This volume, as its name indicates, claims to be no more than a chronicle as distinguished from a history, a simple record of facts and events rather than an attempt to discuss even briefly the causes, movements, and results to which these facts and events bear witness. The hold which the Church so rapidly gained over the minds of men, the vast and penetrating power which it has exercised throughout all the states of Christendom, make the history of the Papacy almost synonymous with a history of the civilized world from the early centuries of the Christian era, and its adequate treatment is beyond the capacity of any single writer.