The Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern; In Which the Rise, Progress, and Variations of Church Power, Are Considered in Their Connexion with Their State of Learning and Philosophy, and the Political History of Europe Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ... Coiiliniana, and the latter in the Vatican library. n consequence of the zeal and munificence of Charlemagne, who, both by his liberality and Dy his example, had excited and encouraged the doctors of the preceding age to the study of the Scriptures. Of these expositors there are two, at least, who are worthy of esteem, --Christian Druthmar, whose Commentary on St. Matthew has reached our times; and the abbot Bertharius, whose Two Books concerning Fundamentals are also said to be yet extant. The rest seem to have been unequal to the important office of sacred critics, and may be divided into two classes, which we have already had occasion to mention in the course of this history; the class of those who merely collected and reduced into a mass the opinions and explications of the ancients, and that of a fantastic set of expositors, who were always hunting after mysteries in the plainest expressions, and labouring to deduce a variety of abstruse and hidden significations from every passage of Scripture, all which they did, for the most part, in a very clumsy and uncouth manner. At the head of the first class was Rabanus Maurus, who acknowledges that he borrowed from the ancient doctors the materials of whieh he made use in illustrating the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Epistles of St. Paul. To this class also belonged Walafrid Strabo, who borrowed his explications chiefly from Rabanus; Claudius of Turin, who trod in the footsteps of Augustin and Origen; Hincmar, whose Exposition of the four Books of Kings, compiled from the fathers, we still possess; Remigius of Auxerre, who derived from the same source his illustrations of the Psalms and other books of sacred writ; Sedulius, who explained in the same manner the Epistles of St. Paul; Florus, .