A more difficult because a more controversial problem than the Roman Empire is its contemporary, the early Christian Church.  In the middle decades of last century Baur treated the rise of Christianity as an historical phenomenon, leaving his hearers to determine for themselves whether it was human or divine; but his influence proved more enduring than his writings.  Weiszaecker, his successor at Tuebingen, in his Apostolic Age, described with consummate scholarship and passionless serenity the life and organization of the early Christian communities.  The necessity of a careful study of the soil out of which Christianity has grown is now generally recognized, and great scholars such as Schuerer and Pfleiderer have re-created the religious atmosphere into which Christ was born.  The constitution of the primitive Church, too long hotly discussed by the champions of rival sects, has been studied with welcome impartiality by Lightfoot and Hatch.  But no man, alive or dead, can boast of such achievements as Harnack.  His History of Dogma, his vast survey of Christian Literature till Eusebius, his narrative of the Expansion of Christianity before the conversion of Constantine, are inseparable companions of the student who means business.  The treasures of the catacombs have been revealed by De Rossi, to whom we also owe the publication of the Christian Inscriptions of Rome.  The history of the early Christian communities in the outlying provinces of the Empire has been enriched by Ramsay’s explorations in Asia Minor.  While the best work naturally goes into monographs, comprehensive narratives are occasionally attempted by scholars of the first class.  Renan’s sparkling volumes have enjoyed immense popularity, and some of them may still be read with profit; but, like his History of the Jews, they belong rather to literature than to science.  If we desire a readable summary of the scholarship of the last half-century we may turn to the Volumes of the Catholic Duchesne or, better still, to those of the late Professor Gwatkin.

Imperial Rome and the Christian Church meet and blend in the Byzantine Empire, the later history of which appeared to Gibbon ’a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery’.  Its services to civilization and the greatness of many of its rulers were revealed to the world by Finlay, whose narrative was acclaimed by Freeman as the most considerable work of English historical literature since the Decline and Fall.  In the half-century that has elapsed since its completion, the exploration of a thousand years has gone busily forward.  The lead was taken in France by Rambaud, Schlumberger, and Diehl, the latter of whom was rewarded for his efforts by his appointment as first occupant of the Chair created in Paris in 1899.  Greater than any of the three was Krumbacher, the prince of German Byzantinists, for whom a Chair was founded at Munich in 1892, and whose encyclopaedic survey of Byzantine literature is beyond comparison the most important single work in this field of historical study.  England is worthily represented by Professor Bury, whose narrative of the Empire has already reached the ninth century.