A History of the Church, Volume I

History of the Church #1

by Philip Hughes

To survey the history of the Catholic Church is, in the words of Eamon Duffy, to be left with “a sense of the intractable complexity of the historical reality of the Church and its institutions.” To do justice to this complexity, Philip Hughes wrote an ambitious, three-volume survey of Church history—comprehensive in scope yet accessible in detail. In Volume I: The Church and the World in Which It Was Founded, Hughes dispenses with the chronological method, instead following the organic division of West and East and the development of the Church in those respective regions. In this “politically Roman and culturally Hellenic” world, Hughes treats the West through to the conversion of Constantine in the early years of the fourth century and the East up to the death of Justinian II in the eighth century.

At the end of antiquity, as in the other stages of history, the Catholic Church was an “all-present, unceasingly active institution.” As such, its history demands to be known. A History of the Church, Volume I, is the first part of a magisterial response to that demand.

Genres: History, Catholic, Nonfiction, Religion, Church History

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Monsignor Philip Hughes (1895-1967) was a Roman Catholic priest and Catholic ecclesiastical historian. He taught post-graduate courses at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

[Sam U · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed treatment from a Catholic perspective of the early Church history from Our Lord’s days up till the 7th century in Volume 1 of this classic of Philip Hughes. Hughes explains the controversies and struggles among prominent theologians, between the Church and State (Byzantine Empire), Roman Primacy ( upheld by Eastern prelates and Councils even up till 7th century) and Caesaro-Papism (pushed by the Byzantine emperors, wittingly or unwittingly. Nevertheless, Hughes did not fail to point out that the various desperate attempts of the Emperors, with coercion and persecution, trying to secure the approvals from popes of their Christological heresies published in Constantinople is only another acknowledgment of the Roman Primacy in the early Church), whilst at the same time backing it up with lines from canons and acts of various Ecumenical Councils all pointing to the importance and esteem of the Pope held by the universal early Church.