OF LATIN CHRISTIANITY; INCLUDING THAT OF THE POPES ΤΟ THE PONTIFICATE OF NICOLAS V. BY HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S. VOLUME I. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS PREFACE. THE History of Latin Christianity is a continuation of "The History of Christianity to the Extinction of Paganism in the Roman Empire." But Latin Christianity appears to possess such a remarkable historic unity, that I have thought fit, in order to make this work complete in itself, to trace again its origin and earlier development, and to enter in some respects with greater fulness, yet without unnecessary repetition, into its history during the first four centuries. On one extremely dark part of that history a book but recently discovered has thrown unexpected light. The sentence of Polybius which describes the unity, and the plan of his History of Republican Rome, might be adopted by the historian of the Rise and Progress of Christian Rome. Οντος γὰρ ἑνὸς ἔργου καὶ θεάματος ἑνὸς τοῦ σύμπαντος, ὑπὲρ τούτου γράφειν ἐπεκεχειρήκαμεν τοῦ, πῶς καὶ πότε, καὶ διὰ τί πάντα τὰ γνωριζόμενα μέρη τῆς οἰκου μένης ὑπὸ τὴν Ῥωμαίων δυναστείαν ἐγένετο.—1. iii. c. i. "The work which we have undertaken being one, the whole forming one great design, how, when, and by what means all the known world became subject to the Roman rule." Though the great sphere of Latin Christianity was Western Europe, yet, during the first seven or eight centuries, it is so mingled up with the |