On the significance of archaeological discoveries for the processing of ancient church history

When embarking on a very serious matter, but to some extent new for me - giving lectures on Church History in a higher educational institution, to persons who have a very solid scientific training, but specifically theological, I involuntarily had to feel some special difficulty of this matter, arising from the special position occupied by the science of Church History among other sciences of the historical and philological faculty, and at the same time I should also have felt an urgent need to secure, first of all, a solid point of support for developing the most appropriate character of research and presentation. It seems that such a point of support can only be acquired through a thorough understanding of the path that in this case seems to us most appropriate. Outlining the proper and best path of research is a very important matter. Sometimes the achievement of a goal and the fulfillment of tasks inherent in a particular science, tasks both permanent and general, and private, more or less random, determined by the volume and properties of scientific material at a given moment, or the needs of the time and individuals, entirely depend on this. I have no claim to break new paths in my science, but in this regard I would like to stand at a height that would be in harmony with both the dignity of this department and the dignity of science, namely: in order to achieve the goal of university teaching, as well as the goals of specifically scientific ones, I would like to follow the best path developed by the history of science and determined by the current state of the sources of this science and the material subject to its processing. What kind of path is this? I will say in advance that from a comparison of the modern needs of science with the needs of university teaching, in my opinion, it clearly follows that this path should coincide with the direction that is currently quite clearly outlined by the frequent excursions of church historians into the field of archeology, although it has not yet received general distribution. In order to determine the merits and features of this direction and its expediency, I intend to occupy your attention with a brief outline of the general position, general tasks and needs of church historical science, developed by its history. I hope that from this essay it will be sufficiently clear where our choice should lean and why. Church History currently occupies a rather uncertain and, so to speak, ambiguous position among other historical sciences. Without a doubt, it is a historical science. In terms of its subject matter, it is a part or special department of general world history. Its subject is religion, although not in its entirety, but only in its specific and individual manifestation, namely Christian religion, which constitutes the property of a special society called the church, but still religion, which has always been one of the most powerful factors determining the direction and course of human history. As such a factor, it cannot be ignored by researchers of world history even today. For its part, Church History, having separated itself from the general history, cannot break its connection with it, since religious movements always took place in more or less close connection with political or social conditions, from which they sometimes received this or that direction, this or that character. In the old days, in the era of chronicles and chronicles, this natural connection between civil and church history was much more visible: chroniclers recorded with equal care both civil and church events. But even now this connection cannot and should not be broken. However, at present this connection is not nearly as close as one might think. Being a historical science, Church History is at the same time a theological science and, moreover, theological science, the science, so to speak, central in the field of theology. All other branches of theology, both theoretical and practical, strive for history as the center and on its basis come into relationship and connection. Serving to unite and justify other theological sciences, Church History, as if involuntarily from ancient times, has adopted for itself some special tasks and special techniques that bring it closer to purely theological sciences and move it away from the general direction of historical science. This, so to speak, unhistorical trend, which reflects quite harmfully on the composition and methods of research of church historical science, is supported in it not only by its special position among the theological sciences, but also by the tradition developed by the history of science, a tradition from which it is not easy to free oneself. This tradition fostered a direction in church-historical science, partly polemical, partly subjective-confessional. Church History adopted this direction from the very beginning of its existence as a separate science. It is very strong in her to this day. Church History emerged as a special science on the basis of religious unrest in the 16th century. It owes its origin to Protestantism and, in particular, to the desire of Protestants to humiliate the papacy and justify the truth of their confession. The first work with which the history of Church History, as a special science, usually begins, was the so-called Magdeburg Centuries. The authors of this enormous work, which appeared between 1550 and 1574, most shamelessly express their counter-historical goal - to prove that the Pope is the Antichrist, that the Church, insofar as it was under papal influence, is the kingdom of the Antichrist, the kingdom of darkness and countless errors, and that only Protestantism brought it out of such a terrible situation. In persistently and passionately pursuing this non-scientific goal, the authors 1 discovered illegibility, gullibility, and obvious bias both in the choice of sources and in the way they were used. Another church-historical work, which appeared somewhat later (1597–1609), “Annales ecclesiastici” by Cardinal Baronius, was also written in a polemical, although more restrained, tone, since the goal in writing it was to paralyze the impression made by the Magdeburg Centuries, which Baronius called satanic centuries. These two works, one Protestant, the other Catholic, for a long time determined the character of Western church historical science. The church historical works that immediately followed them, especially Protestant ones, are all directly or indirectly works that are not so much historical as confessional and polemical. The famous historian Schaff characterizes the church history of the 16th and 17th centuries as follows: “In the 16th and 17th centuries. - he says - history was written from a confessional point of view and it served the confessional interests of the party. Both Protestants and Catholics turned it into an arsenal, from where they took weapons to defeat their opponents. Both have always had the goal of presenting themselves as faithful heirs or restorers of pure Catholic teaching, and their opponents as heretical innovators." At the same time, "of course, there was no shortage of injustices and extremes on both sides. While Roman Catholic polemicists, with the help of partly inauthentic or suspicious documents, tried to attribute institutions of obviously later origin to deep antiquity, and the Reformation was derived from the most unclean motives, Protestant polemicists, with the same spirit of the party and with even greater violence, distorted the history of the Roman Catholic Church and did not at all recognize its great merit in the Christianization and civilization of the Roman and Germanic peoples 2 . To the polemics between Catholics and Protestants, which determined the character of old church historical works, we must also add the polemics between Protestant sects, especially between Lutherans and Reformed people. “Converging in opposition to the Roman Church, Lutheran and Reformed historians of the 16th and 17th centuries. differed as much from each other as each party tried in the centuries of their fathers to find its own distinctive teaching, and of course the purely historical point of view was lost,” that is, their writings acquired an ahistorical character. What is most remarkable is that they all considered themselves impartial and had the task of writing history objectively, pursuing one truth, and this was sometimes even indicated in the very titles of their works. So at the end of the 17th century. one of the very learned Protestant historians, Gottfried Arnold, published a very solid work entitled: “An impartial history of the church and heresies - Unpartheysch Kirchen und Ketzer-Historien (1699–1700). We would be greatly mistaken if we believed this title. Despite the statement of impartiality, the author stands entirely on the same polemical ground on which the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries stood. Both with them and with him, the church-historical task has not yet been separated from the polemical task. The true motivation for the author to compile history was the spirit of polemics, extreme dislike for the direction of Protestantism of that time. Coming from the strange view that the bearers of the Gospel truth, both in ancient and in subsequent times, were only heretics, he made his work an apology for all kinds of heretics against Catholics and Protestants - an original task. One can imagine how the author must have handled historical sources in order to extract evidence from them for his thoughts. It is usually thought that the polemical-confessional element dominated in Church History only in the 16th and 17th centuries. and that from the beginning of the 18th century. a new era of Church History has begun, opening with a supra-natural-pragmatic direction. Mosheim (1755) is considered the best representative of this trend. It is indeed difficult to blame this historian for partisanship, although he is not completely alien to it. But this direction was only a short-term reaction. In the second half of the 18th century. it was replaced by another direction, which in terms of tendentiousness is in no way inferior to the direction of the Magdeburg Centuries. This trend, which continues to this day, can be called philosophical-confessional and, if not directly then indirectly, polemical. Under the influence of various systems of philosophy, it takes on one character or another, but always contains something deliberate and partisan, and therefore not entirely consistent with the true goals and objectives of history. The counter-historical nature of this trend is especially clear in the first series of historians of this kind, who wrote under the influence of Wolffian popular philosophy, French encyclopedism and rationalism in general. Representatives of this direction are considered to be Zemler, Planck and Genke. This is how historiographers characterize this direction. This “direction of historiography is not, in its own sense, historical. It did not have a serious, deep calling to study history, to explain the facts of past Christian life, to establish a more correct and correct view of the fate of the church; history attracts the attention of representatives of this trend primarily as a means to, if not undermine the significance of Christianity, then at least to diminish in the eyes of society the importance of the religious element in human life; For this purpose, from the history of Christianity, facts were collected and presented primarily that pointed to the dark sides in the history of the church, and historians tried to present such facts as the most characteristic ones, in which the very essence of the religious life of mankind in former times was expressed” 3 . “This direction,” says another historiographer, “is not actually historical; it has no attachment to history as history, but sees in it only a negative interest in order to exercise its destructive criticism on it.” In it “everything comes down to a subjective basis” 4. In general, from a scientific and historical point of view, this direction is insignificant; however, some merit is attributed to him and, among other things, the merit that with its extremes it brought into being and activity the so-called Orthodox Protestant school of Neander, in which we have a better treatment of Church History and a better understanding of Christianity and its history. Neander (1850) is called "the father of modern church history." Indeed, in terms of his talents and direction, he stands so high that no other church historian until now could compare with him. However, he, being a Protestant and a student of Schleiermacher, paid tribute to partisanship and subjectivism, and could not completely separate himself from the general trend, which we called philosophical-confessional. His concepts of individuality in religion, of the universal priesthood, his concept of the Christian religion as something excluding the church, existing only outside and next to the church, reflected in a very unfavorable way on his history. This story is not church history. Schaff says that Neander is “a historian par excellence of the invisible church and therefore depicts in the most distinct and original way the development of Christian teaching and Christian life, especially as far as they are reflected in private theologians and pious men, and in this respect he surpasses all his predecessors. On the contrary, he sees little interest in everything that relates more to the external phenomena of the church. This especially applies to the sections on the structure of the church, which already in the first period was presented (by him) very unsatisfactorily and under the influence of his antipathy towards the hierarchical principle. He also did not pay attention to the secular and political side of church history, which is revealed especially in the field of church structure, to the connection between the church and the state,” etc. He also did not pay attention to the aesthetic and artistic side of the Christian religion and to the cult. “There is nothing to look for in his work for a detailed depiction of the influence that Christianity had on this area of ​​​​human life; he has no history of plastic arts, painting, architecture, music, poetry, as well as everything that relates to the splendor and symbolism of the medieval historical cult.” Worship defined in its forms, in his opinion, is an abnormal phenomenon, “a descent into the realm of sensuality with its infirmities” 5 . What does all this mean, if not that Neander carried his subjective and confessional ideas through his history? Another luminary of the latest Protestant church historical science, Baur, a follower of Hegelian philosophy and the head of the so-called New Tübinge school († 1860), reveals incomparably more subjectivity and complete ahistoricality. Having assimilated the theory of development invented by Hegel through theses and antitheses, he applied this theory to the history of Christianity and in particular to the history of its origin and rebuilt ancient church history beyond recognition. To squeeze the sequence of church-historical events into the framework of this theory, Baur stops at nothing. The most authentic documents, if they do not favor the theory, are rejected by him as inauthentic or cut down and corrected as necessary. The same is done with facts that are genuine even from his point of view. He treats them without any ceremony: he either reduces or exaggerates their significance, the ancients interfere with the newest, and all this in order to justify the theory. “He does not want to place himself in a normal relationship to actual history” and wants to position his “prejudiced subjectivism as the legislator of history. From an idea he wants to gain knowledge of how it should be, in order not to have to observe how it really is. As a result, Baur wants to remake the facts themselves, mix them up and place them in a different order than how they are placed by the course of events in actual history - and all this because in this actual form they fit very awkwardly into those schemes that are so dear to Baur, due to his inclination towards Hegelian doctrines. Hence there is so much arbitrariness in his construction of the history of not only early Christianity, but also the history of subsequent times of the Christian Church” 6. In general, Baur’s church history in essence is not so much history as “an experience in applying Hegel’s philosophical ideas to the past destinies of Christianity” 7 . It is clear how little truly historical can be found in a history of this kind. However, its compiler stands at the head of an entire school, which has great strength even today, especially when it comes to the history of the first centuries of the Christian era. And nowadays in Protestant-German literature it is rare to find a book devoted to questions about the first centuries of Christianity, which would not reflect the influence of Baur’s views, although for the most part with some changes. One of these books, published recently, comes from the pen of an author who promises to surpass Baur in talent and hard work. This is an educational book on the history of Christian dogma - Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (Freiburg 1886–1887), compiled by Adolf Harnack, professor of church history at the University of Berlin. With his numerous critical studies, especially on ancient Christian literature, the author managed to win a leading position among modern church historians. His extraordinary critical talent and deep erudition add enormous value to his research. It is all the more astonishing to see how, under the pressure of trends and preconceived theories, the highest scientific qualities are distorted. Harnack's theory, like many others, is the same as Baur's. This is the notorious theory of development, seeking to explain the origin and development of Christianity in a natural way from a small embryo, the content of which seems greater or lesser, depending on what views this or that author holds on the essence of the Christian religion, whether he recognizes it as divine and revealed or not. Since Harnack does not recognize the Christian religion as revealed, in his opinion this initial embryo has such a minimal size and such little content that even the doctrine of Christ as God, which supposedly appeared among Christians after the development of Gnosticism no earlier than the year 160, does not find a place in it. According to Harnack, Christ taught very few moral truths; in the apostolic age the sum of Christian concepts was also not great. Under the influence of Greco-Roman education, Judaism, Gnosticism and other heresies, little by little a certain Christian doctrine began to develop, which is thus not the teaching of Christ and the early Christian church, but subsequently appeared under the influence of various, often completely extraneous to Christianity, factors. In order to prove all this, it was necessary to carry out so many strange and unscientific experiments on facts and sources that any unprejudiced person would involuntarily be amazed. For the development of fantastic theories in the field of history, the fewer facts and sources, the better. Hence the desire to clear the space at all costs from everything that could interfere with the flight of fantasy. For this purpose, Baur even subjected the authenticity of the New Testament writings to unusually captious and arbitrary criticism. The result was the elimination of many New Testament books from authenticity. Garnak stands at the same point. He rejects the authenticity of the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and some of the Epistles. Paul and cathedrals. It was in his interest to deny the authenticity of even all the New Testament books. But many of them bear such a strong stamp of authenticity that there is no way to do this. He is forced to admit the authenticity of the Gospel of John and most of the epistles of St. Pavel. If we depict the early Christian teaching on the basis of these undoubtedly authentic messages of St. Paul, and then there will be such a complete complex of Christian beliefs that it will stand in complete contradiction with what Harnack assumed in this regard. But the theory is not inferior to the obvious fact. Harnack did not dare to reject the authenticity of the Gospel of John, but he does not want to use it, citing the fact that the origin of this Gospel is “the most profound mystery” for him. Harnack recognizes the authenticity of Paul's Epistles, but does not want to use them to characterize the early Christian doctrine, asserting quite arbitrarily that Paul's Epistles until the half of the 2nd century. were not known to the church, or at least until that time had no influence on the formation of Christian doctrine. 8 But, however, if these epistles are truly Paul’s, then they are undoubtedly identical in content with what Paul preached orally; therefore their contents were known. We have described only the most important representatives of Protestant church historical science, who, according to the general opinion, are the most learned and gifted and generally occupy an outstanding position in the history of our science. They are joined by many students and followers, no less learned, but less original and gifted, who in their writings, mostly textbooks, although they propagate essentially the same ideas and follow the same direction, but for the most part they discolor it, smoothing out harshness and eccentricities. Sometimes they achieve a significant degree of objectivity, but never completely renounce confessional subjectivism. As for the Catholics, their church historical works are also very great, and in terms of originality and significance they are considered - and rightly so - much lower than the German Protestants. In terms of the tone and nature of the research, they are much more moderate and calmer than Protestant ones. Even the Annals of Baronius, as we have seen, although written with a polemical purpose, their tone is much more moderate and calm than the tone of the Magdeburg Centuries. Protestants themselves agree with this (Baur). But nevertheless, the confessional element in Catholic church histories is no less developed than in Protestant ones. The desire to justify all the features of the papal system by divine authority and church-historical tradition makes itself felt as strongly and persistently as the desire of Protestants and rationalists to reduce Christianity to the circle of ordinary anthropological functions. Not to mention the primacy of the pope - this cardinal point of the Roman Catholic system, even for all other features of the doctrine and cult, Roman Catholic historians try to find foundations in early Christian antiquity, and, at least in the old days, they were not averse to resorting to damage and forgery of documents, that is, to commit the greatest crime that can only be imagined in the field of science, the ideal of which is one single true. As a result, the systems of church history among Roman Catholics are very often not so much the history of the church as the history of the popes. Even the division of material often has as its starting point the popes alone, so that events are considered by pontificate, as in some civil histories by reign. Hence the view of the so-called schismatics as rebels against the tsar - the pope and the extremely unfair attitude towards them. This is, in general terms, the direction of Western church historical science. Its characteristic feature is extreme confessionalism. Church History in Western processing contains so many ahistorical elements that it is difficult to call it history in the proper sense. This is indeed often not history, but a historical and polemical apology for various kinds of faiths - this is historical theology, as it is often called in the West. Let us note that this brief description given by us is not the result of our personal impression alone, but is an opinion, if not universal, then very widespread and supported by many respectable scientists who have had the opportunity to closely, thoroughly and for a long time study both Protestant and Catholic historiography. And we, making our characterization, tried to deliberately speak mostly in their own words. Let us also note that by giving such a characterization of the general direction of Western church historical science, we do not intend to diminish the high scientific significance of the numerous scientific works carried out by representatives of this science in the West. We also do not think to be contemptuous of their one-sidedness, their mistakes, inaccuracies in the coverage and interpretation of facts, and in general everything that stems from their religious-subjective and confessional motives. Subjectivism in history is a phenomenon that is very difficult to eliminate. It is especially difficult to eliminate the subjective element from Church History, for subjectivism here is of a special kind - religious and, in particular, confessional subjectivism. This subjectivism is distinguished by its particular intensity, particular brightness and passion of its manifestations and, moreover, by its very inner nature it contains a certain kind of mental compulsion, which is due to the characteristics of the subject to which it relates. This subject is religion, a subject that touches on all its sides the most precious interests of a person’s spiritual life. Can a believer (and this is mandatory for a church historian) be neither warm nor cold when studying this subject? From this point of view, the subjective element in Church History has, as it were, a legal right to exist. Nevertheless, it should, if possible, be eliminated from here, or at least confined within strict boundaries, for its presence here, especially when combined with confessional or philosophical intolerance, often affects the merits of scientific research in an extremely harmful way. Without listing here many particular points where one can observe this harmful influence of subjectivism in Church History, we will point out only one of the most general and quite important, namely, the predilection of Western Protestant church historians for the study of only known aspects of church life - those precisely where it is more possible to apply and develop their favorite theories. The history of the Church, when depicting successive changes in the life of the Church, must take into account this life in its entirety and in all its manifestations, both the internal side of this life and the external: for the historian, both should be equally important. This is not what we see in Western, especially Protestant, historians. They are primarily interested, as we saw in the examples of Baur and Harnack, in the question of the origin of Christianity, the history of dogma, and the teachings of the church, and therefore pay relatively little attention to the external side of church life. As a result, their stories are one-sided, more stories of dogma than stories of the church in general. Partly a consequence, partly a manifestation of this dogmatic one-sidedness was that the study of the external side of Christian life, extremely constrained in the field of Church History, little by little, completely separated from it and became isolated into a separate science, which received the name Church Archeology. And in the field of this science, which initially constituted nothing more than a department of Church History, a reaction has arisen in modern times that promises to significantly transform the hitherto accepted methods of church historical research, broaden the horizons of church history and save it from the harmful consequences of confessionalism. Church Archeology as a science about external church life and church cult existed for quite a long time and was worked very diligently and with great success, especially during the past and at the beginning of the present century. But since it was processed using the same method and on the basis of the same sources as history, it could not have an active influence on the latter. On the contrary, constituting in essence only a part of ancient church history, making up for its one-sidedness, it itself was dependent on it, so that the tendencies of confessionalism, which had built such a strong nest for themselves in the field of Church History, often penetrated into it. This was the situation until almost half of the current century, when Church Archeology underwent a radical transformation, receiving its own special independent subject and its own special method. This revolution was accomplished thanks to the special development of purely scientific research in the field of material monuments of Christian antiquity, research begun by the famous Roman archaeologist De Rossi, rightly considered the founder of scientific-monumental Christian archeology. The study of Christian monuments existed earlier, starting at least from the half of the 16th century, but thanks to unscientific methods it was almost fruitless. Researchers copied inscriptions and copied paintings, but at the same time they cared very little about accuracy and even less about documentation in relation to resolving questions about the place and time of their origin. Lacking proper dates, the monuments published by these researchers, for example, Pere and Dazhenkur, had almost no scientific significance, and it was not for nothing that church historians treated them with disdain and suspicion. De Rossi applied another method to the study of Christian monuments - a purely scientific one. He began with special diligence to resolve chronological and topographical issues and began to compose a description of the monuments in which each of them receives the meaning of a precisely defined and undoubted church-historical fact. Thanks to the special merits of the research method, he managed, with his famous publications Roma sotterranea and Biilletino di archeologia cristiana, to introduce into scientific circulation a lot of completely new material, extremely valuable and varied and, moreover, critically processed, in general such that Church History can no longer ignore it. Hence the inevitability of the influence of church-archaeological discoveries on history and here, in our opinion, is the germ of a certain new direction in ancient Church History, an archaeological direction, the features of which are determined by the close rapprochement of Church History with Archeology, the introduction of archaeological discoveries into church-historical presentation and which has recently been quite clearly outlined. The use of archaeological discoveries, generally speaking, is not new to historical science. Civil history, especially the history of the ancient East, for example, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and partly the classical peoples, has long placed archaeological monuments, discovered and rediscovered, in the most honorable place among its sources and reproduces the history of these peoples, sometimes exclusively on the basis of these monuments, and often brilliant, highly relief and clear pictures are obtained, and in general extremely valuable and sometimes unexpected results. It is true that the outstanding role of archaeological monuments in this case is due mainly to the lack of written sources, but nevertheless, science benefits from this, and this is the main thing. However, science benefits from the use of archaeological monuments even when literary sources are not scarce. And in this case, archaeological sites very often provide significant additions, explanations and corrections. Church History also lists archaeological monuments among its sources; but until recently, partly due to the lack of development of this area, partly due to its one-sided development, they were almost not used. At present, traces of the influence of church-archaeological discoveries on Church History are already quite clear. Nowadays, church historians quite often and quite willingly exploit the discoveries of archeology, resorting to its help not only to illustrate historical news about ancient Christian life, art, etc., to outline some details in the general state of early Christian society, but also to clarify some dark sides in the history of Christian teaching and Christian thought. Moreover, among modern historians there are already those who even attach extremely important hitherto unusual significance to archaeological monuments, as a source of history, and place them almost in the first place. This is especially true of the French scientist Allard, who relatively recently began to publish his church-historical works, but has already managed to attract attention with the originality of his questions and his special commitment to archaeology. This is one of De Rossi's most devoted and talented students. In the scientific field, he published the compilation “Underground Rome - a summary of De Rossi’s discoveries in the Roman catacombs,” which was a great success. This is followed by his works “On Christian Slaves from the First Centuries of Christianity to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire” 9, crowned by the French Academy, and another under the title “Pagan Art under Christian Emperors” 10. In the last work, Aliar gives a detailed history of classical monuments from the time of Constantine the Great until the devastation of Rome by the Vandals, and on the basis of archaeological data, contrary to Gibbon and some art historians, he develops and proves the position first expressed by De Rossi that the monuments of pagan art, after Christianity took a dominant position, were by no means destroyed by Christians, who, on the contrary, treated them as works of art, with respect. Finally, in 1885, Aliar began publishing his “History of Persecution According to Archaeological Documents” 11 and has already published three large volumes. In all his writings, Aliar declares an ardent and systematic desire to supplement and correct the image of the destinies of the ancient Christian church with the help of newly discovered very abundant archaeological material. It is true that this aspiration is not always crowned with complete success, since the archaeological material is still quite one-sided, and not yet entirely sufficient, but in Alyar’s work one can count many points in which previous church-historical information with the help of archeology is significantly supplemented or reinforced and even corrected. This work contains entire sections that were not included in previous histories at all. In addition to Aliard, among the representatives or exponents of the same archaeological trend, so to speak, we can also include another French Protestant scientist, Roller, who in 1881 published two huge volumes entitled: “Roman Catacombs. History of art and religious beliefs during the first centuries of Christianity" 12. Here, in this history of religious beliefs, reaching almost to the 9th century, archaeological material already occupies the main and completely dominant position, although it is processed, as in history, in chronological order and with a church-historical purpose. It is true that both named authors, one Catholic, the other Protestant, did not write complete church histories, but only monographs on ancient church history, but in complete church histories the principle of using archaeological discoveries with complete consistency can hardly be applied. It goes without saying that archaeological sites are of particular importance where we are dealing with an ancient period, which is more difficult for us to understand than later periods, a period that is of paramount importance in the history of the church, but is not fully attested by written documents. At the same time, we are dealing with a direction that is just beginning, emerging, and we cannot yet know what will come out of it later, when archaeological research covers a larger field and when the almost untouched soil of the East - the homeland and ancient prosperity of Christianity - opens its depths. Who knows how radically many of the most important sections of ancient church history will then be reworked? We believe that this will happen, that the currently emerging direction of church historical science has a good future and that this direction is the most appropriate for the present time and for this case. What, however, does modern church-historical science gain and what can it hope to gain from this trend, from this invasion of its field of church archeology? There is no doubt that Church History gains a lot from this invasion. We could prove this by a detailed presentation of many more or less important church-historical issues already resolved with the help of church archeology, but it is inconvenient to do this here. Let us limit ourselves to a short list of the most important and most striking. 1) We said that hitherto Church History, under the influence of the confessional-dogmatic trend, paid relatively little attention to the history of the external manifestations of Christian religious life in cult, customs, morals, art, etc. This depended partly on the comparative poverty of the sources. The depiction of external life requires clarity, and the best illustration should, of course, be the material monuments of this life, and these monuments were almost unknown until recently. Now, with the help of church-archaeological data, this section of Church History can be processed with unprecedented breadth and thoroughness. Now here many things can receive a different light, and church life can be depicted from many new sides. 2) Even in those departments of Church History where written monuments are very scanty, archaeological discoveries provide new and important additions. Thus, from Aliard’s book, as well as from the works of De Rossi and Leblanc, we can see that martyrological and hagiological material, as a result of archaeological discoveries, increases to an unexpected extent, and this is very important. It is known that the church is a society consisting of separate members or individuals equal before God, and that the life of the church is the totality of the religious life of its members. The more information we have about the lives of individual members of the church, the more we will be able to depict more fully the general life of the church. Information about the lives of individual church members is contained mainly in the acts of martyrs and in the lives of saints. But it is known that hitherto many tales about martyrs, distorted by legends and various additions by compilers, were completely excluded from a number of church historical sources. Now some of the most suspicious martyrological documents suddenly acquired scientific value, since archeology has verified the veracity of their story, at least in general terms, and provided a means of distinguishing fiction from truth in them. Such are, for example, the acts of Nereus and Achilles, the acts of St. Cecilia, stories about the martyrs Sophia, Vera, Nadezhda and Love, about St. Ippolite and others. Aliar transferred the results of archaeological criticism from De Rossi’s books into his history and thereby significantly enriched its content. 3) Some questions, as a result of the discoveries of archeology, receive a completely new formulation and solution. This is especially the case with regard to the rights of the church over property in the 3rd century. and in general about the legal conditions that ensured the church some very important rights even in centuries of persecution, otherwise the question of the significance for the church of Roman customs and laws regarding the so-called colleges or associations, especially funeral ones. This very important question has been resolved almost exclusively on the basis of archaeological data, and its solution can be considered already generally accepted in science. 4) Some opinions and views, hitherto circulating in science, thanks to old authorities, as a result of archaeological discoveries, are now relegated to a number of unfounded prejudices and declared false. This, for example, is the view of many historians on the attitude of ancient Christians to art in general and to pagan art in particular, an attitude that was supposedly extremely hostile, which was the reason for the destruction of many first-class works of ancient art. Nowadays this view is almost completely abandoned as a prejudice, as a preconceived opinion not based on genuine facts. This is also the view of many Western scientists on Byzantium as something dark, lifeless and ugly. Western scientists studying Byzantium, until recently, treated the subject of their research with an incomprehensible one-sidedness, with clearly biased opinions that were very unflattering for Byzantium. Nowadays, thanks to a more careful study of Byzantine monuments, a rather sharp turn in opinion is being noticed, so that in the latest Western studies regarding, for example, Byzantine art, it is not uncommon to find the most flattering reviews. These are, for example, the reviews of Baye and Roller. It would be possible to list many other less important points where Archeology corrected and supplemented Church History, but this would drag out the speech too much. I will point out one last point of the beneficial influence of archeology on Church History, the most general and therefore perhaps the most important, but which still lies in the realm of the desirable. It seems to us that, under the influence of Archeology, Church History may, over time, be completely freed from those shortcomings that are caused by the too widespread development of confessionalism in its field and the predominance of theory over facts. Archaeological soil is the soil of facts, which, with their striking obviousness and clarity, quickly cool flights of fancy and call our thinking ability to order; cold tombstones are capable of smashing into dust the most intricate constructions and the most blind prejudices. It seems to us that this prediction is already partly justified. The two authors we have mentioned, although they do not completely break with confessionalism, their tone is already different. For proof and in conclusion, I will allow myself to refer to the last of them, i.e. on Roller. This learned Protestant began to study the Roman monuments discovered by De Rossi with a considerable degree of prejudice and studied them for 15 years. This is how he speaks about the significance of archaeological Roman monuments for Church History. “The catacombs,” he says, “represent not only antiquity, important for some archaeologists; they represent a page of history to which modern denominations must necessarily seek to verify their titles. All Christianity has the need to ascertain, on the basis of these little-known, recently not yet fully studied, documents, what happened in the times closest to its origin. The testimonies of the church fathers provide significant clarification on this subject; but many of the main points of their thoughts remain doubtful and controversial. It is not possible to control their statements sufficiently to establish their value or determine their meaning. The poetic and often not quite precise way of expression leaves many things in the dark among the authors of the first centuries of Christianity. Could not this darkness be partly dispelled by a careful examination of tangible documents, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted and which is provided by factual evidence? The various Christian denominations have the greatest interest in examining these documents, because the differences of these denominations cannot be sufficiently justified by the study of church writers. After the question: how did Christ teach? to a certain extent, as an answer to it, other questions follow: how did the immediate disciples, the apostles and the generations that followed them believe?.. The catacombs help solve some of these problems. From these deep dungeons, where they thought they would find nothing but darkness, rays of light broke through, which no longer allows one to not see... It is important to state not so much one’s direct continuity as the degree of one’s kinship with the beliefs of the first centuries. This is history, pure and simple, as it should be. It could lead researchers to the conviction that the Christians of the catacombs were neither Catholics in the modern sense, nor Protestants, much less free thinkers” 13. A fairly large corporation of learned theologians was involved in compiling the Centuries. The initiator of the case and its head was a certain Matvey Flyatsiy. For details, see the book by Prof. A. Lebedeva: “Essays on the development of Protestant church historical science in Germany.” Moscow, 1881, pp. 10 et seq. Church history history, trans. from Schaffa. Proceedings Kyiv. Spirit. Academician 1861. II- 216–217. Schaff, Geschichte der Apostolischen Kirche. Lebedev Essays... pp. 77, 78 Schaff Tr. How. 1861. II. 134 Lebedev, Essays pp. 137, 138 Lebedev, Experience..., pp. 194, 197, 195 For a detailed analysis of Harnack's work, see Rights. Review 1889 January-March in the article L. “A new example of a misunderstanding of the history of the ancient church in German theological literature” It is not surprising that in Russia, where German church-historical, especially Protestant, literature is very well known, a fearful attitude towards the science of church history has long prevailed among the spiritual intelligentsia, so that church-historical research is most often met with us not with joy, but with anxiety and apprehension. From this side, a very characteristic factor seems to us to be the appearance in the light of the first issue of the History of the Church of Prof. St. Pete. spirit. Cheltsov Academy, which was left without continuation. This story, published in 1861, in itself does not represent anything particularly remarkable, since it is a compilation from the history of Neander. But there is a significant preface in it. It is remarkable that the author of this preface considered it necessary, first of all, to dispel, if possible, fears and anxieties of this kind. “Science,” he says, “is such a recent phenomenon in our Orthodox world that many of the most religious and pious people fear it as something hostile to faith.” Pointing then to Clement of Alexandria, who strictly condemns distrust of science, the author continues: “not considering myself entitled to share the severity of his judgments, I think that in our time such distrust of the free research of science - on the part of many undoubtedly well-intentioned people, comes not so much from fear for the faith, but from doubt in the ability of famous persons who undertake the scientific study of objects of faith to conduct their business with real, and not imaginary knowledge. I bow my head before such wise caution, but at the same time I wholeheartedly share Clement’s opinion that our holy Orthodox Church not only should not be afraid of any scientific critical research, but “can rely in them as one of the means for its triumph,” etc. Les esclaves chrétiens depuis les premiers temps de l'eglise jusq' la fin de la domination romaine en occident. 2nd edit. 1876. Paris. L'art paien sons les empereurs chrétiens. Paris 1879. Histoire des persécutions... d'apres les documents archeologiques Paris. 1885, 1886, 1887. The last volume is entitled: Les dernières persecutions du troisieme sifècle. Roller. Les catacombes de Rome. Histoire de l'art et des croyances religieuses pendant les premiers siecles du Christianisme. Paris. 1880. Roller, Les catacombes de Rome. t. I. Praf. You might be interested in: