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Author Preface

“The historian, like the novelist, tells a story; a story of some portion of the past; he describes (rather than defines). The novelist has it easier: he can invent people who did not exist and events that did not happen. The historian cannot describe people and events that did not exist; he must limit himself to men and women who really lived; he must depend on evidences of their acts and words — though, like the novelist, he too must surmise something about their minds.” ¹

John Lukacs, 2011

From the beginning of the Church, Christians have told her story, because history is integral to the Faith. God does not ignore his creation, but rather entered human history in a unique manner in the Incarnation, intimately involving himself in that history. The writing of Church history should acknowledge this super-natural reality and follow certain principles, such as accepting the miraculous in human affairs, seeing the impact of the actions of the saints, and recognizing the primacy of the Vicar of Christ (the pope) in the life of the Church and Western Civilization.²

Saint Luke provided the first example of Christian historical writing when he recorded the events of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles. Early Church historians concentrated on recording the lives and deaths of the martyrs, so that their heroic sacrifices could be remembered through the centuries. Romans, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, wrote histories of their empire and the emperors who ruled it. Similarly, Christians began to write histories of the Church. The “Father of Church History” is Eusebius of Caesarea (263–339). His Ecclesiastical History is a gold mine of information about the Church in the time of Roman persecution, and the Empire’s eventual conversion.

In later centuries, many other great historians have contributed their time and efforts to telling the story of the Catholic Church. The pantheon of Church historians includes such men as Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Saint Gregory of Tours (538–594), Saint Bede, called the Venerable (672–735), Cardinal Baronius (1538–1607), Ludwig von Pastor (1854–1928), Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953), Christopher Dawson (1889–1970), Henri Daniel-Rops (1901–1965), and Warren H. Carroll (1932–2011).³ These authors followed the Catholic principles of history, and wrote books whose influence continues to the modern world.

It is a daunting and humbling task to write a one-volume history of the Church, and I recognize the immense duty (and honor) entrusted to me in this endeavor. This book is not meant to be an exhaustive study of the history of the Catholic Church through the last two thousand years; rather, it is designed to provide a detailed narrative of the main events that have shaped the Church and the world. The focus of this book is on the Church in the Western world, specifically Europe. This approach is not meant to deny the universality of the Church nor the contributions of the East to Church history, but rather is the result of a need to focus the book on a main area of activity — and a recognition that history in the Western world over the last 500 years has been told through a mostly Protestant perspective. Many Catholics are unaware that what they believe to be the history of the Church is a false narrative created as a result of the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment.⁴ My hope is that this work inspires you to grow in your Catholic identity, to understand that Church history is your family history, and to take pride in the actions of your brothers and sisters in the Faith who came before you. Armed with this knowledge, I pray that we may defend the Church when attacked by false narratives and historical myths and grow deeper in our love for the Lord Jesus Christ and the Church he founded.

1. John Lukacs, The Future of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 109.

2. These principles are from Warren H. Carroll and Anne Carroll, The Crisis of Christendom: A History of Christendom, vol. 6 (Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2013), 813–822.

3. This list is not meant to be exhaustive. The reader may want to add or subtract to it, but the list represents the men I believe to be true “greats” in the history profession.

4. This is particularly true in regard to certain historical events such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, etc.