PROGRESS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 647 



Such generalizations are the very negation of scientific method. But 

 let us not be afraid to enlarge the field of our researches and to bor- 

 row from the neighbors all that may enlighten our mind. 



Our highest ambition should be to enlarge our historical material. 1 

 If there are probably no more important discoveries to make in the 

 libraries of central and occidental Europe, except perhaps in some 

 palimpsests 2 there are in all likelihood still fine records to dis- 

 cover in Oriental countries. Till now we have thoroughly studied 

 Christianity only in the Grseco-Latin and in the Germanic world. How 

 much remains to be done before we can know the development of 

 this same Christianity among Oriental or Slavonic peoples! How 

 uninformed are we still of the religious change which took place at 

 the conversion of a great part of the Christian world from the religion 

 of Jesus to that of Muhammad? Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, 

 perhaps also Persia, certainly still conceal vast unknown historical 

 treasures. We have to direct the scholars to that side also. 



Finally I should like to account more exactly for the real sense 

 of what I called the secularization of ecclesiastical history. The same 

 rational and critical method, which is used in all other parts of his- 

 torical scholarship must be applied to religious or ecclesiastical his- 

 tory: that is a fact beyond all further discussion. But to be able 

 to apply it in this special department, you ought to know, of your- 

 self, what is religious feeling or religious emotion. A scholar quite 

 devoid of religious disposition will study religious history only as 

 a deaf man might study the history of music or a blind man that 

 of painting. He lacks the sense, which alone enables him to recog- 

 nize and appreciate the inmost value of religious doctrines, rites, or 

 institutions. 



Let us not forget this : in the history of the Christian Church as well 

 as of all other religions, the work to be done is not alone of intellectual 



1 The discovery of a document like the Philosophoumena, for instance, has 

 contributed more to our knowledge of Gnosticism than all dissertations on texts 

 already known. In the last quarter of the preceding century our historical material 

 for the knowledge of ancient Christianity has been largely increased by the 

 discovery of new texts, such as various Logia Jesu, the Didache, fragments of 

 the Gospel and of the Revelation of Petrus, the Syriac Sinaitic version of the 

 gospels, the Acts of Paul, fragments of several apocalypses and apostolic acts (for 

 instance of John and of Peter) , of Coptic apocryphal gospels, the old Latin version of 

 the Epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians, new versions of the Didascalia, 

 the Apology of Aristides, new Gnostic texts (chiefly the Pistis Sophia, the treatises 

 of the Codex Brucianus, magic formulas and incantations), acts of martyrs, 

 original texts of " libelli," writings of Hippolytus (Commentary on Daniel, chiefly) 

 and of Methodius, fragments of Melito of Sardes, of Origenes, of Peter of Alexandria, 

 writings of Priscillian, the Peregrinatio Silviae ad loca sancta, the History of 

 Dioscoros by Theopistos, and numerous fragments of the Church Fathers. More- 

 over the writings of the Latin Fathers are reedited in the best conditions in the 

 Corpus scriptorum ecdesiasticorum latinorum, and those of the Greek Christian 

 writers of the first three centuries are published again with all the resources of 

 modern paleography and criticism in the Corpus edited under the patronage of 

 the Academy of Sciences of Berlin. 



2 This is shown, for instance, by the discoveries of Dom Morin published in the 

 A nccdota Maredsolana. 



