The same too may be said about the work entitled, _Libri XIII. historiæ ecclesiasticæ_ written by the Abbot =Odericus Vitalis= in Normandy, about A.D. 1150, which forms upon the whole the most creditable production of the middle ages. In the 24 books of the Church history of the Dominican and Papal librarian, =Tolomeo of Lucca=, composed about A.D. 1315, church history is conceived of as if it were simply a historical commentary on the ecclesiastical laws and canons then in force, as an attempt, that is, to incorporate in the history all the fictions and falsifications, which Pseudo-Isidore in the 9th century (§ 87, 2-4), Gratian in the 12th century, and Raimundus [Raimund] de Penneforti [Pennaforte] in the 13th century (§ 99, 5), had wrought into the Canon law. Toward the end of the 15th century, under the influence of humanism there was an awakening here and there to a sense of the need of a critical procedure in the domain of church history, which had been altogether wanting throughout the middle ages. In the Greek Church again, during the 14th century, =Nicephorus Callisti= of Constantinople, wrote a treatise on church history, reaching down to A.D. 610, devoid of taste and without any indication of critical power. § 5.2. =The 16th and 17th Centuries.=--About the middle of the 16th century the Lutheran Church produced a voluminous work in church history, the so-called =Magdeburg Centuries=, composed by a committee of Lutheran theologians, at the head of which was =Matthias Flacius=, of Illyria in Magdeburg. This work consisted of 13 folio vols., each of which embraced a century. (_Eccles. Hist., integram eccl. ideam complectens, congesta per aliquot studiosos et pios viros in urbe Magdb._ Bas., 1559-1574.) They rest throughout on careful studies of original authorities, produce many documents that were previously unknown, and, with an unsparingly bitter polemic against the Romish doctrinal degeneration, address themselves with special diligence to the historical development of dogma. In answer to them the Romish Oratorian, =Cæsar Baronius=, produced his _Annales ecclesiastici_, in 12 vols. folio, reaching down to A.D. 1198 (Rome, 1588-1607). This work moves entirely along Roman Catholic lines and is quite prejudiced and partial, and seeks in a thoroughly uncritical way, by every species of ingenuity, to justify Romish positions; yet, as communicating many hitherto unknown, and to others inaccessible documents, it must be regarded as an important production. It secured for its author the cardinal’s hat, and had wellnigh raised him to the chair of St. Peter. In the interests of a scholarly and truth-loving research, it was keenly criticised by the Franciscan Anthony Pagi (_Critica hist-chronol._ 4 vols., Antw., 1705), carried down in the 17th century from A.D. 1198-1565, in 9 vols. by Oderic. Raynaldi, in the 18th century from A.D.