B.J. Kidd’s Church History to AD 461

Beresford James Kidd’s classic 3-volume treatment of early church history to AD 461 entered the public domain this year. My thanks to Book Aid for making a copy available for digitisation.

Beresford James Kidd [1863-1948], A History of the Church to A.D. 461, 3 Vols. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922. Hbk. pp.558+471+448. [Click to visit the download page]

Chapter 1. The Roman Empire

On the day of Pentecost, when the Church set out on its mission to the world, the field that lay immediately before it was the Roman Empire.

§ 1. In extent the Empire consisted, towards the end of the reign of its founder Augustus, 31 B.C-A.D. 14, of eight and twenty provinces. By the incorporation of dependencies such as Mauritania, 40, and Arabia, 105, by subdivision and re-arrangement, the twenty-eight had become ninety-nine at the opening of the reign of Diocletian, 284-305, its second founder. During the interval, no permanent acquisition of territory took place, save that Britain was annexed between the reigns of Claudius, 41-54, and Domitian, 81-96. The southern part of our island was occupied after the campaigns, 48-7, of Aulus Plautius. Then Julius Agricola, 78-85, extended the province to the line of forts which he built between the Forth and the Clyde. He would have brought Ireland also within the sway of Rome, had he not been refused an extra legion. But his conquests were abandoned, and the frontier withdrawn to the Wall of Hadrian, 122, from the Tyne to the Solway…

Volume 1, p.1.