AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO SECOND VOLUME

IT is with few words only that I commend this second edition of the second Volume of my History of the Councils to the kindness of my readers. It comprises the time from the second to the fifth General Council inclusive, from 381 to 553, being precisely the period of the fullest and most eventful dogmatic development in the history of the Church; and I trust I may have contributed some help towards a clearer insight into this great process. I have therefore given my first and best attention to the Synods of that period which handled dogma; but the many others, with their numerous and often very important ordinances concerning ecclesiastical discipline, worship, and morals, canon law and judicial procedure, have also received due consideration. Every lover of the history of the Church and of civilisation will here find abundant materials for study.

This second Volume comprises about two hundred sections, of which, comparatively speaking, only a few in this new edition have remained without some, if only a slight correction. The most considerable improvements, corrections, and additions have been made in Sections 98, 101, 102, 110, 111, 118, 123, 126, 127, 134, 157, 162, 163, 188, 190, 196, 217, 222, 228, 242; and thus, although here and there something has been erased, the whole work has been enlarged by some twenty-five pages. I have also taken great pains with the improvement of the Index.

So far as they were known to me, and came within my reach, I have made use of new publications on the subject; but in my present position and place of residence, much that has recently appeared may have remained unknown to me.

I can only regret that the completion of the seventh Volume of the History of the Councils should have preceded the second edition of the second Volume, and not vice versâ. I should otherwise have been able to make use of the second Volume of the Monumenta Conciliorum Gencralium Sæculi XV. (the first volume had appeared in 1857), published by the Vienna Academy of Sciences, for the history of the Councils of Basle and Florence.

ROTTENBURG, January 1875.