In his review of Professor Emerton's English translation of the Letters of St Boniface (a posthumous publication edited by G. La Piana of Harvard and Austin Evans of Columbia in Records of Civilization) Mr George Washington Robinson, who is an admirable reader of manuscripts for the press and possesses a keen flair for misprints and occasional irregularities in the spelling of proper names, went beyond his depth when confronted with a question of chronology. There are in the collection several papal letters addressed to Boniface or to others and dated, as it was then the practice of the papal chancery, by the years of the coronation of the living emperor and the years of his consulship. For instance, the letter to Boniface of 1 April, 743 is dated: ‘Kalendis Apriles, imperante Domno Augusto Constantino a Deo coronato magno Imperatore vicesimo quarto, post consulatum eius anno secundo.’ Professor Emerton omitted these dates in his translation; they were added by the present writer whom Professor Emerton, a few days before his death, personally requested to subject his manuscript to a thorough, much needed revision.

The question of the Byzantine Theater is again on the foreground of Byzantine studies. Several publications on this subject which have seen the light during these last years suggest the need of a new general survey of the whole question and of the literature bearing upon it, especially because it seems that, as in no other field, imagination has taken the place of sound critical method in dealing with texts and with historical sources.

About the year 1170, Odo, prior of Canterbury and later abbot of Battle, wrote a letter of edification to one of his novices describing the great spiritual opportunities and privileges offered by monastic life. Among other things, the learned and saintly prior outlined a theological interpretation of universal history in this fashion:

O admirable mystery and admirable sacrament! God gave to the hearts of men a First Testament which was called Natural Law; had they observed it, they would not have needed another. But being lovers of novelty, men neglected it, when it grew old, and God gave them a Second Testament in the Circumcision, which some adopted with a certain willingness on account of its novelty. But this also became old and was neglected, hence God gave a Third Testament in the Baptism which is predestined to remain for eternity. Yet when this too became old through long use, men gradually began to be neglectful of it, and God gave them a Fourth Testament in the Monastic Cowl (cuculla) to the novelty of which almost the whole world, lover of novelties, has now turned. After this, there will not be a fifth one, because in this all the benedictions granted to all peoples are contained. All religion and all holiness contained in the three previous Testaments, are condensed in the Testament of St Benedict.

The belief in miracles has played a very important part in all the great historical religions. In primitive religions the intervention of powers supposed to be beyond ordinary human control and acting for purposes of their own did not assume the character of supernatural events, for natural and supernatural were not two distinct categories in the primitive religious experience of mankind. It was the process of moralization of religions and the growing knowledge of the consistent working of natural laws that gradually led to a classification of phenomena into the two great divisions of those which were natural and those above nature, a distinction that very soon became an opposition and gave rise to that dualistic conception of life and of the universe which we find at the basis of all the great historical religions.

Among the many religions of oriental origin Christianity was the only one which really became a Roman religion, and any attempt to explain the complex history of the institutional development of the Church of Rome during the early centuries of the empire must start from the analysis of this distinguishing fact, the ‘romanization’ of the Christian Church. A survey of the Roman environment in which Christianity made its first conquests and secured its success is the indispensable preliminary to the study of the process that gradually transformed Christianity in Rome from a religion of foreign groups into the legally established religion of the Roman Empire.

During the latter part of the second century Irenaeus of Lyons, at the beginning of his treatise “Against All Heresies,” did not hesitate to state with great emphasis that Christianity had fully succeeded in keeping intact the original Christian faith, in safeguarding the unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition, and in maintaining the unity of belief and of sacramental practice throughout all the churches scattered in the Roman Empire. One might easily remark that the very treatise which Irenaeus had set himself to write offered clear evidence that the Christian unity so emphatically affirmed by him did not really exist. Far from being united, Christianity was rent by serious doctrinal and disciplinary conflicts. Evidently Irenaeus was speaking of the oneness of the Christian faith without taking into account the divergent beliefs and practices of those groups which had been cut off from the communion of the Great Church. So understood his assumption was true: by the end of the second century the καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία did possess unity of essential belief and even a certain degree of uniformity in its organization and practice. How such a unity had been achieved is one of the most important problems in the history of early Christianity.

Catholic writers on Scholastic Theology do not hesitate to admit that no work contributing new and valuable additions to this science has been published since the days of Bellarmin, Suarez, and Lugo. The collapse of scholastic philosophy after the fifteenth century could not fail to affect also scholastic theology, which in losing all contact with the new scientific progress lost also its strong appeal to speculative minds. Moreover, the Church, instructed by the events of the Reformation, had become so suspicious of novelties that any attempt to introduce new additions to the traditional teaching of theology was more likely to bring a thinker into the hands of the Inquisition than to lead towards a cardinal's hat.

Recent archaeological discoveries have contributed in many ways to enrich our knowledge of the early periods of Christian history. It cannot be denied that the results of these investigations as a whole have given testimony in favor of the conservative historical tradition, rather than of the aggressive criticism of the last century. In many cases archaeological evidence has verified or confirmed traditions to which historical criticism had denied any positive value, and solved what had been regarded as insoluble problems. Where literary evidence was lacking or inconclusive, archaeology and ancient liturgy have furnished the historians of the early centuries of the Church new sources of knowledge of inestimable value.