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The
Catholic University Bulletin.
" Let there be progress, therefore ; a widespread and eager prog-
ress in every century and epoch, both of individuals and of the
general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress
in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their na-
tural limits and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teach-
ing, feeling and opinion."— St. Vincent of Lkrins, Commonit, c. 6.
VOLUME IX— 1903.
PUBWSHED QUARTKRI,Y BY
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA,
LANCASTER, PA., and .WASHINGTON, D. C.
Press OF
The New Era Printins Compahv.
LAR CASTER, Pa.
Th.
Catholic University Bulletin.
VOL. IX. JANUARY, 1903. No. i.
\
" Let there be progress, therefore ; a widespread and eager prep-
ress in every century and epoch, both of individuals and of the
general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress
in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their na-
tural limits and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teach-
ing, feeling and opinion."— St. Vincent of Lkbins, Commonit, c. 6.
PUBI^ISHED QUARTERI.Y BY
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA,
LANCASTER, PA., and WASHINGTON, D. C.
iM INSTITUTE Of MD^^h mm^
10 ELMSLEV^STeE
TUrtQNTO Sy^^AOA,
OCKfu 1331
PRESS OF
THIi NEW ERA PRINTING COt.lPANYi
LANCASTER, PA.
AUG 2719601
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
Vol. IX. January, igoj. JSfo, /.
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY.
To the general student of English history the chantry sys-
tem is a subject quite unfamiliar. Even to those who make the
history of the English medieval church a special object of study
the question is, as a rule, but little known; while to the casual
reader of English life in past ages the very word itself, chan-
try, is new and insignificant. The guilds, those great benefit-
societies of the Middle Ages, the Lollardy movement, and those
magnificent ''agricultural, industrial and literary republics,'*
the monasteries, have all attracted to themselves a number of
distinguished writers, who have set forth in detail their rise,
development, influence and decline. But the chantry has been
allowed to remain in obscurity.
Now why this neglect of an institution which, according to
Mgr. Moyes, is among the most notable features in pre-Eefor-
mation England? The little attention given to it in early days
is due, no doubt, to the character of most history writing. A
perusal of the histories of Gibbon or Macaulay or Hume gives a
good idea of the old style. These men seem to have been occu-
pied with what are called the great questions— with the life and
environment of kings and heroes and eminent men. All else
was set aside as unworthy of attention or was considered merely
as a background for the great life or event to be depicted.
Naturally in the works of such men a subject so devoid of ex-
ternal glamor as the chantry is, could have but little place.
For there is nothing in it to tempt the writer of high-sounding
(3)
4 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
periods, no glowing scenes to be described, no achievements
calculated to arouse popular enthusiasm.
But how does it happen that in these latter days, at a time
when historians seek to give us a glimpse of the life of the great
mass of the people— as they bought and sold, joyed and sor-
rowed, labored and suffered and prayed— how is it, I ask, that
in such works a paragraph usually sums up all that is worth
saying on the subject? This question indeed is not so easy to
answer. It may be remarked however that most of the writers
who have occupied themselves with that period of English his-
tory are men of an immeasurably different religious spirit from
the people of the time of which they speak, men who, in their
writings, may have been animated with an ** objective sense of
justice, '* but who have lacked the sympathy necessary for a
right understanding of the life and customs of the Catholics
of pre-Eeformation days. Without this sympathy, without a
belief in the existence of purgatory, without an ability to enter
into the intense religious life of the people, a life in which the
things of faith were realized as clearly as *Hhe merchant now
realizes the market place and his bales of merchandise, ' ' it is
very difficult to rightly understand a religious institution of the
chautry character. Then again, it is to be noted that materials
bearing on the question of the chantry are not so abundant
as is desirable. True the archives of the British Museum, and
the parish churches and cathedrals scattered throughout the
kingdom, are rich in these data, but as yet only a comparatively
small part of them has been printed or even calendered. This
valuable work is now under way. But because of the many
difficulties which beset such a task, and because of the small
number of men capable of properly performing it, its progress
is slow.
By what has been just said, however, I would not be under-
stood as implying that our present materials are so inadequate
as to prevent the student from securing a fairly accurate notion
of the chantry system. Such an impression would be erron-
eous. Thanks to the publications of the different English his-
torical and archaeological societies— of the Surtees Society, the
Chetham Society, the Somerset Society, the Yorkshire Arch-
aeological Society and many others— and to the learned intro-
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 5
ductions written to the different publications by eminent
scholars, much light has been thrown on the question. The
wills, church-warden accounts and commissioners' reports,
thus far published, though by no means complete, give us at
first hand an interesting picture of the social and religious
condition of the people of those days. And although the
future labors of these different learned societies will, no doubt,
serve to bring out in clearer light the different details of this
picture, already, in accuracy and color, they are such as to
furnish us with no faint notion of the nature and influence of
the chantry institution.
Briefly, a chantry^ as it existed in England, was the endow-
ment of one or more priests, charged with the performance of
certain duties, usually, though not necessarily, set down by the
founder in a deed of foundation. These duties might be many
or few according to the will of the testator. One only was essen-
tial, and that one was the office of reading or singing mass for
the soul of the donor, or for the souls of persons named by him,
a function which was performed in a chapel built specially for
the purpose, or at an altar already existing in some parish
church or cathedral.
It is clear from this definition that the chantry was a re-
ligious institution, primarily though not solely— a means
which persons took to insure, in so far as they were able, the
eternal welfare of their souls. But the chantry was not the
only institution erected with a view to this spiritual benefit.
From early medieval times nobles and rich gentry had founded
or contributed to the foundation of monasteries, animated, in
part at least, by the thought of the eternal favors to be derived
from the prayers of those who had been assisted. Built in the
quiet depths of the primeval forest, or in the very heart of
villages and towns, raised and supported in answer to the gen-
erous promptings of hearts overflowing with religious interests,
those homes of prayer, industry, and agriculture, art, science
and literature, carried on for centuries their glorious work of
^ The different forms of the word chantry as found in Murray's Dictionary are:
4-5 Chanuterie; 4-6 try; 5 chaunterye; 5-6 Chauntery-e; 6 chauntne, trye,
chawntary, chanterie (schawittry, schawnter) ; 6-7 chaunteryj 7 chantrie; 5-9
chauntrig; 5 chantry (M. E. Chaunterie; O. F. chanteri'^j F. chanter— to sing;
M. L. Cantaria, cantuaria, whence cantarie, cantuarie).
6 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
building up the solid structure of England's power and
greatness.
But there came a time in the course of events when religious
fervor and zeal ceased to find their expression in the monastic
establishment. After the year 1350 we search the records in
vain for traces of this form of endowment. At about that
period the social and religious condition of the English people
underwent a tremendous change. The transformation was
mainly brought about by a series of overwhelming calamities
which fell upon England, in common with the rest of Europe,
in the middle of the fourteenth century. The first one, known
as the Black Death, so called from the dark blotches which
appeared on the skin of the person afflicted, was by far the most
terrible. It first made its appearance in the ports of Bristol and
Southampton in August, 1348, and thence its deadly breath was
quickly wafted all over the land. Blackened and disfigured
corpses to the number of one half the population made the
island one vast charnel house.
The effects of this and the two succeeding plagues in the
religious world were of the nature of a revolution. At first a
dull despair fastened itself upon all; and writers of the
period agree in their descriptions of the dissoluteness and
corruption which for a time prevailed. But such a deplor-
able condition of affairs could not long exist in a nation
in whose heart the fires of faith had for centuries so brightly
burned. A great religious awakening soon took place. A new
religious spirit seems suddenly to have grown up among the
people, a spirit marked by its devotional and self-reflective
character and finding its expression in a number of religious
practices hitherto but indifferently popular.
Among these, the devotion to the souls in purgatory, a de-
votion old and dear to Catholic hearts, had a special attraction.
And this is not to be wondered at. For the pre-Reformation
English were a deeply religious people. Religion indeed was
the sunlight of their lives, the very soul of their commonest
daily duties. The doctrines and practices of the Catholic
Church had taken a firm hold on the minds and hearts of all.
Her Christian ideals, her teaching on the Christian brotherhood
of man, her doctrines on the efficacy of prayer and good works
I
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 7
for salvation and on the communion of saints were, in reality,
the very cornerstone of their whole social fabric. It was, there-
fore, only natural, when the ''awful cruelty of death'' had left
its dreaded trace on every side, that the nation should turn with
intense ardor to the church's consoling teaching with regard
to the holy souls— that those whom the ''fell mortality" had
spared should strive with the means which the church held out,
to secure the eternal rest of the souls of the dear ones whom the
plague had taken away. Now this increased devotion to the
holy souls, following on the plagues, found its expression in
many ways but in none more markedly than in the foundation
of chantries. The chantry foundation did not of course take
its rise at that time. Long before the Black Death, even before
the Conquest, traces of the chantry are discernible, while
throughout the thirteenth and especially during the first half
of the fourteenth centuries large numbers were erected. Nor
did the chantries founded after the passage of the great pesti-
lence spring up solely in answer to the devotion to the holy
souls. Indeed after the plagues, owing to more equal distribu-
tion of wealth, to the growing importance of the middle class
and to the decrease in popularity of the monastic establish-
ment, motives of a less spiritual character may be said to have
exercised a stronger influence than ever before. This fact has
been lost sight of by many men who have regarded chantries
"as illustrative of the extent to which the necessity of praying
for the dead was impressed upon the people, by ecclesiastical
authorities and that with a view to their own profit," yet it is
important for a just appreciation of the institution.
Conspicuous among these other motives was "that pride
which hopes still to exact homage in its ashes and to live in an
inscription." For just as in ancient times the desire to be
remembered found expression in the stately arch, the graceful
statue or the animated bust, and just as to-day this same crav-
ing leads to the foundation of universities and the estabUsh-
ment of libraries, so in the days of faith and piety of which
we are speaking it moved men to choose as fitting memorial the
chantry and its priest; and though there can be no doubt that
many of these chantries were erected for this end by men who
during life had done no deed worthy of the grateful memory of
8 CATEOLIG UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
posterity yet, at the same time, it is equally certain that not a
few of them were raised by a loving and admiring people and
stood as monuments, meant to be perpetual, to *Hhe best and
holiest and most venerated names in the long roll of English
men of honor. ' '
Again, in a large number of instances, the chantry speaks
the ardent desire of zealous souls to increase God's earthly
glory by adding to the number of ministers in the cathedrals
and parish churches. In our day when so many causes have
tended to weaken the delicate spiritual sense it is difficult to
realize the religious fervor of souls in an age when men lived
in the divine presence, when men remembered God, sought God
and saw God everywhere. A cold, barren religious service,
such as the Reformation has forced upon the world, could not
satisfy the cravings of the hearts of such a people. The most
magnificent churches, the most sumptuous furniture, the most
artistic decorations, the most solemn ceremonies, the most gor-
geous vestments, a numerous and complex staff of endowed
ministers, all that goes to arouse the imagination and to inflame
the heart, were deemed essential ; and no expense was spared,
no labor was thought excessive, which would lead to their pos-
session. In response to religious promptings such as these,
we are not surprised to find that many a chantry was founded
that the priest thereof might, **syng in the quyer and help
in the doyngs of all divine service,'' or *Ho the praise of God,
and in honor of the Saviour and the name of Jesus and also
that divine service might be increased and augmented. "^
Then again many chantries were erected by pious found-
ers as a means of fulfilling actual social and religious needs.
Thus it was that the demand for grammar schools led many to
establish chantry foundations which took on the educational
aspect; thus it was that the wretched condition of the jails,
where men were *' caged like dogs and fed like hogs," caused
persons of ardent faith and munificent charity to erect
chantries that the **prysoners of the gaole" might have the
aid and consolations of the priest; thus it was that the
* These chantries were erected in the county palatine of Lancaster and are
dated 1506. This is probably the most common reason assigned by Edward
the Sixth's commissioners for the existence of chantries.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 9
pitiful condition of the sick and the destitute, the feeble and
the aged induced generous benefactors to erect chantries in
the hospitals that the inmates might have the ministrations,
material as well as spiritual, of the incumbent; so it was that
the many cases of death without the last sacraments impelled
religious souls to found chantries in places distant from the
parish church thus giving them the character of chapels of
ease ; thus it was that the needs of those making pilgrimages,
a devotion very popular in pre-reformation days, led devout
souls to erect wayside chapels. Many of these last were erected
at the entrance to bridges, or more frequently on the central
pier of the bridge, and a welcome sight to the weary pilgrim
must have been the lone lamp just mitigating the chapel gloom.
Indeed few there were in those days who entered not to seek
strength and consolation on the way.^
Still another fruitful source of chantry foundations was
the great demand for domestic chapels. These domestic chapels
were nothing new in English life. For centuries noble families
had maintained priests who celebrated religious services in the
castles or manor houses— an arrangement which excused the
founders, except on rare and specified occasions, from the obli-
gation of attending the parish church. Now with the increase
of wealth of the middle class, for which the century after the
pestilences was conspicuous, many rich yeomen coveted these
same privileges. Besides, a domestic chapel with a resident
priest brought to a household a certain dignity which those who
felt themselves able were not slow to seek. But the conditions
necessary for the erection of a regular domestic chapel were
many and serious ; so to escape these difficulties many families
had chapels built under the convenient form of the chantry.^
•A very fine example of such a bridge chapel is seen in the Journal of
ArchcBological Association, 1864, by F. E. Wilson where is described the chapel on
the bridge over the Calder, at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on the road between the
much frequented abbeys and shrines. , 1 j xv
*Here is an example of the foundation of a domestic chapel under the guwe
of a chantry, taken from Cutts " Parish Priests, etc.," p. 724. bir Cr. de
Brante, in right of Joanne his wife, had liberty given him by Robert dean of b..
Paul's, with the consent of Walter Niger, Vicar of Navestock, Ess?x, to found a
chapel and chantry in his court at Navestock, Provided he and his heirs mam-
tain a chaplain at his own expense, sworn to preserve the liberty of t^e mo;^er
church, and to pay the vicar all the profits he should receive there and admit
none of the parishioners to confession or other ofiices ^^^/^ P^^^ . J\^^^^'°f /^:
pended by the bishop. The founder also and the heir3 of the s^^id Joanne his
wife, and whoever else had the said chapel in his lordship, were also to be sworn
10 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN,
From the number and variety of the motives leading to the
foundation of chantries we may readily understand that the
movement was widespread. Thus we find archbishops,
bishops, cauons, deans and vicars choral, even the chantry
priests themselves, when able, all making provision for the
chantry establishment. But the movement was by no means
confined to the clerical body. Among the laity it was equally
popular. The successful merchant whose business ability and
growing wealth made his name a household word with the
people of the town in which he lived ; the knight whose deeds of
valor were the subject of praise throughout the land ; the noble,
whose impregnable castle dominated from some summit the
poor wattled huts of the villagers ; the very kings of the realm,
not even excluding Henry VIII himself, willed that chantries
should be erected in their honor and for the good of their souls.
And where an individual was unable of himself to secure the
much-desired object he united with others for the purpose.*^
Indeed most of the guilds that arose during this period were
associations formed mainly in view of the chantry establish-
ment and deserve the name, given them by a recent writer, of
** cooperative chantries.''^ Thus high and low, rich and poor
throughout the length and breadth of the land were directly or
indirectly occupied in the erection and maintenance of these
foundations.
As a result of this universal interest we find that in 1547
when Edward VI ordered their suppression, there were, accord-
ing to Peter Heylin in his **Ecclesiastica Eestaurata, ' ' no less
than 2,347 of them. Nor is this estimate by any means over the
to preserve the rights of the mother church under like pain. In which chapel
the chaplain was to administer the mass only, with bread and holy water (sic)
forbearing all other holy offices, saving that at Easter the founder and his wife
and heirs, together with her free servants and guests, were to be admitted to the
sacrament of the altar j but all his servants were to go to the mother church
throughout the year.
^E. g., "The chauntre of Donatyve at Saynt James auter in the church of
Yycall. John Clowdesdale, incumbent. The sayd chauntre is founded by the in-
habitantes ther of ther devocion to pray for the prosperyty of parochiners and
all crysten sowles, and to kepe the quier in the sayd churche at all devyne servyce,
& the landes gyven to the sayd chauntre by severall persons of the parochiners
ther. The same chauntre is in the sayd church. The necessete is to helpe the
curate to mynyster sacramentes to the parochyans, ther beyng in nomber of c c c
howslynge people and above." Extract from commissioners' reports for York-
shire. Page, William: "Yorkshire Chantry Surveys," 2 vols., London, 1898;
Vol. I, p. 58.
• See Ashley, " Eng. Econ. Hist.," Vol. II, pp. 37, 38 req.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. n
mark. To the contrary, we liave every reason to believe that
when all the certificates and records scattered throughout Eng-
land are printed, we shall find the total number of the chantries
somewhat larger than Heylin's calculation. The records thus
far published however show us that the distribution of the
chantries throughout the land was unequal. We learn for
example that in Yorkshire, one of the richest and most popu-
lous districts in England, there were 402 such foundations,
while, according to the publications of the Chetham Society,
the Commissioners of Edward VI report only ninety for the
poor and sparsely inhabited county of Lancaster.*^ Again in
towns with cathedrals served by secular canons we find that
chantries existed, as a rule, in large numbers,® whereas only a
few are given for places where monks were in charge.^
As to the location of the chantry chapels there was nothing
defined. We have a great many examples of them standing as
detached buildings in out of the way places or in churchyards
or in cloister courts. Chantries of this kind were sometimes
of two stories, the lower one being devoted to the strictly re-
ligious services of the foundation, while the incumbent used
the upper floor as his home or as a school room. But in most
cases the chantry chapel was a part of the parish church or
cathedral. Sometimes it was an addition made to the choir and
opening into it, while at other times it was made by screening
off a space between the great pillars of the nave or transept.
This latter method seems to have been the most popular. In
such a case the altar was erected usually under a window with
a lavatory adjoining. Eoom was left for the priest to celebrate
and an acolyte to serve, while those who attended the service
stood or knelt outside.
At times the number of these foundations in parish churches
was so large that the church was absorbed, as it were, and
became what was called a chantry college, or collegiate church.
By this it is not meant that the church became an educational
institution. True, some did take on this character. But ordi-
T In these reports we must remember that many chantries had been concealed
by the owners and by the priests and were not published in the Commissioners
lists. , ,
• St. Paul's, London, had 54 at the time of the suppression.
•Durham, Ely, Norwich, Worcester, Winchester, had none. See Lutts,
" Parish Priests," p. 443.
12 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
narily by collegiate church is simply meant an association of
chantry priests living together nnder the same roof and having
one of their number called warden or dean, for superior. By
this change of the aspect of the parish church, parochial duties
were not neglected. On the contrary, with the dean as rector
and the cure of souls discharged by one or more of the chantry
priests acting in the capacity of vicars, the religious affairs
had the very best of attention. These collegiate institutions
were not at all uncommon in England, and in wealth, number
of clergy, dignity of worship they may be said to have occupied
a second or middle rank between the ordinary parochial
churches on the one hand and the cathedral churches on the
other.
In the great majority of cases the interior decoration of the
chantry chapel was meagre, the donors seeming to have been
able only to supply them with the bare necessities— with a
vestment, a missal, cruets, bell, chalice, a paten and linens. At
the same time there also existed a large number of noble speci-
mens of architectural design. In such the stained glass window
behind the altar was of exquisite workmanship, setting forth
in brilliant and beautifully harmonized colors some subject of
popular devotion or, in case of a guild chapel, the figure of the
saint under whose patronage the association was founded. The
altar, made of stone, was artistically carved, so as to set forth
the different mysteries of the faith. Resting on it was a tablet
bearing in large characters the name of the founder that all the
worshippers might remember him in their prayers. Beautiful
frescoes or rare and costly tapestries covered the walls, while
the wooden screens which separated the chapel from the body
of the church were of exquisite design and perfect workman-
ship. The roof too received attention. As a rule it was divided
into a series of panels, each panel bearing the motto or mono-
gram of the founder surrounded by delicately executed foliage
whose serrated edges appeared as if the breath of woods had
blown through them. Thus did these chapels become a no slight
means of teaching the unlettered the mysteries of the faith.
But the most remarkable thing about these beautiful gems
of art is that, as in the case of the great cathedrals, churches
and castles of the Middle Ages, the designers and workmen
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 13
are unknowii. It seems hard to account for the fact that the
beauty, genius and invention discovered in their structure and
decoration should not have rescued the names of their builders
from the oblivion in which they lie. But what Rogers says, in
speaking of the Middle Age cathedral, may help us to under-
stand this condition of affairs, for his remarks apply with equal
truth to the chantries. **It seems,'' he says,^'^ 'Hhat skill
in architecture and intimate acquaintance with all that was
necessary, not only for the design of the structure but also for
good workmanship and endurance, was so common an accom-
plishment that no one was at pains to proclaim his own reputa-
tion or to record the reputation of another. ' ' And occasionally,
when by accident, the author of some rarely beautiful specimen
is discovered, the world is astonished to learn that a work so
excellent in design and so perfect in execution as to have been
ascribed to some great master^ ^ is from the hand of a simple
village workman (at times even the very donor himself) ^^ *^a
youth to fortune and to fame unknown.''
But as we look about us now and see only vestiges here and
there of these many expressions of the ardent faith and munifi-
cent charity of that by-gone time we are very apt to consider all
such lavish ornamentation and exquisite detail as a waste of
time and labor and wealth. Let us not forget, however, that as
a rule the more beautiful chantries were meant to be perpetual
memorials. By this I do not wish to imply that only the artis-
tically decorated chapels were destined by the donors to last
forever. Many of the most meagerly furnished chantries were
built with this intention. As regards their existence, indeed,
^"Rogers, R. E. T.: "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," London, 1890,
p. 162.
"A remarkable series of paintings on the walls of the Lady Chapel at Win-
chester long thought to be the work of some unknown Italian artist of the school
of Giotto has been found by Wm. J. Clarke, to have been executed by an English
man named Baker. Gasquet, F. A.: "Eve of the Reformation," London, 1900,
" The chantry of John Baret, in the Church of St. Mary's Bury St. Edmunds,
still quite well preserved and forming a most interesting remnant of church de-
coration, was very probably the work of John Baret himself. Here is an extract
from the will of John Bawde of Woolpett dated 1501 and found on p. 83 of
" Wills and Inventories from the Registers of the Commissary of the Bury bt.
Edmunds," etc. (1370-1650) (Camden Society), London, 1850, by bamuel
'lymms. "I wyll that the tabernacle of St. James, weche I did make m the
north yle and the troues of the auter there by, be well and suflFyciently peynted
and a cloth bought to save the seyd tabernacle fro soyle; also the stoole weche
I ded make, coloored and garnyshed wt synnys of Seynt Jamys.
14 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
chantries were of two kinds, those meant to be perpetual and
those which, according to the will of foundation, were meant
only to last for a stated number of years. Most of those erected
in perpetuity did in fact exist till the statute of suppression
was passed, although some of them, either because of insuffi-
ciency of revenue or because of the inability of one of the
parties to carry out the conditions of the foundation, fell into
decay, the altar being abandoned or sometimes even actually
removed. Chantries to which this happened, as well as those
which were explicitly founded for a certain number of years,
greatly added to the number of what were called migratory
priests— clerics who wandered about from place to place seek-
ing fields of labor, thus becoming the source of most of the
evils that can be placed at the door of the chantry system.
According to Canon Law chantries were of three kinds,
mercenary, coUative, and in private patronage. In the erection
of the mercenary form the bishop played no part, the funds set
aside by the donor never becoming ecclesiastical but always
remaining in the hands of the founder or his trustees. By
their institution no title was conferred. The priest was chosen
by the owner to say mass and could be removed at the owner's
will. Having no permanent endowment these priests were
ordained by the bishop on proof that they were entitled to a
small pension with which they declared themselves to be satis-
fied. History shows however that frequently they became dis-
satisfied and at times demanded for their services sums that
were considered excessive. Chantries erected for a certain
number of years and those depending for their maintenance on
voluntary offerings of many persons were no doubt of this
mercenary character. But this was by no means the more
common form of foundation. The canon law of Eome as
Maitland clearly proves was binding throughout England,^ ^
and the unceasing effort of the canon law would be toward
making all these foundations ecclesiastical. Besides as Moyes
points out,^* we know from the use of the words **Post admis-
"This Maitland does in his admirable series of essays entitled "Roman
Canon Law in the Church of England," London, 1898. Cf. Cath. Univ. Bul.,
1901, Vol. VII, p. 347.
" J. Moyes, in the " Academy," Vol. 37, p. 223.
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY, 15
used in the constitution of Winchelsey and in the
Gloss of Lyndwood, that the coUative chantries or chantries by
right of patronage were the common forms. In both of these
forms the chantry was instituted by the bishops, the only dif-
ference being that in the latter form the right of presentation
of the incumbent belonged to the founder or those named by
him. It would seem however that of these two forms, chantries
in private patronage was the more common, for it was the
policy of chantry founders to keep to themselves or to their
heirs the right of presenting the priest. But of course even in
this case, in accordance with the canon law, which as we have
said was recognized as of binding authority in England, insti-
tution by the bishop was necessary.
To erect these chantries conditions analogous to those re-
quired in the building of a church had to be fulfilled. Before
everything else the permission of the ordinary was necessary,
and this was given only when he was satisfied that funds suffi-
cient for the erection and maintenance were laid aside. The
bishop's consent obtained the founder then applied to the
crown for license to alienate lands in mortmain. This license
was not to be obtained without very special royal permission
unless the lands were held by other than soccage tenure, or
knight's service. But besides the permission of the bishop and
the license of the crown it appears that the permission of the
rector of the parish in which the chantry was to be raised had
also to be obtained. At any .rate it is certain that every pos-
sible care was taken that the vested rights of the mother church
should not be allowed to be invaded.^*^ In a number of instances
indeed the incumbent as an evidence of his subjection had to
make an oath of obedience to the rector. By law he had to
go with those who had permission to attend the services of his
chantry, to take part in certain processions and ceremonies
held during the year in the parochial church, a regulation, be it
observed, which at times was neglected. Again, the chantry
priest could receive no tithes or Easter dues ; nor could he, with-
out special permission ofthe^rdinary,^adnaimgter the sacra-
"Capell^ cum fuerint c^i^^^^^^^i^^^^i^^^
cedat prSjudicium . . . statuimus ut sacerdotes in ^^^^^^^^ ^^P J^^^^^
universas oblationes quas in ipsis offerri contigerit eccles ^ matricis recton cum
integritate restituant. Wilkins, "Concilia," Vol. 11, p. 1^7.
16 CATHOLIC UNIVEB8ITY BULLETIN.
ments or perform any other of the duties -Qsually belonging to
a priest with a cure of souls.^^ From this it will be seen that
the incumbents of the collative chantries or chantries in private
patronage had only simple benefices; though at times as, for
example, in cases of collegiate bodies and many outlying dis-
tricts, benefices with cures existed.
Once the rights of the parish priest were secured, there still
remained, in a large number of cases at least, other formalities
to be carried out in the erection of the chantry. There was the
legal institution by the civil authorities of the place where the
chantry was founded. * * Compositions, ' ' i. e., bonds or agree-
ments establishing the various chantries with their particular
rules were enrolled in the city books, and in Bristol we are told
that ^4t hath been used on the iiii dale after Mighelmas, the
newe maire to bet summen all the chauntry priests whose com-
posicions are enrolled in the rede boke to com before the maire
to the counter, their to take their othes truly to observe their
seide composicions."^''^
These * * composicions ' ' or regulations were the work of the
donor of the chantry and were contained in the deed of founda-
tion. In framing them the founder was free to command those
things which seemed good to him so that he should lay down
nothing out of harmony with the conciliar and synodal decrees,
relative to the duties of a priest, duties of a patron, the rights of
the parish rector and the like. Regulations made contrary to
such decrees, duties and rights were to be considered by the
bishop when instituting the chantry as null and void. To see
the wisdom of these precautions one has only to read the wills
of the period, which are filled with the most curious stipula-
tions in violation of the church law. But, once the regulations
were properly drawn up and were accepted by the bishop, the
will of the founder was strictly binding even to details.
As one reads these different regulations he is impressed
with the great care manifested in regard even to minute par-
ticulars. Everything is considered and provided for— the
"Inhibemus etiam ne in capellis quae proprios parochos non habent, paro-
chianis matricis ecclesiae, nee aliis quibuscunque sacramenta vel sacramentalia
ministrentur, nisi aliquibus amplius fuit indultum. Wilkins, "Concilia," Vol.
II, p. 137.
"Ashley, W. J.: "An Introduction to English Economic History and
Iheory," 2 vols., London, 1888-93; Vol. II, p. 42.
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. yj
method to be followed in choosing the priest and in giving the
oath of office, the number of incumbents, if more than one is to
be chosen, his duties and place of living, the disposition of the
stock and stores, living and dead, the amount to be given in
doles, and in salary, the provision for the proper decoration
and repair.18 j^ sometimes occurred however notwithstanding
these carefully prepared regulations that the chantry revenue
from one cause or other became insufficient. In such cases it
was not unusual to unite two or even three foundations under
one priest,i9 or for some relative of the founder to come forward
to make up the deficit. Especially is this last act true with
regard to supplying the chantry chapel with bell, vestments
and books, and many touching instances of the piety and
affection of the people of the times manifested in this way
are seen in the wills of the fourteenth, fifteenth and early
sixteenth century.
Let us now turn our attention to the chantry priest.
In acquiring a knowledge of this life and character we shall
" Here is a foundation charter for a chantry at the altar of St. Anne in the
south arch of the church of Blessed Mary of Badsworth. It was founded in 1510
to pray for the soul of Isabella, wife of William Vavasour and daughter of Robert
Urswick. The charter ordains that a chaplain of secular habit, not otherwise
beneficed, should celebrate a requiem mass every week, and also a " Placebo " and
" Dirige," according to the use in the cathedral church at York, he should turn to
the people at the first (sic) lavatory in every mass and say "De Profundis" ex-
horting the people standing round to pray for the soul of the founder, and he
should then say the collect ( sic ) " Incline Domine auram tuam ad preces nostras,
etc.," for the same souls. And every year there should be an anniversary for the
same Isabelle, on Tuesday after the octave of Easter, when there should be distrib-
uted to the poor of Badsworth, 6s. 8d., under the superintendence of the rector.
The chaplain was to be learned in plain song and grammar and should be present
in the choir of the parish church on every Sunday and festival at matins, mass,
vespers, complin, and other divine services in his surplice ; and was to read or sing
as the rector should deem fit. He should not be absent from the said church for
more than a month at a time, and then not without the licence of the rector. He
should not play at dice and other illicit games, except on the 12 days after Christ-
mas, and should not frequent the tavern or ale houses at unseemly times, t. e., in
the summer time, from the feast of the Annunciation to the Nativity of the B. V.
M. after the hour of ten p. m., and in the winter time, from the Nativity of the
B. V. M. to the Annunciation after 9 p. m He was not to alienate the goods,
books, jewels and ornaments of said chantry. If he should be convicted of
incontinence, theft, rape, perjury, or other crime, or if he should be prevented by
loss of any limb from performing his duties he should be removed by the rector.
Quoted by Page in Yorkshire chantries from Duchy of Lancaster Records, Div.
XI, vol. 25, p. 1. — Moyes in Dublin Review for January and April, 1899, in an
article entitled " A Chantry Foundation " gives at length the 'charter of the
foundation of the collegiate chantry of Robert Lord Bouchier (the first English
lay Chancellor) at Halstead. It is dated November 12, 1411. Therein are given
minute details, especially financial details. But its length forbids quotation here.
" At St. Paul's London, for example 54 chantries had by union been reduced
to 37 at the time of the suppression.
2CUB
18 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
at the same time be obtaining a view of the evil effects of the
chantry system in society, for the one is intimately bound up
with the other. The good effects we shall reserve for a special
paragraph.
The duties of the chantry priest varied as I have stated
above according to the will of the founder. One duty only was
essential— the saying or singing of mass daily for the soul of
the donor or for the souls of the persons named by him. But in
addition to this office, by the will of the founder, many chantry
priests acted the part of curates, others assumed the office of
school master or librarian, while a great number, located in
cathedrals, collegiate houses and large parish churches, fol-
lowed the duties of the choir. And this last office, when rightly
performed, was no light labor. It began at dawn with the
solemn recitation of Matins and Lauds, followed, at short
intervals, by Little Hours and High Mass. In this way most
of the morning was taken up while part of the afternoon was
occupied in the singing of vespers and complin.
But after eliminating the number of chantry priests occu-
pied in these various ways there still remained some priests,
just what proportion to the whole body it is impossible to say,
who had no other duty aside from the morning Mass. This
office accomplished, and, though slight, some did not hesitate to
neglect it, the rest of the day was theirs to do with as they
pleased. There can be no doubt that some of this class,
with perhaps a number of those who performed additional
duties, spent it and some of the nights too, in the taverns and in
doings little in harmony with their priestly office. Evidence
of this is had in the wills,^^ in the records and memorials of
episcopal visitations,^^ and in the writings of men contem-
porary or almost contemporary with the existence of the
chantry institution.^^
But this evidence is by no means as damnatory as some
would have us believe. No doubt it shows that some chantry
" See Sharp's collections, also those of Raine, Furnival and Thymm.
*^See "Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster" (Camden Society),
London, 1891, by Arthur Leach.
"'Stow's "Chronicle" (passim), where many curious incidents are related;
also St. Germain, "Salem and Bizance," wherein we see the author urging the
adoption of stringent measures to prevent them from " frequenting the ale house,
or tavern," etc.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY, 19
priests were totally unworthy of their calling but, as St.
Cyprian said of the confessors of old, **we must not allow the
wicked and evil characters of the few to tarnish the honorable
glories of the many''; for there can be no doubt that the pre-
ponderating majority of the chantry priests were good men,
men whose noble lives of devotion and self sacrifice are re-
corded only in the book of time.
According to such an eminent authority as Page, indeed,
the chantry priests were '* quite uniformly of good behavior. ''2»
This testimony is concurred in by Brewer, than whom, few
men, if any, are more fitted to speak on this period of English
history,24 and is also well borne out by a study of the certificates
of Edward the Sixth's commissioners. Besides, we must re-
member that the chantry priests had every reason to preserve a
good character, since in case of misbehaviour they were remov-
able. And finally, the fact that throughout the whole pre-Eef-
ormation period men of broad learning and noble principles,
men high in the offices of the Church and State, the people at
large (for, as Stubbs remarks, to say that they were unpopular
is without foundations^), and even the chantry priests them-
selves, when they were able, were engaged in making provision
for this form of foundation— this fact I say of itself is of
sufficient force to permit us to conclude that, as a class, the
chantry priests were a respectable body of the clerical order.
To understand the existence of some bad chantry priests
we need only to look at the cantarist's origin, education and
home life. The chantry priests, like the other members of
the clergy, were drawn from all ranks of society. No doubt
those coming from the peasant class made up the main body,
but those sprung from the more gentle folk were by no means
rare. Indeed the wills of the period show that a very large
proportion of those families who were in such circumstances as
made it necessary for them to make a will had members or near
kinsmen chantry priests. ._
" In introduction to the publication of "Yorkshire Chantry Records."
" Life of Henry VIII, Vol. II, p. 50. Quoted by Gasquet, " Eve of Refonna-
''' "Constitutional History of England," Oxford, 1887-1891, Vol. Ill, p. 380.
20 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The amount of education possessed by these priests differed
naturally according to their early opportunities. Most of those
of good birth received their training in the best schools of the
period— an education now recognized as broad and liberal;
while there are not a few instances of chantry priests holding
university degrees. But it cannot be said that, as a whole, the
chantry priests were a well educated body of men. According
to canon law it is true the cantarist like all other priests had
to be able to read and write, to have a familiarity with the rules
of grammar and with the ritual, and to possess a knowledge of
the New Testament. But at times it happened, in admitting the
candidate to orders, that some of those requirements were
passed over. This sad state of affairs, if not begun, was at
least greatly increased by the Black Death when, to secure the
most necessary public religious ministrations, the most inade-
quately prepared subjects had to be accepted; and even those
could be obtained only in insufficient numbers.^^ Thencefor-
ward it was hard to check the evil. For with the increase of
the wealth of the population ** every mean man felt he must
have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife. " As a result
great numbers animated primarily, and at times solely by the
motive of securing an easy means of livelihood, entered the
ranks of the priesthood as cantarists. Large numbers of them
traveled from town to town seeking employment in the chan-
tries precariously endowed. And it was this pitiful condition
of affairs which caused More to cry out, * ' The whole order is
rebuked by the priest's begging and lewd living, who are
obliged to walk as rovers and live upon trentals or worse, or
serve in a secular man's house."
The home life of the chantry priest was, in some instances,
quite comfortable, some of them being provided with an appro-
priate house and garden, situated hard by the chantry chapel,
while others were well housed as members of collegiate bodies.
Some again had a home with the family of the benefactor. This
last arrangement, however, tended greatly to bring the priest-
hood into contempt from the fact that often the cantarist was
sent *'to lie among the lay servants where he could neither use
^ Consult Gasquet's excellent chapter on " Some Consequences of the Great
Mortality ** in his work, " The Great Pestilence," London, 1893.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 21
prayer nor contemplation. ' ' Still other chantry priests boarded
with f amihes of the town. But this too was the source of many
evils; for by it, says an ancient writer, ^ divine service in the
church IS mmished, occasions of insolence are given, popular
obloquy is engendered and scandals and dangers 'to souls
arise. '^27 ^nd. it is to one of these, no doubt, that Chaucer
refers in his Shipman's Tale, when he writes:
**In London was a priest, an annuller,
That therein dwelled hadde many a year,
Which was so pleasant and so serviceable
Unto the wife thereas he was at table,
That she would suffer him no thing to pay
For board ne lodging, went he never so gay
And spending silver had he ryht ynoil [enough]."
But for the most part the chantry priest's home life was
most wretched. Two small rooms of a low timbered hut usually
served as a domicile. Its rudely built walls, matted or plastered
with clay or mud, were frequently without windows. A hole
in the roof admitted a feeble light and served also as a
chimney.28 For fireplace there was marked off a space in the
ground in which was burned some dry turf or, at Christmas
time, a yule log. A bench, a stool, a wooden bedstead and a
mattress of straw comprised the furniture and household com-
forts. And such was the place in which, cooking his own
frugal meal, many a chantry priest, poor without professing
poverty, led his half monastic life, till at a ripe age, mourned
by the poor people of the village or town, clothed in the priestly
habit of coarse woolen stuff in which he had worked and prayed,
he was placed in a rough rectangular coffin and laid to his
eternal rest.
As I have intimated the chantry priest was, as a rule, poor,
his usual annual revenue being five pounds— a sum scarcely
large enough to supply him with the bare necessaries of life."
*^ Quoted by Leach, p. xi of introduction to "Visitations and Memorials."
See also Stow's Survey (passim) for curious and humiliating instances.
^ For a description of a typical medieval house of peasant class see Fr. Johns-
ton's article in Cath. Univ. JBull. for July, 1898.
" The equivalent in our money for a pound of these days has been variously
estimated. But we may safely say that a pound of the fifteenth century was
worth at least eight or nine pounds of the present time.
22 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Some indeed, to eke out a scanty living, were compelled, owing
to their penury, to cultivate bits of glebe; others were able to
add to their income by acting in the capacity of schoolmasters
or librarians, while it is on record that some few took to
stealing. In times when priests were comparatively few, how-
ever, the cantarists were not slow to take advantage of the
pressing need of their services and demanded and received for
their labors six, seven and even as high as ten pounds. But
this was an abnormal state of affairs and we find the bishops
taking stringent and successful measures to put a stop to it.
Hence we may reasonably conclude that, after the close of the
fourteenth century at any rate, notwithstanding the fact that
the system of appropriation had lessened greatly the income
of many of the parish clergy, there would be little incentive
for a parish priest to leave
*'his sheep accombred in the mir.e,
And run unto London unto Seinte Poules
To seeken him a chantry for souls — ;
though before that period the lamentable practice was no doubt
frequently indulged in. In such circumstances then, with
many sprung from the lower class of society, without education,
without a decent home or suitable revenue, in an age when the
spirit of the priesthood in general had cooled, it is not sur-
prising that a number of chantry priests, with plenty of time
on their hands, should pass their lives in little harmony with
the lofty ideals of their holy calling. Rather are we to be aston-
ished that the body as a whole preserved a character of true
priestly virtue.
The evils indulged in by some of the chantry priests and
the important part which the devotion to the holy souls played
in the foundation have caused most men to overlook the bene-
ficent influence of the chantry system. This influence was,
however, many-sided and lasting. In the first part of this
paper when speaking of the different motives which moved men
to build chantries I intimated the character of the good contem-
plated by the founders. It now only remains therefore for me
to speak a little more in detail of what was actually accom-
plished.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 23
It must be said, first of all, that the chantries were a
great factor in the medieval scheme of relieving the poor— a
work which the people of those days looked upon as a funda-
mental religious duty.^o The wills of the period show that in
nearly every case where a chantry was founded some provision
for this purpose was made. We see, for example, that, as a
rule, on the day of the donor's funeral, in the case of an in-
dividual foundation, or, if the chantry was the work of a guild,
on the feast day of the saint in whose honor it was erected, alms
were distributed— * 'a penny to each of a hundred men, three
pence to three hundred, and food and drink enow." True this
chantry alms giving, like much of the charity of the middle ages
was, in general, indiscriminate, and yet there are many touch-
ing instances of benefactors taking care in the deed of founda-
tion to direct their charity in special channels where it would
do the most good, such as supplying of coal to the poorest
among the families of the village, the maintenance of a bed in
the village hospital and the like.^^ And though, according to
the ideas of modern philanthropy, there may have been many
evils connected with the chantry method of relieving the poor,
yet it cannot be denied that it was incomparably better than no
giving at all, and the best the times could possibly offer.
That it accomplished real good is evident from the terrible
evils which followed the abolition of the system— evils due in a
great measure to this very change.^^ And that it cannot have
been so utterly defective may be seen from a comparison with
the results of the methods pursued in our own day. For with
all our system and vast expenditure our ahns giving is still
quite indiscriminate and our abject poverty is greater.^s
But if the benefit attending the eleemosynary work of the
chantry was great, the influence the system had on the religious
condition of the country was even more significant. The Black
«>See Stubbs, "Const. Hist.," Vol. Ill, p. 619-620. ,
'^E. g., in the will of Percy Vale dated London, February 21, 1502* IJ)
Master and Wardens of Merchant Tailors . . . 12 ^f «^^g^^ ' * ' /^ The a^
ance of 2 chantry priests. The masters and wardens to ^P^^^ /JP^^^y. ^^^ T
of 30 shillings, on the purchase of coals for poor parishioners of -the parish of St.
""'"^^'sl'safaibbins, Rogers, Cunningham and other writers of economic his-
tory. ^. /, see Rogers, pp. 418 seq., "Work and Wages." See Stubbs, 111,
"Constitutional History," p. 620. ioft« « iok of ^naqim
»«See Gibbins, "Industry in England," London, 1896, p. 196 et passim.
24 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Death had stalked abroad over the whole island. In round
numbers some 25,000 members of the clergy had fallen victims
to its awful ravages.^^ As a result *Hhere was everywhere''
writes the chronicler Knighton **such a dearth of priests that
many churches were left without the divine offices, mass,
matins, vespers, sacraments and sacramentals. ' ' In this
lamentable state of affairs the chantry foundation came as an
invaluable means of supplying the religious needs of a pros-
trated people. But the usefulness of the chantry in parochial
work was by no means confined to times of special needs.
Throughout the period of his existence the chantry priest acted
in much the same capacity as that now occupied by the curate,
saying the morrow mass,^^ visiting the poor and '* holding up
the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. ' '^6
But by far the most beneficent effects of the chantry system
was its influence on the development of English education.
Until within a comparatively short time this most useful work
of the chantry, a work which our own age looks upon as god-
like in character, was but little considered. Even Stubbs whose
great book, *'The Constitutional History of England," Mait-
land calls a training in justice, ^^ gives it but scant attention,
while he lays stress on the work of the noble statesman, *^who
after the dissolution of the monasteries, obtained in the founda-
tion of grammar schools a permanent, free, and to some extent,
independent source of liberal education for the people.''^*
But recent investigation has clearly evidenced that before
Edward the Sixth, before Henry the Eighth, before even the
first rumblings of that upheaval which men have supposed
brought light and liberty to a benighted and priest-ridden
«* See Gasquet, " The Great Pestilence," pp. 203-204 seq.
" By the Morrow Mass is meant the mass said every morning " before sunrise,
for such as be travellers by the way." Extract from a chantry certificate.
•• Hundreds of examples of this might be taken from the volumes of surveys.
As a sample I shall cite one, that of St. Katharine in the parish church of Selby:
" The necessity thereof is to do divine service, and help the parish priest in time
of necessity, to administer sacraments and sacramentals and other divine ser-
vice. . . ." For " the said parish of Selby is a great parish, having but one
curate, and the same parish is a thousand housling people; and the said curate
has no help in time of necessity but only the said chauntry priest." " Yorkshire
Chantry Surveys" (Surtees Soc.), p. 213.
•^Maitland in Eng. Hist. Rev. for July, 1901. Article entitled "William
Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford."
» " Constitutional Hist.," Vol. Ill, p. 627.
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 25
population, grammar schools were a common institution in
England. It is now admitted, indeed, by men whose word no
one can gainsay that England was far better provided with
grammar-schools before the Keformation than it has ever been
since.2^ And one of these men, Mr. Leach, than whom no one
is better fitted to speak, does not hesitate to call the much lauded
Edward VI, so long hailed on all sides as the great patron of
education, 'Hhe spoiler of grammar schools. '^^^ All Edward,
or Elizabeth, or the statesmen under them did was to restore
in part,^^ with scanty resources and more restricted aims, the
grammar schools which had flourished under the form of chan-
tries. And it is now quite certain that between the year 1547,
the date of the chantry suppression act, and the year 1645, the
date of the death of James I, no grammar school was founded
which had not already existed as a chantry.* ^
Just when the chantries came to be used as grammar schools
is hard to determine. All we know at present is that when
the monasteries, which had supplied the learning of the early
middle ages, lost their influence over the minds and hearts of
the people at large, the chantries seem to have gradually
assumed the educational character, and this they retained, not-
withstanding many obstacles, till they were suppressed by law.
But unlike the monasteries, which seem to have been frequented
more by the country gentlemen and the rich, the chantry schools
were patronized more by the middle and lower classes. The
reason for their popularity is quite obvious. They were
free schools. In them the ^4gnoble and degenerate off-
spring" of the humblest peasant was enabled without expense
to acquire that preparatory training necessary to fit him for the
University. And in these latter institutions there were offered,
says Stubbs, abundant facilities and fairly liberal inducements
to scholars. Nor were the poor slow to see the great advan-
tages. For in 1406 we find them petitioning *'that every man
«»Rashdall, Harrow School, Ch. II, p. 12. See article in Dublin Review for
April, 1899, on " Medieval Grammar Schools," by J. B. Milburn. ^ ^^ ^ ,
*^ Contemporary Review for 1892, Vol. 62, p. 393. Cf. also Dr. Shahans
article in Catholic Times for December, 1894.
*^ Edward the Sixth restored about one third.
** Leach, ubi supra.
26 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
or woman of whatever state or condition he shall be, shall be
free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school
that pleaseth them within the realm. ''^^ By the granting of
this petition by Henry IV, and that at * ^ a time when the supply
of labor ran so low that no man who was not worth twenty
shillings a year in land or rent was allowed to apprentice his
child to a craft, ' ' the path which led to the highest positions in
the Church and State was opened to the poor, and a high grade
of learning was assured on all sides. Thus their existence
is of itself a conclusive argument against the time-worn asser-
tions of the dense ignorance of the period.^^
The instruction received in these chantries was by no means
of an elementary character. True, the course of studies pur-
sued was not so varied as that which obtains in the grammar
school of the present day. But we cannot say they were much
the worse off for that reason. The principal subject was Latin,
for without a knowledge of that language it was impossible in
those days to pursue a course in the universities or to make any
progress in the learned professions. The grammar taught was
that of Donatus, tutor of St. Jerome. But the word grammar
had not then the restricted meaning given to it in the present
day. It then stood for scholarship— ** an acquaintance with
Latin literature derived from a reading of the classical authors,
and the power to speak as well as to write the language. ''^'^
Among the authors studied were Terence, Cicero, Sallust,
Caesar, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St.
Jerome, and Prudentius. But besides these works, writing, in
Greek, Hebrew and French was also taught, and that not in
a perfunctory manner but so thoroughly as to render them the
medium of conversation during recreation.. The method fol-
lowed in the teaching of these matters did not greatly differ
from that now pursued in our schools, excepting in so far as the
*» " Rotuli Pari.," Ill, 602. Stat., II, 158, quoted in Stubbs, " Const. Hist.,"
Vol. Ill, p. 627.
**The Paston Letters show that "not only that family but also friends and
neighbors, lords, commoners and domestic servants possessed the art of writing,
and that no one of any rank or station in society was quite illiterate." And a
recent writer has said that education in pre-Reformation England was less re-
stricted than it has been from that time till within a quarter of a century.
*» J. B. Milburn, Dublin Review, July, October, 1899, p. 167.
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 27
deep religious spirit which then presided over all is now sadly
lacking.^®
It is as yet impossible to state precisely the number of chan-
tries supporting these grammar schools. But already thanks to
the publications of the English government and of different
historical societies we are able to arrive at an estimate which
cannot be far from the exact figure. The wills of the period
show that in a comparatively large number of instances it is
expressly stated that schools shall be maintained in connection
with the chantries, whereas, by the returns of the commis-
sioners of Edward the Sixth, we know that there were a great
number of instances in which grammar schools, though not ex-
plicitly specified in the will, were in fact, supported by the
foundation.^ ^ This was done sometimes in accordance with the
wish of the governing bodies, sometimes by long custom and
sometimes because the priest found profit in thus supplying a
demand. Now calculations based on a study of the wills and
on the commissioners' returns show, I think, that ten per
cent, of the whole number of chantries founded were educa-
tional; or in round numbers that in England **when the floods
of the great revolt called the Reformation were let loose''
there were more than 300 chantry grammar schools.
We have no definite means of determining the exact number
of pupils attending these schools, but no doubt it must have
been very large. For while it is true that those attending them
who could afford to pay were expected to do so, yet it must be
remembered that these schools were really free schools, *' teach-
ing gratis the poor who ask it humbly for the love of God."
Hence we are not surprised to find that they were attended not
« I cite the following beautiful prayer which the pupil of a Scottish Bi^g
School recited every morSing. That offered up by a student of a chantry school
""'-rtVaTref Je^v^nlf ^^^^ that Thou hast willed that the past night
has beL' prosperous foTmef and I pray that Thou wilt al^o be ^avo-ble to^ m^
this day, for Thy glory and the health of my soul; ^nd Thou who art the true
light, knowing no setting, sun eternal enlivening, ^^P^^^^ff'/J^S^X ^^^^
things, deign to enlighten my mind, that I may never ^^1 into sin but by iny
guiding arrive at lifl eternal. Amen. Jesus, ^e Thou Jesus to me and by rby
chief spirit strengthen me-et spiritu principali confirma me. Grant, iiurg
''''^?\f L^incoinshire out of ninety foundations (t^e pla- 7^^^^^^^^^^
habited and the population was poor) nine were by deed of foundation gramm
schools. " Chetham Society Publications.
28 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
only by the children of the neighborhood but also by those
whose homes were at some distance. These last boarded with
families living in the vicinity of the chantry, frequently on the
proceeds of a fund specially set apart for the purpose by the
generous chantry founder ; or they were cared for in hospitals
founded for that purpose in connection with the chantries. For
the hospital of the middle ages was more often a house for the
poor than a hospital for the sick.
Many of the eminent men of the later middle ages received
their early education at these chantry schools, and not a few
even began their career of greatness in the humble capacity of
chantry priests. These were not forgetful of the benefits of the
chantry institutions, and in after life we find some of them in
grateful memory rearing free colleges that larger numbers
might be able to enjoy their own early opportunities.
It may appear a long step from the simple but useful chan-
try to the college, e. g., the magnificent establishments of Eton
and Winchester. But these colleges were really chantries or
collegiate churches of a larger type and the powerful influence
for good which they have wielded in their long life through
the centuries is owing to the chantry institution.
But the great good which these chantries had been doing and
were still able to do did not shield them from the unholy designs
01 those who coveted the riches with which they were endowed.
The great wealth to be derived from their plunder brought
their suppression into consideration at the time when the court
was discussing the dissolution of the monasteries. As early as
1529 we fimd an act passed forbidding any religious person,
regular or secular, to receive a stipened or salary for the sing-
ing of masses for the dead. Again in 1536 Cranmer, in a
sermon at St. Paul's, expressed as the King's desire, that the
chantry should be destroyed. But these early threatenings seem
to have been without immediate effect, since we find that the
establishment of new foundations still continued without in-
terruption for many years. But that these menaces were not
idle is seen from Henry's action in November, 1545. In that
year, the thirty-seventh of his reign, under the plea that the
revenues of the chantries would enable him to defray the ex-
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY.
29
penses of his wars with France and Scotland, and at the same
time lighten the heavy tax burden of the people, he caused his
parliament to place at his disposition all chantries, colleges,
free chapels and hospitals throughout the realm.^^ But this
act, while it was of such a general nature as to include even the
great universities,^^ did not vest the chantry properties
immediately in the crown. It merely empowered Henry to
appoint commissioners to carry it into effect; and until the
work of the commissioners would be completed the original
owners could not legally be disturbed.^^
In accordance with this act therefore, for which the gen-
erous parliament received the heai-tfelt thanks of the most
gracious sovereign, men were appointed to enter in possession
of such chantries, colleges and other foundations as should be
named in their commissions. But it so happened that at the
death of Henry, only a few of these commissions had been
executed. In consequence the appropriation of the chantry
lands, for the time at least, was not carried out, and before
Edward, Henry's boy successor, could proceed to take posses-
sion of them, a new law giving him power to that effect was
necessary.
Such a law, however, was not long in forthcoming. The
rich booty to be derived from the suppression was never for a
moment lost sight of by the greedy courtiers. Accordingly, on
December 6, 1547, a new law was introduced in Parliament. By
it, chantries, colleges, free chapels, etc., not actually seized
during the late reign were declared the possession and seisin
of the king and his successors forever.^^ The passage of the
bill was strenuously resisted. But the greed of the unscrupu-
lous men who surrounded Edward won the day. First the
Lords, and shortly afterwards the Commons, gave consent. The
crown thus became possessor of the lands, goods, rents, and
tenements of nearly 3,000 foundations. No pressing state need
« Stat. 37, Henry VIII, ch. 4.
*» The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge with the colleges of Winchester
and Eton were included, and in the breaking up of Parliament, notice was sent to
both the universities, and colleges that they were at the King?s disposal. This
put them to petitioning for mercy which was soon obtained and letters of thanks
were sent for the continuance of them.
^ Dodd's " Church History of England," etc., by Rev. M. A. Tierney, London,
1839, Vol. II, p. 13.
" Stat. I, Ed. VI, ch. 14.
30 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
was assigned for the passage of this nefarious measure and the
promise of devoting the proceeds to the maintenance of gram-
mar schools, to the competent endowment of the vicarages and
to the establishment of larger parishes, was not fulfilled. The
real end of the measure, as Milman points out, **was to satisfy
the unprincipled and rapacious members of the council and
their adherents.''
In the beginning of March, 1548, commissioners were dis-
patched throughout all the shires of the country to make a
survey of the chantries and other institutions which had been
placed in the hands of the king. And thereupon followed a
spoliation in comparison with which the recent lootings in
China and the Philippine Islands are but as the shadow to the
substance. ' * The halls of country houses were hung with altar
cloths; tables and beds were quilted with copes; the knights
and squires drank their claret out of chalices and watered their
horses in marble coffins.'' It was, indeed, says Peter Heylin,
**a sorry house and not worth the naming which had not some-
what of this furniture in it though it were only a fair large
cushion, made of a cope, or altar cloth, to adorn the windows or
make the chairs appear to have somewhat in them of a chair of
state."
But aside from the cruel and blasphemous desecration of
sacred vessels— objects dearer to the hearts of the people than
words can tell, as being consecrated to all that was sweetest and
most beautiful and most hopeful in their lives, aside, too, from
the unjust and violent methods used in the prosecution of
this spoliation, the suppression of the chantries had other evil
effects of a more social character. By it a deep and lasting
wound was inflicted on the whole structure of English society.
It swept away the very basis of practically the whole of the
secondary education. True, the system of instruction had
received a serious blow in the destruction of the monasteries.
But in the spoliation of the chantries the effect was more deadly.
For the monasteries had been the schools mainly of the richer
classes who one way or another might be able to supply, in
some measure, the loss, whereas the chantry schools were the
source of learning for the peasantry, the country's pride, who,
THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 31
by their destruction, had no alternative but to lapse into a state
of ignorance with all its attendant evils.
Here and there, it is true, some foundations previously pro-
vided for by pious endowment were continued under new and
more limited ordinances. At a later period, when the cry of
ignorance was heard all over the land, dilapidated remains of
a few others were reconstructed and made fit for use, but at
best these efforts only partially satisfied the crying need
created by the maelstrom of fanaticism and greed.
Education, however, was not the only thing to suffer by the
demolition of the chantries. Art too felt the baneful effects of
the blow. The English people were unable to shake off the
feeling of depression which came over them as they saw their
treasures— those beautiful works in gold and silver and stone,
those stained glass windows and beautiful vestments— all
caught up in one fell swoop and deposited in the homes of the
rich all over the land. A dull despair of ever replacing what
had been so ruthlessly destroyed took possession of them.
**Art died out in the land and King Whitewash and Queen
Ugliness reigned supreme for centuries. ' ^'^^
The chantry suppression ' act sounded the death knell of
the English guild system. Never after did these great
benefit societies of the middle ages take any active part
in the public life— a part which in the care for the sick, the help
of the poor and the development of the free and noble social
life of the English, was of priceless value. The guilds were
ruined. For even if it were true, as Ashley affirms, that
Edward YI did not intend to ''abolish," or ''dissolve" or
"suppress" or "destroy" them, yet, in the practical working
of the statute, that is just what happened.*^ ^ The guilds of the
middle ages, to use Ashley's own expression, were simply
' ' cooperative chantries, ' '^^ primarily and principally religious
institutions. Most of their wealth in lands and stocks was
derived from and increased by donations inspired by motives,
in those days, regarded as religious. Hence to take from
"^Jessop in Nineteenth Century for March, 1898. Parish Life in England
before the Great Pillage.
" Ashley, " English Economic History," p. 154.
" Ibid., p. 138.
32 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
them their religious character was to deprive them of the very
source of their existence and to leave only an empty and useless
shell. The heart which sent the bright blood of life through
them and gave them the power for the great good they were
accomplishing was thus ruthlessly ripped out and trampled on.
Nothing was left to them but to die a speedy death. And so it
came to pass ; for from that moment the companies fell away
in power as they fell away in faith.
Besides we are not so sure that the destruction of the guilds
was not really the intention of the king. It is not so certain
as Ashley asserts, that of the guild revenues only those devoted
to religious purposes were confiscated.^^ Original documents
in the Record Office prove that revenues devoted to ends which
do not come under the head of what Ashley considers religious
purposes were the object of the greedy clutch of the spoilers,
and this too with the consent of the king. For in the reports
of the commissioners sent to inquire into the possession of the
guilds a black pen stroke is drawn through every recommenda-
tion to spare the corporate property which went for the main-
tenance of the poor. This was done by the crown official
through whose hands the reports passed, intimating, says Gas-
quet, that the king, not recognizing any strict right on the part
of the poor, would take possession of the entire property.^^
When we consider that few parishes throughout the realm
were without guild lands,^^ donated by chantry founders
for the support of the poor and aged, for the maintenance
of hospitals,^ ^ for the building of roads, the repair of
bridges, and the like, we may realize, to some degree at least,
what a terrible effect this chantry act had on the condition of
England at large. And while it cannot be denied that much
of the woeful destitution of the sixteenth century was due to
economic changes, to the succession of bad harvests from 1527
to 1536, to the agrarian revolution, and to the expansion of
trade,^^ yet it is none the less certain that it is also due, in no
'^ AsMey, " English Economic History," p. 152.
" Gasquet, " Eve of Reformation," pp. 384-385, also introduction to Cobbett's
" Reformation."
"Rogers, " Econ. Interpretation of History," London, 1888, p. 15.
'^ One hundred and ten hospitals mostly in form of chantries were destroyed.
" Rogers, " Econ. Int. of Hist.," p. 242, seq.
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY, 33
small measure, to the disestablishment of the chantries.^^ And
though it may not be said absolutely, that the poor law was
the direct result of the chantry suppression, yet it is undeniable
that this measure left open a door for the introduction of
that law.
With the great sufferings of the poor came also untold
hardships to the priests themselves. For by this act thousands
of them were suddenly deprived of their means of livelihood,
and, without provision, were cruelly left to do as best they
might. True, as was done in the case of the ejected monks
some years before, a pension about equal to what they had
received while acting in the capacity of chaplains was, by law,
granted to them. But for various reasons, the payment of the
pensions, in all but comparatively few cases, did not long
continue. As a result hundreds of the chantry priests were
soon reduced to the extremities of want. Besides they were
ridiculed and publicly insulted in the streets, the boys *^ revel-
ling, tossing of them, taking violently their caps and tippets
from them.''
Some writers have endeavored to show that this unholy
suppression of the chantries was not at all unwelcome to the
people at large. And in truth it cannot be denied that in the
beginning there were some, not a few, who sympathized with
the movement. No doubt too many of these were animated
by the purest motives. They were daily witnesses of most
shocking laxity in the lives of some chantry priests. They felt
the need of reform. And that there was urgent need of reform
should not surprise us. For we must recollect that the re-
ligious life is a spiritual life. Nature has to be held in constant
check. From time to time all devoting themselves exclusively
to religion need to be held up and to be made to begin afresh.
If external helps be removed, then after a long period of
freedom and owing to a variety of circumstances, the spiritual
life grows weak. The Church teaching and church laws remain
in force but they lose their power to exact obedience. Thus
the wave of laxity moves along and grows in strength— soon
sweeping over large bodies of the religious world. The people
~ Gibbins, " Industry in England," p. 208.
3CUB
34 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
at first seem not to note the degeneracy. But suddenly all
awaken to the existence of this state of affairs. Some laugh
sarcastically at it. Others try to hide it. Others again, and
among them noble types of the priesthood, stand out and throw
all their strength against it, while large numbers, crying out
wildly and without waiting for the slow moving Church to act,
take it upon themselves to bring about a reform. This hap-
pened with regard to the chantry priests. But it was not the
first occurrence of the kind. The Wycliffite movement was of
a similar nature. It was however the first time in England
that such a movement had behind it the state power and a
large body of nobles moved on by lust and avarice. Hence its
success.
With this in mind then we are not surprised that many
good souls should for a time look kindly on this agitation
against the chantries believing that it was inspired by holy
and unselfish motives. But they were soon undeceived, as
Burnet himself is forced to admit, when they saw *Hhe open
lewdness in which many (of the destroyers) lived, without
shame or remorse . . .'^ when they saw *Hhe gross and in-
satiable scrambling after the goods and wealth . . .'' when
they saw the spoilers' * irregular and immoral lives. '^^^
As for the main body of the people their opposition to the
chantry destruction is undoubted. For notwithstanding the
fact that the middle classes and the poor were absolutely in the
power of the great who had been bribed and who, in turn, were
themselves at the mercy of the king, the chantries were not
dissolved without strong opposition. **In Yorkshire in 1548
the inhabitants of Leamer, near Scarborough, and the neigh-
borhood, rose under the leadership of William Ambler of East
Heslerton yeoman, Thomas Dale parish clerk of Leamer, and
one Steavenson, and in the night set the beacon alight at
Staxton, collecting a company of about three thousand persons,
who went to the house of Matthew White, one of the commis-
sioners under the act of Edward the Sixth and particular
receiver of chantry lands, and dragged him, one Clapton, his
•^Burnett, Gilbert: "History of Reformation of the Church of England,"
(edited by N. Pocoek), 7 vols., London, 1865; Vol. Ill, pp. 216, 217.
I
TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 85
wife's brother, one Savage, supposed to have been Eichard
Savage, Sheriff of York in 1540, and one Berry, servant to Sir
Walter Mildmay, one of the commissioners for the sale of chan-
try lands, from their beds, and carried them to the wolds near
Leamer, and there murdered them."^^ -^^j. ^^^^ -^ik^ insurrec-
tions confined to a few localities. They broke out in all parts
of the country, the most dangerous being in Cornwall, Devon-
shire and Norfolk. But German and Italian mercenaries were
introduced and the protests of the people choked in their own
blood.
Nor again was the resistance to the spoliation of the chan-
tries restricted to the common people. For, notwithstanding
the fact that nobles were bought off by the chantry treasure,
many stoutly resisted the iniquitous proceeding, declaring that
the king had no right to seize property given by their fore-
fathers for a specified object— an object too that the king had
promised to protect. In some cases this opposition met with
success. Chantry properties were allowed to be retained by
their lawful owners, as was the case of the chantry of St. Anne,
Askrigg. But such cases were very rare.
As to the chantry priests themselves we hear but very little
protest from them. Though the people most concerned history
says little about their manner of acting while the law was being
carried into effect. Most of them no doubt were silenced by the
promise of pensions. Besides they were almost universally
very poor, and long distances separated one from another so
that there could come from them no concerted action. But
without doubt they took an active share in the numerous popu-
lar uprisings.
This brings our brief study of the chantry to a close. If
successful it has served to bring out in consecutive narration
what has been but briefly touched upon in a variety of docu-
ments and histories— the nature of the chantry, its appearance
and its importance in pre-Eeformation life, as seen from its
actual accomplishment and from the evils consequent on its
suppression. Cornelius Holland.
St. Joseph's Chuech, Pbovidence, R. I.
"From Wilson's "History of York," Vol. I, p. 132. quoted by Page in
" Yorkshire Surveys," Vol. I, p. xvi.
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THE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY. 37
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TEE OLD ENGLISH CHANTRY.
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memoration des defunts.
Revue des Questions Historiques, for 1895, Vol. LVII. La society au commence-
ment du XVI si6cle, d'apr^s les hom6lies de Josse Clichtoue, 1472-1543, by
H. Ch6rot, S.J.
Saturday Review, Vol. LIX, p. 344. Chantries.
Tablet, September 25, 1880. Guilds of Catholic London.
Tablet, July 30 and August 6, 1898. The first lay Lord Chancellor, by Mgr.
Moyes.
Tablet, September 3, 1898. Christian Democracy in Pre-Reformation times.
(Paper read at Catholic Conference at Nottingham. Dom A. F. Gasquet.)
University Bulletin (Catholic). Articles by Dr. Shahan and by Fr. Johnston.
Bibliographical:
Gardiner, Samuel, and MuUinger, J. Bass. Introduction to the study of English
History. Third edition. London, 1896.
Gross, Charles. The sources and literature of English history from the earliest
times to about 1485. London, 1900.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN.
Kinship within certain limits is regarded by nearly all man-
kind as an impediment to marriage, though the degree of con-
sanguinity constituting snch a bar varies among different peo-
ples. Almost universally the ties existing between parent and
child and between brother and sister having the same father
and mother are recognized as preventative of marital union.
Yet even these bonds have not always availed as a hindrance to
marriage. In his Memorabilia Xenophon represents the sophist
Hippias as expressing to Socrates the opinion, that the law
which forbade parents to intermarry with their children was
not from the gods, for the reason that the speaker found some
nations that transgressed it. Who these nations were, however,
Hippias does not inform us.^ The astronomer Ptolemy is more
specific, for he states in his Tetrabiblos that, owing to the
stellar influences under which they fall, most of the inhabitants
of India, Ariana, Gedrosia, Parthia, Media, Persia, Babylon
Mesopotamia and Assyria, have children by their own mothers,^
and St. Jerome, writing against Jovian, says that ^*the Per-
sians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians, marry their mothers,
grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters. "^
Whatever doubt may exist concerning the incestuous char-
acter of the alliances contracted by the other peoples whom
Ptolemy and St. Jerome mention, the corresponding testimony
of a number of authors compel us to believe that instances,
more or less numerous, existed of intermarriage not only
between brother and sister, but even between parent and off-
spring, among the Persians. Quintus Curtius tells us that a
satrap of Naura at the coming of Alexander the Great, was
the father of two sons by his own mother, **for," says the
biographer, **in those regions it is allowed parents to form
^ Xenophon, Memorabilia, Lib. IV, Chap. IV, 20.
*"The Tetrabiblos or Quadripartite of Ptolemy," trans, from the copy of
Leo Allatius by James Wilson, Book, II, Chap. Ill, p. 67.
»S. Hieron, adv. Jov. Lib., II, C. 7. See Migne, P. L., tom. 23, p. 296.
" Persae, Medi, Indi et Ethiopes regna non modica et Romano regno paria cum
^tribus et aviis, cum filiabus et neptibus, copulantur."
40
f^l LIBRARY
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN, 41
shameful unions with their children. ''^ Plutarch asserts that
one of the beneficent results following upon the conquest of
Alexander, was that the Persians were taught to venerate their
mothers and not to possess them as wives.^ The same writer
also informs us that the Persian King Artaxerxes married his
two daughters, Amestris and Atossa,« and Diogenes Laertius
writes: '*It is not unlawful for the Persians to wed their
daughters, a thing which would be considered by the Greeks
most wicked.""^ Again Athenaeus relates that Antisthenes,
in one of his treatises reproaches Alcibiades with having
had illicit relations with his mother, as well as with a
daughter and a sister, after the manner of the Persians.^ But
needless to say, whatever evidence this notorious gossip may fur-
nish is of little worth except as giving some cumulative value to
the deposition of other witnesses more reliable.
To the list of those who charge the Persians with the prac-
tice of marrying their mothers, must be added the names of
the author of the Recognitions, of TertuUian who relies on the
questionable Ctesias, of Minutius Felix, St. Clement of Alex-
andria, Origen, Eusebius, Theodoret and St. John Chrys-
ostom.^ Finally, as late as the sixth century Agathias speaks
of the Persians of his day as contracting alliances of this kind
though these connections, he says, were at variance with the
former manners of the country, their origin being attributable
to the teaching of Zoroaster. The same historian tells us that
Artaxerxes, the son of Darius, when his mother Parysatis be-
sought him to marry her, refused to do so on the ample ground
that such a union would be consonant ^ * neither with religion nor
with the laws of the country, nor with good morals.''^*'
*Quintus Curtius Rufus; De Reb. gest. Alex, Lib. VIII, C. II. "His in
fidem acceptis, in regionem quam Naura appellant rex cum toto exereitu venit,
satrapes Sysimithres duobus ex sua matre filiis genitis, quippe apud eos parentibus
stupro coire cum liberis fas est."
* Plutarchi, De Alex. Mag,, Fortuna aut Virtute Oratio prima, V.
•Plutarchi omnia qusB extant cum Lat. interpret Cruserii Xylandri, Vol. I,
p. 1025.
^Diogenis Laertii; De Clar. Philosoph. vitis, etc.: Pyrrho, Lib. IX, 83.
*Athenaei Dipnosophist. sive Cosnae Sapient, Lib. V, Cap. XIV.
'Clemens Romanus Recognition. Lib. IX, Cap. XX, Apolog, C. IX. Ad.
Nationes, Lib. 1, C. XVI. Octav, C. XXXI. Psedagog, Lib. I, C. VII. Contra
Celsum, Lib. V, C. XXVII; Lib. VI, C. LXXX. Prsepar. Evang., Lib. VI, 10.
Graec Affect Cur., Serm. IX, 935. De Virgin, VIII in Epist 11, ad Cor. Homol.,
" Agathiae, De. Imper. et Reb. gest Just. Vulcanius. Venitiis, 1729, Lib. II,
p. 44 E, et p. 51 A.
42 C ATE 0 Lie UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The contention of Agathias that this incestuous custom arose
among the Persians from the influence of the religion of Zoroas-
ter is worthy of note. That the tree of Zoroastrianism ever
bore such fruit the Parsees, the modern disciples of Zoroaster,
most stoutly deny. Certain it is the word Khvetuk-das current
among the Parsees to-day to designate marriage of near kin
does not connote a union of a closer consanguinity than the
second degree. It is no less certain that the sense of this ex-
pression as it is found in the remnant of the Avesta that has
come down to us— the sole document of an intrinsic authority
representing the ancient discipline of Zoroaster— does not give
warrant to the assertion of Agathias. According to West
**the term E^hvetuk-das 'does not occur at all in the oldest
part of the Avesta, and when it is mentioned in the latter
portion it is noticed merely as a good work, which is highly
meritorious without any allusion to its nature; only one pas-
sage (Vend., VIII, 36) indicating that both men and women
can participate in it.'^^^
But if the Avesta gave no literal sanction, as far as we can
know, to marriage within the first degree of kindred, the better
Pahlavi works contain many references to the holiness of such
alliances and the duty of contracting them, and it is not unlikely
that Agathias derived his appreciation of the influence of
Zoroastrianism from some of these versions which, as we
possess them at present, first appeared about his time.^^
Another evidence of the attitude of the Avesta towards
marital union with next of kin is supplied by those authors
who impute the custom of marrying a mother, not to the
Persian people at large, but to the hereditary sacerdotal caste
—the Magi. As the Avesta was originally written for the
Magi only, we would expect to find the doctrines inculcated by
it finding first expression in the life of these priests. And that
the members of this class took to wife their mothers, Xanthus,
who it is said flourished shortly after the death of Cambyses,
bears witness in a text preserved by St. Clement of Alexandria.
The geographer Strabo and the apologist Tatian^^ bear the same
"See E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts. In "Sacred Books of the East," Vol.
XVIII, p. 427.
" West, loc. cit.
" Stromat, Lib. Ill, C. 2. Strabo, Lib. XV, C. Ill, 20. Tatian, Oratio ad
Grcecos, C. 28.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 43
testimony of the Magi, while Catullus is more particular still
when he tells us that a Magus, according to the Persian religion,
should be born of a marriage formed between mother and son!
Nam Magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet
Si vera est Persarum impia relligio.^*
The religious ordinance here mentioned by Catullus was
of the Magism, which, together with the Magi themselves, was
introduced by Cyrus into Persia from the province of Media.^*^
Hence the declaration of Agathias that marriage with a
mother was a departure from the former manners of the Per-
sians, is seen not to offer the contradiction which Mr. Adam
in his article in the Fortnightly^^ thought it offered to the testi-
mony of Xanthus who, in his early day, as already said, repre-
sents the Magi as having entered into this kind of unions. In
view too of the fact that Magism in all its observances
did not prevail throughout Iran until six centuries after
the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the language of Artax-
erxes II describing the solicited marriage with his mother, as
opposed to the dictates of religion, becomes clearly intelligible.
Restricted at first to the Magi, the practice of marrying a
mother naturally enough in course of time would be taken up
by the laity. At first this form of incest would seem to be con-
fined, as a distinctive usage, to the more exclusive classes.
And so we learn from Philo that the *^ magistrates of the Per-
sians marry even their own mothers and consider the offspring
of such marriages the most noble of all men.''^^ But such a
badge of aristocracy would not be long exclusive. Hence it is
we find so many writers attributing the custom of contracting
these alliances to the nation generally.
The statements, however, regarding the extent of these
marriages among the Persians, made by Greek writers or
on the authority of such, cannot but be regarded with sus-
picion. The Greek historian and biographer were pre-
posterously prejudiced against foreigners and their habitual
proneness to color falsely and exaggerate whatever they might
" CatulL, Carm., XC, 3.
"Xenophon, Cyrop, VIII, I, 23. . _^^ ^^ , ^^
" W. Adam, " Consanguinity in Marriage," Fortnightly Review, 1865, Vol. 11.
" Philonis Judaei De Special Leg, trans, by C. D. Yonge, Vol. Ill, p. 306.
44 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
find of ill-repute in other lands must be ever borne in mind
when we read their reports of the incestuous connections of
the Persians.
As the Persians had received the institution of Magism
from the Medes so these in turn received it from Babylonia.
The tradition therefore recorded by Said Ebu-Batrich, Patri-
arch of Alexandria (876-940), according to which the first
Magus to take his mother to wife was the first also whom
Nimrod, the founder of the Babylonish Empire, constituted
minister of fire-worship, is not without some historic interest.^ ^
The grandson of this Nimrod was Ninyas and he, the Spanish
presbyter Orosius informs us, married his mother Semiramis,^*
though, according to Agathias, this son murdered his mother
that he might free himself from her importunate solicitations.^^
Herodotus tells us that not until Cambyses espoused his
sister Atossa was intermarriage of brother and sister known of
in Persia.2^ Before this time however, as Wilkinson clearly
gathered from the sculptures found both in Upper and Lower
Egypt, marriage with a sister took place among the Egyp-
tians, ^^ and Diodorus says that common report had it that
such alliances were ordained by law in this land.^^ Mas-
pero is of opinion that the union of a father and daughter
was perhaps not wholly forbidden among the ancient Egyp-
tians, ^^ but of this he adduces no substantial evidence.
"Quoted in Selden De Jure Natural! et Gentium, Vol. 1, Tom. I, Lib. V,
Cap. XI. "Dicitur enim is (Nimrod) primus qui ignem eoluit. Scilicet cum
videret flammes e longinquo in oriente ascendentes e terra iliac ut penitius eas
contueretur descendit, atque eas adoravit. Illic vero hominem constituit qui
sacra ministraret igni et in eum thura porrigeret. Atque ab eo tempore
coeperunt magi ignem colere atque adorare eum. Nomen autem hominis quem
Nimrod constituit sacrum ignis ministratorem erat Andshan, cui diabolus e
medio ignis hisce usus est verbis Nemo hominum potis est rite igni ministrare nee
mea sacra callere, nisi commisceatur cum matre sua, et sorore sua et filia sua.
Fecit itaque Andshan juxta quod dixerat ei diabolus. Et ab eo tempore qui
sacerdotio apud magos functi sunt, commisceri solebant cum matribus et sororibus
suis et filiabus suis. Et Andshan hie primus erat, qui hunc morem incepit."
Selden would lead us to think that the Patriarch of Alexandria based his story
on data furnished by oriental monuments. Sayce, however, is authority for the
statement that outside of the account of Gen. X no historic traces whatsoever can
be found of Nimrod.
" Orosii, " Adv. Pag Hist.," Lib. VII, lib. I, C. IV.
^Agathiae, op. cit., Lib. II, p. 44, D.
»^ Herod., Hist., Lib. Ill, 31.
'"Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, "The Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians," ed. by Samuel Birch, Vol. I, p. 319.
" Diodor, I, 27.
" G. Maspero, " The Dawn of Civilization in Egypt and Chaldsea," p. 50.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 45
Whether or not the marriages spoken of by Diodorus and
Wilkinson were with a full sister such as that of Cambyses, we
do not know for certain, though that such they were we would
infer from the well-known alliances of the Ptolemies who, with-
out any sign to indicate that they had departed from the former
practice of the Egyptians, took to wife their sisters german.
If we are to believe Garcilasso de la Vega, the Incas of Peru
were wont to marry their sisters, for this chronicler narrates
that Manco Ccapac, the first of the Peruvian kings, espoused
his sister and his ** legitimate and illegitimate sons also mar-
ried their sisters to preserve and increase the descendants of
the Incas. ''25 g^^ ^he account given by Garcilasso of the
origin of his royal race, caught up, as he tells us, from the tales
which he heard as a child from the elders of his people, pos-
sesses nothing beyond the value of interesting folk-lore.
Moreover, Acosta positively asserts that marriages between
brother and sister were always held as unlawful among the
Incas, until in the sixteenth century Tapa Inqua Tupanqui
married **Mamaoello his sister by the father's side, decreeing
that the Inquas might marry with their sisters by the father's
side and no other. ' '^^
If the human race was to descend from a single pair, it was
inevitable that the first son of this pair could only marry one
bom of the same parents as himself. And so the wife of Cain
was his own sister. Upon the rapid multiplication of the species
however, the partriarchs ceased to intermarry with their full
sisters, and even as we would infer from the words of Abra-
ham, Gen. XX, 12, with their uterine sister. Still they con-
tinued to form their marital alliances only within the circle of
their near relations, Abraham telling the *' elder servant of his
house" to **go to my country and kindred and take a wife from
thence for my son Isaac," and Isaac in turn charging his son
to go ''to the house of Bathuel, thy mother's father, and take
thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban, thy uncle."
When Esau married two of the Hethite women he gave such
^ Garcilasso de la Vega, first part of the "Royal Commentaries of the Yncas,'*
trans, by C. R. Markham, Vol. I, p. 93.
=» Joseph Acosta, "The Natural and Moral History of the East and West
Indies," trans, by E. G., London, 1604, p. 470.
46 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
offense to his parents that to appease them he took to wife
Maheleth, the daughter of Ismael, his uncle.^"^
Of closer consanguinity was the marriage of Abraham with
his half-sister, Saxahf^ of Nachor with his niece Melsha,^®
and probably Amram with Jochabed, who in Ex. VI, 20, is
said to be the aunt of her husband. ^^ It is to be observed that
the blood connection existing in the marriages just mentioned
was upon the father's side only. And because such connec-
tion did not operate to prevent marriage in these instances
anthropologists have maintained that the relationship here
obtaining, through the male line, was unrecognized. But free-
dom to contract these alliances, as we shall see in a subsequent
chapter, cannot be construed as a disregard of male kinship.
Barring the possible case of Amram and Jocabed which is
clearly exceptional, this freedom is to be referred to the familial
conditions which obtained at the time.
The Hebrew legislation against marriage of near kindred is
to be found in Lev. XVIII and XX and in Deut. XXVII.^^ Of
the thirteen verses (6-18) in Lev. XVIII that bear upon the
degrees of relationship declared to be a bar to matrimonial
union, there are six that refer to consanguinity.^^ These pro-
"Gen. XXIV, 2, 4; XXVIII, 1, 2; XXVI, 34, 35; XXVIII, 8, 9.
"Gen. XX, 12. According to Josephus (Ant., Lib. I, Cap. XII) Sarah was
the niece, not the sister of Abraham. This interpretation St. Jerome is inclined
to follow ("De Perp. Virg. B. M.," 15) though he admits that the more apparent
sense of the text, is that Sarah was the sister; not the niece of Abraham. The
reason prompting St. Jerome and St.Augustine (cont. Faust, XXII, 35) to think
that Abraham could have been the uncle only, and not the half-brother of his
wife, was that in the opinion of these Fathers, a marriage with a half-sister, was
even in the time of the patriarch so contrary to right order, that a man of
Abraham's sanctity could not have contracted it.
" Gen. XI, 29.
"'In Num. XXVI, 59, Jochabed is designated as the daughter of Levi. In
Ex. VI, 20, she is called "dodha" (aunt). This in the LXX, strange to say, is
rendered " the daughter of the brother of his father." The Vulgate translates it
" patruelis."
•^ On the question of authorship and date of composition of Lev. XVIII-XXVI
and for literature thereon see " The Levitical Priests," by Samuel Ives Curtiss,
Jr., Edinburgh, 1877, pp. 69 and ff. For the same question concerning Deut.
see Hummelauer, " Com. in Deut.," introduc, p. 5 et seq. in Cur. " Scrip. Sacr.
Lethielleux," Paris, 1901.
»* These forbid marriage with a mother, a granddaughter, whether
daughter of a son or of a daughter, with a stepmother's daughter, a
paternal aunt, and finally with a maternal aunt. Lev. XX and Deut. XXVII
prohibit no consanguineous marriage not already forbidden in Lev. XVIII, but
Lev. XX, 17, declares that he who marries "the daughter of his father or the
daughter of his mother" shall, with the partner of his guilt "be slain in the
sight of their people," while Lev. XX, 19, prescribes that a nephew and aunt
maternal, or paternal, that shall enter into marital relations with each other
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 47
hibitions directed to the male rather than to the female would
inculcate primarily reverence for the person of the father as
the head of the family. This high position and authority of the
polygamous father the prohibitions of Lev. XVIII, 6-8, ever
suppose, sanction and immediately regard. And because the
union of an uncle and niece, such as was that of Nachor and
Melsha, did not cast upon this paternal preeminence the shadow
of disparagement that was thought to be offered it by the
alliance of a son and an aunt, the former of these marriages
escaped the prohibition pronounced against the latter.^^
Centered about the father the Israelitish family formed a
group more or less independent and self-suflacient. In the
marked division that set off the polygamous households of this
people, one from another, the bonds of relationship between the
children of brothers and sisters were so loosened that the reason
for constituting a matrimonial impediment to the intermarriage
of cousins german which might exist in different conditions of
society, is seen to have not yet prevailed.^*
"shall bear their iniquity." Finally Deut. XXVII, 22, testifies to the deep
reprobation in which matrimonial alliance with a sister the daughter of father
or mother is held, by crying upon it a curse.
The opinion of those who declare that these prohibitions refer not to mar-
riage but to incest outside of wedlock, is generally repudiated. See S. E. Dwight,
" The Hebrew Wife," p. 48, S. ; also Michaelis, " Com. on the Laws of Moses,"
trans, by A. Smith, pp. 46-47.
" It is true the Old Testament makes record of no indisputable instance of
marriage contracted between an uncle and niece, that of Othoniel and Axa
(Jos. XV, 17) being questionable on account of the uncertainty regarding the
degree of kinship existing between Othoniel and the father of his wife. We
learn though from Josephus that Joseph the son of Onias, the high priest, mar-
ried his niece and the manner in which, according to the historian, this alliance
was brought about would lead us to believe that it oflfered no violation to law or
custom among the Jews (Josephus, Ant. XII, 4, 6). The marriage of Herod the
Great and his two sons will also be remembered. But as Herod the Great mar-
ried his half sister (Josep., op. cit., XVII, 1, §3) and Herod Antipas his
brother's wife, both of which unions were clear offenses against the law, it were
manifestly unwarrantable to conclude that the matrimonial alliances of these
kings with their respective nieces, bore reliable testimony to the legality of such
marriages among their countrymen. There is, however, a well-known incident
connected with the union of Herod Antipas, that gives it an evidential value
which otherwise it would not possess. This incident was the rebuke administered
to Antipas by St. John the Baptist. This Herod, it will be recalled, was
censured for having espoused Herodias, his brother's wife, no mention being
made of the fact that in so doing he had also married his own niece. Had the
alliance been unlawful on this last-named ground as well, we may safely assume
that the stern Precusor would not have failed to declare it so. Moreover,
Herodias was the niece of Herod Philip, her first husband, just as she was of
her second, yet the Baptist refers to this former marriage as to a perfectly
legitimate union (Joseph., op. cit., XVII, 1, 3; XVIII, 5, 4. Mark VI, 17, sqq.).
«* St. Ambrose endeavors to deter Paternus from joining in marriage the son
and granddaughter of the latter on the ground of an interdict thought to be implied
48 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
But not only did family range apart from family, among
the Jews, but as was natural where there was a plurality of
wives, sub-families arose. Eachael and Lia and the concubines
of Jacob abode in their own separate tents (Gen. XXXI, 33)
and were severally under the one head, the genius of a house-
hold quite complete in itself. Members of a different sub-
family, brothers and sisters agnatic, might easily come to enter-
tain for each other sentiments that normally could find no place
among children reared in the mutually intimate companionship
ordinarily following upon the circumstance of birth from a
common mother. So it was Abraham took to wife his half-
sister Sarah, and as we would infer from Gren. XX, 12, the
Hebrews in the patriarchal period were not unaccustomed to
contract the same kind of marriages. That they ceased for a
time to enter into these unions after the promulgation of Lev.
XVIII, 9-11 seems most probable, considering the strikingly
forceful expression which they heard given to the prohibition
against marriage with a half-sister and the dire punishment
with which a violation of this law was threatened. The incident
of Amnon and Thamar (2 Kings XIII, 13) however would lead
us to suspect that, even in the days of David, the interdict
placed upon such marriages was not rigidly enforced, and we
gather from Ezekiel XXII, 11, how persistently the temptation
to such form of incest continued with this people.
In examining the legislation enacted against incest among
the Hindus we notice the markedly greater extent to which kin-
ship stretches out from the paternal as compared with the mater-
nal line. * * In all pure Hindu Society, ' ' says Alfred Lyall, ' * the
law which regulates the degrees, within which marriage is inter-
dicted, proceeds from the theory that between agnatic relatives
connubium is impossible. "^^ This appears clearly in the law
of Manu, which declares that **a (damsel) who is neither a
in Lev. XVIII, 6 ; the saint arguing that, since the alliance between cousins german
was forbidden, much more so was the union between persons of closer kinship.
S. Ambr. ad Pater, Epis. LX; cf. Migne, P. L., col. 1183. But St. Ambrose puts
too wide a meaning upon Lev. XVIII 6. And as there is no prohibition in the
Scripture quoted, against the intermarriage of cousins german the principle that
"he who constrains to the lesser does not absolve from but binds also to the
greater," which the Bishop of Milan lays down, finds not the application he
would make of it.
"A. C. Lyall, "Asiatic Studies, Religious and Social," p. 156.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN, 49
Sapinda on the mother's side, nor belongs to the same family
on the father's side is recommended to twice-born men for
wedlock and conjugal union. "^6 tj^^ Sapinda relationship
lasts to the sixth degree,^^ but descent from the same family on
the father's side which constitutes one a member of the same
gotra^s and is made known by the possession of a common sur-
name, gives rise to an impediment that goes along the male line
indefinitely.
Mr. McLennan is undoubtedly right in describing the con-
tinuous impediment to intermarriage on the male side among
the Hindus as a relic of a former social condition among this
people. Such a bar to intermarriage arose from the practice,
we shall have occasion to describe later, of never contracting
marital union with a member of the same gotra or clan.
Incapable of keeping but an easy and loose kind of record
the members of these clans would choose one of their ancestral
lines to the neglect of the other in tracing their clan-relation-
ship. Among the Hindus, as among the more advanced clans,
this relationship would be reckoned from the father's side. In
some editions of the Laws of Manu it is specifically stated that
descent from the same father is made known by the posses-
sion of the same family name. The fact of clan kinship
therefore was in the beginning declared by a common sur-
name and hence between those of the same surname marriage
was prohibited. Hence also a one-sided and disproportionate
system of relationship was inevitable.
The Hindus in marking their kinship ever kept in mind
origin from a common clan or gotra. It would be quite natural
however that with some peoples the remembrance of a near
relationship should be lost sight of in the name which at first
connoted this relationship and the sign should come to be
regarded rather than the thing signified. We observe this in
the case of the Chinese.
»«"The Laws of Manu," III, 5. The Brahmana (the sacerdotal), the
Kshatriya (the governing and military), the Vaisya (the agricultural and
mercantile) castes are the twice-borne ones, Manu, X, 4.
"Manu, V, 60. According to Gautama, Vishnu and Narada, Sapinda rela-
tionship does not go beyond the fourth degree where the common ancestor is a
female.
*• Among the Brahmans membership in the same gotra means descent from
the same Rishi.
4CUB
60 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Among this people the male only is accounted the primitive
stock of the family tree, as the male descendents only are con-
sidered the branches of this tree. These descendents never
take but the father's name and between those of the same
name, no matter how remote is the degree of consanguinity be-
tween them, marriage is prohibited.^^ Since among this people
surnames are extraordinarily few, there being, according to Mr.
Medhurst,*^ but 530 of them throughout the whole Chinese Em-
pire, the limitation which is thus put upon intermarriage is
seen to be narrow indeed.
The penalties attached by the Chinese to the violation of the
law regarding intermarriage between those of the same stock
are definitely prescribed. The Rev. Pierre Hoang, in his ex-
cellent brochure, **Le Manage Chinois,'' tells us that such
unions are declared void, and in cases where the parties escape
the death punishment, the woman is separated from her con-
sort, and the nupital presents are confiscated. We are informed
by the same writer that if a man and woman who are of the
same stock, but beyond the fourth degree— not counting the
stock— shall marry, they shall each of them receive 100 blows
of the rod. Relatives on the paternal side, to a closer degree,
who shall intermarry shall be sent into exile for a determined
period. But he who shall take to wife his paternal grand-aunt,
or a cousin german of his father, bom to a paternal grand-uncle,
or his cousin german bom to a paternal uncle, shall, with the
partner of his incest, be promptly strangled to death. Finally,
he who shall marry a paternal aunt, a sister or a daughter of
his son, shall, with his marital mate, be speedily decapitated.
Kinship through the female line is termed, among the Chinese,
external relationship, and the impediments to intermarriage
following upon it are not as extensive as those resulting from
connection through the male. Thus marriage with a uterine
sister entails three years' exile and 100 stripes of the rod for
the woman, and military banishment for the man. So too, the
children of two sisters or of a brother and sister may inter-
marry ; never, however, may the offspring of two brothers.*^
•" Le P. Pierre Hoang, " Le Mariage Chinois au point de vue legal," p. 6.
"W. H. Medhurst, "Marriage Affinity and Inheritance in China," in Trans.
Roy. As. 8oc., China Branch, Vol. IV, quoted by Westermarck, " History of Human
Marriage," p. 305.
*^ Hoang, op. cit., pp. 46, ff., and 51, flf.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 51
The Greeks of the post-Homeric age esteemed lightly their
marriage bonds, the Lacedaemonians especially so, yet the
grosser forms of incest they shunned. Tertnllian, it is true,
accused the Macedonians of having indulged the intimacies of
which the Persians were held guilty, but his accusation which
seems to rest on no other ground than the outburst of ribaldry
which greeted the enactment of the play of GGdipus in the
theater at Macedon*^ ^g j^^^ sufficiently supported. And both
Tatian and Diogenes Laertius refer to the abhorrence enter-
tained by the Greeks towards the unions reported as peculiar
to the Persians.^3 Marriage with a half-sister, however, was
permitted to the Greeks, both by the person or persons whom
history calls Lycurgus, and by Solon ; the former as we learn
from Philo^^ allowing the Spartans to take to wife a sister
uterine but not agnatic, while the latter gave the Athenians
liberty to espouse a sister agnatic but not uterine. With the
liberty accorded by Solon, Cimon married his half-sister
Elpinice,^^ as did Archeptolis Mnasiptolema,*^ Alexander the
son of Pyrrhus, Olympias,*''^ Mithridates Laodice,^^ Mausolus,
Artemisia,^^ and Dionysius of Syracuse, Sophrosyna.^^
Marital union with a half-sister, legal among the Greeks, was
forbidden to the Roman whose law regarding marriage of near
kin was a reflex of the high domestic virtue which character-
ized the citizen of the Imperial City in its nobler days. This
law the Roman, even in the season of wildest debauchery, did
not forget or disregard. For though otherwise depraved, his
horror towards incestuous alliances ever remained. To this
sentiment of horror, their poets gave testimony.
Says Lucan
— cui fas implere par.entem
Quid rear esse nefas?**^
and Virgil, pointing to one among the damned tells us:
« Tertullian, " Ad Nationes," CXVI.
*» Tatian, loc. cit., Diog. Laert., op. cit.
** Philo, " De Spec. Leg. Thomas Mangey," 1742, Vol. II, p. 303.
" Nepos, " Vita Cimonis, Cap. I.
" Plut, in Them, tom. II, p. 500.
*■" Justinus, Lib. XXVII, C. I.
*" Justinus, Lib. XXXVII, C. III.
" Strabo, Lib. XIV, C. II.
«• Plut. in Dion, C. VI, tom. V.
" Lucanus, Pharsal, 8.
52 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Hie thalamum invasit natae, vetitosque hymenseos.''*
We may quote here, too, as bearing the same idea, the story
told by Agathias of the Roman philosopher who, warned in a
dream,
M^ d^a(pi^<: Tou dd^anvou, ia xom xupjia yevea&at
r^ Trai^Tcou fJLrjZTip fir^rpofd^opov ou de^erdi^dpa.'^
awakes to find that the offended earth had in very truth spewed
out, as it were, the body which he had given to it.
The Roman family was founded, not upon ties of blood,
but upon the power vested in the paterfamilias. The Latin
word **familia," derived from the Oscan term **famel," signi-
fying a slave, bears witness to the absolute sway that originally
rested in the head of the Roman household. Yet despite this
exalted authority of the husband over the wife no distinction
was drawn between the blood relationship with the father and
that with the mother in prescribing the degrees of kinship pro-
hibiting intermarriage. These prohibiting degrees extended
along the right ascending and descending line indefinitely. In
the collateral line those within the third degree could not inter-
marry. A single exception was made to this law in the case of a
brother's daughter, which was brought about **when the divine
Claudius took to wife Agrippina the daughter of his brother. ' ''^^
But Constantine, in accordance with the sentiments of the
Roman people, afterwards repealed the exception introduced
by Claudius forbidding marriage with a brother's daughter
under pain of death. Beyond the third degree, marriage was
allowable, except in the instance of a granddaughter, * * for when
we may not lawfully marry the daughter of any one, we may not
marry the granddaughter. ' ' And as of the granddaughter, so
also of the great-granddaughter and the sister of a great-grand-
father. These persons, though beyond the third degree,
were considered as coming within the scope of the prohibition
against unions in the right ascending and descending line,
connection with them being likened to that between parent
and child.^^ From a text of Ulpian we learn that in the ancient
Roman law, the prohibition to intermarry extended to first
« iEneid, Lib. VI, 623.
" Agathias, op. cit., p. 50 E et seq.
"Gai., I, 62.
« Instit Just., I, 10, 3. Dig. XXIII, 2, 7, 2. Ibid., XXXIII, 2, 39.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 53
cousins.^^ Later on we find sucli a marriage at one time for-
bidden, at another made lawful, until eventually it is interdicted
under penalties most severe by Theodosius the Great.
In passing to a consideration of marriage between near of
kin among savages, we recall the passage of Andromache, in
which Euripides makes Hermione declare that amidst all bar-
barians, father married with daughter, son with mother and
brother with sister, without any hindrance from law or cus-
tom." The statement of the poet is dramatically stronger for
its sweeping character, but for the same reason it can possess
but little historic value. Ovid is not more definite when he
tells us
Gentes tamen esse feruntur
In quibus et nato genitrix et nata parent!
Jungitur.*^®
According to Herodotus the MassagetsB held their wives in
common, while the Auseans had no marriage but lived together
like gregarious beasts. Solinus testifies to the promiscuous cohab-
itation of the sexes among the Garamantes, and Aristotle refers
to a similar practice among the Libyans.^^ But these instances
do not afford examples of a disregard of kinship as prohibitive
of intermarriage. Herodotus indeed tells us that the Massagetae,
though communal marriage existed among them, had each his
own wife, and this, together with the fact that the Auseans were
at pains, according to this historian, to determine by artificial
means the paternal parentage of their healthy offspring, leads
us to think that the so-called promiscuity of these people was
similar to the promiscuity observed among the Spartans.
These Greeks, we know, recognized no crime in adultery,^^ and
cared not who was the father of their children as long as a
"Ulp. Frag., 5, 6. See also Plutarch, Qusest. Rom., 6.
" Euripides, Andromache, 173 et seq.
TOivTOV irdv TO ^ap^apov yevo^
iraTTjp TE ^vyarpl Tvai^ re [iijTpl fitywrai
Kop^ TaSehfxj ...
ml Tuvd bvdev e^ecpyei v6fioc.
•» Ovid Metam, Lib. X, 331. ,. „^ „
•• Herod, " Hist. Lib." I, C. 216. Ibid., Lib. IV, 180. Solinus, De Memoral.
Mundi," C. XXXII. Aristotle, Pol., II, 3, 9.
«* Xenoph., De Rep. Laced., I, 789.
54 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
strong progeny was born to the state,^^ and yet we also know
that relationship through the father operated to check inter-
marriage among them. The same may be safely said of the
Garamantes and Libyans. Moreover, it must be borne in mind
that the evidence for a general Hetairism is not coextensive
with the evidence for the absence of any horror of incest. The
one may be present amidst a wide prevalence of the other. The
cases mentioned by McLennan of conjugal infidelity, of poly-
andry, of the wantonness of the women in some savage tribes^*
are not therefore instances in which kinship within certain de-
grees was not recognized as a stop to intermarriage. The same
must be affirmed of the examples, which Sir John Lubbock and
others adduce of certain modern savages who recognize no mar-
riage as we understand it.^^ To show that these savages take no
heed of relationship as an impediment to marriage, a more
specific and particular testimony is necessary than that which
would merely disclose a wide promiscuity.
That, however, an impediment to intermarriage springing
from nearness of kinship quite universally exists among sav-
ages, we know from the ample testimony of travelers
which is detailed for us in the works of anthropologists. It is
observed that, as a rule, the number of persons affected by this
impediment is greater among uncivilized communities than
among those more advanced in the social scale. Indeed, among
savages the bar to intermarriage reaches beyond the pale of
relationship by blood and prevents marital union between mem-
bers of the same clan. We have seen that the original families
into which the Hindus and Chinese were divided had, as their
distinguishing mark, a common surname. Among many sav-
ages, however, a sign more readily suggesting itself to the un-
tutored mind designates family from family, clan from clan.
This is the name of some vegetable or animal— the kobong of
the Australian, the totem of the American Indian. And be-
tween those of the same kobong or totem marriage is never
contracted.
~ Aristotle, Polit., II, 9.
•' John F. McLennan, " Primitive Marriage," p. 176 and flF.
~Sir John Lubbock, "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condi-
tion of Man," pp. 86, 95.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 55
The practice among savages of marrying outside of their
own clan Mr. McLennan has called by the fitting name ex-
ogamy. This custom, as is clear, puts a check to marriage
between persons that are unrelated by blood. Nevertheless,
as we shall see, in a following article, from the nature of the
familial conditions of the early clans among whom exogamy
obtained, it is to be identified with the bar, which in civilized
societies, stops consanguineous unions.
The practice then of seeking a wife from a strange clan ap-
pears among people so diverse and so widely separated that its
nature cannot be set off by the narrow characterization that may
fit institutions of a purely local compass. And as many anthro-
pologists would most firmly deny that such a practice could be
prompted by an instinct of nature they are at special pains to
show its evolution from the influence solely of external con-
ditions. Thus Mr. McLennan is of the opinion that exogamy
must have arisen from a scarcity of women in the tribe,
brought about by female infanticide, the unbalancing in
the proportion of the sexes compelling the men to resort to the
capture of foreign women for wives. This ** usage induced by
necessity would in time establish a prejudice among the tribes
observing it— a prejudice strong as a principle of religion, as
every prejudice relating to marriage is apt to be— against
marrying women of their own stock. ' '^^
Mr. Spencer is ready with a different account. According
to this writer women of a hostile tribe— and tribes at the period
of which it is question, were ever hostile one to the other— were
sought as trophies of war. The possession of these captured
women as prizes by a few inevitably incites a desire for them in
the many, * * and as the number of those who are without them
decreases, the brand of disgrace attaching to them will grow
more decided ; until, in the most warlike tribes it becomes an
imperative requirement that a wife shall be obtained from
another tribe— if not in open war, then by private abduction. ' '^'^
Finally, Sir John Lubbock attributes this custom to the
determination on the part of the men of the tribe to gain wives
•** McLennan, "Studies in Ancient History," p. lllj "Primitive Marriage,"
p. 140.
"Herbert Spencer, "The Principles of Sociology," Vol. I, pp. 61&-621.
66 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
as their own private property. **We must remember," *'says
this anthropologist, **that under the communal system the
women of the tribe were all common property. No one could
appropriate one of them to himself without infringing on the
general rights of the tribe. Women taken in war were, on the
contrary, in a different position. The tribe as a tribe had no
right to them and men surely would reserve to themselves ex-
clusively their own prizes. These captives then would naturally
become the wives in our sense of the term. ' '^^
The positive variance with objective reality presented by
these different theories anthropologists themselves have not
been slow to point out to one another. Mr. McLennan 's hy-
pothesis, it will be observed, rests upon the two postulates of
female infanticide and the resultant scarcity of women. Mr.
Fison has shown that Mr. McLennan has absurdly exaggerated
the existence of female infanticide, as he has also shown that the
motive alleged by the latter for such inhuman conduct could not
have availed with the savage.^*^ The supposition of female
infanticide disproved, the consequent supposition of a scarcity
of women must be discredited.
The theories of Mr. Spencer and Sir John Lubbock would
take for granted that, in the battlings between savage tribes,
individuals are wont to take captives of war. For only when
the individual was the victor could the individual have the spoil.
But Mr. McLennan well says that booty of war was ordinarily
the accomplishment of groups, and, as such, subject to the dis-
position of many rather than of one.^^ Individual seizures of
women, no doubt, were frequent, but they never could have been
so common as to give rise to the system of exogamy. More-
over, as Westermarck justly remarks, the process of winning a
wife, pictured by the authors just mentioned, could have been
the exclusive performance of the stronger and conquering
tribes. But where would the weaker and conquered tribes
secure their matrimonial consorts f^^ Surely if there were
scarcity of women anywhere, it would be among those who
had lost their female companions to the rough prowess of their
" Lubbock, op. cit., 135-136.
•^ Fison and Howitt, " Kamilaroi and Kumai," p. 135, ff.
«» McLennan, " Studies in Ancient History," p. 345.
* Edward Westermarck, " The History of Human Marriage," p. 315.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 57
hostile neighbors. Yet exogamy was a custom among the
weaker and conquered, no less than among the stronger and
conquering tribes.
The anthropologists we have been considering might, it is
true, reply to the question, put by Westermarck, why savages
did not also take to wife the women of their own tribes, by con-
tending that the scarcity of women would permit only of poly-
andry or communal marriage which, indeed, they say was
originally practised. But if so, why do we not detect this poly-
andry and communal marriage among the men and women of
the same tribe, coexisting with the capture of foreign women
for individual wives'? From the coexistence of such low unions
the savage admittedly is not deterred through considerations of
morality.
The theories offered by Messrs. Tylor and Morgan to ex-
plain the origin of exogamy, though more plausible than the
ones just mentioned, are quite as insufficient. Mr. Tylor thinks
that the savage was induced to this usage by a desire of political
advantage and preservation to be secured by affiliation with a
foreign tribe f^ while Mr. Morgan is of the idea that the inter-
marriage of brothers and sisters in a group which he calls the
** consanguine family'' ceased because of the evils ** which
could not forever escape human observation."^^ These evils,
we take it, were the physical defects that were supposed to be
discernible in the offspring of marriages between near of kin.
It needs, however, but little knowledge of the savage to be con-
vinced that he would never submit to the kind of abstinence en-
tailed by exogamy through the considerations presented by
Messrs. Tylor and Morgan. Moreover, the hypothesis of the
latter assumes in the savage motives that failed to suggest
themselves to the greatest of the ancient law-givers when de-
creeing against marriage of near kin. These motives did not,
as far as we can know, occur to Moses or the framers of the
Laws of Manu when they formulated their enactments against
incest. And the history of the Church reveals no thought of
the physical deterioration of progeny as following from mar-
'• Edward B. Tylor in Jour. Anthr. Inst., Vol. XVIII, p. 267.
" Lewis H. Morgan, " Ancient Society," p. 424.
68 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
riages of consanguinity, until towards the close of the sixth
century. Indeed, such a result, far from being obvious to the
modern scholar, could hardly occur to the savage mind.
It is true that an Australian legend recorded by Mr. Fison
makes the Good Spirit Muramura prohibit intermarriages
among members of the same branch of a tribe because of the
evil effects observed to have issued from the intermarriages of
closest kin which took place after the creation."^ ^ But the par-
ticular nature of these evil effects the tradition does not disclose.
Nor are we warranted in setting them down as the weakness or
defect of offspring. Incapable of catching the purpose of a
hidden law, the savage could only account for the extensive and
striking phenomenon of exogamy by picturing it as brought
about by the decree of a god. He could not but think that, in
violating this practice, he would bring upon himself a condign
evil. Did he have a clear idea of the nature of this evil he would
not fail, considering its significance, to give it a more specific
description.
Mr. Morgan lays stress on the foregoing tradition because
of the basis of probability which he claims it establishes for
the *' consanguine family'' described above ;'^^ just as Mr. Mc-
Lennan attaches importance to the tradition, current among
various peoples, that marriage was instituted by some legislator
because of the evidence afforded by these traditions of a former
state of promiscuity.''^* But because the Egyptians attribute
the origin of marriage to Menes, the Chinese to Fohi, the
Hindus to Svetaketu, the Greeks to Cecrops, a scientific argu-
ment is no more presented for a former state of promiscuity,
than the same kind of an argument is afforded for the former
existence of snakes in a particular island, by the legend that
a certain holy man once expelled these reptiles from that island.
The stage of sexual promiscuity, Mr. Morgan confesses, *4ies
concealed in the misty antiquity of mankind beyond the reach
of positive knowledge. ' '^^ Yet into these primeval shades most
anthropologists, nothing daunted, rush. And when we read
"Fison and Howitt, op. cit., p. 25.
"Morgan in introduction to Fison and Howitt's "Kamilaroi and Kuraai,"
p. 4.
^* McLennan, "Primitive Marriage," pp. 174-175.
"Morgan, op. cit., p. 502.
MARRIAGE OF NEAR KIN. 59
of the grand generalizations based upon the custom observed
among some peoples, of tracing kinship through females, upon
the ''expiation for marriage'' and the jus primae noctis, upon
the practice of lending wives, upon the greater esteem paid
by the Greeks to the Hetairae than to their legitimate wives and
finally upon the classificatory system of consanguinity found
in 139 tribes or races, we cannot but express our accord with
the judgment passed by Fairbaim upon our modem anthro-
pologies, understanding of course the words of this judgment
in the sense in which they are accepted by him who uses them.
* ' Our modem anthropologies, says this author, are in heart and
essence, as speculative as mediaeval scholasticism, or as any
system of ancient metaphysics. There is no region where a
healthy and fearless scepticism is more needed than in the
literature which relates to ethnography. There is no people
so difficult to understand and to interpret as a savage people;
there is no field . . . where testimonies are so contradictory, or
so apt to dissolve under analysis, into airy nothings. ' '^^
Shunning then the domain of mere surmise we find among
savage as well as among civilized mankind a recognized bar to
the intermarriage of near Mn. Instances, indeed, are to be
found, as we have noted, where no such impediment is recog-
nized, but these must be considered in the order of extraordinary
exceptions. These exceptions must be reckoned also as ex-
amples of a perverted moral instinct which may become com-
mon to a whole people, as we know it to be found among
individuals. And so the habit of incest in the case of the Egyp-
tians was but one form of a depravity to which, as we leara
from Lev. XVIII, 3, 21 et seq., these people were addicted.
Thus, too, according to Mr. Baacroft, the Kadiaks of North-
western America, while given to the grossest forms of incest,
practiced other unnatural vices.^"^
The Persians, however, beyond the custom of marrying
their own mothers, did not show signs of being possessed of a
more vitiated moral sense than other nations of antiquity. The
"Andrew Martin Fairbairn, "The Philosophy of the Christian Religion,'
^' "Hubert Howe Bancroft, "The Native Races of the Pacific States of North
America," Vol. I, pp. 81-82.
60 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
irregular unions which they learned to form from their foreign
priests were, no doubt, originally practiced by the Magi through
an overweening desire to keep religious traditions pure from
strange and unfriendly influences. The declaration of Mr. Mc-
Lennan that such marriages were ** those of hordes who con-
secrated an incestuous promiscuity into a system ''"^^ is seen
from what we have said of these unions to be absolutely con-
trary to historical fact.
John Websteb Melody.
"McLennan, "Primitive Marriage," p. 223.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES.
Among all the differences between the United States and the
Old World by far the most salient is the separation of Church
and State in the former. Perhaps, too, on no other point are we
so mnchmisunderstood by the latter. Our customs in this matter
are regarded as the outcome of religious indifference and the
expression of hostility of the State towards the Church; as the
product of atheistic theorists who seek to level all other coun-
tries down to our measurements. Neither one of these supposi-
tions is true. Americans yield to no people in religious, nay,
Christian zeal. The State in separating from the Church is
actuated very largely by friendliness, believing that the Church
can best attend to its own affairs without that governmental
support which is only too often more of a hindrance than a help.
Nor is separation of Church and State with us the
outcome or the expression of any abstract theory. It is pre-
eminently a fact. True ! there are theorists among us. But as
a people we are practical at least so far as we do not believe in
holding on to a system of government after that system has
been found impracticable. Our European cousins call us a * * na-
tion of shop-keepers. ' ' They will also admit that we keep our
shops in very good order. For the sake of argument, we may
accept the description. It will aid considerably in explaining
our differences. As Mr. Bryce says in his ' ' American Common-
wealth'' (II, 575), one of the causes of our separation of
Church and State lies in our commercial view of the State.
**It is more like a commercial company . . . for the man-
agement of certain business in which all who reside within
its bounds are interested . . . but for the most part leav-
ing the shareholders to themselves. That an organization of
this kind should trouble itself otherwise than as a matter of
police with the opinions or conduct of its members would be as
unnatural as for a railway company to enquire how many of
the shareholders were total abstainers. ' ' Now one step farther.
What has made us so practical? The imperfections of Old
61
62 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
World theories. Without asserting that a imion of Church and
State is a false theory or inapplicable under any conditions,
Americans severally hold that such a theory has not been so
uniformly successful as to warrant a blind acceptance of it
under all conditions. If this be commercialism, shop-keeping,
then it were high time for some of our critics to lay aside their
imperial insignia and don working clothes.
The historical origin and progress of this new element in
civilization, must therefore claim close and sympathetic study.
Judged by theory we will be misunderstood because we are pre-
eminently a fact, a stupendous fact, and can be appreciated
correctly only as a fact. In the book^ before us the reader will
find an extremely interesting and able sketch of the origin of
separation of Church and State in America as well as of its
historical connection with the struggle for political independ-
ence. The author is well equipped for the work. His research-
work has been vast ; the arrangement of the same is lucid ; the
style is pleasant; and, best of all, his treatment of such a
delicate question is eminently fair and courteous to all parties
concerned. Defects there are, but not many. The title of the
book, for instance, is unhappy, because ** liberty" is a word
susceptible of so many and varied meanings, and in fact, the
author himself seems rather ill at ease in his attempt in the
opening chapter to define it. '^Separation of Church and
State'' would have been a more felicitous title. His admiration
for Eoger Williams is rather exaggerated and he is incorrect in
stating (p. 482) that Ehode Island never ** admitted into
statute or practice any spirit of repression," since it is well
known that Catholics were disf ranchisied at least by 1728 if not
earlier. Finally, the estimate of the influence of Jonathan
Edwards (pp. 485-9) is so exaggerated as to border on the
absurd. It is surely astounding to hear that Edwards exerted
a more profound influence on the minds of men than **any
other man since Luther," and that in theology **he made a
place for his name along with those of Augustine and Calvin. ' '
But these defects are few and pardonable in a way. On the
whole the author has written an excellent work which we
* " The Rise of Religious Liberty in America," by Sanf ord H. Cobb, 8vo, pp.
XX and 541, Macmillan, New York, 1902.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 63
cordially commend and whose conclusions we accept in the
main.
1. Colonial Beginnings.— The growth of religious liberty
(by which words we mean separation of State and Church) in
America was slow. The early settlers, be it remembered, were
all Europeans; hence, they reflected the views of Europeans.
Now in the early part of the seventeenth century, union of
Church and State was the still generally accepted theory and
practice. Nevertheless, a counter movement had set in.
Thomas More a century earlier had described in Utopia a dif-
ferent condition of affairs. The fratricidal religious wars of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had left a feeling of weari-
ness in thinking minds, which found expression in the compro-
mise Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The cause of religious
liberty found more and more open advocates among even such
intolerant men as Oliver Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane, and others.
So then, there was a double current. The English colonies
reflected both. Most of them started out with intolerance, a few
with more or less modified toleration.
Hence, several groups are distinguishable. In the first there
was a strict union of State and Church. In this group we find
Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, Connecticut, and New
Hampshire with their congregational establishments ; then Vir-
ginia and the Carolinas in which the Church of England was
established from the very beginning and remained so until the
era of the Eevolution. It is curious to note the different
motives of *' establishment *' in these sub-groupings. In the
northern colonies the union of Church and State was based on
the conviction that the State should be religious. In the south-
em ones it was based on the conviction that the Church was
necessarily a department of the State, so that religious dissent
was a civil disorder.
A second group is composed of Georgia, Maryland, New
York and New Jersey, where changes occurred. Thus Mary-
land under Catholic rule practiced religious freedom, but under
Protestant rule was forced into establishing the Anglican
Church. Likewise, the other colonies accepted the same estab-
lishment with more or less completeness.
64 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
A last group comprises Ehode Island, Pennsylvania, and the
latter 's off-shoot, Delaware, in which colonies no Church was
ever established, and in which religious intolerance had the least
sway.
But in none of the colonies was there absolute religious
equality before the law during all of their course. We can
grant, for argument's sake, that Rhode Island, for a long while
after the foundation of Providence in 1636, taught and prac-
tised religious equality. Yet, it is undeniable that later on (cer-
tainly by 1728-9) Catholics were disfranchised. And, speaking
of Rhode Island, we note in passing our conviction that Mary-
land preceded it as well as all others in the practice of religious
liberty, although the adverse circumstances in which Lord
Baltimore found himself placed prevented him from expressly,
and in so many words embodying it in his Maryland charter of
1632. However, a comparison of Williams and Lord Baltimore
is, at bottom, somewhat idle, as at best it is a priority of only a
few years. Both were undoubtedly great and broad-minded
men, pioneers in the cause of religious freedom, though not its
originators. A broad view will give credit to both for equal
liberality and for having worked out the problem in the best
way suitable to each, one as a preacher, the other as a practical
man of business, both as founders of colonies.
II. Subsequent Development,— T\iq early outlook for liberty
was, therefore, none too encouraging, although, even then far
brighter than in Europe. Yet, the movement gained ground
steadily. It was gaining ground even in old Europe. The
almost universal religious indifference characterizing the
Europe of the later seventeenth and entire eighteenth centuries,
tells plainly enough that men's minds had swung to the oppo-
site extreme of atheism and scepticism out of utter disgust at
the religious bickerings of the preceding age. When at West-
phalia the opposing troops laid down their weapons, the
theologians as well laid down their pens and folio volumes.
The age of Voltaire, Du Barry, Bolingbroke and Chester-
field was weary of religion and sought relief in contemptuous
agnosticism and grosser epicureanism. America felt the
movement. Chiefly in Virginia, where the established Church
never was regarded as much more than a department of the
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 65
State, and little respected, owing to the scandalous lives of
its clergy. In the northern colonies, the minute intolerance
of such governments as Massachusetts had disgusted even its
own admirers. The ^^Blue Laws'' gradually lapsed into
desuetude and became objects of contempt. The experiment of
a theocracy, modelled on the Old Testament, had proved an
utter and inglorious failure. Meanwhile, in little neighboring
Ehode Island, the ** lively experiment" (as Charles II called
it) of a separation of Church and State had proved itself not
only a success but a blessing.
Above all, it should be remembered that the colonies were
settled, almost universally, in the North by religious refugees
from European persecution. At first, indeed, few of them
learned the lesson of toleration from their own sufferings. But
later on, that lesson was sure to impress itself, grow clearer
and clearer, in proportion as their very diversity of religious
conviction rendered a union of Church and State satisfactory
to none but the dominant faction. Out of the very necessity of
facts the idea sprang. A few theorists there were like Williams.
But to the most the problem presented itself as a practical one,
as a condition of affairs that demanded immediate solution.
Another motive lay in the absurd attempt at a general
establishment of the Church of England by the appointment of
colonial bishops, a fact which is intimately connected with the
political struggle for independence. To understand this, it
should be remembered that there were no bishops of the Church
of England resident in the colonies. This naturally led to a
complete disorganization of it, even in the colonies like Vir-
ginia, where it was the established Church. In consequence,
appeal after appeal was made to England to have bishops
appointed. The appeal seemed reasonable enough at first sight,
and no one would have questioned it if he were convinced that
it was a question affecting only the internal affairs of the
Anglican Church. As a matter of fact, it did affect every resi-
dent in the colony. Catholic and Dissenter no less than Anglican,
and after this fashion.
Bishops so appointed would become ipso facto members of
the Anglican State-Church in England. Now, a bishop in
England was an officer of the State. Parliament appointed and
66 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
removed him at will, and sustained him out of public taxation,
and often endowed him with important civil powers— like a
*' Bishop of Durham/' So then the appointment of an Angli-
can bishop became involved in the ever-increasing quarrel
between the colonies and the home government. The former
objected to such appointments of bishops for precisely the same
reasons that it objected to the tax on tea: i, e., such appoint-
ments would be made by Parliament without any representa-
tion on the part of the colonists (pp. 474 and 475). Of course,
there were other reasons for this attitude of hostility. Such
were the memories of what the colonists' forefathers had suf-
fered in England at the hands of Anglican bishops. But the
main cause was political, as is proved by the fact that the
opposition to Anglican bishops ceased as soon as the winning
of political independence rendered vain any lingering fear that
these bishops would have any political power.
Another reason for believing the agitation chiefly political
lies in the attitude of the episcopal clergy on the political ques-
tions at issue between the home government and the colonies.
The clergy were uncompromising Tories. They were staunch
supporters of Parliament, and frowned upon all attempts of the
colonies to maintain their right to representation. There fore-
most members openly admitted that the enmity towards Par-
liament and King was necessarily bound up with antipathy
towards the Anglican establishment. Certainly the Anglican
Church was a bitter and irreconcilable enemy of American
independence, so far as its clergy were concerned. Its laity, be
it said to their honor, were not generally in sympathy with its
misguided clergy.
Thus, the cause of independence, or American Democracy,
was indissolubly linked with that of American separation of
Church and State. They had a common origin, a common his-
tory, and, we venture to predict, will have a common fate.
*'Fear of the Church of England,'' said John Adams, *' con-
tributed as much as any other cause to arouse the attention, not
only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people, and
urged them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of
Parliament over the Colonies" (pp. 478-9).
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TEE UNITED STATES. 67
III. The Revolution,— li is not surprising, therefore, to find
that political independence from England almost necessarily
drew after it religions liberty, despite the fact that traces of
religious bigotry still marred the constitutions and statute-
books of some of the States. The movement in favor of liberty
in matters of conscience had advanced a long distance during
the century and a half intervening between the earliest colon-
ization and the "War of Independence. Colony after colony
had fallen in with it, so that its ultimate complete success was
now assured. But old ideas and customs die hard, and the
spirit of religious intolerance fought to the last ditch, nor is it
yet lifeless. There was still enough life in it to make it an
absorbing issue when the new states came to consider the Fed-
eral Constitution in 1787. It is interesting to note exactly how
far each state had advanced at that date.
'*By brief grouping of them it appears that in only two out
of thirteen was full and perfect freedom conceded by law.
These were Rhode Island and Virginia. Six of the states, viz.,
New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, the two Carolinas
and Georgia, insisted on Protestantism. Two were content
with the Christian religion; Delaware and Maryland. Four—
Pennsylvania, Delaware aad the Carolinas— required assent to
the divine inspiration of the Bible. Two— Pennsylvania and
South Carolina— demanded a belief in heaven and hell. Three
—New York, Maryland, and South Carolina— emphasized
belief in one Eternal God. One— Delaware— required assent to
the doctrine of the Trinity. And five— New Hampshire, Massa-
chusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and South Carolina— adhered
to a religious establishment" (Cobb, 504).
It is curious and worthy of note that of these Virginia,
which had started out as one of the most intolerant, had now
become one of the most tolerant. The reason is worth investi-
gating. It seems to have been due to Virginia's leadership in
the struggle for political independence, another fact showing
the close historical connection between the two fundamental
elements in Americanism— democracy and religious liberty. ^
The very presence and intolerance of the established Angli-
can Church rendered the struggle in Virginia unusually bitter
and long for the advocates of liberty. The state convention
68 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
whicli met in 1776 for the purpose of formally severing political
relations with England adopted, as the sixteenth section of its
famous **Bill of Rights/' a statement according equal rights to
all religions. This was the beginning of disestablishment,
though the end did not come until the passing of the ' ' Declara-
tory Act'' of 1785.
The chief interest, however, in the study of this struggle in
Virginia, lies in the personnel of the advocates of religious
liberty. They were all the very men most prominent in the
contemporary struggle for political liberty— Madison, Patrick
Henry, Jefferson, R. H. Lee, Marshall and Washington.
Patrick Henry presented the above-mentioned section of the
Bill of Rights. Madison offered to it the amendment which left
no loophole for the introduction of intolerance. Jefferson, of
course, was a leader here as in all else, and he plunged with
his accustomed impassioned eloquence into what he called ' ' the
severest struggles in which I have ever been engaged, ' ' Wash-
ington, Lee, and Marshall were ranged with him, though not
perhaps, as radical. They approved a bill providing for a
general assessment for the support of Christianity, but allow-
ing everyone to signify to what church he wished his contribu-
tion paid. Probably it was meant as a compromise. But it was
defeated by Jefferson and Madison on the obvious ground that
it made Christianity the religion of the state to the oppression
of all non-Christians. At all events, it is striking to find the
great leaders in the political revolution substantially agreeing
on and fighting for religious liberty. It is not surprising, there-
fore, to find religious liberty laid down as a fundamental of
the American Constitution, drawn up in 1789 by these same
leaders in the political struggle for independence.
When the Constitution was submitted to the states for
approval in 1787, it contained this sole reference to religion:
*^No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to
any office or public trust under the United States. ' ' By most
of the states this was not regarded as a sufficient protection of
religious rights. Massachusetts alone regarded it as too liberal,
for the spirit of Cotton Mather was yet abroad in that land of
intolerance. The Puritan still shuddered at the idea that
** Roman Catholics, Papists, and Pagans might be introduced
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TEE UNITED STATES. 69
into office, and that Popery and tlie Inquisition may be estab-
lished in America.'' But this one solitary cry for intolerance
was drowned by the otherwise universal demand for a more
unlimited freedom of religious observance. When the First
Congress of the United States assembled, it considered the
various amendments to the Constitution proposed by the dif-
ferent state conventions. Many of these concerned the rights
of conscience. As a result Congress accepted, and put first into
the Constitution the amendment reading: ** Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or pro-
hibiting the free exercise thereof.'' Thus, so far as the general
government is concerned, the last relics of religious intolerance,
of an established Church, were swept away by a few words
which are majestic in their simple dignity. To one unac-
quainted with the varying struggles of which they are the out-
come, they may seem meagre. But when we compare them
with the verbose and awkward attempts made by the separate
states to express their opposition to a union of Church and
State, we are forced to admire their profundity and compre-
hensiveness. They are the ^^Eequiem" of intolerance, and by
their brevity express what is no longer, rather than what was.
Here is no verbiage, but in simple words a simple and a great
fact. It is the formula in which, after a century and a half of
experiment, the friends of religious liberty thought best to
embody their principles.
IV. The Last Remnants,— We would do well to remember
that the adoption of religious freedom by the government in
1789, did not then, and perhaps does not now, necessarily imply
its adoption in each particular state. ''The Constitution con-
ferred on the general government the right and duty to main-
tain in every state a republican form of government, but it
bestowed no right of interference with the institutions of a
religious character which any state might choose to establish,
so long as the moral safety and the integrity of the nation were
not involved. If, for example, one of the states should set aside
its present form of government, and set up a monarchy, the
national government under the Constitution would be required
to stop such action. But if one of the states, even to-day, should
change its own Constitution, and set up a State-Church, with
70 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the perquisites and power of an establishment, and should put
such Church upon the public treasury for support, the general
government has no power to stop if (op. cit, p. 510).
As regards the present day, this statement of our author is
not so certain as his language implies. It is certain beyond all
doubt that the men of 1789 did so interpret the Constitution.
But the powers of Congress have grown considerably since
then. It interferes in many affairs of even lesser importance
than those affecting religious liberty which a century ago were
regarded as out of its scope, and a union of Church and State
is so intensely abhorent to the American mind, so opposed to
all that we call Americanism, that most Americans, it is cer-
tain, would hold that Congress would be amply justified in the
use of federal force to prevent the establishment of a Church
in any part of the country.
The fact remains, however, that our forefathers did not con-
sider the abolition of religious intolerance by the general gov-
ernment in 1789 tantamount to its abolition by state govern-
ments. * ' Each state was free to do as it willed in regard to the
Church, individual liberty of worship, establishment, religious
taxation, and religious tests. They carried over into their
future statehood the special institutions obtaining in 1789, and
used their own time and method of making what changes they
desired. For this cause, though full freedom was the law of the
nation, yet in some parts of the union, illiberal and oppressive
restrictions obtained for many years, attended by more or less
of struggle, until the last vestige of old distinctions was swept
away: if indeed, it can be said that they are all gone even yet''
(op. cit, ibid.).
A few instances will illustrate the tenaciousness of the old
traditions. Especially in Connecticut was the last struggle
most interesting, both because of its intensity and of the light
which it throws upon the relation between democracy and re-
ligious equality. Not until after 1818 was the Church disestab-
lished there. One of the chief reasons why it existed so long
was the support accorded it by the Federalists, whom it were
more correct to term conservatives. Under their influence re-
ligious liberty actually became more restricted. Like so many
conservatives of to-day, they confounded religious liberty with
BELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 71
the atheism and all the other outrageous exercises of the French
Eevolution, forgetful that the very same consequences in the
political order could be urged by the reactionaries in civil gov-
ernment—the Tories, the Bourbons, the Bonapartists. Even
when their feeble efforts were unavailing to stem the irresistible
tide of liberty they gave up the struggle '^hugging the dear
error to the last." **To many the change seemed to portend
the day of doom. The venerable Timothy Dwight, the presi-
dent of Yale, deprecated it until his death'' (op. cit, p. 513).
In Massachusetts the disestablishment of the Church was
a long process. An amusing incident hastened its end. Not
until 1833 was the Church completely disestablished. The
death-blow was given to it by the very weapon with which it
had so long destroyed its enemies. By a curious irony of fate it
perished by a law of its own making, a fact which all adher-
ents of a union of Church and State would do well to remember
before attempting to put their theories into practice. It seems
that the Massachusetts Constitution gave to towns, and not to
Churches, the right to elect the minister in the last resort. Now
in many localities the old orthodox Church had become a
minority as the result of the rapid increase of Untarianism,
though still containing control of affairs wherever the minister
happened to be orthodox. But when a new election came off,
the Unitarian majority of the town elected a minister of their
own persuasion over the orthodox minority in actual control of
the Church. The dispute was carried to the courts which
naturally stood for the constitutional rights of the town. This
was too much for the old theocracy, which saw itself hoist by
its own petard. Finally, by 1833, the Church was disestab-
lished. Titles were done away with, the voluntary system was
introduced, and the town discharged from all participation in
the management of Church affairs.
There are typical instances illustrating the tenacity of the
old idea. It gave way slowly, grudgingly, with bad grace. Even
now there are a few instances which survive, harmless, it is
true, at the present moment, but yet existing. The state consti-
tutions generally enforce religious liberty, although they differ
very appreciably in their method of expressing the same.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions. ' ' In five states— Arkansas,
72 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Mississippi, Texas, and the Carolinas— no person can hold office
who denies the being of Almighty God or the existence of a
Supreme Being. Arkansas also makes a denier of God incom-
petent as a witness. Pennsylvania and Tennessee restrict office
to such as believe in God and in a future state of reward and
punishment. Maryland requires this belief in a juror or ^wit-
ness, but for the office-holder demands only a belief in God.'*
And yet by a curious inconsistency, two of these states (Missis-
sippi and Tennessee) forbid all religious tests as qualifications
for office.
To New Hampshire must be awarded the palm of intoler-
ance. Up to 1881 the Bill of Rights contained this section:
"Every denomination of Protestant Christians, demeaning
themselves quietly and as good subjects of the State, shall be
equally under the protection of the law.'' And the State yet
continues to ** authorize the towns to provide for the support of
Protestant ministers. ' ' Repeated efforts have been made to do
away with these last relics of intolerance, but to no avail. As
late as 1889, they were retained with characteristic stubborn-
ness, and for all we know, still remain. Of course the law is a
dead letter in practice, but, nevertheless, the existence of a senti-
ment opposed, in theory, to its repeal, is a fact which may well
call for some concern on the part of New Hampshire citizens
who are not Protestant. Stranger things than the rehabilita-
tion of supposedly defunct laws have happened in history.
There is, therefore, even at this late day, a difference in the
amount of religious liberty guaranteed by the charters of the
various states— a verbal difference because just now no state
would think of applying any religious restrictions expressed
by its Constitution. All, however, would seem to agree on the
following points :
"1. No legislature can pass a law establishing religion or
a church. To effect such a purpose a change in the Constitution
would be required.
**2. No person can be compelled by law to attend any form
of religious service ; or
*^3. To contribute to the support of any such service or
Church.
**4. No restraint can be put by law on the free exercise of
religion ; or
BELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 73
*'5. On the free expression and promulgation of religious
belief. Provided always that this freedom shall not be con-
strued as to excuse acts of licentiousness or to justify practices
inconsistent with the peace and safety of the state'' (op. cit
p. 520).
V. Objections and Dcmgers.— It must now be clear to the
reader that religious toleration in America is an historical
growth, the slow outcome of conditions peculiar to America. It
is not the result of experiments based on an abstract theory, but
a great fact adopted by a people tentatively, with almost un-
necessary caution, after a long and unsuccessful trial of a union
of Church and State. It was not forced upon them suddenly by
a small band of doctrinaires before they were ready to grapple
with the serious problems entailed by it. It needs to be looked
on in this light in order to explain away some of its present
inconsistencies and objections to it from a theoretical point
of view. For there are inconsistencies and there are objec-
tions which cannot be brushed aside contemptuously. Our
legislators can exclude the products of foreign countries by a
tariff, but foreign ideas will always enter freely, will compete
and force attention.
To all objections against separation of Church and State
from a theoretical point of view, the serious American will
answer that they do not touch the question vitally. Surely no
one of judgment will question either the philosophical harmony
and beauty of an ideal union of Church and State, or the fact
that such unions have been beneficial under given conditions.
The mere fact that all peoples believed in and practiced such a
system up to within comparatively recent times, that even now
many peoples do continue to live under it, is ample reason to
restrain a sweeping condemnation of it. But theory very
seldom disconcerts the American man. He accepts the opposite
fact. He has lived under a different system for over a century,
finds that it works very harmoniously despite an occasional
hitch, and has firmly made up his mind to bitterly resent and
unflinchingly oppose anything or anybody seeking to disturb
the present state of affairs.
Objections touching upon facts require usually very de-
tailed answers, even when the former presuppose ignorance.
74 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
A very common objection is that separation of Church from
the State means persecution of the Church and atheism or
indifference in the State. Such a conclusion is warranted
neither by logic nor facts. The State declines to interfere in
Church affairs, not because it is irreligious but because, from
past experience, it has found out its incapacity to do so with
good results to either, because the diversity of religious opin-
ions renders union impracticable. The framers of the Consti-
tution were, almost to a man, Christians, God-fearing and pious,
after their own fashion. Infidelity or indifference were, with
casual exceptions, abhorred by the leaders of the American
Eevolution. And, if facts alone can teach, then assuredly the
sad condition of affairs in countries like France and Italy,
where officially a union of Church and State exists, is eloquent
enough to dispense with comment.
Indeed, many of our leading legists maintain that Chris-
tianity is **in a certain sense and for certain purposes . . .
part of the law of the land.'' While this will allow for a
diversity of opinion, all will accept without hesitation the trib-
ute of De Tocqueville uttered sixty years ago: ** There is no
country in the whole world in which the Christian religion
retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in Amer-
ica" (op. cit., p. 525). Certainly there is no country in the
whole world where the true Church is more vigorous than, or
even as vigorous as it is in the United States. Americans,
therefore, indignantly repudiate the charge of irreligion, how-
evermuch there does exist among us a hopeless diversity of
religious beliefs. This, by-the-way, is not of our own making,
but a European inheritance.
This answer suggests the counter-objection of inconsistency.
It is argued that if Christianity be the law of the land, what
becomes of our boasted separation of Church and State. Add,
moreover, our inconsistency in enacting laws for the observance
of Sunday, the exemption of Church property from taxation,
thanksgiving day proclamations, punishment of blasphemy, etc.
Now this is, indeed, a serious difficulty. The common
answer to it is awkward. It says that the State looks upon the
Church as a social institution, on religion of some sort as neces-
sary to its own well-being, and so on. But whilst such a con-
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN TEE UNITED STATES. 75
nection between religion and well-being of society is undeniably
necessary, this does not turn the point of the charge of incon-
sistency, for there is no such thing as church in general or
religion in general, at least, in these days. There is not a single
fundamental of any church which will be accepted by all others.
What one church considers necessary to the well-being of
society, another thinks evil. We have only to look upon the
attitude of the various churches towards divorce. Thus the
State is forced to adopt some principles of government which
are denied by certain churches and accepted by others : this done,
there is ipso facto a union of Church and State ''in a certain
sense.'' Thus a Jew can logically infer from the existence of
our Sunday laws that this is a Christian State, and that he does
not enjoy complete religious freedom if he is obliged to cease
work on that day.
Again. Has not every persecutor that ever lived persecuted
chieiBiy on the ground that the Church was a social institution?
that heresy was a social menace, a political peril? Catholics
were persecuted in England, the Huguenots in France because
of political expediency. Old Rome slaughtered the Christians,
because they were held enemies of the State.
Such answers, then, do not meet the difficulty. The only
answer which seems reasonable is, strange to say, to admit the
objection. We are inconsistent, but necessarily so. Only we do
not admit that part of the objection which pre-supposes that
Christianity is theoretically the law of the land. For, if Chris-
tianity be the law of the land, then what is Christianity? Is it
Catholicity or Protestantism? and what is to prevent a Protes-
tant majority from concluding that Protestantism is the law of
the land? Hence, the use of the Protestant Bible and prayers
in the public schools, and other conclusions. Our Puritan pre-
decessors made Christianity the law of the land, and we Cath-
olics know full well what that meant. Indeed, Christianity is
no more the law of the land in theory than is Buddhism. But
this is true, namely, that our laws are penetrated with the spirit
of Christianity, that Americans, with some exceptions, are, as
a nation. Christians, and live as Christians.
Now to the very crux of the difficulty, j^re we inconsistent,
i. e., in passing Sunday Laws? It seems to me that we are, yet
76 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
we are forced to be so. The nation is, as a unit, Christian, and
Christians as a unit observe Sunday. To make an exception
for the sake of a few Jews is to expect too much from human
nature, to push a theory to a ridiculous conclusion. As
already emphasized, religious liberty in America is more of a
fact than a theory. Were we dreamy doctrinaires, fierce
apostles of a system, we should push separation of Church and
State to some very unpleasant conclusions. But we are, above
all, a practical people, inclined, therefore, to use with discretion,
an institution that, for us at least, makes for peace and har-
mony. Our very inconsistency proves our good sense.
A last word as to the dangers ahead of us. Are there any If
We think so, though at present they may seem distant and in-
distinct. The relations between Church and State are swaying
in a delicate adjustment, which the slightest untoward move-
ment can disturb. There are so many things, partly religious
partly civil, that belong at once to both domains. The question
of taxation for schools, appropriations for hospitals under re-
ligious control, appointments of army and navy chaplains— all
these require infinite delicacy and tact in the handling. A
blunder might at any time precipitate a crisis or establish pre-
cedents which would allow for the silent, insidious entrance
of the principles of union of Church and State. Then, too, a
heavy discount must ever be made for the tendency in human
nature to grow tired of the same thing, no matter how excellent
in itself, the yet greater tendency to grasp at power of any kind,
the necessarily constantly increasing wealth of untaxed reli-
gious corporations tending to throw taxation upon civil entities,
the presence in our midst of a not inconsiderable number of
persons who secretly wish for a change of affairs because they
are men of no country, the change in democratic ideas as the
result of imperialistic expansion— these are but some of the
grave dangers which every serious American must be aware of.
How shall we meet the problems of the future? With good
sense, tact, charity, honesty, patience. Above all, with a knowl-
edge of history. The writer can only repeat again, that sepa-
ration of Church and State was not the outcome of a theory and
does not exist as a theory. It is a fact now, and was the out-
come of facts. It will be preserved chiefly by realizing this its
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. 77
nature of fact. We do not need to repeat that the theory of a
union of Church and State is as harmonious as the theory of
their separation. It is only in the light of facts, of history, that
the differences of merit appear. The prisons of the Inquisition,
the fires of Smithfield, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
blood of Catholic Irishmen flowing like water in the streets of
Drogheda and Wexford, the unspeakable atrocities of the
Thirty Years* War, the fanatic Titus Gates and Gordon riots,
the witch-fires and duck-ponds of Salem, the Kultur-kampf , the
present enslavement of the Church in European countries— this
it is which makes an American love his country above all others
as that wherein one may love God without hating his neighbor ;
these living historical memories alone will preserve him from
any repetition of the errors of the dead and cruel past.
LuciAN Johnston.
NoTEE Dame College, Baltimore, Md.
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE.
In a series of articles recently published in the Fortnightly
Review, Mr. Mallock has undertaken to furnish us with an accu-
rate estimate of the relative positions occupied by Religion and
Science at the dawn of the twentieth century.^ He proposes to
investigate the intellectual accounts, both of theologians and
of * * leaders of science when they speak in the capacity of philos-
ophers," and to formulate an intelligible statement of the re-
spective assets and liabilities of the scientific philosopher who
denies religion, and of the theologic philosopher who defends it.
By religion Mr. Mallock means, not some particular system of
worship, but simply Ethical Theism— *' the essence, the vital
epitome of religion" is comprised in the ** doctrines of God,
freedom and immortality, ' ' which are the basic ideas of Theistic
Dualism. Three men, owing to their recognized ability as
Theistic apologists. Father Gerard, Father Maher and Dr. W.
G. "Ward, have been singled out by Mr. Mallock, to bear the
brunt of his attack on the Theistic position.
Opposed to Theistic Dualism is the doctrine of Evolutionary
Monism, which Mr. Mallock is pleased to call scientific phi-
losophy. This theory maintains that, *4n the primitive nebula
out of which the existing universe arose, was contained the
potency of everything which the universe contains now, in-
cluding life and all its phenomena— human, no less than animal
reason. Besides the forces, qualities and materials contained
in the primordial nebula, no other causes are required to ex-
plain the universe." Professor Haeckel is chosen by Mr.
Mallock, as the ablest exponent of this theory.
In his role of intellectual accountant for Theistic Dualism
and Evolutionary Monism, Mr. Mallock expects to show **that
the scientific philosophers are correct in their methods and
arguments— that the attempts of contemporary theologians to
find flaws in the case of their opponents, or to convert the dis-
coveries of science into proofs of their own theism, are exercises
* Since these pages were penned Mr. Mallock's articles have been embodied
in a book entitled "Religion as a Credible Doctrine" (Macmillan).
78
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 79
of an ingenuity wholly and hopelessly misapplied. ' ' But he is
not going to stop here. He proposes to establish that, in spite
of the onslaught of science, we can find, in the fact of moral
responsibility, sufficient ground for maintaining the doctrine
of Theistic Dualism. To the former proposition, viz., that Evo-
lutionary Monism is in accord with scientific knowledge, while
Theistic Dualism is not, Mr. Mallock devotes most of his atten-
tion, and it is with this contention alone that we are concerned in
the present paper.
It is to be deplored that at the very outset Mr. Mallock intro-
duces into the discussion a source of interminable confusion.
The terms, ''man of science," ''scientific philosopher," and
"monist" are used interchangeably. The monistic doctrine of
substance is declared to be a scientific theory. "Science," we
are told, "leads us to a conception of matter or the universal
substance nearly approaching to that of Spinoza." "Science
is opposed to religion ... as a monistic doctrine to a dual-
istic." The limits of confusion seem to be reached when Mr.
Mallock repeatedly uses the term, "science" in two different
significations in the same sentence. For example, he speaks of
"Fr. Maher's endeavors to prove against science on its own
ground, that man possesses a life independent of the life of the
body." Here the term science obviously refers, in the first
instance, to the speculations of evolutionary Monism ; and sec-
ondly, to a systematized body of rigorously verified facts. This
confusion of thought and terms pervades the whole series of
articles, and has thoroughly obscured the original issue. Fur-
ther, Mr. Mallock, instead of auditing the accounts of Monism
and Dualism in the light of science, devotes his energies mainly
to showing that Theists cannot prove the existence of an Ethical
God solely from the data of physical science— a feat which no
theist ever attempted to perform. In a word, Mr. Mallock
begins by assuming that Evolutionary Monism is a scientific
doctrine, and ends by elaborately proving that it is opposed to
Theistic Dualism.
Mr. Mallock 's statements of the doctrines of Monism and of
Ethical Theism may be accepted as satisfactory. But in order
to avoid Mr. Mallock 's fatal confusion, we shall follow tradi-
80 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
tional usage in defining the domain of science as tlie * Afield of
rigorously verified fact. ' '
It is important to bear in mind that there is evolution and
evolution. The word ** evolution/ ' as an explanation of the
universe, expresses nothing until we know whether Theistic or
Atheistic evolution is meant. With the former we have here no
concern, for Mr. Mallock^s evolution is the evolution of Pro-
fessor Haeckel, who boasts that he has rendered the * * God
hypothesis" superfluous. The question then which confronts
us is not whether evolution be scientific, but whether atheistic
evolution be in accord with science.
In this paper it will conduce to clearness to discuss the prob-
lems at issue, not in the order which Mr. Mallock follows, but in
the order which most naturally presents itself, viz., the origin of
the universe ; the genesis of life ; the evolution of life-forms ; the
spirituality of the human soul, and finally, freedom of the will.
To begin with the beginning: the monistic concept of the
origin of the universe is in irreconcilable opposition to the
physical doctrine of entropy or the dissipation of energy— a
doctrine our knowledge of which is due chiefly to Lord Kelvin.
This law is stated by Professor Haeckel in these words: **As
the mechanical energy of the universe is daily being trans-
formed into heat, and this cannot be reconverted into mechanical
energy, all difference of temperature must ultimately disap-
pear, and the completely latent heat must be equally dis-
tributed through one inert mass of motionless matter. ' ' When
Father Gerard pertinently points out that Monism is hopelessly
at variance with this well authenticated conclusion of science,
Mr. Mallock jauntily dismisses Father Gerard's strictures by
asking in what way is the theory of entropy inconsistent with
the doctrine of inorganic evolution. If Mr. Mallock refers to
Theistic Evolution, the question is obviously irrelevant. But if
he means to ask: How is the scientific doctrine of entropy
opposed to Monistic Evolution, we shall let that *^most eminent
and thoughtful man of science," Professor Haeckel, supply the
answer : * ^ If the theory of entropy were true, ' ' says Professor
Haeckel, **we should have a beginning corresponding to this
assumed end of the world. Both ideas are quite untenable in
the light of our monistic and consistent theory of the eternal
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 81
cosmogenetic process/'^ In other words, Professor Haeckel
rejects an authoritative conclusion of physical science because
it contradicts Professor HaeckePs philosophical speculations.
This method of procedure is thoroughly characteristic of the
whole monistic argument, and the denial of the doctrine of
entropy is by no means the only example we shall see of the
facility with which monists reject the most thoroughly estab-
lished facts which happen to be out of harmony with their
** enlarged cosmological perspective/'
The next point to be discussed is the question of the genesis
of life. Here we shall find Evolutionary Monism again dis-
credited by physical science. The fundamental proposition of
evolutionary philosophy. Professor Huxley tells us, is, *Hhat
the whole world, living and non-living, is the result of mutual
interaction, according to definite laws, of the powers possessed
by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity was com-
posed.''^ This proposition, which is fundamental with evolu-
tionary Monists, is utterly unscientific. Professor Tait only
voices the verdict of all sane science when he declares : * * To say
that even the lowest form of life can be fully explained on
physical principles alone, i. e., by the mere relations, motions
and interactions of portions of inanimate matter, is simply un-
scientific. There is absolutely nothing known in physical sci-
ence which can lend the slightest support to such an idea. ' '^ No
scientist of note would to-day maintain that there is the slightest
shred of experimental evidence supporting the doctrine of
abiogenesis.
Now this doctrine of abiogenesis is, as we have been re-
peatedly told, a cardinal principle with the Monist. Another
principle not less essential to the Monist is that all knowledge is
worthless which is not based on experience. Still he continues
to uphold abiogenesis in spite of the fact that all trustworthy
experience tells against it. Contradicted by all science worthy
of the name, he continues to proclaim abiogenesis a philosoph-
ical necessity:^ either, he says, spontaneous generation took
1 ((
Riddle of the Universe," p. 247.
* On the Reception of the Origin pf Species, " Life of C. Darwin," p. 201.
'Contemporary Review, January, 1878. ..-. j r
* In marked contrast to this unscientific frame of mind is the attitude ot
Professor Brooks. Speaking of life, he says: "While we know nothing of its
6CUB
82 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
place ages ago, or else there is some power distinct from the
forces of inorganic nature, which produced life on the earth.
But the latter supposition he holds to be inadmissible and
absurd, as is proven by a mere reference to * * our monistic cos-
mological perspective. ' ' Surely, a system that employs this
kind of reasoning has forfeited all claims to be considered either
scientific or philosophic.
In his eagerness to eliminate this vital discrepancy between
monism and science, Mr. Mallock resorts to very peculiar
tactics. Instead of meeting the dualist argument that there is
demonstrably involved in all organic life a principle which is
absent from inorganic matter, he conveniently denies that the
problem of the origin of life has any bearing on the truth of
Ethical Theism: **As far as the practical controversy between
religion and science is concerned, the issue here raised is alto-
gether illusory. ' ' But, if science disproves a fundamental tenet
of Monism it is difficult to understand Mr. Mallock 's assertion
that * * Science is opposed to religion as a monistic doctrine to a
dualistic.'' If, as he says, the conflict between science and re-
ligion is resolvable into a conflict between monism and dualism,
then it would seem that a disproof of monism in a basic doc-
trine should bear very directly on the ** practical controversy
between religion and science." What Mr. Mallock 's contention
here amounts to is simply this : the disproof of monism does
not establish the existence of an ethical God. To disprove abio-
genesis, he explains, is merely to establish a dualism between
fermented liquor and unfermented; between beer and water.
**How far," he asks, *^ should we be on the road to vindicating
religion with God for one of our terms and beer or vin ordinaire
for the other?" This is really unworthy of Mr. Mallock. He
rejects an argument because it fails to prove what it was never
intended to prove. He seems to have forgotten that, as he him-
self has already pointed out, the theistic apologists are here
trying to establish the existence not of an ethical God, but of a
living Creator. * * The real question at issue, ' ' says Father Dris-
nature or origin and must guard against any unproved assumption, there seem
from the present standpoint to be insuperable objections to the view that this
agency is either matter or energy." " We are told that the belief that it has at
some time arisen from the properties of inorganic matter is a logical necessity,
but the only logical necessity is that where our knowledge ends we should confess
our ignorance." Science, April 5, 1895.
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 83
coll, as quoted by Mr. Mallock, ^^is the existence of a living
Creator'' ; and Mr. Mallock adds, *' Father Maher says precisely
the same thing. ' '
From the problem of the origin of life, we pass on to the
question of* the evolution of living beings. ** Undoubtedly,*'
says Father Gerard, to whom Mr. Mallock now directs his
attention, *'we find that the history of life on earth has been a
history of evolution— that is to say the scheme of vegetable and
animal life as we know it has been gradually unfolded in a
progression of types from lower to higher, the same general
lines of structure being elaborated to greater and greater per-
fection. ' ' For the explanation of this process of evolution there
are two hypotheses and only two in the field. Of these one is
intelligent design manifested in creation. The other is natural
selection operating through countless ages of the past. The
former is the explanation offered by Theistic Dualism. The
latter is the theory of Evolutionary Monism. Professor Haeckel
calls the struggle for life **the great selective divinity by which
a purely natural choice without preconceived design creates
new forms, just as selective man creates new types by an arti-
ficial choice with definite design.'' And the most glorious
achievement of the Darwinian theory of natural selection, he
assures us, is that it gave us the solution of the great philosoph-
ical problem, how can purposive contrivances be produced by
merely mechanical processes without design? The Darwinian
theory of natural selection is, then, the basis of the monistic
concept of the Universe. But here again scientific investigation
has been unfavorable to such a conception. * * Serious objections
have presented themselves," as Father Gerard points out,
** difficulties have accumulated, till now as we have been told,
the natural selection theory has sunk beneath the rank even of
an hypothesis." This statement Mr. Mallock challenges with
a direct denial: *' Whether the theory of natural selection be a
true theory or not, the scientific world of to-day have not agreed
to abandon it." In considering this assertion we should re-
member that Darwinian natural selection is a theory explaining
purposive adaptations on purely mechanical grounds, and that
in a teleological view of evolution natural selection is simply a
factor supporting or accelerating the process. Now, Mr. Mai-
84 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
lock's statement that the purely mechanical theory of natural
selection is still in repute among scientists, is to say the least,
interesting. We might quote indefinitely the views of individual
scientists to the contrary, were it not rendered unnecessary by
the appearance of a recent publication of high authority. We
refer to the work by Dr. E. Dennert, entitled, ' ' Vom Sterbelager
des Darwinismus. ' ' After quoting the views of dozens of natur-
alists, zoologists, biologists, who are opposed to the Darwinian
philosophy. Dr. Dennert, speaking of the actual status of the pres-
ent controversy, has this to say : * * It cannot be denied that Dar-
winism, in the sense of natural selection by means of the strug-
gle for existence, is being crowded to the wall all along the line.
The bulk of modem scientists no longer recognizes it, and those
who have not yet discarded it, at any rate regard it as of sub-
ordinate importance. In place of this, older views have again
come into acceptance, which do not deny development, but
maintain that this was not purely a mechanical process. ... A
survey of the field shows that Darwinism in its old form is
becoming a matter of history, and that we are actually wit-
nessing its death struggle." We cannot be expected to admit
as ultimate the mechanical explanation of the universe when the
theory on which it is based is openly or tacitly rejected by men
of science as insufficient. The structure of Evolutionary Mon-
ism indeed, remains, but its scientific foundation is admittedly
gone. ^ ^ What is it, then, ' ' Father Gerard may well ask, * * but a
mere castle in the airV
After a vain chase from star-dust to animal sentiency in
search of a solitary instance in which science either sustains
Evolutionary Monism or contradicts Theistic Dualism, Mr.
Mallock brings the religious apologist up short with the thesis :
'*The religious doctrine of man stands or falls . . . with the
establishment of a difference between animal life and human. ' '
Here two questions are involved, viz: the spirituality of the
human soul and the freedom of the will. As the most capable
exponent of the former doctrine. Father Maher is singled out
for attack ; for a similar reason Dr. W. G. Ward is taken to task
on the latter.
The traditional scholastic arguments for the spirituality of
the soul are Dresented by Father Maher with unusual clearness.
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 85
The human soul, he tells us, exercises activities which transcend
the powers of any agent intrinsically dependent on matter. A
most obvious example of such an activity is the intellectual act
of apprehending abstract, universal and necessary truths, or
the act of perceiving rational relations between ideas, and'the
logical sequence of conclusions from premises. Moreover, the
reflex operation exhibited in self -consciousness cannot be the act
of a faculty essentially dependent on a corporeal agent. The
act of reflexion is in absolute contradiction with the essential
nature of matter. The intellectual operations of the soul are
thus seen to be independent of matter. And as we may logically
argue from the nature of the activity to the nature of the agent,
we conclude that the soul, as the source of spiritual activities,
must also be spiritual.
Now what is the value of all these arguments? '*I shall
point out, ' ' says Mr. Mallock, ' ' that they are all of them equally
inconclusive': that they ignore facts which are obvious, assume
facts which are unprovable— and that in a still more striking
manner, the more important of them contradict each other."
''In the first place,'' continues Mr. Mallock, ''Father Maher's
entire appeal is an appeal to the imagination. It amounts to
assuming that the unimaginable cannot exist. ' ' And as Father
Maher himself sees, when it is to his interest, ' ' Imagination is
not the test of possibility.'' Mr. Mallock 's explanation of this
bit of criticism is hopelessly unintelligible, so entirely has he
misunderstood Father Maher 's position. To quote his own
words: "The unique and unimaginable nature of the phe-
nomena presented by consciousness as associated with matter, is
seen and acknowledged by everybody as fully as it is by Father
Maher : but he, like everybody else, admits this association is
a fact; and the fact that consciousness is associated with matter
at all is just as difficult to imagine, and is just as contrary to
the analogy of all other phenomena, as would be the fact that
consciousness could exist apart from it or that it could not."
This is all quite true and at the same time quite irrelevant.
There is here no question of imaginability. All the phenomena
under consideration are unimaginable. The problem is one of
metaphysics, and amounts to this : Find a sufficient cause for
the intellectual activities of man. A careful analysis of the
86 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
phenomena involved shows that no material organ can possibly
be such a cause as is required. That spiritual operations should
have their source in a material substance is not only un-
imaginable, but, in the strictest sense, inconceivable.
Mr. Mallock's whole objection comes from supposing that
Father Maher argues from the simplicity, i. e., quantitative
nonextension, of the soul, to its spirituality, i. e., independence
of matter. That this is his view of his opponent's position is
evidenced from the dilemma in which he fancies Father Maher
has placed himself. **If the non-spatial intellect must be essen-
tially independent of the spatial brain, why is the non-
spatial consciousness of the brute not likewise essentially
independent of its material organ T' In each case the
chasm between matter and consciousness is for the imagination
and the intellect equally impassable. * ' ' * The whole argument
from the contrariety between conscious life and matter is there-
fore wholly valueless. It either shows that animals are immor-
tal, which Father Maher denies ; or it does nothing to show that
man is. ' ' With most perverse ingenuity, Mr. Mallock has here
introduced a source of confusion which has concealed from him
the weakness of his own objection. When this confusion is re-
moved the solution of his dilemma will neither be difficult nor
far to seek. His entire difficulty arises from a failure to dis-
tinguish between the simplicity and the spirituality of the soul,
and between the proofs by which each is established. Yet this
elementary distinction is indicated by Father Maher with the
greatest precision : * * By saying a substance is simple we mean
that it is not the resultant or product of separate factors or
parts. By affirming that it is spiritual we signify that in its
existence, and to some extent in its operations, it is independent
of matter. The principle of life in the lower animal was held
by the schoolmen to be, in this sense, an example of a simple
principle which is nevertheless not spiritual since it is alto-
gether dependent on the organism, or as they said, * completely
immersed in matter. * ' '^
From the non-extended character of sentiency, whether in
man or animals, nothing can be established as regards the
soul except its simplicity. And no scholastic, least of all Father
^^n?sychology," p. 469^
RELIGION A8 A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 87
Maher, ever dreamed of proving the spirituality of the soul
from this source. If the simple soul be essentially independent
of matter it is said to be spiritual; if it depends on matter for
its existence it is said to be non-spiritual or material. Now the
only way in which we can judge whether the soul is essentially
independent of matter or not, is by a study of its operations. If
it puts forth activities which are entirely in accord with the
activities, i. e., properties, of matter, we have no reason to
believe that it is essentially independent of matter. But if, on
the other hand, its operations transcend the power of a material
organ and radically contradict every known property of matter,
we are justified in holding it to be essentially independent of
matter, i. e., spiritual. With the mere explanation of this dis-
tinction Mr. Mallock's objections become not so much irrelevant
as meaningless.
"We scarcely need refer to Mr. Mallock's attempt to prove
the spirituality of the brute soul. If he were to show that the
brute exercises spiritual activities, e, g., that the brute can
apprehend necessary truths, or is capable of self -consciousness,
he would be entitled to conclude that the brute soul is spiritual.
But in this matter his reasoning is not in harmony with the best
psychological thought of the day. The verdict of the most emi-
nent psychologists is that all the actions of even the higher
animals can be explained by assuming them to be endowed with
powers analogous to man's sense faculties.^ And from the
operations of man's sense faculties we could never deduce the
spirituality of man's soul. Without entering into Mr. Mallock's
arguments here, it is sufficient to observe that they are com-
pletely beside the question. Even if he were to succeed in estab-
lishing his point, it would in no way detract from the theistic
argument. The nature of the human soul is deduced from its
operations, and its spirituality is conclusively established in-
dependently of all speculation as to the nature of the animal
soul.
^Wundt's testimony may be taken as typical; "The closer analysis of the
so-called manifestations of intelligence among animals shows, however, that they
are in all cases fully explicable as simple sensible recognitions and associations,
and that they lack the characteristics belonging to concepts proper and to
logical operations." "Outlines of Psychology," p. 314.
88 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Confident that he has completely demolished Father Maher's
arguments of the spirituality of the human soul, Mr. Mallock
passes on to the problem of free will. Here, if anywhere, Mr.
Mallock is called upon to show most clearly the harmony of
evolutionary monism with the facts of positive knowledge, for
on this point the universal conviction of mankind absolutely
contradicts the fundamental principle of the monistic phi-
losophy. Before we can reasonably be asked to reject this
undeniable conviction of the human race— and this is surely
**a fact of positive knowledge' '—reasons more substantial
must be advanced than the mere assertion that Professor
Haeckel finds no place for the fact of freedom in his * * enlarged
cosmological perspective. ' '
**The main grounds," says Mr. Mallock, *'on which modem
science (sc. monistic philosophy) contends that free will is im-
possible,'' are three. First: **The general argument from
psychology may be summed up thus : In the absence of motive
there can be no act of the will at all. When motives are present
will is always determined by the strongest." Second: ** Since
every act of the will, every motive, feeling or desire has its
physical equivalent in some movement or condition of the brain,
all mental processes must follow the same laws as those which
prevail through the whole physical universe." Third: *^This
argument comprises a mass of facts which show how the
qualities of the individual organism depend on parentage, phys-
ical health, climate, and similar circumstances, so that whilst
it is the organism which determines the character and will of
the individual, it is a multitude of external causes that deter-
mine the character of the organism." Let us examine these
arguments briefly : The last directly involves a petitio principii.
It assumes that the organism necessarily determines the charac-
ter and the will. This is the point at issue. The scientific facts,
which show that the qualities of the individual organism depend
on heredity and environment, are recognized by the defender
of free will quite as fully as by the determinist, but the former
utterly repudiates the assumption that the qualities of the
organism necessarily determine either character or will. Char-
acter, he maintains, is to a great extent, moulded by the will,
whilst the will, being the activity of a free cause, is self-deter-
RELIGION A8 A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE.
89
mining. This position lie defends by an appeal to experience.
As regards the physical sciences, there is not, and by the very
nature of the case cannot be, a shred of physical or physio-
logical evidence forthcoming to support the assumption of the
determinist. Physiology, we are told by the most eminent
physiological psychologists, neither disproves nor verifies the
postulate of the free will. Consequently, this postulate must be
raised and discussed on other grounds— the problem of the free
will belongs to the domain of rational psychology.
The second argument involves a confusion of the law of
causation with the uniformity of the laws of nature. We need
not go into this question because Mr. Mallock himself freely
confesses that the argument is worthless. He tells us: **If we
allow ourselves to assume that the brain is influenced by some
hyper-physical cause . . . with which it is associated, the
hypothesis of this free force does not necessarily contradict
the scientific doctrine of the uniformity of the physical uni-
verse. ' ' Precisely, and no theist ever attempted to explain the
freedom of the will on any other assumption than that man is
endowed with a hyper-physical soul— the existence of which
we have already seen, has been established by incontestable
arguments.
We come finally to the consideration of the problem of Free-
will from the standpoint of rational psychology. On this point
Mr. Mallock directs his attack against Dr. W. G. Ward, who, on
the admission of John Stuart Mill, was ^ ^ one of the clearest and
most logical of the English dialecticians of his time.'' In his
disproof of Determinism Dr. Ward, with characteristic clear-
ness, goes directly to the point at issue. He begins with the fact,
admitted by everyone, that the spontaneous and unforced im-
pulse of the will is determined by character and circumstances.
**A man's spontaneous impulse" he says, *4s infallibly and
inevitably determined by his entire circumstances external and
internal, of the moment." Thus far Dr. Ward and the Deter-
minist agree. But now the question arises : Does preponder-
ating spontaneous impulse always and necessarily issue in
accordant action? This is the critical point. The answer given
to the question must settle the controversy between Determin-
ists and Libertarians. The Determinist must answer the ques-
90 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
tion in the affirmative. Dr. Ward rejoins with repeated and
emphatic denial. **I am able,'' he says, ^*to resist this spon-
taneous impulse by my soul's intrinsic strength. . . . Con-
sciousness attests unmistakably that I have the power of resist-
ing my preponderating spontaneous impulse. ... It is a mat-
ter of unmistakable certainty that at this moment the spon-
taneous impulse of my will is in one direction and the act of
my will is in the opposite direction"— *^ It is an undeniable fact
of experience that at certain periods I pursue a course of con-
duct divergent from that prompted by my will's spontaneous
impulse. It is most clear, then, that at these particular periods,
my will is not infallibly determined by the preponderating
influences or attractions of the moment. In other words, the
phenomena of those periods make it irrefragably certain that
the doctrine of determinism is false. ' '^
* * This argument, ' ' says Mr. Mallock, * * amounts to nothing.
For, ' ' he continues, ^ ' Dr. Ward ( 1 ) instead of attempting to find
any internal flaw" in the determinist arguments, ** admits that
so far as a large part of human life is concerned, they are cor-
rect, irrefragable and conclusive." (2) **In other words. Dr.
Ward frankly admits that most of the actions of all of us are
as completely determined and necessary as the most thorough-
going determinist could maintain them to be." (3) ** Instead
of doing anything to reconcile" free-will with determinism,
**he contents himself with admitting that the mysterious action
of the former extends over a smaller domain of human conduct
than most of the advocates of free-will suppose, and that the
domain of the necessary or the determined is very considerably
larger." (4) ** Free-will, " according to his own admission,
**is essentially will without motive. Thus an event or process
which in the larger part of human conduct, his analysis shows
to be impossible and even unthinkable, is in the smaller part,
not only not impossible, but of constant occurrence." Hence
concludes Mr. Mallock, ^Hhe sole result at which Dr. Ward
arrives is not even an apparent re-conciliation of free will with
Determinism. He leaves free will, on one hand, as unthinkable
and unintelligible as he finds it : he leaves Determinism on the
other, with its foundation unshaken, untouched. ' '
^ " Philosophy of Theism," Vol. II, p. 16.
RELIGION A8 A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 91
What is to be said of Mr. Mallock's criticism? Merely this,
that the position ascribed to Dr. Ward in the four passages just
quoted— passages which form the basis of Mr. Mallock's criti-
cism—is fundamentally different from Dr. Ward's actual posi-
tion as set forth in his published essays. (1) We read with
amazement, **Dr. Ward did not attempt to find an internal flaw
in the determinist arguments.'' Dr. Ward resolves the dis-
cussion into an appeal to facts of experience and then thor-
oughly establishes that such facts make '4t irrefragably cer-
tain that Determinism is false." To give irrefragable proof
that a doctrine is false is surely to find an internal flaw in it.
(2) **Dr. Ward frankly admits that most of the actions of us
all are as completely determined and necessary as the most
thoroughgoing Determinist could maintain them to be. ' ' There
is not so much as a single passage in Dr. Ward's works which,
if taken with the context, would justify this assertion. On the
contrary. Dr. Ward repeatedly states : ^ * that man is free during
pretty nearly the whole of his waking life." This statement is
the thesis of an essay of over seventy-five pages.^ Moreover,
he thoroughly concurs with Father Gury in the assertion that,
man, during his earthly course, while sui compos, never acts
under necessity. (3) **Dr. Ward contents himself with ad-
mitting that the mysterious action of freewill extends over a
smaller domain of human conduct than most of the advocates of
free-will suppose." Dr. Ward admits nothing of the sort.
**The tenet . . . that my will is only free at those particular
moments, when, after expressly debating and consulting with
myself as to the choice I shall make betweeh two or more com-
peting alternatives, I make my definite resolve accordingly; this
tenet, held by most non-Catholic and many Catholic liber-
tarians—we cannot but regard as erring gravely against reason,
against sound morality and against Catholic Theology."
*'We maintain that when (this tenet) is embodied in concrete
fact and translated into everyday practice, the very doctrine of
Determinism is less repulsive to the common sense and the com-
mon voice of mankind than is (this)— doctrine on the limits
of Freewill." ''I am my own master and responsible for my
course of action during^pretty near the whole of my waking
^"Philosophy of Theism," 18th Essay.
92 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. BULLETIN,
life." (4) Finally, Mr. Mallock tells us: ^* Freewill, according
to Dr. Ward's admission, is essentially will without motive.''
Mr. Mallock here means that the anti-impulsive resolve is un-
motived. This is sheer nonsense. It is only in relation to the
anti-impulsive resolve that Dr. Ward would have us speak of
** motives" at all. The influence of the spontaneous impulse
is an ** attraction. " **But a * motive' is a thought of such and
such an end which the will, by its own active resolve, chooses
to pursue." '*What are the motives," asks Dr. Ward, ** which
induce a man to resist his spontaneous impulse?" And he
answers : * * There are two which are adequate to the purpose.
First there is my resolve of doing what is right : and secondly,
my desire of promoting my permanent happiness in the next
world, or even in this." So much for Mr. Mallock 's state-
ments individually. Taken collectively they are contradicted
by the ** common axiom of theologians," which is also funda-
mental with Dr. Ward, viz: *^that no object necessitates the
human will, except only God, as seen face to face in heaven. ' '^
Mr. Mallock 's criticism of the position of **one of the
clearest and most logical English dialecticians, ' ' based as it is
on an utter misrepresentation of that philosopher's position,
amounts to nothing more or less than a disgraceful caricature.
We have reached the end of Mr. Mallock 's destructive ( !)
criticism of our Catholic apologists. We have seen that science
in the sense of ^* rigorously verified fact" repudiates Evolu-
tionary Monism at every step, and is throughout in harmony
with the doctrine of Theism. To the objections already urged
against Monistic philosophy it is needless to add the contradic-
tion in which, as Mr. Mallock himself points out, it is involved
by its postulate of a continuous ether. Professor Haeckel's
theory, therefore, of the *' eternal cosmogenetic process" is
from every point of view thoroughly unscientific, and we may
dismiss its claim to be even a consistent system of philosophy
with the words of von Hartmann; ^^Haeckel is, therefore, an
ontological pluralist, since he conceives nature as a plurality of
separate substances (atoms) : a metaphysical dualist, since he
assumes two metaphysical principles (force and matter) in
every single substance: a phenomenal dualist, since he recog-
1" Philosophy of Theism," Vol. II. p. 317.
RELIGION AS A CREDIBLE DOCTRINE. 93
nizes two different fields of phenomena (external mechanical
occurrence and internal sensation and will) : a hylozoist, since
he ascribes life and soul to every part of matter : a philosopher
of identity, since he regards one and the same kind of sub-
stances as the ground of both fields of phenomena: a cos-
monomic monist, since he denies the teleological uniformity in
nature and admits only causal law; and a mechanist, since he
regards all causal processes as mechanical processes of material
particles. ' '^
Mr. Mallock's latest excursion into the field of philosophy
must come as a surprise and a disappointment to those who are
familiar with the thoughtful and critical tone of most of his
other writings. It is hard to understand how a man of Mr.
Mallock's intellectual acumen could regard the dogmatic pro-
nouncements of Professor Haeckel as the highest achievements
of science. Among the scholars of the day Professor Haeckel
stands discredited as a man of science. Professor Paulsen has
recently stigmatized as a disgrace to German scholarship, the
very work of HaeckePs from which Mr. Mallock has drawn so
extensively and so unquestioningly. And still more recently,
Professor Eiitemeyer, the distinguished zoologist, has openly
accused Mr. Mallock 's *^ eminent and thoughtful man of sci-
ence ' ' of * ^ playing with the public and the natural sciences. ' *
That Mr. Mallock should regard Professor HaeckePs theoriz-
ing seriously, is to be wondered at; that he should confound
such reckless speculation with science is still more amazing.
But if his rash espousal of Professor HaeckePs views is
unworthy of Mr. Mallock 's prestige as an intellectual account-
ant, his unfair treatment of theistic apologists is no less
deserving of censure. In spite of his repeated assurance that
all their arguments amount to nothing a cursory perusal of
their works shows that Mr. Mallock has in every case failed to
understand the position he attacks. This misconception not
only invalidates his criticism of Father Gerard and Father
Maher, but in the case of Dr. Ward, exposes Mr. Mallock to
the further charge of culpable negligence.
Edwin V. O'Hara.
Academy of Apologetics,
St. Paul Seminary.
" Geschichte der Metaphysik," Vol. II, p. 456.
VATICAN SYRIAC MSS. : OLD AND NEW
PRESS=MARKS.^
When Joseph Simon Assemani began his great work, the
Bibliotheca Orientalis, the Syriac MSS. of the Vatican Library
formed nine separate collections.
1. The old Vatican Collection, which had been catalogued
by Abraham Echellensis. It included MSS. in the Syriac lan-
guage only ;2 the Karsiini MSS., that is, those written in Arabic
with Syriac characters, had been added to the Arabic CoUec-
tion.3 This old Vatican Collection contained 49 MSS.
2. The Nitrian Collection, brought from the Syrian mon-
asterjr of St. Mary in the desert of Nitria in Egypt. This
collection had been purchased in 1707 for Pope Clement XI by
Elias Assemani, a cousin of J. S. Assemani. It included 34
MSS., one of which (no. XX) in Karsuni.
3. The Echellensis Collection which had been bought by
Pope Clement XI. It was made up of the private collection of
Abraham Echellensis and of that of his successor, Faustus
Naironi. It contained 64 MSS., 20 of which were in Syriac.
4. The Amida Collection, so called because it came from the
private library of the Chaldean patriarch Joseph I, a native
of Amida (Diarbekir), who died at Eome in 1713. 18 of its
20 MSS. were in Syriac.
5. The Beroe Collection, gathered by Gabriel Eva, a Maro-
nite monk of the Order of St. Anthony, during his sojourn
(1718-21) at Aleppo (the ancient Beroe) whither he had been
sent by Clement XI to settle certain disputes among the
Maronites of that region. This collection numbered only 13
MSS., among which were 9 Syriac MSS.
6. The Assemani Collection, acquired by J. S. Assemani
himself, during a voyage to the East (1715-17) undertaken at
^Digest of an article written by Dr. Hyvernat in the Annates de Saint
Louis des Fra/ngais for October, 1902, under the title "Concordances des c6tes
des anciens fonds et du fonds actuel syriaques de la Vaticane."
'Some of these MSS. had been bought by the authorities of the Vatican
Library; the others had been composed and written by the " Scriptores " them-
selves.
•When the Assemanis undertook a new classification of the Vatican MSS.,
the Karsuni MSS., fifteen in number, were transferred to the Syriac Collection.
94
VATICAN SYRIAC MSS,: OLD AND NEW PRESS-MARKS. 95
the request of Clement XI. It contained 45 Syriac MSS. Some
of these were brought from the Monastery of St. Mary in
Nitria, 12 from the Convent of Saidnaia near Damascus, and
the majority of them from Aleppo and Mount Lebanon.^
7. The Scandar Collection brought from the East for Pope
Innocent XIII, by the Maronite Andrew Scandar, professor of
Arabic at the Roman Sapienza. It numbered 61 MSS., dis-
tributed as follows: 35 Syriac (I-XXXV), 19 Arabic (XXXVI-
LIV), 6 Greek (LV-LX), and one Hebrew (LXI).
8. The Carafa Collection, formed with the help of Eastern
missionaries by Peter Aloysius Carafa, Archbishop of Larissa
and Secretary to the Propaganda. He gave it to Clement XI
for the Vatican Library. This collection which was added to
that of Andrew Scandar contained 5 Syriac MSS. (LXII-
LXVI), 6 Arabic MSS. (LXVII-LXXII), and 4 Greek MSS.
(LXXIII-LXXVI).
9. The Propaganda Collection, acquired by the authorities
of the Congregation P. F. and transferred by them to the
Vatican Library in 1723 together with other Oriental Collec-
tions. This Collection numbered 16 Syriac MSS.
Abraham Echellensis wrote a brief catalogue of the Old
Vatican Collection under the title ** Index librorum (manuscrip-
torum) Chaldaicorum et Syriacorum, Bibliothecae Vaticanse, 12
junii 1660." He also catalogued the Arabic MSS. He died
in 1664. His work was continued by John Matthew Naironi,
who added the other Oriental MSS. to the Arabic Collection
and placed at the head of the Syriac MSS. the only Samaritan
MS. then at the Vatican. Naironi 's Catalogue,^ still unpub-
lished, is to be found, together with the ''Index'' of Echellensis,
in the reading room of the Vatican Library. The Index con-
^ During this same voyage J. S. Assemani collected a certain number of
Coptic and Arabic MSS. Among the latter were 11 Karsuni MSS., which, like
those of the old Arabic Collection, were classed with the Syriac MSS. For a
description of these Karsuni MSS., see "Index Codicum" of the "Bibliotheca
Orientalis," I, p. 619.
2 Its complete title is: Catalogus Codicum MSS. linguarum Orientalmm
Vaticanse Bibliotheca nempe Samaritanse, Chaldaicae, etc. S. D. N. Innocentio
XI P. M. Em. et Rev. Laurentio Brancato de Lauraea S. R. E. Card. Biblioth.
Illustriss. D. Emanuele a Schelstrate ejusdem Bibliothecae Custode. Inceptus ab
Abrahamo Echellense A. D. MDCLX et absolutus a lo. Matthaeo Nairono Banesio
Maronitis in eadem Bibliotheca Scriptoribus A. D. MDCLXXXVI.
96 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
tains only 47 numbers; the Catalogue 48. To these a 49th
number was added later.
The remaining eight collections were catalogued and de-
scribed briefly by J. S. Assemani in his * ^ Bibliotheca Orien-
talis. ' '^ Later Stephen E vodius Assemani, in collaboration with
Joseph Simon Assemani, his uncle, undertook a systematic and
detailed catalogue of all the Oriental MSS. in the Vatican
Library. 2 The separate collections in each language were
merged into one, and the MSS. were classified according to their
contents, no account being made of the particular collection to
which they belonged originally. Thus the nine Syriac Collec-
tions, of which we spoke above, were thrown together into one,
and their MSS. were designated by new numbers. Such a pro-
cedure would have caused no great inconvenience, had the
authors of the Catalogue given a concordance of the numbers
of the MSS. in the old collections with the numbers in the new
collection they had formed. But, instead of this, they simply
noted, at the beginning of the description of each MS., the
number which the MS. bore originally. Thus we can refer
from the Catalogue to the ** Index Codicum'^ of the Bibliotheca
Orientalis, but not vice versa ; in other words, the Catalogue is
of no practical use to the readers of the Bibliotheca. Besides,
the Catalogue of the Assemanis is exceedingly rare. Hardly
was the edition finished when it was almost entirely destroyed
by fire. Only a few copies remain, so that, to-day, the ' ' Index
Codicum'' of the Bibliotheca Orientalis is practically the only
source of information regarding the contents of the Syriac
MSS. of the Vatican. Unfortunately, the numbers of the MSS.
* Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana in qua manuscripti Codices
syriaci, arabici . . . Romae, 1721-1728, fol., 3 tomes in 4 vols.
See tome I. " Index Codicum Manuscriptorum quos Clemens XI Pont. Max
Bibliothecae Vaticanse addixit." Nitrian Coll., p. 561; Echellensis Coll., p. 673;
Amida Coll., p. 681; Beroe Coll., p. 686; and Assemani Coll., p. 606; tome II.
" Index Codicum "... as above, " una cum iis quos Sanctissimus Pater Inno-
centius . XIII in eamdem Bibliothecam inferre jussit," Scandar Coll., p. 486,
Carafa Coll., p. 517; tome III. "Codices Manuscripti Syriaci, Coptici, Arabici et
Armenici typis impressi ad sacram Congregationem de Propaganda Fide ex
Oriente transmissi ejusdemque decreto in Bibliothecam Vaticanam illati, etc."
Propaganda Coll., p. 636.
' BibliothecaB Apostolicse Vaticanse Codicum manuscriptorum Catalogus in
tres partes distributus, etc., Primae Partis, tomus I (Hebrew MSS.), tomus II et
III (Syriac MSS.) Romse, 1767-1759.
VATICAN SYRIAC MSS.: OLD AND NEW PRESS-MARKS. 97
in this *^ Index'' do not correspond with their numbers in the
new classification, the only one now in use.
We have thought that it would be a welcome help to the ever
increasing number of Syriac students to publish the two follow-
ing Concordances: the first, of the old numbers with the new;
the second, of the new numbers with the old. By means of the
first, the reader of the Bibliotheca Orientalis will know the
number which the MS. he desires to consult bears in the new
classification ; by means of the second, those who cannot consult
the Catalogue of the two Assemanis will be able to use the
^^ Index Codicum'' in its stead.
Let us add a few words of explanation for the right under-
standing and use of these two Concordances. In the first Con-
cordance, after the old Vatican and Assemani Collections, the
numbers of the Karsuni MSS., of which we spoke above, are
given under the heading ''Supplement.'' A No. Xllbis has
been added to the Propaganda Collection, and a No. XL VI to
the Collection of Assemani. Although these two MSS. are
noticed neither in the Codices Manuscripti of the third tome, '
nor in the ''Index Codicum" of the first tome, of the Bib-
liotheca Orientalis, they are, nevertheless, so numbered in the
Catalogue. It must be remarked that Nos. XLI, XLIII, and
XLV of the old Vatican Collection, No. XII of the Beroe Col-
lection, and Nos. XIII and XIV of the Amida Collection, have
no corresponding numbers in the second Concordance. As
there is no trace of these MSS. in the catalogue, their disappear-
ance must go back to an early date. It is also to be noted that
in the second Concordance MSS. IX, X, XI of the Propaganda
Collection are registered under a single MS. in three volumes.
The total number of the MSS. of the old Syriac Collections is
thus reduced from 231 to 225. By adding to them the 26 MSS.
taken from the old Arabic Collections, we get the sum total of
251 MSS. Yet the secondConcordance has 256 numbers. This is
owing to the fact that the authors of the Catalogue added 4 MSS.
(181, 189, 191, 195) which had found their way into the Vati-
can Library after the formation of the early collections, and a
fifth MS. (230), the origin of which is not given. These ^ve
MSS. are designated by "Add." The letter "A" has been
written after the numbers of the KarSuni MSS. taken from the
7CUB
98
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
old Arabic Collections. The sigla ''YaV or ** Vatic." fol-
lowed by Eoman numerals, refer to the MSS. of the old
Vatican Collection; these same sigla, followed by Arabic nu-
merals, designate the MSS. in the new classification. The
two Concordances cover only the Vatican MSS. mentioned in
the Bibliotheca Orientalis and in the Catalogue of Assemani.
Since then the number of Syriac MSS. of the Vatican Library
has been almost doubled by the addition of Assemani ^s own
Collection and that of the Borgian Museum.
Concordance of the Old Numbers with the New.
r Old Vaticm Col
lection.
Vatic. I
= Vat. 7
Vatic
.XXVI
= Vat
. 88
'* II
=
2
XXVII
<<
89
" III
=
3
XXVIII
(t
188
'* IV
=
5
XXIX
ti
28
4. y
=
u 4
XXX
i(
36
'* VI
=
'' 10
XXXI
K
148
** VII
=
9
XXXII
((
186
*' VIII
=
' 15
XXXIII
Ci
193
" IX
=
u JL7
XXXiV
(C
18
" X
=
' 16
XXXV
((
95
" XI
=
' 19
XXXVI
((
35
" XII
=
* 22
XXXVII
tc
158
'* XIII
=
' 154
XXXVIII
Ci
6
** XIV
=
' 128
XXXIX
il
107
" XV
=
' 27
XL
It
145
" XVI
— *
' 65
XLI
((
** XVII
— *
' 66
XLII
ti
226
" XVIII
= *
' 45
XLIII
ti
*' XTX
: *
* 46
XTJV
it
190
'* XX
= *
' 86
XLV
((
" XXI
=
' 68
XLVI
it
57
" XXII
= <
' 69
XLVII
((
108
*' XXIII
r= *
^ 67
XLVIII
It
85
'* XXIV
z= '
' 87
XLIX
((
228
** XXV
*
* 62
VATICAN SYBIAO M8S.: OLD AND NEW PRES8-MARKa. 99
Supplement.
Vatic. Ill (A)
= Vat. 98
Vatic. CXIV (A)
= Vat. 2m
** X (A)
'' XVII (A)
z — •
'' 197
'' 203
' CXXXIII(A) —
* CXLI (A) =
'' 212
** 213
'* XLI (A)
=:
'' 211
' CL (A)
** 99
'* XLIX (A)
=
*' 229
' CLI (A)
___
•/«7
** 214
** LII (A)
t I T TT" / « \
=
'' 225
' CLXVIII(A) =
** 208
LV (A)
'* LIX (A)
=
** 199
" 72
* CLXXXII(A)= *' 227
2°
Nitrian
Collection,
NiTR. I
= Vat. 12
NiTR. XVIII
= Vat. 122
** II
=r
" 13
11
XIX
* 123
" III
=
'* 25
it
XX
__ t
* 198
<i IV
=
" 26
ti
XXI
t
* 124
" V
==
" 117
it
XXII
— <
' 125
" VI
=
'* 110
t(
XXIII
= *
* 254
'* VII
=
'' 111
tt
XXTV
— <
' 106
*' VIII
=
** 112
It
XXV
— <
' 137
** IX
=
'* 113
((
XXVI
— <
* 138
" X
=
'* 251
11
XXVII
— *
* 136
*' XI
=
'* 116
<(
XXVIII
= *
* 139
" XII
=
* 114
<<
XXIX
— *
* 140
'* XIII
= *
' 115
it
XXX
= *
* 255
'' XIV
•■ — '
' 252
((
XXXI
— *
' 141
** XV
= *
• 253
tt
XXXII
— <
' 142
*' XVI
= '
* 92
tt
XXXIII
= <
' 143
** XVII
== *
* 93
tt
XXXIV
= ** 256
3° Ec
hellensi
s Collection.
ECH. I
= Yi
LT. 8
ECE
[. XVII
= Vat. 176
'* II
= *
* 47
tt
XVIII
= ** 249
'* III
= *
' 48
tt
XIX
= '* 231
'* IV
== *
* 51
tt
XX
= " 210
'* V
— *
' 29
tt
XXI
= " 250
* VI
— — *
' 70
tt
XXV 11
= " 194
' XI
= *
' 169
tt
XXX VI
= ** 102
' XII
—
172
tt
LIX
= ** 209
' XIV
= **
146
tt
LX
= ** 232
* XVI
— **
100
tt
LXIV
tt
101
100
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
4° Amida Collection.
Amid. I
=
Vat
83
Amid. X
' II
=
t{
84
' XT
' in
=
It
61
* XII
* IV
=r
tt
224
' XIII
* V
=
IC
24
' XIV
* VI
=
. ((
23
' XV
' VII
=
((
184
' XVII
' VIII
=
It
90
' XNTIII
* IX
=
tt
63
' XIX
5
^ Beroe
Collection.
Be
BCEENS. I
3=
Vat.
159
Ber(t,ens. VIII
III
=
((
243
IX
IV
=
tt
130
XII
V
=
ft
131
XIII
VI
=
tt
202
6°
Asseman
i Collection.
Asf
3.1
==
Vat.
160
Ass. XXIV
II
=
tt
161
XXV
III
=:^
It
103
XXVI
IV
=
tt
119
XXVII
V
=
tt
120
XXVIII
VI
=
tt
126
XXIX
VII
=
tt
118
XXX
VIII
=
tt
104
XXXI
IX
r=
tt
105
XXXII
X
r=
tt
109
XXXIII
XI
=r
tt
135
XXXIV
XII
=
tt
163
XXXV
XIII
=
tt
162
XXXVI
XIV
=
tt
144
XXXVII
XV
z=^
tt
94
xxx\riii
XVI
=
tt
155
XXXIX
XVII
=
tt
1
XL
XVIII
==
tt
14
XTil
XIX
==
tt
31
XLII
XX
=
tt
30
XLIII
XXI
z=z
tt
39
XLIV
XXII
=:
tt
52
XLV
XXIII
=
tt
50
XLVI
Vat.
42
43
44
223
206
221
201
Vat.
121
tt
170
220
Vat
.242
tt
233
tt
234
tt
235
It
236
tt
237
tt
238
tt
239
tt
240
tt
241
tt
59
tt
74
tt
77
tt
40
tt
76
It
53
tt
41
tt
21
tt
80
tt
81
tt
82
tt
174
tt
156
VATICAN STBIAC M8S.: OLD AND NEW PBE88-
Ass. LXXV (A)
*' LXXVI (A)
*' LXXVII (A)
" LXXVIII (A)
'* LXXIX (A)
*' LXXX (A)
SCAND. I
II
'' III
" IV
'' V
VI
VII
VIII
" IX
" X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
Cab. LXII
*' LXIII
'' LXIV
Supplement,
Prop. I
*' II
'' III
'* IV
'* V
'* VI
'* VII
** VIII
'* IX
= Vat. 216
= ** 133
= '' 196
= '* 134
= *' 200
== " 207
7° Sccmdar
= Vat. 91
64
150
187
204
175
180
222
177
178
149
185
165
129
179
157
164
127
Ass. LXXXI (A)
'* LXXXII(A)
'' LXXXIII (A)
'' LXXXIV(A)
'' XCVI(A)
Collection,
SCAND. XIX
'' XX
XXI
'* XXII
** XXIII
'' XXIV
** XXV
XXVI
'' XXVII
'* XXVIII
'' XXIX
'' XXX
XXXI
XXXII
'' XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
■MARKS. 101
= Vat. 217
= *' 215
= " 218
=^ ** 219
= *' 245
= Vat. 244
= " 183
182
152
132
166
171
168
173
96
58
97
147
37
78
11
192
S"^ Carafa Collection.
Vat.
49
Car. LXV
((
54
'' LXVI
((
20
9° Propaganda Collection,
= Vat. 247
Pr(
= '' 56
= *' 71
= '' 60
= '' 248
= '' 32
= '* 33
= *' 34
= '' 55t.l
XI
XII
Xllbis
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
= Vat. 75
= ** 79
Vat. 55 1. 2
** 55t.3
'* 38
" 73
'' 246
" 167
" 153
** 151
102
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
concokdance of the
Vat. 1 = Ass. XYII.
2 = Vat. II.
3 = Vat. III.
4 = Vat. V.
5 = Vat. IV.
6 = Vat. XXXVIII.
7 = Vat. I.
8 = ECHELL. I.
9 = Vat. VII.
10 = Vat. VI.
11==SCAND. XXXIV.
12 = NlTR. I.
13 = NlTR. II.
14 = Ass. XVIII.
15 = Vat. VIIL
16 = Vat. X.
17 = Vat. IX.
18 = Vat. XXXIV.
19 = Vat. XL
20 = Car. LXIV.
21 = AssEM. XLI.
22 = Vat. XII.
23 = Amid. VL
24 = Amid. V.
25 = NiTR. III.
26 = NiTR. IV.
27 = Vat. XV.
28 = Vat. XXIX.
29 = ECHELL. V.
30 = AssEM. XX.
31 = AssEM. XIX.
32 = Prop. VL
33 = Prop. VIL
34 = Prop. VIIL
35 = Vat. XXXVL
36 = Vat. XXX.
37 = ScAND. XXXIL
38 = Prop. XIL
39 = AssEM. XXL
40 = AssEM. XXXVIL
41 = AssEM. XL.
n.
New Numbers with the Old.
Vat
. 42 = Amid. X.
n
43 = Amid. XL
((
44= Amid. XIL
11
45 = Vat. XVIIL
it
46 = Vat. XIX.
<(
47 = EcHFJ.T,. IL
<<
48 = ECHET.T.. IIL
(<
49 = Car. LXIL
n
50 = AssEM. XXIIL
it
51 = ECHETJ.. IV.
ti
52 = AssEM. XXIL
it
53 = AssEM. XXXIX.
it
54 = Car. LXIIL
it
55 = Prop. IX-XL
it
56 = Prop. IL
it
57 = Vat. XLVL
it
58 = ScAND. XXIX.
ti
59 = AssEM. XXXIV.
it
60 = Prop. IV.
ti
61 = Amid. IIL
it
62 = Vat. XXV.
ti
63 = Amid. IX.
ti
64 = SCAND. IL
ti
65 = Vat. XVL
it
66 = Vat. XViL
it
67 = Vat. XXilL
it
68 = Vat. XXL
it
69 = Vat. XXIL
it
70 = ECHELL. VL
ti
71 = Prop. IIL
it
72 = Vat. LIX (A).
ti
73 = Prop. XII his.
it
74 = AssEM. XXXV.
ti
75 = Car. LXV.
It
76 = AssEM. XXXVIII
it
77 = AssEM. XXXVL
ti
78 = ScAND. XXXTIL
it
79 = Car. LXVL
it
80 = AsREM. XLIL
it
81 = AssEM. XLIIL
It
82 = AssEM. XLIV.
VATICAN SYRIAG MSS.: OLD AND NEW LABELS,
103
Vat. 83 = Amid. I.
84 = Amid. II.
85 = Vat. XLVIII.
86 = Vat. XX.
87 = Vat. XXIV.
88 = Vat. XXVI.
89 = Vat. XXVII.
90 = Amid. VIII.
91 = SCAND. I.
92 = NiTR. XVI.
93 = NiTR. XVII.
94 = AssEM. XV.
95 = Vat. XXXV.
96 = ScAND. XXVIII.
97 = ScAND. XXX.
98 = Vat. Ill (A).
99 = Vat. CL (A).
100 = ECHELL. XVI.
101 = ECHELL. LXIV.
102 = ECHELL. XXXVI.
103 = ASSEM. III.
104 = AssEM. VIII.
105 = AssEM. IX.
106 = NiTR. XXIV.
107 = Vat. XXXIX.
108 = Vat. XLVII.
109 = AssEM. X.
110 = NlTR. VI.
111 = NlTR. VII.
112 = NiTR. VIII.
113 = NiTR. IX.
114 = NiTR. XII.
115 = NiTR. XIII.
116 = NiTR. XL
117 = NiTR. V.
118 = ASSEM. VII.
119 = ASSEM. IV.
120 = AssEM. V.
121 = Bergeens. VIII.
122 = NiTR. XVIII.
123 = NiTR. XIX.
124 = NiTR. XXI.
125 = NiTR. XXII.
Vat.126 = Assem. VI.
" 127 = SCAND. XVIII.
'* 128 = Vat. XIV.
II 129 = SCAND. XIV.
130 = Berceens. IV.
131 = Berceens. V.
" 132 = SCAND. XXIII.
'' 133 = Ass. LXXVI(A).
'' 134 = Ass. LXXVIII (A) .
*' 135 = AssEM. XL
'' 136 = NiTR. XXVIL
137 = NiTR. XXV.
138 = NiTR. XXVL
139 = NiTR. XXVIIL
140 = NiTR. XXIX.
141 = NiTR. XXXL
142 = NiTR. XXXIL
143 = NiTR. XXXIIL
144 = AssEM. XIV.
145 = Vat. XL.
146 = ECHELL. XIV.
147 = ScAND. XXXL
148 = Vat. XXXL
149 = ScAND. XL
i50 = scAND. in.
151 = Prop. XVL
152 = ScAND. XXIL
153 = Prop. XV.
154 = Vat. XIIL
155 = AssEM. XVL
156 = AssEM. XLVr.
157 = ScAND. XVL
158 = Vat. XXXVIL
159 = Beroiens. I.
160 = ASSEM. I.
161 = ASSEM. II.
162 = AssEM. XIIL
163 = AssEM. XIL
164 = ScAND. XVIL
165 = ScAND. XIIL
166 = ScAND. XXIV.
167 = Prop. XIV.
168 = ScAi«). XXVL
104
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Vat. 169:
= ECHELL. XL
Vat. 213 =
= Vat. CXLI (A).
170 =
= Berceen. IX.
ii
214 =
= Vat. CLI(A).
171 =
= SCAND. XXV.
a
215 =
= Ags. LXXXII(A).
172 =
= ECHELL. XII.
li
216 =
= AsR. LXXV(A).
173 =
=:SCAND. XXVII.
({
217 =
= Ass. LXXXI(A).
174 =
= AssEM. XLV.
tc
218 =
= Ass. LXXXTTI(A).
175 =
=:SCAND. VL
ii
219 =
= Ass. LXXXIV(A).
176 =
= ECHELL. XV 11.
<(
220 =
= Berceens. XIII.
177 =
==:SCAND. IX.
ct
221 =
=:Amid. XNTIIL
178 =
= SCAND. X.
iC
222 =
= SCAND. VIIL
179 =
= SCAND. XV.
it
223 =
= Amid. XV.
180 =
=:SCAND. VII.
t(
224 =
= Amid. IV.
181 =
= Add. I.
cc
225 =
=:Vat. LII(A).
182 =
= SCAND. XXL
((
226 =
= Vat. XLIL
183 =
= SCAND. XX.
(C
227 =
= Vat. CLXXXIII(A)
184 =
= Amid. VIL
((
228 =
= Vat. XLIX.
185 =
= SCAND. XIL
<(
229 =
= Vat. XLIX (A).
186 =
==Vat. XXXIL
cc
230 =
= Add. V.
187 =
= SCAND. IV.
cc
231-
= ECHELL. XIX.
188 =
= Vat. XXVIII.
cc
232 =
= Echell. LX.
189 =
= Add. IL
cc
233 =
= ASSEM. XXV.
190 =
= Vat. XLIV.
cc
234 =
= ASSEM. XXVI.
191 =
= Add. hi.
cc
235 =
= ASSEM. XXVII.
192 =
= SCAND. XXXV.
cc
236 =
= AssEM. XXNTIIL
193 =
= Vat. XXXIII.
cc
237 =
= ASSEM. XXIX.
194
= ECHF,T,L. XXVIL
cc
238 =
= AssETvr. XXX.
195 =
= Add. IV.
cc
239 =
= AssEM. XXXL
196 =
=:AssEM. LXXVII(A).
cc
240 =
= AssEM. XXXIL
197 =
= Vat. X(A).
cc
241 =
= ASREM. XXXIIL
198 =
= NlTR. XX.
tc
242 =
= ASSF,M. XXIV.
199 =
= Vat. LV(A).
ct
243 =
= BeR(T]FNS. III.
200:
= Ass. LXXIX (A).
tc
244
= SCAND. XIX.
201 =
= Amid. XIX.
cc
245 =
= Assem. XCV1(A).
202 =
= Berceens. VI.
cc
246 =
= Prop. XIIL
203 =
= Vat. XVli(A).
cc
247 =
= Prop. I.
204 =
==:SCAND. V.
cc
248 =
=:Prop. V.
205 =
= Vat. CXIV(A).
cc
249 =
= ECHELL. XVm.
206 =
==Amid. XVII.
cc
250 =
=:ECHELL. XXL
207 =
= Ass. LXXX(A).
cc
251 =
=:NlTR. X.
208 =
= Vat. CLXVill(A).
cc
252 =
= Nitr. XIV.
209 =
= ECHELL. LIX.
cc
253 =
= NlTR. XV.
210 =
= ECHELL. XX.
cc
254 =
= NiTR. XXIIL
211 =
= Vat. XLI(A).
cc
255 =
= NiTR. XXX.
212 =
= Vat. CXXIII(A).
a
256 =
= NiTR. XXXIV.
Henri Hyvernat.
BOOK REVIEWS.
Petite Introduction aux Inventaires des Archives du Vatican
Par le R. P. Louis Guerard, pretre de I'Oratoire, Paris: Picard'
1901. 8°, pp. 39.
The opening of the Vatican Archives by Leo XIII to the gen-
eral public of scholars has naturally brought to Rome not a few
persons anxious to profit by this vast repertorium of historical docu-
ments. It is not every one who is properly equipped for the use
of the written authorities; as a preliminary, both a general and a
special palaeographical training is necessary. This may be now
acquired, either in one of the university schools of history that have
grown up in Europe, or at Rome within the limits of the Vatican,
where a two years' course of three lessons a week is now in working
order. A good French manual, that of M. Giry, contains excellent
doctrine, and the classic German **Handbuch der Diplomatik'*
(Leipzig, 1889) of H. Bresslau is simply indispensable for any com-
plete training.
But how shall the would-be editor of original materials out of
the Vatican Archives go to work in order to know where they
actually are? If he knows precisely what document he wants, it
may not be very difficult to lay his hand upon it— the obliging offi-
cials will probably find it for him through means of certain ancient
inventories of the Archives, or through their own trained instinct.
But the special student of some line or problem of history knows,
only too often, no more than the general nature of his subject, and
its limits in time and place.
If the Vatican Archives had ever been fully inventoried, indi-
vidual research would still be toilsome, by reason of their vastness.
But no such work has yet been done, perhaps ever can be done for
this mare magnum of mediaeval and later history. With the excep-
tion of the workers on the ''Repertorium Germanicum" (Berlin,
1897) no systematic depouillement of the several depositories of the
Archives has been attempted for the centuries this side of the thir-
teenth, and that valuable work only reaches the pontificate of Eugene
IV ; nor does it pretend to be exhaustive.^
* For the study of German history the authors of the R. G. have examined
thirteen depositories of the Archives: (1) Registra Vaticana, (2) Registra
Brevium, (3) Registra Supplicationum, (4) Registra Lateranensia, (5) Libri
obligationum prselatorum, (6) Libri annatorum, (7) Libri Solutionum, (8)
Libri quitantiarum, (9) Introitus et Exitus, (10) Libri buUetarum et manda-
torum, (11) Diversa cameralia, (12) Acta of the Sacred College (of Cardinals),
(13) Various other documents scattered in isolated volumes.
105
106 CATEOLIO UNIVEB8ITY BULLETIN.
The Abbe Guerard, priest of the French Oratory, and one of the
national chaplains of St. Louis des Frangais at Eome, undertook in
the Annates of that society (January, 1897) to prepare a guide for
the use of the existing inventories of the Vatican Archives, with the
particular purpose of aiding the students of the mediaeval history
of provincial France. This study, somewhat enlarged, appeared in
the same periodical (July, 1900), and is now presented to the gen-
eral public. Its few pages are the result of no little toil, and the
author acknowledges that without the habitual kindness of the sub-
archivist of the Vatican even these notes could not have been put
together.
The nearest approach to a general inventory is owing to Petrus
Doninus de Pretis, prefect of the Archives in 1727.^ It is a very
summary enumeration of the contents of the greater part of the
volumes that contain the official acts of the Cancelleria Apostolica.
It represents, therefore, the most important part of the Vatican
Archives. For the thirteenth century there exists an inventory of
the names of persons and places mentioned in the subscriptions of
the bulls. From John XXII to the end of the Great Schism there
is a double series of '* Registers" of bulls— the **Regesta Aveni-
onensia," and the '*Regesta Vaticana." The former were removed
to the Vatican towards the end of the eighteenth century. Two in-
ventories of them exist, made at Avignon in the eighteenth century
— one of them is in 85 folio volumes. The **Ilegesta Vaticana'* for
the fourteenth century are an official transcription of the preced-
ing. The division of **Epistol8e Secretse'* that contains the political
correspondence of the popes in that period, gave way in the fifteenth
century to the series of briefs (Epistolse Breves) that have been
indexed from Clement VII to Leo XI (1523-1605). A very im-
portant series in several thousand volumes is that of the **Regesta
Lateranensia*' (Dataria) that reaches from Boniface IX to Leo
XIII. It does not seem to have been the object of any known
inventory, though those who know it best say that its volumes pre-
sent for the end of the fourteenth century a more complete portrait
of papal administration than the **Regesta Vaticana'' themselves.
In addition, there are the 7,011 volumes of **Supplicationes'* or re-
quests and petitions, lately transferred to the Vatican, likewise insuf-
ficiently inventoried, though a fair idea of their contents for the
' Cf . Baumgarten, " Untersuchungen und Urkunden ueber die Camera Collegii
Cardinalium fuer die Zeit von 1295-1437," Leipzig, 1898, also A. Cauchie,
" De la creation d'une Ecole Beige k Rome," Tournai, 1896. In this latter
brochure. Dr. Cauchie has collected all the earlier literature relative to the great
divisions of the Archives. M. Gu6rard declares this study " un apercu d'ensemble
fort utile " for the use of the Archives.
BOOK REVIEWS. I07
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be gained from the epoch-
making work of Denifle/
For these huge collections of original materials, M. Guerard indi-
cates with aU possible precision, and after such personal examination
as the circumstances permit, the actual state of the inventories, in-
dexes, summaries of contents, etc., as they are kept in the **cabmet
de travair' of Mgr. Wenzel present sub-archivist'
The records of the financial administration of the papacy are
very abundant since the fourteenth century, inclusive. Several
valuable studies, like those of Gottlob, Kirsch and others, have lately
appeared, based on these materials. These financial records form
part of the documents of the Camera Apostolica (Treasury Depart-
ment of the Holy See), all whose existing records have been inven-
toried up to the fifteenth century by M. de Loye.' For the last four
centuries no detailed inventory is at hand, as far as is known, al-
though the volumes of each pontificate are recorded in De Pretis.
Mgr. Baumgarten has published a conspectus of the **Obligationes*'
as far as Julius II.*
A large portion of the records of the Camera Apostolica, particu-
larly for modern times, is now incorporated with the Italian govern-
mental archives; two manuscript inventories enable the student to
work with some satisfaction. The earliest of these documents go
back to the end of the fourteenth century, and the latest come down
to 1860. Before 1870 this collection was preserved in the Palazzo
Ugolini, near the Sapienza. In it, among other valuable deposits,
are records of six provincial sub-treasuries of the Holy See— Avignon,
Bologna, Campagna, Marittima, Fermo, Marca, the Patrimonio. It
is said that in all there are some five hundred volumes of the financial
records of the Holy See in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Another extensive collection of the documents of the Holy See
is that once kept in the old papal citadel of Castel Sant-Angelo, now
part of the Vatican Archives. It is provided with a chronological
1 " La Desolation des Eglises de France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans."
Paris, Picard, 1899, 3 vols.
2 Sans la complaisance et la patience de Mgr. Wenzel et de son neveu, M.
Ranuzzi, il serait k pen prfes impossible k im debutant d'utiliser les repertoires,
Gu6rard, op. cit., p. 32.
»" Archives de la Chambre apostolique," Paris. Fontemoing, 1899. Cf.
Moyen Age, 1899, pp. 414 sqq.
* Cf. introd. to Rep. Germ. The records of the Camera Apostolica are
divided into three classes: Introitus et Exitus; Servitia (Obligationes) ; Col-
lectarise, Inventaria et Processus. The vicissitudes of these records, related in
the work just cited, have somewhat enhanced the difficulties of research-work
among them.
108 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
index, more or less complete, and now more or less corresponding to
the actual state and disposition of the records/
Finally, there are in the Vatican Archives what is known as the
** Miscellanea,'' documents collected in boxes or bound in volumes,
varying greatly in date and character. One class of them, the Mis-
cellanea Instrumentorum, is kept in cassette or small receptacles,
classed chronologically. Three of these cassette contain documents
previous to the year 1300.^ The latest of them contain materials of
quite modem history. They may be consulted by indicating the
year or decade in question. Another class of these documents is
called simply ** Miscellanea"; according to M. Cauchie (op. cit., p.
289) there are more than two thousand volumes of them, mostly
acquisitions made by the popes in modern times.'
The Archives of the papal Secretariate of State and the Borghese
Archives have each an inventory. Though the former is a summary
one, it acts as a guide to the enormous collection of nunciature re-
ports since the Reformation. For France alone, it is rumored that
more than 600 volumes of such documents are preserved, containing
material of very miscellaneous character.*
The inventory of the State Department of the Holy See mentions
also: **Lettere di Cardinali, vescovi, principi, particolari e soldati.''
There ought to be here a very rich harvest for the historian of man-
iCf. Paul Fabre, "Note sur les archives du Chateau St. Aiige, Melcmges de
I'Ecole de Rome," Avril, 1893. " Ce fonds cont^nait jadis les actes d'un proems
de rarch6v6que de Tolfede au seizi^me si&cle, Barth6l6iny Carranza, poursuivi
par rinquisition d'Espagne," Gu6rard, op. cit., p. 23.
2 For the history of the Vatican Archives and Library previous to that period
see the researches of De Rossi and P. Ehrle.
3 That our readers may see what " curiosa " are to be met with, even in these
dustheaps of the Archives, I reprint the description given by Dr. Cauchie (after
Dr. Schlecht) of the contents of one of the large cabinets (armoires) containing
what is known as " Varia Politicorum." " En 1890, dit encore M. Cauchie, M.
le docteur Schlecht a fait un d^pouillement complet des 176 volumes qui portent
ce nom. II y a vu des paperasses de toutes espfeces: des statistiques de
I'administration des Etats pontificaux et parfois des autres gouvernements, des
instructions aux envoy^s du Saint Sifege, des relations de nonces, des bulles et
des brefs, des trait6s d'alliance, de guerre et de paix, les rapports des ambas-
sadeurs v^itiens, des lettres envoy^es ou regues par des princes, des actes dea
Difetes et des Parlements, des d^crets de souverains; des opuscules historiques,
des catalogues des archives pontificales, des priferes, des poSmes, des comedies,
des 6nigmes, etc. . . . ; toutefois la politique fait Tobjet principal de ces docu-
ments, lis concement surtout le XVIe et le XVIIe si^cles, mals il y a aussi
quelques pieces relatives aux ages ant6rieurs. En g6n6ral, ce ne sont que des
copies. Les autres melanges ne sont pas moins bigarres: des papiers de noncia-
tures, des bulles, des Mits, des ordonnances (Bandi), des actes de I'lnquisition,
des ouvrages de th^ologie, des visitations, des actes relatifs aux ordres religieux,
des diarii, des vies de papes, etc'
< These reports are now being (partially) published, especially those con-
cerning Germany. A society has been established in France — ^the Archives de
I'histoire religieuse de la France — ^with the avowed purpose of publishing these
records, at least in analysis.
BOOK REVIEWS. 109
ners and institutions, as well as for the editors of **memoires" and
the writers of biographies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
century.*
Cardinal Garampi (1725-1792), prefect of the Vatican Archives
from 1751 to 1772, is responsible for a certain amount of classifi-
cation of the materials of the Vatican Archives. It was his inten-
tion to compile an **Orbis Christianus" which would be for all
Christendom what the ''Gallia Christiana" was for France. For
that purpose he compiled, or caused to be compiled' out of the
various depositories of the Vatican Archives a certain number of
general repertories of ''notitiae"— they were particularly drawn from
the "Regesta" of papal bulls, and from the records of the ''Camera
Apostolica," although printed indications were not neglected. The
paper notes or "fiches" on which were made the annotations that
he sought are still preserved in the rooms of the sub-archivist, and
are particularly useful for those seeking clearly defined materials.
They are not inventories, strictly speaking, and in no wise represent
a methodical and systematic depouillement of the archives. The
inventory of De Pretis was utilized in the collection of these raw
materials for a general documentary church history. Under the
headings— bishops, abbots, benefices, miscellanea, popes, cardinals,
Roman churches, pontifical offices, Garampi put together fifty-three
volumes which, with the twelve volumes of a chronological and the
ten of an alphabetical index, form an important "first help" of
some seventy-five volumes. If Garampi had examined completely
some one of the several deposits of the Archives, and made an
alphabetical index of his notes, his work would have been even yet
indispensable. As it was, he only thought of the documents that
were to appear in his projected "Orbis Christianus, " and Fr. Con-
rad Eubel, the learned editor of the episcopal lists of Christendom
since Innocent III., would have found his task considerably
lightened. There was already an example in the labors of the con-
temporary Avignon archivists (Guerard, pp. 14r-15) whose materials,
however, were not then at the immediate disposal of Garampi. Such
as they are, the "fiches" of Garampi no longer correspond with ac-
curacy to the actual state of the Archives, or are in need of inter-
pretation. M. Guerard furnishes useful directions to the research-
student whose duty compels him to utilize these folios. It must be
remembered that they were put together for the personal use of
iCf. "Ricardo de Hinojosa, Los despachos della diplomacia pontificia en
Espana," Madrid. , . .. . -dt, tjo ^„«„
2Cf. D. Gregorio Palmieri, "Ad Vaticani archivii regesta RR. PP. manu-
ductio," Roma, 1885, pp. xiv-xv.
110 CATHOLIC UNIVEB8ITY BULLETIN,
Garampi, or at most, of his secretaries and the employes of the
Archives. M. Guerard at the end of his instructive brochure, urges
all research-students engaged at the Vatican in the editing of ma-
terials for local European history, to not wander from those that
are indicated in the '*fiches" of Garampi, the Avignon inventories
and M. de Loye's inventory of the Camera Apostolica to the end
of the fourteenth century. The personal examination of the entire
huge mass of manuscript records could only be fruitful in case it
covered a very large geographical field. In the future it will be
easier to study at first hand Vatican materials for the fourteenth
century, since the French School of History and Archaeology at
Rome has undertaken a complete assorting of all the **Regesta" for
that period. In the meantime the historical student will profit
greatly by the works of MM. Teige,^ Tomaseth^ and Tangl.*
Thomas J. Shahan.
Origines du Cultc Chretien. Etude sur la liturgie latine avant
Charlemagne. Par Mgr. L. Duchesne, Membr.e de Tlnstitut. 3d
edition. Paris: Fontemoing, 1902. 8°, pp. 556.
As compared with the first edition of this admirable manual the
third shows an increase of some fifty odd pages, distributed through
the sixteen chapters of the work, and the hundred pages of appen-
dixes. To the latter have been added the **Ordo Romanus" for
the three days before Easter, and the Latin translation of the Canons
of Hippolytus, the latter a welcome help to such as have not the
work of Haneberg. For those who do not know this indispensable
liturgical work we may say that it is divided into the following
chapters: The Early Christian World (Christian communities; local
churches; episcopal dioceses; ecclesiastical provinces, patriarchates,
national churches). The Mass in the Orient, the Roman and the Gal-
ilean Liturgies, Liturgical books and formulae, The Oldest Books of
the Latin Liturgy, The Mass at Rome, The Galilean Mass, The Chris-
tian Feasts, Baptism, Ordination, Liturgical Dress, Dedication of
Churches, Consecration of Virgins, Nuptial Blessing, Reconciliation
of Penitents, The Divine Office.
* " Beitraege zum paepstlichen Kanzleiwesen des XIII und XIV Jahrhund-
erts" ( Mittheilungen des Instituts fuer osterreicfiische Geschichtsforschung),
Wien, 1896.
2 "Die Register und Sekretaere Urbans V und Gregors XI" (ibid.), 1898.
" Die paepstliche Register von Benedict XII bis Gregor XI " ( Innsbruck ) ,
1898. Cf. also the introduction and notes of Denifle, " Specimina palaeografica
Regestorum RR. PP., Roma, 1888. The last two works, says M. Guerard (p.
13), give " le meilleur apergu d'ensemble qui ait 6t6 donn6 jusqu-ici sur lea
registres du XIV sifecle."
BOOK REVIEWS. ^
Mgr. Duchesne does not propose to exhibit in this work a portrait
of ecclesiastical antiquities in general, but only of those which may
be classed under the rubric of collective acts, acts of public interest
to each local church, which are usually performed before its authori-
ties and within its walls. Moreover, the work is strictly historical,
dealing as a rule with the known attainable facts for each paragraph'
and in the language of the original witnesses or what must pass for
their evidence. Theological discussions and solutions would swell
the book to an unwieldy volume— for such the reader is referred
to the numerous learned books that deal with the same. Our author
is concerned only with the general outlines of the public services of
the Church as they appeared to the Christian eye from the fourth
to the eighth century. Though Mgr. Duchesne disclaims any direct
attempt at edification, let it be said that every priest will rise from
the perusal of his learned book filled with a joyous faith, gifted with
a satisfactory historic insight into the origins of the holy functions
that he daily discharges.
"These ancient rites," he says (p. viii), "are doubly sacred; they come
to us from God through Christ and the Church; even if they did not wear that
halo, they would still be holy from their contact with the piety of a hundred
generations. For so many centuries mankind has thus prayed to God! How
many emotions, how many joys, how much affection, how many tears have these
sacred books beheld, these rites and formulas made holy!"
Certainly no living historian is more capable than the Director
of the French School of History and Archaeology at Rome of throw-
ing abundant light on the public services of Western Christianity in
those four fateful centuries. The City of Rome is the living center
of that worship from the days of Constantine, and this early mediasval
Rome is almost the apanage of Mgr. Duchesne. Its bishops, its
churches, its monuments and inscriptions, its institutions, customs
and traditions, its hopes and fears, ideals and conflicts, its splendor
and power, as well as its seamy and human side, are all an open
book to the editor of the Liber Pontificalis. With him as guide we
may learn to know and esteem all these liturgical **Mirabilia Urbis
Romse" that Charlemagne witnessed and Anglo-Saxon kings came
from their island home to revere and imitate. It is the Rome of
the **Ordines Romani,*' with its multitude of rare and curious sur-
vivals out of the earliest ages of the Christian religion, its inborn
racial *'pietas" toward the past, its sure sense of what was sober
and decent in ritual, its inherited gravity and majesty that shine in
all those holy rites which the ends of the earth still continue to borrow
from her.
112 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Teachers and students of mediaeval history will profit much by
mastery of this volume. Professors of theology, particularly of
sacramental theology, will read it with equal profit, and all inter-
ested in the charming story of the Christian liturgy will draw from
it both rare information and genuine edification. It deserves the
compliment of translation into all the great vernaculars and par-
ticularly into English. Thomas J. Shahan.
Ames Religieuses. Par Henri Bremond. Paris: Perrin, 1902.
8°, pp. 284.
L' Enfant ct \e Vic. Par Henri Bremond. Paris: Retaux, 1902.
8°, pp. 278.
There is firmness at once and delicacy of touch in the literary
manner of Fr. Bremond. Every new work from his pen reveals
genuine merits of feeling, discernment, style, and a certain kindly
intimate sympathy with the temper and the thought of the modern
world. He has a definite message for his fellow-men, but he blends
it with well-bred and shrewd conversation on the things they love
and admire— literature, education, spiritual experience, the strong
vivid play of personality. He finds no little that is good and ad-
mirable in the highly individualized religion of certain noble minds
without the pale of the Church. One is moved to see the skill and
sureness with which he extracts from the lives of John Keble, Edward
Thring, Arnold of Rugby, and others, the lessons they offer to the
men of his own France. After all, there is something un-Catholic
and illiberal in excessive nationalism, something narrow and wither-
ing, a thinning down of the larger stream of general human interest
and experience. In the writings of Fr. Bremond there is a marked re-
action against such exclusivism and arrogance— /e prends mon Men
ou it se trouve — seems to be his motto. The volume on '^L'Enfant
et la Vie'' contains so many tender and exquisite pages that, in spite
of its miscellaneous character, every one interested in the Christian
education of little children can read it with equal pleasure and profit.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Geschichtc der Univcrsitact Dillingcn (1549-1804) und der mit
ihr verbundenen Lehr und Erziehungsanstalten. Von Dr.
Thomas Specht. Freiburg: Herder, 1902. 8°, pp. xv + 706.
This is a very conscientious, painstaking, instructive work— few
of the modern special histories of universities surpass it for mani-
fold suggestiveness. Dillingen was founded in 1549 by Cardinal
Otto Truchsess, Bishop of Augsburg (1543-1573), one of the most
BOOK REVIEWS, 113
vigorous men of the Counter-Reformation. Not satisfied with sug-
gesting and urging the Collegium Germanicum at Rome, he brought
about (1549) the establishment in the town of Dillingen of an eccle-
siastical academy or college under the patronage of St. Jerome, that
was shortly (1551) raised to the dignity of a university by Julius
III. Like several other German Catholic university schools, it soon
passed (1563) into the hands of the Jesuits, who administered it
until their suppression in 1773— two hundred and ten years. Dr.
Specht follows out in close detail the general history of the school
for this period, the organization of its faculties, its privileges, cur-
ricula of studies, administration, literary and scientific labors, stu-
dent-life. We have in these pages the entire inner life of a Jesuit
university of the eighteenth century. In the two centuries of its
existence the theological faculty alone had over two hundred pro-
fessors. Short terms and frequent changes were the order, as can
be seen at once from the list of teachers. Among the theologians
of repute were Hieronymus Torres, Gregory of Valentia, Christopher
Rassler, Paul Laymann, Tobias Lohner, Alphonsus Pisanus. Dil-
lingen enjoyed an excellent reputation for the study of canon law.
Schmalzgrueber, Laymann, Pirhing, Pichler, taught here. Among
the professors was the famous Irish Jesuit, Stephan White, author
of an ** Apologia pro Hibernia" (Dublin, 1849) against the calum-
nies of Gerald Barry.
From 1773 to 1804 Dillingen went through many vicissitudes.
In the latter years it ceased to exist as a university, after more than
two and a half centuries of activity. The Bavarian government,
successor to the civil jurisdiction of the Bishops of Augsburg, carry-
ing out the principles of the Napoleonic secularisation of the ecclesi-
astical properties, completed the ruin that had really begun with
the financial crippling that followed the Thirty Years War. Dr.
Specht gives a long list of valuable academic documents— papal and
episcopal constitutions, instructions, bye-laws, programs. A list of
the manuscript authorities (university records, faculty minutes, etc.)
and a bibliography of printed works used in the compilation of the
book, make it very serviceable for the intelligence of a small, but
meritorious university. Thomas J. Shahan.
Unpublished Letters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of
His Father, Charles Carroll of Doughoregan. Compiled and
edited with a memoir by Thomas Meagher Field. New York:
The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1902. Pp. 250.
There are revealed in this volume of interestirg letters phases of
colonial life that have not come down to us in the pages of even
8CTJB
X14 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
the most faithful and painstaking of historians; the appearance
of this monograph is only another proof that if we wish to obtain
an accurate notion of the past it is necessary to explore the sources
of history. The more ample narratives of the era of the Revolution
aim to sketch the principal characters and scenes of that eventful
period, and while it is doubtless true that the philosophical student
may perceive in their outlines men and things very much as they
actually existed, the general reader will derive a more just concep-
tion by examining the original documents for himself.
Of all the memorials of those stirring times which have been
discovered by either scholarship or patriotism the unpublished letters
of Charles Carroll and those of his father form one of the most
instructive and entertaining that have recently been offered to the
public. From an examination of them we see clearly the mental
equipment of one of the most amiable as well as one of the ablest
of the Revolutionary leaders.
In his own generation, as in ours, Charles Carroll was known as
a cultured and uncompromising patriot. He was likewise known to
have had a firm grasp of the great constitutional questions which"
presented themselves to the consideration of his contemporaries. In
what manner **The First Citizen'' acquii*ed this mastery of public
affairs, however, is not so generally known. The letters included in
the monograph before us show the successive stages in his develop-
ment. Interesting a-s may be the contemplation of this and other
questions, the impression which a reader of the letters will be likely
to receive is that the younger Carroll was the product not so much
of either French or English schools, for he enjoyed the benefits of
both, as of a healthy American ancestry. His chief obligation was
to the solicitude of an intelligent and Christian father, who carefully
pointed out the value of sound religious principles. Not, indeed, in
a didactic manner, like one who had only recently acquired them
himself, but with the artlessness of one who held them in solution
and who could not have written otherwise without doing violence to
cherished convictions.
Even to those most familiar with our history the present volume
introduces a character hitherto regarded as somewhat shadowy. Yet
the correspondence of the elder CarroU shows him to have been any-
thing but an insubstantial personage. He comes before us as a
shrewd, generous and enlightened patriot profoundly interested in
and fully comprehending all the public questions of his day. These
qualities alone, however, would not have distinguished him from
many of his contemporaries. It is his affectionate interest in every-
thing designed to fit his son to adorn the station to which wealth and
BOOK REVIEWS. 115
talents invited him that gives Charles Carroll of Doughoregan a claim
to our esteem.
Though the elder Carroll was not indifferent to worldly consid-
erations, no sordid sentiment can be found in any of his numerous
and unreserved communications to his son. If he manifested a
strong desire that the future statesman should apply himself to the
study of the law, it was not only that he might thereby the better
protect his property interests but that he might be able also to give
to his neighbors the benefit of sound legal advice. The thought of
serving his fellowman appears never to have been absent from his
mind.
Between two such men there was to be expected the most perfect
harmony, and in the letters from the owner of Doughoregan Manor
we catch no glimpse of even a momentary misunderstanding. In-
deed it would be difficult to find elsewhere in colonial records so
charming a picture of domestic life as that suggested by this inter-
esting correspondence. While there were no elements of discord
within, clouds were beginning to arise from without. British op-
pression had long before destroyed the rank and fortune of the
O'Carrolls in Ireland. British intolerance, by imposing a double
portion of taxes on Catholics, threatened once more to reduce them
to a condition of poverty; but, fortunately for the people of every
class, the illiberal policy which could discriminate against Catholics
with impunity was soon applied to the entire population, and in the
spirit of freedom aroused by the attempt the shadow of intolerance
passed forever away.
It is not the purpose of this notice to describe either the contents
or the character of this entertaining monograph. It would be spoiled
by even a good paraphrase. We desire merely to interest the reader
in the environment of one of the makers of this nation as well as
in the home of a fine old Catholic gentleman of colonial times.
The volume forms a fitting supplement to Miss Rowland's biog-
raphy of The Signer, and the United States Catholic Historical
Society is to be congratulated as well upon its choice of an editor
as upon the attractive appearance of this useful contribution to
American history. Charles P. McCarthy.
Cathouc High School, Philadelphia.
Essentials of American History. By Thomas Bonaventure Law-
ler. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1902. Pp. 420, with index.
The competition among publishers and authors has produced
many of the excellent text-books now in use in our schools, and,
116 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
perhaps, it is chiefly in respect of simplicity and clearness of ar-
rangement that we are to look for their further improvement. Mr.
Lawler makes no apology for offering to the public a new history of
the United States. Indeed, to any student who is at the trouble of
examining any considerable part of the work no apology is required.
Twenty pages of clear and interesting narrative summarize the
achievements of the great navigators who appeared at the end of
the fifteenth and the beginning of the succeeding century. Little
that is new is seriously to be expected in any work on this era.
Nevertheless, Mr. Lawler has imparted to his first chapter a fresh-
ness that makes it entertaining reading for even those who are
familiar with the period of discovery.
In addition to the maps which usually illustrate this portion of
our school histories there is contained in the present volume a chart
of the trade routes between the commercial centers of Italy and the
markets of India. It is only by some such aid that the young stu-
dent can be made fully to comprehend the disastrous effect upon
Genoese and Venetian trade of the taking of Constantinople. Though
it is a commonplace of history to describe the flight of scholars after
the fall of the venerable capital of the Eastern Empire, writers have
not been accustomed to emphasize the influence of that event in
giving character and direction to the nautical activity of the fol-
lowing century.
It is chiefly in the matter of style and arrangement that Mr.
Lawler 's account of the explorers differs from those given in most
of the school histories now in use. It is not by the accumulation
of detail but by a striking summary or a happy quotation that he
shows himself qualified to prepare a history for the young. For
example, the French method of acquiring supremacy in America is
thus concisely described by an excerpt from Parkman: ** Peaceful,
benign, beneficent were the weapons of this conquest. France aimed
to subdue not by the sword but by the cross; not to overwhelm and
crush the nations. She invaded but to convert, to civilize and em-
brace them among her children.''
Hand in hand with the work of the explorer went the labors of
the missionary. A few well-written pages describe the efforts of
these spiritual heroes. The roving character of the Indian tribes
suggests the magnitude of the task undertaken by the Jesuits, and
even if in this instance they failed to attain complete success they
established by deeds of heroism unsurpassed in history a standard
of character and of devotion to duty that will not soon pass into
forgetfulness. The encouraging beginnings, as well as the causes of
BOOK REVIEWS. -^-^^
the decline of the California missions, receive for the first time in
a school history anything like adequate treatment.
Without a tolerably complete account of the events preceding the
formation of the Constitution the story of our national development
is not easy to write, and, as we may perceive by his distribution of
emphasis, this difficulty Mr. Lawler appears fully to recognize. So
many able and industrious writers have discussed this portion of
American history, however, that it only remains to point out in what
respect the present work differs from many of its predecessors.
First, the national period is duly emphasized. The number, ex-
cellence and accuracy of the maps is a very important feature of
the work, and shows that the author is conscious of the relation
which subsists between geography and history. The development
of our unequalled system of transportation is well described and,
where it is possible to do so, illustrated by interesting cuts. That the
importance of our industrial history is not overlooked is apparent from
the space devoted to the inventions of Whitney, McCormack, Howe,
Morse, Edison and others. Economic and other reforms are given
prominence in the narrative. The great financial measures, as well
as the movements of population and their causes, receive considerable
attention. The author adheres to his purpose to write the essentials
of American history, for the summaries following his successive
chapters mention only the conspicuous landmarks. In short, the
work is admirably planned and ably executed.
Charles P. McCarthy.
Catholio High School, Philadelphia.
Sermons from the Latins. Adapted from Bellarmine, Segneri,
and other sources, by Rev. James J. Baxter, D.D. New York:
Benziger, 1902. 8°, pp. 618.
It is an almost excessive modesty that leads Dr. Baxter to claim
for these sermons that they are only ''adaptations.'* The material
of them may, indeed, be taken ''from the Latins," but it has been
so transformed and so mingled with the author's own thought as to
be, to all intents and purposes, his own. Therefore, whatever is
said of this volume, in praise or blame, must be for the ears of the
reverend preacher himself.
As a matter of fact, the sermons deserve not a little praise, and
some blame. Some of the merits we have found in them are these:
a decided originality, and sometimes, if not eloquence, at least, beauty
and force of expression, a simplicity and vigor of diction, and much
that is of doctrinal, ethical and practical value. The defects are
118 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
fewer: an occasional ineptitude of word or phrase; here and there
a lapse from the specific, and exclusively sacred, character that
befits pulpit utterances, some inconclusiveness of proof in certain
controversial parts. In spite of these defects, the volume is easily
superior to most of the current Catholic sermon books in English.
It gives abundant evidence that the author is himself a man of
personal original thought and that he has the power of begetting
noble and useful thoughts in the mind of his hearers or readers.
Not only is the book attractively made and printed, but each of the
sixty sermons is provided with a synopsis.
S. Jerome et la Vie du Moine Malchus le Captif. Par Paul
van den Yen, docteur en philosophic et lettres. Louvain: J. B.
Istas, 1901. 8°, pp. 161.
The Vita Malchi, one of the most interesting of the hagiological
writings of S. Jerome, is extant in Latin, Greek, and Syraic, each
recension being represented by numerous MSS. In 1898, M. J. Kunze,
professor of the History of Dogma at Leipzig, put forth the opinion
that Jerome can no longer be considered as the original author of
the Vita Malchi, that he merely translated it from a Greek or a Syriac
text, adding to it a prologue of his own. In his learned monograph,
Dr. Van den Ven refutes at length the arguments of the Leipzig
professor. As Kunze neglected to consult the Greek text of the Vita
Malchi and based his objections on a Latin translation of it, known
as the Sirletto translation. Dr. Van den Ven begins his investigation
with a thorough critical study of the Greek original. He edits it for
the first time from three of the principal MSS. which contain it, viz. :
Cod. Paris, gr. 1605 (Xllth century), Cod. Paris, gr. 1598 (A. D.
993), and Cod. Vat. gr. 1660 (A. D. 916). For the Syriac text he
publishes from Add. 12175 (Vllth or Vlllth century) of the British
Museum the fragment which is wanting in Sachau's edition of the
Vita Malchi (Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der koniglichen
Bibliothek zu Berlin, XXIII Band, Verzeichniss der syrischen Hand-
schriften, Berlin, 1899, pp. 103-109). The Latin, Greek and Syriac
recensions are referred to as H. G. and S, respectively. Dr. Van den
Ven takes up in order the objections adduced by Kunze, and shows
that they contain no valid reasons for denying to Jerome the orig-
inal composition of the Vita Malchi. Not content with answering
Kunze, he establishes his conclusions by arguments of his own and
puts in clear light the incontestable literary superiority of H, the
substitution in G and S of the direct oration for the indirect oration
BOOK REVIEWS. Hg
of H, the grouping together by G and S of details found scattered
in H, the evident tendency in G and S to develop and amplify what
strikes their fancy and appeals to their imagination, and finally the
manifest allusion which the three recensions make to VergiPs de-
scription of the habits of ants (Aen., IV, 402). From all this Dr.
Van den Ven concludes that Jerome is really the original author of
the Vita Malchi, which in turn served as a model to the Greek and
Syriac compilers.
He shows, too, that S depends on G, as is clear from the similarity
of syntactical construction and the abundance of Greek words in the
Syriac text. The author might have dwelt on this at greater length
and quoted instances of Greek words perhaps more to the point. In
order to ascertain the author of G, Dr. Van den Ven makes a study
of the Vita Pauli Thebensis, and of the De viris inlustribus. He
reaches the conclusion that three different redactors translated into
Greek the hagiologic writings of Jerome, and that the Vita Malchi
and the Vita Hilarionis had a common translator, probably Sophro-
nius (De viris inlus., ch. CXXXIX). Dr. Van den Ven deserves
the thanks of Latin, Greek and Syriac scholars for his learned mono-
graph; it is a valuable contribution at once to philology, historical
criticism and patrology. Arthur A. Vaschalde.
S. Hieronymi Stridonensis Presbyteri Tractatus Contra Orige-
ncm dc Visione Esaiae quem nunc primum ex Codd. MSS.
Casinensibus Ambrosius M. Amelli Monachus Archicoenobii Mon-
tis Casini in lucem edidit et illustravit. Tipografia di Monte
Cassino, 1901.
The archives of Monte Cassino, it is well known, are one of the
richest European depositories of ancient theological manuscripts. Two
years ago the learned archivist, Don Ambrogio Amelli, made public
a very interesting text, what he holds to be one of the very earliest
efforts of Saint Jerome in the field of biblical theology— nothing less
than his doctorate thesis, issued while at Constantinople in 381 as
the guest and friend of the bishop of that city. Saint Gregory
Nazianzen, and on the eve of becoming secretary of Pope Damasus.
Don Amelli is of opinion that the actual twelfth century codex
is a transcription from a much older uncial codex that was written
quite near the time of the author. Good palaeographical criteria are
urged for this view, likewise for the opinion that the manuscript
wants something ''ulterius et vehementius, ' ' and is therefore incom-
plete, a view confirmed by the absence of the usual palaeographical
signs of manuscript-ending. That the text is the work of Saint
120 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Jerome seems to follow from the peculiar Hieronymian latinity, the
critical and exegetical principles it follows, the well-known Hier-
onymian contention that Origen's interpretation of Isaias YI, 2, is
impious, and the quality of the biblical text used. Moreover, Don
Amelli believes that the text reveals in its first youthful outburst
not only the ardent vivacious style, but the * ' prsestantiam ingenii
animique audaciam" which are characteristic of Saint Jerome. The
opusculum was probably written in Greek. The original transcrip-
tion of the present text was made by a Greek, or by some one poorly
acquainted with Latin, doubtless some Byzantine or Calabrian monk,
who copied out mechanically an almost coaeval Latin translation that
he found in an uncial manuscript, with its absence of word-separa-
tion and its ineffaceable evidences of having been taken down more
antiquo from dictation. If this work be truly (and some yet doubt
it) a new treatise of Saint Jerome, then some interesting data for
the history of the Church and theology are gained from it. Thus
Saint Jerome was an anti-Origenist in 381 and not first in 393 ; the
famous negative definition of God is not first found in Saint Augus-
tine (cf. op. cit., no. 4), but in Saint Jerome, unless both drew it
from Clement of Alexandria; the Manichaean heresy was vigorous
in New Rome in the latter quarter of the fourth century, hence the
Theodosian rigors. Perhaps the most valuable lines of the manu-
script are those that touch on the Roman Church. The author in
discussing the orders of the angelic hierarchy, refers to the distinc-
tion of order in the Apostolic college, and asserts the supreme **prin-
cipatus'* of St. Peter.^ Thomas J. Shahan.
Die Eschatologie dcs Buches Job. Yon Dr. Jakob Royer. Frei-
burg: Herder, 1901. Pp. 156. (Biblische Studien, vi, 5.)
Abraham. Yon Dr. Paul Dornstetter. Freiburg: Herder, 1902.
Pp. 278. (Biblische Studien, vii, 1-3.)
Die Einheit der Apokafypse. Yon Dr. Matthias Kohlhofer. Frei-
burg: Herder. Pp. 143. (Biblische Studien, vii, 4.)
1. There is a perennial fascination in the book of Job, so sublime
in its poesy, so poignant in the woe and perplexity of its hero. The
author of this monograph has undertaken to see what light is thrown
upon the life beyond the grave, by this inspired delineation of a soul
wrestling with the problems of human suffering. He has come to
the conclusion that Job— which he thinks was the work of Jeremias
* Nam et Apostoli cum ignorarent mensuram suam, et nescierunt quis quo
major esset, dijudicati sunt a Domino, Et ita Petro datus est principatus ut un-
usquisque suum ordinem possideret (op. cit., no. 7, p. 14).
BOOK REVIEWS. 121
—teaches not only immortality but also— though somewhat dimly—
the continuation after death of the relations of the just with God,
and the hope of their release from Sheol. Moreover, Dr. Royer adds
another to the expositors who find in the well-known passage (xix
23-27), the doctrine of the resurrection. Certainly this obscure
puzzling text bears this meaning with at least as much probability as
others given it. But the last v^rord on the crux—ii there will be a
last word— shall depend on the right view of Job as a whole, and the
answer to the queries : is the book a unit, and if so, does its tenor com-
port with advanced ideas of the future life? There are many who
deny one or both. Meanwhile, we have a right to hold to the tradi-
tional interpretation. This is strengthened by Dr. Royer 's exegesis,
but remnants of doubt are still left clinging to it. With the excep-
tion of a few ill-founded statements, such as the assertion of a tradi-
tion of judgment after death, among the Babylonians, Dr. Royer 's
work is a solid addition to the literature of Job.
2. Must Abraham be relegated to the region of myths? Comill
is alone among the advanced German critics in saying nay. The
question is one with which Christian apology is closely concerned, for
Israel by the flesh and that of the spirit alike trace their descent from
this patriarch. Dr. Domstetter's 278 pages are not too many for
a theme of such importance. He defends the historicity of the
Abraham narrative, and has brought a wealth of reading and patient
research to his task. He upholds piece by piece, all the details of the
history attacked by the adversaries. Most of the discussion centers
about names of places, men and tribes. Much space and effort is
given to adjusting the biblical chronology with the data of Babylonian
and Eg3T)tian discoveries. The author brings into requisition the
conclusions of the archaeologists Sayce and Hommel, but their judg-
ment is apt to be warped by their anti-critical stand, and on many
points they have the cocksureness justly blamed upon some biblical
critics. A copious bibliography ends the book. It is a stanchly con-
servative essay, but like other of its class, has the fault in seeing
but error in the ranks of criticism.
3. The Apocalypse was a stumbling stone to a number of Christian
fathers and doctors of the early centuries. Antioch's literal school
of exegesis, including Saint John Chrysostom, could make nothing
clear or intelligible out of it or the Apocrypha. Its visions and
mysteries furnish apt material for heretical vagaries, and this was
another cause of its long eclipse in parts of the Orient. Modern
biblical criticism has stumbled at this enigmatical book. Not that the
critics concern themselves with its inner meaning, but they would
122 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
make it a curious patchwork or mixture containing various elements,
Jewish, Judeo- Christian, Gnostic or Babylonian, according to the
presuppositions or idiosyncrasies of the analyzers. But the marked
lack of agreement in their results offers a strong point to the de-
fenders of the book's unity, and strongly suggests much subjectivity
in the critical enterprises. In *'Die Einheit der Apokalypse*' the
arguments of the assailants of its unity are scrutinized, and the
objections answered in detail, and in general, effectively. In view
of a kind of family resemblance between the New Testament book
of Revelations and pre-Christian apocalypses or apocalyptic visions,
the interesting question suggests itself: is the supernatural char-
acter of its visions compatible with an influence of older apocalyptic
passages? In other words, did the revelations vouchsafed to St.
John at Patmos, before their ultimate perception by him, pass through
a medium, formed by his mental state, and in so doing assimilate
something of their mental form and color from a fullness of Old
Testament and Hebraic thought there. The author does not go into
this question though hinting (pp. 65, 66^ 70) that some of the images
may have been drawn from the older sacred literature. Certainly,
the phraseology at least of this book of mysteries savors strongly
of the Old Testment. George J. Reid.
St. Paul Seminary.
jhe Literature of American History. A Bibliographical Guide,
in which the scope, character and comparative worth of books
in selected lists are set forth in brief notes by critics of authority.
Edited for the Am. Library Association by J. N. Larned. Bos-
ton; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902. 8°, pp. ix + 596.
Many hands have contributed to this bibliography of 4,155 num-
bers. Under the rubrics, America at large. The United States, the
United States by Sections, Canada, Spanish and Portugese America,
The West Indies, the reader will find a catalogue raisonne of a choice
library of Americana, drawn up by forty capable scholars, many of
them life-long students of the department assigned to their industry.
The late Paul Leicester Ford contributes thirteen pages of a syllabus
of existing materials for the study of American history that makes
excellent reading, even for those who are no longer beginners. Each
writer is responsible, over his initials, for the brief characterization
of the works he treats. From a Catholic point of view the omissions
are many, nor are they slight and unimportant. Thus, no account
is taken of the numerous diocesan histories published by Catholics,
nor is Finotti's unfinished " Bibliographia Catholica Americana''
BOOK REVIEWS. 123
mentioned. Possibly we are ourselves somewhat to blame, since the
science of bibliography does not count many devotees among us.
It would be unfair to pass final judgment on this work as a ** Supple-
ment" is promised, that, however, will contain only works published
in 1900 and 1901. Thomas J. Shahan.
Etudes Sur Lcs Evangiles. Par le Pere V. Rose, O.P. Paris:
Welter, 1902. Pp. xiv + 336.
This little volume is mainly a reprint of articles, which appeared
originally in the Revue Bihlique. The author is the learned
Dominican who fills the chair of exegesis at the University of Fri-
bourg. He defends, in a rigidly critical and scientific manner, the
vital truths of the Gospel assailed by the rationalistic criticism of
the time. The work is concisely done— indeed, here and there one
wishes a greater fullness of the argument— but every impartial reader
will acknowledge that it is well done, and that the apologist meets
his opponents on their own ground and with their own weapons.
The first chapter. La Tetramorphe, is a defense of the primitive
canonicity of the four Gospels against Harnack's allegations. In the
next the credibility of Matthew and Luke's narrative of the super-
natural conception is vindicated; the silence of the other evangelists
explained. The Kingdom of God is then treated ; its spirituality and
universality are proven by the words and actions of Jesus. Under
the caption, Le Pere Celeste, the writer deals with the new relations
which the Redeemer established between God the Father and man-
kind. The fifth chapter, Fils de I'Homme, discusses the problem of
Our Lord's reserve regarding his Messiahship, and contends that the
"Son of Man" was a veiled title of the Messiah, significant to those
who entered into Christ's idea of the Kingdom. In the next, Fils de
Dieu, the inner divine nature of the Messiah's person is evinced by
the words of Jesus himself, and the pre-temporal character of his
Sonship deduced from the testimonies of the evangelists. La
Redemption is the title of a chapter devoted to Jesus' virtues, to the
expiatory and vicarious nature of his redeeming Act. Finally, in Le
Tombeau trouve, Fr. Rose attempts to reconcile the two types of
accounts of Christ's apparitions after the Resurrection, and vindicates
the historic value of the evidences of this miracle.
Some views enunciated in these Etudes have an unfamiliar sound,
though they are not hereby condemned. For instance, we are not
used to be told by Catholic theologians that Jesus did not proclaim
his Messiahship until the end of the Galilean ministry; that the name
124 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
''Son of God'' as given to our Lord by the celestial voices, the angels,
demons and apostles, connotes nothing more than the Messiahship.
The Resurrection is retired to a secondary place in Christian evi-
dences. Fr. Rose thinks that he would be but a blundering apologist
who would lead an unbeliever to the empty sepulchre, without hav-
ing prepared his mind by revealing Christ's teaching about himself.
The rationalist critics are always adducing the consciousness of
Jesus ; it is to this that that our author appeals, jfirst of all ; it is the
foundation of his ''apologetic." With a clearness, brevity and per-
spicacity that leave little to be desired. Father Rose strips Christ's
self-testimony, and the witness of the evangelists, of the disguise
thrown about them by the adversaries, whom he convicts of error by
the voice of their self -chosen tribunal. George J. Reid.
St. Paul Seminaey.
Staatslexicon. Edited by Dr. Julius Bachem. (2d ed.) Freiburg:
Herder, 1902. Vol. Ill, Hegel to Mormonen.
The preceding volumes of this admirable Staatslexicon have been
already noticed in the Bulletin (April, 1902). The third volume
contains many very interesting articles which appear in the order
required by the German alphabet. "We might mention in particular :
Kapital und Kapitalismus, Lehrlings und Gesellenwesen, Kartelle,
Monopol, Lohn; the biographical sketches of Bishop von Ketteler,
Malinckrodt, de Lammenais, Montalembert ; and the articles on
Kirche und Staat, Liberalismus, Kulturkampf. The entire volume
is characterized, as are volumes I and II by methodical exposition,
completeness and sufficient bibliographical indications.
The great service that a work like this may render is understood
when we note that an intelligent grouping of articles gives one a
complete view of all questions within its scope. True, the stud-
ies are not exhaustive nor technical. In such a work, they can-
not be. But the thoughtful reader will find them complete enough
for every general purpose. The dependence of volume on volume
and of article on article, prevents one from reviewing single vol-
umes satisfactorily. They will be noticed as they appear. When
the final volume is published, a general review of the whole work
may be of service. The work merits generous support from the
Catholics of the United States who are familiar with German.
William J. E[erby.
BOOK BEVIEWS. 125
Socialism and Labor. By Bishop Spalding. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 225.
This new volume by Bishop Spalding is a compilation of some
occasional addresses together with a number of chapters which are
but remotely related. The variety of the contents makes it neces-
sary to state the titles of chapters, in order that the reader under-
stand the scope of the volume: Socialism and Labor; The Basis of
Popular Government; Are We in Danger of Revolution? Charity
and Justice; Woman and the Christian Religion; Emotion and
Truth; Education and Patriotism; Assassination and Anarchy;
Church and Country; Labor and Capital; Work and Leisure; The
Mystery of Pain; An Orator and Lover of Justice; St. Bede.
While the personality of the author is the chief bond which gives
unity to the work, the multitudes who love to read and who admire
whatever Bishop Spalding writes, will be anxious to possess this vol-
ume because it is from his pen, and they will find in it the optimism,
enthusiasm and hope which characterize him. The chapters ** Woman
and the Christian Religion,'' ** Emotion and Truth,*' "Education and
Patriotism," **Work and Leisure" and "The Mystery of Pain" are
admirable. One would recognize them as the work of the scholarly
Bishop of Peoria, no matter where one found them. The chapters
on the general phases of the social question present the author to
us in a new role. One feels at a first reading that these chapters
have not taken on the imprint of the author's personality. We are
not accustomed to meeting him in the field of statistics and economics.
Nevertheless, the treatment of the questions shows a wide acquaintance
with the elements of the social problem and an accurate appreciation
of the psychological forces in it. There is possibly not much that is
new in the treatment, yet all of the author's admirers will heartily
welcome this expression of his views and will undoubtedly receive
guidance from it.
Chapter XIII, "An Orator and Lover of Justice," is a discussion
of the character of Altgeld. Possibly some who followed the political
career of this remarjjable man will hardly agree with Bishop Spald-
ing's high estimate of Governor Altgeld; but waiving that, the address
is a splendid analysis of character and a subtle appreciation of the
forces that manifest themselves in the life of a leader.
It may not be out of place to express the hope that Bishop Spald-
ing's work as a member of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission
may later impel him to publish more on the labor question. Mean-
time, this little volume will not fail to add to his reputation as a
public spirited man and a teacher of rare power.
William J. Kerby.
126 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
A Short History of the Christian Church for students and gen-
eral readers. By John W. Moncrief. Chicago: Fleming H.
Revell Company, 1902. 8°, pp. 458.
Some books are reviewed because of intrinsic merit. The only
claim of this one to recognition is the position of its author as
Associate Professor of Church History in the University of Chicago.
Of course it has some merits. It could hardly fail to have them,
coming, as it does, from such a source. But in general, its author
has failed to write anything new in thought or method, and has
marred his wori by an occasional ignorance simply astounding, and
a more frequent display of bigotry, which is nothing less than in-
sulting to the Catholic students in the University of Chicago.
In the space at our disposal we can notice only a few points.
To begin with the bibliography. It is certainly pretentious, though
any of Professor Moncrief 's students could have done as well, and
doubtless with more modesty, not to say fairness. Catholic sources
are rarely mentioned, and always with the adjective ** Romanist"
or some signal to make the average non-Catholic reader shy of read-
ing them. In fact, one cannot resist the suspicion that the author
never read most of the books cited; otherwise it is hard to under-
stand some of the ridiculous views put forth by him. For instance,
speaking of monasticism, he puts down the following as its ** psy-
chological cause": **The deep desire planted in the soul to escape
contamination is universal. This led the heathen to believe that
matter and sense are essentially evil — and the Christian to the same
conclusion." Merely this and nothing more. Professor Moncrief
as a philosopher of history is certainly unique. We do know of a
widespread sect, half pagan and half Christian, known as Manichae-
ism, which did hold matter to be essentially evil. But it is news
indeed, to learn that the cultured Greek held the same, and down-
right astounding to find a similar belief attributed to Christians uni-
versally, to men and women who believed in a resurrection of the
body and condemned Manichgeism as a heresy. As for monasticism,
has Professor Moncrief ever read of St. Francis of Assisi or St.
Catharine of Siena, whose greatest delight was to wander through
the fields and pluck wild flowers and talk to the birds and weave
garlands of daisies and sing for very joy of being close to nature?
Farther on this writer (p. 153) seems less confident in his theory,
and so he advances another ** psychological cause" no less wonder-
ful: **In monasticism, with all its perversions and later corruptions,
we have a foregleam of the Reformation" because it was **a great
protest of the individual" against a decaying constitutional church.
BOOK REVIEWS. I27
By this reasoning then the belief that ''matter and sense are essen-
tially evil" was a ''foregleam of the Reformation." The author,
perhaps, will object to such a logical deduction because (p. 306) he
classes ''Luther's marriage to Catherine von Bora— an escaped nun"
among the notable "events indicating the progress of reform."
Surely, there was no contempt of matter in that affaire du coeur.
And Luther were the last to despise matter or the enjoyment of it
whether as "wine, women or song." Speaking of this "idyll" of
the Reformation, we offer a suggestion to our author. He commences
Modem Church History (p. 34) with the "posting of the ninety-
five theses" of Luther. Would it not be better to begin it with
Catharine's escape from the convent, or at least, with her marriage
with Luther? That would have the advantage of linking the Ref-
ormation with Monasticism and Manichaeism, giving it a logical
continuity, so to speak, with antiquity. We trust the reader will
not hold us guilty of levity in throwing out this suggestion. Far
be it from us to be otherwise than solemn in dealing with such a
solemn subject.
Leaving the higher atmosphere of philosophy and coming down
to particular facts, we are sorry to hold the author guilty of down-
right slander. One need only be a gentleman to brand as such the
statement concerning the Jesuits (p. 364) that "among their prin-
ciples we find the following: the end justifies the means." As
Catholics, Jesuits could not hold such a principle, and we formally
challenge Professor Moncrief to produce evidence that they do. We
would not be surprised to read such a slander in a penny Sunday
School paper, published in some backwoods village, but we have no
words with which to properly express our contempt when finding it
printed in a Church History, written by an Associate Professor in
one of our leading universities. It was our impression that such
a style of controversy was out-of-date, but it would seem that civil-
ization among some people has not progressed far enough to make
them abandon the use of chain-shot and dumdum bullets in warfare.
However much Professor Moncrief may disapprove of Jesuit prin-
ciples, he ought at least give them the credit of being too wise to
be fools, and too upright individually, to hold a principle which is
stigmatized by all honorable men of every religious belief.
The author's acquaintance with Catholic doctrine is, to put it
mildly, not profound. Even the simplest, most elementary prin-
ciples of Catholic belief are misinterpreted or unknown. Thus on
page 251 we read of "worship of the Blessed Virgin," "Saint wor-
ship." Now, no Catholic ever did or does now "worship" anyone
128 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN,
but God. Worship, as used nowadays, means adoration, and Pro-
fessor Moncrief is strangely ignorant if lie does not know so. At
least, his wording is ambiguous and misleading.
Likewise (p. 422), he evinces a fundamental ignorance of the
meaning of Papal Infallibility, when he triumphantly writes of the
decree restoring the Jesuits: **This infallible decree repudiates the
infallible decree of Clement XIV (1771) which forbade the restora-
tion of the Jesuits forever." Now this is simply astounding. Any
child in a parochial school in Chicago could tell Professor Moncrief
that Papal Infallibility concerns only teaching of faith and morals,
and not such cases as the actual erection or dissolution of a religious
society, which acts are purely disciplinary.
Throughout most of the book, however, the author is not more
bigoted than many other Protestant writers of popular text-books.
He is merely more than usually ignorant. But in his treatment of
modern Catholicity he passes the bounds of decency. Of Leo XIII
he thus speaks (p. 427) : **As we follow the subtle movements of
this pope, and see that when he here and there yields a secondary
matter it is only that he may gain a point of greater importance, and
when we see him stirring up strife within nations and between
nations, with a view to personal advantage, and see, too, his minions
going to all the ends of civilization," etc. Then of Rome in gen-
eral, **we reluctantly admit the truth of Rector Schwab's statement
in his introduction to Nippold's Papacy in the Nineteenth Century
*True; we need no longer fear bodily harm. . . . But are there not
other considerations. ... Is not the possibility of national decay
something to care about? The danger from the Church of Rome
to-day is not the stake or torture ; but it is the danger from insidious
moral and spiritual forces threatening to stop a nation's progress,
to corrupt a nation's ethical standard, to darken a nation's intellect.
The greatest task which God has appointed to the religious forces
of this country is to build up a government in city, state and nation
which shall be pure and just; and the papal system is the most de-
termined enemy to the accomplishment of this task.' " These are
incendiary utterances, and they bring this manual beneath the ordi-
nary level of its kind.
At the sight of such ignorance and bigotry in the person of an
associate professor of the University of Chicago, one cannot help
asking himself if this be the best product of Chicago culture. The
dedication to Eri Baker Hulbert, Professor of History in the same
university, whom the author admiringly terms his * 'faithful friend
and wise counsellor," would suggest that the department of history
BOOK REVIEWS, 129
in general was not unsympathetic, even though the average of
scholarship might be higher than that displayed by the author.
However, this may be, one thing is clear, to wit, that Catholic
students in the University of Chicago would do well to select their
courses with discrimination; or still better, to attend a Catholic uni-
versity, where they can be sure of not hearing their faith slandered
and of making a more reliable course in ecclesiastical history than
would seem to be accessible on the shores of Lake Michigan.
^^ ^ ^ LuciAN Johnston.
Notre Dame College, Baltimobe.
First Lessons in the Science of the Saints. By R. J. Meyer,
S.J. St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1902. Pp. 320.
Practical Preaching for Priests and People (Second Series) :
Twenty-five Plain Catholic Sermons on Useful Subjects, with a
Synopsis of Each Sermon. By Fr. Clement Holland. London:
Thomas Baker, 1902. Pp. 422.
Forty-five Sermons, Written to Meet Objections of the Present Day.
By Rev. James McKernan. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pus-
tet & Co., 1902. Pp. 291.
Earth to Heaven. By Monsignor John Vaughan. St. Louis, Mo. :
B. Herder, 1902. Pp. 184.
1. Father Meyer's position of prominence and authority in the
Society of Jesus bespeaks for his new volume a respectful attention.
Upon examination the reader will find his anticipations realized.
These pages give abundant evidence of faithful study of approved
spiritual teachers, of close acquaintance with the vagaries of human
character, and of a zealous longing to inspire ordinary Christians
with the ambition of holiness. The voliune is adapted to reach
about the same class of readers as that to which Father Faber's
writings were addressed; the subjects treated are the ones usually
touched upon in Retreat Conferences, Treatises on Perfection, Man-
uals of the Virtues, and the like ; but while the writer may be said
to resemble Father Faber in directness, in earnestness and in gen-
eral temper, his plainness is in contrast with the poetic fervor and
adornment of the popular Oratorian's writings. The chapters are
supplied with ample proof of doctrinal soundness, in the form of
references to such authorities as St. Ignatius, St. Francis de Sales,
St. Thomas and Suarez. Simple language, a fairly interesting style
and a mildy philosophic tone, form characteristics that should en-
courage the prospective reader.
9CUB
130 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
2. An admirable point about Father Holland's Sermons— a char-
acteristic that will recommend the book especially to a busy, quick-
thinking priest— is the little synopsis that stands at the head of
each discourse. As to the sermons themselves, there is a good deal
of practical common sense interwoven with the treatment of the
moral and doctrinal subjects, some of the sermons being composed
quite in the missionary's vein. In point of elegance they yield the
palm to other compositions, but, of course, they have been directed
to the attainment of a more practical end than the production of
elaborately constructed periods.
3. Father McKernan's contribution of forty-five sermons should
be a "useful acquisition to both priests and laity. The author has
paid almost exclusive attention to objections nowadays current against
the faith; over against the positions and the arguments of those who
assail or doubt Catholic doctrines he places the Church's teaching
and the reasons that support it. Brevity, simplicity and ardent faith
are apparent in his pages. It is in the devotional sermons, however,
that his best work seems to have been done. One notices with some
regret the lack of a devotional sermon on the Blessed Sacrament,
though — perhaps in compensation — there is a good one on the Holy
Name. Oftentimes a careful and fervent exhortation on the Blessed
Sacrament will profit both the good and the bad, both the faithful
and the unbeliever, far more than a most learned discourse in proof
of transsubstantiation.
4. In Mgr. Vaughan's sermons one discovers a very noticeable
concern as to matters rhetorical. We make this comment not by
way of reproach but rather as a commendation. For though he
does not always succeed in escaping the pitfalls that beset the **fine
writer," yet he does attain to a varied excellence that furthers him
in his endeavor to ^ attention upon the doctrinal truths he is ex-
posing. His language is figurative, lively, vivid; he employs enter-
taining allusions and illustrations; he is brief, positive and clear.
It is in the non-controversial sermons, however, that he appears to
be most successful; his genius runs rather to explanation than to
argument; he preaches more effectively than he demonstrMes. In
the preface contributed by the Bishop of Emmaus are some rather
unintelligible sentences due no doubt to an oversight in the proof-
reading.
J. McSOELEY.
St. Thomas College,
Catholic Univebsity.
BOOK REVIEWS. 181
The Harmony of the Religious Life. By Herman J. Heuser.
New York: Benziger Bros., 1902. 8°, pp. — .
Father Heuser 's book is intended for religious belonging to
teaching communities. It is constructed in the manner of an elab-
orate allegory wherein the religious life and virtues are conceived
as an organ built to give melodious expression to worship of the
Most High. This novel conveyance for the ever-old lessons of
humility, patience, poverty and obedience, serves its purpose ad-
mirably. It appeals to one with something of the quaintness, force
and picturesqueness of an Oriental parable, and recalls the wisdom
of the householder who has at command both new things and old.
The latter pages of the book are taken up with counsels of Christian,
pedagogy. For these alone, we should have to thank the author for
a good, strong, stimulating work. Fortunate it will be for the great
host of children now in our parochial schools, if they are given the
wholesome training for which Father Heuser makes a plea. For-
tunate, too, those teachers who will assimilate the deep and truly
spiritual principles which he lays down for the accomplishing of
what he calls ' * a continuous creation through the action of the Divine
Spirit,*' the unfolding of the natural faculties and supernatural
possibilities which God has hidden in the mind and heart of a child.
Joseph McSorley.
The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of
Alexandria, in the Syriac version of Athanasius of Nisibis.
Edited and translated by E. W. Brooks, M.A. Vol. I (Text),
Part I. London and Oxford : published for the Text and Trans-
lation Society by Williams and Norgate, 1902. Pp. ix + 259.
The Text and Translation Society, established for the purpose of
editing and translating the Oriental Texts chiefly preserved at the
British Museum, issues as the first number of its series of publications
an edition of the sixth book of the select letters of Severus of
Antioch (539) in the Syriac version of Athanasius of Nisibis (684).
This edition is the work of E. W. Brooks, a scholar already will
known for his excellent contributions to Syriac literature. The
present volume contains Part I of the Syriac text, the English trans-
lation of which wiU appear about Easter. Part II of the text and
Part II of the translation will be published in as quick succession
as possible, and an introduction deaUng with the work of Severus
will follow with the translation.
The Letters of Severus of Antioch, lost except for a few fragments
in Greek, are preserved in at least three Syriac versions; of these^
132 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
two are represented by a few isolated letters or fragments ; but of the
third, that of Athanasins of Nisibis, the sixth book is found almost
complete in two Syriac MSS. of the British Museum, viz. Add. 12181
and Add. 14600, both of the eighth century. Brooks' edition is
based on these two MSS., to which he refers as A, B, respectively.
Variant readings are given from Add. 12154 of the British Museum
(about A. D. 800), and from Cod. Paris Syr. 62 of the ninth century.
The Greek fragments which are extant are also published in full.
The first part of the text contains, besides the Syriac preface and
headings, 66 letters, 63 in Section I (pp. 1-221) and 3 in Section II
(pp. 222-231). These letters throw considerable light on the work
and influence of Severus of Antioch whom Tillemont calls ''the second
founder of the Eutychian heresy (Memoires, XVI, 682). They
certainly confirm what we know of his opposition to Nestorianism (p.
42), and of his bitter hatred towards St. Flavian of Antioch, to
whom he refers as "a trafficker in divine things" (p. 145). Seven
of the letters are addressed to different parties in Apamea, and two
to the archimandrite of Mar Bassus, a monastery which was a hotbed
of Monophysitism in the first quarter of the sixth century. The
majority of the letters deal with points of ecclesiastical discipline;
such is the letter of Philoxenus of Mabbogh (No. 48) asking his
advice as to whether those who had received ordination in considera-
tion of temporal gifts should be granted absolution, upon their plea
of ignorance of the canons, the letter to Eustace the presbyter (No.
35) telling him that a slave cannot be ordained priest, until he has
secured his freedom, the letter to Dionysius of Tarsus (No. 33) advis-
ing him to act leniently with a priest who was possessed of the devil,
but not to allow him to minister at the altar. This suffices to show
the wide range of topics covered by the letters as well as their im-
portance for the student of Church History. Mr. Brooks is entitled
to the gratitude of all scholars for placing within their reach the
hitherto inaccessible letters of Severus of Antioch. Taking this
volume as an index of those that will follow, we may bespeak a
hearty welcome to the future publications of the Text and Transla-
tion Society. Arthur Vaschalde.
The Relation of Experimental Psychology to Philosophy. By
Mgr. Desire Mercier. Translated by Rev. Edmund J. Wirth,
Ph.D., D.D. New York: Benziger Bros., 1902. Pp. 62.
Dr. Wirth gives us in this little volume an English version of a
lecture delivered before the Royal Belgian Academy by the well-
known professor of philosophy in the University of Louvian. Both
BOOK REVIEWS. 133
the original and the translation are useful; they place before a large
circle of readers the real value of a science which has not always
been looked on with favor by adherents of the spiritualistic philosophy.
Although it was not possible within the limits of a lecture to thor-
oughly discuss any of the problems at issue, the principal points of
contact between experimental results and philosophical principles are
clearly indicated. The general conclusion is that experimental
psychology, far from justifying the materialistic position ** widens
the road of progress for true philosophy and furnishes it with val-
uable information." It is interesting to read this verdict from one
who is a recognized authority on Scholasticism; and, doubtless, the
result for many minds will be that surpassing peace which is de-
sirable. At the same time, it would be worth while asking just why
so much "valuable information" should be of the important sort,
and why the true philosophy should be content to follow scientific
movements which are inaugurated under foreign auspices.
E. A. Pace.
The Middle Ages. Philip Van Ness Myers. New York: Ginn &
Co., 1902. 8°, pp. vi + 454.
Mr. Myers possesses in a marked degree the art of book-making,
i. e.y the art of making a book so attractive that it is a pleasure to
read it, nay even to look at it, to feel it. He knows the best kind of
paper and binding and print; just where to place a map or a foot-
note; his ability to pack a whole century into a few pages and do it
well is marvellous. And though he is not learned and makes many
blunders he has that rare knack of picking out the chief events-
movements from the tangled web of history— and presenting them
free from minor events which might tend to confuse the reader.
Then too he hits upon very excellent books in his bibliographical
notes, though his own text does not show great research. In this,
one of his numerous books, all these excellent qualities are foimd in
an unusual degree. It is one of those little histories which one
keeps around him for quick reference, because he is always sure of
finding what he wants quickly and said clearly. From a controversial
point of view we should call the work moderate. Occasionally things
are said offensively, nor is the author always correct in his state-
ments as to Catholic positions. But such blunders are due more to
ignorance than ill will. Because, as above said, Mr. Myers is not and
does not pretend to be scientific. His aim is to compile a tolerably cor-
rect, fair and very readable work, and we must say he has succeeded
in doing so. LucuN Johnston.
NoTEE Dame College, Baltimore.
134 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
(Euvres Oratolres dc Bossuet. Edition critique complete, par
I'abbe J. Lebarq, Docteur es-lettres, Vol. I-VII. Lille; Desclee
De Brouwer et Cie, 1890-1897. 8°. 38 francs.
Our readers will scarcely be displeased that, somewhat tardily
it is true, we bring to their knowledge this valuable publication of
the late abbe Lebarq. It seems incredible that for the first time the
sermons of Bossuet lie before us in a text as like as possible to that
which he wrote or preached. It seems still more incredible that so
little remains— two hundred and thirty-five sermons— of the fifty-
four years of his magisterial preaching (1648-1702). Nevertheless,
we welcome these precious volumes that contain the output of the
most sublime of modern Christian minds, a mind very clear, simple
and logical, that seemed bathed always in an atmosphere of doctrinal
intelligence and elevation. He was one of the makers of that great
weapon of human activity— the French language. In his hands it
was made to express with precision and fulness whatever was true,
pure, universal, of general human interest. He created the language
of philosophical history, and, first since St. Augustine, outlined with
massive strength and perfect sense of proportion, a consistent philos-
ophy of history. He is truly the Michael Angelo of history, before
whose vision only the majestic, the grandiose, the divine, find favor,
whose spirit seems always touched with an apocalyptic fire, that
shines in his phrase with celestial warmth and sweetness.
In his life time only one sermon appeared with his full appro-
bation, that on the Unity of the Church, preached at the opening
of the famous Assembly of 1682. Already, indeed, his six great
funeral orations had been printed, but under pressure from the
Court ; a seventh, that on Anne of Austria, seems lost forever. Not
until 1772-1778 was a complete collection of his sermons printed by
the Benedictine Deforis, from manuscripts that had come down in
the family of Bossuet. The methods and principles of this edition
— whose content, strangely enough, has never been increased — were
very faulty from the view-point of modern exact scholarship. Nor
is the edition of 1815 to be regarded as superior. The Lachat edi-
tion (1862-1864) furnished M. Lebarq with no little material for
criticism in his **Histoire Critique de la predication de Bossuet'*
(Paris, 1889). In the partial editions of Gandar, Gazier, Brune-
tiere, Rebelliau, judgment and science seem to have dealt, for the
first time, with the text of the Eagle of Meaux. The editions of
Bar-le-Duc (1870) Paris (1870-74) Lyons (1877) have no merit of
their own— M. Lebarq declares them "replicas'' in various propor-
tions of the editions of 1815, Gandar and Lachat.
BOOK REVIEWS. 135
Each sermon in this edition, is placed in its historical *' milieu.'*
Philosophical and historical notes accompany the text. Besides a
useful introduction there are several pages on the grammar of Bos-
suet. A seventh volume contains a complete index, and each volume
is provided with a concordance that permits comparison with all
previous editions. The volumes are printed in large and fresh type,
and offer also specimens of the handwriting of Bossuet, as well as
portraits of the great orator. Five of the volumes contain his ser-
mons before 1670. One is suJOacient for all that is left of the active
episcopal life of Bossuet from 1670 to 1704; a space of thirty-four
years. What would we not give for the full content of those years,
his sermons at Meaux, in the villages of his diocese, to his priests
and nuns, the occasional discourses of so varied a calling! Hence-
forth, the sermons of Bossuet must be read and cited in this edition.
It is a monument put up by the nineteenth century to the memory
of one who has been called, nor without reason **the last of the
fathers.'' Thomas J. Shahan.
The Letters of St. Teresa. Translated from the Spanish by the
Rev. John Dalton. London : Thomas Baker, 1 Soho Square, 1902;
8°, pp. 304.
The value of private letters as a means of effecting intimate ac-
quaintance with historic personages had been remarked time and
again— never more truly than in the case of Saint Teresa. Without
her letters the Autobiography and the Book of Foundations lose
their significance in great measure; with them we are able to pene-
trate far into the saint's personality, to realize the details of her
wonderful career, to appreciate accurately her mental keenness, her
splendid business talent, her quick wit, her affectionate disposition,
her striking bravery. A sense of all this no doubt has cooperated
with personal reverence and scholarly zeal in suggesting those pains-
taking careful researches, which in recent years have revealed so
much that is new with regard to the text and the significance of Saint
Teresa's Letters.
A complete enumeration of the various editions and translations
of this work, while not without interest, would be rather to take us
too far afield. Let us remind ourselves, however, that not until
1657 did the public receive the first Spanish edition— one painfully
incomplete and containing but 65 letters. By 1748 sucfh advance had
been made that a French translation of 107 letters then appeared,
and a little later, a more careful edition was made at Madrid, thanks
to the labor of a conmiittee of three appointed by the general of the
136 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Discalced Carmelites in Spain. Until very recently the best known
French translations have been the three volumes of Migne (1840-
1845) and those of P. Bouix, S.J. (1861 and 1882). In 1900 ap-
peared a new edition increased by some 70 new Letters and some 400
fragments never before published in French, due to the scholarly re-
searches of Father Gregory of Saint Joseph, Discalced Carmelite.
As to the English translations, one containing seventy letters was
put forth by Father Dalton of Northampton in 1853. For reasons
unknown, it was never followed up by succeeding volumes as readers
had been led to hope. This volume was re-edited in 1893 and again
in 1902; its reimpression has suggested the present notice. The
publication will be regarded with mingled feelings of satisfaction
and annoyance by everyone familiar with the writings of Saint
Teresa. The contents of the book of course, are full of charm,
interest and endless inspiration, yet that this volume should be pub-
lished in its present form is nothing less than an outrage upon our
sense of propriety and a sad reflection upon our literary zeal. The
plates appear to be new, some misprints at least have been rectified,
and the book is sold cheaply— but beyond that, absolutely no con-
sulting of public interest seems to have been attempted. In the
edition of 1893 *'Suarez" was written down **Saurez^' and **Saurez**
he still remains. By some unmistakable oversight the old edition
repeated a letter first as No. VIII, and again as No. XXII— not even
that easily discovered error has been rectified. There is not the
slightest evidence of any use of recently acquired information. The
publication before us certainly will effect good; our sincere wish is
that its fruit may be multiplied a hundredfold: while it remains the
only attainable edition of Saint Teresa's Letters, surely English-
speaking Catholics cannot help feeling stung to shame.
Joseph McSorley.
St. Thomas' Colleoe.
Poems of Ovid : Selections. Edited by Charles W. Bain. New
York: The Macmillan Co. Pp. xiv + 461.
The justification for adding this latest accession to the already
rather numerous editions of Ovid is found, as the editor says **in
the growing demand for some easier poetry than Vergil's in the
earlier years of Latin reading. It has long been felt, indeed, that
VergiPs syntax, vocabulary and scansion require a much surer
knowledge, and consequently a longer acquaintance with the Latin
tongue than the first years can possibly afford. Hence, if the courses
in Latin poetry are to be orderly, that is progressive from the less
BOOK REVIEWS. 137
to the more difficult, some reading, not quite beyond the young
mind, must be substituted in the earlier years. Now the poems of
Ovid, in the opinion of Mr. Bain, are the best preparation for Vergil.
Their form and content are not beyond the beginner's grasp, and in
addition the "Metamorphoses," filled with myth and fable, are well
calculated to attract and hold the attention of the young, "and at
the same time to clear the way for the more arduous work to come."
The volume under discussion is then, essentially, a preparatory
school edition. It is made up of about four thousand verses, three
thousand of which are carefully annotated, the remaining one thou-
sand, intended for rapid reading, are also accompanied with a brief
commentary. The text followed is that of A. Riese in his critical
edition of 1889. The editor, Mr. Bain, claims the capitalization and
punctuation as his own. In addition to the commentary, with its
careful solution of grammatical problems and its lucid exposition of
dark mythological lore, the volume is further enriched with numer-
ous illustrations, a full vocabulary and a list of word-groups, from
which list it is expected that the scholar will be enabled to retain the
words most frequently occurring, because their rendition will be
the result of his own intelligent effort. It seems, however, that
the same end could be attained more easily and with quite as much
profit by requiring the young student to commit to memory selected
and interpreted passages. Language is not learned entirely by
grouping together radically related words, and then memorizing
them. The appreciation of word-collocation in the Latin sentence
is of importance in determining with accuracy the meaning of its
verbal constituents. Besides words are related syntactically as well
as radically. And the memory of phrases and construction actually
occurring will do much to dispel that very vagueness which of neces-
sity attaches to radical elements.
That the volume is the result of considerable experience in the
class-room is evident, both from the commentary and from the selec-
tions chosen. It cannot therefore but prove helpful to the teacher
and scholar who have the pleasant task of reading the lines of
"Rome's sweet sad singer." John D. Maguire.
The Teaching of Latin and Greek, in the Secondary School. By
Charles E. Bennett, A.B., and George P. Bristor, A.M., Professor
in Cornell University. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1901.
Pp. xvi -f 330.
In the initial chapter of this welcome contribution to Latin and
Greek pedagogics, Professor Bennett takes the following position:
138 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Language is the supreme instrument of education; by language is
meant the study of one's own language, which is achieved incom-
parably better by the indirect method of studying another language.
In the present instance, this other language is Latin. Professor
Bennett's analysis of the process of mental gymnastics through
which the student of Latin must inevitably pass is thorough— all that
could be desired. He quotes from President Eliot,^ and then points
out clearly and logically how the proper study of Latin contributes in
an eminent degree to the four essential processes or operations of the
educated mind: viz., ** observing accurately; recording correctly;
comparing, grouping, inferring justly; and expressing the result of
these operations with clearness and force.''
Professor Bennett is undoubtedly right in maintaining that
"Training in the Vernacular" is the first and most important reason
for studying Latin.*' This proposition is well substantiated by
citing the testimony of Cicero, who declares in his **De Optimo genera
oratorum" that he found careful translation from Greek into Latin
a very useful exercise. His quotations from Lowell and Dettweiler
are also apropos in confirmation of the above statement. Indeed, the
great Cardinal Newman owed no small share of his command over the
English language to his constant study of Cicero, of whom he could
truly say as Dante said of Vergil, "My Master, thou, and guide."
Professor Bennett states his case clearly and his positive proofs
are conclusive. His negative proofs, however, or his discussion of
Latin vs. Modem Languages, will scarcely carry conviction. He gives
two reasons for giving Latin a decided preference to either French
or German. First the ideas and concepts of the Latin language
are remoter from those of English than the ideas and concepts of
the modem languages. This argument, if pushed to its logical con-
clusion, would lead to the substitution of Greek for Latin, and per-
haps, of Sanskrit for either Greek or Latin. Remoteness of ideas
and concepts is a rather weak plea in the question at issue. Besides,
the statement, "all modern thought is essentially kindred," will
hardly pass the pickets of accuracy. The second reason urged in
favor of Latin as compared with the modern languages, is that Latin
has supplied us with so large a share of our own vocabulary. These
two reasons combined are slightly contradictory. Remoteness and
contiguity generally exclude each other. His argument drawn from
experience and his reply to Herbert Spencer, to Balin and to the less
radical Frederick Paulsen, are decidedly stronger and more accurate
than his two theoretical reasons for preferring Latin to French or
*" American Contributions to Civilization," p. 203 ft.
»
BOOK REVIEWS. I39
German as an instrument of secondary education. Professor Bennett
criticizes what he styles the ''Typical Beginner's Book of To-day."
The student's hard work is apparently lessened by these books,
but as a result ** pupils to-day are conspicuously inferior in the
mastery of their inflections to the pupils of twenty-five years ago, as
well as conspicuously inferior in their general familiarity with the
Latin Grammar." The alleged overtraining of the memory has its
sad consequences. In a chapter on Roman Pronunciation, Professor
Bennett states the incontrovertible evidence for the same as taught
at present in most of our American schools and colleges, and then
strongly advocates its immediate removal. The experience of his
last fifteen years in the class-room has led him to the conclusion that
the Roman Pronunciation is a labyrinth of difficulties and yields no
profit for the amount of time spent in its acquisition. His criticisms
are not mere assertions; they do not end with the bitterness of the
moment. Remedies are carefully pointed out and practical sugges-
tions offered for the betterment of the situation. His plea for the
return of Vergil's Ecologues to the class-room cannot fail to elicit the
sympathy of every teacher who appreciates those consummate trans-
lations and imitations of the Idyls of Theocritus. Professor Bennett's
reflections, suggestions and assertions on the subject under considera-
tion are supported by years of experience. Young teachers will find
an admirable guide in this contribution to modem pedagogics; and
though many of the author's statements will not pass unchallenged,
every teacher may glean a few useful hints from the ** Teaching of
Latin in the Secondary Schools." J. J. Trahey.
Holy Ceoss College.
School Administration in Municipal Government. By Frank
Rollins, Ph.D. Vol. XI, No. 1, Columbia University Contribu-
tions to Philosophy, Psychology and Education. New York: The
MacmiUan Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 106.
Within the brief pages of this brochure, the author points out
many of the difficulties encountered by the viUage school in its rapid
development into the municipal school system. Much of his infor-
mation is derived from personal correspondence with *' superinten-
dents and other school officers in all the cities of the United States
numbering more than one hundred inhabitants, and in an equal
number of cities having a population of nearest to fifty thousand."
On the basis of this information, there is a brief treatment of
such questions as The Right and the Need of the State's Interference
in the Control of the City School; The Necessity of Separating
140 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
School Administration from other Departments of Municipal Gov-
ernment to the end that the School may be Wholly Removed from
the Influence of Politics ; Sources of Appointment ; Qualifications and
Tenure of Office of Members of the School Board, Superintendents,
Principals, Teachers and Janitors. The author also calls attention
to the need felt in every city of stimulating local interest in the
school, and to the methods adopted in Brookline, Mass., St. Paul,
Minn., and some other cities, to meet this need. Finally, the author
discusses, briefly and on a purely theoretical basis, the peculiar ad-
vantages for social education offered by the schools of a great city.
It is to be regretted that the scope of Dr. Rollins' work did not
permit him to address his questions to representative grade teacherjs
in the various cities. The grade teachers' point of view on many
of the questions at issue, is well worth considering. The recent
work of the Chicago grade teachers in compelling the owners of
municipal franchises to pay their taxes, and in securing initiative
referendum legislation, is such a conspicuous illustration of the
power of the grade teacher as a factor in social education as well
as in municipal reform, that the absence of any mention of this
work by Dr. Rollins will be regretted by many readers of his very
instructive brochure. Thomas E. Shields.
Etudes Bibliques. Par Alfred Loisy. Paris: Picard et Fils, 1901.
8°, pp. 160.
This little book— a second and enlarged edition— is important out
of all proportion to its size. It is a generalization of the author's
biblical studies, comprising the results of his labors, and a plea for
their acceptance or at least for their toleration. It may be called
M. Loisy 's apology; better, the apology of the advanced school of
French Catholic exegetes, of which the Abbe is the most distin-
guished and most outspoken representative. Courage, bordering on
temerity, critical acumen and literary talent, have made the former
professor of the Institut Catholique of Paris and the present in-
structor in Comparative Religion at the Sorbonne, a strong factor
and storm-center in the present renascence of critical theology in
France.
M. Loisy is fortunate in his style. Being French, it is of course
lucid. This language offers, in general, a cool, calm march of ideas,
an exact harmony of thought and expression, and an absence of
technicality and learned apparatus, which unite to make a model
literary medium for the savant and critic, who wishes to make him-
self intelligible outside the circle of the initiated few. As much as
BOOK REVIEWS. 141
any living master of the language, M. Loisy has the rare and potent
gift of clothing scientific thought in popular, form.
It is well known that the Abbe Loisy is a keen critic, and at the
same time one convinced that what is to many a revolutionary biblical
criticism is nowise irreconcilable with Catholic faith, but on the con-
trary is a gain for the truth and a necessary arm for the successful
defence of the written Word. Though a believer in the existence of
** relative truths" in the Bible-a term which on its reverse side
spells relative errors— M. Loisy holds that for Catholics to discuss
the question of inerrancy from a purely theological point of view
is irritating and inconclusive. He wishes the opposing schools to
seek in Catholic criticism mutual reconciliation and a point of union
against the forces of unbelief. He sagaciously remarks that while
Catholic scholars are quarreling over the crux of biblical inerrancy,
rationalism is making formidable assaults upon the authority of the
Bible as a whole. **I1 ne s'agit plus de savoir si la Bible contient
des erreurs, mais bien de savoir ce que la Bible contient de verite.
*Que vaut la Bible T Telle est la question que Texegese non cath-
olique fait retentir a nos oreilles par un si grand nombre de voix
qu'il n'est plus en notre pouvoir de ne pas I'entendre. Nous de-
vons opposer a la science rationaliste la science catholique de
I'Ecriture."
The fourth gospel is a favorite study of M. Loisy and it is the
one in which he shows the greatest originality of mind. Yet he
disclaims entire novelty here, as he finds in the attitude of Christian
fathers and a few old expositors towards St. John's gospel and other
Scriptures, at least the principles which he develops and applies so
strikingly and sometimes with luminous effect. The question of
authenticity is not directly treated; it has a secondary importance
in the writer's eyes. The learned critic seems to still cherish some
reserves on this point and is not an outspoken adherent of the tradi-
tional authorship. He is also rather non-committal on the delicate
matters of the seeming variations between St. John and the synop-
tists, and the historicity of the former, though it is evident enough
that he thinks that historical completeness and chronological order
are subordinated to the evangelist's doctrinal purpose.
M. Loisy is least reserved and most satisfactory in his character-
ization of John's spirit and method. The gospel is symbolic and
mystic. The evangelist's principle is that our Lord's actions and
words are full of deep-lying meaning. He selects certain miracles
and acts of the desired symbolic import and completes them by the
Saviour's words. The words and deeds elucidate each other; but
142 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the form of the discourse is St. John's, who in the course of years
has re-conceived the Gospel of Jesus, and translates its symbols into
a language and form which are drawn from his own mind and
spiritual consciousness, while ever expressing the Gospel of Jesus.
In other words, the fourth evangel is an inspired interpretation,
whose terms were neither revealed nor dictated, but sprang spon-
taneously from the evangelist's thought, '*qui est comme la con-
science de Teglise chretienne." M. Loisy has closely studied this
difficult but fascinating book. It seems to the reviewer that he has
laid his finger upon the key to one of its greatest problems.
George J. Reid.
St. Paul Seminaey.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Les Infiltrations Kantiennes et Protestantes et le Clerge Fran^ais,
Etudes Complementaires. Par J. Fontaine, S.J. Paris: Betaux,
1902. 8°, pp. 437.
Letters from a Self -Made Merchant to his Son. Boston : Small, May-
nard & Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 312.
The Katipunan. An illustrated historical and biographical study of
the society which brought about the Insurrection of 1896-1898
and 1899, taken from Spanish State Documents; The Katipunan
or The Rise and Fall of the Filipino Commune by Francis St.
Clair. Manila: Tip. Amigos del Pais. Palacio 258, 1902. 16%
pp. 335.
Vexata Qusestio, or what shall we do with the Friar ? A brief sketch
of three Centuries of History in the Philippines. By W. Breck-
nock Watson. Manila: ibid., 1901. 8°, pp. 44.
A New Catechism of Christian Doctrine and Practice. By Rt. Rev.
James Belford, D.D. Notre Dame, Ind. : The Ave Maria, 1902.
8°, pp. 115.
The Living Church and the Living God. By Rev. Charles Coppens,
S.J. New York: Benziger, 1902. 8°, pp. 32.
The Wage of Gerald O'Rourke, Christmas Drama in three Acts.
Transposed by M. R. Thiele from a story by Francis J. Finn, S.J.
New York: Benziger, 1902. 8°, pp. 47.
Storia e Pr.egio dei Libri Corali Officiali, Studio del Sac. F. X.
Haberl. Rome: Pustet, 1902. 8°, pp. 69.
L'Uso del Canto Gregoriano tradizionale, etc. Rome: Pustet, 1902.
8% pp. 43.
BOOK REVIEWS, 143
The Accadians of Madawaska, Maine. By Kev. C. W. Collins. Bos-
ton: 1902. 8°, pp. 66. (N. E. Cath. Hist. Society Publications,
no. 3.)
Memorial of the Most Reverend Michael Augustine Corrigan, D.D.,
Third Archbishop of New York. Compiled and published by
authority. New York; The Cathedral Library Association, 1902.
8°, pp. xii + 234.
La Question Biblique chez les Catholiques de !f ranee au XIX® Siecle.
Par Albert Houtin. 2d ed. Paris: Picard, 1902. 8°, pp. 378.
Un peuple antique au pays de Menelek: Les Galla (dits d'origine
gauloise), Grande Nation Africaine. 2d edition. Par le R. P.
Martial de Salviac. Paris: H. Oudin, 1902. 8°, pp. 353.
Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten drei
Jahrhunderten. Von Ad. Harnack, Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902. 8°,
pp. 561.
Three Letters of Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabbogh (485-519). Edited
from Syriac Manuscripts in the Vatican Library. Rome: 1902.
8°, pp. 190. (Catholic University Dissertation.)
Jean-Marie de La Mennais (1780-1860). Par le R. P. Laveille.
Paris: Poussielque, 1903. 8°, pp. 551, 680.
Julien 1 ' Apostat. Vols. II-III. Par Paul AUard. Paris : Lecoffre,
1903. 8°, pp. 376, 416.
Santa Cecilia e la sua basilica nel Trastevere, Note di critica, del
Sac. Dr. V. Bianchi-Cagliesi. Rome: Pustet, 1902. 8°, pp. 89.
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE APOSTOLIC
DELEGATE.
On Thursday, December 8, feast of tlie Immaculate Concep-
tion, the Apostolic Delegate visited the University, and was wel-
comed by the entire body. He assisted at the Solemn Pontifical
Mass sung by the Et. Rev. Rector, and afterward imparted to
all present the Papal Benediction. There were present at the
dinner many distinguished guests, among them Mgr. Donatus
Sbarretti, Apostolic Delegate to Canada, Very Rev. Mgr. F. Z.
Rooker, secretary of the Delegation, and Rev. Dr. D. J. Stafford,
of St. Patrick's Church. Toward the end of the banquet the Rt.
Rev. Rector rose and extended to the Delegate a formal welcome
to his new office :
Address of the Rt. Rev. Rector.— Yot^r Excellency: We appre-
ciate the great honor conferred upon the University by your
willingness to visit it at the very opening of your career among
us and to take part in the solemnities of our Patronal Feast.
We are deeply sensible of the kindness which thus expresses your
interest in the University, the work of which is so important and
far-reaching. In union with all the Catholics of the United States
we cordially welcome you as the Apostolic Delegate, the represen-
tative of the Holy See among us. In your appointment there
appears a new proof of the solicitude of the Sovereign Pontiff
for the welfare of the Church in our beloved country. It is a
strengthening of the tie which binds us to the center of spiritual
authority, and bids us feel anew that in the person of the Delegate
we have the close watchfulness and tender care of the Father of the
Faithful, whom the whole world loves. This University extends to
your Excellency a special greeting with the fondness of a special
affection. You are the representative of its founder Leo XIII.
Anxious for the higher education of clergy and laity, immediately
and lovingly responding to the earnest desire of the American Hier-
archy, our illustrious Pontiff clothed this institution with the char-
acter of a Pontifical University, and its aims and purposes are set
forth in its Pontifical Constitutions. It holds also a charter from
the District of Columbia.
144
TEE UNIVERSITY AND APOSTOLIC DELEGATE. 145
It was eminently proper that the hospitality of the University
made it for a time the home of the first Delegate, when that friend-
ship began which has always characterized the relations between the
Apostolic Delegation and the University. Confided to the fostering
care of the Bishops and under the kindly supervision of the Dele-
gate, the University carries on its work successfully. It seeks his
advice and relies on his guidance and counsel with the same confi-
dence in which any Pontifical institution in Rome relies on the direc-
tion of the Holy Father.
Its one desire has been ever to realize the hopes of its illustrious
Founder, never failing to respond to the best instincts of the Catholic
heart, and unflinchingly faithful to the received traditions of Cath-
olic truth. The mustard seed planted a little more than a decade
ago is reaching forth into the trunk and branches of a mighty tree.
What was then a waste of farm land is now a vast university settle-
ment. Buildings, magnificent in their proportions, have been erected
by the munificent generosity of our Catholic men and women; facul-
ties have been established in which are found, as teachers, men whose
scholarship is recognized in Catholic and non-Catholic academic
circles, and whose writings are valuable contributions to the world's
store of knowledge. Among them, too, are many young men who
once were students in their departments, and who are now acquiring
fame by their instructions and writings; priests and laymen from
all sections of our country have followed the courses, seeking for
the degrees which mark the higher scholarship, and which entitle
them to the positions of trust now held by them in Church and State.
Many religious institutes appreciating the benefits of the Uni-
versity have placed their scholasticates in a cluster about it, and
here have been trained many who fill with honor the places of ad-
ministrators and teachers in their colleges.
A large body of influential teachers in New York has asked for
university direction and instruction in work of pedagogy and, not-
withstanding the exactions of university departments, this work is
being done with credit and success under the direction of our pro-
fessors in the great city of New York.
This is but an outline of what the University is doing, and has
done, for the higher Christian education. All this means sacrifice,
privations, generosity, unselfishness on the part of the men who have
contributed their thought and energy to the educational upbuilding
of this institution. Men sometimes fail to recognize that the Univer-
sity is in its youth, and that not much more than a dozen years have
passed over its head; that like all new institutions it has had to prove
lOcUB
146 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
itself worthy of confidence; that it has had to enter into competition
with long organized and well endowed universities. Notwithstand-
ing all this the name of the Catholic University is one of honor and
renown. The number of its students may be small when compared
with collegiate institutions, yet it is well to remember that it is not
a seminary nor a college, nor has it the attractions in many depart-
ments of professional or semi-professional instruction. Alone it
stands in our country to-day as an institution doing graduate work
without collegiate classes. To its credit be it said that its students
form a very large proportion of Catholic graduates who, outside of
professional schools, enter into the higher educational courses. Its
numbers must necessarily be limited, yet while it seeks numbers, it
is not to condemned for the lack of numbers. It is to be judged by
the scope of its work, as defined by those who interpret its pontifical
Constitutions and its University aims and purposes, as well as by the
conditions which surround the Catholic graduate body seeking the
higher education outside of professionalism. With its limited equip-
ment it has indeed done wonders. Give it the years of its associates,
give it an endowment in keeping with its needs, and its record will
be worthy of the Pontiff who laid its foundation.
"With the full appreciation of the work that is being done by our
Catholic colleges, the University has hitherto declined to enter the
field of collegiate work. In consequence it has no large body of
undergraduate students such as swell the registers of the older and
richer American universities, nor can it have such while it remains
faithful to its purely graduate character. A very small percentage
of Catholic students is found in non-Catholic post-graduate institu-
tions, but it must be remembered that many of these young men have
pursued their undergraduate courses in these same institutions; that
many others are there because the school is near their homes, while
to some there is the attraction which comes from the social advantages
which such schools are thought to possess.
It is difficult to conceive that a Catholic college should act as a
feeder to non-Catholic universities, and yet, disguise it as we may,
this must eventually be the case, unless there be developed here,
under the auspices of the Church, a fully equipped university, in
which the layman as well as the ecclesiastic shall find every facility for
doing professional and scientific work. If we read the constitutions
granted to it by the Sovereign Pontiff we cannot fail to recognize that
such indeed is the scope of the Catholic University as planned and
outlined in them. This motive is the source also of the generosity
of the Catholic laity, who in the foundation of its professorships, had
TEE UNIVERSITY AND APOSTOLIC DELEGATE. I47
in mind the securing of a Catholic education for lay students as well
as for clerics. And this becomes to the University one of its most
sacred trusts. To dissuade those who seek the higher education from
entering this University is to expose them to the danger of non-
Catholic institutions, and thus neutralize the effect of that Christian
training which is provided at untold cost in the parochial school and
Catholic college. To diminish in any way the influence of the Uni-
versity upon the life of this great American people would be to
uphold and confirm those who cast upon the Church the reproach
that she is no longer the teacher of mankind, and that she has never
been the sincere friend of science and progress. If Catholics, in
order to learn anything outside of theology, must sit at the feet of
teachers who do not share our Catholic beliefs, then the intellectual
power of Catholicism will be weakened, then, indeed, will we have
forgotten the admonition of Leo XIII, ** Catholics should be leaders
not followers."
This country needs a university center of Catholic thought,
where religion and science in their highest forms may combine to
make known the marvellous truth of God; where scholarship aims
to make known and defend religion, and give glory to our common
manhood. Its mission should be to wield a vivifying influence on the
whole educational system, to unify and elevate it, as also to give tone
to all Catholic institutions; to set a definite standard of scholarship
that will arouse in clergy and laity a love for the highest intel-
lectual attainments; to advance the interests of science and widen
out the horizon of human knowledge, by producing men prepared
to do the work of science under the inspiration and guidance of
revealed truth; to show the world that the Catholic Church is not
afraid of the truth wherever found, but on the contrary is eager
for the largest possible measure of truth. Thank God, this has been
done by the Catholic University. The University is, and will be, in
one sense, an object lesson, showing the attitude of the Catholic
Church to the highest development of the mind.
It stands in the Capital City of our nation, close to the heart of
our great Republic, in touch with the currents of national life, with
its eyes upon all the movements that stir society, and it shapes and
guides the education of men destined to be leaders in Church and
State. Its voice is heard above the din and bustle of commercialism,
warning men that society can find no solution for the problems that
confront it, unless it be sought in the light of Him who came to
teach and to save. It is the proud boast of the University that it
has never for a moment wavered in its loyalty to the prmciples of
148 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Christian philosophy, which alone can answer the demands of reason
and give solid foundation to all religious and social life. Loyal in
every fibre to the Holy See, true to the noblest ideals of Christian
scholarship, and devoted to the best interests of our American life
the Catholic University is doing the work of God among our people.
We have faith in it, as a mission from God, we are full of hope in its
future, that with fidelity to the aims and purposes of the great Leo,
as the very center of the highest scholarship it will always be the
honor of our Church and the pride of our Eepublic.
There is a special delight for us in welcoming your Excellency,
because as a religious and a superior of religious, you have had
years of successful experience in our country. We are not a little
proud that while clothed with the highest authority of the Holy See
among us, and exercising the fullest spiritual jurisdiction, you are
also a citizen of our Republic and enjoy all its political privileges.
Then, again, as the son of the great St. Francis, your learning and
piety and gentleness commend you to all who know you. In our
neighboring Canada your mission as Apostolic Delegate has called
forth the kindliest sentiments of respect and affection for your per-
sonal character. You have that traditional love of learning which
has been the inspiration of so many scholars of your order who are
indentified with the universities of the world and rank as saints of
God. You will find among our affiliated colleges, the college of
your brethren, and among our students the members of your beloved
order. I take it as a good omen that you are here on our Patronal
Feast, sharing with us the glory and the graces of this day. We
remember with gratification that the dogma of the Immaculate Con-
ception found its foremost champions among the sons of St. Francis.
As Rector of the University, and in the name of its trustees,
faculties, affiliated colleges, ecclesiastics, laymen, I welcome you among
us as the Apostolic Delegate, the representative of Leo XIII, our
illustrious Pontiff and beloved Father. We welcome you as the suc-
cessor of delegates who by their learning, piety and kindly sympathy
have won the deepest affection of our hearts. We offer to you this
expression of our loyalty with an earnest prayer for your success
in the important mission that has been entrusted to you by our Holy
Father. We beg you to bear special watchfulness over all the inter-
ests of this University, and to be to it a father, a counsellor, and a
friend. In return we pledge you our love and obedience.
After the applause which greeted the Rector's address the Most
Rev. Delegate was enthusiastically received. '
THE UNIVERSITY AND APOSTOLIC DELEGATE. 149
th«.1?? ^;/^g^- Falconio.-i^i^/,, Rev. Rector: Accept my sincerest
thanks for the cordial welcome you have bPPn t.1ooo./i f "^^ °^^^^^^^
representative of the Holy See LTe Zr^r^f ^.w . ^""^'^ *" *^^
and students of the Catholfc^Let^^^^ AmSca "' '''''''''''
Your sentiments of attachment and gratitude towards the Supreme
Pontiff for all that he has done for the welfare of this insti' uZTr
cTZLiT '""''T '' "^' "^' ^^^^ -« *^^ ^oPe that L
Holy Father ha^ taken m promoting more and more, through this
Encouraged by the Supreme Pastor of the Church, and acting upon
his wise counsels, the superiors will know how to govern with success,
the professors how to teach with soundness of principles, and the
students how to treasure up with confidence in their minds and in
their hearts the precious teachings of science and religion, and to
put them in practice.
Attached as you are to the Supreme Pontiff, the infallible teacher
of truth, I have no doubt that, under his guidance, you wiU be able
to work with success, and that the blessings I have mentioned will
form the happy inheritance of this institution.
However, it is well to remember that, no matter how holy and
how commendable may be the object we have in view, in order to come
to its realization we shall have to overcome difficulties and work with
courage, earnestness and perseverance. The end which the Holy
Father had in view in the canonical erection of this University, as
you have observed, is noble and useful. It is intended to give to the
Catholic youth of America an opportunity to receive a scientific and
religious education in its highest form— an education apt to render
them not only possessors of the treasures of science and religion, but
also to place them in a position to impart these blessings to others.
I know that, in order to realize fully this object, you will have to
overcome difficulties and work with earnestness and perseverance.
But as earnestness and perseverance are the factors of success, I have
no doubt that, in the course of time, this young Catholic Institution
will be second to none of the most illustrious universities of the land.
You have just recalled our attention to what the immortal Pontiff,
Leo XIII has done for the welfare of the University. He is its
founder, its protector, its guiding genius. Since its foundation he
has never ceased to give it encouragement and to offer you the most
evident proofs of his benevolence. You may be justly proud of
such a patron. However, permit me to observe that this benevolence
150 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
of the Sovereign Pontiff will not surprise you when you consider the
noble and effective part he has always taken in whatsoever concerns
the scientific, moral and religious movements of modern society.
During his long pontificate he has always wished that the Church
should be more than ever at the head of every real progress in science,
in art, in Christian knowledge. Nothing has escaped his vast and
profound intelligence. Fine arts and letters, science of government
and international relations, have found in him a profound and clear
expositor, and a protector full of energy and good taste. But the
most ardent desire of his heart has been not merely to illuminate the
intelligence; he has also wished to move and purify the heart by
applying himself earnestly to the revival of Christian virtues amongst
the people. Hence it is that we see him so highly esteemed and
honored by all men of good will who recognize in him a superior
genius, the glory of the papacy and of the two centuries to which he
belongs.
Then it is this ardent love for all that is grand, for all that is
beautiful, for all that is good, and, at the same time, his esteem for this
republic, which have led him to give to your University his patronage
and to watch over it with constant solicitude. May God grant that,
under such efficacious protection, you may arrive at that apex of glory
which the name of Catholic University implies !
You, Rt. Rev. Rector, have made allusion to the young Franciscans
who frequent the schools of the University. May these young men
profit by them, and may the spirit of their glorious ancestors, who
gave luster to some of the most renowned universities of Europe, be
transmitted in them for the greater glory of God and of the Church.
Besides the Franciscans I observe that some other religious con-
gregations profit by your teaching. Their buildings form, as it were,
a crown surrounding the University. Thus science and religion, even
in its most rigid form, seem to combine together to make of these
young men a body of valiant soldiers to fight the battles of the Lord
in both fields. May they emulate in virtue and in learning those
bands of missionaries who from the earliest date of the discovery of
America, at the cost of long and patient labor, laid the first germs of
Christian civilization and high culture, which, in the course of time,
fertilized by the zeal of their successors and of the secular clergy, have
brought forth their fruit in that high civilization which places the
American people on a level with the most advanced nations of the
world !
This fraternal union of the secular and religious clergy of the
United States in partaking of the benefits of an institution destined
TEE UNIVERSITY AND APOSTOLIC DELEGATE. 151
for the highest intellectual development speaks well for the future
of the University and of the Church in America.
Again I pray the Rt. Rev. Rector, the trustees, the faculties and
the students to accept my best thanks for their sentiments of loyalty
toward the Holy See, and best wishes for success.
In the afternoon was held a reception. The assembly room in
McMahon Hall was crowded from four to six. A more brilliant
gathering has never met within our walls. There were present mem-
bers of the diplomatic corps, members of the administration, sena-
tors and representative of the United States, presidents and officials
of many institutions of learning, and a large gathering of the more
prominent residents of the city. The weather was faultless, and the
entire proceedings of the day were calculated to leave an excellent
impression on all who assisted at them. It is sincerely hoped that
this event is a good omen for the career among us of the official
representative of the Holy See.
THOriAS JOSEPH BOUQUILLON.
By the death of our Professor of Moral Sciences the Uni-
versity loses an original member of its staff of teachers, one
who was identified with all its interests, a part of all its his-
tory, a principal factor in its growth, since the day when its
doors were first opened to the studious Catholic youth of the
United States.
Dr. Bouquillon was a typical Catholic theologian— for those
who know what such words imply no more honorable praise
is possible. To a minute acquaintance with the entire sub-
ject-matter of philosophy and theology, such as befits every
well-bred priest, he added a knowledge of their literary history,
such as is possessed by very few. Indeed, we may say at
once that Catholicism is so much poorer by the loss of a genuine
encyclopaedic mind, one of that class of ecclesiastical savants
who belong less to our own uncertain and disturbed days than
to the calm academic world of cloister and library in the pre-
revolutionary time. He grew up in an atmosphere of learn-
ing ; books were his one concern in life, their content his study,
their spirit his spirit, and their ideals his own. He had all
the qualities of an eminent theologian— sincere and holy love
of truth, thoroughness of investigation, order and method in
his procedure, a dialectic at once sure and honest, an exposi-
tion clear and logical. If somewhat wanting in color and
movement, he was never loose or confused. His memory was
justly held to be prodigious ; it threw its tentacles over all that
came within his purview as one day possibly useful in any of
his many lines of study. It was at once quick, tenacious,
responsive. He was a walking **nomenclator'' of all the
modern theologians, beginning with the upcoming of the
scholastics; more than once have his colleagues been amused
and edified to see him complain, with chapter and verse, of the
imperfections of great classical works of reference that seemed,
162
THOMAS JOSEPH BOUQUILLON. 153
like seines, to have let nothing escape their exhaustive sweep.
He was especially at home in all that pertained to the writings
of Catholic theologians of the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries, notably those of Spain and the Low Countries,
whom he ever held in the highest eteem. His library held their
best works and his students will remember with what delight
he would wander from one old folio to another, building up
slowly and persistently out of their treasures the doctrine he
had to expound. Yet, he was not wont to swear **in verba
magistri^'; his mind was peculiarly self-contained and in-
dependent, one in which the judgment primed all the other
faculties, leaving it apparently, at times, rather too cold and
logical, the victim of its own insighj; and grasp.
As long as it endures, the University will owe his memory
a debt of gratitude, for it was he who really laid its academic
foundations. By age and service he was the principal among
the little group of men called to begin in the United States the
long slow work of the creation of a Catholic University amid
circumstances that neither they, nor men wiser than they, quite
thoroughly understood or mastered. He brought to the task,
besides ardor and conviction, a wide knowledge of the peda-
gogical life of the older universities of Europe, their academic
rights, privileges, spirit ; also, their duties and responsibilities.
He was deeply conscious of the dignity and the splendor of the
academic office ; whatever enhanced it or illustrated it was wel-
come to him; any blot or stain or degradation was to him as
personal hurt or wrong. One might say that his common-
wealth was the **Universitas Studiorum''; he wanted no better
citizenship, no sweeter companionship, no honors or victories
that it could not approve. Though our country and our lan-
guage were new to him, his own democratic convictions and
temper fitted him to cooperate in mapping out the general lines
of development for the schools contemplated in the first
stadium of the University's life. In this work he aided by
counsel and study, by personal service at all times, by sugges-
tions and corrections; in a word, he was never wanting in those
earliest years, whatever were the task laid before him. In the
University Senate he was always heard with profit. Somewhat
154 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
slow and hesitating in speech, he usually went at once to the
core of the question or the kernel of the difficulty. His counsel
was ever calm, dignified, conservative.
The Faculty of Theology always cherished him as its most
learned member. Its curriculum of studies is particularly his
work, and to the end he followed every new problem with an
interest that never abated. In the Faculty meetings, in com-
mittee sessions, in familiar intercourse, the progress of eccles-
iastical studies was his constant theme. His large conspectus
over the theological arena of the past and present permitted
him to speak with particular authority on most matters per-
taining to the ecclesiastical sciences. Withal, he was modest
and unassuming, and though he was at times tenacious in his
views, he was always courteous and mild in his relations with
his fellow professors.
Dr. Bouquillon possessed an innate gift for teaching. His
real chair was not in the more or less formal work of the lecture-
room, but in his ** Seminar'' or Academy. In this bi-weekly
meeting of his students, and in the Journal Club or meeting
for discussion of new books and review articles, each familiar
and voluntary in its character, came out all the qualities of a
mind peculiarly fitted to develop other minds— earnestness and
devotion in research, patience and perseverance in the best
methods, openness to all suggestions and indications, a large
and correct view of the phases, relations, points of contact,
shadings of the question at issue. Not a few young priests in
all parts of our country owe to him the acquisition of a new
sense— the historico-theological sense. The history of a ques-
tion or problem was ever his first concern ; what was its genesis,
and how did other students handle it from the time it took
shape and meaning? He was, therefore, easily eminent in
bibliography, not only in that of his own beloved subject— the
moral sciences— but in the particular bibliography of all the
ecclesiastical sciences, as far as they bore on his own studies.
It would not be too much to say that very few printed books
of any importance to the theological sciences were unknown
to him.
The Library of the Faculty of Theology was planned by
him, set in order, and to his death administered with loving
THOMAS JOSEPH BOUQUILLON. 155
fidelity and discriminating judgment. Its 30,000 volumes are
no mean tribute to his taste and good sense, for it fits in admir-
ably to the numerous other smaller libraries of the University,
both public and private. To see it grow in riches and utility
was his most sincere joy, for Dr. Bouquillon was a ** bib-
liophile'^ of the first rank. His work-tables, ever covered with
the newest and choicest literature of the moral and social
sciences, drawn from every quarter, friendly and hostile, were
themselves like bright hearth-stones, filling with a warm zeal
the souls of his students and visitors.
Indeed, he was constantly besieged for help, not only by
those of his own household, but by outsiders. In every rank
of the clergy he had numerous correspondents ; his memoires,
consultations, decisions, and other literary work, nameless now
and intangible, are scattered far and wide between the oceans.
The growing weakness of his health made him less communi-
cative towards the end, but did not destroy the root of scholarly
altruism that was a part of himself.
The Editors of The Catholic University Bulletin may not
easily forget the wise and gentle scholar whose pen illustrates
so many of its volumes, whose counsel was ever at the disposal
of his colleagues, and whose pure academic spirit, it is hoped,
will forever dwell with all the University publications.
Bouquillon was a very great theologian, by no means in the
third rank, and the University has reason to congratulate itself,
that his name is written first on the roll of its teachers. With
his learning there came to us no little of the temper, the wis-
dom, the life-experience of the great Catholic theological
schools of Europe. We shall always feel that through him
there has been no break of continuity between Paris, Oxford,
Louvain and Washington. As became a Roman student,
he was devoted to the Roman Church. His writings give
ample proof of this attachment which his teaching and
habitual discourse emphasized.
He was an upright man, a pious priest, a faithful friend,
a loyal churchman, patient and forgiving when assailed or mis-
understood, a man of infinite sympathy with the world of his
own time, truly a consulting physician of its social woes and
moral ailments. Somewhat solitary and reserved in manner,
156 , CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. BULLETIN,
sedate and introspective, he lacked only a certain flow of im-
agination, a certain temperament of publicist, to make his
name and his learning household words throughout the Catholic
world. In return, he was a teacher of teachers, and his in-
fluence will forever be felt in the Church and in the land of his
adoption. His numerous students will surely remember him
at the holy altar ; we may even hope that there will arise in their
ranks some at least of our distinguished teachers of the future.
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.
He was an apostle of the Higher Education of the Catholic
Priesthood. It was in their service that he lived and toiled.
And now that he is no more, may his example long shine before
all who once sat at his feet, to bring forth similar fruits of
virtue and learning ! Requiescat in pace!
MEHORIAL EXERCISES FOR DR. BOUQUILLON.
The Memorial exercises for Very Rev. Thomas Bouquillon,
D.D., late Professor of Moral Theology, were of a most im-
pressive character. The presence of the Cardinal, the Arch-
bishops and Bishops at the meetings at the University gave an
opportunity for very marked tribute on their part to the memory
of the professor and the universally recognized, much beloved
and highly respected scholar. The occasion at the University
was an academic one, the rector and professors appearing in
their academic robes. The chapel was filled to its capacity
with the visitors, the professors and students of the University,
and the superiors and students of the affiliated colleges.
Cardinal Gibbons occupied a place in the sanctuary, and beside
him was the Rector of the University. Among those present
were Most Rev. Archbishops Williams, of Bostoiji; Ryan, of
Philadelphia; Elder of Cincinnati; Ireland, of St. Paul;
Christie, of Portland, Oregon ; Keane, of Dubuque, and Farley,
of New York; Right Rev. Bishops Maes, of Covington, Ky.,
and 0 'Gorman, of Sioux Falls, S. D., Professor Emeritus of
Ecclesiastical History at the University ; Monsignor Kennedy,
Rector of the American College, Rome, Italy ; Very Rev. Father
Deshon, C.S.P., Provincial of the Paulists; Very Rev. Dr.
Zahm, C.S.C, Provincial of the Holy Cross Congregation ; Rev.
Fr. Shandelle, S.J.; Rev. F. X. Mulvaney, S.J., Georgetown
University; Rev. F. X. McCarthy, S.J., Gonzaga College;
Brother Gordian, Visitor of the Baltimore Province of the
Christian Brothers Colleges ; Rev. Paul Griffith, Rev. Fr. Hurl-
but, of Clarkesville, Md.; Rev. Fr. Tower, of HyattsviUe, Md.;
Dr. Mallon, the attending physician of Dr. Bouquillon.
Solemn Pontifical Mass of Requiem was celebrated by Right
Rev. Bishop Maes, Rev. John Webster Melody, of Chicago,
being the assistant priest; Rev. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P.,
deacon; Rev. Maurice J. O'Connor, of Boston, sub-deacon;
Rev. Romanus Rutin, S.M., and Rev. Thomas P'. Heverin, of
San Francisco, being masters of ceremonies. All the officers
of the mass were among the older students of Dr. Bouquillon 's
classes.
157
158 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
At the conclusion of the Mass Eev. William J. Kerby,
Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, a former pupil of Dr.
Bouquillon, delivered the eulogy.
Discourse of Rev. Dr. Kjerby.
Thomas Bouquillon, Priest, Doctor of Theology, Professor of
Moral Theology in the University since 1889, is dead. We are
summoned by the University to attend this solemn ceremony in
memory of him, and to offer public prayer for the happy repose
of his soul. Denied the melancholy comfort of seeing and serving
him in his last moments, we can in our quiet grieving only picture
the freshly made grave in distant Belgium while we here ask God
to give him rest.
One would rather weep alone, and think in silence over the life
and character of this calm kindly man, but the University, obeying
the impulse that springs from gratitude and love, must pay public
tribute to him who was its pride and glory. Great as is the loss
which his death inflicts, it were far greater did his name and memory
perish from our traditions. May this solemn service fix both name
and memory in these traditions forever !
Thomas Bouquillon was born at Wameton in Belgium, May 16,
1842. He studied philosophy and theology at Roulers and Bruges.
He was ordained in Rome in 1865. He entered the Gregorian Uni-
versity and was made Doctor of Theology in 1867. In the same
year he was appointed Professor of Moral Theology in the Seminary
of Bruges. In 1877 he was appointed to the Catholic University of
Lille, France; in 1889, he came to this University as Professor of
Moral Theology, and taught here till the close of the past year. His
health began to fail some time ago. He went to Europe in June
of the present year; failing rapidly, he was unable to return, and
he died last Thursday.
He published the following works: ''Theologia Moralis Funda-
mentalis," the third edition of which is now issuing from the press;
**De Yirtutibus Theologicis, " in one volume and *'De Yirtute Re-
ligionis," in two volumes. He had completed, but not published,
three volumes **De Justitia et Jure"; **De Eucharistia"; *'De
Poenitentia. " He edited and enriched with critical and historical
notes the following: *'De Magnitudine Ecclesiae Romanae," of Thomas
Stapleton; **Leonis XIII. AUocutiones, Epistolae, Aliaque Acta,"
the Catechismus ad Parochos, the Dies Sacerdotalis of Dirckink";
**rExcellence de la Sainte Eucharistie of Luis de Grenada." He
published upwards of fifty articles, pamphlets, critical, theological,
historical.
MEMORIAL EXERCISES FOR DR. BOUQUILLON. 159
The simple mention of these facts conveys no just impression of
the merit, activity and power of our departed colleague. His was
a life so filled with usefulness that one can with difficulty estimate
it, and that difficulty is increased when affection and gratitude bid
one be loving rather than analytical or exact.
Strange it is and wonderful that life should be such a mystery,
baffling, fascinating, evasive; attracting us to study it, and disap-
pointing us by the failure which we meet; understood, yet never
thoroughly so; varied and inconstant as the play of sunbeams on
the floating clouds, yet stable and identical as the very mountain. Phi-
losophy has not defined it, nor thinking explained it, nor investiga-
tion revealed its secrets. And hence when one is taken from us—
one who stood alone in attainments of mind and heart— strange
insistent questions arise within us and demand reply. ''What is
life, what its meaning, what is noblest, highest; what deep truths
should we learn from it and how shall we read them?'' We seek
for answer, but tears blind, they do not sharpen vision. We would
remain silent in contemplation of our loss— as we might were we to
see a stately ship laden with rarest treasure from many lands en-
gulfed and lost forever. Like a stately ship, this mind that death
has taken was richly stored with treasures of knowledge, understand-
ing, and wisdom from many lands. It is lost to us now, except in
memory. Well may we to-day study that life— so simple, so humble,
so strong, so useful, true, and seek to learn the lessons of virtue in
which it so abounded.
Thomas Bouquillon was in manner simple, gentle, courteous, sym-
pathetic, kind, marked by sincerity and directness. In disposition
unselfish and helpful, he was far more pleased in serving others than
in being served. Optimistic, invariably cheerful, hopeful, his in-
fluence was always constructive, and his example an inspiration.
Gifted with rare mental power, he lacked aggressiveness and
ostentation, delighting rather in the retirement and silence of
his beloved library. In conversation and in counsel last to speak
and wisest when speaking, his self-repression was no less rare than
it was admirable. No one ever heard him boast of what he had
done or could do ; his personality seemed lost in his learning. Well
may we say of him as he said of his Master Aquinas: ''Nihil hahuit
de se ipso." He lived on his admirations and not on his dislikes;
he was charitable, tolerant of view and of personality, never volun-
teering an unfriendly remark or an unnecessary criticism. Again,
as he said of St. Thomas we may say of him: ''Nihil hahuit contra
alios.'' Reverent, affectionate, deeply religious, one would think that
he was writing himself into his book when he enumerated in his "Fun-
damental Theology" the qualities of the theologian, fides viva, magna
reverentia, perfecta sinceritas, ardens veritatis amor, lihertas a prceju-
160 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
diciis gentis, instituti, scJiolce, ordinis. The sweet serenity of his
scholarly, priestly life, which rested on sure foundations, was never
disturbed by the misrepresentations of trifling critics who served
party and not truth, nor by the forgetfulness of those whom he
had served, nor by the misunderstanding of those who had neither
mind nor will to know the magnitude of his scholarship, the unself-
ishness of his work, and the simple, honest motives that dominated
his life.
Nothing tempted him away from the pursuit of learning. Wise
enough to know the values and relations of life according to which
books are kept for eternity, he lived always in close touch with great
men in church and state without seeking, loving or using the power
that position brings.
In making for the moment a first estimate of Thomas Bouquillon,
one feels that one may apply to him without irreverence St. PauFs
description of charity. For like it, he was patient, kind; he envied
not nor dealt perversely, was not puffed up; was not ambitious;
sought not his own; was not provoked to anger; thought no evil.
Rejoiced not in iniquity, but rejoiced with the truth; bore all things,
believed all things, endured all things.
Of his learning, only one equally gifted could adequately speak.
Blessed with a mind of rare and varied power, he brought to it a
diligence, a consecutive methodical habit of study, that made him little
less than a prodigy. He had a vast knowledge of facts, saw prin-
ciples clearly, coordinated them accurately and based his interpreta-
tions on solid foundations. Careful in his mental processes, his con-
victions, opinions, views were as free from the influence of feeling,
interest and preference as it is possible to imagine. His great knowl-
edge was always at his service, within the call of consciousness. His
views were therefore thorough, broad and safe. When analyzed,
they were found to have been so carefully made that one thought of
the many colors that the prism reveals in the ray of sunlight. His-
tory, philosophy, psychology, theology, science— all had converged into
the beam of light that came from his splendid mind. He was Emer-
son's "All-reconciling thinker." We may aptly apply to our de-
parted colleague the keen words of Silvius, who said of St. Thomas:
**QuaUuor implacahiliter inter se pugnantia, hrevitas cum multi-
tudine, multitudo cum securitate, securitas cum facilitate, facilitas
cum hrevitate, indissoluhili pads fodder e copulata, hie inveniuntur/^
Thus objective and critical, thus synthetic, erudite and honest,
thus diligent, he could not have been other than an extraordinary man.
His knowledge of the literary sources of his beloved science —
moral theology— was coextensive with the sources themselves. His
grasp of its principles was profound, his exposition luminous, erudite,
balanced. He lifted the science high over the plane of casuistry,
MEMORIAL EXERCISES FOR DR. BOUQUILLON, 161
placed it on the higher levels of principle and philosophy, giving
to it dignity and system. Again, as he said of St. Thomas: ''Apud
ipsum moralis theologia toto suo nitore resplendens sua gravitate
noUlis, ohjecti amplitudine immensa, apparei prout vere est, omnium
scientiarum practicarum domina ac regina.**
Remarkable for the accuracy of his theological sense, his mind
was none the less historical. His keen understanding of movements
of thought and life as well as his wide knowledge about them, revealed
the true historical sense— the power to see and measure the converg-
ing complex processes which produce institutions; to discover be-
ginnings, trace relations, see developments, and analyze the intan-
gible yet powerful influences that combine to make movements in
human society. This power alone might have made him a marked
man. Reading history as a master theologian, and reading theology
as a critical historian, his appreciation of the supernatural, as an
historical fact as well as a theoretical truth, was remarkably accurate
and profound. This was possibly the highest achievement of his
mind. He possessed a knowledge of the sciences closely related to
his own which was almost extensive enough to give his opinion au-
thority, while his acquaintance with more remote fields was excep-
tionally wide.
He was thoroughly devoted to his students, exact in doing his
duty, generous of time and energy beyond that and tireless in stim-
ulating thought; patient and always hopeful of success. From his
lectures and his students, from the revision of his books, he turned
frequently, and always gladly, to assist, direct or advise a younger
colleague in the university, from him to some scholar or student
from other quarters who, perhaps, not sharing his faith, admired
his learning and sought his aid; from such he turned to problems,
questions, requests for information, assistance, sent to him by men
high and low in church and state. With all he was gracious, ready,
generous ; so that we must again say of him as he said of St. Thomas :
^* Adfuit principihus in consilium, pontificihus in adjutorium, fra^
trihus in defensionem/^
Learned in the history of universities, he was consecrated to the
welfare of our own. Never shirking the dull routine of committee,
though his heart would have kept him among his books, he was not
one to minimize the duties of any office that came to him, no matter
how it distracted him from intellectual work. He was consequently
a great constructive force in our academic life by his activity, as
he was an inspiration by his attainments— a splendid realization
of our high ideal.
In all of these varied and exacting demands no one ever found
him nervous, heard him complain of overwork, or knew him to be
other than genial, helpful, scholarly, retiring and kind.
IICUB
162 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
This hurried enumeration of some of the traits of mind, heart
and manner of Thomas Bouquillon is complete enough to allow us
to draw many useful lessons from his life. He taught us that highest
scholarship is consistent with reverent, abiding religious faith; that
power may be quiet and unobtrusive without failing of its possibili-
ties; that simplicity, gentleness and charity— calm, enduring charity
— are worthy adornments of any scholar; that a life free from all
vile ambition for temporal glory and from self-seeking may contain
within itself sources of endless peace, serenity and joy ; that true learn-
ing spiritualizes, ennobles, sanctifies life. How well his life illustrates
the words of St. James: ^^Who is a wise man and endued ivith knowl-
edge among you, let him show hy a good conversation his work in
the meekness of wisdom. . . . But the wisdom that is from above,
first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to he persuaded,
consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, without judg-
ing, without dissimulation."
Any life that taught this much were a rare benediction indeed,
but we have not yet discovered the secret of this life, no more than
would the enumeration of the parts of a delicate and complex piece
of mechanism tell us what was its function. The life, the work, of
Thomas Bouquillon was one great solemn act of consecration to the
Church of Christ as an historical institution. Understand that and
you understand him; miss that and you miss the law, the glory and
the inspiration of his life and mind. I speak not of his personal
faith as a Catholic priest, nor of the tender piety that inspired his
beautiful commentary on the mysteries of the Rosary, or brought
him every day to visit Christ in the Blessed Sacrament on his way
to the lecture room. These were, perhaps, not altogether distinc-
tive. I refer to his unwavering, generous loyalty to the Church as
an organization: to the remarkable degree in which he understood
the genius of her institutions, absorbed her spirit, shared her point
of view, believed, approved, defended, expressed it, honestly, bravely
and well.
Our minds sometimes play subtle tricks on us. While we revere
the authority, doctrine and definitions of the Church in the abstract,
we may fail to do so equally in the concrete; while Church authority
as a proposition receives complete submission. Church authority as
a fact, perhaps, may not ; while in theory we are Catholic in a general
sense, in fact we at times become partisan. Witness the history of
disorders in the Church or the recent history of France and Germany.
Unlike all such and safe from any similar mistake was Thomas Bou-
quillon. His loyalty, devotion, love; his thought, his energy, were
consecrated to the concrete Church: to the persons in whom the
providence of God has vested authority; to the Church entire; to
no party, view or school other than that of the Church itself.
MEMORIAL EXERCISES FOR DR. BOUQUILLON, 163
The great, luminous, central fact of history was to him the In-
carnation : the great permanent and pervading fact of history since
the Incarnation was the Church; the great fundamental science, which
set standards, corrected criteria and systematized knowledge, waa
theology, "Domina ac regina scientiarum/' Dogmatic theology,
moral theology, canon law, Church history, were in a particular
sense in his mind one. His objective views permitted nothing more
than a distinction between abstract and concrete. He had read the
Fathers with sympathy that gave him understanding; he had read
theologians and philosophers with acumen; he knew modern thought
accurately. Ever objective, truth seeking, truth loving, ancient
things were to him not true because old, nor were modern things
false because new. Throughout all the variations of thought, of life
and institution which mark the centuries be saw his Church-
permanent, enduring, divine. His mind understood well the super-
natural; the Church was its organized expression. And all of the
reverence, love, devotion, power of his being were consecrated to God
in the service of his Church. The Church was his pia mater. Its
limitations he saw much as a devoted child sees a fault in a parent—
reluctantly, though honestly. His devotion to the university rested
on the view that it was an organ of the Church, that in it and through
it might be worked out safely processes of thought that would help to
place theology and philosophy in safe and harmonious adjust-
ment with what was right, true and enduring in modern thought
and institutions. Hence also his love of learning, his industry, his
qualities of mind and heart. Gather them all together, arrange them
around this central complete consecration to the historical Church,
and the life of Thomas Bouquillon is understood. For this all, from
this all, to this all. Therefore, it is not unbecoming that his name
be mentioned from this altar or that his personality and his learning
be praised to-day.
It is unnecessary to attempt to study the influences which pro-
duced him. How far nature, how far grace, how far the sturdy Cath-
olic traditions of his native Belgium, strengthened by his life in Rome,
how far his absorbing devotion to St. Thomas, contributed— it were
too difficult to say. Nor need we say. His character, his achieve-
ments are before us; our duty is to remember, to revere, to imitate.
Then rest, gentle, kindly spirit, rest in the bosom of God ! May
the earth press lightly on thy mortal remains; may thy grave be
honored ! Be thy memory a benediction forever !
And thou, 0 University, center of our hopes, forget not him who
was thy pride and glory! He watched and loved and served thee
in thy first days— do thou love and bless him even unto thy last!
VERY REV. DR. HAQNIEN.
The death of Doctor Magnien on December 21, 1902, is a
matter of sincere regret not only to his immediate colleagues
in St. Mary's Seminary, but also to the Church in the United
States. As head of an institution which has trained so many
of the American clergy, he displayed those qualities of mind
and heart which enlist the sympathy of the student and secure
the esteem of the priest. Practical insight into the needs of
the Church, breadth of view, tact in dealing with characters
and situations, prudence in counsel and unfailing kindness,
were his distinguishing traits. To these in large measure is due
his success in the administration of the Seminary which holds
so prominent a place in the work of clerical training.
In all the larger problems of education he was deeply in-
terested. From its inception, the work of the University ap-
pealed to him strongly ; and he was ever ready to further it by
suggestions and advice based on his long experience. For
its professors he had always that cordial welcome which is
prompted by community of high purpose and by the genuine
spirit of cooperation. Beyond the difficulties of the beginning,
he saw the ideal and strove as best he could for its realization.
The director of a theological Seminary is called to bear
responsibilities and to discharge duties which are of vital im-
portance to religion, but which are not generally understood
by the world at large. It is all the more needful that he should
be both a man of character and a model to those who are pre-
paring for the prieshood. St. Sulpice has produced many
directors of this type. Doctor Magnien 's life was a true ex-
pression of the Sulpitian spirit. He was an exemplary priest.
164
NOTES AND COMMENT.
TheEncyclicalsof Leo XIII. — (Leon XIII d'apr^s ses EncycUques,
Jean d 'Arras. Paris: Poussielgue, 1902. 8°, pp. 273.) The author
classifies the teachings of the Pope under the following headings:
The Church and Truth, Religious Unity, The Church and the Civil
Power, The Training of the Priesthood, Freemasonry, The Organiza-
tion of the Family, Social and Economic Questions, Political Duties
of Catholics, Christian Piety and Devotion. When one has read it
through it is clear with what success the Holy Father has made
known the teachings of Catholicism on all these points.
The Holy Shroud of Turin — The newest phase of the question of
the authenticity of the Holy Shroud (il Santo Sudario) of Turin has
given rise to more than 3,000 brochures, reviews and newspaper
articles. In **Le Saint Suaire de Turin'*: Histoire d'une Relique
(Paris, Picard, 1902, 8vo, pp. 19) are resumed the historical proofs
of its non-authenticity due to the pen of Canon Ulysse Chevalier.
They have been fortunate enough to receive the adhesion of the
Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, of M. Leopold Delisle,
and of the Bollandists— certainly an uncommon assurance of cor-
rectness. In **Le Saint Suaire de Turin photographic k I'envers
(Paris, Picard, 1902, Svo, pp. 13) M. Hippolyte Chopin maintains
that the famous photographs of MM. Secondo Pia and P. Sanna
Solaro are made not from the right or front side of the ''Sudario"
but from the reverse, the original painting having been covered and
repaired in 1534 with very fine *'toile de HoUande" by the Clarisses of
Chambery. '* J'ai done droit," says M. Chopin (p. 13) **de declarer
aujourd'hui que toute discussion basee sur la photographic de M.
Pia ne peut etre que sterile, parceque le docuement est fausse, et
qu'il ne peut servir qu'a faire repandre bien inutilement des tor-
rents d'encre et des avalanches d 'articles, tant qu'on n'aura pas
examine 1 'original du hon cote J*
Critical Bibliography MM. Alphonse Picard et fils (82, Rue
Bonaparte, Paris) have inaugurated a **Bibliotheque de Bibliog-
raphies Critiques" to be edited by the **Societe des Etudes Histor-
iques" of which the bibliographer M. Henri Stein is president, and
M. Funck-Br.entano vice-president. These bibliographies aim at
being exhaustive in the departments of general, provincial, and
municipal history ; the history of institutions, manners, customs, arts ;
166
166 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the history of literature; in biography, geography and the economic
and social sciences. Some seventeen have already appeared and
over a hundred more are announced. We have before us those on
*' Latin Epigraphy/' by M. Cagnat; "Hoffman," by Henri de Cur-
zon; **Les Conflits entre la France et 1 'Empire pendant le Moyen
-A-ge," by A. Leroux, and "Taine," by Victor Giraud. Very brief
notes often accompany the book or article cited. The story of the
long conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the Crown of
France is here outlined in the titles of 363 books and articles; the
life and writings of Taine in 292. In the latter (p. 75, no. 262)
Lorensbury should read **Lounsbury." These bibliographies are
excellent, cheap, and highly serviceable, not only each one in itself,
but as a collection. In the latter form they will render mutual
service of cross-reference and completeness. Every working-library
and ** academy" of history should subscribe to the series.
The First Universities — The origins of the universities of Paris
and Bologna (Polleunis and Ceuterick, Louvain, 1902, 8vo, pp. 23)
furnish the text of a pleasing and instructive discourse delivered by
Dr. Cauchie, Professor of Church History in the University of Lou-
vain, at the annual reunion of the alumni of the Seminaire de Bonne
Esperance (September 19, 1901). The documents of Denifle-Chate-
lain, and the synthetic work of Rashdall, furnish the basis and out-
lines of the description. But it is carried out with all the additional
learning and the gifts of style and exposition that the historical world
to-day recognizes in the able successor of Dr. Jungmann. Dr. Cau-
chie is one of those who have infused new life into the venerable
schools of Louvain.
Edward Bruce and Ireland. — The original sources of Irish history
for the early part of the fourteenth century have been carefully ex-
amined by Miss Caroline Colvin for her doctorate thesis in history
before the University of Pennsylvania. The study is entitled *'The
Invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce, 1315-1318" (Philadelphia,
1901) and is made at first hand from the contemporary annals,
chronicles, histories, as well as from the modem collections of docu-
mentary material of the period. It is high time that the neglected
history of Ireland be treated after the scientific and objective man-
ner of this treatise. But this will not be until academic historical
formation is more common among its students and narrators. And
that will not happen until a truly national government sits at Dub-
lin, and inaugurates for this ancient folk what Stein did for Prussia,
a "Monumenta Hiberniae Historica" with all that such an enterprise
means.
NOTES AND COMMENT. 167
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 — The Arthur H. Clark Com-
pany, Cleveland, 0., announce in a limited edition, an extensive,
and unusually important literary undertaking— an historical series
entitled ''The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803: Explorations by early
Navigators, descriptions of the Islands and their Peoples, their His-
tory, and records of the Catholic Missions, as related in contempor-
aneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, com-
mercial, and religious conditions of those Islands from their earliest
relations with European Nations to the beginning of the nineteenth
century,'* in fifty-five volumes, the first of which will appear about
January 15, 1903. This work will present (mainly in English trans-
lation) the most important printed works, to the year 1803, including
a great number of heretofore unpublished MSS., which have been
gathered from various foreign archives and libraries, principally
from Spain, Portugal, France, England, Italy, Mexico, Japan, the
Philippines, etc. The manuscripts which have been known to a very
few scholars only, and have been very difficult heretofore to study,
are of great importance at the present time.
The series will be edited and annotated by Miss Emma Helen
Blair, A.M., of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, assistant
editor of ''The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, *' and James
Alexander Robertson, Ph.B., also formerly engaged upon that work.
An historical introduction and notes are furnished by Edward Gay-
lord Bourne, Professor of History in Yale University, well known
as an authority on early Spanish discoveries and colonization in
the New World. The series will include a very careful and exten-
sive bibliography of Philippina— the most valuable that has yet ap-
peared. There will also be an exhaustive, anal3i;ical index to the
complete series.
The selection of documents to be published in this series has
been made with special reference to the social and economic condi-
tions of the Islands under the Spanish regime, and to the history of
the missions conducted therein by great religious orders of the
Roman Catholic Church. The undertaking is commended by well-
known scholars, librarians, and ecclesiastics, and promises to be one
of the most important literary events of this decade. The work
will contain many illustrations of historical importance from Spanish
and other originals, from manuscripts, etc. It will further be illus-
trated with modern and old maps, plans of cities, views, convents,
architecture, etc. It will give for the first time in the English lan-
guage, the complete, original sources of our knowledge of these
islands for over three centuries, and will thereby make accessible to
168 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
scholars for the first time the books and manuscripts to which we
must refer to get a clear and correct view of the social, economical,
political, and religious state and history of the islands. Many im-
portant and almost unknown manuscripts now published for the first
time will throw much new light on present conditions and on the
inner history. The sources and authorities in every case will be
carefully given, and the locations of rare Philippina in libraries at
home and abroad will always be stated. The text will be carefully
elucidated by notes, geographic, historical, ethnological, etc., and
many contributions by well-known scholars and specialists will be
included.
This work is of great value and interest at the present time, when
a correct knowledge of the islands is absolutely necessary, and it
will contain much of interest to students of geography, ethnology,
linguistics, folklore, comparative religion, ecclesiastical history, admin-
istration, etc. The economic and commerical aspects will be given
due attention, and it is the intention of the editors to make the work
such that it will be highly welcome to librarians who are already
seriously embarrassed in trying to meet the demand, in both refer-
ence and public libraries, for information relative to our Malaysian
possessions— a demand which is increasing rapidly and must con-
tinue to increase.
Louis XVIII and the Hundred Days.— The latest volumes of the
valuable publications of the **Societe d'Histoire Contemporaine "
bring us the correspondence between the envoys of London and
Berlin and their respective governments during the ephemeral
restoration of Napoleon that ended so disastrously at Waterloo. Sir
Charles Stuart *s letters to Lord Castlereagh and Count von der
Goltz's letters to the Prussian minister Hardenburg illustrate the
hopes and anxieties of Louis XVIII during his temporary exile at
Gand. They also illustrate the rigid determination of England and
Prussia not to tolerate the reestablishment of a Bonaparte regime.
The business-like correspondence of Stuart interests less than the
more chatty newsy letters of the Prussian nobleman. ('* Louis
XVIII et les Cent Jours a Gand, Receuil de documents inedits,"
par Albert Malet, Paris, Picard, 1902, 8vo, 2 vols.)
Historic Highways of America.— Under the above title Arthur
Butler Hulbert begins a series of fifteen volumes destined to deal
with the great pathways that nature, the wild beast, the Indian, and
civilized man, have made across the face of the New World. The
first volume treats of the roads made by the mound-building Indians,
NOTES AND COMMENT. 169
and of the pathways of the buffalo in its annual migrations. Other
volumes will deal with Indian thoroughfares, the roads of the
pioneers, historic and military roads, the great canals, and the roads
of the future. Every volume will te a welcome illustration of the
great historic truth that the roads of a land are the real arteries and
veins of its social and political life. (Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleve-
land, 1902, 8vo, pp. 140.)
UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE.
Meeting of the Board of Directors.— The animal meeting of the
trustees of the Catholic University was held Wednesday, Nov. 12.
Those present were His High Eminence James, Cardinal Gibbons, Most
Rev. John J. "Williams, D.D., Archbishop of Boston ; Most Rev. Patrick
J. Ryan, D.D., Archbishop of Philadelphia; Most Rev. John Ireland,
DD., Archbishop of St. Paul ; Most Rev. John J. Keane, D.D., Arch-
bishop of Dubuque ; Most Rev. John M. Farley, D.D., Archbishop of
New York; Right Rev. John L. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Peoria;
Right Rev. Camillus P. Maes, D.D., Bishop of Covington, Ky., and
secretary of the board; Right Rev. John S. Foley, D.D., Bishop of
Detroit; Right Rev. Ignatius F. Horstmann, D.D., Bishop of Cleve-
land, and Right Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, D.D., Rector of the Uni-
versity.
Cardinal Gibbons presided. The forenoon was given to the con-
sideration of the reports of the different committees. The Committee
on Finance, of which Archbishop Williams is chairxaan, found the
report of the Rector and Treasurer clear, full and satisfactory, and
accepted the report of the auditors who had examined the assets and
investments of the University. It was found that the finances are
in a most satisfactory condition. During the year the receipts
amounted to $158,917.29 and the disbursements to $155,268.73, leav-
ing a balance of $3,648.56. Of the amount received $66,517.25 came
from the earnings of the trust funds and other ordinary sources of
revenue. There have been received in bequests during the year $26,-
370.95 ; from sales of property, $33,222.19 ; by endowments this year,
$19,465.41, and from the Bishops' Guarantee Fund, $10,400. Eleven
thousand seven hundred dollars were paid this year on the general
indebtedness of the University. The gross indebtedness of the Uni-
versity is $193,500 ; the assets on hand amount to $59,493.10, making
the net indebtedness $134,006.90, or $11,700 less than last year.
The Committee on Studies and Discipline, through its chairman.
Bishop Horstmann, reported in commendation of the program of
studies as proposed by the University, as also the reports as to dis-
cipline in Caldwell Hall and Keane Hall.
The Committee on Organization, Archbishop Ryan chairman, re-
ported by the Rector, was approved. The appointment to the chair
departments of the University. The coordination of faculties, re-
ported by the Rector, was approved. The appointment to the chair
170
VNIYERSITY CHRONICLE. m
formerly held by the late Very Rev. Dr. Bouquillon was deferred
to the April meeting. The meeting amended the by-laws of the
board by voting to change the time of meeting from November to
the second Wednesday after Easter.
Bishop Matthew Harkins, of Providence, R. I., was elected trus-
tee, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Archbishop Corrigan.
The board elected the following officers: His Eminence Cardinal
Gibbons, president; Most Rev. Archbishop Williams, vice-president;
Right Rev. Bishop Maes, secretary, and Mr. Thomas E. Waggaman,
of Washington, D. C, treasurer. The Rector, Bishop Conaty, was
appointed acting assistant treasurer.
There was no appointment to the vice-rectorship, the place being
left open for the present. The board appointed a Committee on
Investments, consisting of Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop Conaty and Mr.
Michael Jenkins, of Baltimore. Dr. Joseph H. McMahon, of New
York, who is assisting the Rector in the completion of the Endowment
Fund, made a report which was very satisfactory. The board voted
to lease a site on the University grounds for the erection of a new
apostolic mission house. Several matters of importance were re-
ferred to the April meeting.
Patronal Feast of the University.— The Patronal Feast of the Uni-
versity was celebrated, as usual, on December 8. Solemn Pontifical
Mass was sung by the Rector, Right Rev. Bishop Conaty. The cele-
brant was assisted by Rev. Wm. B. Martin, of New York ; deacon,
Rev. Stephen N. Moore, of Peoria; sub-deacon. Rev. Fr. Achstetter,
of Baltimore, and master of ceremonies, Rev. Thomas E. McGuigan,
of Baltimore. His Excellency, Most Rev. Archbishop Falconio, the
new Apostolic Delegate to the United States, was present in the
sanctuary in cope and mitre, assisted by Very Rev. John A. Bums,
C.S.C., president of Holy Cross College, and Very Rev. Daniel Duffy,
S.S., president of St. Austin's College. As this was an academic
occasion the professors and students of the University wore their
academic robes. Very Rev. Mgr. Rooker occupied a seat in the
sanctuary. After the First Gospel Rev. D. J. Stafford, S.T.D., de-
livered an eloquent sermon. At the end of the Mass the Most Rev.
Delegate gave the Papal Blessing.
The New Marist College.— On November 1, Feast of All Saints,
the Rt. Rev. Rector blessed the comer-stone of the new college
building in which the Marist Fathers will conduct their Apostolic
School or Juniorate. It is located at Second and Savannah Streets,
N. E., within easy reach of the University grounds. The plans,
172 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
which have been drawn by Mr. A. 0. Von Herbulis, provide for a
structure three stories high with a frontage of 131 feet and a depth
of 77 feet. The style is English Gothic and the material is brick
with trimmings in Indiana stone. The building will accommodate
ten professors and sixty students.
Gifts to the Library.— Among other valuable gifts the University
Library has received a copy of **Isocratis Orationes Tres/* printed
at Venice '*apud hseredes Petri Ravani et socios, MDLY." Though
not a treasure of the earliest ** cradle-period ' ' of printing, it is still
a very old and rare book. Only the Greek text is paginated. A
very literal Latin translation creates the impression that the booklet
was printed **ad usum discentium." The University is indebted for
this valuable text to the generosity of Mr. Matthew Daly, Esq., of
Brooklyn, N. Y.
The New Apostolic Mission House.— On the afternoon of Thurs-
day, November 13, in the presence of a large number of visitors,
professor and students of the University and surrounding colleges.
His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons broke ground on the site of the New
Apostolic Mission House on the grounds of the University, leased
by the Missionary Union at the recent meeting of the Board of Trus-
tees. This ceremony marks an event of national importance, and
is destined to be far-reaching in its influence upon the work of the
Catholic Church in this country. The ceremony occurs on the thir-
teenth anniversary of the opening of the University, and seems to be
second only in importance to the establishment of that institution.
Among those present were : His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, Most
Rev. Archbishops John J. Williams, William Henry Elder, Patrick
J. Ryan, John Ireland, Alexander Christie, John J. Keane, John
M. Farley, Right Rev. Bishops Camillus P. Maes, Thomas 0 'Gor-
man, Thomas J. Conaty, Monsignor Kennedy, rector of the American
College, Rome, Italy; Very Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., provincial of
the Holy Cross congregation; Very Rev. Fr. Deshon, C.S.P., provin-
cial of the Paulists; Rev. Walter Elliott, C.S.P., superior of the
Apostolic Mission House; Rev. A. P. Doyle, C.S.P., New York.
Conference of the Association of American Universities,— The third
annual conference of the Association was held at Columbia Uni-
versity, New York City, December 29, 30 and 31, 1902. Several
important papers were presented and discussed, and matters of
business transacted. Dr. G. R. Parkins, President of Lower Canada
College and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Cecil Rhodes
UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE. I73
Sch.-^larship Fund, appeared before the association, and gave an
interesting account of the establishment of the fund and the work
that is being done preliminary to the assignment of the scholarships,
and expressed the desire for any advice that members of the associa-
tion might be able to give. The Catholic University of America
was represented by Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, S.T.D., Rector, and
Daniel W. Shea, Ph.D., General Secretary. An invitation from
Bishop Conaty to hold the next conference in Washington was taken
under advisement by the executive committee. The Catholic Univer-
sity of America was made a member of the executive committee.
On the evening of December 30, the association was given a banquet
at Sherry's by the New York Alumni of the universities composing
the association. Rev. P. H. Hayes, S.T.L., Secretary to Archbishop
Farley, and President of the Catholic University of America
Alumni Association, was a member of the reception committee. The
University Club and the Century Club of New York very courteously
extended the members of the Association of Universities the privileges
of their clubs. Columbia University maintained fully its tradition
for splendid hospitality.
Faculty of Law.
General University Lectures.— Of the five courses of general uni-
versity lectures offered by the Faculty of Law, two have been com-
menced during the current term — the course on the principles and pro-
cesses of oratory, and the course on religious corporations. The
course on oratory has been given on Monday in the law lecture room
in McMahon Hall, and has been attended by between forty and fifty
students, drawn from all departments of the University and from the
colleges of the religious orders. This course of lectures is auxiliary to
the courses on homiletics and sacred eloquence offered in the faculty
of theology, and to the course in forensics offered in the School of Law.
The subjects treated in this course are: I, The Psychological Process
involved in Oratory; II, The Training of the Orator; III, The Con-
tents of an Oration; IV, The Preparation of an Oration], V, The
Delivery of an Oration. The course on Religious Corporations has
been delivered on Wednesdays in one of the lecture rooms in Cald-
well Hall, and has been attended by thirty or more students, most of
them belonging to the School of Theology. The subjects treated in
this course are : I, The general law of the land concerning corporations
and associations, especially those organized for the promotion of
charitable and religious enterprises; II, The legal status of Catholic
ecclesiastical corporations and associations in the United States, in-
174 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
eluding the relations of Church and State in each state in the Union,
and the laws of each state in reference to religious bodies; III, The
incidental legal rights -and duties of Catholic ecclesiastical corpora-
tions and associations in the United States, with special reference to
limitations upon property rights, exemptions from taxation and other
public burdens, the validity of charitable devises and bequests to
pious uses, etc. The first subject is now under discussion with the
class by Dr. W. C. Robinson. The second will be taken up early in
the winter term by Rev. Dr. Creagh. The third will follow under
Dr. Robinson. The object of this course is to afford to the clergy
educated at the University an opportunity to become sufficiently
acquainted with the legal rights and obligations of parishes, asylums,
etc. ; to enable them to protect the interests committed to their charge,
and to become safe advisers in matters pertaining to the business
management of church affairs.
The Decision in the Riverside Law Suit. —Although the Faculty
of Law has no greater interest in the property of the University
than any other of its academic departments, the decision of the River-
side suit in favor of the University affords them a peculiar satisfac-
tion, as confirming their unanimous opinion concerning the rights of
the University in reference to this controversy. The matter is im-
portant enough to all friends of the University to receive a brief
mention in these pages. In 1897 the University sold a tract of land on
Riverside Drive in the City of New York, a portion of the McMahon
estate, for $100,000, giving to the purchaser an executory contract
to be followed by a deed when certain payments had been made. The
purchaser, having paid a small amount, erected a building on- the land
at an expense of upwards of $10,000, and soon after abandoned the
land, leaving the building unpaid for, and making no further pay-
ments on the purchase money. The University was compelled to
take back the land and again put it on the market for sale. The con-
tractors with the purchaser, who had erected the building, then made
claims upon the University for the payment of their bills, and having
placed mechanics' liens upon the land, proceeded to foreclose them in
the courts of New York. Upon the trial of the case in the lower court
the University was defeated, and judgment rendered against it for
$10,419.88. From this judgment the University appealed to the
Appellate Division of the First Department, where the judgment
below was affirmed by a divided court. From this decision another
appeal was taken to the Court of Appeals, which reversed the decisions
of the lower courts and by a unanimous judgment of the six judges
UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE, I75
present at the hearing determined the suit in favor of the University.
In rendering their decision the court said:
"The judgment appealed from should be reversed. The me-
chanics* liens involved in this action were filed against property now
owned by the Catholic University of America. The appellant insists
that the labor and materials furnished, for which liens were filed, were
not furnished either with its consent or at its request, although its
property has been held liable therefor. It is not even pretended
that the university requested the performance of the labor or the
furnishing of the material employed in the erection of the building
upon the appellant's land. Nor do we think there was any such
consent as is contemplated by the statute relating to the subject. . . .
The only ground upon which the Appellate Division held that the
university consented to the erection of buildings on its land is that
the contract of sale effected such consent. The provision upon which
that court relied as constituting consent was as follows : * It is further,
understood and agreed that the vendee shall have the right of imme-
diate possession to the property hereinbefore mentioned and described
for the purpose of erecting buildings thereon.' Obviously, the only
effect of that provision was to give the vendee the right of possession
which he would not otherwise have had, and it cannot be regarded
as a consent under the provisions of the Lien Law to the erection
of the building constructed by Dexter. It is to be observed that,
while there was consent by the vendor that the vendee should have
the right of possession for the purpose of erecting buildings thereon,
there was no consent whatever to the construction of the particular
building erected. It is quite evident that the university had knowl-
edge of the fact that the defendant Dexter intended to improve the
property by the erection of a building thereon. There was, however,
no proof of any knowledge upon its part as to the character of the
building to be erected, of the erection of the building constructed,
or that the university acquiesced therein. Proof of the existence
of that knowledge was insufficient to establish a consent, under the
Lien Law, to the erection of any building which the vendee should
conclude to or did erect. The decision of the learned Appellate
Division in that respect is in direct conflict with the later decisions
of this court (Vosseller v. Slater, 25 App. Div., 368, 372, affirmed
163 N. Y., 564; Havens v. West Side Elec. L. & P. Co., 49 N. Y. St.
R., 771, affirmed 60 N. Y. St. R., 874; Hankinson v. Vantine, 152
N. Y., 20, 29 ; De Klyn v. Gould, 165 N. Y, 282, 286 ; Rice v. Culver,
172 N. Y., 60).
**. . . This review of the authorities discloses that the consent
176 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
relied upon by the respondent was insufficient to justify the court
in holding the land of the university liable to the liens sought to
be enforced in this action. Therefore, there was in this case no
evidence to justify the trial court in finding that the labor and ma-
terials performed and furnished by the lienors were furnished with
the consent of the university.
**It thus appearing that there was no evidence which, according
to any reasonable view, supports the finding of the trial court, and
as the affirmance by the Appellate Division was not unanimous, the
question whether there was any evidence to support that finding
raises a question of law which the Court of Appeals may review
(Ostrom V, Greene, 161 N. Y., 353).
** While there were several other questions presented upon the
argument and in the briefs of counsel, still, as the judgment must
be reversed upon the ground that there was no valid consent by
the owner which made its land liable for the liens placed thereon,
no discussion of those questions seems necessary. . . .
**The judgment should be reversed and a new trial granted.*'
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
VOL. IX. APRIL, igoj. No. 2.
" Let there be progress, therefore ; a widespread and et^er prog-
ress in every century and epoch, hoth of individuals and of the
general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress
in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their na-
tural limits and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teach-
ing, feeling and opinion."— St. Vincent op Lerins, Commonit, c. 6.
PUBWSHED QUARTKRI*Y BY
THE CATHOI.IC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA,
LANCASTER, PA., and , WASHINGTON, D. C.
PRESS OP
THE NEW ERA PRINTINQ COMPANY,
LANCASTER, PA.
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
Vol. IX, April, igoj. No. 2.
JOHANN KASPAR ZEUSS: FOUNDER OF
CELTIC PHILOLOGY.
In the investigations on the common origin of the Indo-
Germanic languages which took place early in the last
century in Germany, the home of comparative grammar, the
Celtic branch did not for some time take part. To be sure
a good deal was written about that time, in Germany as well
as elsewhere in Europe, on the ethnography and literature of
the Celts, but these writings are often the work of dilettanti,
and although of interest for historical reasons, are for the
most part of little scientific value. Among the more notable
of the early works, to confine ourselves to Germany, may be
mentioned Diefenbach's ^'Celtica'' (1839) which, although
antiquated, is still of considerable interest for the Gaulish
names it contains, and Leo^s essay (1845) on the Old-Irish
hymn of Fiacc in honor of St. Patrick. Even before this
Bopp, the founder of comparative grammar, had called atten-
tion to the importance of Celtic in the study of Indo-Germanic
and in 1838 read an essay before the Berlin Academy on the
affinity of the Celtic language with the Sanskrit— but the
honor of having inaugurated Celtic Philology belongs incon-
testably to Johann Kaspar Zeuss whose work, epoch-making
in the strictest meaning of the word, the ^'Grammatica
Celtica,''! is the basis on which the new science has since his
time been developed. -
1 a
Grammatica Celtica e monumentis vetustis tarn Hibernicse linguae quam
Britannicorum dialectorum Cambricae, Cornice, Aremoncae Comparatis Gallic*
priscae reliquiis construxit, I. C. Zeuss, Phil. Dr. Hist. Prof. 1853.
179
180 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
This remarkable man was bom July 22, 1806, at Vogten-
dorf, a village not far from Kronach in Upper Franeonia,
Bavaria, where his father was a master-mason. He attended
the village school at Hofles, near by, and was from the first
destined for study. His mother often took him with her to the
church on the Kreuzberg, near Kronach, and from the priest
he received his first instruction in Latin.^ After he had at-
tended the Latin school at Kronach he was received, in 1820,
in the progymnasium at Bamberg where he soon surpassed
his fellows in their studies. The choice of his vocation cost
him a great struggle, for his mother wished very much that
should be a priest, but Zeuss felt that that was not his calling.
He attended the Lyceum at Bamberg and the University at
"Wiirzburg for a short time and, in 1826, decided to go to
Munich. There he devoted himself to linguistic studies,
Oriental as well as classical, Slavic and comparative grammar,
but his native language attracted his chief attention. Toward
the end of his university career he was tutor two and a half
years in the house of the Count of Montgelas. He completed
his university studies in 1830, and in 1832 was appointed in-
structor in Hebrew at the old Gymnasium at Munich. This
post he held until 1839. His leisure he gave to scientific in-
vestigations and, in 1837, produced *^Die Deutschen und die
Nachbarstamme'' which, not finding a publisher, he printed at
his own expense. In 1838 Zeuss received the degree of doctor
of philosophy from Erlangen and in the same year he asked
to be appointed professor of Germanic philology, at Wiirzburg
or Erlangen; his lectures, he says in his petition, would be on
historical German grammar, the interpretation of Old German
texts, northern mythology and Sanskrit grammar. His appli-
cation was rejected at Wiirzburg on the ground that other
needs had first to be satisfied there and that the establishment
of a professorship of Germanic philology was not then neces-
sary ; it was refused at Erlangen on the ground that the faculty
had not sufficient evidence of the applicant's qualifications
for the post. His petition was equally unsuccessful at Berlin.
1 The material of this brief sketch of Zeuss' life is taken from C. W. Gllick's
" Erinnerungen an Kasper Zeuss," Miinchen, 1857. Cf. Revue Geltique, VI, 519,
Zeits. f. Celt. Phil., Ill, 199, " Allgem. Deutsche Biographie," Bd. XLV.
JOHANN KASPAR ZEUS8. 181
There his name was well known but he was objected to because
of his religion. In 1839, however, he was appointed teacher
of history at the newly founded lyceum at Speier where he
remained seven years and produced: ''Die Herkunft der
Baiem von den Markomannen gegen die bisherigen Muthmas-
sungen,'' ''Traditiones possessionesque Wizenburgenses ' ' and
''Die freie Eeichsstadt Speier vor ihrer Zerstorung nach
urkundlichen Quellen ortlich geschildert. ' ' From Speier he
often went to Carlsruhe, and regularly every Saturday to
Heidelberg, where he passed the time in the library, returning
to Speier on Monday mornings. In Speier he applied him-
self with eagerness to the Celtic languages and every year
made a journey to London, Oxford, St. Gall, Milan or Wiirz-
burg to collect manuscript which contained Celtic glosses. He
knew all the libraries in which there was anything to be found
on the subject and it was chiefly in order that he might
be able to use his savings for gathering material and reach-
ing the goal of his Celtic studies that he remained unmarried.
In 1847 Zeuss was appointed ordinary professor of history at
the University of Munich, but the Munich climate did not
agree with him, and lecturing in the large halls of the univer-
sity was injurious as he suffered from lung trouble, and after
only a few months he was obliged to ask to be reappointed to
his former post, or transferred to a milder climate, with the
result that in the fall of the same year he was appointed teacher
of history at the Bamberg Gymnasium. In 1855 his health
failed and he received leave of absence for the winter term;
he passed the time at Kronach with his brother who followed
the father's trade. The following spring he was at his re-
quest retired for the space of a year and passed his last days
with his sister in Vogtendorf. He died November 10, 1856,
just fifty years old.
Zeuss is described by one who visited him shortly before
his death as tall, with black hair and moustache and a Slavonic
rather than a German cast of countenance. Great as Zeuss
was as a scholar, equally modest was the retirement in which
he lived. As a school-boy in Bamberg he seemed shy at first
sight but on acquaintance one recognized that it was merely his
nature to keep to himself. He took no part in the games of the
182 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
boys but found pleasure and delight in study alone. Only
in the last years of his university life did he attach himself
to a few of the best of his fellow-students. In his maturer
years as well he loved retirement ; still, he formed a true friend-
ship with the pupil who accompanied him in his career. When
a boy he set learning above everything ; even so, later, research
and science were the air in which he breathed.
Zeuss was already one of the most prominent Germanists
of his time when he began more and more to give attention to
the study of the Celtic languages and to the great task of Celtic
grammar. He thus announces his gigantic work: ^*It is my
purpose to set forth on the basis of the oldest extant monu-
ments, the nature, variety and forms of that language which,
of all the related languages that spread from India over Asia
and Europe, is farthest to the West . . . not of small im-
portance must that work be considered which shall help us to
examine the laws of the language of a people split up, no
doubt, ages ago, but once widely spread over Europe, the re-
mains of which, accordingly, are plentiful from the very earl-
iest period and are still represented in the more recent lan-
guages."^ Zeuss began with copying the old manuscripts
which contain Celtic texts, he got together the remains of the
old Celtic language, the Gaulish, which are scattered in the
writings of the ancients, on inscriptions and in other docu-
ments; he devoted long and searching study to the Ogam in-
scriptions and the oldest monuments of the Irish, Welsh,
Breton and Cornish, and made himself familiar with their
modern varieties. But he gave especial prominence to the
Old-Irish:
* * In the prosecution of this work which, in the first place, inquires
into what were the primitive and common Celtic forms and how the
modern variety has arisen from them, the Irish language claims the
first place as being, of all the related languages of Europe and Asia,
the last, as the island Thule is the farthest west in Europe. It claims
^ Linguae, quae inter cognatas linguas ab India per Asiam et Europam
dilatatas extrema est in occidente, naturam, varietatem formasque e fundamento
monumentorum extantium vetustorum exponere aggredior . . . non parvi etiam
erit sestimanda opera ea, qua fiat facultas inspiciendi leges linguae nationis fractae
illius quidem iam dudum, sed latissime quondam per Europam patentis, cuius
linguae rudera ideo non rara sunt iam a vetustis temporibus, atque hodie quoque
extant in aliis recentioribus Unguis.
JOHANN KASPAB ZEU88. 183
attention not only because of the greater richness of the Irish form
of Celtic but also because of the more numerous monuments pre-
served in Old-Irish codices which far surpass, both in their number
and their subject matter, the British codices of the same age, or,
more strictly speaking, the Cymric which alone reach the age of the
Irish/ '^
The codices which Zeuss made use of and which are the
sources of his grammar are, for the Irish, the St. Gall Priscian,
the Wiirzburg Paulinus, codices from the Ambrosian Library at
Milan, from Carlsruhe and Cambrai, seven in all, dating from
the seventh to the ninth century. Out of this material Zeuss,
with consummate skiU, created the **Grammatica Celtica."
The work is admirably arranged so as to show the relations of
the Celtic languages to each other, their phonology, formology,
word-composition, syntax, the principal verse-forms and speci-
mens from the earliest monuments.
To Zeuss is due the credit of having made known the exis-
tence of Celtic linguistic phaenomena and of having formulated
the laws which have since been elaborated. His work had no
forerunners in the shape of separate studies on Celtic subjects
and so came as a revelation to those engaged in general com-
parative grammar as well as to those whose specialties lay in
the allied philologies. Few at the time were able to criticise
his work. As he was his own teacher so all were his disciples.
The Germanic languages had been opened up some time before
by Jacob Grimm, and Diez' etjnnological dictionary of the
Komance languages had appeared one month before the
* ^ Grammatica Celtica, ' ' but Zeuss had far greater difficulties to
overcome than either of the above for in no field of history or
philology had wilder theories been propounded. The ^* Gram-
matica Celtica'' ranks as one of the greatest monuments of
erudition and its author as one of the first scholars of the
^ Hibernica lingua, extrema et ultima omnium linguarum Europae et Asiae
a primordio affinium, ut Thule insula est ultima Europse, in inquisitionibus huius
operis, quae id quaerunt praesertim, quae fuerint primitivae et communes Celtics
formae et quomodo ex eis prodierit recentior varietas, primum locum sibi vindicat
primamque diligentiam, non solum ob maiorem formarum iibertatem linguse
ipsius, sed etiam ob eopiosiora monumenta servata in codicibus vetustis hiber-
nicis, a quibus longe superantur tarn numero quam contentorum copia britannici
codices eiusdem aetatis vel potius cambrici, qui scilicet soli aetatem hibemicorum
attingunt.
184 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
century. John 0 'Donovan, in a notice on the death of Zeuss,
wrote:
'* Ireland ought not to think of him without gratitude, for the
Irish nation has had no nobler gift bestowed upon them by any
continental author for centuries back than the work which he has
written on their language."
The ' ' Grammatica Celtica'' appeared in the year 1853, just
fifty years ago, and the progress of Celtic studies during the
half century in Germany, where scientific methods have been
applied to the languages and literatures of the Celtic people,
may be judged from a brief account of the most prominent
German Celtists and their most important work. It was in-
evitable in a pioneer work of such vast extent as that of Zeuss,
embracing as it did all the available material from the earliest
records of the Celtic languages to his own time, that errors of
various kinds should creep in, ancj Zeuss himself during the
three years that he survived the publication of his work had
prepared a great deal of matter for its revision and intrusted
the preparation of the new edition to his pupil Christian
Wilhelm Gliick, ^^virum unice sihi coniunctum et pietate dis-
cipuli et familiaritatis usu^^ (Ebel). Gliick as well as his
master was a Bavarian and studied at Erlangen, Tiibingen,
Zurich and Berne; he was Zeuss' junior by four years and
died in 1866. The work by which" he is best known is * * Die
bei C. I. Caesar vorkommenden Keltischen Namen.'' Among
the letters which Zeuss wrote to Gliick during the last three
years of his life (mostly answers to questions on the Celtic
languages)^ is one under date of September, 1853, one month
after the appearance of the ^^Grammatica Celtica,'' in which
Zeuss already speaks of the need of a new edition of his gram-
mar; again, in 1855, when he found that he himself had not
the strength to carry out the work, he wrote to Gliick asking
him to undertake the latter, but Gliick 's health, likewise, for-
bade him to do so and the task fell to Hermann Wilhelm Ebel, in
some respects the most illustrious of Zeuss' scholars. He was
bom in 1820 and his death in 1875 prevented the Celtic course
which he had announced for the winter of 1875-6 at Berlin.
^ These letters have been published in Zeitschrift fur Celt. Phil., Vol. III.
JOHANN KASPAR ZEUSS. 185
Ebel was prominent in comparative grammar investigations;
his Celtic studies are to be found chiefly in the volume of Kuhn's
''Zeitschrift'' and in Bezzenberger's ' ' Beitrage. ' ' In his
revision of Zeuss he had help in the first place from the relicta
of the latter and from the works of Stokes and Schleicher, of
whom the latter had devoted study to Old-Irish in his works on
the comparative grammar of the Indo-Germanic languages. As
the result of his constant labor in the investigation of the struc-
ture of the Celtic languages the ''Grammatica Celtica'' was
greatly improved: Zeuss 's statements were reviewed and sup-
plemented in many ways, errors and omissions corrected, many
additional illustrations brought forth and the parts of the
work more usefully distributed, so that the Zeuss-Ebel Gram-
mar is an almost entirely new work and the only edition of the
^^Grammatica Celtica'' now referred to.
In the same year as the appearance of this work, that is in
1871, Ernst Windisch lectured on Celtic at Leipzig and during
1874-5 at Heidelberg; since then he has lectured at Leipzig,
is the Nestor of German Celtists, and was the teacher of
Thumeysen and Zimmer. The place accorded to the Celtic
languages in Curtius* ^^Grundziige der Griechischen Etymol-
ogie*' is due to his efforts. His first work devoted to Irish
alone, the * * Kurzgef asste Irische Grammatik'^ which appeared
in 1879, blazed a way through the mazes of Zeuss, of which it
is chiefly a digest, and made the study of Old- and Middle-
Irish more accessible. The grammar has been twice translated
into English and it would be safe to say that no book has so
greatly faciliated the study of Irish. It was not Windisch 's
intention to make his ^Concise Grammar' an historical gram-
mar of Irish ; the bare facts of the language are given, and a
few pages of selections from the Old-Irish glosses and the
Middle-Irish texts with a glossary thereto. Of even more im-
portance than his Grammar is the chrestomathy ''Irische Texte
mit Worterbuch'' which was published in 1880 and with it be-
gan a new era in the study of Irish— especially of Middle-
Irish, to which Windisch has given particular attention; in the
work Old-Irish was only a starting point and Old- and Middle-
Irish forms are not distinguished. This was probably the
most important contribution to Irish lexicography in the last
186 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
century, for it brought together and put into a convenient form
for the student a mass of material up to that time widely
scattered and difficult of access. It contains the Old-Irish
hymns from the ^^ Liber HymnOrum'' and from the Irish
manuscript from the monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia, be-
sides several of the most interesting episodes in prose and verse
from the Middle-Irish saga cycles, some here printed for the
first time, and one prose text of a religious character, the ^ ^ Fis
Adamnain'' or Vision of Adamnan. The Irish texts are pre-
ceded by notices on the MSS., the sources and variant read-
ings, but the greatest value of the book lies in the rich vocab-
ulary of over 7000 words, occupying nearly two-thirds of the
whole volume, with rare exceptions supported by authorities,
references, etc. In spite of the severe criticism which the
book met with at the hands of some reviewers— it was as ex-
travagantly praised by others— the *^Irische Texte'' certainly is
a work of the first rank, and if it does not ^ ^ stand next to that
of Zeuss-Ebel on the shelves of every Celtist" it is the best-
thumbed book in his library. The publication of Irish texts
thus begun has been continued since 1884 in the series of
**Irische Texte mit IJbersetzungen und Worterbuch'^ edited by
"Whitley Stokes and Ernst Windisch, and intended primarily
for the publication of the Irish national heroic legends.
Under Windisch Heinrich Zimmer began his Celtic studies
and lectured in Berlin from 1878 to 1881 and since then in
Greifswald until, in 1901, he was appointed to the newly
founded chair of Celtic at Berlin, the only one in Germany
devoted exclusively to Celtic, and is consequently regarded as
the dean of German Celtologues. His first important writings
bearing on Celtic are the ^^Keltische Studien^' (1881) the first
part of which is given up to a violent attack on Windisch 's
^^Irische Texte''; in the second part are Zimmer 's views,
which he has since modified, ^'Ueber altirische Betonung und
Verskunsf which, he says in the preface, he composed in six
weeks, working twelve hours daily, or rather nightly, from
4 p. m. to 4 a. m. In the same year appeared his ^ ' Glossee Hi-
bernicsB e Codicibus Wirziburgensi Carolisruhensibus et aliis, ' '
with addenda and corrigenda in 1886, but without translation
or index. The work was the occasion for some severe counter
J OH ANN KA8PAR ZEUSS. 187
criticism from Celtists in England and France, and has since
been partly superseded by the publication of the ** Thesaurus
Palaeohibernicus,'' but it was the first complete edition of the
Wiirzburg Paulinus, which contains the most important of
Old-Irish glosses, for Zeuss and Ebel had printed only a small
part of it. Zimmer's investigations on all phases of Celtic
philology are scattered throughout many scientific journals of
Germany and would fill several thick volumes. Most impor-
f,ant of all was the discovery of the laws and effects of Irish
accent which has necessitated a complete remodelling of Irish
grammar.
. The credit of having made this discovery is shared by Pro-
fessor Thumeysen, one of the foremost living Celtists.
Rudolf Thumeysen studied under Windisch and Zimmer and
lectured on Celtic, first at Jena in 1882-3, and since 1887-8 in
Freiburg. In 1884 appeared his first work on Celtic philology,
* ^ Keltoromanisches, " which is of the greatest value to
Eomanists as well as to Celtists, in which the words supposed
by Diez, in his ^ ^ Etymologisches Worterbuch der Romanischen
Sprachen,'' to be of Celtic origin are critically examined. In
collaboration with Bruno Giiterbock, who is best known for
his ^^Bemerkungen iiber die lateinischen Lehnworter im
Irischen'' published in 1882, he compiled in 1881 the ** Indices
Glossarum et Vocabulorum Hibemicorum quae in Grammaticas
Celticae editione altera explanantur" which by its abundant
references greatly facilitated the use of the **Grammatica
Celtica. ^ ' The first part serves as a commentary on the glosses
in Zeuss-Ebel with references to the places of occurrence of each
word ; the second part is an index of all the Irish words of the
^^Grammatica Celtica.'' Among Thumeysen 's many writings
on Celtic subjects (for example the Old-Irish part in Brug-
mann's ^^Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indo-
germanischen Sprachen"), two may be mentioned here, his
fundamental study of Middle-Irish metric in the third series
of the ^'Irische Texte," consisting of the publication of three
metrical tractates on the kinds of poetry, classes of poets and
mles of composition, with notes explanatory of the technical
terms, and his ^'Sagen aus dem Alten Irland" (1901), a collec-
tion of fourteen of the most interesting mediaeval Irish tales
188 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
translated into German and intended primarily to make known
to the German public the richness and variety of Irish litera-
ture, and containing valuable bibliographical and literary
notices.
In this brief account of the progress of Celtic philology in
Germany since its foundation by Zeuss mention at least must
be made of the other Celtic scholars, Germans in training at
least, who in recent years have added most to our stock of
knowledge of Celtic antiquity and civilization; Hugo Schu-
chardt who has written extensively and, since 1882 at Graz in
Austria, has occasionally lectured on Celtic; A. Holder whose
monumental work, the **Altceltischer Sprachschatz ' ' first ap-
peared in 1891 and is still in course of publication, a work of
vast compass and a wonderful repertory of Gaulish material
gathered from inscriptions, documents and quotations from
ancient authors; Kuno Meyer, who occupies himself mostly
with the Middle- and early Modem-Irish literature; Max
Nettlau, best known for his contributions to Cymric as well as to
Middle-Irish grammar; the Danish philologist Holger Ped-
ersen, well known in other fields of Indo-Germanic philology,
whose most valuable work in Celtic is his * ^ Aspirationen i
Irsk''; E. Zupitza, W. Meyer Liibke, Chr. Sarauw, Rich.
Schmidt and Fred. Sommer.
It is not surprising that Old-Irish, the most important
branch of the Celtic languages for comparative grammar pur-
poses, and Middle-Irish because of the age and wealth of its
literature, have been the favorite domain of investigators but the
sister languages have not lacked attention from German scholars.
To tell those who have advanced the study of Welsh and Breton
would be to repeat most of the names already given. In the
Gaelic of Scotland Ludwig Christian Stern of Berlin is facile
princeps and almost alone on the continent; but in Celtic an-
tiquities, archaeology, mythology, folklore and law hardly any-
thing has as yet been done in Germany.
The great activity of German scholarship in editing glosses
and texts, and in solving the problems of Celtic grammar, made
it advisable to publish a German review devoted exclusively
to these subjects in addition to the linguistic and literary
journals, pamphlets and proceedings of learned societies and
JOHANN EASPAR ZEUSS. 189
the peculiarly Celtic periodicals of France, Ireland and Great
Britain in which the results of their investigations had been,
and are still, made public. So in 1896 the first volume of the
Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie appeared and in the same
year the Archiv fur Celtische Lexicographie, which is German
in title and place of publication, although written mostly in
English. The '* Archiv" is intended chiefly to be the store-
house of everything relating to Celtic glossology (some Cornish
and Breton glosses have already been published) and of the
Middle-Irish in particular.
But German Celtists have not been absorbed in the purely
linguistic side of Celtic philology to the neglect of the literary
history. A great deal of this, however, is almost entirely in
the hands of Zimmer, although Windisch and Stern have done
much on the Ossianic cycle. Zimmer 's views on this question
are peculiar and not generally accepted, especially his theory
of the great influence on Old-Irish language and saga material
of the German, or more strictly Scandinavian, by which he
tries to explain the Finn and Ossian stories. The versions of
the voyage of St. Brendan have also been studied by him and
in Latin-Celtic literature his ^^Nennius Vindicatus'' on the
authorship, date and transmission of the Historia Britonum
has been the occasion of many disputes on these and related
questions. It is around the ^^Matiere de Bretagne'' however
that the battle has raged most, i. e., as to how the Celtic material
entered French literature. This difficult and important ques-
tion, since it concerns the Arthurian romances, the Breton
lays, the Tristan and Grail sagas and the poems of Marie de
France and Chrestien de Troyes, has been debated with very
different results by the Celtists, Romanists and English
scholars of Europe and America. Zimmer 's conclusion, based
largely on a study of proper names, and probably not far from
the truth, is, in a word, that the Arthurian material arose
among the Bretons and that the romanized Bretons, especially
those from the bilingual zone of the Armorican peninsula, were
the bearers of the traditions to their French neighbors to the
north.
It is mainly through the efforts of German scholars that
our knowledge of the main facts of Celtic grammar has been
190 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
advanced; they have also done much in editing the Old-Irish
glosses— the basis for all scientific study of the Celtic lan-
guages—which are now nearly all in print, and in publishing
mediaeval Celtic texts, but many fields are yet untouched and
none exhausted. For example the historical syntax of the
Celtic dialects has hardly begun and their literary history is
only in its beginnings. Although a few excellent collections
have been compiled, the vocabulary of Middle- and Modem-
Irish is far from being complete, and here each student must
be for a time and to a certain extent his own lexicographer.
The extent of the field and the abundance of material make
this an exceptionally difficult task, while the necessity of keeping
as distinct as possible the different periods of the language, and
the fact that very few of the texts we have are at first hand but
are mostly in the language of different periods and different
localities, add to the difficulty. All the efforts of Celtists are
concentrated on the historical grammar of the Celtic languages
from their beginnings up to and including their modem var-
ieties, and not till that is accomplished will Zeuss' **Gram-
matica Celtica" have been superseded.
John Joseph Dunn.
Univebsity of Freibukg, Baden.
THE ''PUZZLE" OF HAMLET.
'*The Puzzle of Hamlet** is a phrase frequently repeated;
and the more ''Hamlet'* is considered by the critics, the oftener
it is repeated, and the reasons for it may be found in the lack
of serious study given to the text of this incomparable drama
and psychological study, as well as in the neglect by the reader
of culture of the contemporary literature of Shakspere*s time.
Added to these is the strange habit of guessing at Shakspere's
meaning from a modem point of view. This habit is fixed by
the determination of so many persons to read the past as if we
possessed the one light capable of illuminating it. It is as if
we thought the secrets of old rolls of papyrus could reveal
themselves only under the rays of the electric light. Hamlet
has been made a puzzle because of our inability to look at the
text from the point of view of a contemporary. *' *ow could
Shakespere *ave lived in such a nasty *ouse without h' illumi-
nating gasT* asked a Cockney at Stratford.
In the most scholarly work in the department of English
literature, written in the last fifteen years, *'A History of
Criticism,** George Saintsbury says, speaking of the critical
necessity of confining ourselves to the actual texts. ''This
is not perhaps a fashionable proceeding. Not what Plato
says, but what the latest commentator says about Plato— not
what Chaucer says, but what the latest thesis-writer thinks
about Chaucer— is supposed to be the qualifying study of the
scholar. I am not able to share this conception of scholarship.
When we have read and digested the whole of Plato, we may,
if we like, turn to his latest German editor ; when we have read
and digested the whole of Shakspere, and Shakspere*s con-
temporaries, we may, if we like, turn to Shaksperean biog-
raphers and commentators.**
A fault in much Shaksperean criticism is that it is too
reverential. The writer who scans the Bible, alert to find an
anachronism or an exaggeration, sprawls at full length before
the silliest "sallet** of the Bard of Avon or, perhaps of Messrs.
Hemynge and Condell, in rapt admiration. Hysterical girls
191
192 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
after a morning recital by Paderewski are no more ecstatic
than some of the Shaksperean acolytes; this blazon ought not
to be ; it makes Shakspere an idol hidden in clouds of incense,
—an idol to be worshipped as unreasoningly as all idols are
worshipped. From what we can discover of the English of the
sixteenth century— and no great list of historical references is
needed to show this,— we know that they regarded a play as a
play, not as an enigma to be thought about, written about, dis-
cussed as a problem in philosophy. All the reconstructions of
the Elizabethan playhouse show that the auditors went there
to weep or laugh, to love the hero and to detest the villain, to
applaud the good and to hate the bad. The recent revival of
the Catholic morality play, * ^ Everyman, ' ' ought to give us
a clue to the truth that the drama in England, from the day of
its appearance in the monasteries to the day of its disappear-
ance under the ban of ultra-Protestantism, was made to be
seen and heard, not read or strenuously studied. Again,
although we talk of the continuity of history, we do not take
seriously the truth it implies,— that, in essentials, human nature
has always been the same ; and that by recognizing these essen-
tials, we get the keys to many things of the past that are closed
to us by the unconscious assumption that we are a new order
of beings, transformed by the Eeformation and experimental
philosophy. That the Elizabethans and the Jacobeans did not,
in the space of a few years, break completely with the beliefs
and traditions of the ancient Catholic Church, that they, in
spite of the manner in which distance and romance have trans-
figured them, took a matter-of-fact view of life ; and that there
were varying shades of belief, opinion and taste are facts that
might well be taken into consideration in discussing the mean-
ing of ' ' Hamlet. ' ' No audience will flock to a playhouse to see
a tragedy which it does not understand or with which it is out
of sympathy. The moralities and miracle plays were almost
too obvious for our present taste, but not more than sufficiently
obvious for the liking of the English of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. The dramas of Shakspere, Fletcher, Chap-
man, and the rest may contain a cipher. That is another
question. It is certain that a noble Earl who liked to listen
to music or to mingle with his countrymen of a lower caste at
TEE "PUZZLE" OF HAMLET. 193
bear beatings, did not go to see ^^ Hamlet'^ for the zest of solv-
ing any problem, whether in cipher or not !
A lover of Shakspere recognizing these things, has two
quarrels on his hands,— or at least, two reasons for irritation
in his mind. One is with the expositor of ' ' Hamlet' ' who treats
the text as a mere matter for the student; the other with the
actor, having, in his art, so many means that make for clarity,
who uses the play as if his own personality was the first
thought, and the meaning of the author the second. To these
reasons for discontent may be added,— the disregard of the
actor's part in the making of the play by the student and the
slavish obedience by the actor, in minor details, to the student.
The student forgets that '* Hamlet'' was written to be acted, and
the actor does not recognize that neither philological ^'guesses"
of the note-maker, nor the exact shape of Laertes' cloak are
of consequence, provided the value of each character be so ex-
pressed that the meaning of the tragedy is full and clear;— if
the actor could impress on the student that, if 'intuitional"
interpretation is to be allowed, he has the advantage, because
he is forced in the exercise of his art to take Shakspere 's point
of view, we might have less critical dust thrown in our eyes.
There is now no difference of opinion as to the position of
'* Hamlet" in the literature of the world,— Voltaire having been
long ago thrown out of court. Insight into man's heart and
mind, and into the fundamental verities which underlie life,
expressed in words of piercing beauty and aptness, is acknowl-
edged to exist to an amazing degree; but, if the art-form in
which these appear is defective, the symmetry of the master-
piece is affected. In a word, if the play does not answer all
the requirements of a play, if it be not interesting and clear,
Shakespere made a serious mistake in adopting the dramatic
form. If Shakspere was not sure whether Hamlet was mad
or not, or whether he was noble or not, or whether he loved
Ophelia or not, or whether Gertrude had sinned or not, he
had the commentators of the future in his mind's eye, and he
wrote for them; but, as his utter disregard of the, future of his
written plays shows that he did not consider the commentators,
he must have had in mind an immediate audience. And for
the audience of the moment, the dramatist must be sure of what
13
194 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
he wants to say, and must say it with vigor. There have been
exceptions, no doubt, but not enough to prove that a so-called
drama, of the vagueness of one of Henry James ' novels, could
hold the attention of normal auditors. From the first, ^^ Ham-
let,^* as a play, is clear and admirably constructed to meet the
demands of the London stage of the time.
A glance at the source of the play,— ^^ The History of
Hamblet,*'— connotes the evident purpose of Shakspere to
show that the Prince of Denmark counterfeits madness.
Hamblet, in the * ^ Historic, ' ' is, however, a very young prince
who imitates Brutus, because he knows that his father-uncle,
Fengon, suspects that he will avenge his father's murder as
soon as he comes of age. He is a Pagan, and he thinks and
acts as a Pagan ; but Shakspere was too much of his own time,
to be able to project himself into a Pagan mind, and too much
of an artist to forego the opportunities offered by a conflict
between Christianity and that nature which Edmund, in his
famous sololiquy called his ^ * goddess. ' ' In this conflict lies the
pregnant interest of the play. If Hamlet had Edmund's con-
tempt for any law but Nature's, the play would have lost its
deep dramatic interest. In the *^ Historic of Hamblet," as in
Malory's *^Morte d 'Arthur" Paganism shows plainly through
the Christian veneering. The translators apologize for this,
conscious always of the lack of sympathy in their readers for a
Prince, no matter how greatly injured, who would thirst for
the mere satisfaction of vengeance. In ^^ Hamlet" the Pagan
man bursts through the habits of the Christian mind. The
young Prince will not kill Claudius at his prayers.
'*Not might I do it, pat, now he is praying;
And now I '11 do it ; and so he goes to heaven,
And so I am avenged? That would be scanned;
A villain kills my father; and, for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Oh, this is hire and salary, not revenge."
The Pagan writing on the palimpsest has not been entirely
effaced. Whether Shakspere had read the ^* Historic of
Hamblet" or not, or whether he founded ^'Hamlet" on an old
THE ''PUZZLE" OF HAMLET. 195
tragedy derived from the ^ ^ Historie, ' ' it is evident that he had
at least at heart the conflict between Christian law and that
lawlessness,— that giving way to natural impulses,— to desire
or hatred, knowing no law, which we call Pagan. How coolly
too, Hamlet sends his treacherous friends, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstem to their death. His excuse would have seemed
a valid one to Elizabethans, for the traitorous friends had been
privy to a plot for compassing the ruin of one of the royal
blood, and the rightful heir to the throne. Horatio is aston-
ished that these two fellow-students should be let go straight
to their fate. Hamlet says—
**Why, man, they did make love to this employment;
They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow."
Hamlet does not doom these traitors to death in madness;
it is not madness that makes him spare the king's life until he
can think that the murder will plunge him into hell. He is
frenzied for the moment when he kills Polonius, behind the
arras, believing that Claudius is listening there, nervously
overwrought, and in the overwhelming horror of the Ghost's
revelation, striving for self-control, until, in the tumult of
heart and brain, he seems unbalanced and hysterical, but never,
even for a moment mad. The '* madness'' that he alludes to,
in his pathetic words to Laertes, is evidenced in these episodes.
It is the loss of that habitual balance which he admires so
much in Horatio, who is never passion's slave. '* Passion's
slave" at times, Hamlet is. In this consists his madness.
Hamlet is essentially noble; he may decline from the law,
but he knows, loves and respects it. Claudius, on the other
hand, being a man of parts, knows and hates it; he sins and
trembles before God, but before man he is every inch a king,
in spite of Hamlet's passionate exaggeration of his defects.
He accepts evil with open eyes. He would be virtuous, if virtue
could be reconciled with friendship for the world, the flesh and
the devil. He would be good, if he were not compelled to make
satisfaction for evil done to his neighbor. Luther's comfort-
able doctrine about works had not been preached in Shakspere's
Denmark. Claudius is no mere king of shreds and patches,
196 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
though some of the commentators and most of the actors make
him so;— as they make an arrant fool or a comic knave of
Polonins who was an accomplished Euphuist and a clever
prime minister.
It is impossible to enjoy the play as a clear and logical
work without keeping in mind that it was written for the
theatre, acted under the direction of Shakspere, and made ac-
tual by what the stage-manager in our time would call ^* busi-
ness.'' And this ^^ business'' the technical direction for the
dumb show or the actions suited to the word, which elucidates
the meaning of speech,— must have been as delicately and care-
fully considered as is every line in the text. The record of
this ** business" we have lost, and the loss is irreparable. If
it existed, the student who looks on ' ' Hamlet" as a text detached
from dramatic action would not have had matters so much his
own way, and the actor who derives most of his traditions from
the practice of other actors of no greater knowledge than him-
self, would not cause intelligent lovers of Shakspere to wish
that *^ Hamlet" might never be degraded by the glare of the
footlights. Nevertheless, the impulse of the actor to cause the
Play to be as obvious as possible has wrought good results.
He knows what our critics do not seem always to know, that
no accomplished playwright wants to obscure the processes
or the objects of his drama, or to convert an ** acting play,"
into an elusive study as Orphic as one of Eichard Strauss 's
symphonic poems. He may,— and he generally does,— neglect
every other character in the play to round out that of the
Prince; but at his worst, he must regard the action as well as
the words. His consciousness of an audience that does not care
to think forces him to present effectively what the student re-
fines, re-refines, and over-refines in his closet. Hamlet, with
him, is a man, not a mind divorced from a man, and he has not
such a superstitious regard for the text that he will allow
words to stand merely as words which have no meaning, if not
illumined by gesture or facial expression. He makes mis-
takes at times ; in his passion for effects, he overleaps truth,—
as when, after the death of Polonius, he weeps and groans in
most unprincely fashion. Hamlet says,—
THE ''PUZZLE'' OF HAMLET. 197
**For this same Lord
I do repent, But heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me
That I must be their scourge and minister."
At the end of this most dramatic scene, Hamlet ** drags in
the body of Polonius''— the Queen hurrying away by another^
door. The actor who should coolly and cruelly obey the stage
direction, would bring upon himself the hisses of the auditors
and destroy all sympathy for Hamlet, unless it is presumed
that he had suddenly become insane. The text of the interview
between Hamlet and his mother ought to render that supposi-
tion out of the question, although Gertrude, horrified by the
effect of the Ghost ^s appearance on her son,—
''This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in."
She does not see her husband, Hamlet's father, *4n his habit
as he lived,'' come to hold the Prince by the bonds of love, to
his *' almost blunted purposes." *' Taint not thy mind," the
spirit of the King, suffering, unpurged of crimes, not great in
the eyes of men, but ^^foul" before the purity of God, has
said. And now,— not as a king, not as an outraged patriot,
seeing with clear eyes that sin is corrupting Denmark, and that
the roots of the cancer must be torn out by Hamlet,— but as a
suppliant for the soul of the Queen, he comes. That the
* illusion was no illusion in the modern sense is shown by the
stage direction in the First Folio,— 'Enter the Ghost' " That
the Ghost was no hallucination in the beginning of the play,
Shakspere takes pains to prove by the testimony of the soldiers,
and, more convincing than all, by the evidence of the clear-
minded Horatio. As Hamlet was not mad, the dragging in
of Polonius could not have been the only ''business" set down
for Hamlet after the exit of his mother; and, "severally" is
not sufficiently definite. The actor, whose instinct is true, sees
this, and supplies the "business" to save the situation. At
times he is intemperate,— there have been actors who grovelled
^"Exeunt severally; Hamlet dragging in the body of Polonius."
198 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
at the feet of Polonius and howled with grief in the most nn-
princely manner and unphilosophical fashion. The student
does not, as a rule, weep at all, or conceive that Hamlet could
have wept. He takes the text as it stands, and Hamlet, instead
of for the moment assuming a coldness that he does not feel
to impress the Queen with the surety of his purpose, becomes
brutal in madness. Much of the text of Shakspere, which
seems inconsistent, and is therefore held to have deep and even
occult meaning by isolated students simply needs the theatrical
** business ''—not set down in the first Folio or the Quartos,—
to be clear and inconsistent. In minor passages this is very
plain. For instance in the First Act when the Ghost passes,
and Horatio cries out,—
''I'll cross it though it blast me,''
the ** business" explanatory of this is differently interpreted
by actors, and though great play is made with the cross-handles
of the swords in the swearing scene, the usual method is for
Horatio merely to cross the path of the Ghost. The famous
romantic player, Fechter, made the sign of the crogs, and, as
the Ghost did not flinch— as it would have done, had it been
an evil spirit,— he went on with his truly Christian appeal to a
spirit in a process of purgation :
''If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me;
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
0, speak!"
What the actor of the Ghost did in Shakspere 's time, we have
no means of knowing. The ^^ business" accompanying Ham-
let's
"Look here, upon this picture and on this"
is not even so important, yet it is sometimes a piece of very
gross exaggeration. It will never be possible for an actor to
insert the ' ^ business ' ' in the grave-diggers ' scene as described
by M. de la Baume Desdosset, when he said that the author
THE "PUZZLE" OF HAMLET.
199
''fait jouer a la boule avec des tetes de mort sur le theatre/'
The bowling with death's heads on the stage might easily be
introduced to exemplify Hamlet's allusion to the old game of
''loggats" by the performers who wanted to accentuate the
Gothic and grim humor of the Clowns. Knight smiles at the
statement of the exquisite M. Desdosset, and yet some of the
''business'' introduced by the theatrical grave-diggers is not
less grotesque;— and who cau conclude that it is really out of
keeping in the awful contrast Shakspere makes? There is,
as I have said, the evidence of no prompters' books to the
contrary. The taste of the time is the only limit one can set
to the grotesque in Shakspere or in any author of this period.
It is evident from the text that the spirit of Shakspere is against
exaggeration of any kind, and the taste of our time is with him.
The actor of to-day runs a great risk when, as Laertes, he
stands over the body of Ophelia, saturated with the water of
the pool and bound by clinging plants, and says,—
"Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet
It is our trick ; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will ; when these are gone.
The woman will be out."
Often these lines are omitted, and with reason. The actor
is on delicate ground, in uttering what, in our time, seems a
bombastic exaggeration. We cannot tell whether Shakspere
softened his rhetoric by "business." At any rate, we can be
sure that they were delivered, under Shakspere 's direction, so
that they could in no way interfere with the pathos of the
moment. The modesty of nature seems to be outraged by
them, as they stand in cold print; but who can say that, from
the actor's point of view,— which was also Shakspere 's— they
were not so presented that, even to-day they would not have
offended our taste I In most of our modern plays, every direc-
tion is carefully written— no doubt is left by the author in the
mind of the reader as to the exact position of any character at
any given time on the stage. But these minute directions do
not appear in the "reading" edition of the play,— though, as
a rule, the literary quality of modem plays is so poor, that
200 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
nobody cares to read them. They are arranged for the stage,
and when they disappear from the stage, their value likewise
disappears. They exist, like the score of an opera by Verdi,
or a symphony of Beethoven, only when they are interpreted.
Shakspere's meaning suffers when his plays are read as if
they were intended merely to be read. A poet of the first class,
and, consequently, a transfigurer of life, an interpreter of the
fundamentals and universals of human character, he chose the
form of expression most adapted to the feeling and taste of his
time. It has been noticed many times that the limitations of
the Elizabethan Play House forced him to adopt a method
more akin to that of the modem novelist, than that of the
modern playwright. His characters tell us, in their speeches,
many things of local and temporal import which, in the modern
play are indicated, through the change in the theatrical ap-
paratus, to the sight. The Queen's description of the death of
Ophelia, and the poetic expression of Jaques' reveries would
be mere ^^ words, words, words,'' to the theatrical writer of the
present day who uses words, in order to make pictures as
seldom as possible. When Gower enters, at the beginning of
the fifth act of * ^ Pericles, ' ' he asks the auditors to do what the
novelist often asks his readers to do— to ^^make believe," to
** suppose."
"In your supposing once more put your sight,
Of heavy Pericles think this his bark,
Where what is done in action, more, if might,
Shall be discovered; please you sit and hark.''
The audience of to-day neither ** supposes" nor *^sits and
harks." It sits and sees. Shakspere could not adopt his
plays to the modem theatre without destroying their literary
value. At the same time, they would have lost their power of
appeal to the folk of his time, were they literature only, and
not dumb show, at times, and very vigorous action as well.
The characters of Eegan and Goneril in ''King Lear"
seem to be monsters of evil without any attractive traits.
They are so wicked that many lovers of Shakspere have classed
them as theatrical puppets created as foils to Cordelia. And
it must be confessed that the bare text gives this impression,
THE '* PUZZLE" OF HAMLET, 201
for there are few phrases concerning them that suggest to the
imagination that they are more than twin creatures wedded,
unhumanly, to sin. Edmund, too, seems unhuman,— a thing
of no compunction, a pawn of the author's to bring out one
of the emphatic lessons of the play that sin blinds us to the
truth,— that both Lear and Gloucester suffered because, wed-
ded to their pet sins, their minds had grown so darkened that
they could not distinguish truth from falsehood. But neither
Began nor Goneril is a mere puppet. Regan and Goneril differ
in attributes. Albany calls Goneril ^'a gilded serpenf ; and,
on this hint, the actor should build. Goneril and Regan are
too often treated as evil twins, in no way different, except in
their love for Edmund. As for Edmund, he is most dependent
on the actor, the text is full of subtle hints, not always con-
sidered by either the reader or the personater. Edgar says,—
**The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us;
The dark and vicious place where he thee got
Cost him his eyes."
And Edmund replies,—
'*Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true,
The wheel has come full circle; I am here."
Dying, Edmund goes back, in triumph, to his sin again,—
"Yet Edmund was belov'd;
The one the other poisoned for my sake,
And after slew herself."
Edmund is a character created for the actor, and it requires
all the art of artful actors to interpret his subtlety. The puzzle-
questions as to Edmund-is he an atheist?-is he not a mere
creature of circumstances! -become quite plain when Edmund
appears in flesh and blood, with a will to choose nature as his
goddess, and a belief, at least in nature's law. lago himself,
a self-degraded and super-subtile soul, is, too, only human in
the actor's hands. His plottings, read in cold blood on the
printed page, make him seem to be simply adevil, sojourning
for a time on earth in human form. ^^\S^
"^Z 8T. MICHAEL'S
COLLEGE
%^
202 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
On the other hand, the threatre has a way of bing careful
in minor details, which are often stifling to the imagination,
and careless in more important things not considered by a
certain class of modern novels. A manager who prides him-
self on the minutiae of a gondola in *'The Merchant of Venice"
or on the fidelity to detail in the view of a Venetian street in
* * Othello ' ' will cut out those most important lines in the speech
of the Ghost in ' ' Hamlet, ' '-
* * Unhouserd, disappointed, unaneled."
The seem unimportant to that reader of Shakspere who
cannot conceive,— being without present knowledge or histor-
ical data,— their terrible meaning
* * Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled
No reckoning made, but sent to my account,
With all my imperfections on my head;
0, horrible! 0, horrible! most horrible!"
The spirit's heart- wrung exclamation is that he died with-
out the last sacraments, disappointed of his rights as a Christian,
unshriven, without Extreme Unction. The statement affects
Hamlet terribly ; we learn it later in the play. Hamlet broods
on it, and he does not keep in mind that the Ghost is not a lost
soul, though suffering the pains of purgation; that he thinks
only of those pains we know well from his soliloquy over the
praying Claudius. Less archaeology and more art, --more at-
tention to the conditions of minds in the Play would do away
with the aspersion that the theatre, in the United States, at
least, has ^^no historical sense."
The accent laid by the spirit of the elder Hamlet on his loss
of the rites of the Church had its value, we may be sure to the
auditors of the Globe Theatre. It has its value to-day, not only
to persons who have the *^ historical sense," but to many who
can see— whether we admit that Shakspere 's conception of the
Ghost was strictly theological or not— that he realized what
was meant by the cutting off of a Christian soul from its rights.
Again, the Polonius of the modern theatre is a cross between
a knave and a fool. It is true that Hamlet calls him a fool,
but Hamlet, in his fits of passion, is not to be trusted. His
THE ''PUZZLE" OF HAMLET. 203
picture of his uncle, for instance,-^ 'Hyperion to a satyr' '-
and his underrating the qualities of a courageous, cool, highly
intellectual, but deliberately bad man, as Claudius was, ought
to show the representators that Hamlet's estimate of Polonius
should be taken only as the estimate of an overwrought, almost
maddened and supersensitive soul. Polonius was shrewd; a
closer study of the Euphuists and the influences that made
him possible, would prevent the actors,— or the managers,—
from misrepresenting his creator's idea.
In the ''Chorus" of the first act of "Henry V," when
Shakspere despairs of crowding the splendid pageant of Agin-
court into the Theatre, he exclaims against the limits of the
stage,—
''Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram
Within this wooden 0 the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
0, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million ;
And let us, ciphers to this ^reat accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upr.eared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth."
As a rule, Shakspere adapts his dramas to the bounds of
his theatrical world without any evident dissatisfaction with
them. In fact, if his means of satisfying the sight had been
greater, our pleasure in reading his plays would be less.
No better example can be found in "Hamlet" of the loss
the student suffers from the absence of the "business" used
by the actors in the days of Elizabeth and James than in the
first scene of the third Act. Hamlet has unveiled his doubtful
mind, and suddenly he sees Ophelia. A flood of sudden tender-
ness sweeps over his heart. "Soft you now!" he says.
204 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
''The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered/'
It almost seems as if the wide-spread delusion that Hamlet
is really mad was founded mainly on this scene,— for here, un-
less some adequate reason for his suspicion of Ophelia's truth
could be given to the auditors, he seems to be not only mad, but
possessed of a brutal and sullen devil. It is enough for the
close student of the play to believe, after careful comparison
of various parts of the text,— that Hamlet had come to distrust
all women and that he was vowed ^^to wipe away all trivial
fond records"; but it is not enough for the average auditor,
and we may be sure that there was some ^^ business'' arranged
to explain obviously the Prince's outburst of wrath, after a
moment, too, of extreme tenderness. The stage direction is
simply ** exeunt King and Polonius." But where do they go
for their * ' lawful espial ? ' ' Behind the arras ? Into a gallery
at the back of *'a room in the castle"? The author sees that
their presence must be made known to Hamlet, in order that
he may have an excuse for acting the part of madness with
such brutality. He must have some plain proof that Ophelia
is playing upon him for the benefit of her father, and the
auditors,— according to the usage of the stage,— must know that
he has this proof; therefore, it is the custom, in many stage
presentments of the Play, to reveal accidentally, for a moment,
the presence of the King and Polonius. The insults of
Hamlet,— excusable only in a madman or one feigning mad-
ness,—are directed then, not at the fair and gentle Ophelia,
but at the listeners.
''1 did love once," he says with a breaking voice, and he
adds, remembering, * ' I love you not. ' '
**I was the more deceived," Ophelia answers gently.
Then Hamlet, fearing his own weakness, frightens Ophelia
with his accusations against himself. Her gentle face appeals
to him, and puts her to the test,—
^'Where's your father?"
* * At home, my lord. ' '
There is no relenting after that. He loves her still, but he
knows that she has deceived him. To the winds he flings his
THE ''PUZZLE" OF HAMLET. 205
wrath; the listeners must believe him mad, and she— ** frailty,
thy name is woman ! ' '
Considered as a play, treated as actors of intelligence, who
desired simply to bring out its meaning, would treat it, ^ * Ham-
let'' ceases to be a puzzle. It must be remembered, however,
that, until the ** historical sense" is cultivated in the theatres,
light thrown on certain passages by the actor's instinct and
insight will not pierce other passages equally worthy of illu-
mination.
Maueice Francis Egan.
1
HARNACK AND HIS CRITICS.
Since the days of Strauss and Eenan no other book has so
deeply stirred the world of theological thought as Harnack's
work on the essence of Christianity— ^^ Das Wesen des
Christentums. ' ^^ The lectures which make up the volume
were designed to give a clear and concise account of the
Christian religion, to show what it was in itself and what in
the vicissitudes of history it has become, and to define its
bearing on the pressing problems of the day. Although
three years have passed since the lectures were delivered, the
interest aroused by them has been steadily on the increase.
In Germany alone nearly thirty thousand copies of the work
have been sold. The book has been translated into most of the
languages of Europe, and wherever it has gone its appearance
has been the signal for a storm of controversy.
The profound impression produced by this book is easily
explained. Here we have in the compass of a few hundred
pages the latest answer of modern critical study to the ques-
tion, '^What is Christianity r^ In a little volume packed with
thought and free from pedantry we have the ultimate convic-
tions of a man who is widely regarded as the foremost critic
of the age, writing on a subject to which he has devoted his
life and which is a theme of perennial interest to all reflective
minds. The book marks an epoch in religious speculation.
It raises every momentous issue and sharply outlines every
vital problem in the range of Christian belief ; it passes judg-
ment on almost every disputed point in the origin and history
of the Christian faith. It is one of those books that from time
to time compel men to take their theological bearings anew.
**Das Wesen des Christentums ' ' is divided into two parts.
The first part deals with the Gospel in itself —the origin of
Christianity in the teaching of Christ; the second part deals
with the Gospel in history— the historic development of Chris-
^"Das Wesen des Christentums." Von Adolf Harnack, Funfte Auflage,
Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1902.
References are to the English translation of the work : " What is Chris-
tianity? " by Thomas Bailey Saunders, 2d ed., New York; Putnams, 1901.
( 206 )
HARNACK AND HI 8 CRITICS. 207
tianity in the ages. In both parts the aim is to arrive at the
real message of Christ, to discover under alien accretions the
innermost essence of Christianity, to find ''the Gospel in the
Gospels. ' ' All this is more commonly expressed in the formula
rendered familiar to the public by Abbot, Hamack, Sabatier
and Gardner: to separate the kernel from the husk. The
first part of the work is that to which critics have chiefly
devoted their attention, because it contains the latest word
of higher criticism on the essence of Christ's message, and
because on the conception which we form of the meaning of
this message must depend the value of the judgments that
we formulate on the development of the Church, of its dogma
and worship.
As authorities for Christ's teaching Hamack accepts only
the Synoptics— ** Everything that we know independently of
the Gospels about Jesus' history and His teaching may be
easily put on a small sheet of paper, so little does it come to"
(p. 21). The first three Gospels, he concedes, are substan-
tially reliable; they are not, indeed, historical works in the
consecrated sense of the term, but neither are they ** party
tracts. ' ' The scholarship of two generations has undone the
work of Baur and Strauss and restored in its main outline
the credibility of these documents. We now know that they
belong to *Hhe palseontological age" of Christianity. They
embody, it is true, miracle narratives, but to reject documents
simply because they contain such **unhistorical elements"
would be ^^a piece of prejudice." All that is needful is to
separate the kernel of fact from the husk of miracle, and this
may be done by a comparison of sources and by the exercise
of the critical faculty. '*Do not let yourselves be deterred
because this or that miraculous story strikes you as strange
or leaves you cold. If there is anything here that you find
unintelligible, put it quietly aside" (p. 32).
With the Gospels Hamack professes to deal simply and
solely as a historian. He enunciates, however, a principle
which is hardly a historical assumption and which is prophetic
of difficulties to come. The Gospel in itself, he avers, is
''simple"; so simple is it that ''no one who possesses a fresh
eye for what is alive and a true feeling for what is really
208 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
great, can fail to see it and distingnish it from its contemporary
integument'' (p. 15). We shall see to what nse Harnack pnts
this principle. Meantime it is not clear how in respect of
method he differs from Tolstoi, who in his rough and ready-
way decides offhand what Jesus said and did, or from
Schmiedel who can discover only nine absolutely credible
passages in the Gospels.
It is on the question of miracles that Harnack 's critics first
join issue with him.^ Harnack rejects miracles: ^^We are
firmly convinced that what happens in space and time is sub-
ject to the general laws of motion, and that in this sense, as an
interruption of the order of nature, there can be no such
thing as miracles" (p. 28). The Gospel miracles, in partic-
ular, he finds beset by special difficulties, for miracle as it is
now understood was wholly foreign to the minds of the fisher-
folk of Galilee. These simple people had no clear conception
of what a miracle is because they had no clear conception of
what a law of nature means. They were men of their time,
having no adequate idea of what is possible and what is im-
possible. Hence miracles, which once attested the truth of
the Christian religion, have become serious stumbling blocks
to faith.
Harnack 's critics do not waste time in discussing the ques-
tion whether the ancients understood that there is an order
of nature— the importance which men of Christ's day attached
to miracles seems to be a sufficient answer. They hasten to
point out that in discarding miracles Harnack involves himself
in an illogical compromise. That Strauss and Eenan should
have given short shrift to miracles is intelligible ; the one was
a Hegelian, the other a Positivist, and both frankly investi-
gated the origin of Christianity in the light of their philosoph-
ical systems. But that Harnack should be convinced that
miracles do not happen is not so easily imderstood, for Har-
nack holds that the world of nature and the world of history
are under the rule of Divine intelligence. He will admit that,
in Kant's famous phrase, man is a member of a kingdom of
ends ; he protests that we are not shut up within a blind and
*Walther: "Ad. Harnack's Das Wesen des Christentums," Leipzig, 1901.
EARN AC K AND HIS CRITICS.
209
brutal course of nature. But to acknowledge that a God exists
who rules and governs and who may be moved by prayer, and
to be convinced that there can be no such things as miracles
—this seems to be a strange compromise between naturalism
and supernaturalism. It is felt that whoever holds Chris-
tianity to be non-miraculous abandons what ultimately dis-
tinguishes historical Christianity from impersonal theism.
Moreover, on the assumption that God can visit His people
—an assumption which cannot be set aside by one who em-
phatically denies that we are yoked to an inexorable necessity
—miracles, so far from being improbable, become eminently
probable. Indeed, granted that the Incarnation is a fact,
there is only one miracle to be accounted for ; all the rest are
only accompaniments, the absence of which would have been
still more wonderful than their presence. The strange thing
would be that Christ, being what He claimed to be, did not
perform ** works none other did,'' whether as credentials of
His claims or as the simple outpouring of His majestic Per-
sonality.
Again, when Harnack puts miracles aside he invokes at
the outset of his inquiry a philosophical principle that decides
questions at issue before historical criticism can be brought
to bear on them. Whether an event has taken place or not
must be determined, not on a priori grounds, but on the testi-
mony of those who are competent to bear witness. Thus,
whether Christ was bom at Bethlehem in the manner described
in the Gospel of St. Luke is a matter of evidence; it must be
determined according to methods adopted by such men as
Ramsay, not according to methods pursued by those who set
aside the infancy narrative because they have already elim-
inated God from history. When, therefore, Harnack states
his conviction that miracles do not happen, he formulates a
principle that even his vast knowledge of antiquity does not
teach him, and that vitiates, or rather renders superfluous, any
discussion of the most vital problems of Christianity.
Further, it is asked: how can Harnack give up miracles
and logically stand for the historical character of the writings
that embody them? The Gospels are homogeneous documents.
They present throughout a most august idea of the super-
14CUB
210 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
natural, and constitute from the first word to the last a con-
sistent history of One who ''did mighty works because God
was with Him." They exhibit a sanity and sobriety of
statement that in other documents would be taken for a
guarantee of truth, and the miracles which they report are at
least as soundly attested as any other events in the biography
of Jesus. By what right, then, does Harnack distinguish in
such documents two strata, one historical, the other unhistor-
ical? How can he, without tearing the Gospels to shreds,
remove from them miracles, woven, as the miracles are, into
their very web and fibre? Even Strauss was more logical
than Harnack in this matter, for Strauss saw the futility of
trying to save the historical character of the documents while
repudiating miracles : *'If the Gospels in general be admitted
as historical, it is impossible to eliminate miracles from the
life of Jesus. ' ' In view of the difficulties in which Harnack
so cheerfully involves himself by shelving miracles, we are
painfully struck by the flippancy of his exegetical canon: *'If
there is anything here that you find unintelligible, put it
quietly aside."
Harnack next falls foul of his critics on the question of the
Fourth Gospel. In any discussion of sources this burning
topic at once presents itself. What Harnack thinks of the
much debated document is well known. He has worked his
way back to the traditional date of the Gospel: ''not after
110 and not before 80." He is not, however, willing to as-
cribe it to the pen of St. John; he is still less willing to take
it as an historical authority in the ordinary sense of the term.
Indeed, "it can hardly make any claim to be considered an
authority for Jesus' history" (p. 22). The author was prob-
ably John the Presbyter, a younger contemporary and disciple
of St. John. Whoever he was, "the author acted with sov-
ereign freedom, transposed events and put them in a strange
light, drew up the discourses himself and illustrated great
thoughts by imaginary situations" (p. 21).
Against such a summary dismissal of the Fourth Gospel
several competent authorities have taken the field. Professor
Sanday enters an "emphatic protest" against what he terms
1 " Leben Jesu " ( 18B4, p. 18) .
I
HABNACK AND HIS CRITICS. 211
**the sweeping and unjust language'' of the German pro-
fessor/ Dr. Gore, after reviewing the present state of the
Johannine problem, avers that there is to-day less reason for
rejecting the Gospel than there was a generation ago.^ Others
point to the unbroken ranks of authorities who defend the sub-
stantial authenticity of the book and who belong to all schools
of thought, liberal as well as conservative. Hamack's critics
do not blink the difficulties which arise from contrasting the
Fourth Gospel with the Synoptics. They are wide awaie to
the differences of scene and theme and style— to the change
from Galilee to Judea, from simple chronicles and parables
to discourses on life and light and truth. They make full
allowance for the apparent discrepancies which seem to show
that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was reminting his
materials rather than narrating what he had seen with his
eyes and gazed upon and handled with his hands. But they
appeal confidently to the external evidence which does not
grow less cogent with the discovery of new fragments of early
Christian literature. They appeal with no less confidence to
the internal evidence which indicates in many ways that the
Gospel is the story of one who knew whereof he wrote, and who,
besides, possessed a large conception of the significance of what
he saw. The very contrast which is the only real objection
to the Gospel does not, they argue, weaken, if it does not
strengthen, the cause for Apostolic authorship. It reveals that
the purpose of the writer was to supplement what had been
written, and to afford a deeper insight into the words and deeds
of Christ— to give a view of our Lord's life from within that
all may know ''that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God."
Hence it is that what is of common tradition is passed over in
silence, what is obscure in the Synoptics becomes clear, what
is latent there takes shape in the great ''spiritual Gospel."
The sense in which Christ fulfilled the prophecies is more
amply illustrated; the claims which Christ made are ex-
panded; the filial relation is more abundantly explained; in a
word, the underlying thought of the first three Gospels is
i"An Examination of Harnack's 'What is Christianity?'" London, Long-
mans, Green & Co., 1901, p. 7. . ,,r v i mno
^The Pilot (London), February 22, and March 1, 190^
212 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
elaborated with a wealth of detail. The story that John tells
is the old story newly told— told by one who, as he moves
among the scenes which he describes, looks for the spiritual
significance of it all. The picture of Christ is the old picture—
painted too from life, but by one who consciously strove to
bring out the Divine lineaments of the Saviour. The Fourth
Gospel stills holds its place as the crown and culmination of
the Synoptics and as the only explanation of the life and
thought of the early church. **With it, and not without it we
can attain to some consistent notion of what Christ was and
did.''^ And with it also, and not without it, does the history
of the early days of Christianity become intelligible.
A French critic of **Das Wesen des Christentums ' ' points
out that what separates Catholic scholars from Protestant theo-
logians of the liberal school lies not so much in divergences of
exegesis as in the philosophical principles with which they
respectively approach the study of the Scriptures.^ This
seems to hold true in the present instance, for, as Professor
Sanday says, *Hhe real objection to the Fourth Gospel is an
objection to the supernatural generally.*' It can hardly be
doubted, at all events, that in handling the Johannine problem
Harnack has laid himself open to the charge which he so lightly
levelled against the writer of the Gospel: he has certainly
** acted with sovereign freedom.''
In setting forth the teaching of Christ in systematic form
Harnack chooses three central ideas. These are: the Kingdom
of God and its coming; God the Father and the infinite value
of the human soul ; the Higher Righteousness and the law of
love. These ideas taken collectively or singly, he maintains,
contain the sum and substance of Christ's message. ^*They
are each of such a nature as to contain the whole" (p. 55). It
will be enough, therefore, to consider the first ** category" of
the Christian religion.
From time immemorial the conception of the Kingdom of
God was deeply rooted in the consciousness of Israel— early in
its career the nation had become a theocracy in the true sense
of the word. Hence, the history of Old Testament Revelation
' strong, " Historical Christianity," London, Henry Frowde, 1902.
• Pfere L6once de Grandmaison in iltudes, March, 1902.
I
HARNACK AND HIS CRITICS. 213
is justly said to be a history of the Kingdom of God devel-
oping among a people ever mindful of its unique destiny as a
people chosen by God. The Kingdom of God was variously
conceived in the varying fortunes of the race, but it never lost
its essential character as a Kingdom of Eighteousness. In the
prophecies and the psalms we come upon the most sublime,
because the most spiritual, conception of the divine common-
wealth. In later Judaism the notion became despiritualized,
so that in the age immediately preceding the coming of Christ
it was largely a vision of national blessedness— ''a dream of
apocrypha and apocalypses. ' '
In the New Testament the Kingdom of God occupies a place
no less prominent than that which it held in the Old Testa-
ment. Indeed, Christ made it the burden of His preaching—
His first words struck the keynote of His message to men:
^^Kepent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.'' His Gospel was
*Hhe Gospel of the Kingdom"; the Kingdom was the theme
that He put on the lips of the disciples when He sent them
forth to preach— ^* And going preach saying the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand." It was the secret of the Kingdom He
explained to His disciples to whom ^*it was given to know the
mysteries of the Kingdom of God." It was around the same
doctrine the parables centered; the laws of the Kingdom were
formulated in the Sermon on the Mount. The coming of the
Kingdom was the most devout aspiration of all who prayed as
He taught men to pray. Christ's last commission was in keep-
ing with His great message— it was virtually to push forward
the frontiers of His Kingdom to the uttermost bounds of the
earth.
The doctrine of the Kingdom Hamack explains in accord-
ance with his principle that ^'God and the Soul, the Soul and
God," is the whole content of the Gospel. The Eangdom of
God as taught by Christ is simply the communion of the soul
with God— ''the inner link with the living God." It is ''a
purely spiritual blessing" permeating and dominating the
whole existence of the individual. The Kingdom of God as
it has been commonly understood, with its consummation in
the hereafter, Hamack sets aside. Such a view is the ''tradi-
tional" view, current in the Old Testament and common in the
214 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
days of Christ. It is the husk, the kernel being the communion
of the individual soul with God.
Harnack's method of interpreting a doctrine which he takes
to contain the whole of Christ's teaching has been received with
much surprise. To reject as husk what is traditional, simply
because it is traditional, and to retain as kernel what is Christ's
own in Christ's message, is regarded as a novel and arbitrary
canon of exegesis. It appears the more arbitrafy when we
reflect that the new order introduced by Christ emerged from
the old, for Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfill. The
Kingdom of God, therefore, which He placed in the forefront
of His preaching, simply embodies the spiritual elements of
the commonwealth foreshadowed by the men of old time. It
begins, indeed, with the individual, inasmuch as it is a prin-
ciple of divine rule working in the hearts of men, working from
within outward, and working to transform life and all its
varied relations. But this is only the Kingdom in its begin-
nings. It is also an external reality, a society developing
slowly, according to the rhythmic law of growth, into a world-
wide communion of those who hold communion with God
through Christ. The scene of the Kingdom of God is now not
the individual soul of man but all humanity— ^^ the field is the
world. ' ' And yet, this earthly Kingdom which has come upon
men is only the counterpart of an eternal Kingdom of God-
that *^ eternal life" of which Christ spoke to the young man
who had great possessions. This is the true Kingdom of God.
It is the goal towards which the individual is striving and in
which alone communion with God is consummated. It is also
the culmination of the royal rule of God in the world— the final
realization of the reign of God on earth. It will be inaugurated
with a judgment, ^*that day" which was so often on the lips
of Christ, when the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His
Father with the angels, to reward every man according to his
works. And thus the Kingdom of God is to see God both now
and hereafter ; now as sons by faith, then as sons in possession
of their inheritance.^
If Harnack is properly censured for rejecting as husk what
was traditional in Christ's message of the Kingdom, he is no
1 Cf. Robertson's " Regnum Dei." London, 1902.
EARN AC K AND HIS CRITICS, 215
less justly criticised for identifying the Kingdom of God with
the reconciliation of the individual soul with the Father. No-
where in the New Testament does this *' inner link'' exhaust the
complex content of Christ's great message to the world; no-
where is the reconciliation anything more than the condition
of admission to the Kingdom. The text upon which Hamack
lays so much stress in support of his view : * * the Kingdom of
God cometh not with observation . . . the Kingdom of God
is within you" (Luke, XVII, 20, 21), is susceptible, as is well
known, of an interpretation other than that which Hamack
gives it. And even if the words identified the Kingdom with
*'a still and mighty power in the hearts of men" there are many
other passages which are more clear and which round out the
full conception of the Kingdom as Christ preached it. To lay
the burden of proof upon a text which may be interpreted in
different ways, and to sacrifice the rest of the Gospel to the
interpretation of such a text— this is what Abbe Loisy calls
going against the most elementary principles of criticism.
It is upon the problem of Christology that theological
interest chiefly turns; Harnack's answer to this question of
questions is in keeping with the Eitschlian principle that bars
metaphysics out of religion. A doctrine of Christ's Person,
he holds, forms no part of Christ's Gospel: **The Gospel as
Jesus proclaimed it is a Gospel of the Father, not of the Son."
Jesus was a man, feeling, praying, toiling, struggling, suf-
fering like other men, making no claims for Himself, exacting
no faith in His own Person— such is Harnack's Christology.
True, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah; so much the Berlin
professor concedes against Wellhausen, but what he gives with
one hand he takes back with the other: Jesus claimed to be
the Messiah simply because it was necessary to do so in order
to gain recognition within the lines of Jewish history. True,
also, Jesus claimed to be the son of God; but this title in turn
Harnack empties of significance. ^^Son of God" does not
mean that Jesus claimed to be the divine Son of a divine father :
** rightly understood the name of Son means nothing but the
knowledge of God" (p. 138). To support his interpretation
of a phrase which has been a standing formula for the divinity
of Christ, Harnack turns to the classic text of Matthew: *^No
216 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
man knoweth the Son save the Father: neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
will reveal Him.*' From this passage Harnaek concludes:
*'the consciousness which He possessed of being the Son of
God, is, therefore, nothing but the practical consequence of
knowing God as the Father and as His Father'* (p. 138).
Needless to say, exegesis so arbitrary has provoked the
sharpest criticism. Abbe Lagrange asks whether the Father-
hood of God is constituted by knowledge of the Son as the
Sonship of Jesus is said to be constituted by knowledge of the
Father.^ The text which Harnaek has mishandled has always
been regarded as an incomparable expression of the intimacy,
the absolute intercommunion existing between Father and
Son; to stint and limit the content of it as Harnaek does is to
do injustice to the plain meaning of the words as they stand.
To this same passage Justin appealed of old as proving Christ
to be **the first begotten of God who submitted to become
man." Even some of Harnaek 's forebears and compeers, as
little trammeled as he by reverence for tradition, have always
found in it much more than the human consciousness which
Christ had of the Father. It would seem, therefore, that
once more Harnaek has * * acted with sovereign freedom, ' ' and
that in a matter of vital moment.
He has, moreover, left entirely out of account the startling
claims which Christ made and which obviously should be
reckoned with in a chapter on Christology. Wherever we open
the first Three Gospels we come upon claims which are intel-
ligible only on the ground that Christ stood in a supremely
unique relation to the Father. Jesus fulfills the law and the
prophets. He is the Saviour of souls. He is the final Judge
of human actions and human motives. He forgives sin. He
is the supreme and final Eevealer of truth. With a word He
sweeps away whole enactments of legislation regarded as
divine. He makes demands on men's minds and consciences,
such as no one had ever dared to make. He promises rewards
for deeds done in His name. He is to be loved by all and
above all. He is to be worshipped. Claims such as these—
^ Revue Biblique Internationale, January, 1901,
HARNACK AND HIS CRITICS. 217
and they are only some of the claims put forward by Christ—
are in ill accord with the assertion that a doctrine of Christ's
Person finds no place in the Gospel.^ They are claims that
could have been put forward only by One who was conscious
of a higher Sonship than that with which Harnack is content-
by One who had the inherent right to concentrate upon Him-
self the reverence of humanity, and to exalt Himself far above
the message which He brought. They show that, as Von
Hartmann says, the essence of Christianity is in the Person
of Christ if anywhere at all, and they prove that a Christianity
such as Harnack has assayed from the Gospel— a Christianity
without a Christology— is not the Gospel as Christ taught it.
Fairbairn voices the conviction of scholars when he says:
** Jesus in asking *whom say ye that I amT consciously con-
fesses that His religion will be as His Person is conceived
tobe.''2
Harnack is positive that no doctrine of Christ's Person is
to be found in the Gospel, and yet he finds such a ^* doctrine"
there. He bases his view on a single text— a vice of exegesis
that was supposed to be the apanage of a certain class of
theologians. He leaves out of account a score of passages
which even the most critical of the critical could not ignore,
and which manifestly assume a Filiation far transcending the
Sonship of his interpretation. Such exegesis as this will not
enhance Harnack 's reputation for scholarship; it surely ex-
poses him to a suspicion which is the last that a historian
should be willing to incur.
Jesus **was declared to be the Son of God with power by
the Eesurrection from the dead. ' ' To the Eesurrection, then,
Harnack turns, as must every historian who deals with the
essence of Christianity.
The New Testament, Harnack asserts, distinguishes be-
tween the Easter Message and the Easter Faith (p. 173). The
Easter Message is the empty grave and the appearances of
Jesus; the Easter Faith is the conviction that Jesus *4ives as
the first fruits of those who are fallen asleep.'' Now, he says,
the story of the empty tomb must be set aside. No eye rested
^Kohler: Gehort Jesus in das Evangelium? Leipzig, 1901.
" The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 395.
218 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
upon the Eesurrection— a few women and disciples ** looked
into'' the sepulchre and believed that the resting place was
empty. Then rumors began to rise and men and women took
to seeing visions. It was upon the appearances, not the empty
grave, that the apostles laid stress, and of these appearances
it is impossible to construct a clear and consistent account:
''Who of us can maintain that a clear account of these appear-
ances can be constructed out of the story told by Paul and the
Evangelists; and if that be impossible, and there is no tradi-
tion of single events which is quite trustworthy, how is the
Easter Faith to be based on themT' (p. 174 ).
And yet, he insists, we must cling to the Easter Faith
although we reject the Easter Message; we must hold to faith
in the Eesurrection though not to the fact of the Eesurrection.
That Jesus lives does not depend on the story of the tomb and
the appearances; it is certified for us by *Hhe vision of Jesus'
life and death and by the feeling of His imperishable union
with God" (p. 176). The New Testament itself, Harnack
declares, requires belief in Christ's triumph over death with-
out the message of the vacaat tomb. Were not the disciples
on the road to Emmaus blamed for not believing in the Eesur-
rection, even though the Easter Message had not reached
them? Is not the story of Thomas told for the very purpose
of reminding us that we must hold the Easter Faith even with-
out the Easter Message? Did not Paul— who perhaps knew
nothing about the empty grave— found his Easter Faith upon
the certainty that '^the Second Adam" was from heaven and
upon an inner revelation coupled with vision?
It is obvious that Harnack 's views on miracles determine
his views on the Eesurrection: *4f the Eesurrection meant
nothing but that a deceased body of flesh and blood came back
to life, we should make short work of this tradition" (p. 173).
Now, passing over the fundamental prejudice against
miracles with the remark that criticism does not tell us what
may and may not happen, Harnack 's critics declare that his
theory of the Eesurrection ignores almost everything that
needs to be explained and blunders in almost every explana-
tion it offers. It ignores the despondency of the disciples
which was deepest at the very moment when rumors of the
EARN AC K AND HIS CRITICS. 219
ResTirrection began to rise. It ignores their stubborn refusal
to believe that the tomb was empty until they had entered into
—not ** looked into''— it, and their still more stubborn refusal
to believe the first accounts of the Resurrection. It supposes
too much in assuming that the disciples on the road to Emmaus
had not heard of the Easter Message, for the news of the empty
grave had reached them and they spoke of it. It supposes
still more in asserting that Thomas was rebuked for refusing
to believe, although he had not heard the Easter Message, for
he was manifestly rebuked for his lack of faith despite all
that he had heard concerning the Resurrection. As to Paul:
the man who preached that Christ **was buried and rose again
the third day,'' who founded his proof for the Resurrection
of the body on the Resurrection of Jesus, who enumerated the
various appearances of the risen Christ— surely Paul is the
last witness who should be called to bear out such a theory of
the Resurrection as Hamack offers. Finally Hamack's objec-
tion that no clear, consistent account can be constructed of the
appearances of Christ is so trite that it is almost disregarded.
Discrepancies in detail even when read, point to the substan-
tial truth of a narrative and prove that there has been no
collusion to tell the same story in the same way. Harnack's
entire treatment of the Gospel account of the Resurrection
has proved a surprise both to friends and foes. It is taken
as showing that a man may be a brilliant historian and yet a
very indifferent exegete. The explanation he offers leaves
the ancient dilemma where it stood : to deny the Resurrrection
of Christ is to intensify rather than relieve the mystery of His
Personality. As Professor Swete very well says: ''The intel-
lectual difficulty of believing the Resurrection of our Lord's
Body to be a baseless story will always be greater than the
intellectual difficulty of believing it to be a substanial fact."
The question, therefore, still remains to be answered by Har-
nack: ''Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you
that God should raise the deadf"^
Into the second part of Hamack's work there is no need
to enter. Here he studies in the school of time how, as Lessing
would say, the religion of Christ became the Christian religion.
^ The Expository Times, February, 1903.
220 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
He interprets the history of the Church in the light of the * * re-
duced'' Gospel which he has found in the Gospels. It is a story
of degeneration and decadence, of Hellenizing and Paganizing
that he traces through the centuries. The history of the Church
is, from his point of view, the history of one long blunder. ^
The aim which Hamack kept in view throughout his lec-
tures on the Essence of Christianity, was to make easy the
path of faith for thousands who '* would fain see Jesus'' but
who stumble at the fundamental facts of the Christian creed.
In carrying out this purpose he has manifested the exalted
spirit of reverence for which he is distinguished among the
scholars of Europe; from time to time the historian becomes
the impassioned pleader in behalf of Him who alone ' * satisfies
the longing of which St. Augustine spoke," and Who, alone,
is ' ' the center of the religious history of the race. ' ' He makes
his own the words of Goethe and writes upon them many a
glowing page of commentary: ^^Let intellectual and spiritual
culture progress, and the human mind expand as much as it
will; beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation of Chris-
tianity as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels the human
mind will not advance. " If we shall hear no more of the crude
and flippant methods of criticism which Strauss and Renan
brought to bear upon the Gospels, if there is more reverent
scholarship to-day in Berlin than at any previous time in the
history of higher criticism, this is largely due to the * * Mommsen
of modern theology."
And yet, as the results of his work are more clearly seen
in their proper perspective, the more plain does it become that
he has not only failed in what he set out to accomplish, but has
also given a cruel blow to the cause which he wished to serve.
For Catholics *^Das Wesen des Christentums" has a melan-
choly interest. In it they see the inevitable outcome of the
Augsburg Confession which contained from the beginning, the
potency of chaos.^ They follow the German professor step by
step, tracing as they go the influence of the theological bias
which he brings to the study of the various problems. They
take occasion to remind him that the very data upon which he
' Der Katholik, August, 1901.
•Reinhold: Das Wesen des Christentums. Stuttgart und Wien, 1901.
HARNACK AND HIS CRITICS. 221
works have been given him by tradition; that the Gospel which
he preaches is not the Gospel which Peter and Paul preached;
that the Christ whom he depicts is not the Christ of the Gos-
pels. They affirm once more that no man can separate Christ
from His works— that the historical Christ is the miraculous
Christ. The Evangelicals view Hamack's book with dismay;
into their ranks he has carried consternation. They charge
him with having betrayed the very citadel of Protestantism
and undermined the foundations of belief. In pamphlet and
pastoral conference they continue to condemn him, declaring
that his lectures **meet the demands neither of history nor of
the true Gospel, nor of human want.'* Only among Jews and
infidels has Hamack's book found favor— for them the Ber-
lin theologian has forged a weapon which they have not been
slow to use. Like Schneider^ of Mannheim they declare Har-
nack's lectures *'a splendid justification of infidelity,'' or like
Mehring, ^ the social democrat, they proclaim with exultation
that Christianity has received its death blow in the house of
its former friends.
It is among the bewildered souls for whom he wrote that
Harnack's disastrous failure will be most evident. As they
examine what he offers them as Christianity, they see a religion
without creed, without miracle, without supernatural sanction
or inspiration, without answer to the problems which vex the
souls of men— without anything for the spiritual and intellec-
tual demands of the age. Instead of a supernatural religion
they find only the bare essentials of natural religion. For, to
save Christianity Harnack has jettisoned the supernatural; it
is as if to save a ship from foundering he would throw the
engines overboard. The Christianity in which the world has
any interest is Christianity with the Incarnation and the Res-
urrection ; the Christ Whom men need is the Christ Who not
only showed how a human life may be lived divinely, but also
rose from the dead. Instead of the Christianity for which men
crave, Harnack offers little more than what the Rationalism of
the eighteenth century bequeathed; and instead of the Christ
whose history began with a miracle and ended with a miracle,
J Das Freie Wort, 1901, Nr. 4.
2 Die Neue Zeit, 1900, Nr. 4.
222 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
he gives only one who was bom as other men are born, and died
as other men die. True, for some people he has, in this manner,
removed difficulties from the path of faith, but he has done so
only by leaving them nothing to believe in. The lectures on
the essence of Christianity have eliminated everything that the
world deemed essential to Christianity, and have left nothing
in the place of what they have taken away.
The latest attempt to reconceive the Christ has ended as
all such attempts in the past have ended. Since the beginning
of the nineteenth century shadowy Christs have been floating
before the eyes of men like the shadowy kings before the eyes
of Macbeth. To this long line of unreal and unsubstantial
Christs another has been added : like the rest it will vanish into
thin air and leave behind nothing more than the memory of
its presence.
HUMPHEEY MOYNIHAN.
The St. Paul Seminary.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE CONTROVEESY.
I. Books and Pamphlets.
Rupprecht. Das Christentum von Ad. Harnack nach dessen sechzehn Vorlesungen.
Giitersloh, Bertelsmann, 1901.
Walther. Ad. Harnack's " Wesen des Christentums " ftir die ehristliclie Gemeinde
gepruft. Leipzig, Deichert.
Schick. 1st das " Wesen des Christentums " von Ad. Harnack in 16 Vorlesungen
wirklieh des Wesen des Christentums? Regensburg, Wunderling, 1901.
Cremer. Das Wesen das Christentums. Giitersloh, Bertelsmann, 1901.
Rolffs. Harnack's Wesen des Christentums. Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1902.
Ehrhard. Der Katholizismus und das 20 Jahrhundert. Stuttgart und Wien,
1901 (passim).
Strong. Historical Christianity the Religion of Human Life. London, Frowde,
1902.
Back. Harnack's Vorlesungen iiber das Wesen des Christentums. Breslan, 1901.
Lemme. Das Wesen des Christentums und die Zukunftsreligion. Gr. Lichter-
felde, Berlin, Runge, 1901.
Kohler. Gehort Jesus in das Evangelium? Leipzig, Deichert.
Wolff. 1st Harnack's "Wesen des Christentums" ein Ergebnis geschichtlicher
Forschung? Kassel, Rottger.
Lassen. Das Unwesen des Pseudo-Christentums. Gr. Lichterfelde, Berlin, Runge.
Kaehlbrandt. Vier Vortrage iiber das Wesen des Christentums gehalten im
Winter 1900-1901. Riga, Jonck u. Poliewski, 1901.
HABNACK AND HI8 CRITICS. 223
Baumann. Neuchristentum und reale Religion. Bonn, Strauss, 1901.
Perles. Was lehrt uns Harnack ? Frankfurt a. M., Kauflfman, 1902.
Freimaurerische Betrachtungen uber Harnack's Wesen des Christentums. Vom
Verf asser von " Christentum, Humanitat und Freimaurer." Berlin,
Stankiewicz, 1901.
Reinhold. Das Wesen des Christentums, eine Entgegnung auf Harnack's gleich-
namiges Buch. Stuttgart u. Wein, Roth, 1901.
Abert. Das Wesen des Christentums nach Thomas von Aquino. Wiirzfeurg, 1901.
Sanday. An Examination of Harnack's "What is Christianity?'* London,
Longmans, Green and Co., 1901.
Saunders. Professor Harnack and his Oxford Critics. London, Williams and
Norgate, 1902.
Loisy. L' Evangile et L' Eglise. Paris, Picard, 1902.
II. Articles and Reviews.
German {Non-Catholic).
Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1901, Heft 2. Study by Albrecht.
Der Beweis des Giaubens, May and June, 1901. Articles by Zockler.
Deutsch-Evangelische Blatter, 1901, Heft 4. Articles by Haupt on the Easter
Faith.
Theologische Rundschau, 1901, Heft 3. Review by Bossuet.
Die Gegenwart, 1901, No. 1. Article by von Hartmann.
Monatschrift fiir Stadt und Land, 1900, Heft 10. Article by Nathusius.
Hannoversche Pastoralkorrespondenz, 1901, No. 4. Review by Wohrmann.
Der Alte Glaube, 1900, No. 49; 1901, No. 13; Nos. 34-36; Nos. 43-46. Articles
by Wollenberg and Gussmann.
Die Christliche Welt, 1900, No. 46. Review by Drews.
Chronik der Christlichen Welt, 1901, No. 29; 1902, No. 4.
Allgemeine Evangelisch Luteranische Kirchenzeitung, 1900, Nos. 42, 43 and 52;
1901, Nos. 16, 17, 18, 36; 1902, No. 36.
Das Freie Wort, 1901, No. 4. Article by Schneider.
Die Neue Zeit, 1900, Nos. 29 30. Articles by Mehring.
Kirchliche Wochenschrift, 1901, Nos. 16-17. Articles by Lasson.
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 1901, No. 2. Article by Wolff.
Monatschrift f. d. kirchl. Praxis, 1901, Heft 1. Article by Baumgarten.
Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1901, Heft 1. Article by Burger.
Theologische Litteraturzeitung, 1900, No. 21. Review by Schultz.
Deutsche Litteraturzeitung, 1900, No. 1. Review by Holtzmann.
Litterarische Rundschau f. d. evang. Deutschland, 1901, No. 3.
Die Hilfe, 1900, No. 38. Review by Neumann.
Christliche Biicherschatz, Jahrg 22, 23. Article by Otto Krausa.
224 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
German (Catholic).
Der Katholik, July and August, 1901. Articles by Joseph Adloff.
Stimmen aus Maria Laach, January, 1901. Review by Chr. Pesch, S.J.
Zeitschrift fiir katholische Theologie, 1901, No. 25. Review by Leop. Fonk, S.J,
Natur und Offenbarung, 1900, No. 46. Review by Franz Strung.
Kolnische Volkszeitung, 1900, Nos. 739, 746; 1901, No. 467.
Renaissance, January and February, 1902. In February issue, Dr. Schell's crit-
ical study.
Freie deutsche Blatter, October 19, 1901.
Pastor Bonus, 1901-2; pp. 1-9.
Christliche Akademie, November, 1900.
Miinchener AUgemeine Zeitung, 1901, Nos. 28 and 29. Articles by F. X. Kraus.
French.
Revue Biblique Internationale, January, 1901. Analysis by Abb6 Lagrange.
Annales de Philosophie Chretienne, 1901, August and September. Articles by
J. de Coussanges.
Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie, November, 1900.
Revue Chretienne, June, 1901.
English and American.
The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1902.
The Expository Times, October, 1900.
The American Journal of Theology, January, 1903.
The Biblical World, December, 1901.
The Critical Review, November, 1900.
The Churchman, October 26, 1901.
The Quarterly Review, January, 1903. (Art. XII.)
The Expositor, November, 1901.
The Christian World, February 28, 1901.
The Inquirer, Marc. 9, 1901.
The Times, August 15, 1901.
OLD TESTAMENT CONCEPTS OF EARTHLY
WELFARE.
The views of earthly possessions which spiritual guides
and philosophic teachers take, must necessarily be governed
by their ideas of a supra-earthly life. According to beliefs
concerning the hereafter, the goods of this world must logically
be regarded. In the light of these views they will be held
either as desirable in themselves— an end to be striven for and
fully enjoyed in the brief span of human life— or, on the other
hand, by reason of their use or abuse, as mere helps or hind-
rances to a future existence far above the plane of material
pleasures. So, too, the popular attitude must be tinged, at least
on its theoretic side, by the conviction of the masses concerning
retribution beyond the grave. Even though rigid consistency
be wanting, as is often the case, there is a close and necessary
relation between the eschatologies of a people and its religious
leaders, and the mental attitudes of the same towards material
goods. Therefore, to comprehensively know and justly esti-
mate the views on this point of both the Hebrew people and
their spiritual teachers, as expressed in the Old Testament, we
must glance at Hebrew eschatology in its various phases. In
order, moreover, that Israelitic attitudes towards property
may have their historical settings, and because they not only
reflect but were influenced by the existing economic conditions,
a brief account of the material status of Israel in the various
periods of its national life will be useful and pertinent.
I. The Eschatological. Conditions.
It is necessary to distinguish between the two chief divis-
ions of Jewish Old Testament history, viz., before and after
the Exile, though there is such a shading off in the develop-
ment of the doctrine of immortality that we cannot say that
the Exile draws a sharp line between the older and newer be-
liefs. In both epochs, it is also imperative to distinguish, at
least in some important features, between the popular, gen-
15CUB ( 225 )
226 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
erally prevalent conceptions of the future state, and the aspira-
tions and intuitions of favored, sometimes inspired souls, who
rose above the common level. Both currents of thought run
through the Old Testament literature.
(A) Before the Exile.— It cannot be gainsaid that the
ancient Hebrews had no definite hope of a recompense, either
good or evil, beyond this present life. For the masses death
meant the descent of the soul into Sheol, that universal
rendezvous of the dead, where good and bad, high and low,
suffered the same lot, buried in a vague, vast subterranean
abyss, where they subsisted imperfectly, in a sluggish torpor
or half -sleep. There they rejoined their fathers, but in the
earliest literature of the Israelites, as far as we are able to
assign it, there is scarcely a hint of deliverance from this dark
and sad abode.^ In the divine economy the doctrine of im-
mortality, was to grow and unfold slowly and painfully
through the ages till it received its finishing and confirmation
from the lips of Christ and the revelations of the Holy Spirit.
Yet the idea of retribution was most firmly rooted in the
Israelitic mind from the beginning. For every violation of
divine law a forfeit was due to God's justice and holiness.
Death was the punishment of all-pervading impersonal sin.*
If Sheol was regarded as a penalty at all, it was as one for the
sinfulness of humanity, and not for the transgressions of indi-
viduals. The logical corollary of the juxtaposition, of these two
principles : the absence of judgment beyond the tomb, and the
imperativeness of retribution, was a third broad principle,
viz., that God rewards and punishes in this life, and that there-
fore, well-being, that is, spiritual, material and social pros-
perity, is the reward of righteousness, while misfortune and
suffering are the penalty of evil-doing and the signs of God's
displeasure. This is the general broad principle which pre-
vails, more or less, throughout nearly the entire Old Testament
literature.^
And yet it raised such grave and perplexing problems,
* See " Le Developpement de la Doctrine de I'lmmortalit^,' Revite Bihliqxte,
April, 1898; cf. article on Eschatology in Hastings "Bible Dictionary."
2 Gen. II, 17; III, 19. Cf. Romans, V, 12-14.
» See " The Problems of Weil-Being and Suffering in the Old Testament,"
BilUcal World, April-May, 1896.
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 227
when confronted with the actualities of life, wherein the just
are often miserable and the wicked or godless triumph and
prosper, its application demanded so many exceptions and
modifications, that this law of divinely ordained relation be-
tween righteousness and well-being, unrightousness and suf-
fering, must always— except, perhaps, in the infancy of the
people— have had little more than a merely theoretic truth
for the Israelites when applied to individuals. On the other
hand, the history of the chosen people, as a whole, is a striking
example of the truth that offending nations feel the weight of
God's just wrath in time, since it is only in time they exist.
The pious Israelite of old, if he had enjoyed a long life and
a goodly share of prosperity; if he had *' possessed the land''
—always an important factor in his happiness, if his bams
were well-stored, and he left behind a numerous and loving
progeny, at the close of his days deemed himself in the favor
of Yahveh, and sufficiently rewarded for his faithfulness. He
would ^*go to his fathers," to gloomy Sheol, it is true, and his
spirit must have shrunk from that future of darkness and
semi-extinction, but he found consolation in the thought that
he would still live in his children and posterity and his name
would be held in honor.^
Yet the Israelite who had striven to serve Yahveh and keep
his law, but whose portion was one of affliction, who had felt
the bitterijess of injustice, or the sting of poverty, whose life
perhaps had been one of physical torment or discomfort-
such a one must have been profoundly troubled and cast down,
especially when he saw his oppressor, or the wicked man
batten in ease and riches. Cruel, indeed, must have been the
problem of suffering to such upright souls, of whom Job is the
type. This man's hopeless and agonizing life wrung from
him in his despairing moods poignant complaints against the
seeming failure of God's justice. Such a one must at times
have felt with the Psalmist,
"Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart,
And washed my hands in innocence;
For all day long have I been plagued,
And my chastisement was every morning/'^
^ Cf. Ps. CXII (Vulgate CXI), 1, 2; Ecclus. XL, 19 j Is. LVI, 4, 6.
»Ps. LXXIII (LXXII), 13, 14.
228 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
But Job, seeing dimly a ray of light, hoped against hope that
somehow God would in the end lift him out of his misery, and
bring him into His joy-giving Presence.^ So, many religious
souls, tortured by the enigma of life, rebelling against the
universal application of the law of earthly retribution, must
have faintly trusted, that their consciousness of communion
with God would survive the present life, that perhaps by some
marvel of divine power they would be redeemed from Sheol,
and receive recompense for all their woe, by sharing in the
endless bliss of the Messianic reign or some more transcend-
ent intercourse with Yahveh. It needed such a deeply re-
ligious nature as that of the Israelites, with their instinctive
sense of the essential justice of God, and lowly reverence for
His mysterious dispensations, to keep alive faith and moral
rectitude in this dark period of early Hebrew eschatology,
when the hope of a better life was only a flickering spark.
Yet, it was out of such perplexities and half hopes that this
eschatology grew into something more definite and comforting.
Thoughtful minds sought a solution, and hopeful aspirations
for deliverance from Sheol into a divine life began to find
expression. The problem of the prosperity of the unrighteous
and the sufferings of the just led, too, to a higher estimate of
purely spiritual goods. The tender relationship on earth be-
tween the soul and God, often and touchingly expressed in the
psalms, was found to be in itself a great reward.
"Thou art my refuge,
^ My portion in the land of the living. '^ '
Psalms XXXVII, LXXIII, are the inspired utterances of
souls wrestling with the problem of inadequacy of temporal
retribution, giving voice to their aspirations, and hoping the
** larger hope^' of ultimate blessedness in the afterlife. It is
probable that both are pre-exilic in date, but whether or no,
as we shall find kindred thoughts among the pre-exilic prophets,
it is not too much to say that before the Exile, the development
of the doctrine of a future life had begun to shed abroad
rays, though feeble, of gloom-dispelling light.
^At least according to probable interpretations of XIX, 25, 26; XIII, 15.
2 Ps. CXLII (CXLI), 5; cf. Ps. XVI (XV), 2, 5.
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 229
The prophets dealt with nations, and classes of men. They
entered into no study of the problem we have been describing.
The judgment of God, they predict, is a judgment upon the
whole people. The resurrection that Ezechiel beheld, pre-
figures, as he tells us, the restoration of Israel.' And indeed,
up to the Captivity, an Israelite with the exception of chosen
spirits here and there, such as some of the psalmists, could
hardly conceive of an individual religious life and responsi-
bility apart from those of the community. He was absorbed,
so to speak, by the theocracy as he had been in public and
social life effaced by the clan or tribe. So the eschatology of
the prophets is almost wholly a national eschatology. The
retribution they constantly preach is that of the judgments
which shall precede the Kingdom of God; in the literal sense
of their utterances this Messianic reign was not to be devoid
of earthly elements, though these would be transformed and
renewed. Only indirectly did the prophetic warnings and
exhortations touch the individual. It is significant of the little
prominence which the idea of the personal retribution had yet
gained, also of the ineradicable sense of an omniscient and
avenging God of holiness and justice, that the prophets hold
out no reward for individual virtue, but that of escape from
death at the invaders' hands together with a vague blessedness
and *4ife''; while as a sanction against wrong-doing they
appeal only to the everlasting righteousness of God, and a
sharing in the popular calamities. Once indeed, another and
surprising note is heard: Isaias proclaims that the just Is-
raelites shall rise from the dead to share in the joys of the
Messianic reign, and the stress of the passage seems to bear
upon individuals.^
The catastrophes of the Captivity, by dissolving the nation
and the organic solidarity of the people, brought out strongly
the relations of God to the individual and a consequent per-
sonal responsibility. When the kingdoms and theocracies had
ceased to be, the individual found himself spiritually face to
1 Ez. XXXVII, 11. , „^„ „. ^
2 Is. XXVI, 14-19; cf. Orelli, "Old Testament Prophecy," p. 303; Riehm,
" Messianic Prophecy," 2d ed., p. 276.
230 CATHOLIO UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
face with God. The religious unit in the Exile was not the nation
but the person. Ezechiel announced that henceforth everyone
must stand or fall on his own merits.^ He is the one prophet who
insists upon personal righteousness and holiness, independent
of that of the community, while not losing sight of the truth
that there is a certain oneness between rulers and people,
between the nations and their individual members. This
important step in advance prepared the way for a personal
eschatology.
(B) After the ^a:;iZe.— Whether or not it be true, as some
critics maintain, that contact with Persian theology hastened
the development of the Jewish doctrine of the future life, we
find in post-exilic books a notable progress of ideas. Still, this
is not immediately evident. The old conceptions were deeply
rooted, and the post-exilic prophets, Malachias, Aggeus,
Zacharias, address their messages chiefly to classes, or to the
whole people, and the future they sketch is that of the com-
munity in the Messianic kingdom. The Messianic eschatology
and that of the individual went on developing side by side, till
they were gradually merged into one, by the latter appropriat-
ing to itself the retributions of the Messianic days, previously
related only to nations and collections of men. The wisdom-
literature belonging to the earlier part of the period after
the Captivity concerns itself with the transcendence of Wis-
dom and its application to the affairs of daily life. But in
the deeper spirituality of the Psalms we encounter a marked
advance in eschatological thought.^ Here the problem of the
prosperity of the wicked is solved by their evil end, and by the
deliverance of the just from Sheol into life with God.^ In
Pss. XVI and XLIX the crucial stage of perplexity to which
LXXIII and XXXVII bear witness, is no longer encountered.
Instead, there is a triumphant assurance that God will trans-
late the spirit of the just from the living death of Sheol, which
1 Ezechiel, XVIII. The idea had been announced but not developed by
Jeremias, XXXI, 29-30.
2 Pss. XVI (XV), XLIX (XLVIII), 13, flF. Compare XXXVII (XXXVI),
27, 28, XXXVI (XXXV), 8-9; and XXII (XXI), 14, "man whose portion is in
this life."
8 See Kirkpatrick, "The Book of Psalms," 1902, p. 273; Etudes, November,
1899, p. 340 flf.
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 231
is to be properly the lot of the wicked. And the writers do
not speak for themselves alone : they are tj'^pes.^
The second book of Machabees, probably written in the first
century before the Christian era, gives evidence of immense
progress in the doctrine of the future life. The answer of the
seven martyred brothers to the tyrant presiding at their tor-
tures, and the exhortations of their heroic mother, are animated
by an assurance of a resurrection of the faithful and a reward
for their constancy in the afterlife.^ Those of the just who
die without having been fully cleansed from sin, can be deliv-
ered from these impediments to the joys of the resurrection
by the prayers of the living.^ The ultimate fate of the wicked
is left obscure in the Book of Daniel which is regarded by
recent critics, including a few Catholic scholars,* as composed
in the Machabean era, but we encounter an otherwise highly
developed doctrine in chapter XII, 2, 3, the only passage in the
proto-canonical books where resurrection and retribution after
death are clearly taught, and the sole mention in the entire
Old Testament of a resurrection of the unjust.
The eloquent passages of the Book of Wisdom (II-V) de-
scribing the persecution of the just man by the evil, and the
consternation of the latter on beholding his glory in the after-
world, also mark an advanced stage of progress in eschatolog-
ical teaching. Here the heavenly reward of virtue is clearly
taught. '*The just shall live forevermore and their reward
is with the Lord.'' The fate of the wicked is not so definitely
expressed, but **they are consumed in their wickedness.''*
Wisdom and Daniel hold, in general, the highest levels of
the Old Testament eschatology, but the former, if not both,
belong to the advanced period of Jewish theology comprised
in the two centuries preceding Christ. The progress of Old
Testament ideas of immortality, which we have cursorily traced
from its obscure rudiments to the comparatively full develop-
ment represented by Wisdom and Daniel and Second Machabees
igee Kirkpatrick, "The Book of Psalms," 1902, p. 273; Etudes, November,
1899, p. 340 ff.
' II Mach., VII.
'*CtYnnafe7^de PMlosophie ChrStienne, October, 1902, Revue BihUque,
April, 1898, p. 228.
6 Wisdom, V, 16, 13.
232 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
is instructive and interesting. Yet how slowly the conception
of future rewards and punishments made its way among the
masses may be seen in the second chapter of the late book of
Wisdom where the unrighteous are represented as basing their
sensual enjoyments and cruelties upon a materialistic view of
life, a mixture of Epicureanism and the old unbelief in personal
reckoning hereafter.
II. The Material. Conditions.
The darkness concerning human destiny which prevailed
in the minds of the Israelites before the Exile and for some
time after, naturally gave to the tangible present good of
earthly possessions an attractive and overwhelming force. The
summum hofhum seemed to be the things of this world. Indeed,
only the deeply rooted religious-ethical consciousness of the
people which had been awakened into energy by Moses, and
was kept alive by the prophets, an instinct which found its
embodiment and fixed expression in the Law given or sanc-
tioned by Yahveh— this alone prevented the Israelites, as a
people, from wallowing in the slough of materialism depicted
in the second chapter of Wisdom. As it was, lust of gain
and pleasures ruled the upped classes in the time of the later
kings. A brutal overriding on their part of the rights of
the poor and weak, a ruthless exploitation of the ill-defended
classes, is plainly written in the denunciations of the prophets.
The infection extended to those whose duty it was to ad-
minister justice and vindicate the laws of God. *^The heads
thereof (Jerusalem) judge for reward, and the priests thereof
teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.''
*^The rulers eat the flesh of the people and flay the skin from
them.''^ There is a reiterated outcry from the inspired
prophets against unscrupulousness in trade, against the ex-
actions, the injustice and the violence of the rich.
It had not been always so in Israel. The Jews of to-day
are the descendants of a simple nomadic folk who drove
their flocks in the desert and lodged under tents of skins.
^Micheas, III, 11,2.
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 233
The settlement in Canaan made a revolution in the habits
and life of these wanderers, which was the more rapid as they
came into possession of a country whose inhabitants had
reached a notable degree of civilization. The Israelites became
an agricultural people, and remained such through all the vicis-
situdes of their history as a nation. They were unfitted for
trade, both by their nomadic life in the past and the situation
of their newly-conquered country, hemmed in, as it was, on all
sides by enemies, and cut off from the sea and its ports, except
for the brief space in which the tribe of Zabulon held possession
of a strip of coast. On the other hand, the land answered
generously to the labors of the husbandman and stock-raiser.
Its valleys and lower levels were fertile, especially in the
northern half ; its hillsides were adapted to vine-growing, and
where the soil was semi-desert and unfruitful, large flocks of
sheep and goats could find sustenance. The good wheat and
barley harvests and the herds were ample to support the popu-
lation with its few and simple wants.
At first trading was left in the hands of the Canaanites,
close kinsmen to the Phoenicians, and inheritors of their genius
for commerce. Forced from the soil, they turned actively to
a mercantile life. The term * * Canaanite ' ' remained for a long
time a synoym for merchant.^
The Israelites tilled the ground or kept their flocks. Their
modest wealth lay in the fruits of these industries. The mass
of people was thus composed in the early period of a middle
class of peasant-proprietors, equally removed from want and
luxury. Saul, himself, the newly chosen king, did not disdain,
even after his elevation, to follow the plough and cultivate the
paternal acres. ^
Nevertheless, the monarchy, itself the token of a higher
civilization, reacted upon the hitherto simple, patriarchal life
of the people, and brought in an element of complexity and
social inequality. It also gave an impetus to trade, yet not
before Solomon had expanded David's moderate establish-
ment, and made Jerusalem the capital of a splendid Oriental
despotism. Luxuries were now in demand. An increase
^Sophonias, I, 11; Ezech. XVI, 29; Prov. XXXI, 2, 4.
2 I Samuel, XI, 5.
234 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
of wants created an increase of traffic. Nearly all costly-
articles had to be imported from the opulent and bnsy
Phoenician emporiums, Tyre and Sidon, or from Damascus
and Assyria, by the caravans whose route lay across northern
Israel. Solomon himself had the commercial instinct, as is
proven by his dealings in Egyptian horses and chariots,^ and
his expeditions to Ophir, though these last were probably only
to supply gold for the Temple and luxuries for the court.^
Thus it came about that Israelites, learning from the
Canaanites, began to be skilled in crafts of the humbler kinds,
as pottery, smith-work, weaving, baking. They embarked
upon the currents of world-commerce which streamed through
their land in two great caravan-routes. The third book of
Kings (XX, 34) casually reveals the fact that the northern
kingdom, always the representative Israel in a material sense,
had important trade relations with Damascus. The fertile
areas of Palestine produced a surplus of grain, oil and bal-
sam, which was consumed by mercantile, densely populated
Phoenicia. In return, the latter sent its fine fabrics and arti-
cles of luxury. Palestine became the granary of Phoenicia,
and probably through Phoenician middlemen, carried on an
export trade in its surplus wheat. ^ But despite these trade
developments, the Israelites always remained essentially an
agricultural people.* The tilling of the soil was held in
eminent honor, and the well-to-do residents of cities and towns
generally owned farms, vineyards or pasture-lands, to which
they gave attention personally or through stewards.^ How
strong were the fibres which rooted the ancient Jew to the
soil of his fathers is strikingly seen in the story of Naboth's
vineyard which the owner refused to sell, even to the king.
Commerce always remained a secondary element in Israel's
economy, except in so far as it was based directly upon the
products of the earth.
As well as the limited data permit us to judge, it was
Israel's extensive grain trade with Tyre and Sidon that—
» III Kings, X, 28, 29.
2 Ibid., IX, 26-28; X, 11, 12, 22.
3Cf. Ez., XXVII, 17.
* See Buhl, " Die socialen Verhaltnisse der Israeliten," 1899, pp. 65, 66.
fiCf. Sam., XIL 1. ff.
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 235
mucli more than the monarchies and royal officialdom-broke
up the old approximate social equality which had held in
the era of the Judges, and that of the beginnings of the
kingdom.! This equality rested upon a relatively equal dis-
tribution of land. As a consequence the body of the Israelites
were an agrarian middle-class. But in the age of the later
kings the growing dimensions of the grain exports whetted
the avarice of the rich, and induced them to enlarge to the
utmost by fair means or foul, their holdings of a soil which
had become so remunerative. They took advantage of the
seasons of dearth, caused by war or failure of crops, to press
their peasant creditors and force them to part with their mort-
gaged farms.! Thus arose landlordism and concentration of
wealth in the hands of relatively few. The numbers of the
comfortable middle class were reduced, and the poor were mul-
tiplied.
The influx of money from the grain-trade brought in a
money-economy, a commercialism which soon heightened and
emphasized the social inequalities, for by these new factors in
IsraePs industrial life the upper class profited in great dis-
proportion. All the advantages were on the side of the wheat-
jobbers and the land monopolists. Socially the distance be-
tween the more and the less prosperous widened rapidly. The
poor found themselves isolated in their miserable villages in
a state of serfdom to the lords of the soil. Having lost their
land and become too straitened to redeem it, they were now
forced to subsist at the mercy of the larger proprietors, or seek
a precarious livelihood in cities. The rise in the price of food
products, caused by the selfish hoarding of grain for export
and speculation, intensified the distress of the proletariat. In
many cases they were obliged to sell into slavery their children
or themselves, in order to obtain the necessaries of life.^
Thus the commercial development of the nation ended in
the rise and dominance of a moneyed aristocracy, at once
^ See Walter, " Die Propheten in ihrem sozialen Beruf und das Wirthschafts-
leben ihrer Zeit," 43 if.
^Osee VII, 14, Is. V, 3; Mich. II, 1, ff. Cf. Neh. V. The accumulation of
the land of poor agrarian creditors is a common source of the rise of classes in
antiquity. See Adler, Geschichte des Sozialismus und Kommunismus, 6.
3 Amos, II, 6, 7; Is. Ill, 12; cf. Neh. V, 2, 5, S.
236 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
grasping and oppressive, whose wrongdoings were shielded
by corrupt rulers and judges. The victims on whose blood
they fattened constituted a class without property, a proletariat,
whose existence was a portent unknown in the older days of
Israel, and whose condition was the more helpless inasmuch
as they were without the rights of citizenship,^ bare and de-
fenceless before the greed of the *^ mighty.'' So we find that
in the second deportation to Babylonia there were left in Juda
only the utterly poor, those destitute of real property. These
alone found comfort in the catastrophe, for they came into the
occupancy of the vacant lands and houses.^
Between the capitalists and the poor was a shrinking middle
class, composed on the one hand of small freeholders,^ strug-
gling against absorption by the magnates, and on the other of
well-to-do tradesmen, established in cities and town. The
royal officers, military and civil, formed another element,
closely allied to the agrarian and financial aristocracy. They
often abused their power of gathering tribute, to exploit the
much-suif ering commonalty. The king himself, even when he
had the will, which was rare,^ could check but not prevent the
widespread oppression of the weak and poor by the ' ' mighty. ' '
The Exile did little to abate the covetousness which had
become one of Israel 's crying national sins. The old spirit of
soulless greed soon reappeared after the Eeturn. In the stress
of political and social restoration, the poorer people were forced
to borrow money and grain from the *^ nobles and the rulers''
and being unable to pay the usurious interest, they saw their
mortgaged houses and fields, and even their children, fall into
the hands of the exactors. It took the angry intervention and
generous example of Nehemias to redress these evils. ^
The sojourn of many Hebrews in the industrial and trading
centres of Babylonia, Assyria and Persia, after their violent
uprooting from the soil, compelled them to learn trades and
handicrafts and further stimulated the awakened commercial
tendencies of the race. It was now that Jews for the first time
1 Buhl, " Socialen Verhaltnisse, etc.," p. 45.
2 IV Kings, 25, 12; Jer. XXXIX, 10.
3 Cf. Jer., XXXII, 7.
* Jeremiah, XXII, 16, mentioned as a noteworthy fact that King Josias
"judged the cause of the poor."
6 Neh. V.
I
EARTHLY WELFARE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 237
entered into money-trading and became bankers. At first con-
fined to the Dispersion, this new feature of Jewish life ex-
tended itself in time to the fatherland. The first minted coins
came into use during the Persian domination, the Israelites
having previously used, as mediums of exchange, only weighed
pieces of gold and silver. In Jerusalem, after the Exile, arti-
ficers and tradesmen were numerous and important enough to
form guilds, which had a status resembling that of the clans,
and enjoyed corporate rights and privileges.^
But after the Captivity the fuller operation and more liberal
provisions of the Law in favor of greater equality, must have
bettered the condition of the poorer classes. The population
steadily increased, and despite the wars and persecutions, which
ravaged the country, prosperity gradually reappeared. So we
find a sacred writer describing the rule of Simon Machabee as
a golden age.^ It was then that fertile Galilee was reunited
to Judea. The producing power of Palestine in the time im-
mediately preceding Christ is strikingly evidenced by the enor-
mous taxes the poulation was able to pay to foreign rulers and
the Temple service, without suffering exhaustion.
George J. Eed).
St. Paul Seminaey.
^ Buhl, op. cit., pp. 75, 43. Cf . Neh. Ill, 8, 31 ; I Par. IV, 21.
*I Mach. XIV, 6-15.
THE MINING QUESTION.
The recent Anthracite Coal Strike has given to the mining
question in the United States a prominence which is excep-
tionally welcome. The strike was a calamity; the suffering
which it entailed and the uncertainty which it created in the
business world have shown us the possibilities of danger and
disaster that lie in our present industrial condition. The
Commission created by the President to investigate the condi-
tions in the mining regions and to arrange a settlement of the
controversy between the operators and the miners will un-
doubtedly give to the public a report which will have a first-
rate educational value. The public is interested ; the situation
should be known. Undoubtedly the report will be well stud-
ied when it is presented.
It may contribute in a slight degree to that work of popular
education if attention be called to the extended investigation
of the mining question made by the Industrial Commission.
Hence, a brief resume of the evidence and recommendations
concerning the situation in the mining industry is here pre-
sented. In addition, attention is called to the valuable report
made by the Hon. Carroll D. Wright on the strike controversy,
last summer, and published in the Bulletin of the Department
of Labor, November, 1902.
This Industrial Commission was approved by an act of
Congress of June 18, 1898, and its duty was, according to this
act, **to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, to
labor, to agriculture, to manufacturing and to business, and
to report to Congress and to suggest such legislation as it may
deem best upon these subjects. ... It shall furnish such in-
formation and suggest such laws as may be made a basis for
uniform legislation by the various states of the union, in order
to harmonize conflicting interests and to be equitable to the
laborer, the employer, the producer and the consumer."
Hence, we may well expect to find in the reports of the
Industrial Commission much information which will be dupli-
cated by the Anthracite Coal Commission. The testimony
( 238 )
THE MINING QUESTION, 239
regarding the conditions of capital and labor in coal mining
in the eastern states was taken in 1899, and additional state-
ments of one or two leading representatives of the employers
and employees of this industry were secured in 1901. More-
over, the complaints and the demands of the miners are almost
the same as they were at the time when the testimony was
taken. The testimony will show that the problem, though
changed in accidental features is essentially the same.
The exact words of the text are occasionally given without
references or quotation marks: they may be easily traced to
the original sources. The fifth, ninth, twelfth, seventeenth
and nineteenth volumes of the Eeport of the Industrial Com-
mission and the November number of the Bulletin of the
Department of Labor are the documents chiefly employed.
The Anthracite Coal. Mines of Pennsylvania.
The anthracite coal deposits of Pennsylvania are located
in the northeastern part of the state, less than 150 miles from
New York, and 100 miles from Philadelphia. They are scat-
tered over four distinct areas: (1) The Northern or Wyoming
field, with Carbondale, Scranton and Wilkesbarre as the prin-
cipal centres; (2) the Southern or Schuylkill field lying east
and west of Pottsville; (3) the Eastern Middle or Lehigh
region, about Hazelton; (4) the Western Middle of Mahonoy
and Shamokin basins (XIX, 444).
These deposits vary greatly in size and character— the
Northern and Southern being by far the largest. In the
Wyoming field the coal beds lie only 1,000 or 1,200 feet below
the surface, while in the Western Middle field the depth of
the mines reaches 2,000 feet. In the Southern field the gen-
eral depth is still greater and for this reason it has not been
developed as rapidly as the other regions. The veins axe
very irregular; some are worked which are only three or four
feet in thickness, while elsewhere they may reach forty feet
and even more, as is the case in the Mammoth beds.
These mines were discovered between 1770. and 1790 by
a party of hunters, camping in the region, who were astounded
at seeing the ground take fire. The ''black stones'' were
used for many years for different purposes, as for instance in
240 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Philadelphia for the constmction of gravel walks. But it is
only towards 1820 that hard coal mining began as a trade
(XIX, 446).
The amount of anthracite mined yearly has not increased
much for the last twenty-five years; it amounts to little over
50,000,000 long tons (2,240 pounds) while the production of
bituminous coal, which was hardly larger than that of the
anthracite twenty-five years ago reached 250,000,000 tons for
the year 1900, and has considerably increased since then.
But more perfect machinery and methods are regularly intro-
duced in drilling, blasting, loading coal, propping mines, haul-
ing coal from the rooms, conveying it to tipple, dumping
screening, weighing. The dangers of the mining industry
have been greatly reduced by improved methods in ventilation
and drainage though they are still considerable.
Unfortunately, in anthracite mining, as well as in many
other industries, social progress has not kept pace with the
mechanical progress, and while more perfect machinery has
been introduced in mining, the relations between the operators
and miners have been more and more strained until they
have reached the present critical state of open rupture.
The developments which have led to the present condition
may be briefly told.
The railroad companies have, little by little, monopolized
most of the coal mining industry of Pennsylvania (XIX, 446).
At the present time they own or lease more than nine tenths
of the coal deposits. However, as most railroads are not per-
mitted by law to operate coal mines directly (447), they make
use of sudsidiary coal mining companies for this purpose.
Thus, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad coal is mined
by the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Co., of which
it owns the entire capital stock. Similarly the Central Rail-
road of New Jersey operates the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal
Co., the Pennsylvania through the Scranton Coal Co., etc.
Not only have the railroads evaded in this way the law pro-
hibiting combined privileges of mining and transportation, but
they have used this system to eliminate independent operators
(448). They have charged them excessive rates for the trans-
portation of the coal from the mines to tidewater, alleging that
THE MINING QUESTION. 241
they charge the same rates to their own subsidiary mining
companies. The result, in fact, has been that most of these
subsidiary companies have been apparently operated at a loss.
But, on the other hand, it is obvious that the railroads have
fully recouped themselves for these deficits by means of the
corresponding profits which they have made in transportation
(XIX, 453). The ultimate result has been the gradual absorp-
tion of the property of the independent operators by the rail-
road companies.
At the same time continual attempts on the part of the rail-
road companies have been made to restrict production and pre-
scribe prices by artificial means. Agreements were made be-
tween the companies to limit the yearly output to a certain
quantity determined by the extent of the mining properties of
each company. Combination was attempted by means of
pooling, then by lease of one railroad to another. Public opin-
ion, official investigations, decisions of courts, enactment of
laws, nothing could check the progress of combination. In
fact, it has continued to our day, no longer by allotment of ton-
nage, pooling or lease, but by outright purchase of stock holding
control.
While the operators tended more and more toward consol-
idation, a like movement took place among the miners. They
also united, and in union they found strength comparable to
that of their employers.
The first organization of coal miners in the anthracite coal
region (XII, xxiv) was formed as early as 1860. Several
attempts were made to establish (XII, xxiv) a national organi-
zation. They had greater or less temporary success, until the
*^ United Mine Workers'' association was formed in 1890. The
great bituminous strike of 1897 gave it an extraordinary im-
pulse. Yet, in the anthracite region, it attained considerable
strength only at the time of the anthracite strike of 1900. It
went into that strike with a membership of only 8,000 among
the anthracite miners and came out of it with about 100,000.
It has been the continual professed aim of this organization
(XVII, 190) to better the condition of the miners. Its efforts
to secure proper wages (XVII, 186), paid in lawful money,^ to
regulate the weighing of coal, to obtain and enforce legislation
16CUB
242 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
on prevention of accidents in the mines, on employers' lia-
bility on accidents, on the length of the working day and on
child labor have not been fruitless. They had to fight every
step in their progress towards a better social condition ; never-
theless much has been accomplished.
About 1875 the sliding scale system was established; the
wages of the miners were to advance in proportion with the
price of coal. It was then thought to be a great gain for the
miners. But they soon complained that they could not verify
the computations of the company on which their wages de-
pended, and that in fact the operators had failed to raise the
wages when the price of coal rose.
This was not the only grievance of the miners. When, on
September 12, 1900, the strike was declared, they demanded,
besides the abolition of the sliding scale system, an advance of
10 to 20 per cent, in the wages, according to the class of labor—
semi-monthly payment in cash— abolishment of the system
of 3,360 pounds to the ton and restoration of the 2,240 pound
system— appointment of a checkweighman by the miners to
verify the weight taken by the company ; protection of the men
in the mines— abolishment of the company store system, and
company doctor system— reduction in the price of powder,
from $2.75 to $1.50. The price of powder is an important mat-
ter as the miners buy from the operators all powder used for
blasting.
The demands were not all granted. The strikers returned
to work on a promise of an increase of 10 per cent, in wages.
The sliding scale was abolished and the operators agreed to
take up with their men any further grievances they might have.
The price of powder was reduced to $1.50 a keg, but the differ-
ence was deducted from the increase of wages.
On the whole it was a victory for the miners, and their
union. Yet the war between the two great combinations
(XVII, 192) did not end there. The term of the concessions
granted by the operators expired April 1, 1901. As the time
approached the operators posted notices to the effect that they
were ready to continue the same terms until April 1, 1902. In
spite of this offer it seemed for a time that a general strike
would be called. The miners were clamoring for a recognition
THE MINING QUESTION. 243
of the Union. Finally the strike was averted. The operators
held a conference with the leaders of the miners and *'held
out the hope that if during the present year the mine workers
demonstrated their willingness and ability to abstain from en-
gaging in local strikes, full and complete recognition of the
organization would unquestionably be accorded at a future
date.''
The conflict averted in April, 1901, broke out in March,
1902. The miners demanded arbitration. The National Civic
Federation endeavored to induce operators to arbitrate. But
to no avail. The operators insisted there was nothing to
arbitrate. Finally, the strike was declared, and in May, 1902,
145,000 miners went out. The strike continued until last
October when the President called in conference, the represen-
tatives, operators and miners *4n regard to the failure of the
coal supply which had become a matter of vital concern to the
whole nation.'' Negotiations went on until the second half of
October when a commission of arbitrators, appointed by the
President, was accepted by both parties.
Its purpose, according to the instructions of the President,
is to endeavor to establish the relations between employers and
wage workers on a just and permanent basis, and as far as
possible, to do away with any causes for recurrence of such
difficulties as those it is called on to settle.
The miners returned to work on the 23d of October, and
the next day the Commission met in Washington to begin its
proceedings.
Complaints of Miners. Wages.
The first complaint of the miners at the time of the hear-
ings of the Industrial Commission as well as now, was that
they did not receive fair wages. They admitted that since 1897
wages had risen and they attributed this rise to the strength
of the organization, to strikes and to the general increase in
the price of labor. Yet they contended that these wages were
too low, whether compared to the American standard of living
or to the wages received in other occupations of the same
nature.
Most of the mining done in the anthracite fields is done on
a contract or piecework system. As these contracts are gen-
244 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
erally made by individual bargaining between the miner and
the superintendent, and as they vary from mine to mine and
from vein to vein, it is very difficult to ascertain what is the
average earning of the miner. What increases the difficulty is
that each miner (XII, xxv) has usually one or two assistants,
whom he pays, and therefore, the amounts figured by the
operators often represent not the wages of a single man, but
the wages of two or three men. Another fact to be taken into
consideration in the computation of wages is that coal miners
are employed only a fraction of the year. Out of over 300
possible working days, the miners are employed seldom over
200 days in the year, sometimes much less. These facts will
serve to explain the strange differences which exist between the
testimony of the miners and that of the representatives of the
companies. Some assert that the yearly wages of a miner
averages from $500 to $1,000, while others testify that an
underground miner receives less than $2.00 a day, other
laborers from $1.10 to $1.64; the workers on breakers $1.00
to $1.20. To those figures must be added the 10 per cent, in-
crease which was the result of the anthracite strike of 1900.
According to an operator (IX, clxv) who appeared before
the Industrial Commission in March, 1901, therefore after the
10 per cent, increase, the average wage of the coal miners
throughout the year was $40.00 a month. About 12 per cent,
of the whole number are boys who receive half this rate. The
average wages for foremen above ground are $2.71 per day;
for mechanics above ground $1.92 ; for laborers above ground
$1.29 ; for boys under sixteen, 62 cents. Below ground, a fore-
man receives $3.05 on an average; miners, $2.40; laborers,
$1.63, and boys under sixteen 89 cents. According to this
witness the average number of days worked is about 200 a
year, hence, the annual wage is lower than one might think.
The Commissioner of Labor obtained about the same
figures from the mine operators. The monthly earnings of
miners working for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western
R. R. Co., are $66.48. In the Reading Co., the average daily
earnings during November, 1901, were from $2.00 to $3.00 for
regular miners; $1.20 to $1.60 for laborers, and 85 cents for
boys.
THE MINING QUESTION. 245
Method of Payment.
Formerly employers paid wages every month, always re-
taining half a month's earnings at the time of payment. The
United Mine Workers obtained a semi-monthly payment but
the employers still held back from ten days' to two weeks'
wages. Weekly payment seems to be the universal desire of
the employees, because provisions and supplies could be
bought for cash outside of the company's stores at cheaper
rates, and miners would be less under the control of the em-
ployers.
The operators complain of the great labor involved in the
making out of frequent pay-rolls: they add that pay day is
likely to be followed by two or three days of idleness and dis-
sipation. But the miners see in this monthly or bimonthly
payment only an attempt on the part of the operators to compel
the men to trade at the company stores.
Company Stokes and Tenements.
The method of payment was one of the most bitter com-
plaints of miners in the strike of 1900. Company stores and
company tenements have been established in places of work
remote from business centres, and if the employers were
satisfied with a fair compensation for the building and running
of such stores and tenements, they would be a great benefit to
the employees. But this is generally not the case. In cer-
tain mining sections of Pennsylvania, the prices at company
stores are said to be 25 to 40 per cent, higher than elsewhere.
Moreover, company stores and tenements are objected to even
where the prices are not excessive, because they limit the choice
of the miners and, above all, are an instrument of oppresion
in the hands of the operators. According to the miners, often,
men who fail to trade at the company store or to occupy the
company tenement are discharged. It must be remarked,
however, that this question has not had, in the last strike, the
importance which it had in 1900.
Child Labok.
(XII, cxlv.) The miners complain that they are often so
poorly paid that they feel driven by necessity to take their
246 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
children into the mines, while the operators prefer to employ
boys for certain classes of work on account of the lower pay.
Yet this custom is deprecated by every one. All agree that
it interferes with the physical, intellectual and moral develop-
ment of the children, and the representatives of labor add
that the competition of children with men lowers wages and
increases the number of unemployed.
The law of Pennsylvania allows children over fourteen to
be employed under ground, and those over twelve over ground.
It also requires them to attend school until they are fifteen
years of age.
Hours of Work.
The strike of 1897 secured for the bituminous coal fields
of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania the eight-hour
day. But in the anthracite mines great irregularity of hours
seemed to exist. The miners working by contract have their
own way, yet ten hours is recognized as a full day. Miners
working by the day, laborers, mechanics, etc., work ten hours.
The representatives of the miners advocate a shorter day.
They declare that the change which took place in bituminous
fields has been beneficial to the health of the miners and to
their mental and moral culture without working injury to the
operators.
The operators, in answer to this demand of the miners,
say that there is already too much idleness and loafing among
the men. They claim that on the average the contract miners
work only five hours a day and that, moreover, there are con-
stant interruptions of work on account of picnics, parties, ex-
cursions and celebrations of all kinds.
Conditions of Work.
(XIX, 905.) One of the great arguments of the miners
in favor of an increase of wages and a decrease of hours is
the character of the coal mining industry. It is, they* say,
more unhealthy and more dangerous than most other occupa-
tions. The absence of light is in itself an element of injury
to the health of underground workers. Still more serious is
the impurity of the air, which they are constantly breathing.
Ventilation is only a partial success. The dampness, or at
THE MINING QUESTION. 247
times, the obnoxious coal dust, the confined and strained posi-
tions in which the miner is often obliged to work, are also
causes which soon tell on his physical condition.
Moreover, the mines are the scenes of innumerable acci-
dents to the workingmen. This is still more the case in the
anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania which are deeper and
more exposed to noxious gases. The veins too, are more fre-
quently thin and tilted. The proportion of fatal accidents in
the anthracite mines is in most years considerably over 3 per
1,000 persons employed while the number of injured miners
is twice and often three times larger.
The most general cause of fatal accidents is the falling of
coal and rock, especially from the roof of the working places.
Statistics show that nearly 2,000 miners were killed by falling
of coal and slate in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mines
between 1891 and 1900. Another serious cause of accidents
is connected with mine cars. The slopes and underground
roads in which these cars are run are often so narrow that
except where safety holes have been provided no person can
pass the moving and loaded cars. About one-tenth of the
fatalities is caused by explosions of gas or firedamp. Such
explosions can often be traced to the lack of proper ventilation
or of proper inspection of the mines by foremen and **fire
bosses. '' A very large proportion of accidents in the anthra-
cite mines is also due to blasting, though it must be added, the
miner's carelessness is very frequently the cause.
(XII, xxvi.) There is considerable friction between
miners and operators in regards to docking for impurities in
coal. The operators contend that the practice is necessary
to prevent some miners from careless work. The miners
allege that whole cars are deducted from their account because
of trifling amounts of slate or dirt. They have demanded
judges of docking, but the requests have been refused.
The miners have been allowed to have their own check
weighmen. Some complain that these check weighmen are
not permitted to test the scales as often as they see fit, or that
the cars are sometimes measured instead of weighed, or that,
where they are paid by the car, the size of the cars has been
increased without a corresponding increase of the pay.
248 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Hence, their demand now is that they shall be paid by weight
and that 2,240 pounds shall constitute the ton.
Labor Organization.
One of the most important causes of conflict between miners
and operators in the anthracite coal fields is the obstinacy of
the latter in refusing a formal recognition of the organization
called the ** United Mine Workers.'^ This question has come
more and more to the front with the rapid development of the
uiiion.
The trade unions have been recognized in many great in-
dustries. In this case, the representatives of the unions deal
directly with representatives of the corporations, and fix the
wage scale and the conditions of labor (XIX). To cite only
one or two examples which have come more prominently
before the eyes of the public, the managers of the steel com-
binations which now make up the ** United States Steel Cor-
poration'^ deal with the officers of the Amalgamated Associa-
tion of Iron, Steel and Tin workers, and even sign the scale
with them (XII, xxx). Another example which is still more
to the point is that of the joint conferences between miners
and operators in the bituminous coal industry. The inter-
state convention representing the operators and miners of
Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, determines
the wages, houses and other conditions of labor for the ensuing
year. Besides interstate conventions, there are state confer-
ences in which lesser disputes are settled between the opera-
tors* commissioners and the miners* officials. The commis-
sioner of the Illinois Coal Operators* Association states that
he acted in about 200 cases within a year— in joint conferences
with the representatives of the miners and in every instance
they came to an amicable settlement.
During the strike of 1900, the anthracite coal miners en-
deavored in vain to obtain the official recognition of the union.
They have renewed their efforts during the last two years
and in the last general strike it has become one of the main
demands of the miners.
(XII, 113.) The fundamental reason of this opposition
lies in the desire of the employers to secure labor as cheaply
THE MINING QUESTION. 249
as possible. There is no doubt that this end is obtained more
easily by dealing individually with employers than by dealing
with the officials of the union.
Other reasons are alleged by the operators, the one most
frequently appealed to, being the irresponsibility of the union.
The organization, they say, contains in the anthracite coal
fields of Pennsylvania, a strong element of lawlessness and
violence. There has been more trouble with the discipline
since 1900, ^. e., since the development of the union, than ever
before. The leaders are often thrown into their positions
by an ignorant vote, they are without the necessary require-
ments. If they are fit for the charge they are frequently
forced into courses of action which they do not approve, as
was the case when the last strike was declared (Dep. of Lab.
Bulletin, November 1902, p. 1149). The union, conscious of
its irresponsibility, has constantly refused to incorporate.
(XII, cxlvii, XIX, 967.) They admit that the recognition
of the union by the bituminous coal operators has brought
about beneficial results, but entirely different conditions pre-
vail in the anthracite coal fields. There the foreign element
predominates, a class of people entirely unfamiliar with the
traditions and customs of organization, unaccustomed to the
rules and self-control which it imposes, liable to misunder-
stand the purpose and institutions of a labor union.
In fact, a large number of the miners, which some estimate
as high as 60 per cent., belongs to the non-English speaking
races and many of them are still unable to speak English.
These foreigners, mostly Poles, Slavs, Lithuanians, Hun-
garians and Italians, are largely without education, unmarried,
and live in a manner which would never be acceptable to
Americans. It will require a long time to train such a class
of men into American methods and customs, and to develop in
them the spirit of our labor organizations.
Blacklisting.
No convincing proof has been given of blacklisting. Yet it
is a general feeling among the miners that they are refused
work on account of affiliation to the union, or of the active
part they have taken in organizing labor. It is true, the
250 CATHOLIC UNIVJEESITY BULLETIN.
employees have a counter weapon in the boycott, though the
latter has never proved very useful to the anthracite miners.
The blacklist, they say, has been very injurious to them. Yet,
it is very hard to detect the truth in this connection, as the
men are too apt to exaggerate the wrongs of the operators and
they too often see an injustice in the mere attempt to maintain
order and discipline.
Eemedies.
It was the purpose of the Industrial Commission to suggest
remedies for the present industrial evils. Hence one turns with
interest to see what may be the recommendations of the Com-
mission. To quote the words of the Report: (XIX, 933.)
**The Industrial Commission has recognized the very general
feeling on the part of the people that strikes and lockouts are
in many instances, unduly expensive methods of settling dif-
ferences, and that they, too, frequently injure greatly the wel-
fare of large bodies of the people as well as that of the parties
in dispute. The Commission has, therefore, investigated very
thoroughly the methods employed for promoting industrial
peace, both in the United States and in foreign countries, and
has considered various proposals for the extension of these
methods either by legislation or by voluntary action of organi-
zations of employers and employees. ' '
Three processes by which disputes may be adjusted are
treated at length in the Report of the Industrial Commission;
they are: collective bargaining, conciliation and arbitration.
The first two processes have already been referred to and
are, to a certain extent, practiced in the bituminous coal regions
of the United States.
Collective hargainmg consists in an agreement between the
employers and organized workingmen to fix the general condi-
tions of labor. It is also called by the name of joint con-
ferences, wageboards, agreement system. To be successful it
must be conducted by and between organizations of fair-
minded working people having honest, intelligent, and con-
servative leaders, and employers who are also honest, conserva-
tive and fair-minded (XIX, 839). Collective bargaining,
though adopted by ten or twelve leading trades in the United
States, has not yet been worked into its ultimate form.
The Commission suggests that this practice be extended
THE MINING QUESTION. 251
to industries and developed where it is already established.
It IS of opinion that the joint conference should be com-
posed of relatively large numbers of representatives of em-
ployers and employees, so as to render the committees of the
two parties as thoroughly representative as possible. These
conferences may be held at fixed intervals, or when a change in
the conditions of labor takes place, but always on the principle
of friendly negotiation rather than formal rules and fixed pro-
cedure. It is also thought more advantageous that the condi-
tions of labor be determined not by vote, but rather by peaceful
discussions and mutual concessions, leading to practical
unanimity.
(XIX, 835.) Conciliation is the process by which lesser
disputes concerning matters of interpretation are settled, either
through direct negotiations between the employers and em-
ployees concerned or through the action of joint boards repre-
senting the organizations to which they belong.
Arbitration, according to the Commission, should not be
resorted to unless all means of bargaining and conciliation have
been exhausted. Arbitration means an authoritative decision
by some person or persons not directly concerned. The Com-
mission discountenances the practice of submitting important
questions regarding the general conditions of labor to outside
arbitrators. It is urged that ^*no person outside the trade has
the necessary technical knowledge on which to base a reason-
able decision." They cannot understand sufficiently the rela-
tive strength of the employers and the employees, the condi-
tions of competition within the trade and of competition from
other sections and other countries. They are ^Hoo often in-
clined to split the difference in the matter of wages, whereas a
just decision would rather, in many cases, be strictly in favor
of the position taken by the one side or the other." Finally,
they are not likely to overcome wholly certain inherent
prejudices, the outcome of their training and environment.
The application of these suggestions to the present anthra-
cite coal conditions is obvious to all. Arbitration has been re-
sorted to after the failure of all other means. An attempt was
made during the proceedings to return to the regular process
of bargaining between employers and employees, but it failed.
There is no doubt that the majority of the members of the
252 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Industrial Commission favored not only the formation of labor
organizations, but also their recognition by employers. It
suggests the solution of labor questions through collective
bargaining. But collective bargaining as defined by the
Commission is : * * The process by which the general labor con-
tract itself is agreed upon by negotiation directly between
employers, or employers' associations and organized working-
men. Yet these organizations of workingmen should be com-
posed of fair-minded working people, having honest, intelligent
and conservative leaders.'' This suggestion will help us to
understand the stubborn effort of the operators, during the
hearings of the Coal Commission to show that the United Mine
Workers are an irresponsible, lawless, dissolute, violent crowd.
It is to be feared by the friends of organized labor that some
truth will be found in the charge.
Besides the recommendation by the Industrial Commission
of voluntary action of employers and employees, it also sug-
gests such legislation on hours of work, method of payment,
discrimination, etc., as may again throw light on the present
anthracite problems.
(XIX, 948.) The Commission proposed as a model of legis-
lation, for all states, the provisions of the Utah constitutions
and statutes by which the time of employment in all under-
ground mines and workings, shall be eight hours a day, except
in cases of emergency, when life or property is in imminent
danger.
(XIX, 949.) A law regulating the payment of wages should
be adopted by all states, providing that laborers * ^ shall be paid,
for all labor performed, in cash or cash orders, without dis-
count, not in goods or in due bills, and that no compulsion,
direct or indirect, should be used to make them purchase sup-
plies at any particular store." Mining employers should not
be permitted to run supply stores at all. They have often
evaded the laws by exacting a percentage on all purchases from
a supposed independent store.
Provisions for the fair weighing of coal at mines before
passing over a screen or other device, in order that the miner
may be compensated for all coal having a market value, should
be adopted.
The Commission recommends laws against discrimination
THE MINING QUESTION, 253
and blacklisting. Employers may be allowed to communicate
to one another fair information upon subjects of mutual in-
terest, but at the same time, no man must be excluded from em-
ployment because he belongs or does not belong to a union.
As regards safety in mines, as well as in other industries,
the Commission requires as a matter of primary importance,'
not only compensation to the workingmen after the occurrence
of accidents, but still more, preventative methods and legisla-
tion providing for them. The sanitary conditions of the mines
must also be improved to protect, as far as possible, the health
of the underground workers. Means of drainage, and more
particularly of ventilation should be provided in more liberal
manner than would be necessary merely to make work possible
and safe (XIX, 910).
Mine inspection should be regulated very carefully. The
laws of Pennsylvania, are, it is true, proposed by the Com-
mission as a model of legislation for other states, but at the
same time it is asserted that in this state the number of in-
spectors is often insufficient, nor are they always thoroughly
competent.
The suggestions of the Commissioner of Labor, practically
confirms those of the Industrial Commission, the only new
feature being that in insisting on the advantages and im-
portance of collective bargaining and conciliation, he advo-
cates the organization of an anthracite coal miners' union in-
dependent of the United Mine Workers. The report is very
carefully done; hence it is not to be expected that the finding of
the Strike Commission will vary in many essentials from it.
Crises such as the Pullman strike in Chicago and the recent
anthracite strike show very clearly that our institutions fail
to meet the modern situation in industry. While such troubles
are greatly to be regretted, they at least force advance in our
social education, awaken the public and prepare the way for
industrial peace.^ t .^
Leo Dubois.
The Marist College,
Washington, D. C.
^ Since this r6sum6 was prepared, the Commission appointed by the Presi-
dent has made its recommendations. The chief features are: ten per cent, increase
in wages; a nine-hour day; arbitration to decide on all questions concerning the
awards; a sliding scale; no discrimination against union or non-union labor;
the award to continue in force until March 31, 1906.
BOOK REVIEWS.
Jean-Marie de La Mennais (1780-1860). Par le R. P. Laveille,
pretre de I'Oratoire. Paris: Poussielgue, 1903. 2 vols., 8°, pp.
xli + 550, 679. 11 francs.
This life of the brother of the unhappy Felicite de La Mennais
comes opportunely at the end of a long series of contributions to
the tragic history of the founder of modern Christian apologetics.
For some years, memoires, letters, documents, have been multiplying,
as the result of the gradual dispersion of the literary effects of the
generation that lived so long under the spell of the Sage of la
Chesnaie. The Lamennaisian literature is now a very extensive one ;
if it has not changed the traditional views of the events and
measures that culminated in the philosopher's apostasy, it has
brought light into many dark corners, and furnished rich material
for the future historian of the vicissitudes of Catholic theology and
its immediately correlated or ancillary sciences. Nearly thirteen
hundred pages are devoted by Fr. Laveille to the story of Jean-Marie
de La Mennais, the brother of '*Feli," with whom he shared his
heart, his mind, his ideals and aspirations, his plans and methods,
until the crushing events of one fatal year (1832-1833), put a gulf
between himself and the apostate, and opened for both of these
remarkable priests a ''via dolorosa" that has made forever memorable
the name of a remote dairy-farm in the loneliest depths of Brittany.
If the career of Felicite de La Mennais ended in spiritual and in-
tellectual disasters worthy of the pen of a Dante, that of his brother
Jean-Marie led onward and upward, by a royal Via Crucis, to the
heights of sanctity. Since 1901, the question of his canonization is
an open one at Rome. This son of a merchant of Saint-Malo
possessed in the highest degree certain apostolic virtues, among
them a consuming energy and an evenly burning enthusiasm. His
first, and he had hoped his most effective conquest, was his own
brother: a doubt will always reign in the minds of many whether
the latter had a vocation to the work of a priest, and whether Jean-
Marie were wise in compelling that fiery soul to enter the sanctuary.
Jean-Marie was for much in his brother's most famous writings; he
was cofounder of la Chesnaie, and equally active in the organization
of Catholic public opinion, and the creation of anti-Gallican and
pro-Roman policies, measures, and institutions. To both the French
( 254 )
BOOK REVIEWS, 255
Erastianism of their day was equally odious. A profound study of
the mediaeval world had persuaded both that genuine political liberty
for Frenchmen was impossible apart from the closest union with
the See of Rome. Papa et populus: that bold cry of Gregory VII
to the people of Milan, seemed to both these men even yet big with
possibilities of peace and justice. Felicite forgot that the first virtue
of a soldier was obedience, his first conquest submission of himself.
Democracy was then far from the solidity of its modern assiette, an
object of suspicion and hatred to a multitude of faithful Catholics
-especially in Brittany-who had lost their all to its stormy
apostles. The chanceries and bureaucracies of continental Europe
had their faces turned toward the past rather than the future,
and were busy in restoration rather than in transformation. The
Fabian policy of the Holy See was a stone of scandal for the
younger de La Mennais. Had he possessed more Christian patience,
more insight and sympathy for the difficult circumstances of the
papacy; above all, had he followed the friendly solicitations of
Bishop Brute, and buried himself for a time in the solitudes of the
New World, his fate would have probably been another and a
happier one.
The story of Jean-Marie is that of an educator— first in colleges
and seminaries, which he founded or restored within the limits of
his native Brittany, then in the famous hermitage of la Chesnaie,
where passed the flower of the French stylists of the nineteenth
century, later in the novitiate of his unfortunate Congregation de
St. Pierre, that charming Malestroit, where he gathered about him
such men as Gerbet, later bishop of Perpignan, de Herce, bishop of
Nancy, the abbe Blanc, and the abbe Rohrbacher, church historians
of note. The education of the clergy, the training of a multitude
of Frenchmen to announce the truths of Catholicism in the polished
accents of Bossuet and Fenelon, was the original pre-occupation of
Jean-Marie de La Mennais. Both brothers were profoundly con-
vinced that the man of France must be dealt with intellectually,
on the highest level of speech. There is something of Brahmanic
fixity in the Gallic adoration of ''la parole'*— hence, the insufferably
pedantic Boileau can hold forever an open shrine and find a whole
nation of cryptic votaries of his ''art de bien dire." Felicite de La
Mennais was pleased when he had finished ten lines in a whole day;
all the strength of this physically unseemly man lay in
lo bello stile che m'ha fatto onore.
Not even a De Maistre and a Chateaubriand have reached that com-
pelling beauty of form that ravishes every reader of "Les Affaires
256 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
de Rome" and "Les Paroles d'un Croyant." He may be a lonely
and blasted peak, seamed by the devastating bolts of heaven, but
his seared head is also crowned with eternal snows that forever
beckon and impress and fascinate, only to fill the oncomer with awe
and horror as he realizes out of what depths of moral ruin rises
this Titanic wreck, this Prometheus of ineffable pride and unfathom-
able suffering.
The durable work of Jean-Marie de La Mennais consists in two
Breton teaching congregations for the children of the poor, the
Brothers of Christian Instruction of Ploermel, and the Sisters of
Providence of Saint Brieuc. The former have overrun all Brittany,
and are busy with their calling throughout the French colonial
possessions; an attempt to establish them in England failed. He
labored likewise by advice and help to strengthen the teaching com-
munities of many French dioceses. These incessant labors, as well
as endless conflicts with a jealous government, eventually affected
his health. Yet he toiled on to the end, courageous, unselfish, far-
seeing— it would seem as if he felt himself somehow bound to up-
lift the name of La Mennais and compensate the Church for the
losses occasioned by the spiritual bankruptcy of his brother. The
most touching chapters of the work are those devoted to the rela-
tions between the two men, relations that grew weaker after 1833
and eventually ceased, not without causing great suffering to the
innocent party. This life of one of the earliest and foremost apostles
of Catholic education is worthy to rank with the best of those lives
of French public men of the nineteenth century that have lately
been printed— Louis Veuillot, Montalembert, Dupanloup, and
others. In many ways it is a melancholic book. And yet it is in-
spiriting, for it shows a brave and honest soul in daily conflict
with opposition, interference and persecution, bearing steadily an
intimate domestic cross, and expending an incredible energy on a
multitude of enterprises for God's glory, any one of which would
have exhausted the zeal of an ordinary Christian.
Thomas J. Sha.han.
Summa Theologica V. Tractatus dc Deo-Homine sive de
Yerbo Incarnato. Auctore Laurentio Janssenns, O.S.B., S.T.D.
II Pars. Mariologia et Soteriologia. St. Louis : B. Herder, 1902.
Pp. xxxiv + 1021. $4.25 net.
The simple order of facts narrated in the scriptures furnished
Saint Thomas with a plan of treatment for soteriology. The author
of this volume finds the plan of Saint Thomas so admirably suited
BOOK REVIEWS. 257
to present needs that he contents himself with merely adding to the
text and its exposition such positive and critical information as the
times demand. His method of presentation is, therefore, essentially
scholastic. Many curious queries that might without loss have been
omitted as so much that was ''nimis subtiliter investigatum " receive
their share of attention in the subject-matter treated. The historical
method of meeting objections directly, and not laterally as so many
side-issues, is a distinct feature of modem treatises, although hard
to apply in a commentary whose very nature perhaps makes its
absence excusable. The positive studies scattered through this vol-
ume in the form of appendices, the extensive bibliography, marginal
references and quotations, as well as the excellent analytical index
which it contains, are especially noteworthy. To all these newer
features may be added a gracious Latin style and the attraction of
a well-bound and clearly printed book.
More than five hundred pages of this work are devoted to ques-
tions concerning the Blessed Virgin. The author portrays the Old
Testament types of the Virgin Mother, analyzes the dogmatic defini-
tion of the Immaculate Conception, sees in Genesis a direct source
of the doctrine, finds accommodated sources in Ecclesiasticus, Prov-
erbs, the Canticle of Canticles, and rehearses at length the argument
from tradition. He pays little attention to the criticisms that have
been advanced against the first source, and is inclined to regard the
Proto-Evangelium as a genuine reference to the doctrine in question.
From certain expressions, here and there, it would seen that the au-
thor takes rather too realistic a view of the wounding of nature by
original sin. But this impression may be only subjective on the
reader's part, as the author has not yet had occasion to treat of this
matter professedly.
He recognizes and proves the opposition made to the doctrine of
the Immaculate Conception by the Lombard, St. Anselm, St. Ber-
nard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure, though
he very justly remarks that the latter finally overcame his negative
attitude. Scotus was the mediaeval champion of the Mother conceived
without stain, and his view was destined eventually to triumph. The
author endeavors to explain the hostility of these theologians, and
especially Saint Thomas. The latter, according to Dr. Janssens,
failed to grasp the idea of redemption by anticipation. It was this
oversight on the part of St. Thomas, which led him to argue from
the singular privilege of Christ to a denial of the Immaculate Con-
ception. Sin was universal; so was the need of redemption in all
individuals descended from Adam in a natural way. According to
17CUB
258 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the universal laws of contracted sin and the need of redemption, the
Virgin Mother had to be redeemed and therefore must in some way-
have contracted the original stain. Now it is without question that
the Blessed Virgin was individually included in the economy of the
redemption; the Immaculate Conception was not an isolated fact,
but one related to the redemptive work of Christ, whose meritorious
effects were, by a special privilege, applied to her by anticipation.
St. Thomas was, therefore, right in his general principle, but wrong
in his particular instance. He simply failed to see that actual con-
traction of original sin was not necessary for actual redemption.
This interpretation of St. Thomas is not general, and much could
be said in favor of a far different reading of the texts. It is well
supported, however, by the author who is fully aware that he is only
stating the results of his own personal study and not settling a moot
point between rival interpreters.
The author reviews the many plausible interpretations of the
name **Mary" that have been suggested by scholars ancient and
modern; states the controversial literature on the authorship of the
Magnificat which he holds should be ascribed to the Blessed Virgin
and not to her cousin Elizabeth ; and criticizes the arguments against
the perpetual virginity of Mary drawn from certain texts of the
Gospel, her marriage with St. Joseph, and the occasional mention of
the Lord's brethren made by the Evangelists. In a final appendix,
after rehearsing the tradition and reviewing the theological argu-
ments in favor of the Assumption, the author is of opinion that this
doctrine may be made a matter of dogmatic definition. The disserta-
tion on the Immaculate Conception is the most widely developed topic
treated in the first part of this book.
The Soteriology, properly so-called, comprises, besides the regular
questions treated by St. Thomas, several instructive dissertations on
the names of Christ, devotion to the Sacred Heart, the Precious Blood,
and the Wounds of the Redeemer. In discussing the problem of
reconciling Christ's free oblation of himself with the command re-
ceived from the Father to die for men, the author endeavors to reach
a middle ground between rival views. He admits that the command
partook of the nature of a strict precept, but denies that it was ex-
plicit; the very idea of the sacrificial character of Christ's mission
contained it implicitly as part of Christ's destination, and so the
Sinless One could neither refuse nor fail to observe it. Yet in its
actual observance, so the author contends, Christ truly merited be-
cause of the perfect love with which he accepted and fulfilled the
command of the Father. This is certainly a suggestive solution of
BOOK REVIEWS. 25^
a problem that is overrun with a veritable network of inventions and
subtleties. It may leave much to be desired, but it destroys no facts,
and appeals to no fictions.
We miss in the Soteriology the fuller positive treatment lavished
upon the first part of the volume. The question of the atonement
of Christ has only the mediaeval background to give it setting, and
lacks the robust character of the questions discussed in the Mariology.
But we must remember that Dr. Jannsens is writing a commentary
on the Summa, and endeavoring to present St. Thomas to modern
students. That he has succeeded in giving us something far above
the average commentary in matter, style, bibliography, and positive
information, none will deny, not even those who do not share all his
views, nor regard the commentary as an ideal form of exposition.
Edmund T. Shanahan.
Sul Motivo Primario della Incarnazione del Verbo. P. Fran-
cesco M. Risi, dell'ordine di San Giovanni di Dio. 4 vols., 8°.
Rome: Desclee, Lefebvre, e Comp., 1898.
The first volume of this work contains an historical survey of
the speculations concerning the primary motive of the Incarnation,
together with a criticism of the various views and the arguments
on which these are made to rest. The first to raise the question
explicitly whether Christ's coming was solely on account of sin or
for a larger purpose, in which sin figured only as a secondary and
modifying feature, was Rupert, Abbot of Duitz, in the twelfth
century. Thenceforward to our own day the question has been
much agitated within and without the pale of the Church Catholic.
The author discusses the growing persuasion, in the minds of many
writers, of the truth and beauty of the Scotist world-view, and loses
no occasion to extol its excellence and grandeur. The method of
presentation throughout is scholastic and frequently polemical, al-
though historical considerations abound. We cannot follow Father
Risi into the labyrinthian detail of his exposition, nor should we
agree with all his contentions if we did. Suffice it to say that the
author does not make the view which he holds any more acceptable
by defending certain vague metaphysical generalities as persuasive
thereunto. The view itself, is worth more than many of the refine-
ments of thought invented for its support. These considerations
apart, the first volume gives a very full, if not prolix, presentation
to a speculative opinion which is usually, and unjustly, dismissed,
in most text-books, with only a passing mention, or refuted with a
stereotyped syllogism.
260 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The second volume is devoted to the presentation of what St.
Thomas thought on the question. The author collects the scattered
texts, re-enforces them with his own commentary, but sometimes, we
fear, lets his wish play father to his thought in reading their mean-
ing. When we build syllogistic bridges to another's meaning, we
may be right, and we may be wrong, too, if we attempt to cross them.
We are glad, however, to see a fuller presentation of St. Thomas
than has thus far been given, and the author has surely sought out
every text that would count in the reckoning.
The third volume contains an exhaustive account of the Catholic
tradition on the question and is an interesting positive study. The
fourth volume develops the Scriptural sources which may be said to
warrant the inference that Christ was destined to be part of the
perfection of the Universe even if the race had not fallen, and the
redemptive character of Christ's work become paramount in the eyes
of sinful men. In the fourth volume is also to be found an index
of authors, sources and topics, that is very useful, together with an
appendix in which the author takes exception to certain views on
the name of Christ and the meaning of His eternal priesthood, at-
tributed by Toutte to St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The patronage of
Holy Writ, claimed by the author, for the Scotist view is more clearly
contained in certain passages of the New Testament than in any of
the Old. Despite all the author's arguments, however, it may well be
doubted if we are not embarking upon too large an enterprise when
we seek a philosophic point of view in Old Testament sources which
have to be raised by argument to a high degree of significance before
yielding the desired result.
The author deserves credit for his laborious task; only a good
supply of enthusiasm would have carried him through this investi-
gation, and he has succeeded in gathering together much positive
information from the texts of the Fathers. Whatever may be
thought of the scriptural and patristic value of the idea which he
seeks to expose and defend, there can be little doubt of its worth and
significance to contemporaneous opinion. Catholic as well as Protes-
tant theologians are beginning to devote attention to it. lUingworth
finds in the Scotist world-view, so large a spiritual outlook upon
history that a nobler idea of man's unity and dignity must perforce
come to him who sees in Christ the first-born of the brethren, whose
death and suffering were an afterthought, but whose coming in the
flesh was part of the world's order as planned in the divine counsels
And, indeed, if we take the trouble to reflect on the undue prom-
inences which Protestants gave in Reformation days to the atone-
BOOK REVIEWS. 261
ment, with their, legalistic fictions of substitution and imputation,
we will readily appreciate the avidity with which they are now
turning to the Incarnation as the central fact of Christianity.
Christ's life-work cannot be adequately expressed in the sole idea of
satisfaction. Love, mercy, and order, as well as justice, are revealed
in the coming of Him who was the Head of the race no less than
the Savior of men.
There are some who will think that a work like this is a thresh-
ing over of old straw, a repetition of the duel between St. Thomas
and Scotus. There are others who will say, that it is a theme more
vast than they have strength of pinion to carry. But both forget
that we live in an age of hypothesis, and that a sweeping view, such
as the one the author advocates, and for which he seeks a solid
ground in tradition, may have a new significance and value quite
independent of the old-style fencing of dialectians for and against
it. We would scarcely take a man seriously if he thought modern
Chemistry a return to Democritus because it follows the atomic
theory as a convenient working-hypothesis. Neither should we be
hasty to question the wisdom of those apologists who by means of
a pure hypothesis, if you will, deprive many a well-directed modem
shaft of its barb and point. Balfour and Fairbairn have, as a result
of historical and critical study come to the conclusion that the Incar-
nation is in itself so wonderful a fact that it counterbalances com-
pletely the objection drawn from the relative unimportance of man
with respect to the immeasurable grandeur of the material universe.
And if some men historically, and others speculatively, are working
toward the same result— the central position of the God-Man in
the world's history— why should we think it labor lost when ex-
tremes meet, when the old methods and the new are but different
avenues leading to the same conclusion?
Edmund T. Shanahan.
Les Galla: Un Peuple antique au pays de Menelik. Par le R. P.
Martial de Salviac, O.M.C., 2d ed. Paris: H. Oudin, 1902.
Illustrated. 8°, pp. 353.
If the best books of travel and exploration in English are those
of merchants and diplomats, the best in French are surely those
written by the missionaries. From the days of the ^'Lettres Edifi-
antes" the French priest possesses a peculiar skill in combining with
the story of his religious labors a multitude of observations and
judgments, both interesting and valuable, on the public and private
life of the strange peoples among whom he has taken up his abode.
262 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
For thirty-five years the late Cardinal Guglielmo Massaia had worked
in Abyssinia as a Capuchin missionary, among the warlike tribes of
the Galla or Oromo, whose ten million souls now form the backbone
of that ancient empire, as lately compacted and rounded out by the
great African statesman, the Emperor Menelik. The Letters and
Memoirs of Cardinal Massaia are themselves a splendid chapter in
the history of Catholic missions. But there was something to be
gleaned even after him, and the pages of P. de Salviac will well
repay any reader anxious to know what manner of men the modern
Catholic missionaries of Abyssinian Africa are like. This charming
volume introduces us to an almost absolutely unknown African
people of superior worth, physically, religiously, and perhaps ethno-
logically. There is a tradition that the Galla are of Gaulish stock,
the descendants of mercenaries of Gaul in the service of Carthage or
Egypt, or of traders from the Mediterranean seaboard of continental
Keltdom. It is a fascinating thesis, and the arguments for it are
persuasively put by Fr. de Salviac. The latter is an enthusiast, after
the fashion of missionaries, for his chosen people. We must admit,
however, that his text breathes sincerity and truth; also that the
numerous illustrations bear out his contention that in the Galla tribes
is to be found the proper native human element for the civilization
of inner Africa, as far as it can be conducted from the tablelands
of Abyssinia. Thomas J. Shahan.
Documents Relatlfs aux Rapports du Clerge avec la Royaute
(1682-1705; 1705-1789). Publics par Leon Mention. Paris:
Picard, 1903. 8°, pp. 183.
These two latest volumes of the ''Collection de Textes" are of
signal utility to the students of Church history. In them are to be
found many original documents of the principal controversies be-
tween France and Rome in the latter part of the seventeenth and
the greater part of the eighteenth century. These documents illus-
trate the Liberties of the Galilean Church, the Royal Franchises at
Rome, the controversies on Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, the Maxims of
the Saints, the Bulls Vineam Domini and Unigenitus, the Parlia-
ment and the Jansenists, the clerical estates, the suppression of the
Jesuits. The teacher and the student of ecclesiastical history will
find here highly interesting material, that otherwise they must look
for in rare and often inaccessible books. Year by year the ''Col-
lection de Textes" grows in serviceableness, and now deserves a place
in every library of history that contemplates personal investigation.
Thomas J. Shahan.
BOOK REVIEWS. 26a
St. Arphonsc dc LiguoH (1696-1787). Par le Baron J. Angot
des Rotours. Paris: Lecoffre, 1903. 8°, pp. xviii + 182.
The Life of Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595), Apostle of Rome and
Founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, from the Italian
of Father Bacci, new and revised edition. By Frederick Ignatius
Antrobus of the London Oratory. St. Louis : Herder, 1903. 2 vols
8^ pp. 392, 447. $3.75.
1. The story of Saint Alphonsus is, in its own way, the story of
the religious life of Italy in the eighteenth century, likewise one of
the most remarkable chapters in the long and tortuous history of
Jansenism. Quite lately, in several European centres, his writings
have been assailed with great bitterness and greater injustice— an
extreme anti-Catholicism has seized upon his fundamental doctrine
of probabilism, in order to make political capital out of misrepre-
sentations of the same. This brief life in the collection of **Les
Saints" is therefore very timely. It does not pretend to the fulness
of detail of a Tannoia or of Fr. Berthe (Paris, 2 vols., 1900), yet it
is suggestive and instinctive; if read with the *' Letters" of the
Saint, now accessible in French and English translations, it will
suffice to bring before us in vivid outline, the figure of the man who
found for the troubled consciences of great multitudes formulae that
were at once consoling and enlightening, without offending truth and
justice, the man to whom are owing in great measure the popular
Catholic forms of spiritual revival, together with similarly popular
devotions and pious practices,— Italian and "Meridional" in their
origin and form, it may be, yet attractive and puissant enough to
secure adoption among Catholics of every other land, and to lend
new color and variety to the immemorial liturgical life of the Church.
2. Shortly after the death of Saint Philip (1595), his disciple
Gallonio produced in Latin (1600) an annaJistic life of the saint.
During the next hundred years his story was told more than twenty
times in Italian prose, not to speak of three metrical lives and several
in foreign languages. The most important of these lives was that of
Father Bacci (1646), often re-edited, in 1670 by the Dominican
Ricci, and in 1794 by a Venetian Oratorian. This life was (partially)
published in English in 1847, and again in 1868. The lives by Bayle
(1859), by Mrs. Hope (about 1868) and the brilliant narrative of
Cardinal Capecelatro (1879) translated into English (1882), do not
seem to have stilled the desire of English readers. Hence, Fr.
Antrobus presents us with this new edition of Bacci, a work that has
always been held remarkable for simplicity, historical dignity, and
264 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
straightforwardness. It contains in full the miracles of Saint Philip,
that are especially interesting to the historian of life and manners
in the Italy of that day. There are also (26) letters of Saint Philip,
among them two or three of some length, written to his niece, a
Florentine nun. They are characteristic of the saint and of the
literary taste of his day. Some of them were first published by
Biscioni in 1743, in his ^'Raccolta di Lettere di Santi e Beati
Fiorentini"; a few of them would have appealed to von Reumont for
a place in his admirable " Brief e gottesfiirchtiger Italiener," so quaint
and peculiar is their expression of the religious sentiment. These
two volumes are worthy of a place in every ecclesiastical library, as
the final English presentation of the classical life by Bacci, which
was itself written out of the materials for the canonization process.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Christus und Apostelbilder: Einfluss der apokryphen auf die
aeltesten Kunsttypen. Von J. E. Weis-Liebersdorf, with 54 illus-
trations. Freiburg: Herder, 1902. 8°, pp. ix + 124. $1.50.
This conscientious study of all the oldest pictorial representations
of Christ and the apostles is based upon a thorough knowledge of the
actual monuments, and a close acquaintance with the modern literature
that has grown out of their study. It is well known that the Gnostic
literature of the second and third centuries offers frequently por-
traitesque descriptions of Christ and the apostles, particularly of
Saints Peter and Paul. Our Lord is always presented as a beardless,
youthful, even child-like figure of great beauty,— from the latter
half of the fourth century the figure of Christ on the sarcophagi,
gilded glasses, catacomb frescoes and church mosaics, is that of a
grave, bearded, majestic figure, with parted hair that flows down
equally on both sides. It is also well known that all the orthodox
Christian literature previous to Constantine insists on the absence of
manly beauty and charm in Our Lord— His beauty was all moral
and spiritual. When now the fairly numerous orthodox Christian
monuments before Constantine depict Christ as a beardless youth,
of genuine Hellenic beauty, it seems to be the result of Gnostic
influences working through their apocryphal literature, or through
Catholic adaptations and imitations of the same. Dr. Weis-Liebers-
dorf's book is full of the views and hypotheses of the latest students
of the primitive Christian art-monuments that offer us figures or
busts of Christ and the apostles. Notably new is the redating of
the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, whereby that admirable piece of
Christian sculpture belongs not to the year 359, but a century earlier.
BOOK REVIEWS. 265
Good use is made of the latest reproduction of these sculptures by
Mgr. de Waal. In general, an earlier date is asserted, and with
good arguments, for several ancient Christian monuments. In spite
of the grave authority of Furtwangler, our author maintains, in-
geniously and successfully, the traditional antiquity of the Vatican
medallion of Saints Peter and Paul. The Berlin ivory pyxis, the
Milan silver casket found in 1894, the Stryzgowski sarcophagus-frag-
ment at Berlin, the Cecil Torr gilded-glass fragments, and other rare
monuments, are described at length. The notes offer a valuable
up-to-date bibliography, and give the book a distinctive value. This
book is one result of the teaching of the Catholic faculty of theology
at Munich; it acknowledges, in particular, the inspiration and guid-
ance of the distinguished professors of Church History and Patrology
in that university. Thomas J. Shahan.
Julicn I'Apostat. Par Paul AUard. Vols. II-III. Paris: Lecof-
fre, 1903. 8°, pp. 376, 416.
In the second volume of his life of Julian the Apostate M. Allard
describes his career as pagan emperor, restorer of the old ''cultus
deorum, ' ' and convinced worshipper of the invincible Sun. The per-
sonal theology of Julian, his inimical attitude toward the ^'Galilaeans**
his attempts to debar them from the schools and to reduce them to
intellectual helplessness, are treated with all the competency that the
severest critics acknowledge in M. Allard. In the new volume he
deals with the sojourn of Julian in Antioch, now an overwhelmingly
Christian city, consequently contemptuous of the former "Reader'*
in its Church. The conflagration of the temple of Daphne, and
the vengeance of Julian, his book *' Against the Christians," and his
attempt to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, round out the short-
lived reign of the emperor that closes with the disasters of the Per-
sian campaign and the death of the last member of that Flavian
house which for nearly a century had exercised an ever-widening
influence on the imperial world. Perhaps the most instructive pages
of the work are the last sixty in which are enumerated and discussed
the authorities, pagan and Christian, for the life of Julian.
For many years M. Allard has dealt at first hand with the texts,
monuments, inscriptions, and literary remains of the imperial period,
notably the third and fourth centuries. He is eminently qualified,
by many learned volumes and articles, to deal with those two brief
years of the sixth decade of the fourth century when the spiritual
welfare of humanity truly hung trembling in the balance. All told,
the line of progress was through Christianity, the line of retrogres-
266 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
sion was through the exhausted institutions of polytheism. Julian
himself was obliged to confess that, without borrowing from the hated
Galilaeans, he could not revive the fortunes of Ethnicism or ''Hel-
lenism, " as he was fond of calling it. It will always be a significant
proof of the depth of the Christian transformation of imperial society
that with the passing of Julian, life at once took on its former Chris-
tian character, while only here and there an impotent philospher
murmured in the accents of Plato against the decrees of an irresistible
fate. The revolution of Julian was not based on popular convictions
or sympathies, but on the academic pagan mysticism of a coterie of
dreamers, at once doctrinaire and unreal. The sober tolerance of
Jovian and Valentinian is another index that the temperament of
the army and the civil service was henceforth Christian— measures
of repression were not needed, at least in the Orient. Many great
families in the Eternal City remained pagan yet, and a generation
must elapse before the defeat of Eugenius and the Sack of Eome
set a final seal on the collapse of the old Roman religion. In the
meantime, the Theodosian legislation could consummate the work
begun by the laws of Constantine against the worship of the gods.
Like a new and heady wine, the triumphant religion penetrated in
every direction the body politic and social, roused and urged, stimu-
lated and inspired, until all memories of the Julian reaction were
forgotten, only to reappear as a rallying banner when Christianity
once more found itself in a parlous state not dissimilar to that which
obtained under Julian, and which public opinion not unjustly crys-
tallized in the famous contemporary legend that represents Julian
transfixed by an arrow and scattering heavenward the blood from
his gushing wound, with the despairing cry: "Galilaee, vicisti!"
Thomas J. Shahan.
Un Pape Fran^ais: Urbain II (1088-1099). P^^ Lucien Paulot,
de rOratoire de S. Philippe de Neri. Preface de Georges Goyau.
Paris: Lecoffre, 1903. 8°, pp. xxxvi + 562.
The Cardinal Odo de Lageri, of Chatillon-sur-Marne, was one of
the chosen lieutenants of Gregory VII in the latter 's warfare against
the simony and concubinage of the clergy and the abuse of investi-
tures by the civil power. When he took up, a few years later, the
work that had fallen from the hands of his mighty predecessor, he
brought to the task a choice experience gathered in court, curia, and
monastery, for he had been a monk at Cluny, and legate of the Holy
See, as well as an intimate personal friend of Gregory VII. Henry
IV and his antipope, Wigbert of Ravenna, disputed with him the
BOOK REVIEWS. 267
possession of the Eternal City, and kept him a wanderer in Southern
Italy during the early part of his reign. Here the sympathies of
the Norman over-lords and the piety of the monks of Cava and Monte
Cassino made up partially for the loss of the papal stronghold. Un-
ceasingly he upheld the principles of Gregory VII, yet not without
mercy and moderation in dealing with individuals. He is, indeed,
one of the noblest and holiest of the long line of superior men with
whom Cluny endowed the Church of the eleventh century. The idea
of the Crusade, that may have dawned vaguely a century before in
the mind of Sylvester II, was preached with extraordinary eloquence
and success by Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Fr.
Paulot strives very hard to vindicate for this pope the sole proprietor-
ship of the idea of the Crusade, yet it must be admitted that he
might have taken it over from his master in statecraft, Gregory VII,
who certainly had in view the succor of Constantinople, from which
to the conquest of Palestine the transition is not far. Gregory died
(1085) in the midst of his conflict with the emperor— the succeeding
popes changed little in his plans and methods, for they were, like
him, the instruments of a policy that had been long before excogi-
tated near Macon in the solitudes of the vast abbey by the winding
Grosne. May it not be that from Cluny, too, came the original mas-
terly concept of a military enterprise, that should at once distract
the public attention from the impasse of an embittered domestic con-
flict, arouse and console scandalized faith, unite discordant ecclesias-
tical and civil elements, and elevate the papacy in public opinion by
bringing it again into close personal contact with the Sepulchre of
its divine founder, as though seeking a new consecration and a new
mission 1
Fr. Paulot follows almost slavishly the chronological order in his
narrative— much space is thereby lost by repetition of similar events,
consecrations of churches and altars, visits of monasteries, judicial
decisions, and the like. A multitude of interesting details are scat-
tered through the volume, that might well have been collected under
suitable rubrics; for instance, the evidences of the pope's concern
for the welfare of the monasteries might well have been worked into
a general description of the nature and workings of the wonderful
establishment of Cluny and its almost countless filial houses. There
is wanting, too, a chapter on the political, economical, and social con-
ditions of the time ; the helplessness and degradation of the diocesan
clergy can only be understood fully in the light of its poverty, im-
perfect recruitment, dependency, and the uncertainty of peaceful
tenure owing to the yoke of feudalism and the dubious status of a
268 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
multitude of bishops, distracted for a whole generation between pope
and emperor. The original sources are not described and evaluated,
as is usual in a work of this kind, an omission all the more regret-
table as Fr. Paulot does not spare his adjectives in dealing with the
historians of the emperor's party. Some account of the famous
**libelli de lite imperatoris et papae," was really needed to enable
the reader to judge with impartiality. Similarly a description of
the authorities for the preaching of the first Crusade would have
been welcome, an easy task after the great labors of Eiant and
Rohricht. There is no index to the book, always a grave blemish,
and particularly so in a work filled with details. The bibliography
is incomplete and badly arranged. The German literature on the
subject is drawn on with a sparing hand, and in general the work
takes on the air of a panegyric— a superabundance of light with a
minimum of shadow. The pages on the ''cursus leoninus" outline
the results of several charming literary studies on the peculiarly
musical papal style of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which owes
its introduction to that brilliant master of the **ars dictaminis,*'
Urban II. For the *'cultus" of the pope Fr. Paulot has brought
together all the available evidence beginning with the veneration shown
his memeory by the monks of his beloved Cava. The veneration of the
Blessed Virgin owes not a little to this pope— to him are referred the
Ave Maris Stella, the mass Salve Sancta Parens, the evening Angelus,
the Little Hours of Our Lady, the Saturday office in her honor,
whether with accuracy or not remains unsettled. In spite of some
drawbacks of form and construction this work is an excellent one
and destined to bring out favorably the figure of a great French
pope who feared no king, not even his own, and who, for the decade
of his reign, held aloft the banner of the papacy on the sublime
height where the most dauntless of that long line had placed it.
Thomas J. Shahan:
The English Church in the Sixteenth Century from the acces-
sion of Henry VIII to the death of Mary. By James Gairdner,
C.B. New York: Macmillan, 1902. 8°, pp. xvii + 430.
The generally flattering reception given by the English-reading
world to this latest history of the Reformation in England is well
deserved. We have at last an honest and reliable account of that
great religious revolution from the pen of a man fitted in every way
to perform the task. Only one fault— if fault it be— can be urged.
It is not brilliant as a story. For which reason Froude's travesties
on the same period are still likely to prove the storehouse of informa-
BOOK REVIEWS. 269
tion for the average non-student reader. But is it a fault? There
are two ways of writing history. One, the older, is to start out
with a preconceived thesis and group around it artistically all the
facts that have any relations to it. So wrote Froude. As a result
we have a fascinating story, but precious little history. The other,
that followed by the author, is to tell the facts chronologically, just
as he finds them, leaving them to produce their natural conclusion
unassisted by any historical philosophy of the author. The result
is a plain, unvarnished tale, rather tedious in the recital, but any-
how it is history, pure and simple, and that is what the English
world has been in need of ever since England cut loose, or was cut
loose, from the communion of the Church.
What do the facts tell as we find them in this book? They tell
with irresistible logic that the English Reformation was due almost
entirely to the evil passions of one man, Henry VIII. To the new
school of sociological historians, in whose calculations the individual,
be he king or serf, plays but a small part in the making of history,
such a conclusion will come as a disagreeable shock. But it is dif-
ficult to see how any reader can avoid accepting this conclusion if
he has already accepted the premises, i. e., the facts ; and Mr. Gaird-
ner's position as keeper of the state records of the Reformation period
is ample warrant for accepting them. All through that tangled web
of religious politics we can trace with ease the one dominant policy
of Henry — namely, to secure his divorce from Katherine, to stave
off foreign criticism of it by keeping the sovereigns of Europe at
loggerheads with one another, to crush out criticism at home by
coercing Parliament, by encouraging heresy and killing anyone bold
enough to oppose him. A reviewer, of course, cannot go into all
these details, but if ever a nation of free people was bedevilled, be-
fooled, and dragooned out of its faith, that nation was England, the
boasted land of civil and religious liberty. The mother of parlia-
ments had become the slave and the mistress of royal absolutism.
Far more truthfully than Louis XIV could Henry Tudor say of
himself ''I am the State." Once embarked on his downward course,
he pursued it with characteristic Tudor obstinacy. At his death it
was too late to bring England back to the old faith. Though, had
a Catholic immediately succeeded him, or had even poor Mary been
more skilful, enough might have been won back to constitute a re-
spectable party. As it is, blunder succeeded blunder on the part of
the Catholic leaders, until practically all was lost by the end of
Elizabeth's reign.
The question arises, how was it possible for one man, even a
270 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
tyrant, to thus succeed, contrary to the plain wishes of his people?
The answer is indeed difficult. The psychology of the English
Reformation is one of the most baffling studies in all history. But
we think Mr. Gairdner has struck upon the right solution. Briefly
put, it is this: ''The greater part of the clergy and bishops resigned
themselves to the new state of affairs, which many thought so forced
and artificial that it could not possibly last long'' (p. 155) ; but
when it did last then the leaders in the Church were like Cranmer
** compelled to face the question as to the true relations between
Church and State in a way which no one thinks of in these days of
ease; and he was conscious that the old spiritual empire of Rome,
dependent, as it had been all along, on the support of Christian
princes and nations, could no longer be maintained when one power-
ful sovereign cast it off. If the act of that sovereign was not an
intolerable outrage to the whole of Christendom, compelling other
princes to treat Henry as an enemy, no less dangerous than the Turk,
then it followed that the Church of England must obey the ruler of
England in things both temporal and spiritual. And if so, then it
further followed that doctrines which were, in the last resort, only
upheld by papal authority could not be essential doctrines of Chris-
tianity" (pp. 375-376); ''And however little men loved royal au-
thority over the Church, it was certainly a question which perplexed
some consciences whether resistance was even justifiable; for if the
king took upon him the responsibility of supreme headship, and had
so much power to make his position respected, was it not after all,
a right thing to obey?" (p. 197). "Responsibility must always rest
with him who has absolute power, and dares to go all lengths" (198).
At first reading, and from a point of view of strict logic such a
view will appear absurd. But it nevertheless contains the key to
the understanding of that period of English history. The funda-
mental reason of the success of the Reformation in England (and
perhaps everywhere else) was not its quality of heresy. Heresy, it
is true, came pari passu. But the efficient cause was a political one.
Ever since the days of Wycliffe and Marsiglio of Padua, the one
great fact of Church history was the ever-increasing absorption of
the Church by the State. Friends during the Middle Ages proper,
they are bitter foes from Dante to Luther. With Luther the State
is supreme. Here is the core, the fibre, the raison d'etre, the quint-
essence of Protestantism. This is what keeps it alive to-day, when
as a theological and philosophical system it is an acknowledged
failure and as an historical expression of the Church of Christ it
is a contradiction in terms. It never was a heresy fundamentally,
BOOK REVIEWS. 271
though heresy of every conceivable variety sprung from it. It was
a world-wide sociological and political revolution, destructive of all
the traditional relations, political, financial, legal and social, between
the Church universal and each particular nation. The Church had
crushed the Empire. The nations of Europe in part have crushed
her. Until she is once again free, until the hand of the State is off
her throat, she will not recover her lost ground. But that is a con-
summation afar off, unless we realize the true nature of that Reforma-
tion, cease fighting its theological absurdities, things of straw, and
transfer the battle to the only plane upon which we can come to a
final issue, namely, the relations of Church and State, the proper
limits of each, the proper duties of each.
LuciAN Johnston.
Notre Dame College, Baltimore.
L'Apollinarisme. Etude historique, litteraire et dogmatique sur le
debut des controverses christologiques au IVe siecle. Par Guil-
laume Voisin. Louvain: Van Linthout, 1901. Pp. 429.
This volume embodies the author *s doctorate dissertation pre-
sented to the Catholic University of Louvain. Highly creditable and
timely in view of the unsympathetic research which rationalists of
late have been conducting in the field of christology, this dissertation
is a distinct contribution to the unravelling of an historical and theo-
logical tangle. The presentation is clear, the criticism cogent, and
the reconstruction original as well as suggestive.
ApoUinaris of Laodicea was the first to precipitate the discussion
of christology proper when, about the middle of the fourth century
he raised the question: what is the mode of union of the divine per-
son of Christ with his human nature? Up to this time, during the
Arian and Trinitarian controversies, the object of investigation and
debate had been the divine rather than the human side of Christ, his
relations to the Father rather than his relations to the humanity
which he assumed. Arius, it is true, had previously contended that
the "lesser" divinity of Christ was united to a soulless human body.
But this theory of Arius seems to have escaped the attention of most
of the Fathers, intent on safeguarding the divinity of the Son, and
wholly absorbed in questions concerning the Trinity. In fact, this
preoccupation with other theological interests is sufficient in itself to
account for the failure during this period to discuss what a union of
the divine and the human formally implied.
ApoUinaris shifted the theological debate from the divine to the
human side of Christ, and thus deserves to be singled out among
272 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
heresiarchs as one who contributed to the development of Christian
doctrine. A teacher of rhetoric in his early years, a skillful dialec-
tician, hebraist, and exegete, to whom, in the latter capacity, St.
Jerome acknowledges his indebtedness as a pupil ; a man of irreproach-
able moral life, a staunch defender of the Trinity, and afterwards
bishop of his own native Laodicea, he fell a victim to the difficulty
which the union of two perfect natures in a single person presented
to his reason. This was the rock of scandal to the faith of one who
had so stoutly defended the doctrine of consubstantiality as to win
the favor and esteem of the most illustrious doctors of his time ; who
had so opposed the dualism of the Antiochians and put the personal
unity of Christ beyond the reach of their captious criticism that the
very force of the reaction, one might almost say, carried him over
to the other extreme, and led him to champion the view that the
divine Person of the Son was united to a human body without soul
or intelligence. The aged Fathers who had already borne the brunt
of the Arian attack, were again compelled to take the field, this time
against an old companion in arms who, by his prestige, piety and
learning, had become all the more dangerous as an enemy.
After thus introducing ApoUinaris to his readers, the author shows
very clearly that the profession of faith in the integrity of Christ's
human nature made by the Fathers at the Council of Alexandria in 362
was not restricted to a condemnation of Arianism, but extended to
ApoUinarism as well, although ApoUinaris himself was as yet not
suspected of heresy, having made no public statement of his views. It
was after the Council and during the lively debates to which this
profession of faith gave rise, that ApoUinaris went over to the enemy.
This contention of the author strikes at the root of the counter-
theories proposed by Harnack and Stiilcken ; it also helps to vindicate
Athanasius from the charge— preferred by Stiilcken— of having been
at heart an adherent of ApoUinaris.
But what led the bishop of Laodicea to precipitate this issue con-
cerning the human constitution of Christ? The general opinion has
been that the Arian doctrine was the prime source of his inspiration :
he simply foresaw and stated the conclusions to which Arianism in-
evitably led. The author finds such a view untenable in the light
of later research, and adduces solid proof from history as well as
from textual study that ApoUinaris was a product of the religious
spirit of the Antiochians and the rationalizing tendency of the Alex-
andrians, an Aristotelian without a spark of Platonism in his mental
life. While the Fathers were still defending the Trinitarian doc-
trines of the Council of Nice, ApoUinaris was absorbed in the question
BOOK REVIEWS. 273
of Christ's unity, for which he sought a rational explanation. A new
problem thus arose in his mind out of the very circumstances and
needs of his own peculiar environment. He tried to solve it and
failed ; a problem that was local and almost personal then became the
common concern of all ; ApoUinaris hitherto in conflict with the Anti-
ochians found himself at odds with the Church, and his condemnation
soon followed. The author next describes how ApoUinaris was gradu-
ally led to admit a division of human nature into body, soul, and
spirit, and to contend that in Christ the divinity replaced the spirit
and entered into direct union with a body whose soul was purely ani-
mal. Pressed by his adversaries to acknowledge in Christ a perfect
man, he had to fall back upon trichotomy as a last resort, and by
quotations from Scripture endeavor to establish that man's nature
was threefold and not dual. Here again the influences that formed
him are to be sought in the concrete necessities of the controversy in
which he was engaged, and not in any special attachment to the doc-
trine of trichotomy which he adopted merely because he found it a
most serviceable means of self-defense.
The rapid rise of ApoUinarism was followed by an equally rapid
decline. After the heresiarch's death the secular arm was stretched
out to put a stop to the spread of this doctrine among his followers.
The disastrous influence exercised by ApoUinaris over all those who
professed with him the unity of Christ's nature l«ft a serpent's trail
over the several phases of Monophysism that subsequently appeared
during the fifth and sixth centuries. This influence was greatly aided
and abetted by the fraud of disciples who endeavored to secure a
respectable patronage for their views by ascribing to Julius, Gregory,
Athanasius and others works that were afterwards, but too late to
avert consequences, found to be productions of ApoUinaris himself.
The origin of Eutychianism the author regar<ls as chiefly due to
this fraudulent tradition invented by the ApoUinarists to give likeli-
hood to their contentions.
This first part of the author's work is highly suggestive because
of the fuller critical knowledge with which he approaches the history
of ApoUinarism. Full justice cannot be done his presentment within
the space allotted to this review. Suffice it to say that in his intro-
ductory review of the development of Christology, the sources and
Uterature of the subject, as weU as in the study of the influences which
determined ApoUinaris to beat out a new path of theological inquiry
he has added to the quality, and sometimes to the sum of human
knowledge. The latter addition is seen in the fuUer light which he
has thrown upon the hitherto fragmentary history of the ApoUinarist
18CUB
274 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
sect after the death of the founder, no less than in the tracing of
the influence which Apollinaris exercised on the recrudescence of
Gnostic speculations in the fifth century.
The second part of the work is taken up with a study of the Apol-
linarist literature as known to the writers of the fourth and fifth cen-
turies; the fraud of the disciples and its temporary success; the au-
thentic writings of Apollinaris and his followers; the ApoUinarian
source of the pseudepigraphies ; the writings to be attributed to the
disciples and those falsely ascribed to the heresiarch himself. Meagre
material for reconstructing the doctrine of Apollinaris is to be found
in the works of his adversaries, whose general acquaintance with the
Laodicean 's views, while undoubted, does not imply familiarity with
particular writings; and so the author wisely avoids conjecture and
sets forth what the facts warrant in the case of each individual. Were
it not for the fraud of the disciples in attaching honored names to
their master's writings, but little could be known with surety con-
cerning this heresy. The success which this fraud met with was due
to the judicious distribution of the master's heretical ideas among
doctrines of an orthodox nature on the unity of Christ and the
Trinity, which he had earlier held in common with his contemporaries.
Egypt was probably the place in which the fraud was first perpe-
trated, and it seems strange that Saint Cyril failed to detect it when
drawing so largely upon interpolated sources to refute Nestorius.
Yet, such was the case. Not until John, bishop of Scythopolis in
Galilee, had found some old copies of the heresiarch 's writings about
the middle of the sixth century was the fraud fully unmasked, to
which result the unknown author of the ''Adversus fraudes Apol-
linaristarum" had about the same time contributed.
In the critical reconstruction of the works of Apollinaris which
the author next undertakes, there is much of value and interest to
the student of Church history and the development of dogma. The
supposed profession of faith made by the Council of Nice against
Paul of Samosata is shown by the author to be quite possibly due
to the fraudulent insertion of ApoUinarists ; likewise the ascription
to Athanasius of works that reveal the mind of the Laodicean and
the hand of his disciples. The author recognizes the value which
the pretended correspondence between Apollinaris and Basil would
have for reconstructing the history of the sect, but does not regard
these letters as authentic. The second part of the author's work is
a fine piece of historical criticism.
After thus determining his sources, the author proceeds to
reconstruct the christological view professed by Apollinaris. The
BOOK REVIEWS. 275
third part of the voume is devoted to this dogmatic study, and
presents many features out of the ordinary which are worthy of at-
tention.
ApoUinaris worked out a detailed system of christology. The
first to put the question how the divine and human elements in Christ
are united in one and the same person, he was also the first to propose
a solution of this knotty problem. Accepting on faith the fact of
Christ's unity, he endeavored to explain it on the principles of Aris-
totle 's philosophy which drew no distinction between nature and per-
son, but considered both terms as wholly correlative. The result was
the doctrine of a single nature in support of which the analogy of
the union between the human soul and body was frequently adduced,
although not regarded by ApoUinaris as a perfect parity. He did
not admit any degradation of the divine nature, or interfusion of
the divine and human in the Incarnate Word, as has been so often
stated, neither did he hold to any transformation of the divine. Such
crudities formed no part of his christological system. He simply
denied that Christ possessed a thinking and willing human spirit,
conceding at the same time the possession of an animal soul. The
reason for this denial was the consequence which he foresaw in an
acknowledgment of a perfect human nature in Christ. As nature was
the same as person to his way of thinking, the admission of a com-
plete human nature in the God-Man would entail the admission of
two persons, and this would destroy the fact revealed by faith that
Christ was a concrete unity, a truth which he would not sacrifice at
any cost.
The author next reconstructs the views of ApoUinaris on the con-
sequences of the incarnate union, and shows how the defective lan-
guage employed by the Laodicean contributed to fix upon him un-
justly the doctrines that Christ was consubstantial in the flesh with
God and that his body preexisted. Of course, it was foregone accord-
ing to his principles that ApoUinaris should deny all strictly human
acts to Christ and refuse to him the possession of a human wiU. The
soteriology of the heresiarch, which the author sets forth in detail
shows how consistently, though not without fault, a solution had been
attempted in those early days. In successive chapters the author
explains the gradual misunderstanding which was the fate of these
many views of the Laodicean; examines into 'the opposition of the
Fathers to his doctrine; criticizes the extreme interpretations put
upon the language of the Fathers by Dorner and Harnack, who deny
that the latter professed any more clearly than ApoUinaris himself
the distinction of natures in Christ; sets forth the teaching of the
276 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Church, and discusses the relation of ApoUinarism to the progress of
dogma. In a final appendix the Trinitarian doctrine of ApoUinaris
is reviewed, and certainly the author is right in contesting the state-
ment of Harnack, that the Bishop of Laodicea was the chief promoter:
of orthodox teaching on the Trinity, and the statement of Draeseke
that he was *' facile princeps" among the doctors of his time.
What the author has to say with regard to the relation of ApoUi-
narism to the development of Christian doctrine is specially significant
in the light of recent events and deserves at least a brief consideration.
ApoUinaris, it will be remembered, gave a new direction to theo-
logical inquiry when he drew attention away from the divine side of
Christ to the human, when he concentrated men's minds on the Incar-
nation rather than on the Trinity. The result was a development
and expansion of doctrine which the critic must perforce interpret in
relation to what had gone before. Was this development a substitu-
tion of one doctrine for another in the Hegelian sense, or a working
over of Gospel data into formulas acceptable to the cultured minds
of the Greeks, as Harnack would have it, or only a more complete,
more scientific expression of the traditional faith of the Church, ex-
hibiting continuity and identity as well as progress?
To assure one's self that there was no change in the objective
deposit of revelation, one has but to note the fact. that the primitive
Church believed that Jesus Christ was at the same time God and Man
and registered this belief in the Apostles' Creed, which was unde-
niably in use at Rome toward the close of the first century or at the
beginning of the second, even in the admission of extreme critics who
have not fully made out their case for this late origin of it. The
Council of Chalcedon only reaffirmed this baptismal profession of
faith in the God-Man when it defined the doctrine of one person in
two natures, and so we have the conservation of the essential idea
throughout as the first and chief mark of true development.
Besides, the definition of a truth as the object of universal belief
is no proof of novelty or change, if instances of its formal profession
preceded the definition. Of course, the positive doctrines of Christ
true God consubstantial with the Father, true Man endowed with a
perfect human nature, were not the object of scientific research, nor
systematically set forth in their mutual relations at the very begin-
ning. They were believed without being investigated. It is only by
confounding the constant and continuous element of faith with the
slowly formulated analysis of it, by mistaking systematic interpreta-
tions of revealed facts for the arbitrary intrusion of new beliefs that
the rationalist is enabled to construct his theory of development as
the successive substitution of one doctrine for another.
BOOK REVIEWS. 277
The doctrine of the two natures in Christ affirmed by the Church
of the fourth century on the occasion of the controversy with Apolli-
naris is a peremptory refutation of the theory that an objective
change was introduced into the deposit of revelation. The Church
then believed that Christ is truly man, come really in the flesh as the
world's Redeemer. ApoUinaris himself is witness to the fact that
this was the universal persuasion accepted indisputably by all. Then
ApoUinaris raised the question whether the Christ possessed a ra-
tional soul. What was implictly believed hitherto, was thereupon
explictly declared against his denial; and declared not as an exten-
sion, but as the very content of Christian truth from the beginning.
It was ApoUinaris, not the Fathers, who introduced a change into
the objective deposit ; he, not they, sought to corrupt the belief. The
Bishop of Laodicea furnished an occasion to the Church to express
more precisely her belief in the Incarnation, but had nothing what-
ever to do with the Catholic solution of the problem which the Church
stated. So cogent is this historical fact of the influence of tradition
on the development of Christian doctrine that the rationalist recog-
nizes its force to the full, when he seeks to find in the fourth Gospel
and the distinction there made between the **Word" and the *' Flesh"
an anticipation of the Christology of ApoUinaris which denied to the
Logos the assumption of a human soul. The rationalist projects into
the earliest Christian past a theory of the fourth century, fastens it
upon some loosely employed hebraic expressions, and thereby secures,
as he thinks, two hostile traditions which he thereupon proceeds to
play off against each other as a serviceable means for showing how
ApoUinaris, and none other but he, drank fully of the well of Chris-
tian doctrine undefiled.
We recommend this volume to the careful consideration of pro-
fessors and students of Church History and Dogma. Now that the
idea of development is in the air an ounce of induction is worth a
pound of theory. Facts may not always speak so loudly as words,
but they speak more cogently. To have the literature on Apolli-
narism collected, sifted, criticized, and corrected is a distinct advan-
tage. To have the early sources of Christology judiciously discussed,
is a still greater gain. For these reasons we wish this volume of
Doctor Voisin a wide circulation. Edmund T. Shanahan.
Onward and Upward. A Year-Book compiled from. the discourses
of Archbishop Keane by Maurice Francis Egan. Baltimore:
John Murphy Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 387.
According to the preface of this compilation, ''its main object is
278 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
to give to earnest men and women, often too busy for long meditation,
a spiritual keynote for each day in the year. And Archbishop Keane
knows our country and the human heart, our conditions and our
struggles and temptations so well, that from the work of no other
man could be drawn sentiments at once so spiritual and so practical, so
stimulating and so sustaining for the great mass of the American
people. ' ' The twelve sections of the work are entitled Right Living,
Religion, Home, Education, The Ideal Woman, The Ideal Man, Civil-
ization, The Social Ideal, America, Progress, Art, Brotherhood, Death
and Resurrection. For each day a thought is selected from the dis-
courses of Archbishop Keane, corresponding to these general headings;
thus a body of doctrine is brought together, at once brief, compact,
well-divided, and easily assimilable. The purpose of these thoughts,
scattered only in appearance, is eminently a helpful and directive
one — excellent educational principles and suggestions, for young and
old, are to be found all through the work, and not alone in the chapter
specially dedicated to that topic. The editor rightly says that it is
impossible to transfer to the printed page the many oratorical quali-
ties of the Archbishop of Dubuque. Nevertheless, it is equally im-
possible for any reader to peruse these pages without catching some-
thing of the unction and the candor of the writer, something of the
abundant persuasiveness of his manner and character. Possibly many
readers will draw solace, encouragement, and inspiration from these
echoes of a long and fruitful career as a preacher of Catholic truth
who would never read through the original discourses themselves.
A table of contents and an index of subjects treated would im-
prove the work. "We wish it the widespread circulation it deserves,
and trust that it is only the forerunner of other contributions to our
ecclesiastical literature from the pen of one who needs no introduction
to an American audience, and to praise whose constant zeal and
charity in the work of his ministry would be almost an impertinence,
so much are they household words among us.
Thomas J. Shahan.
La Sociologie Positivistc : Comtc. By Maurice Defourney, Insti-
tut Superieur de Philosophic. Louvain, 1902. 1 vol., 8°, pp.
370.
This volume on the life and doctrine of Auguste Comte is an in-
teresting addition to the literature of Sociology. It appears in the
series of philosophical publications issued by the Institute of Phi-
losophy in the University of Louvain and is certainly a creditable
addition to it.
BOOK REVIEWS. 279
After a brief sketch of the life of Comte, the author presents a
lucid exposition of his theory of sociology. The second part of the
work contains a systematic critical appreciation of the theory. That
is followed by a brief synopsis of the permanent elements in Comte '<?
teaching, and by several documents which show the relation of posi-
tivism to Catholicity and to Socialism. The author has done his
work with every evidence of care and of fairness. While not a be-
liever in Comte as a philosopher, there is scarcely a trace of preju-
dice against him in any part of the exposition. The critical portion
of the work is admirable for the objective manner in which the author
attempts to set aside the social theory of the great positivist.
The interest in Comte and his sociology is not as great as formerly,
though interest in sociology itself was never greater. Comte is of
course a permanent character in the history of sociological theory.
His merit is very great for having pointed to the field of the science
before it had explorers. Those who are unacquainted with him and
his works will find in Dr.. Defourney's volume a most attractive and
useful introduction to that study. It has been said often that what
is permanent in the six volumes of Comte 's Philosophy, might be
expressed in a couple of paragraphs. The author proves the statement
by doing so. The variety of influences which have affected sociology
since his time has been so great that the science has drifted far away
from the point where Comte discovered it. However, Comte empha-
sized the question of method— and method is still the vital thing to
sociology. Hence Dr. Defourney's volume is very useful to the
sociologist who would study Comte for the sake of knowing his method
and of seeing it applied to the whole field of social phenomena.
William J. Kerby.
The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America, with special re-
lation to their early cartographical representation. By Joseph
Fischer, S.J., translated from the German by Basil H. Soulsby,
B.A. St. Louis: Herder, 1903. 8°, pp. xxiv + 130.
That hardy Norsemen had reached the American coast as early as
the year 1000, and that for two centuries at least, more or less fre-
quent relations existed between the Northern lands and the new dis-
coveries, has long been admitted. The epoch-making work of Carl
Christian Rafn entitled ' ' Antiquitates Americange" ,(1839) made
known such convincing documents from Norse literature that the
thesis has never since been gainsaid with success. But to what extent
were these discoveries known through Europe in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries? Did they ever find their way into the mediaeval
280 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
maps or navigators' charts of that period known as * ' portulanos ? "
What probability is there that this information drifted into Southern
Europe in the course of the fifteenth century, to become one of the
sources of the faith of Columbus in a western world? Distinguished
scholars, Norse and German, French and Italian, have long been busy
at the genesis of the earliest maps of the New World, particularly at
the additions to Ptolemy, which begin with the Dane Claudius Clavus,
in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and show the outline of
the great Norse discovery of ' ' Engronelant ' ' or Greenland. It would
seem that this now famous Dane had his work executed in Italy, and
was thus the first known oral witness to make known to the peninsula
the outlines of the nearest portion of the New World.
Another Northern savant, Donnus Nicolaus Germanus, learned
German priest and humanist, perhaps printer and miniator, issued
a work known as ' ' Cosmographia " in 1466, 1470, and in 1482— in the
second and third editions are found maps of the Northern lands and
Greenland. The second edition is dedicated to Paul II (1464-1471),
though the original edition was prepared at the expense of Duke
Borsio d'Este and dedicated to him. There were, therefore, current
in Italy during the fifteenth century manuscripts of Ptolemy, which
contained maps of Greenland, though the American coast of Hellu-
land, Markland and Wineland the Good does not appear. A letter
of Nicholas V. dated 1448, deals with the wretched condition of the
inhabitants of Greenland, and another of Alexander VI, given in 1492
or 1493, bears witness not only to the extremity of their temporal and
spiritual destitution, but also to an accurate knowledge of the climatic
conditions. There are therefore excellent cartographical and histor-
ical reasons for believing that in fifteenth century Italy some general
knowledge of Greenland was current enough for a man like Columbus
to become possessed of it, nor is it necessary to send the Genoese navi-
gator to Iceland to hear from Bishop Magnus of Skalholt the story
of the Norse discoveries. Though the earliest Icelandic maps of
these American discoveries date only from the end of the sixteenth
century, there is a fifteenth century ''portulano" that shows to the
south of Greenland a little circular island called Markland. Columbus
may have seen such a map. In another map of the year 1500 there
appear, besides Greenland (Ilia Verde), the islands of Frixlanda and
Brazil. Already in 1498 merchants of Bristol had for seven years
been sending out annually two, three, and even four caravels in search
of this island of Brazil— not improbably the Hy-Brasil of the mediae-
val Irish, that 'insula Sancti Brendani" which disappeared from
the maps only in the eighteenth century, after holding its own on
BOOK REVIEWS. 281
every portulano or navigator's chart since the fourteenth. The news
and the nature of these Norse discoveries would naturally travel to
Rome with bishops, pilgrims, penitents, students, merchants, monks,
and other classes of the Norse population regularly drawn thither,
as Werlauff pithily says, by "pietatis studium, absolutio, negotia.''
The most nothern bishoprics were founded in the twelfth century-
Lund in 1104, Drontheim in 1152, Holar in Iceland in 1106, the
Faroes in 1152, and Gardar in Greenland, 1123. Cardinal Nicholas
of Albano, afterwards Hadrian IV, was legate in Norway from 1154
to 1159, nor wa^ he the only papal legate to visit the far North.
Crusading Danes rested long in Constantinople and Rome, and the
port of Bergen was at the same time a much frequented one by
travellers and merchants from many parts of Europe.
The work of Fr. Fischer is at once the latest and most instructive
of the numerous introductions to the history of these early discoveries
of America. He has had the good fortune to discover at Wolfegg
Castle in Germany, not only the only known manuscript of the third
edition of the *'Cosmographia" of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus, but
also the long lost first map of Martin Waldseemiiller, executed in 1507,
the map that showed to the world for the first time the name America.
Scarcely less important is his discovery, in the same place, of the
Carta Marina of 1516, also executed by Waldseemiiller. By these
discoveries and labors, Fr. Fischer has linked his name to those of
Von Wieser, Storm, Ruge, Nordenskiold and other litterateurs of the
Northern geography of the fifteenth century. His work, notably
pp. 57-107, may serve as an introduction to their minute researches
in a hitherto untrodden field. As a preliminary to his cartographical
chapters, Fr. Fischer discusses all the known historical evidence for
Norse discoveries and settlements in America. His knowledge of the
sources and of the modern literature is quite extensive, and his critical
method sane and scholarly. Indeed he rather leans to the extreme
in his unwillingness to accept some traditional theses— in this peculiar
silva of materials one must abate somewhat the pretensions of a too
strict criticism. We miss in the bibliography the remarkable work
of Edward Payne, ''History of the New World called America'*
(1892, 1899), and the ''Brendaniana" of Fr. O'Donoghue (1893).
Thomas J. Shahan.
Papst Innocenz XI und Ungarns Befreiung von dcr Tiirkcn-
herrschaft. Von Wilhelm Fraknoi, aus dem Ungarischen iiber-
setzt von Dr. Peter Jekel. Freiburg: B. Herder, 1902. 8°, pp.
vii + 288.
One of the immediate results of the revolt of Luther was an in-
282 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
crease of military activity on the part of the Osmanli, then fresh
from the conquest of Constantinople and hopeful of planting the
banner of the Crescent in all the other centres of Christendom. The
great battle of Mohacs (1526) made the Turk master of the fairest
lands of Hungary and set him up as an European power. One of
the great national romances of history is the struggle then inaugurated
by the Magyars against the Turkish yoke, a struggle that fills the best
part of two centuries (1526-1685), and ended only with the successful
siege of Ofen in the latter year. Thereby the capital of Hungary was
won back for the nation and Christianity. With that famous siege
closed the splendid series of Christian successes— the Relief of Vienna
(1683), the naval victory of Navarinna (1685)— that relieve the
otherwise calamitous annals of the seventeenth century. It has been
almost forgotten that the soul of the combination between Poland and
Austria, whereby the liberation of Hungary became possible, was Pope
Innocent XI, Benedetto Odescalchi. It was he who won over Poland
and secured the leadership of the chivalrous Sobieski, he who kept up
an uneasy peace between Louis XIV and the Hapsburgs, he who
poured into the ruined treasury of the latter the incredible sums of
money that made possible the vast operations of that famous decade
and utterly surpassed all the capacities of the Turk, he who confis-
cated for the national cause one third of all the property of the Hun-
garian monks, and secured soldiers and money from many of the
German and Austrian feudataries of the empire. His memory is
otherwise held in benediction for his manly courage and his high
devotion to the interests of the papacy, but nowhere has he right to
a higher honor than in Hungary that owes him its national existence
and unity. All historians acknowledge that the critical hour of life
or death had struck for that people. James II of England declared
that for many centuries no pope had deserved so well of Christendom.
The pope's nephew, Livio Odescalchi, was made Duke of Sirmium,
and in 1751 the Hungarian Assembly conferred on his son the rights
of citizenship, declaring that the nation still held in grateful memory
the zeal, solicitude, and generosity of his ancestor, whereby the sworn
enemy of Europe and Christianity was rendered powerless forever.
The Odescalchi are still an influential family of Hungary, and may
boast of a title to nobility second to none in Europe. In 1885 Hun-
gary celebrated the second centenary of the Siege of Ofen, and on
that occasion one of her most scholarly historians, William Fraknoi,
published a learned volume that revealed all the merits of the great
pope, in diplomacy, encouragement, cooperation and generosity. This
work now appears in a German translation, and is well worthy of
BOOK REVIEWS. 283
attentive perusal by all who are interested in the public and political
history of the papacy. Ex pede Herculem. This last chapter of the
Crusades, for that is what it is, deserves to be forever remembered.
Were it not for the Bishops of Rome there would be to-day no Chris-
tian Europe. From Jerusalem to Vienna, from Lepanto to Navarinna,
from Constantinople to Ofen, the Turk met everywhere in the papacy
a foeman worthy of his faith, his steel, and his undeniable courage.
Were it not for the irremediable domestic schism, that enemy would
long since have driven him from the Golden Horn and given back to
Christian worship and service. Christian love and Christian polity,
art and life, the glorius spaces of Sancta Sophia and all they stand
for. Veniat sicut mercenarii optata dies!
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. By A. M. Fairbaim,
D.D., LL.D., Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1902. 8°, pp. xxviii -f 583.
* ' This book may be described as an attempt to do two things : first,
to explain religion through nature and man ; and secondly, to construe
Christianity through religion*' — such, in the author's words, is the
purpose of this remarkable work. In the first part of the book Dr.
Fairbairn lays the philosophical foundations of the Christian religion ;
in the second part he deals directly with ''the central fact and idea"
of the Christian faith.
Religion rests on a basis of reason. Hence* our author begins with
a philosophy of nature. He shows that nature must be conceived
through the supernatural and that man is the key of all mysteries.
In stating the case for Theism Principal Fairbairn faces frankly
what is the main apology for agnostic pessimism— the problem of evil.
He makes no new contribution of thought to the venerable controversy,
but he restates and reaffirms with much force and eloquence the
theistic solution of the question: ''if it were good to have moral beings
under moral law, evil must be permitted." Further: "to allow evil
to become and continue without any purpose of Redemption is an
absolutely inconceivable act in a good and holy and gracious God."
In the section dealing with the Philosophy of Religion we have a
valuable review of the History of Religion. In analyzing the sub-
jective and objective factors of religion, in formulating the relation
of the founder to the religion of his founding, in describing the causes
of variation in religion and in handling kindred topics. Dr. Fairbairn
brings out into relief many principles which are too often ignored
or misunderstood by students of comparative religion. No one who
284 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
has before his eyes the current abuses of the Science of Religion can
read Principal Fairbairn's canons for the proper use of Ethnography,
or his discussion of the question whether all religions are variations
of one religion, without feeling that he has said many things which
needed to be said, and which few could say so well as he has said them.
Having established his philosophical prologomena. Dr. Fairbaim
in the second half of the work, devotes his attention especially to
determining the relation of Christ to Christianity. His position is
clearly defined in the words: *^The Christian religion is not built
upon faith in Jesus of Nazareth, but upon the belief that He was the
Christ, the Son of the living God." This thesis he finds in the Syn-
optics, in the claims of Christ— ''claims representing a sovereignty
which only a singular and preeminently privileged relation to the
Father could justify"— in the Fourth Gospel, the Apocalypse, the
Epistles of St. Paul, etc. Worthy of special note is the argument
built upon the fact that while other religions have lifted their found-
ers to a superhuman rank, Christianity alone has worshipped its
Founder as God, and has moreover thereby given to the world a more
exalted and universal conception of the Deity.
To state Christian doctrine in relation to the thought of the day
— this is a work for which the time is ripe. Principal Fairbaim has
laid down the lines of the synthesis and has shown that the claims
of Christianity are compatible with the frankest admission of the
claims of reason and critical science. To this coordination he has
brought a marvelous grasp of all the questions in philosophy and his-
tory that bear on Christianity, and an eloquence that cannot be
matched in recent religious literature. For such a work as Harnack's
**What is Christianity?" he has provided a much needed antidote.
Against the fundamental thesis of the Berlin historian who would
leave to Christ no place in His Gospel, Principal Fairbairn has proved
that '* without the metaphysical conception of Christ the Christian
religion would long ago have ceased to live. ' '
It is a matter for regret and surprise that Dr. Fairbairn did not
bring to his strictures on Catholic doctrines that sympathy and in-
sight which are so conspicuous in the rest of his pages. We were
prepared for his views on the Eucharist, but we were hardly pre-
pared for the assertion that if the dogma of the Immaculate Concep-
tion be logical ''not only Mary, but all her ancestors and ancestresses
back to Adam, were immaculately conceived." Still less did we ex-
pect to find in such a book such a sentence as this : ' ' Nothing fills me
with darker horror or deeper aversion than the apotheosis of wounds
and death which the Roman Church offers as the image of Christ."
BOOK REVIEWS. 285
However, it is not the first time that "the foremost theologian of
England" has shown how vast and varied learning may go hand in
hand with a somewhat crude conception of the system and the spirit
of Catholicism. Humphrey Moynihan.
St. Paul Seminary.
Rich and Poor in the New Testament. By Orello Cone, D.D.
New York: Macmillan, 1902. Pp. vi + 245.
One reads this book with mixed impressions. The smooth literary
English and inviting typography carry the reader along through
the discussion of an interesting topic, and one peruses the book to
the end, in spite of the constant recurrence of ideas which, however,
delicately phrased, jar on orthodox sensibilities, and are utterly at
variance with Catholic faith. When it is said that the author is a
contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica, the reader will know in a
general way what to expect. Jesus the "son of a mechanic" is of
course a transcendent Teacher, but not without his limitations and
illusions, especially regarding the coming of the Kingdom. The
fact that he regarded the Parousia as impending shortened his per-
spective of earthly conditions, and disturbed the judgment of his
Apostles and followers on social relations. Hence the radical teach-
ing of the intrinsic evil of riches, the now impracticable injunction
to renounce all things, not to resist the evil-doer, and so forth. In
the work under review, one is always coming upon unsuspected dif-
ficulties raised by German criticism— solved sometimes variously but
often with tempting plausibility, however inadmissible the solutions
are to one following the principles and analogies of Catholic theol-
ogy. Not all are fitted to successfully resist the insidious influence
of such a book as this where the hypotheses and conclusions of
rationalistic criticism impregnate a composition of alluring theme
and style, while strenuous protest is almost disarmed by the calm
scholarly tone, and the high value admiringly set upon the teachings
of Our Lord and the New Testament in general.
After the critical process has done its work and eliminated from
Christ's and the apostles' doctrine concerning earthly goods, what
is of doubtful authenticity or merely transient value, the residuum
is found by our author to contain principles and inspirations of
great virtue for the betterment of modern social conditions. The
sures and most satisfactory part of Dr. Cone's work, because the
least negative, is the chapter on the New Testament and the Social
Question of To-Day, though naturally it is tinged with humanitarian-
ism. Of the New Testament in this relation the writer says with
286 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
tinith: ''Principles, the seeker will find in it, not system." ''The
effective remedy will be found, not in a new system, but in a new
spirit." Materialism is decried, the paramount claims of spiritual
life and aims upheld.
Yet the liberal Protestant and rationalist exegesis of the day is
always missing the higher spirituality of the inspired text. The
hard, dry literalism of this school robs the words of more than half
their meaning. The historico-literal method of interpretation is the
only solid basis for a right understanding of the sacred text, but to
stop at that is, in general, to take the symbol and leave the reality, to
feed on the letter which by itself killeth and discard the quickening
spirit. The same error often puts the inspired authors unnecessarily
at variance with one another. The higher transcendent truth, which
is the key to synthetize them, is missing or contemptuously disre-
garded by the critics of whom I speak. For instance, Dr. Cone
finds Matthew and Luke in hopeless disagreement, because the former
reports the first beatitude as: "Blessed are the poor in spirit"— and
the latter: "Blessed are ye poor," and he decides in favor of Luke's
version in its literal sense.
"Why cannot both be right, within their scope, Luke transmitting
the letter, and Matthew the broad, spiritual meaning of the maxim
— a sense implied in Luke's context, or the circumstances in which
the words were spoken^ Similarly for "Blessed ye who hunger
now." To say that the hunger of the disciples, to which a blessing
is attached, is merely a physical hunger, and that the recompense
promised is merely a physical satisfaction, is to sadly misread the
Sermon on the Mount. George J. Reid.
St. Paul Seminaby.
Die Beiden Ersten Erasmus Ausgaben des Neuen Testaments
und ihre Gegner. Von Prof. Dr. Aug. Bludau. Herder, 1902.
(Biblische Studien, VII, 5.) Pp. vi + 145. 85 cents.
1*0 Erasmus belongs the honor of giving to the world the first
printed edition of the New Testament in Greek. Scholars will find
in this monograph a detailed account of its publication and that of
the editions immediately following. The Greek was accompanied by
an original Latin translation which differed much from the Vulgate,
and this departure, together with the annotations in which the great
humanist defended his text and version against the anticipated cavil-
lings of scholastic learning and "monkish theology" gave rise to a
series of controversies and discussions with various scholars and
divines, including Luther, who had not yet broken with the Church,
BOOK REVIEWS, 287
and with Dr. Eck, the heresiarch's later antagonist. All countries
were represented by these critics, some of whom were friendly and
some acrimoniously personal. Erasmus was accused of favoring
mostly all the heresies in the catalogue, including Arianism, Euty-
chianism, Pelagianism, ApoUinarism and finally Lutheranism. From
among these disputes the author has chosen those which best illus-
trate the strife between the humanists and scholastics on the eve
of the Reformation. As is well known, Erasmus sympathized with
the first movements of the Reformers; the annotations of his New
Testament exhibit this free and rather bold spirit inveighing against
the complexity, burden and degeneracy of the ecclesiasticism of his
day. George J. Reid.
St. Paul Seminary.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Alberti, De Jejunio Ecclesiastico tractatus theoricus et practicus.
Rome: Pustet, 1903. 8°, pp. 80.
Casus Conscientiae ad usum Confessariorum compositi et soluti, ab
Augustino Lehmkul, S.J., vol. I, Casus de theologiae moralis prin-
cipiis et de praeceptis atque officiis Christianis speciatim sumptis.
Freiburg: Herder, 1903. 8°, pp. 566. $2.40.
The Lady of the Lake, edited with notes and introduction by George
Rice Carpenter. New York: Longmans, 1903. 8°, pp. xxiv +
191.
Reverend Mother Xavier Warde, The Story of Her Life, etc. Boston :
Marlier & Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 287.
The Talisman. By Anna T. Sadlier. New York: Benziger, 1903.
8°, pp. 186.
The Pilkington Heir. By Anna T. Sadlier. New York: Benziger.
THE PONTIFICAL JUBILEE OF LEO XIII
(1878-1903).
Leo XIII has been a great educational pope. It is prob-
ably the title lie would himself choose as his best recommenda-
tion to posterity. Moderation and conciliation have been his
watchwords among parties sects and factions bent either on
the extermination of the truth or of one another. In all the
ecclesiastical sciences he has been like the wise house-father,
a preserver of what was old and good, and an apostle of what
was useful in the new elements of progress. And now a more
than patriarchal length of years is vouchsafed to him, whereby
his services to Catholicism must always be seen in a certain
romantic light. The latest successor of Peter seems to touch
the Fisherman across the eventful centuries. Standing at his
tomb he can see himself yet the centre of a world of Catholic
faith and obedience that finds its raison d^etre beneath the
matchless dome that shelters the last resting place of Christ's
first Vicar. First and last, the office is a teaching office, the
sublimest magisterium the world has known, so sublime that
the Holy Spirit has taken it under His own protecting care.
Popes come and go, but their purpose lives on forever, and a
new person is never wanting on whom to throw the mantle
of succession and responsibility. Only, from time to time,
the habitual grandeur of their dignity is heightened by cir-
cumstances, and among these is an exceptional length of ser-
vice in an office to which men usually attain when already
old, and whose cares are specially wearing and exhaustive.
The University celebrated with all due solemnity this mar-
velous event in the life of Leo XIII. A general holiday was
proclaimed for Tuesday, March 3, in honor of the twenty-fifth
anniversary feast of the Coronation of the Holy Father. At
9:30 A. M. Pontifical Mass was celebrated in the Divinity
Chapel in the presence of the professors and students of the
University. The Rt. Rev. Rector sang the pontifical mass.
Rev. John W. Melody was assistant priest ; Rev. Victor Ducat,
of Detroit, deacon; Rev. Maurice O'Connor, of Boston, sub-
(288)
TEE PONTIFICAL JUBILEE OF LEO XIIL 289
deacon, and Eev. William P. Clark, of Cincinnati, and Eev.
Thomas E. McGuigan, of Baltimore, masters of ceremonies. At
the close of the mass the Te Deum was intoned by the Rt. Rev.
Rector as an act of thanksgiving to God for the many bless-
ings that have come to the Church during the pontificate of
Leo XIII, and in grateful recognition of the memorable equal-
ling of the years of Peter.
At 11 o'clock the solemn academic exercises of the day
were held in the Aula Maxima of McMahon Hall. The Rt.
Rev. Rector presided. Seated on the platform were the pro-
fessors of the various faculties and the representatives of the
colleges and religious houses.
The Rt. Rev. Rector made the opening address and in it
spoke feelingly of the character and services of the Holy
Father. It would always be remembered that the founder of
the University lived to see the years of Peter, and in this
rare happening we might recognize an omen of good fortune
for the years to come. The broad ocean might divide us from
the Common Father of Christendom, but our hearts over-
leaped that barrier, and in spirit we were present at the glori-
ous assembly in the Basilica of Saint Peter, beneath the match-
less dome, members of the great Catholic family and rejoicing
with it that God had seen fit to crown with extraordinary
length of days the latest successor of the Fisherman. Leo
XIII would be always remembered in the world's history for
any one of his varied lines of intellectual activity and spirit-
ual direction. But when he stands forth, as he now does,
one of the three popes who in nineteen centuries have ruled
the Christian world as long as the first Vicar of Jesus Christ,
his fame will certainly be unperishable and his name remem-
bered by the remotest posterity.
The following professors eulogized in turn the work of
Leo XIII in their respective branches. Rev. Dr. Henry
Hyvernat spoke of *'Leo XIII and Oriental Studies''; Rev.
Dr. Charles P. Grannan, of ^'Leo XIII and the Biblical Com-
mission"; Rev. Dr. Thomas J. Shahan, on ^*Leo XIII and
the Science of Church History"; Rev. Dr. Edward A. Pace,
on ^^Leo XIII and Scholastic Philosophy"; Dr. William C.
Robinson, on ^^Leo XIII and the Science of Law"; Rev. Dr.
19CUB
290 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
William T. Kerby, on **Leo XIII and the Social Sciences/'
and Dr. Maurice Francis Egan, on **Leo XIII and Poetry.''
The closing address as made by Rev. Dr. Edmund T. Shana-
han, professor of Dogmatic Theology and Dean of the theolog-
ical faculty.
On the conclusion of these discourses, the following resolu-
tions of congratulation were read by V. Eev. Dr. Shanahan,
Dean of the Faculty of Theology.
Leo XIII, student, litterateur, sociologist, philosopher, civil gover-
nor, diplomat, statesman, priest, bishop, cardinal, pope, who shed the
luster of his many-sided personality on these several careers ; restorer
of the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas to the place of honor
in all Catholic schools; advocate of the synthetic spirit and sweep-
ing world-view of the great Dominican as an offset to the extremes
of the present-day specialization and as an incentive to a larger
outlook upon the field of human knowledge; advocate, no less, of
science and research, whereby the revelation of God in nature is
daily increased, the hardships and discomforts of life are more and
more diminished, and the truths from above are ever more surely
seen to be in concert with the discoveries from below; exhorter of
the clergy and the laity to a spirit of study in which investigation
and reconstruction should go together; patron of the science of his-
tory, who encouraged the work of a number of independent investi-
gators in history and liturgy by appointing them to membership on
the historico-liturgical commission, who opened the doors of the
Vatican archives to the scholars of the world and wrote the three
supreme canons by which all historical research should be forever
governed; patron no less of the biblical sciences, in the interest of
which he has shown a scholar's zeal, for the direction of which he
has latterly appointed a permanent commission; foreseeing friend
of the poor and needy in a world whose fat and lean kine do not
exhibit the proportions revealed in the dream of Joseph, his ancient
homonym; spokesman of the rights of labor, the worth and dignity
of the human individual, the ethical as against the purely economic
appreciation of man; adversary of socialism and all movements
threatening social order; exponent of the Christian constitution
of civil governments, the mutual rights, duties and prerogatives of
church and state in promoting, respectively, the spiritual and tem-
poral good of their subjects; supporter of The Hague Conference
and freely chosen arbiter of international disputes in the interests
of universal peace; indefatigable promoter of harmony between the
TEE PONTIFICAL JUBILEE OF LEO XIIL 291
churches of the West and the East, within and without the spiritual
commonwealth of Christ, between embittered political and religious
parties in his own and other lands ; guardian of the Christian family
and opponent of divorce ; champion of Catholic piety, practice and tra-
dition throughout the church universal; establisher of a larger and
more solidified hierarchy for purposes of a more generous spiritual life ;
founder of the Catholic University of America for the inheritance
of his spirit and the propagation of his ideas in the years that are
to be; friend of this truly great Republic of the West, in which his
watchful eyes have ever discerned a fair field for the beloved Church
Catholic whose interests have been peculiarly his in the century of
years with which we hope the Lord's bounty will crown him ere he
takes his place among the peers of the church triumphant ;
Wherefore, in the honor of this great Catholic leader, whose
sword is of the spirit; in honor of this encyclopa3dic Pontiff, whose
hospitable soul admitted an ailing and troubled world into the con-
fidence and counsel of his sympathy; in honor of this Pope of solid-
arity, who strove to restore harmony between the natural and the
supernatural, science and religion, faith and reason, piety and learn-
ing, and exemplified in his own matchless career the embodiment of
the ideals which he taught; in honor of this advocate of peace, who
sought the peace of the family, the workingman, the church, the state,
and the reunion of all Christendom by his firmly gentle and gently
firm method of conciliation, by his loftiness of purpose and nobility
of aim; who ever rendered to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's, protesting only with the
righteousness of a holy cause against the despoilment of the patri-
mony of Peter's successors and his own enforced captivity; in honor
of Leo XIII, in fine, our common spiritual father, founder and
friend, be it, and it is hereby
Resolved, That we, the rector, professors and students of the
Catholic University of America, in joint meeting assembled, after
hearing the eulogistic discourses on our Holy Father pronounced by
the members of the teaching staff of this institution, do mark this
day as sacred in our annals and do hereby give public act of expres-
sion to our sense of loyalty, love, devotion and gratitude to this noble
successor of the Fisherman, to whom it has been given to see the
years of Peter, to whom it shall be given, God grant, to enjoy
still greater length of days in governing the Kingdom' of God and
furthering the purpose of Him who died that all men might live.
These resolutions were unanimously adopted as the ex-
pression of the sentiments of filial love and veneration of the
292 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
University for its founder, Leo XIII. At the same time the
cablegram of felicitation was sent; its text and the reply of
the Holy Father are appended.^
Cardinal Eampolla, Rome, Italy: Beatissimo Patri Quern Diu
Deus Sospitet Jubilaeum Celebranti Universitatis Catholicas Americae
Borealis Rector Doctores Alumni Concilium Concionesque Ha-
bentes Gratulantur Fundatori Patrono Amico Faustos Annos Fausta
Omnia Precantur Sanctitatis Suae Pedibus Provoluti Benedictionem
Apostolicam Enixe Petunt.
CoNATY, Rector.
Reply.
Illmo. Conaty Rectori Unitersitatis CATHOLiciE, Washing-
ton, Mar. 4, 1903: Beatissimus pater grato excepit animo devotionis
sensa oblata in his pontificii jubilasi solemniis et amantissime bene-
dicit rectori doctoribus at alumnis istius sibi acceptissimse universi-
tatis.
M. Card. Rampolla.
^ The rector, professors and students of the Catholic University of America,
in joint meeting assembled for the purpose of celebrating the jubilee of Leo XIII,
their father, founder, patron and friend, rejoice with him on this glorious day,
wish him still greater fullness of years in the government of God's kingdom and
humbly ask his apostolic blessing.
{Reply.) The Holy Father has received with great pleasure the expression
of devotion conveyed to him on the occasion of his solemn pontifical jubilee, and
most affectionately sends his blessing to the Rector, professors and students of the
Catholic University, which Institution is very dear to him.
(Signed) M. Card. Rampolla.
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ALUMNI
ASSOCIATION.
The ninth annual meeting of the Alumni Association of the
Catholic University was held Wednesday, February 18, at
the Waldorf-Astoria, New York city. The president, Eev.
Patrick Hayes, was in the chair. The minutes of the last
meeting were read and accepted. The following officers were
elected for the coming year : Eev. Patrick Hayes, of New York,
president ; Rev. G. J. Lucas, D.D., of Blossburg, Pa., and Eev.
T. E. Shields, Ph.D., vice-presidents; Rev. William J. Higgins,
of Philadelphia, secretary; Mr. William H. Kelly, of New
York, treasurer; Rev. Francis P. Duffy, of New York, his-
torian; executive committee: Rev. Dr. Wm. J. Kerby, of the
University; Rev. W. A. Fletcher, D.D., of Baltimore; Rev.
John T. Driscoll, of Fonda, N. Y. ; Rev. John E. Bradley, of
Philadelphia; Mr. C. E. Martin, of Parkersburg, W. Va.
The retiring executive committee made a report concerning
the revision of the constitution. Mr. Clarence E. Martin sent
to the officers of the Association copies of a new constitution
which he had carefully prepared and to which he added a num-
ber of by-laws. The proposed constitution was submitted to the
Association. Some amendments were offered for discussion,
but final action was delayed in order to give more considera-
tion to the various changes and additions suggested.
Father Fletcher drew the attention of the Association to
the great loss the University has suffered by the death of the
learned and beloved Dr. Bouquillon. On motion the president
appointed Dr. Kerby, Fr. Fitzgerald and Dr. Fletcher a com-
mittee to draw up a resolution that should express the senti-
ments of the members in regard to the memory of the lamented
Professor of Moral Theology. The committee reported :
*'The Alumni Association has learned with deep regret of the
death of Dr. Bouquillon. The Association pays a heartfelt tribute
to the personal merit and scholarly attainment of Dr. Bouquillon and
expresses to the University its sympathy in this great loss.'*
It was ordered that a copy of the resolution be spread upon
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294 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the minutes of the meeting and that a copy be forwarded to the
Et. Eev. Rector.
It was felt by all present at the meeting that the time had
now come when the Association should give some practical
illustration of its attachment to the University. Hitherto the
members have been content to meet once a year to renew old
friendships, to gather round the festive board, to speak of
the happy hours spent at the University and to sing her praises.
But according to the constitution of the Alumni Association
the organization has other purposes beside these. The Asso-
ciation was formed not only to promote friendship among the
alumni, but also to strengthen the union between the alumni
and the University, and to further the interests of the Uni-
versity.
A very graceful means of manifesting in a substantial
way the regard of the alumni for Alma Mater was brought
to the notice of the meeting. It met at once the favor of all
present. It was learned that Dr. Bouquillon had bequeathed
his very valuable library to the University with the proviso
that the University should pay $5,000 to his heirs. The au-
thorities of the University were thoroughly acquainted with
the value of the collection which had cost the labor of a life-
time and had exercised the discriminating skill of a famous
bibliophile. Permission was obtained from the trustees to
borrow the money which would secure for the University a
collection that cannot be duplicated, containing, as it does,
many rare and costly volumes, in every way a unique con-
tribution to the needs of the University library. On the mo-
tion of Rev. J. F. Smith the following resolution was unanim-
ously adopted by the Association :
^^ Resolved, That the AlTimni Association pledge itself to raise
$5,000, to present the library of Dr. Bouquillon to the University
according to the terms of his will."
The president was empowered to appoint at his leisure
a committee which should take measures to obtain contribu-
tions from the alumni towards the proposed fund. All who
were present at the meeting are confident that there will be
a willing and early response to the request of the committee,
and that the Alumni Association will imitate in an humble
MEETING OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. 295
way the splendid example of the alumni of the American
College at Rome who have recently given a most emphatic
proof of their practical interest in their Alma Mater. The
cooperation of every alumnus of the University will be
earnestly relied upon by the Association in this its first effort
to manifest its devotion to the University.
The meeting was followed by a banquet. Sincere thanks
are due to the thoughtful care of the alumni of New York,
whose efforts to entertain the visitors surpassed all expecta-
tion. It will be difficult in the future to eclipse the elegant
hospitality displayed on that occasion. During the course of
the banquet it was announced that letters of regret were re-
ceived from His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop
Keane, Bishops 0 'Gorman and Garrigan, Drs. Dumont, Sha-
han, Shanahan, Aiken, Maguire, Neill, and from over fifty
members of the Association. All the letters received expressed
sincere attachment and loyalty to the University.
At the banquet the toasts were: *^Our Holy Father,"
Bishop Conaty; ^^The Archbishop of New York,'' Dr. Kerby;
**Our Country," Mr. Francis P. Garvan; **Our Guests," Dr.
M. Cready. The distinguished speakers were heard with
profound interest and they were interrupted many times by
vigorous and hearty applause.
The Association was highly honored by the Most Rev.
Archbishop of New York. He graciously acceded to the wish
of all present by making an address. His speech will be
memorable in the annals of the Association.
Most Reverend Archbishop Farley began his remarks by recalling
the early history of the University idea and the welcome which he
had given to it. The Church had neither organ nor institution in
the United States, through which to bring to expression higher and
advancing Catholic thought. This consciousness of a defect in our
religious life seems to have created the University idea; it has been
the support of the University ever since and to-day it is its main
inspiration.
The Archbishop dwelt at length on this important function of the
University, and he reminded the members of the Alumni Association
that the needs of the University must be gauged by that high stand-
ard. Thus measured, those needs are great. Great must be the love
and good will of the alumni, of the hierarchy, the clergy, and the
296 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Catholic laity of the nation. The possibilities of the University, when
it will be thus strengthened and supported, are magnificent.
Early trials in the University's life have not only intensified but
clarified in all members the consciousness of their noble mission. In-
difference and misunderstanding have, therefore, been providentially
sources of great strength. The University's perpetuity is assured,
the continuation of its work and its glorious success are now merely
questions of detail. Much remains to be done naturally, but we know
that it will be well done; the prospects of the University were never
brighter. It is necessary only to work with energy, with method, to
collect around the University the good will, the interest, and sympathy
of the Catholics of the nation, and to perfect internal organization.
We may trust to the blessing of God for success.
The Archbishop referred with much feeling to the presence of the
Paulists, the Fathers of the Holy Cross, the Sulpicians, the Marists,
and the Dominicans as a guarantee of the future of the University
and as a prophecy of the unifying and strengthening of our Catholic
life through the instrumentality of the University. He hoped that
others would follow their example.
He alluded briefly but in most flattering terms to the Catholic
University Bulletin, its scope and the excellence of its work, and
its value as a means of placing Catholic thought before the country.
Addressing the alumni, whose guest he was, he complimented them
on their attachment to the University and appealed to them for con-
stant active loyalty. They were to be the University 's representatives
and apostles in their life and in their work.
Concluding, the Archbishop pledged his unqualified support and
sympathy to the University, and he was emphatic in his expression
of his belief that an epoch of great activity and fruitful service to
the Church has already been begun in the University's career. Much
credit for it is due to Right Reverend Bishop Conaty, whose term
as Rector is about to expire. The work, so well directed under him,
will be taken up with equal energy and zeal by his successor.
As Joseph in his dream saw his brothers come and render homage
to him, may we not soon see the day when all of the institutions of
Catholic life in the nation, will render willing and loving homage
to the University as their pride and glory. As under Joseph's direc-
tion, the granaries were filled before the years of famine, may we not
hope to see the University, the great store-house of the seed of Faith,
preserved against the religious and spiritual famine that seems to
threaten our civilization.
Those present at the banquet were: Most Eev. John
MEETING OF TEE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION. 297
M. Farley, D.D., Archbisliop of New York; Et. Eev.
Thomas J. Conaty, Rector of the University; Very Rev.
James F. Driscoll, S.T.D., St. Joseph's Seminary, Dun-
woodie, N. Y.; Very Rev. Edward A. Pace, S.T.D., Rev.
Henry Hyvernat, S.T.D., Rev. Dr. Wm. J. Kerby, Catholic
University; Very Rev. M. W. Holland, V.F., Port Henry,
N. Y.; Rev. A. P. Doyle, C.S.P., New York; Rev. Joseph H.
McMahon, D.D., Rev. Chas. McCready, LL.D., Rev. M. C.
Farrell, Rev. P. J. Hayes, Rev. Joseph F. Smith, Rev. Francis
P. Duffy, Rev. Jno. F. Brady, Rev. William A. Courtney, Rev.
Jas. J. Keane, Rev. R. B. Cushion, Rev. Thos. J. Heafy, Rev.
Jas. V. Lewis, Rev. C. F. Crowley, Rev. Patrick J. Healy,
Rev. Francis Colety, Rev. D. J. McMackin, D.D., Rev. Jas.
P. Sheridan, Rev. Jas. F. Ferris, New York ; Messrs. William
H. Kelly, Francis P. Garvan, Thomas B. Lawler, John F.
Duane, Rev. Joseph P. McGinley, Bay Shore, N. Y.; Rev. T.
J. O'Brien, Brooklyn; Messrs. George V. Powers, Joseph G.
Powers, Central Park, L. I.; Rev. Francis J. Sheehan, Rev.
Michael J. M. Sorley, Rev. John E. Bradley, Rev. N. J. Hig-
gins, Philadelphia; Rev. J. J. Loftus, Watertown, Conn.;
Rev. John C. Ivors, Holyoke, Mass.; Rev. Michael Mulvihill,
Marion, Ohio ; Rev. J. F. Donohue, New Milf ord. Conn. ; Rev.
G. J. Lucas, D.D., Blossburg, Pa.; Rev. James J. Fox, D.D.,
St. Thomas College, Washington; Messrs. W. T. Jackson,
Isaac L. Henson, Francis de S. Smith, Washington; Mr. D.
J. Donovan, M.D., New York; Rev. John T. Driscoll Fonda,
N. Y.; Mr. John W. Smith, Washington; Rev. John T. Stin-
son, Walden, Mass.; Rev. Matias Cuevas, University; Rev.
M. G. Flannery, Far Rockaway, L. I.; Rev. Wm. J. Fitz-
gerald, Millville, N. J.; Rev. W. A. Fletcher, D.D., Baltimore;
Rev. T. E. Shields, Ph.D., University; Rev. John Fleming,
Waterbury, Conn.; Rev. Geo. F. Hickey, Milf ord, Ohio.
Next year the annual reunion will be held, in accordance
with the constitution, in Washington.
Rev. William J. Higgins,
Secretary.
REV. THOMAS LEO BARRY, S.T.L.
Eev. Thomas Leo Barry, S.T.L., of the diocese of Pitts-
burg, died March 14, 1903, at the early age of twenty-seven.
He made his preparatory studies at the College of the Holy
Ghost, Pittsburg, and his professional course at St. Mary's
Seminary, Baltimore, where he was ordained in June, 1899.
In the fall of this same year he entered the Catholic Univer-
sity as a graduate student of theology and history, giving
evidence from the beginning of the exceptional ability which
had marked his earlier career. His dissertation for the licen-
tiate degree, which he won with high honor in June, 1901, was
a very creditable piece of work, and in his public examination
for the same degree he showed a maturity of mind and judg-
ment truly commendable.
The central problem in Christian Anthropology, that,
namely, which concerns the historical development of the idea
of image and likeness, was singled out by him for investiga-
tion. The work grew in interest and importance as he pro-
ceeded, and afforded so clear an outlook upon the theology of
grace that he returned to the University in 1901 with the end
in view of pursuing his study still further for the Doctor's
degree. The better to enable him to complete a piece of work
thus auspiciously begun, as well as to pay public tribute to
the esteem in which he was held, he was to be made fellow
in the department of dogmatic theology this year. News of
his rapidly failing health came as a sad surprise to those who
felt with assurance, made doubly sure by actual achievement,
that his future was bright with promise.
Gentle, unpretentious, earnest and thorough in his char-
acter as in his work, he would be the first to deprecate, if
living, these words, no less true because kindly, which his
memory calls forth. His quiet, unobtrusive spirit was critical
without being harsh, sympathetic without being effusive, judi-
cious rather than argumentative. History furnished him with
(298)
BEV. THOMAS LEO BABBY, S.T.L. 299
the safest approach to old problems, and his positive character
of mind found great pleasure in retracing the path of an idea
down through the centuries.
Never self-assertive, he was to the members of the teach-
ing-staff as to his fellow students on all occasions the priestly
gentleman whose outward self reflected the calm of his inner
life. Men of his stamp are given to force the pace of others ;
the battle of life is not always to the strong, nor the race to
the fleet of foot, and Thomas Barry has proved that there is
a momentum in the calmest of spirits where the world is least
prone to look for its presence. May he rest in peace !
His funeral took place at Pittsburg, March 16, and Fathers
Heverin, Crane and Grant, of the University student body,
attended. On the same day a solemn Mass of requiem for the
repose of his soul was celebrated in the University chapel in
the presence of rector, professors and students. To his deeply
grieved parents and relatives the University extends sympathy
on this occasion of common loss.
NOTES AND COHMENT.
When Did St. Caecilia Suffer Martyrdom ? —Among the minor
controversies of the last decade we may set down the question of the
time of the death of the Roman martyr Caecilia. It is an old con-
troversy, but was long held to be settled by the opinion of De Rossi
that she died in 177, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Since the
death of the master, more than one of his theories has been questioned,
and among them the date of 177 for the martyrdom of Caecilia. Sev-
eral archaeologists have tried to locate her trial somewhere in the third
century, from Septimius Severus to Valerian. One, bolder than
others, has come out strongly for the reign of Julian the Apostate.
Dr. Kirsch, of the University of Friburg, has for some time advo-
cated the reign of Alexander Severus, and particularly the year 229-
230. In his interesting brochure, Dr. Bianchi-Cagliesi adheres to the
view of Dr. Kirsch, after expounding with clearness the dissenting
opinions of other scholars. He has also collected many historical
data concerning the venerable basilica that ranks among the oldest
meeting-places of the Christian society, and which has lately been
restored at the expense of its titular. Cardinal RampoUa. (Rome,
Fr. Pustet, 1902, pp. 89.)
Female Recluses in the Middle Ages — Our modem life, doubtless,
has no place for pious souls, men and women, who might desire to
shut themselves up in a small cell, close to some church or cathedral,
with a window open upon the sanctuary, and another upon the
church yard. Yet of such recluses there was once an abundance
throughout all Catholic Europe. At its best, the purpose of this
peculiar isolation was a highly mystical one— close and perpetual
union with Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. They were her-
mits in a way, and yet not cut off from the society of the town or
village. Their reputation for sanctity and the general mystical
temper of the time combined often to make them the councillors of
clergy and people, the depositories of secrets and even of portable
wealth. In England the women-recluses were known as ''Anchor-
esses," as distinguished from the men known as ** Anchorites. " A
number of stone cells still remain in England, once affected to the
use of such anchorites and anchoresses. Miss Francesca Steele has
made an entertaining book out of the odds and ends of references
to such persons in mediaeval hagiology. There is no attempt at any
(300)
N0TE8 AND COMMENTS. 301
critical description and discussion of the sources for her story— the
current data in dictionaries and ordinary hagiological collections are
accepted. A preface by Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P., on the theology
of mysticism serves as a suitable introduction to the book. It is a
pity that the scattered references to her authorities were not gathered
together in a suitable bibliography— such a service is always welcome
to the scholarly reader and often promotes the sale of older but excel-
lent works, only too easily forgotten in the actual abnormal output
of historical literature. (The Anchoresses of the West, by Francesca
M. Steele (Darley Dale), St. Louis, B. Herder, 1903, 8°, pp. xix +
257.)
The Perennial Charm of Saint Francis.— It is not unnatural that a
world overrun with materialism, and more deeply deceived than it
likes to admit should again hark back to the ''Poverello di Cristo,"
should listen once more to the simple, sweet, original poetry of the
devout Umbrian heart, in which his first disciples clothed the story
of his life. Then, the irrepressible thirst for social justice and equal-
ity, the sight of strong new walls of division rising amid our chang-
ing economical conditions, added to the scientific treatment of the
Romance literature and the earnest quasi-religious study of the medise-
val beginnings of western art, have repopularized Saint Francis, not
exactly among his own, but among a multitude of non- Catholics. In
his very remarkable "Vie de Saint Francois" Paul Sabatier has given
expression to all these neo-Protestant sympathies, and his editions
of the oldest Franciscan attempts at the story of their founder have
added to his merits. Unfortunately his thesis is enslaved to his
hypothesis, viz., that the spirit and purpose of Francis were really
anti-Roman, anti-organizational, and that violence was done him,
both living and dead, by the Roman Curia, in order to stifle the germ
of individual and irresponsible mysticism that was the essence of his
life and ideal. Under the caption ''Sons of St. Francis" we have a
popularization of the writings and the hypotheses of the school of
M. Sabatier. In spite of the loose journalistic English of the work,
there are both life and color in its pages, and the author has often
caught the inspiration of the peculiar conditions of the thirteenth
century amid which Saint Francis arose and flourished. Perhaps the
best pages are those descriptive of that ''rara avis" among mediaeval
chroniclers, the gossipy, wandering, highly personal and' independent
Fra Salimbene of Parma. Only too often the author manifests great
ignorance of the Catholic doctrine of sanctity— its history, its points
of contact with society, manners, daily life, prejudices, aspirations,
302 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ideals, states of culture, intellectual, social and economic conditions
and the like. Saint Francis is no ** Reformer before the Reformers,*'
no enemy, tacit or otherwise, of the Roman Church. The fine but
misdirected genius of M. Sabatier can accomplish no more than the
historical erudition and insight of Uhlmann and a host of others
who seek for the essence of the Lutheran revolution away from its
authentic and sufficient sources and causes. (Sons of St. Francis, by
Anne Macdonnell, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902, 8°, pp.
436).
The Abjuration of Jeanne D* Arc— In the course of the process of
canonization of Jeanne d'Arc, the fact of her abjuration of her
famous ** voices" and confession of imposture, deception, supersti-
tion, blasphemy, and violation of the divine law, the Holy Scriptures
and the Canons of the Church, has naturally come up for discussion.
The abbe Ulysse Chevalier, in a brochure of eighty-eight pages, sub-
mits the entire "sujet lugubre et angoissant" to a penetrating critical
examination. After a minute study of all the original texts, in their
chronological order and according to their reliability, and after a
careful investigation of the rules of fifteenth-century inquisitorial
procedure, he concludes that the process of the '*Maid" was canon-
ically ''beyond a doubt invalid and null." The act of abjuration, as
now found in the documents of the process, is either a forgery or
much interpolated— the witnesses agreeing at a later date that it
contained only seven or eight lines, whereas the actual (French)
document contains some fifty lines. M. Chevalier nevertheless main-
tains (p. 86) that the **Maid" was not thereby justified for her
abjuration and retractation **in extremis." It would seem, however,
from his own expose of the physical and moral pressure brought
against the wonderful girl that we are in presence of that **metus"
which in the eyes of the Church robs an act of its "human" char-
acter, nullifies in it the element of responsibility, and reduces it to
the rank of deeds performed under the blind compelling laws or
instincts of nature. The study of M. Chevalier is otherwise a model
of concise and objective criticism; its bibliographical notes are abun-
dant and very useful ; its judgments habitually sane and conservative.
The publishers are not too bold when they say of this brochure that
it is a ''regal pour les connoisseurs et une des pieces essentielles a
consulter sur la vie de Theroine." (L 'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc
au cimetiere de Saint Ouen et I'authenticite de sa formule, Paris,
Picard, 1902, 8°, pp. 88.)
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 303
Sources of French History.— Students of mediaeval history will
welcome the third fascicule of the "Sources de I'Histoire de France"
that we owe to the learned direction of M. Molinier. In the number
before us, the historians of the later Capetian dynasty (1180-1328) are
treated with the same fulness and proportion that distinguish the
two previous issues. Over three thousand (3,092) writers on French
mediaeval history are now described in this work that deserves a
place in every public and private library. (Paris, Pi card, 82 Rue
Bonaparte, 1903.)
The Truth of Papal Claims — Under this caption Mgr. Merry Del
Val publishes the results of a controversy between himself and an
Anglican clergyman at Rome in the winter of 1902. Only the more
remarkable arguments for the supremacy of the Roman See are set
forth, and these are drawn principally from the Christian Fathers
of the first five centuries. It is difficult in a controversy to make
clear the full value of these ancient texts: the adversary's mind is
usually clouded by prejudices and pre-occupations of a remote and
often intangible character. Nevertheless, Mgr. Del Val has pro-
duced a good work, small in compass, but very useful for the general
reader, and sufficient to illustrate the strength of the immemorial
Catholic tradition. (B. Herder, St. Louis, 1902, 8°, pp. 129 + xv.)
The Civilization of the Philippines.— It is a pity that some friendly
hand did not "castigate" the English style of the booklet that under
the above title presents excellent considerations on the great merits
of the religious orders in the civilization of the Philippines. The
translators of this and similar brochures have doubtless rendered the
sense of their Spanish originals— but at every page the English-
speaking man must "start and stare" at the unidiomatic phraseology,
improper use of prepositions, and generally foreign air of the whole
page. Catholics know a priori that the labors of the orders
are the true source of whatever civilization exists in the Philip-
pines. What is now wanted is the proper presentation, in fully
documentated and illustrated works, of the past history of the Philip-
pines. As it is, the truth suffers from the absence of a respectable
Catholic literature in English concerning our island possessions.
:(Thomas J. Flynn, Boston, 1903, 8°, pp. 72.)
The Hand of God in American History.— Is there a divine Provi-
dence shaping for good our national life? Principal Thompson is
firmly persuaded that such direction is visible in our history from
its very beginning. In illustration of his thesis he treats philosoph-
304 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ically the great events and the main features of our public life from
the colonial period down to our own time. Naturally in the multi-
tude of appreciations that fall from his pen as he surveys three cen-
turies of a new and unexampled human activity, there are some from
which many will dissent. His political point of view is frankly stated
and vigorously defended. He is wedded to the belief in a "Scotch-
Irish" national element. But, aside from minor deficiencies, his book
is remarkable for elevation of sentiment, and for large Christian
views of public life, wealth, equality, labor, and charity. His views
on education (pp. 212-217) are very sane and correct. What he has
to say (pp. 105-117) on Immigration as a factor in the upbuilding
of the American state is well worth an attentive reading. Principal
Thomson looks with courage and hopefulness on the future of a people
which, in the past, has conquered nature and itself, has often risen
to the highest human conception of justice, and responds yet to the
great Christian impulses and influences that moulded its present
greatness. He is impartial, as may be seen from his pages on the
causes of the Mexican War and on the actual condition of the negro.
He writes with much concision, yet his pages are often picturesque
and always throb with feeling and the high passion of an enlightened
patriotism. (T. Y. CroweU and Co., New York, 1902, 8°, pp. 235.)
Religious Liberty in Maryland and Rhode Island Rev. Lucian
Johnston, S.T.L., offers in a pamphlet bearing this suggestive title a
summary of the evidence concerning certain dissenting claims to
priority in the matter of religious toleration in the New World, or
rather within the actual territory of the United States. Rhode
Island's foundation dates from 1636, and taking it for granted that
absolute religious liberty was thenceforth the law and custom of
that colony, it might seem to have priority over Maryland, which
passed its famous Toleration Act in 1649. But Father Johnston
maintains that the latter date cannot be taken as the beginning of
religious liberty in Maryland. That colony really dates from the
Avalon patent (1623), ** logically and historically the beginning of
Maryland." At any rate, religious toleration is already in the
Charter of Maryland (1632) and in the practice of the colony since
1634. Fr. Johnston is even of opinion (p. 13) that this toleration
extended to non-Christians. The method of the writer is the proper
and sure one of consulting the original documents. He reads into
these documents nothing of his own, at least consciously, and his
interpretation of them is sustained habitually by non-Catholic writers.
This presentation of an important chapter of American history de-
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 305
serves to be placed before the teachers and children of our parochial
schools; it would make excellent supplementary reading for the
upper classes in the history of the United States. Fr. Johnston
discusses with sincerity and writes with calmness, as the following
paragraph of his *' Conclusion" will show:
''After this rather minute examination of the evidence, the pres-
ent writer reiterates his general conclusion expressed in the beginning
—to wit: that a comparison between Maryland and Rhode Island
as to their priority in the establishment of religious liberty is some-
what idle. At least, it is not likely to result in changing the now
generally settled convictions of the parties to the dispute. And for
a reason which must be evident to the reader— namely, that the
whole question revolves around an interpretation of written docu-
ments rather than the finding out of facts. We have all the facts.
We disagree in their interpretation. Both parties by approaching
the subject with preconceived opinions (as mostly all do, and will
continue to do), can honestly interpret these facts in diametrically
opposite fashions.
"The obvious question then suggests itself: Why has this paper
been written ? I answer, that it were well for it to have been written,
if it does nothing else than present the evidence clearly, so that most
readers will see the futility of a dispute which never can end as long
as interpretations of that evidence will (as they must) conflict. It
has served a still higher purpose if it convince a few that, after all,
it is better to take a broader view of the whole affair, i. e., to overlook
the petty question of a few years priority, and regard both Lord
Baltimore and Roger Williams as practically simultaneous forces in
the movement towards religious freedom; forgiving the faults and
errors of both, in view of their nobler motives; and seeking, as far
as in us lies, to imitate the good they did. Such a view is nobler in
itself, and infinitely more productive of sound sense and mutual
good feeling."
One regrets the absence of a table of contents and an alphabetical
index. Otherwise the pamphlet is a tasty and meritorious produc-
tion that could easily be swelled into a very useful book— many of its
brief paragraphs barely state the outlines of stirring events and
measures that it were well to know in greater detail. There is always
much instruction in the phraseology of the contemporary documents
and literature. We hope that some day Fr. Johnston will undertake
this task, if only as a labor of love. (International Catholic Truth
Society, Brooklyn, 1903, 8°, pp. 56. Ten cents.)
20CUB
306 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Irish Rhode Islanders in the American Revolution^— Mr. Thomas
Hamilton Murray, the efficient Secretary-General of the American-
Irish Historical Society, has placed upon the future historians of the
American Revolution a serious burden of gratitude, by a series of
publications in which he has gathered the names of many Irishmen
who served in the armies of the young republic. From the muster
and size rolls of the Revolution, records of the General Assembly of
Rhode Island, official war correspondence, company and regimental
reports, and other authoritative sources (p. 13) he has collected the
numerous facts that go to establish indubitably the share of Ireland
in the glory of American Independence. Mr. Murray has not only
made out a long list of Rhode Island Irishmen ; he has also collected
the names of many others who came from Massachusetts and New
Hampshire to serve in the quota of Rhode Island. Every such con-
tribution to the history of the upbuilding of the world's greatest
republic is of value riot alone to the scholars of the present, but to
those of the future. It is only when a multitude of such painstaking
monographs is at hand, making known and using the forgotten
original sources for these special studies, that the future historians
of the Revolution can allot scientifically to Ireland the merit which,
in a general way, has never been honestly denied. (The American-
Irish Historical Society, Providence, R. I., 1903, 8°, pp. 90.)
Early Americana of Interest — The latest issue of the meritorious
*' Historical Records and Studies" of our New York Catholic Histor-
ical Society possesses more than a local interest. It contains from the
pen of Dr. Benjamin F. DeCosta an account of the famous terrestrial
globe of Pope Marcellus II (1555), and incidentally the proofs of
the thesis that in the spring of 1524 the Catholic navigator Giovanni
da Verazzano did, first of all Europeans, enter the harbor of New
York and proceed some distance up the Hudson River. He was in
the service of Francis II, and had sailed from Dieppe, reaching the
coast of South Carolina on February 27. Very soon San Germano
and the River of St. Anthony appear on maps of the New World as
the first European names for the New York and the Hudson, the gay
palace of Francis I and the mystic Franciscan saint as forerunners
of imperial Eboracum and a London sailor. Made at Rome in 1542,
perhaps under the direction of Marcellus Cervinus while yet a car-
dinal, this globe offers an interesting evidence of the rapidity with
which discoveries in America were heralded through Europe. An-
other paper of absorbing interest is the scholarly resume given by
Dr. Charles George Herbermann of the cartographical discoveries of
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 307
Fr. Fischer, S.J., whereby the first known map of America (1507)
has become the property of the learned world. We dare say that,
in so brief a space, there is no more satisfactory account of the results
attained by the new school of European cartographers who have for
some time been seeking in old maps, pre-Columbian and post-Colum-
bian, for a solution of many problems concerning the earliest Ameri-
can discoveries that can never be solved from purely literary sources.
THE BARONIUS SOCIETY.
The purpose of the Baronins Society is to secure annually
for the Catholic University, particularly for the use of its
Historical Academy, the best books on Church History, ac-
cording^ as they are printed at home or abroad.
Every priest and every cultivated lay Catholic recognize
the great need of excellent libraries, well equipped with the
latest historical literature. Discussion, attack, and insinua-
tion are more than ever carried on along the lines of historj\
Hence, the old theological libraries no longer furnish pro-
fessors, students, and workers just the class of books they
need to defend and illustrate their faith.
In the last fifty or sixty years a multitude of excellent
Catholic works in every department of Church History have
appeared in French, German, Italian, English, Spanish, and
even other languages. Many excellent historical reviews
have been founded and still continue their output of research,
defence, illustration and refutation. Countless monographs
have been printed on nearly every problem, institution, per-
sonality known to Church History.
New and critical editions of old ecclesiastical writers have
been published both by Catholics and non-Catholics, so that
it is a shame to cite antiquated texts, when scholarly editions
are now accessible.
A multitude of original authorities, but little known, or
hard to consult, are now before us in large collections or in
separate editions. For many such works the new edition is
final. All of these contain material of manifold utility for
Church History, that great and final battle-field between the
Church and all heresies.
Even among the works of the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries not a few are yet of great service to the
historian for the valuable and rare documents they contain.
This is notably true of the numerous historical collections
owing to learned Benedictines, Jesuits, Franciscans, Domin-
icans and other studious orders and congregations of that time.
( 308 )
TEE BAR0NIU8 SOCIETY, 309
We are anxious to complete at once the historical collec-
tions of the past, so that there shall be at least one centrally
located library in the United States where a Catholic scholar
can find every book of any practical use in Church History
since the invention of printing.
We are anxious to secure an annual fund that will enable
us to buy every good book likely to be useful to the Catholic
Church now or in the future, for the defence of her magnifi-
cent work in the civilization of Asia, Europe and America.
It is not necessary to have at once a large sum of money,
A modest yearly income will represent considerable capital
and enable us to order many valuable books on Church His-
tory as soon as they are printed.
This will help our theological students in the preparation
of their dissertations. Often the labor of several years is
left incomplete for the want of many useful new books. Our
licentiate and doctor candidates feel this very keenly. They
have the skill, the method, the knowledge; but the weapons
and equipment are wanting. As the University is young,
this is no disgrace. But it can be removed or diminished by
good-will and a little self-sacrifice.
There should be at Washington a first-class library of
reference for all questions pertaining to Church History,
The teachers of Church History have received hundreds of
letters in the past, to answer which satisfactorily required
far better equipment than we then possessed, or do now.
Every year scholarly men, priests and laymen, come to
do work in our libraries. With the great increase of Catholic
population owing to the results of the Spanish War, scholars
and legislators will welcome more and more a rich Historical
Library on our grounds. The work of the Apostolate of the
Mission Fathers to non-Catholics makes it desirable that all
the historical collections of the University should be completed
and kept up to date.
Five dollars a year entitles one to membership in the
Baronius Society. No one feels the burden very heavy, and
yet the collective effort produces a permanent result beneficial
to all students, whether their need be that of calm research or
the refutation of some belated slander. The more neatly and
310 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
scientifically the latter class of work is done, the less will be
the need of returning to the task.
Those who wish to become benefactors of the Society may
do so by contributing annually such larger sums as their
generosity suggests or their means permit. There are many
kinds of charity; the Catholic Church ha& always approved
and honored charity exercised toward academic institutions
and purposes. Such cannot appeal to the people like a dio-
cese or a parish; they must wait till the refined and noble-
hearted think of them.
An annual report will he issued, showing the moneys re-
ceived from members and benefactors, also the full titles of
all the books purchased therewith since the last report.
All books purchased with the funds of the Baronius So-
ciety shall be the property of the Catholic University of
America, be stamped with its seal, and be accessible to all
its students.
Members and benefactors will receive a copy of any pub-
lication that may be issued by the Society.
The roll of membership will be exhibited publicly in Cald-
well Hall.
The students of the University will be exhorted to re-
member daily in their prayers all who generously contribute
to the work of building up the historical department of the
University Library.
All correspondence and moneys should be addressed to
the treasurer of the Society, Eev. Thomas J. Shahan, D.D.,
Professor of Church History, Catholic University, Washing-
ton, D. C.
UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE.
The Washington Discourse.— On Tuesday, February 24, Hon.
Hannis Taylor, member of the Spanish Treaty Claim Commission,
and ex-Minister to Spain, delivered the annual discourse on George
Washington.
Annual Spiritual Retreat.— The annual retreat was conducted this
year by the Rev. Felix Ward, C.P., of the Passionist Monastery at
West Hoboken, N. J.
University Celebrations — The Faculty of Theology celebrated its
annual patronal feast on January 25, the commemoration of the Con-
version of Saint Paul. The Rev. Fr. Walter Elliott, C.S.P., delivered
an appropriate discourse. On March 7, the Faculty of Philosophy
celebrated the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Rev. Dr. Maguire de-
livered an appropriate oration.
Portrait of Cardinal Martinelli.— A fine portrait of Cardinal Mar-
tinelli, done in oils, has been presented to the University by the artist,
Mr. Thomas Eakins of Philadelphia. It is an excellent piece of work
and represents the Cardinal in the street dress of his rank.
Very Rev. Dr. Grannan Member of the Biblical Commission. —Very
Rev. Dr. Charles P. Grannan has received through the Papal Delega-
tion at Washington the Pontifical Brief appointing him a member
of the International Biblical Commission created by his Holiness
Pope Leo XIII. The Commission which was first appointed in
August, 1901, consisted originally of twelve members, one from each
of the principal Catholic countries. It was subsequently discovered
that the work was so extensive that the Commission originally named
would be inadequate to perform the task imposed. The Commission
has recently been reorganized and two Cardinals have been added
to the original three; while the number of Consultors has been in-
creased to forty members, comprising the most prominent Biblical
scholars in the Church. It is a matter of sincere gratification to the
University that it should have a representative in this distinguished
body. For his fatherly condescension the University will always
hold in grateful remembrance the person of Leo XIII.
Lectures by Dr. Pace.— In response to an invitation from the
Twentieth Century Club, Dr. Pace delivered, January 24, an ad-
811
312 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
dress in Boston on ''Moral Education." He also lectured at Bryn
Mawr College, February 20, on ''Medieval Views of Brain Function."
Bishop Spalding's Lecture on Education.— On Wednesday after-
noon, March 18, the Right Rev. J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria,
and one of the trustees of the University, lectured in McMahon Hall
on Education, before a very large audience. Over a thousand people
representing all classes of the National Capital, greeted the distin-
guished prelate. The large hall was crowded to overflowing, as were
also the corridors leading to the entrances. The day was beautiful
and pleasant, and the distinguished audience was a tribute to one
who is recognized as the foremost leader in the religious and educa-
tional life of the country. Seated on the platform with the Right
Rev. Rector were his Excellency, the Papal Delegate, Most Rev.
Archbishop Falconio; his secretary. Very Rev. Mgr. F. Z. Rooker,
D.D. ; the Mexican Ambassador, Senor Don Manuel de Azpiroz;
Rev. Jerome Daugherty, S.J., president of Georgetown University;
Rev. Edward X. Fink, S.J., president of Gonzaga College; Brother
Abdas, president of St. John's College; Hon. John Lee Carroll, ex-
Governor of Maryland; Hon. Judge Barry, of Winnepeg, Manitoba;
Gen. E. C. 0 'Brien, of New York ; Hon. Hannis Taylor, former
Minister to Spain ; Dr. "William F. Byrns, Dr. A. J. Faust, Professor
Cleveland Abbe, Hon. Terence V. Powderly, members of the different
faculties of the University, and a large number of the reverend
clergy from Washington. In his introduction the Rector, Right
Rev. Bishop Conaty, spoke of the deep interest taken by the Bishop
in university work, and described him as one of its most devoted
friends, who never failed in all circumstances to manifest a vital
interest in its establishment and development.
The discourse of Bishop Spalding was in every sense a masterly
one, and held the attention of the distinguished audience for more
than an hour.
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
VOL. X. JULY, igoj. No. 3.
" Let there be progress, therefore ; a widespread and eager prog-
ress in every century and epoch, both of individuals and of the
general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress
in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their na-
tural limits and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teach-
ing, feeling and opinion."— St. Vincent of Lkbins, Ckmmonit, c. 6.
PUBWSHED QUARTERI^Y BY
THE CATHOIylC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA,
LANCASTER, PA., and WASHINGTON, D. C.
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY,
LANCASTER, PA.
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
Vol. IX. July, igos. No. j.
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE.
By the word *^ Renaissance'' is usually meant that period
of mediaeval history in which the ideas, tastes, artistic princi-
ples, and the political spirit of Grseco-Roman or pagan an-
tiquity for the first time asserted themselves in Christian
society, and finally, to a greater or lesser extent, prevailed and
affected the development of all Christian peoples. The time,
roughly speaking, is the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—
though the glorious and typical period really comes to an end
with the death of Pope Leo the Tenth, and the careers of
Raphael and Michael Angelo. In something less than one
hundred years there occurred, chiefly in Italy, a vigorous ad-
vance in all that pertained to classical learning and the fine
arts. First the Latin and then the Greek authors of antiquity
were either discovered for the first time, or studied and appre-
ciated from a new point of view. The best manuscript copies
of them were sought out with avidity. Popes and kings,
bishops and rich individuals, kept great scholars travelling
in all directions for such literary treasures. An unknown work
of Cicero, or a fragment of Tacitus, was hailed with scarcely
less enthusiasm than the discovery of America. The conflict
of the great popes of Rome and the emperors of Germany,
the political failure of the Crusades, the increase of the city
populations, and the growth of new cities, the perfection of
social intercourse, the rise of great banking houses, the in-
315
316 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
creased value of arable lands, the growing trade of Venice
and Genoa and Florence with the Orient— the only immediate
result of the Crusades— were so many remote causes of this
revival, which is less a sudden outgrowth than a natural de-
velopment of the Middle Ages.
Then, the popes had come back to Eome at the opening
of this period. The unhappy schisms that were rending Eu-
rope before the rival claims of three or four bishops to the
See of Rome had been finally settled at the Council of Con-
stance (1418) to the content of Christendom, and that ponti-
fical unity restored which has now lasted for five hundred
years. Rome was again a center of government, and the
papacy again a Roman institution. It was no longer in the
hands of one nation, France, nor dominated by the interests
of that one people. Italy itself had gradually emerged from
the political anarchy of the fourteenth century into a certain
unity. Five great states were solidly established on the Italian
peninsula and held a balance of power that was not disturbed
with success until the end of the fifteenth century, when the
municipal revolutions of Florence opened to France, Spain,
and Austria the road of successive domination over the peo-
ples of Italy. To these five states— Naples, Venice, Florence,
Milan, and Rome— were subject a multitude of smaller cities
and principalities, in greater or lesser degree, with more or
less acquiescence. Some of these states were quite feudal
and aristocratic, others quite popular and democratic. Still,
the land was administered with a certain regularity of system.
The prosperity of Italy was perhaps never greater; there
were wars and sieges and revolutions— but they were seldom
bloody. The Italians themselves are now traders and farm-
ers. The wars are carried on by wandering bands of
hired ruffians from Germany and England and France—
the famous Condottieri, whose aim is always to save their
own carcasses and extort the last penny from their em-
ployers. Nearly everywhere the old popular liberties
have lost their meaning, the popular constitutions have
ceased to operate, and the political power is held by some
bold and resourceful man. Liberty had mostly been be-
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 317
gotten in turbulence and disorder— when the period of par-
turition was over the masses sank exhausted to the level of
mere enjoyment. In the Italian city-states henceforth it is
the age of the ''tyrants," the ''despots," very much like
certain periods of old Greek history, when the richest mer-
chant in the state seized on the reins of authority, slew or
exiled or imprisoned the heads of factions, imposed his will on
the people, gave them peace and comfort, and put the reve-
nues in his own treasury. Italy was dominated by these men
—the Medici in Florence, the Farnesi at Naples, the Visconti
and Sforza at Milan, the Baglioni at Perugia, the Malatesta at
Eimini, and a host of smaller but no less masterful men, no less
quick watchful and resolute. They were nearly all new men,
either scions of the smaller nobility, or daring spirits from the
lower strata of Italian life. None of them inherited his power.
Each one got it by some deed of violence or cunning, some
great personal act of intelligent political boldness or "virtu"
that command universal attention and admiration. Of course,
he held his standing, his "stato" by the same policy. To
such men the classical revival, particularly the Latin, became
an instrument of government. The native Latin scholars got
employment and salaries and distinction from them. It came
about that an Italian man could advance more quickly with
a Latin speech of Ciceronian elegance, or a mouthful of sharp
and pungent epigrams, than with a big warhorse and a coat of
mail. Moreover, all this was in the history and manners of the
people of Italy, whose soil had been for centuries the "danc-
ing-field of Mars," the "dark and bloody ground" of Europe.
The centers of government were no longer the lonely castles
or cloud-kissing burgs of the Apennines or the Abruzzi. The
hard and unlovely feudal rule of Colonna and Orsini, of
Frangipani and Conti, was over with the Gregories and the
Innocents, the Henrys and the Fredericks. Italy was now
governed as of old, from her cultured cities. She still knew
only a government by imperium, but it was now to be ex-
ercised with the moderation born of humanitas.' The stern
mediaeval fortress was abandoned with its moat and its draw-
bridge, and the house of the despot, the very spot where he
318 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
had risen to greatness, was enlarged, beautified, and made the
seat of government. Enough big Germans and Englishmen,
adventurers and semi-outlaws of all Europe, were kept on
hand to overawe the unruly elements of the population, to
form a bodyguard for the despot, but the palace was given
over practically to the enjoyment of life— to the recitation of
poems and tales of chivalry, to musical and theatrical enter-
tainments, to every kind of amusement that could beguile the
uncertain leisure of the master and his numerous household,
or distract the wealthy and the influential from meditation on
the gilded slavery into which they had fallen. The despot ^s
position was by no means secure from revenge, envy, or
popular whim. Now and then velleities, vague souvenirs of
liberty, awoke faintly in the heart of some exalted youth, or
romantically transfigured reminiscences of popular freedom
stirred up some belated Rienzi. But the Italian peoples were
now prosperous in peace, and all such fruitless efforts stand
out as proofs of the general contentment with the political
situation. The republican spirit was dead, and the peninsula
was moving through despotism and oligarchy to its final
monarchical constitution.
The last century was the great epoch of inventions. They
crowd one another so fast ; we are so near them, so in the midst
of the far-reaching social changes they are imposing on us,
that we can not yet appreciate with finality their importance.
So it was in the fifteenth century with practical politics. Events
of the greatest interest for the world followed with startling
rapidity on one another— the healing of the great Schism of
the West (1418), the Fall of Constantinople (1453), the growth
of Venice as queen of the seas, the natural ambition of regen-
erated France to pose as political mistress of Europe, the
simultaneous creation of a splendid Spanish monarchy that
dominated Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands, and
undertook to dispute those claims of France on a hundred
bloody fields. On all sides human interest, curiosity, energy,
were aroused. Infinite opportunities arose, even before the
discovery of America. Man came almost at once to know
himself as the source of the greatest things, to look on him-
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 319
self as capable of infinite progress in any direction. After
the long mediasval era of collectivism an era of individualism
liad set in, and the Italian man was the best equipped for the
new order of things. His experience, bought in blood and
tears, in a multitudinous wrestling of several centuries, was
his title to preeminency. A long series of historical events
was behind him, during which all the great factors of Euro-
pean life had arisen, developed and conflicted with one another.
It was an hour, if ever, for the philosopher of history, and he
was at hand. It was in this Italian political world, at once
old and new— old with the religious heart and experience, the
faith and the family life of the Middle Ages ; new with all the
prophetic stirrings and impulses of the future— that Latin and
Greek learning, the poets, philosophers and historians of
pagan antiquity, found the nation of disciples best fitted for
them. The Italian tongue is the Latin tongue of the common
people, peasantry, and soldiers of old Rome, only modified by
contact with the Teutonic dialects and filled with a new Chris-
tian content and spirit through contact with Catholicism. So
the Latin classics, as they came back into daily life with
Petrarch and Boccaccio and their nameless contemporaries,
with Valla and Poggio and so many others, awoke from their
secular sleep, as it were in their own family circle. Their
spirit and their ideals of life and man, their vague or negative
teaching about the soul and the future, their amorphous
notions of God, righteousness, sin and evil, their cold cynicism
and ruinous agnosticism, their ineffable obscenity and their
cringing adulation of force and success, their hopeless moral
debasement and their refined intellectualism— all these things
came back with them and appealed to the rising generation of
Italians with a siren voice. Literature was always their
national weakness, and the sources and agencies of it-
schools, books, writing— were always better preserved in Italy
than elsewhere. The monuments of Roman grandeur were
there; her cities never forgot that they were the homes of the
great poets; Mantua boasted of Vergil's birth, and Naples of
possessing his tomb ; Padua was proud of her historian Livy,
and Tibur of her satirist Horace. It was the first thing that
320 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the children in the schools learned and the last thing that the
aged citizens forgot. All through the fifteenth century went
on a constant excavation of the soil on the sites of these ancient
cities, with the result that thousands of marble statues were
found, the best work of a multitude of those Greek sculptors
of the early empire who repeated for their imperial masters, at
Ehodes or elsewhere on the coast of Asia Minor, the master-
pieces of the glorious art of their Hellenic fatherland. The
Law of Rome, that perfect mirror of the genius of the Eternal
City, had for four hundred years been the constant study of
Italians, both laymen and clerics, and thereby they had risen
to eminence, not only at home, but in every land of Europe.
Its spirit of absolutism, its enticing suggestions and examples
of administrative centralization, its large and luminous prin-
ciples, its appeals to human reason and the common experience
of mankind, its temper of finality and practical infallibility,
made it the great working code of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries— likewise the sepulchre of mediaeval liberties and
independence.
This universal Italian interest, as commentators and ex-
pounders of an old national system of law and order, naturally
developed much intellectual liberty. A lawyer is notor-
iously useless if he cannot see at least one other side to every
question that can arise. And there were many of them in con-
temporary Italy who had been long accustomed like Hudi-
bras, to
*' Distinguish and divide
A hair 'twixt south and southwest side. ' '
Then, too, the layman had never been so ignorant in Italy
as in Germany and England. Not only was the career of the
law always open to him, but also that of schoolmaster, of
notary, of tutor— and the noble and rich youth of Italy was
always brought up by tutors. Vettorino da Feltre and Guarino
da Verona were only excellent in a multitude of lay teachers
of the quattrocento. The man of Italy was architect, artist,
jurist, traveller, merchant— in a word, just as the bishops
of Italy dominate less in the political life of the nation than
those of Germany or England, so there was in every city and
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 321
town a clear-headed and self-conscious percentage of laymen,
highly educated for the time, and persuaded that they were
the representatives of the majesty of ancient Rome. Their
hearts and minds were of course like wax for the new move-
ment toward a revival of the times in which their forefathers
had governed all civilized humanity.
These elements alone would have sufficed to create a
Renaissance of learning on the soil of Italy. And, indeed, it
was far advanced when Greek scholarship came to its aid, and
gave it a powerful impulse and a logical basis. As a matter
of fact the poetry philosophy and art of Rome were originally
borrowed from the Greeks. The Roman, left to himself, was a
shrewd farmer, a patient obedient soldier, a painstaking
lawyer. Farther afield in the world of the mind, the Catos and
Scipios never went— in fact, they scented a grave danger in
the absolute intellectualism of Greece as soon as it rose above
their social horizon. But the fine mind of Greece was too beau-
tiful—and beauty has always an hour of victory— to be kept
out of the Roman City. And so from Ennius to Vergil, it was
the schoolmistress of the heavy rustic Latin, a tongue of fields
and cows, of beans and peas and fodder, of rough policemen
and dickering peddlers. The Roman knew that his soiil had
no wings, but he bore the veiled sarcasm of his Athenian or
Corinthian teacher for love of the graceful forms into which
he was soon able to cast his thoughts, the very ones that he had
borrowed from the gifted children of Hellas. He had de-
stroyed their archaic autonomy, he had laid waste their small
but marvellous state— this was their revenge, that in .the hour
of gross material triumph the spirit of Rome prostrated itself
before the spirit of Greece and divided with the latter the
hegemony of mankind.
And so, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, when
that splendid seat of Greek life and thought, Constantinople,
was unhappily lost to Christendom, there was an exodus, a
flight of its learned proletariat, the gifted and needy but often
unprincipled and immoral scholars of the Christian Orient.
From the Golden Horn and the Greek cities of Asia Minor they
came in great numbers to Italy. Every city of the peninsula
322 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
welcomed tliem, every little court invited them. Only, Flor-
ence, the City of the Golden Lilies, was especially generous.
Here a great family of merchant-princes and bankers, the
Medici, had long been absorbing, by a complicated system of
accounts, the political authority, long been debasing the demo-
cratic spirit of the once rude and proud commonwealth by the
Amo. Cosimo de 'Medici, and his grandson Lorenzo the Mag-
nificent, were among the extraordinary men of history— self-
willed, working now by cunning, now by violence, gifted with
a clear untroubled vision of their aims and the practical means
to attain them, rich beyond past example, judiciously prodigal,
cautious and certain in their deliberate enslavement of the
Florentine. In and through the Medici, themselves enriched
democrats, the democracies of northern Italy finally fell a prey
to the new monarchies that it took a Napoleon to overthrow.
But if they were enemies of the popular liberties, the Medici
were the patrons of letters and arts. Their money flowed like
water for manuscripts of the Greek and Latin classics, for
museums and galleries where all the curiosities of antiquity
were gathered, for collections of coins and medals, for every
bit of skilled handiwork— engravings, bronzes, marbles,
ivories, miniatures, intaglios, jewels— for all that was rich,
rare, and beautiful. Lender their protection the learning and
poetry of Greece were made known again to Italy after an
estrangement of twelve centuries. Aristotle was taught, but
not the barbarous Aristotle of the schools— he was now read
in the original texts. Above all, Plato was set up as the true
master of the mind, the one man who held the secrets of ex-
istence both here and hereafter. His magisterium was un-
questioned, his mellifluous sentences were held the very breath-
ing of divinity. His highly spiritual philosophy drove out
from the schools the exact and severe logic of the Stagirite.
At the same time its vague and uncertain idealism ate in like a
cancer upon the stern moral conceptions of life, duty, sin,
judgment, that were essential to Christianity. For severity of
principles there were set up serenity, placidity of soul, equable-
ness and moderation of views, a large and calm tolerance of
all opinions, based on the assumption that there was nothing
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, 323
in the realm of tlionglit but opinions, and that the correct thing
was to have only such as were lovely and beautiful.
The doctrines of Plato are, indeed, reconcilable with Chris-
tianity, which can always find some truth, some utility in every
human philosophy. This reconciliation was once executed by
the Christian fathers— Saints Gregory of Nazianzum and Gre-
gory of Nyssa, Saint Basil the Great, Saint John Chrysostom,
and others, men of sincere and enlightened faith. It could not
be repeated by the Byzantine Greeks of the Eenaissance, who
were only too often infidels at heart, scandalized by the suc-
cess of Mohammed, and still oftener libertines in conduct and
principle. Nevertheless, a holy and learned cardinal like
Bessarion, a mystic gentle priest like Marsilio Ficino, and a
multitude of men like them, did believe that the divine Plato
was as another Messiah, and that his refined and superior
naturalism could somehow be the bridge over which the
modem world would go into the fold of Jesus Christ. It was
an excusable error, but a profound error, and its influence on
all after civilization of Europe has been incalculable.
All these new influences were intimately related to the
primum mobile of Italian life— the fine arts. Architecture,
painting, sculpture and music, were true educators at all times
of the Italian soul, very susceptible and plastic, particularly
open to external influences. In this the Italians differed little
from other peoples who live beneath a cloudless sky, in a land
of perpetual sunshine, amid the charms of a bounteous and
smiling nature.
Italy had never heartily adopted the Gothic architecture.
The soft and even climate called for broad open and light-
some spaces, while the clear and cultivated genius of the
people was opposed to the dim uncertain lines and the semi-
darkness of the Northern Gothic. They adopted, indeed, such
details as were compatible with florid ornamentation— the
pointed arch, the window of colored glass. But the so-called
Gothic churches of Italy are always more Eomanesque than
Gothic, seldom if ever the nicely poised and balanced frame-
work that rises like a perfect problem in calculus. Even these
small concessions to the mediseval spirit were soon withdrawn.
324 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The architecture of the Italian Eenaissance becomes frankly
pagan. The unfinished churches of their Middle Ages, and
they were many, are often completed after the style of a pagan
temple. Everywhere there is absolute symmetry of level lines,
cold unrelieved plain surfaces, perfect proportions of columns
and stories— a bookish architecture with little or no free-rang-
ing personality. Who are now the builders'? It is no longer
the strong spiritual bishop rousing his people to raise before
the world a fitting temple for the God of all natural beauty. It
is the merchant who builds a small but perfect palace within
a reasonable time, the despot who enlarges his modest shop
and converts a square or two into a fortified but elegant camp,
the brigand who calls on the scholar to make his stony crags
impregnable, the epicure who retires from a jarring and rude-
mannered world to enjoy a life of natural comfort in an elegant
villa amid flowers and birds and sunshine, in the company of
cultured men and women. Italian humanity, in its upper
classes, is disenchanted of the great mediaeval spell of vigor-
ous expanding proselytizing Catholicism, and the new temper
is shown at once in the new architecture that is of the earth
earthy. It is not a little striking that the noble treatise of the
Eoman Vitruvius on architecture should have been discovered
and edited by Poggio, one of the most immoral men of the
Renaissance. This new architecture lends itself everywhere
to richness and elegance, in the decoration of doors and win-
dows, in the objects of furniture. Everywhere the ornaments
of antiquity return to use— the egg and dart, the scroll, the
trailing vine, the scenes of the harvest. The churches are vast
galleries of pretty and tempting art-works, repetitions of the
salons of the nobles. The bell-towers of the Middle Ages, pic-
turesque and rugged, disappear; the exterior walls of the
churches are white or yellow-washed. Most of the traces of
the mediaeval life and spirit vanish— as a rule of course
unconsciously. It was a new spirit, a new atmosphere that
was abroad. Architecture became a thing of the schools, a
science of rules and precepts as solemn as the laws of the
Medes and Persians. This was largely the work of the Latin
and Greek scholars, the men known as Humanists, from the
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 325
word Humanitas or Humaniores literce, meaning civilization,
refined literature and the like. It was an unfortunate thing
that deep in the hearts of many of these men there reigned a
positive antipathy to the ideals and tenets of Christianity—
hence all its peculiar monuments must be decried. New ideas
must have a new setting, or rather, the old ideas must be
clothed again in the old forms.
We must not believe that all this love of classical learning,
this devotion to the fine arts, was a sudden growth. The splen-
did works of the fifteenth century in painting and sculpture
were no more a sudden blossoming than the architecture of
the period. Since the time of Giotto and the Pisani, the ob-
servation of nature and the perfection of technical skill in
drawing, coloring, draping, landscape, decorative ornament,
had been growing. There were regular schools for all the arts,
notably the workshops of such wonderful Italian cathedrals as
Pisa and Orvieto and Florence that were never quite finished
—so vast were the ideas of their builders. We know now that
the Italian painters had been learning much from the artists
of Flanders and Burgundy— the handling of light and shade,
the art of painting in oils— a revolution that threw out of daily
or domestic use the fresco aad the painting on wood, and made
popular the canvas painting. Engraving on wood and copper
multiplied the best work and enriched the artist. The painter
is now as intensely popular as once the singer of love and war.
He is yet a plain man of the people and bears always a popular
name, often a nickname. No matter what his subjects are, he
introduces the local landscape, let us say of Tuscany or
Umbria, the local personages and customs. In the human
figure the old conventionalism disappears aad the portrait
takes its place— in a word, we have a Christian realism in
painting. At Siena there lives on a remnant of the deeply
pious old school, the school of calm and serene adoration and
contemplation that has left us the sweet evaagel of San Ge-
mignano. But throughout Tuscany, beginning with Florence,
. it is different. Living portraits, domestic landscapes, local
traits of daily life, real houses and castles, unique and lovely
ornaments based on flowers of the field and the lines of nature
326 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
herself— the individual experiences of the painter— are in
every picture. The prophets lose their nimbus or halo, the
apostles are figures of men on the street, the women are the
mothers, sisters, sweethearts of the painters. Some few traces
of that stem law of early Christian painting that fixed every
type and made it obligatory live on. Thus, the Last Supper,
the Madonna and Child, for the composition and disposition of
figures, are the same as you may see in the Catacombs at Eome.
But Leonardo da Vinci is said to have walked the streets of
Milan for ten years looking for a suitable Head of Christ to
put in his great masterpiece. The living model came into use
—it would have been an abomination to the severely moral and
mystic soul of the mediaeval painter. Painting was, indeed,
yet in the service of the Church. But it was seeking new ob-
jects, ancient history and pagan mythology. Here came in
the influence of the book-men, the Greek and Latin scholars.
Through them the painting, or rather the sculpture and archi-
tecture of antiquity, revived and were cultivated. They lec-
tured on the beauty of them, praised every new find, wrote
daily on the absolute inimitable perfection of what the Greeks
and Romans did, said, and were. Consciously or unconsciously
those teachers, whether in university hall or city market-place,
or in the palaces of the nobles, perverted the simple genuine
Christian life of many an Italian town. The thousand years of
the Middle Ages became a long dismal blank— its monuments
like its writings were to their mind without true style, without
perfection of form, therefore bad and worthy of eternal
oblivion.
Of course, the local domestic origin of much Italian paint-
ing kept up always the religious life. A multitude of the
noblest works of the great masters of the fifteenth and even
the sixteenth centuries was produced for village confraterni-
ties—banners, altar-pieces; another multitude was made for
individuals. Every lady wanted a Madonna in her little ora-
tory, and it must be by the best painter of the time. The
workshop of a Perugino or a Raphael was crowded with orders
from all Italy. Raphael is said to have painted with his own
hand, or designed and begun, nearly three hundred Madonnas.
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 327
Every family of importance had an altar in the parish church
or in some church of the monks or friars, and it had to be deco-
rated by the finest talent they could secure. Then there were
the '^Laudi/' the village processions, and the ^^ Mysteries ^^—
the real origin of our theatres. All their forms of outdoor life
called for images, painted compositions, and the most famous
painter did not disdain the gold pieces that he got from hum-
ble village-folk for these designs. The intense rivalry of popu-
lar Italian life compelled him to produce something new and
lovely each time, and in this way furthered constantly the
perfection of such work.
Thus, the natural genius, the climate, the history, the monu-
ments of antiquity, the language of the Italians, and their un-
broken residence on the soil since the remotest times— all con-
spired to create an incredible number of the loveliest works of
art, and to make Italy one great gallery of the fine arts.
In the fifteenth century were finished, to a great extent, the
buildings begun in the thirteenth. Milan, Orvieto, Siena, Pisa,
gave the new classical temper a chance to overshadow the spirit
of the Middle Ages in fagades, windows, decoration and sculp-
ture that consciously depart from the spiritual belief s and ideals
of the men who planned and partly executed these great works.
The new skill in drawing, both outline and perspective, and in
foreshortening, permitted a more grandiose kind of frescoing.
And when the scholars of Squarcione at Padua, like Andrea
Mantegna, were given such a work as the T palace of Mantua
to build, they reproduced antiquity along every line as far as
they were able. They did not have it all their own way— a Fra
Angelico and a Fra Bartolommeo, and many another famous
painter, still clung to the inward and ideal spiritual beauty, the
expression in each face of tender sentiments of piety, divine
adoration, love, humility, gratitude. After the great triumphs
of the fifteenth century the genuinely Christian sculptor grew
rarer, driven out of business by the glorious models of antique
art that were being daily dug up, and by the popular admira-
tion for these models that sinned in many ways against the
delicacy of the Christian conscience. When finally the old
Saint Peter's was thrown down and the vast modem basilica
328 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
was planned and begun, the genuine Christian architecture,
and with it of course the other arts, suffered a humiliation
from which they are only beginning to recover.
A curious feature of the Italian Eenaissance is the fact
that many of its painters sculptors and architects were gold-
smiths or apprentices of goldsmiths. The Italian goldsmith
of the time was in reality, very often, the chief man of science
in the town. We must remember that there was as yet no
sharp distinction in artistic work— the true artist was able to
turn his hand to sculpture as well as painting, to engraving
on copper as well as to writing down the principles and prac-
tice of all these arts. So the goldsmith had to know many
secrets of chemistry and the treatment of the precious metals,
he had to be an architect for designing of reliquaries and an
engraver for the inscriptions and fine ornamentation, a worker
in mosaic and therefore a painter; a good ironsmith too, for
he often had orders of a bulky nature. His shop, like the tra-
ditional shoemaker *s shop, was the rendezvous of the chief
citizens; his lovely masterpieces were on their tables and in
their halls.
So a Verrocchio, a Pollajuolo, a Ghirlandajo, a Francia,
were either apprentices of goldsmiths or goldsmiths themselves.
It is also of some interest to know that most of the great artists
of the fifteenth century were of poor and humble origin. It is
a significant commentary on the truism that the real goods of
life are not moneys, lands, revenues, but the fruits of the mind
and the heart— education and religion. Who knows or who
cares, except some dustman or scavenger of history, about the
rich bankers of Augsburg, the wool merchants of Florence,
the public carriers of Venice ! With their wealth they wrote a
line upon the sands of time that the next wave obliterated.
But the names of the great artists shine forever in their master-
pieces and echo forever above the great procession of hu-
manity. Their very names to-day are a golden mine for Italy,
since from every quarter of the world they draw thither an
increasing multitude of men and women. Giotto was a
shepherd, and like him Andrea Mantegna tended sheep. Fra
Bartolommeo was the son of a carter. Leonardo da Vinci,
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 329
Brunellesco, and Michael Angelo were the sons of humble
officials. They were all, or nearly all, poorly enough paid, and
much less esteemed than the pompous Latinists and Grecists
who got all that was going in the shape of fat offices, ambas-
sadorships, public junketings and the like. Society usually
gets what it pays for— in those days it admired too much the
fine forms of antiquity, that were as empty then as now of any
deep moral value, and it got in return fine words and elegant
rhetoric. But these were very hollow things and failed to pre-
serve the popular liberties of the Italian republics that were
as solid as a rock so long as the people held to their mediaBval
ideals. While the people of Florence, for example, went off
in pursuit of mere earthly beauty, in language and color and
form, the chains of a long slavery were being forged against
their awakening. With his banquets and his songs, his wit and
his lasciviousness, his manuscripts and his jewels, Lorenzo
led the people out of their mediaeval roughness and rawness.
But when these nodes coeiKBque deum were over, came the
dawn of a cruel and debasing slavery.
After all, Florence is the typical city of the Italian Eenais-
sance. It is true that many of her greatest artists worked for
the popes at Eome, and that Saint Peter 's and the Vatican are
only too thoroughly Eenaissance work. It is true that a multi-
tude of Eoman churches owe their erection or their present
form and ornament to this period. It is also true that govern-
ment and administration were highly colored in that city by
the ideals and the temper of the Eenaissance. But, when all
is said, it remains true that the City of Eome is primarily a
mediaeval citv^, and only in a secondary way a city of the
Eenaissance. Its art is at Eome an importation, the citizens
do not give their children to it, it has nowhere a common
popular character. There is no wild surging of the masses to
look at the last masterpiece of Donatello, no submission of
superb plans and designs to the taste of the mob. Thus, while
the Eternal City wears the livery of the Eenaissance, it is
nowise true that it was the foyer, the living center of its in-
fluence. That was always Florence. There the slowly rising
cathedral, the baptistery, the bronze doors of Ghiberti, the pri-
22CUB
330 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
vate fortress-palaces of the Pitti, the Strozzi, the Rucellai, the
statues of San Giorgio, the masterpieces of the Loggia, the
Greek philosophers and infidels, the Latin orators and critics,
the gabby farceurs, the della Eobbia, a Filippo Lippi, a
Benozzo Gozzoli, a Domenico Ghirlandajo, are all contempo-
rary, all at home beneath a sky and amid a nature that seem-
ingly are made for them. For us modems they have been
made to live again by John Addington Symonds, by Perrens,
Villari, Monnier, and by the incomparable *^ vision'' of George
Eliot. Eome, Naples, Milan, Venice, and countless minor
cities, have each their immortal works, their glorious names
that enthuse from generation to generation all lovers of the
beautiful. Each of these cities has its own significance in the
history of the human mind in the West. Each was in its way
a schoolroom of our education. But Florence is the great uni-
versity of the Eenaissance, where its materials are piled up,
where its professors were trained, where its lessons were long
and regularly taught, where its philosophy worked out most
easily all its purposes and problems. Here, above all, its
spirit was always at home, a supreme and masterful spirit of
free affectionate surrender to the claims of beauty, regardless
of truth and morality, as though beauty were to itself a higher
law and its service some unshackled esoteric form of religion,
sole worthy of the chosen spirits to whom are revealed its
infinite grace proportion and harmony. Here, long before
Luther and Calvin, was reached the real parting of the ways,
the Pythagorean letter of crucial import, the conscious divorce
of the senses and the soul, with a rigid resolution to walk in the
chosen path whithersoever it finally led.
Already the soul of Christian Italy was called on to accept
the noted formula: Amicus quidem Plato, sed magis arnica
Veritas, It is a long cry from Pius II (Aeneas Silvius) to
Saint Pius V, but in that fateful century there went on such
a fierce and relentless probing of hearts and consciences
throughout the peninsula as had never been seen since the
days of Augustus. Unexpectedly men came upon the scene
who hewed judgment to the line and hung the plummet of
righteousness. And when their work was done the astonished
ON THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 331
world confessed that there was yet a heart of oak in the old
mediaeval burg of Catholicism, that it could rise, stem and
uncompromising, from an hour of dalliance and indolence,
that it was not unworthy of its immemorial right of leader-
ship, that it was able to cope as successfully with the insidious
revival of the paganism of Libanius and Symmachus as it had
with the paganism of Frederick II, that it knew itself always
for the living responsible conscience of Catholicism which had
never yet implored from it in vain the key-note of harmony or
the bugle-call of resistance unto death, and that with native
directness it saw far and clearly into the nature and course of
the incredible revolution that was sweeping away all Northern
Europe.
Thomas J. Shahan.
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE.
Of all critics, Voltaire was the narrowest and most in-
capable of appreciating the methods of comparative literature.
He was almost ready to say, with LeClerc— **The English have
many good books ; it is a pity that the authors of that country
can write only in their own language. ' ' And yet narrow, even
to classical bigotry, as he was, regarding all literature that was
not a French imitation of Greece and Eome, he admits the
continuity, the relativity, the world-wide power of literature
when he says— ** There are books that are like the fire on our
hearths— we take a spark of this fire from our neighbors, we
light our own with it; its warmth is communicated to others,
and it belongs to all.'*
The business of the student of literature is to trace the
pedigrees of books, as well as to compare books with books.
And this comparison, this power of tracing implies in its result
both concentration and expansion. Every book has its pedi-
gree ; and the ancestors of books, like the ancestors of persons,
cannot be uprooted from the soil in which they grew ; they are
of their climate, of their time. As the bit of tapestry from a
far-off Turkish palace carries the scent of the attar of roses to
distant lands and through many changing years, so the book-
one of a line of books— mingles with the current of thought,
long after it is forgotten, in the life of an alien nation. Joseph
Texte, in his ** Etudes de Litterature Europeenne, ' ^ says: ^^A
literature no more than an animal organism grows isolated
from neighboring nations and literatures. The study of a
living being is in a great part the study of the influences which
unite it to beings near it and of the influences of all species
which surround us like an invisible net-work. There is no
literature, ' ' he continues, ' ' and perhaps no writer, of whom it
can be said that the history confines itself within the limits of
his own country. How can the evolution of German literature
be understood, without knowing the reasons for the acceptance
on the part of German writers of the French influence, and
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 333
then of its rejection for the English influenced The history of
the influence of Shakespere in Europe would, of itself, be an
essential chapter in the history of modern literature. Ro-
manticism is primarily an international event, which can be
explained, as George Brandes says, only by the inter-relations
of various literatures." The sentimental romanticism of
Goethe, as evident in * ' The Sorrows of Werther, ' ' is due to the
same influence that made **La Nouvelle Heloise'' of Rousseau,
and made Sterne's ^^The Sentimental Journey'*; but before
Rousseau we find that other sentimentalist, the Abbe Prevost,
whose book, **Manon Lescaut,'' was the predecessor of **Paul
and Virginia.'' Voltaire, as everybody knows, owed much of
his worst quality to the English Bolingbroke. In his serious
works we find English Deism served with the esprit Gaulois;
in the others where wit and bitter cynicism play like infernal
lightning, we find Rabelais changed, and yet the same. ^*It
seems, finally," to quote from Joseph Texte again, **that the
literature of the modern epoch— and perhaps of all epochs—
neither develops nor progresses without imitating or borrow-
ing: imitation of antique, as in France, in the seventeenth
century— borrowing from neighboring literatures, as in Ger-
many, in the eighteenth. It is necessary, in order to make
original works germinate, to prepare the soil with the debris
of other works."
The student of literature, then, ought not to attempt to
take one book and isolate it from is fellows. The beauty and
freshness and humor of Chaucer may be enjoyed whether we
go back to the trouveres for the sources of his earlier works, or
trace the effects of Dante and Petrarch on those later in life ;
but for the broadening of the mind, for the perception of that
sense of continuity so necessary for the knowledge of God's
guidance in history, for the value of literature as a method of
discovering the meaning of laws, it is well that Chaucer should
be studied as a link in a chain. And yet not only as a link in
a chain, but as a link in a chain running, as it were, through a
closely knit coat of mail, touching and binding a hundred other
links, large and small, without which the glittering garment
of knighthood would be incomplete.
334 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
It deepens pleasure to know the relations of books to one
another. It makes the study of literature easier, for it softens
that feeling of desperation which strikes the reader when he
enters a teeming library. Where shall he begin? How shall he
hew a line through this wilderness of books? The genealogy
of the book he loves will help him to do this, and its posterity
will further assist in the work. Further to put the study of the
pedigrees of books on higher ground, who speaks the word
comparison, with the object of discovering truths, speaks the
word science. **If the history of literature," as Joseph Texte
remarks, *^does not constitute an end in itself, if it aims, like
all researches worthy of the name of science, at certain results
which are at present beyond it, if it assumes, in fine, to be a
form of the psychology of races and men, the comparative
method imposes upon it the necessity of regarding the study
of one type of men or of one literature as only an approach to
a study more worthy to be called scientific. ' '
There are many reasons, then, why books should be studied
comparatively. The mere investigation as to whether one book
is an imitation of another is not so important or vital as the
analysis of beauties that have stimulated greater beauties in
another book. No reader will say that Plutarch and Shakes-
pere resemble each other. The Greek was a prose narrator,
greatest in his way ; the Englishman was a dramatic poet,
greatest in his way; and yet the influence of Plutarch on
** Julius Caesar" and **Coriolanus" is unmistakable. It is as
plain as the influence of the Byzantines on Giotto, or that of
Wagner on the later manner of Verdi, or of Pindar on the
Englfih ode of the eighteenth century. Mangan and Poe seem
to have no close relationship. As a rule, we do not think of
them together, and yet it is difficult, after reading these poets,
who evidently held peculiar and sensuous theories about
poetry, to believe that Poe did not conscientiously imitate
Mangan. And the German influences on Mangan are easily
traced. How much Gaelic meters affected him, it is not, unfor-
tunately, possible for me to say.
To return to Shakspere: I once asked a friend of mine
who loved only a few books, why he kept the maxims of Epic-
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 335
tetus, the Eoman slave, so near the plays of Shakspere, who
was more than any Roman patrician. He simply turned to a
line out of Hamlet : ' ' For there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so. " '' That is from Epictetus, ' ' he said,
''and the more I study Shakspere 's philosophy, the more I find
Epictetus." And so the little volume held its place beside the
many books of Shakspere 's plays, and further examination
convinced me that it had reason to be there.
Emerson, to come from the reign of Nero and Elizabeth to
our own time, owes much to Epictetus, but more to Plato and
Montaigne. He was not an imitator but an assimilator ; to his
philosophy we owe little, but to his power of stimulating
idealism much. Emerson reflects Plato and Montaigne and his
New England sMes at the same time. His Plato is not the
Plato of the groves and the white temples, but Plato touched
by the utilitarianism of the cotton factory; his Montaigne is
not the gay and polite and witty and pensive Montaigne, con-
tent with his books and his Burgundy, but a restless Mon-
taigne, frost-bitten by Puritanism, become oracular because
his auditors were too busy to contradict him.
If you compare the four essays on ''Friendship''—
Cicero's, Montaigne's, Bacon's, Emerson's, you will find the
man Emerson, surrounded and affected by the shades of his
literary ancestors. If you examine his bumps, after the man-
ner of the discredited practices of phrenology, you will find
that they are all of the American type ; but you will find, too,
that the influences of his literary ancestors has, in its old-
worldly way, corrected the indications which the bumps show.
He is composite ; and the study of the types that enter into his
make up will give a clue to the methods that ought to be used
in the comparative study of other authors, who are all com-
posite.
Voltaire says that nearly everything in literature is the
result of imitation. But Voltaire was as deficient in desire and
the power of real comparison as any of the Romans or Greeks.
He was the slave of conventions ; and was almost as rigid as
that literary sans culotte who, in 1794, refused to save a victim
from the guillotine because his petition had not been put into
336 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
classical language. If Voltaire has said that everything great
in literature is largely the result of assimilation, he would have
been much nearer the truth. There are those who call Tenny-
son classical, in the sense of coldness and symmetry; yet it can
be easily shown that one of his most influential literary ances-
tors was Byron, who can be called neither cold nor classical.
In fact, if any poet is romantic— and sentimentally romantic—
Byron is that poet. In ^^Locksley HalP' and **Maud,'' there
is the Byronic note, without the depths of Byronic despair.
Tennyson's hopes and ideals are infinitely higher than
Byron's in the first part of ^^Locksley Hall,'' and the passion
infinitely purer in **Maud." In the second part of ^^Locksley
Hall" the impetuous boy who felt that the world had come to
an end when Byron dies, had disappeared in the old man
whose hopes in the ^ ^ Christ to come ' ' through science and the
new social order, had completely gone out. Tennyson 's poetry
has a long pedigree; and there are many quarterings on its
coat of arms— among the heraldic colors is the vert of Words-
worth as well as the flaring vermilion of Byron; but there
is one especially that cannot be expressed by any feudal tinct,
and another that may be symbolized by many. The first it
Theocritus; the second. Sir Thomas Malory.
From the first, Tennyson borrowed the title of the greatest
of modern epics, * ^ The Idyls of the King. ' ' And the influence
of Theocritus, the sweetest of all pastoral singers is found
everywhere, but most of all in ^^CEnone." Theocritus, who
was an ancestor of Vergil and of all later pastoral poets, takes
new life in Tennyson. Even the English verse translations
of this singer of the reed and the Cyprus and of the contest of
the shepherds in the green pastures can not wholly shut his
beauty from our view. It is as hard to endure his artificial
image as set up by Pope as it is that of Chancer as regilded by
Dryden. Even Mrs. Browning handles liis exquisite idyls with
a touch that does not fit the violet of the spring. In prose
translations some of the aroma escapes, but enough of it re-
mains to cheer the soul with loveliness. To read him in youth
is never to forget him. For Theocritus was the poet of nature,
the inventor of the little idyls-pictures of town or country—
TEE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 337
that singer of idyls who, nearly three hundred years before
Christ, saw dimly nature's God.
**And from above," he says in the seventh eidulla, **down upon
our heads were waving to and fro many poplars and elms; and the
sacred stream hard by kept murmuring, as it flowed down from the
cave of the nymphs. And the fire-colored cicalas, on the shady
branches, were toiling at chirping; while, from afar off, in the thick
thorn-bushes the thrush was warbling. Tufted larks and gold-
finches sang, the turtle-dove cooed; tawny bees were humming round
the fountains ; all things were breathing the incense of very plenteous
summer and of fruit-time. Pears fell at our feet, and apples were
rolling for us in abundance, and the boughs hung in profusion
weighed down to the ground with plums."
The warmth of the summer is in Theocritus. The gold and
purple bees float in the dry down of the thistle, and Demeter's
symbols, the spikes of corn and poppies, glow golden and
scarlet in the soft Sicilian air. Tennyson, too, gives the color
of the summer and the incense of the autumn, in symbols sug-
gested by the Syracusan. And, from the refrains of Theo-
critus, he borrows, as Poe borrows from Mangan, the cadence
of his music.
Edmund Clarence Stedman, in **The Victorian Poets'' has
some pregnant chapters on the resemblance of Theocritus and
Tennyson, and his passages showing how Theocritus vitalized
the English poet as a bee vitalizes a flower are culled with
exquisite insight and taste. Among these, Mr. Stedman quotes
the delicious appeal of Cyclops to Galatea (in the XI Idyl), to
compare it with the passage in Book VII of **The Princess"—
''Come down, 0 maid, from yonder mountain height;
What pleasure lives in height, (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?"
There is the echo of the Sicilian summer, in *'The Gardener's
Daughter"—
**A11 the land in flowery squares
Beneath a broad and equal-flowing wind,
Smelt of the coming summer,—
From the woods
Came voices of the well-contented doves.
The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
338 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
But shook his song together, as he neared
His happy home, the ground. To felt and right
The cuckoo told his name to all the hills;
The mellow ouzel fluted in the glen ;
The red-cap whistled; and the nightingale
Sang loud as though he were a bird of day."
'^CEnone," with the pathetic refrain, suggested by both
Theocritus and Moschus, could not have existed in its present
form, had not the Syracusan sung amid the hyacinth and
arbutus.
In the black letter of Sir Thomas Malory, Tennyson read
many times, until his mind and heart were steeped in the
wonder of the old stories ; and from the Elizabethan poets, who
had learned much from their Italian brethren, he borrowed the
allegory and added it to the tales of Sir Thomas. Spenser
himself, following Ariosto,— for Ariosto is the chief literary
ancestor of Spenser— had made an allegory. Tennyson strung
the many colored gems of Sir Thomas on the silver string of
his veiled meaning. Or, rather as he told his tales, the beads
of his allegory slipped through his fingers. But the stories of
the knights were greatly changed by the modern poet. Arthur
is not, in ^'The Idyls of the King,'' the terrible monarch of
fire and blood of Sir Thomas Malory. Another age and other
manners have softened the chivalric compromises of the earlier
times— for chivalry seems to have been a series of compro-
mises with an ideal in the distance. The Arthur of Sir Thomas
Malory is not the saintly King of Tennyson's imagination.
In Malory's ^^Morte d 'Arthur," he does and says things
very inconsistent with the ideal, blameless king we love and
revere in the ** Idyls." And the allegory which Tennyson
wove cannot be read into the rough doings of Arthur's knights.
Nor did Sir Thomas, or the sympathetic Caxton who printed
his book, see things as Spenser, Milton and Tennyson saw
them— all these seeing differently according to the light of
their time. But, if a book may be judged by its effects, the
^^Morte d 'Arthur" does not deserve the condemnation of
those Elizabethan Eeformers, like Eoger Ascham, who could
excuse murder and adultery in an unrepentant real king, but
I
TEE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 339
held up hands of horror at a mythical one, even when he
repented.
*' Herein/' says the grand old printer, Caxton, in his preface to
the ''Morte d 'Arthur," ''may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy,
humanity, friendlessness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice,
murder, hate, virtue, sin. All is written for our doctrine, for to
beware that we fall not into vice or sin, but to exercise and follow
virtue, by which we may come and attain to good fame and renomme
in this life, and after this to come unto everlasting bliss lq Heaven;
the which He grants us that reigneth in heaven, the Blessed Trinity.
Amen.'
*'Ah, my Lord Arthur," cries Sir Bedevere, on the last day of
the fight, ''what shall become of me now ye go from me, and leave
me here alone among my enemies T' "Comfort thyself," said the
King, "and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to
trust in. For I will unto the vale of Avilion to heal me of my
grievous wound. And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my
soul!"
We can all recall the Homeric echo of this, in Tennyson's—
"The old order change th, yielding place to new.
And God fulfils himself in many ways.
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: What comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure ! but thou
If thou should 'st never see my face again.
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If knowing God, they hft not hands in prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
*'Now,'' says old Sir Thomas, when the roses have faded,
''now we leave Gninever in Almsbnry a nnn in white and black,
and there she was abbess and rnler, as reason would.'' How
Tennyson refines upon this in the light of more cultured genius
and finer days ! You remember the simple little novice who sits
at the sad queen's feet, and sings—
340 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
** 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now!'
They took her to themselves,"
Tennyson writes of the nuns and Guinevere—
*' — and she
Still hoping, fearing, *is it yet too late?'
Dwelt with them till in time their Abbess died ;
Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life.
And for the power of ministration in her,
And likewise for the high rank she had borne,
Was chosen Abbess ; there, an Abbess, lived
For three brief years ; and there, an Abbess passed
To where beyond these voices there is peace."
It is the province of genius, as Emerson says, to borrow
nobly. If the immediate ancestor of * ' The Idyls of the King * '
was the ^*Morte d 'Arthur'' as to matter, the remote ancestor
was the ^* Idyls" of Theocritus as to form and manner. But
I think it needs only time to show how many other prose
writers and poets, how many changes of philosophies, customs,
and point of view, it takes to make any writer who speaks to
the soul with wisdom and to the heart with beauty. A poet
descends from Heaven, step by step, like Jacob's angels on
bars of celestial light. God only can create him and the
Ancient of Days makes every hour from the beginning move
towards his coming— and each poet is the father of another
poet.
Tennyson was the child of Sir Thomas Malory and of his
own time as Dante was of Vergil and of his time, as Milton
was of the old Testament as interpreted by the rebels of his
time, as William Morris was of Chaucer, accentuated by the
tense romanticism of Dante Eossetti and the early Provengal
poets.
Theocritus, Sir Thomas Malory, Tennyson ! How near and
yet how far apart! And comparatively, how many allied
shades they recall! You mention the ^^Holy Grail," and up
rise Spenser, Milton, Lowell— the Lowell of Sir Launfal—
and then Wagner's Parsifal and spirit of beauty after spirit
of beauty until the earliest of them seems to touch the very
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 341
seraphim. We can as easily leave out St. Thomas and St.
Francis of Assisi in considering the genesis of Dante as we
can consider any modern great work of literature without
reference to its pedigree. Music, too, is closely bound to litera-
ture—the myth of Lohengrin is only a later version of that of
Cupid and Psyche. Wagner could not have done what he did
without the Niebelungenlied ; nor Gounod, if the Middle Age
legend of ''Faust'' had not been told from mouth to mouth,
until Goethe, borrowing nobly from the Book of Job, made
''Faust'' vital and grandiose for all time. If culture means
the broadening of the mind through the widest knowledge of
the best, it is hard to see with what reason we can neglect the
study of the pedigrees of books.
If Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth, Tennyson also suc-
ceeded Byron, ^^ile Wordsworth was serene, a painter of
nature, Byron was the opposite of him. He was fiery, volcanic,
furious, lurid, great in genius. He was popular, while Words-
worth, whom the world is now only beginning to acknowledge,
was neglected ; so that, strange as it may seem at first, Tenny-
son's immediate predecessor was Lord Byron. Byron's popu-
larity was great while he lived. The hero of "Locksley Hall"
—I mean the first part of it, for I think the second part is de-
cidedly the better— is a Byronic hero, diluted. And the hero
of "Maud" is of a similar type.
In "Locksley Hall" the hero sighs and moans and calls
Heaven's vengeance down on his ancestral roof because a girl
has refused to marry him— because his cousin Amy marries
another man, he goes into a paroxysm of poetry and denuncia-
tion and prophecy. But, as Shakespere says— "Men have
died from time to time and woi*ms have eaten them, but not
for love." And the hero of "Locksley Hall" lives to write
a calmer style a good many years later. "Maud" showed,
like "Locksley Hall," something of the influence of Byron.
After "Locksley Hall," and "Maud" the etfect of Byron on
Tennyson seems to grow less.
The young Tennyson's favorite poet was Thomson— he of
the serene and gentle "Seasons." Mrs. Eitchie tells us how
very early the influence of Thomson showed itself.
342 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
'^Alfred's first verses, so I have heard him say, were written upon
a slate which his brother Charles put into his hand one Sunday at
Louth, when all the elders of the party were going into church, and
the child was left alone. Charles gave him a subject — the flowers
in the garden — and when he came back from church little Alfred
brought the slate to his brother, all covered with written lines of
blank verse. They were made on the models of Thomson ^s ** Sea-
sons," the only poetry he had ever read. One can picture it all to
oneself, the flowers in the garden, the verses, the little poet with
waiting eyes, and the young brother scanning the lines. *Yes, you
can write,' said Charles and he gave Alfred back the slate."
*
The poet of Alfred's first love was the calm and pleasant
Thomson we see. Later, as he grew towards manhood, he read
Byron. He scribbled in the Byronic strain. How strong a
hold Byron's fiery verse had taken on the boy's mind is shown
by his own confession. When Alfred was about fifteen, the
news came that Byron was dead. **I thought the whole world
was at ane end, ' ' he said. * ^I thought everything was over and
finished for everyone— that nothing else mattered. I remem-
bered I walk out alone, and carved * Byron is dead' into the
sandstone." Although **Locksley Hall" and **Maud" show
Byronic reflections, yet they were not the earliest published
of Tennyson's poems.
The Greek poet, Moschus, wrote an elegy on his friend,
Bion, and the refrain of this elegy, ** Begin, Sicilian Muses,
begin the lament," is famous. Tennyson, this modern poet,
possessed of the Greek passion for symmetry and influence
almost as much by Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, as by the
spirit of his own time, has made an elegy on his friend as
solemn, as stately, as perfect in its form as that of Moschus;
but not so spontaneous and tender. There is more pathos in
King David's few words over the body of Absalom than in all
the noble falls and swells of **In Memoriam."
I doubt whether any heart in affliction has received genuine
consolation from this decorous and superbly measured flow of
grief. It is not a poem of faith, nor is it a poem of doubt ; but
faith and doubt tread upon each other's footsteps. Instead of
the divine certitude of Dante, we have a doubting half belief.
Tennyson loved the village church, the holly-wreathed bap-
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 343
tismal font, the. peaceful vicarage, because they represent
serenity and order. He detests revolution. If he had lived,
before the coming of Christ, in the vales of Sicily, he would
probably have hated to see the rural sports of the pagans dis-
turbed by the disciples of a less picturesque and natural re-
ligion,
Keats could not have been Keats as we know him without
Spenser. He is called Greek, but he knew Greek best through
Chapman's Homer. Yet, he caught the spirit; and the form
for him did not matter; he had that from the Epithalamium
of Spenser; and **no poet,'' as M. Texte admits, '*has excited
more vocations to poetry than Spenser." He is, like Shelley,
the poet for the poet. Other poets may speak to the world ; he
sings to the sacred city. He lacks the elevation of Spenser, de-
flected as it was, by the Elizabethan concession to the political
spirit of his time; he is without the unconsciousness of the
Greeks whose spirit he assumed without understanding it. He
longed for sensations rather than thoughts, for dreams, rather
than activities. He was romantic, if romance implies aspira-
tion. The ' ' Ode to the Nightingale ' ' expresses Keats. He was
half in love with ' ' easeful death. ' ' He was not Greek in this ;
his neo-Hellenism is like the paganism of Swinbum— it cannot
rid itself of the shadow of the Cross ;it is black against the light
of the Eesurrection. Like Maurice de Guerin, he loved the
pleasure of sensation, and the fact that they must pass filled
him with fear. He turns to the immortal figures on the Grecian
Urn with wild regret;— all, in life that has life, dies— only the
work of the artist who uses inorganic stuff for his material
lives. He felt, indeed, that his name was writ in water before
Shelly made that splendid epitaph! ^^Endymion" is a poem of
shadows in the moonlight. It is not Greek, but it is touched by
the spirit of Greece.
It is romantic because it bears everywhere the burden of
the poet's longing. ''A joy forever" he longs for; but all joys
pass as the moon passes and the shades of beauty with it.
Keats is a neo-Grecian, if you will ; his literary ancestors are
the gods of the rivers and the woods, as Greek singers made
them; but he is nearer to Ovid than to Theocritus, nearer to
344 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Vergil than to Bion, and nearest of all to this time— which,
under the influence of sir Walter Scott and Byron was the time
of longing for light and color and glow and beauty that
should be eternal. He, in his turn, had influenced many. When
we speak of the Pre-Raphaelites we imply the name of Keats.
**The Earthy Paradise" of William Morris presumes the in-
fluence of Chaucer ; but who can read from * ^ The Earthy Para-
dise," without thinking of Keats
"Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasures of past years.
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears.
Or hope again for aught I can say, —
The idle singer of an empty day.*'
What we call the Puritanism of Spenser was, on its spiritual
side, the eclipsed light of the Catholic years that has passed;
it sustained him— for he was the son of Ariosto and of Truth
and Beauty. And the Puritanism of Milton— of the mind, not
of the heart— while it vitiated his Christianity, did not
subdue his Hebraic elevation. Keats, the poet of earthly
beauty, had the feeling of the Greek for the sensations
of life, but he was oppressed by the fear that a day would
come when he and life must part. Heine, a great lyrist, too
(he was Greek by turns, less sublimated than Keats) stood old,
almost blind, paralyzed, at the foot of the statue of Venus of
Melos, in the Louvre. And the world seemed about to go to
pieces, for the Revolution of '48 roared around him. The true
Greek would have died, satisfied that he had lived his life.
But Heine, who had lived for earthly beauty and joy, who was
already dead because the pleasures of life were dead to him,
cried aloud in despair. Earth could not give immortality!
Of these neo-Greeks— not of the old Greeks, but touched by
their spirit— was Keats.
The elegy of Theocritus for Daphnis has echoed ever since
he called on the Sicilian muses to weep with him. If it, with
the recurrent refrain of musical sorrow, touched Tennyson in
,>^
THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN LITERATURE. 345
our time to sing of the dead Hallam, it spurred Milton to raise
the voice of music over Lycidas and Shelley to consecrate the
immortal Adonais to Keats. The pedigree of the English
elegy is as easily traced as that of the English ode, with whose
richness our literature actually blazes. The Pindaric ode is a
name of horror in English, since a slavish imitation of the sub-
lime Greek distorted some of the finest odes of Gray and
Collins. The spirit of Pindar helped to make the English ode
the most beautiful in all the world, but the attempt to give
Greek form to our verse has almost ruined, by meaningless
strophes and antistrophes, some of the loveliest of English
odes. I need only indicate the pedigree of the ode at the
highest by mentioning three sublime names,— St. Teresa,
Crashaw, Coventry Patmore.
The raptures of St. Teresa inspired Crashaw with the ode
beginning—
'* Love, thou art absolute sole lord
Of life and death,"
and with that other ode, less dignified because its form is an
English imitation of the exquisite ever-changing music of
Pindar which can only be transmitted into our tongue by inter-
pretation. Pindar influences the form and St. Teresa the spirit ;
but Patmore is touched by Crashaw and not at all by the form of
Pindar, though he is nearer to Pindar than any of the poets
who failed to see that each of his odes had a delicate shell-like
music of their own which could not be expressed by a short
jumping line thrown in here and there among the longer ones.
^^Each of the Odes of Pindar,'^ William Sharp says, ^^has
its own music, as each conch stranded by the waves has its
own forlorn vibration of the sea's rhythm: whereas the so-
called Pindaric Odes of Cowley and his imitators have no more
individuality of music than have the exercises of instruman-
talists in contradistinction to the compositions of musicians. '^
The pedigree of the Pindaric ode in English offers an admir-
able subject for the study of a beautiful form twisted into an
incongruous shape by poets who blindly followed one another.
There can be no question that a comparative study of the
23crB
346 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
literature of the Japanese and the Italian, the Basque and the
Teuton would make for cosmopolitanism, but who can speak
of fixed literary laws which shall bear exact scientific analysis,
without stretching the word * literary'' so thin that it must
break? Philosophy may be cosmopolitan or international—
Christianity is universal; and if the whole world were Chris-
tendom—animated and active— there would be only one spirit
in literature; but literature of itself must, until the world
shall all be one way of thinking and feeling, be as varied as
Milton's leaves in Vallombrosa— for no two leaves are exactly
alike, though they are all leaves.
Still, the value and beauty of literature are best studied by
processes of comparison which may be called scientific. And
these processes of comparison are rendered easier by the con-
sideration of the pedigrees of books.
Maurice Feancis Egan.
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY.
In the second part of '* Political Theories Ancient and
Medieval,'' by Professor W. A. Dunning of Colnmbia/ we
have the latest and in many respects the ablest exposition in
English of the Protestant view upon papal politics in the
Middle Ages. Before criticizing directly it will not be out
of place to look backward in order to see how much advance or
retrogression in historical science is marked by this book. Some
prefatory remarks are therefore in order, as to the course of
historical criticism in the study of the Middle Ages in general
and of papal politics in particular.
No words need be wasted on the first point: As is well
known the revival of interest in those ages came in on the wave
of romanticism represented by Walter Scott, at least so far as
the public was concerned. True ! long before this a number of
tireless workers were busy compiling their stupendous collec-
tions of documents which were to furnish the first materials
for the student. No centuries boast abler discoverers than the
seventeenth and eighteenth with their long list of Benedictines,
Jesuits, secular clergymen and laymen. Such were Bollandus,
Wadding, the Assemani, Mabillon, Muratori, Labbe, Coletti,
Cossart, who labored so well on the councils, liturgy, national
antiquities, etc.
But allowing for these the study of medieval history was
rare at least on the part of the general reader. This was
especially true of England. To Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)
the Middle Ages were a ^^ millennium of darkness,'' a ^^ misty
^ Macmillan, New York, 1902. In preparing this paper the present writer
could not justly be expected to have read all the authors here criticized, nor have
the sources of information been as accessible as he could wish. Thus he has been
compelled to put down many statements on the authority of others. He has
consulted very freely various articles in the Dublin Review (December, 1844,
April, 1876, October, 1877, April, 1877, the last three particularly) ; also the
learned introduction by M. Alex, de Saint Charon to the French translation of
Hurter's History of Innocent III (Paris, 1838) ; the critiques of church historians
in the introductions to Alzog's and Hergenrother's general histories, and the ex-
haustive bibliographies added to each chapter in same. The " Dictionary of
National Biography " and the " Biographic Universelle " of Michaud supplied
many items of information. The same can be said of the able Catholic apologies
of Hergenrother ("Church and State") and Gosselin ("Power of the Popes").
347
348 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
time," ^^ uncivil age hung with dust and cobwebs/' a verdict
that remained valid to the latter half of the eighteenth century.
Then a change began, almost imperceptibly. Medieval archi-
tecture commenced to fascinate dilettanti of the type of Horace
Walpole (1717-1797) and the poet Gray (1716-1771). Percy's
Eeliques published in 1765 likewise announced a change in senti-
ment. A more powerful impulse came from Germany in the
shape of Goethe's first work ^^Gotz von Berlichingen" in 1773,
which aroused the enthusiasm of "Walter Scott, to whom the
Eomantic movement in all its phases owes so much. Yet even
this was largely unsympathetic. Scott and Wordsworth re-
tained the old religious prejudices against the Middle Ages.
This was yet to be overcome before these were to be studied
with any degree of thoroughness. The renaissance of Gothic
architecture under Pugin was not without its effect, nor again
was the romantic movement in English literature quite foreign
to the change. However, the latter was really accomplished
by the Oxford movement with John Henry Newman as leader.
The immediate results upon medieval history are well known
to all readers of that master and of his friends and disciples,
Church, Hurrell Froude, J. W. Bowden, Maitland, Kenelm
Digby, Dalgairns, Dean Milman, Neale, Mrs. Hemans and Mrs.
Jameson. Then began the publication of the Eolls Series in
1857 which made the medieval records of England accessible
to a degree hitherto impossible, and raised the study of the past
to its present high plane of thoroughness, as is evidenced in the
works of James Bryce, Freeman, Stubbs, Haddan, Bishop,
Stevenson and others. Much bitterness and not a little ignor-
ance still exist, but the advance from Gibbon and Eobertson to
Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Bryce is astonishing. Nor are signs
wanting that an equal advance will be made in the early years
of the new century.
The story is pretty much the same for all Europe. The
Oxford movement in England was but a local manifestation
of this general turning towards medievalism. Its first effects
in Italy are seen in the labors of Cesare Balbo (1789-1853),
Cesare Cantu (living in 1898), Tosti, Capecelatro, Troja,
Cibrario, etc. Germany adds such names as Pertz and Waitz,
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 349
Hurter, Phillips, Jaffe, Potthast, Leo, Hefele, Hergenrother,
Voigt, Kanmer and a host of others. Even irreligious and
Gallican France responded to the impulses of Chateaubriand,
and produced such writers as Montalembert, Rio, Guerard,
Delisle, the two Thierrys, Ozanam, Ampere, Michelet, Lecoy
de la Marche, Menard, Pouchet, Huillard Breholle, Guizot, etc.
Despite such able works, however, France is even to-day per-
ceptibly less sympathetic to things medieval than are Germany,
Italy and even Protestant England. The reasons for this will
be stated below.
In general then the advance in medieval studies is more than
satisfactory despite the yet remaining prejudice. But the same
cannot be said of the modem attitude towards that which is the
very heart of medieval history— the Papacy. Enough prej-
udice exists even yet to seriously mar the very best treatises
on those times. And let it be recorded with shame that this
state of affairs is due as much to Catholics as to Protestants.
One might almost be justified in asserting that it is due chiefly
to Catholics of France.
If the Papacy to-day is the target for coarse abuse even in
the pages of learned writers, the blame can be laid very largely
at the door of Gallicanism. By Gallicanism is not meant a
love of France which is the right and duty of all Frenchmen,
as such being as admirable as any other nationalism whether
Americanism or Italianism. But we mean a distinctively anti-
papal spirit of historical criticism which from the time of and
in the interest of that incarnation of royal despotism, Louis
XIV, has infected pretty much all modern French historians,
even the most Catholic, at least until well on into the nineteenth
century. As a body they can be justly charged with an habit-
ually unscrupulous treatment of papal history and of sacrificing
the papacy whenever it withstood their monarchical absolutism.
They originated and kept alive the most unworthy calumnies
and allied themselves, even when Catholic, to that interminable
list of free-thinking historians who have made of historical
writing such a terrible instrument for the destruction of rever-
ence for the Holy See. Their best excuse is that they after all
have merely reechoed the anti-papal prejudices of writers con-
temporary with the popes of a past age.
350 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The story is a long and a sad one. It begins in the Middle
Ages itself, first with the tremendous conflict between the
papacy and emperors like Henry IV, Frederic Barbarossa,
Frederic II, and kings like Philip the Fair of France. For that
struggle was fought out only with arms and diplomacy at
Canossa, Anagni and Avignon, but as well with the pen by the
legist, canonist and publicist. The names of the protagonists
may be seen in Otto Gierke 's * ^ Political Theories of the Middle
Ages,'' as translated by Professor Maitland (Cambridge, 1900) .
Dante takes a partisan stand in the Divina Commedia. The
popular histories like those of Martinus Polonus and Matthew
Paris are colored with anti-papal prejudice. The very songs
of the tavern and university reflect the same.^ It becomes yet
bitterer in the writings of Marsiglio of Padua, Occam, Pierre
Dubois and that crowd of brilliant but unscrupulous writers
during the saddest age of the Chuch beginning with the Avignon
residence and closing with the Council of Constance.
It was not be expected that those countries which embraced
Protestantism would give up their hatred for the medieval
Popes— and so for almost three centuries after Luther they are
given scant justice in Germany, Engand and any other Protest-
ant country. But, as above noted, the shame of it is that they
were given no more by French Catholic writers of the same
period, so much so that it remained for Protestant writers, above
all German, to render the Popes the justice so long denied them.
M. Gosselin, a Frenchman himself, admits the truth of this
statement in no equivocal terms in the conclusion of his ad-
mirable work^ where he also indicates the fundamental cause
of this anti-papal prejudice on the part of French Catholic
writers *^ interested in supporting the cause of those princes
who had incurred the anathemas of the Church.'' Only a
cursory reading is necessary to find the one man to whom most
of it is due. He is the famous Abbe Claude Fleury (1640-1723),
friend and intimate of Bossuet, author of an otherwise admir-
able ^* Ecclesiastical History" termed by Voltaire the best of its
kind ever written. Here then the genealogy of at least modern
anti-papal history commences in France. True, Bossuet, his
^ Cf. " Political Songs " ed. by Thos. Wright, Camden Soc, 1839.
Power of the Popes in the Middle Ages," Vol. II, pp. 357-358, cf. p. 307.
2 i(
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 351
master, was no ultramontane, but his greater genius saved him
from the grosser errors of the disciple.^ Fleury, though im-
bibing much of his hostility from Bossuet, went far beyond
him in vituperation of the great medieval Popes such as Gre-
gory VII, Innocent III and of course Boniface VIII, the last
opponent of French absolutism whether in church or state.
Being a Catholic priest his views, presented with admirable
style, and with superior narrative power, found way even more
easily than those of the Protestant Centuriators of Magdebourg.
They have held their own with comparative tenacity well into
the nineteenth century, nor have yet completely disappeared.^
Among the numberless French historians from his day to this,
there are comapratively only a few exceptions to the general
prejudice against the medieval popes.
Consider the long list of those who are anti-papal more or
less. Voltaire (1694-1778) of course: Mezerai (History of
France, 1643-1651) ; PAbbe Velly (History of France, 1765-
1785) ; PAbbe Vertot (1655-1735) ; Lebeau (Historie du Bas-
Empire, 1757); PAbbe Millot (Elements de PHistoire de
France, 1767; other works in 1774, 1772, 1796) ; Daunou (1761-
1840) who wrote at Napoleon's command and in order to
justify the latter 's suppression of the papal Temporal Power
his ^^Essai historique sur la puissance temporelle des Papes^';
Capefigue (Histoire de Phillipe Auguste, 1827-1829) ; Michelet
(Histoire de France, 1833-1860) ; Sismondi (Histoire des
Republiques Italiennes au Moyen Age, 1801; Histoire des
FranQais, 1821-1844; Literature du Midi de PEurope, 1813)
whose brilliancy has given such popularity to his venom ; Count
de Segur (Histoire de France) ; Anquetil (Histoire de France,
1805, Histoire Universelle, 1797) ; A. Thierry (Recits des
Temps Merovingiens, 1833-1837, Considerations sur Phistoire
de France) ; Michaud (History of the Crusades, 1811) ; Guizot
(1787-1874); Bemardi (1751-1824); Villemain (1790-1870),
Henri Martin, Victor Duruy, and so on. All of them bear the
hall-mark of Galilean dislike or suspicion of the Papacy whether
they be downright irreligious like Daunou, Sismondi and
^Op. cit., II, 300-301.
2 On Fleury see op. cit., I, 223: II, 134, 319. Also Hurter, Introd., p. x-xiii.
352 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Thierry or rationalist like Michelet, Capefigue, Guizot (fairest
of them all) or really Catholic like Fleury/
Against this formidable array which, by the way, is far
from complete the loyal Catholic reader can pit a mere handful
of writers like De Maistre (Du Pape, 1819) ; Pere Daniel, S. J.
(History of France, 1713) who occasionally displays a Gallican
spirit of unfairness ;^ M. De la Porte du Theil who in 1791 sup-
plemented Baluze with the unedited letters of Pope Innocent
III and inserted a careful and just memoir of the same pontiff
in Vol. VI of his ** Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la
Bibliotheque Nationale et autres bibliotheques ; publiees par
rinstitut National de France''; Chateaubriand (1768-1848);
Montalembert (1777-1831) ; Christophe, Abbe Verlaque, 0.
Delarc, Leon Gautier, Ozanam, etc.— men whose works, we make
bold to say, are more popular outside of than in France,
whereas the works of anti-papal writers have received immense
popularity in France where they are
^'livres entre les mains de la jeunesse, chez laquelle ils propagent les
opinions les plus fausses sur les faits et les hommes de nos traditions
religieuses et nationales . . . On reimprime chaque jour Mezerai,
Anquetil, Velly, Millot . . . le Pere Daniel instruit, exact, sage et
vrai on le laisse dans 1 'oublie. ' ^- ^
Nor is France alone to blame. German Catholic writers of
the age of Joseph II, with a few exceptions like the Jesuit
Joseph Pohl (1753) were all infected with the prevailing hos-
tility towards the Popes, sharpened by not a little rationalism
and coarsened by still more ignorance. Thus Dannenmeyer,
Koyco, Wolf, Michl, Schalfus, Stoeger, Becker, Gudenus, whose
works were published variously from 1776 to 1811.
" D 'historiographie ecclesiastique dans le sens eleve de ce mot, il
n'y en avait point dans TAllemagne Catholique de ce temps." (Her-
genrother's ''Histoire de I'Eglise," Vol. I, p. 51.)
It was not until the appearance of Count Leopold von Stol-
berg's ^^ History of the Religion of Jesus Christ," in 1806-1818,
1 For a critique of these and other anti-ultramontane writers see Gosselin,
I, pp. XV, xxvi, 223, 246, 287; II, 5, 6, 8, 12, 134, 307, 319, 326, 357-8; also
Hurter, introd., pp. x-xiii; here we mention merely a few names at random as
the list is too lengthy for a review article. Cf. also Gorini, " Defense de TEglise,"
2d ed., 1858.
2 See Gosselin, II, 40, 44, 128, 239.
» Hurter, pp. xvii, xxi.
HI8T0RIAN8 OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 353
that a better era commenced. The old prejudice still animated
the works of such writers as Locherer (pub. 1824-1834) and
Reichlin-Meldegg (pub. 1830), though the tide was turned back
by Katerkamp (1819-1834), Bollinger (1833), Hefele, Hergen-
rother, Schwab and other recent writers (see Alzog, Vol. I, pp.
50-54) . These writers and their loyal confreres in France have
done much to put the Papacy in its true light, but it will take
several generations to undo the harm by the above-mentioned
Gallican and Josephist writers, if the harm is really ever to be
completely undone, which we doubt. Of these men it is diffi-
cult to write calmly. Doubtless they were sincere, but an
American Catholic finds in himself little sympathy for men who
have sacrificed the papacy to a blind defence of royalty and its
extravagant ecclesiastical pretensions.
The key to their anti-papal utterances is apparently not a
love of church but of that royal absolutism represented by the
Grand Monarque and voiced by its Court orator :^ Words such
as these make at least an American suspicious of their author's
complaints against the ambition of the Popes who, whatever
their faults, have been too democratic to accept any such
apotheosis of royalty.
From this view at the anti-papal utterances of Catholic his-
torians it is refreshing to turn to the consideration of fairer and
abler Protestant historians, who, be it said to their credit, have,
on certain lines, rehabilitated the medieval papacy so unjustly
calumniated by its natural friends. Stranger still it is from
Germany in particular, from the very land of the Hohenstauf en,
that popes like Innocent III and Gregory VII have received
their vindication. We should have expected the opposite, as it
is but natural to presuppose that the memories of Canossa and
Manfred and Barbarossa would have lingered forever as ter-
rible legacies. But somehow or other the German loves the
Middle Ages more than any other European. Perhaps it is so
because he is more medieval even to-day than any other. At
all events he has rehabilitated the Papacy with an indifference
1 " L'autorite royale est absolue. Le prince ne doit rendre -compte k personne
de ce qu'il ordonne Centre l'autorit6 du Prince 11 ne pent y avoir de
remMe que dans son autorit6.» (Words of Bossuet from his La Politique
tirge des propes paroles de I'Ecriture " quoted by Adolph Franck on p. 10 of
" Ref ormateurs et Publicistes du dix-septi6me sifecle.")
354 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
to religious prejudice which is highly creditable to his historical
candor.
To Germany we owe the epoch-making histories of Gregory
VII by Voigt (1815), of the Papacy by Leopold von Eanke
(1834-1836), of Innocent III by Hurter (1833-1834), of Syl-
vester II by Hock, of the Crusades by Wilken (1823-1825), the
''Apology of Pope Gregory VII'' by Gaab (Tubingen, 1792)
and ''Vindication of Gregory VII'' by the same (2 Vols., 1786),
"Pope Gregory VII and his Age" by Gfrorer (Schaffhausen,
1859, sq., 7 vols.), "Lectures on German History" by John von
Miiller (see Vol. II), "History of the Constitution of Christian
Ecclesiastical Society" by Planck (Hanover, 1806, 5 vols.) and
a number of other works written almost entirely by Protestants
which have done wonders in dissipating the prejudices against
the medieval Papacy fostered by Catholic, Josephist and
Galilean historians of the preceding age.^
Following upon and partly accompanying these works there
appeared a series of able and temperate works on the medieval
papacy in other countries, both from Catholics and Protestants.
Thus the "Storia di Bonifazio VIII" (1846) by Don Luigi
Tosti of the Benedictine Order, the "Histoire de la Papaute
au quatorzieme siecle" (Paris, 1853) by the Abbe Christophe;
the "Temporal Power of the Popes" by the Sulpician Gosselin
(2d part pub. in 1839, 2 vols.) ; the "Defense de I'Eglise" by
the Abbe Gorini; the "Grand Schisme d' Occident" by L.
Salembier (1900) ; the splendid work on Gregory VII and the
Reform of the Church by the Abbe 0. Delarc (3 vols., 1889) ;
"Gregoire VII" by Davin (Toumai, 1867) ; the monumental
labors of Hefele on the Councils and Cardinal Hergenrother's
masterly essay on "Church and State" (Eng. trans., 2 vols.,
London, 1876)— all witness to the fact that Catholics pretty
generally in continental Europe have at last come to their senses
and are striving to undo, if possible, the harm done the Church
by the systematic misrepresentation of the medieval papacy in
is relations to the civil power by the Galilean Catholic writers
above mentioned.
^ Of course even these works, as might be expected from the Protestant
opinions of their authors, frequently state views with which most Catholics would
disagree. For instance even Voigt and Hurter. See Gosselin, I, XXVII, 299:
II, 21.
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 353
In England also the tide is turning in favor of a more liberal
treatment of the medieval popes and their politics at the hands
of Protestants. To William Eoscoe is it due. He is the his-
torical antecessor of Voigt, Hurter, Hock and Ranke, being
certainly the first English Protestant who dared to write a
favorable biography of any pope. I refer, of course, to his
**Life of Leo X'^ published in 1805, ten years before Voigt 's
Gregory VII appeared. In spirit and method it offered a
complete revulsion from the unjust volumes of the ex-Jesuit
Archibald Bower. Other succeeding Anglican writers have
caught much of his spirit of fairness and are gradually drop-
ping the philosophic sneer of Gibbon and the literary super-
ciliousness of Hallam when writing of the Papacy, though much
of the old leaven yet remains. Milman's ^* History of Chris-
tianity'' (1840 and *^ History of Latin Christianity'' (1854-
1855) are good instances of ability marred by the tradi-
tional anti-papal prejudice. The ^'Lectures on Medieval
Church History" by Archbishop Trench mark an advance in
liberality; whilst Maitland's ''Dark Ages" (1844) and ''Es-
says on the Reformation" reach the very high-water mark of
fairness. But English historians are not very generally at-
tracted to medieval papal history. Hence there is a compara-
tive dearth of works on that subject. To those above men-
tioned there are few to add. Among them very prominently
stands the best and most complete life of Gregory VII in Eng-
lish by John William Bowden (London, 1840, 2 vols.). The
most recent works in English are Father Mann's two volumes
on the Popes of the Early Middle Ages (London, 1902) and
Father Barry's "Papal Monarchy" (Story of the Nations
Series).
Lastly coming to the very special questions of the Holy
Roman Empire, of the political relations of Popes and temporal
sovereigns, there does not seem to be very much advance either
in tone or in research amongst writers in English.
The first writer of any note to write at any length upon the
subject was Gibbon,^ whose faults and virtues as a critic are
well enough known to dispense with fresh comment. Suffice
^For a critique on Gibbon's treatment of papal history see Gosselin, I,
243-4, 291.
356 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
to note in this connection that he touches upon Papal history
only as a side issue to his main subject of the Roman Empire
in its decline. But, nevertheless, he has impressed his spirit
upon all succeeding English writers as deeply as Fleury im-
pressed his upon French historians. He is quoted extensively,
by the very latest— Tout, Dunning, who are more or less
poisoned with his scepticism. Even Father Barry speaks of
Gibbon as *Hhe mocking not unkindly sceptic"— an estimate
which, to put it mildly, we are at a loss to comprehend.
But as Gibbon ^s monumental work was beyond the grasp
of the general reader a continuous history of the Holy Roman
Empire for English students was felt to be a necessity. This
want was very inadequately met by Mr. James Bryce who pub-
lished in 1864 his universally known *^Holy Roman Empire."
It had many merits, was fairer in tone than Gibbon, was bril-
liant in style and reduced the subject to limits suitable for the
general public. But its many defects prevented it from fully
meeting the want. Besides being entirely too subjective in
treatment it is almost hopelessly confused. The average reader
wanders through it in pretty much the same condition of mind
that he would blunder through a South African jungle. But,
defective as it is, it has held its own even to the present writing
as the best all-around history of the subject in English, having
passed through many editions. This becomes all the more
apparent when we consider the other works of a similar nature.
In 1898 was published ^^The Medieval Empire" by Herbert
Fisher (2 vols.). A scholarly production but even more disap-
pointing than the preceding because it confines its attention
solely to the German or Imperial side of the question. It should
be entitled rather ^^The German Medieval Empire." Mr.
T. F. Tout's *^ Empire and Papacy" published in this same
year might easily have superseded Bryce had the author not
been compelled by his circumstances to stop at the year 1273,
or had he even with this handicap inserted a chapter or two
upon the early Papacy before 918 and upon the theory of the
Holy Roman Empire. As far as it goes it is a decided im-
provement upon Bryce in every particular, above all in being
objective in treatment and lucid in arrangement. Two other
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 357
volumes treat only of the theoretical aspects of the case some-
what in the fashion of essayists. Reference is made to the
brilliant exposition of the theory of the * indirect power'' of
the popes over temporalities by Mr. William Molitor in his
^^ Burning Questions" and to the essay in the Contemporary
Revieiu (February, 1876) by Sir George Bow^^er entitled ''Con-
cordantia Sacerdotii atque Imperii,'' published afterwards in
book form.^ Both writers are, we believe. Catholic.
Two other remarkable books appeared in 1902. One on
** Political Theories" by Mr. Dunning, the other above men-
tioned, by Dr. William Barry, entitled ^ ' The Papal Monarchy. ' '
Criticism of Father Barry's monograph is difficult. Perhaps
the consciousnes of his Catholicity embarrassed him in his work
intended for a presumably non-sectarian (?) public. At all
events his work touches only upon the political side of the
Papacy, and even there confines itself, when possible, to Rome.
It is even narrower in scope than Tout. Mr. Dunning 's work,
as its title implies, deals only with theories. So that, to sum
up, it will be seen that there is no complete history of the Holy
Roman Empire in English. It has been best treated in all its
phases by Bryce, but his work is too manifestly defective to be
final. There yet remains, perhaps, too much prejudice to allow
of a complete and fair history philosophically planned and
executed. At present we can only deal with particular aspects
or phases of the mighty theme.
Such then is the present state of historical enquiry regarding
the Medieval Papacy in its political relations. As Mr. Dun-
ning has written by far the most pretentious and able work on
his particular subject in English, a detailed examination of his
work will serve the very useful purpose of showing the defects
of historians in this branch and as well the means by which to
avoid past mistakes.^
^ Cf. Dublin Review, April, 1876.
2 Our criticism confines itself to ^he controversial side. But in passing, one
cannot avoid noticing how generally the author omits all reference to what we
might call national politics and the theories which went pari passu with them,
theories which existed though not enunciated in the same elaborate fashion as
those affecting the Papacy and Empire; an omission all the more illogical as he
says (p. XXV) that his object was to present only such theories which had a close
" relation to political fact." Thus, for instance, in the famous song on " The
Battle of Lewes" composed about the middle of the thirteenth century by an
ardent champion of the popular cause led by Simon de Montfort we have
358 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
That we deal at such length with this book is ample warrant
that we consider it a work of prime importance. From a point
of view of both scholarship and fairness of at least tone it is
an advance upon Gibbon and Bryce. The author, moreover,
is evidently sincere. But there praise ends and an unwilling
criticism begins. Despite its many excellencies there are the
ancient ear-marks of hostility to the papacy, which mar an
otherwise creditable work. Gibbon's influence is only too ap-
parent. The reader will understand this better by a glance
at the bibliogi'aphy, because the character of the books habit-
ually consulted by an author are a fair index of the bent of
his mind. Of course, no author can be expected to supply an
irreproachable bibliography especially when his subject is such
a vast one as medieval politics. But, if a writer gives a list
of books at all, he should at least not omit systematically many
of the very best books upon his subject. And when a question
is a controversy, as this one of medieval papal politics is, neces-
sarily though unfortunately, common fairness would require a
writer to mention and consult the best apologists on both sides.
Mr. Dunning apparently has read but one side. In fact he
seems to be ignorant or at least ignores almost entirely the
many first-class works that present the papal position in a
more favorable light. In the general bibliography he mentions,
in almost a spasm of generosity, Pastor, Janssen, Mansi and
one or two modern Catholic writers, but there they lie buried,
Mansi and Janssen being quoted only twice in the special
bibliographies. But not a word of that long list of able writers,
both Catholic and Protestant, who have more or less defended
the Papacy— Hergenrother, Hurter, Voigt, Bowden, Hefele,
Philipps, Muratori, Ozanam, Vacandard, Christophe, Grisar,
Tosti, Gosselin, Balbo, Baronius, Cantu, Hettinger, Gautier,
Schwab, Von Eeumont, etc. Whereas there is not omitted any
quite an elaborate discussion on the nature of kingship, right of rebellion, right
of the people to representation, etc. Being composed in the very thick of the
struggle for Parliamentary liberties at the critical period of English consti-
tutional development it probably has had as much to do with "political fact"
as any document quoted by Mr. Dunning. ( See " Political Songs of England,"
ed. by Thos. Wright for the Camden Society, 1839.) Mr. Edward Jenck's "Law
and Politics in the Middle Ages" (1898) is the very antithesis of the work here
criticised. Disregarding all Imperial politics it goes to the heart of national
law and custom, tracing with a lawyer's acumen the development of the state
as such out of the clan and feudalism.
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 359
anti-papal writer of note, but many are inserted the titles of
whose works the author must have found with considerable
difficulty. The bibliography of texts is not included in this
criticism.^
Now these names above given stand in the very front rank
of historians, above all Cardinal Hergenrother, author of a
'^ General History of the Church'' and an exhaustive treatise on
the relations between ' ' Church and State. ' ' This latter work is
a classic; it is the most ample and learned defense of the papal
position ever published. It has an apparatus of learning
enough to satisfy the most exacting German professor. In a
word it is par excellence the book from the papal point of view.
But not a word about it has Mr. Dunning. Such an omission
is simply inexcusable. Take some others. The lives of Gregory
VII by Voigt and Bowden have no superiors. Hurter's life
of Innocent III is the classic on that subject. Tosti's ^^Life
of Boniface VIII'' comes from the pen of one of the most
learned Italians of this century. Yet they are all passed over
in silence. Equally reprehensible is the omission of the work
so frequently referred to by us— that of M. Gosselin. This
treatise is admirable in every way : learned, fair and temperate.
True, it is not very recent, but Mr. Dunning quotes other inf eror
works of a much greater antiquity.^
So much for the general bibliography. The same for the
special ones at the end of each chapter, which indicate yet more
clearly the character of the author's researches. For example
let us take that at the end of Chapter IX, one of the most able
and typical chapters in the whole book. It deals with ' ^ Theories
during the Decline of the Papal Hegemony, ' ' discussing among
others such characters as Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair.
Now what are the authorities cited on the famous quarrel be-
tween these two? Pierre Dubois, an open foe of Boniface and
^Considering how lengthily our author quotes anti-papal contemporary-
writers like Dubois, Occam, Marsiglio of Padua, Gerson et al, the reader can
consult the contemporary writers in favor of the popes in Alzog and Hergen-
rother's " General Histories." For instance list of those for and against Gregory
VII, p. , Alzog II, p. 481, note; better still in Hergenrother III, p. 573-4
(French trans, of Abb6 P. Belet, Paris, 1886), also in the " Histoire G6n6rale "
of Lavisse-Rambaud (II, pp. 115-116). It would also be well to read Gosselin
(II, 199-239, 359 sqq.) on the opinions of medieval publicists and canonists who
are judged somewhat inaccurately by Mr. Dunning.
^For opinions on Gosselin's book see his own references. Vol. I, p. xvii.
360 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
supporter of Philip ; Pierre Dupuy, a sixteenth century Gallican,
intense royalist, admirer of Philip whom he praises ^'pour la
genereuse poursuite qu'il fit contre le pape Boniface'^— the
generosity consisting in public insult in open Parliament,
physical outrage at Anagni and vile, remorseless calumny
after death; Baillet, a seventeenth century Jansenist and none
too friendly to Boniface; Adolph Franck, a Jew, who, though
calm in style and able as a controversialist, is certainly not
pro-papal in any sense of the term;^ P. Janet, in general an
elegant and cultured writer, but by no means sympathetic with
Boniface ;2 Francois Laurent, to whose eyes the papacy is the
*^ esprit de domination incarne'' and ^^un vrai danger pour le
Christianisme ' ' (p. 514, op. cit.) ; Renan, who needs no com-
ment ; Blakey who asserts that :
*'In proportion as the political power of the church became more
concentrated and energetic, in the same ratio was the religious liberty
of the subject curtailed and abridged. . . . Ignorance consequently
became the only, absolute safeguard against the intellectual intolerance
of the clerical body ; so that the minds of the people became enveloped
in the most profound and impenetrable darkness," etc.^
Bryce's Holy Roman Empire about which our opinion is
above expressed; Gierke, a typical *' German'' scholar, gen-
erally objective but certainly not in sympathy with anything
papal; Gieseler, a learned and temperate Protestant. On
Friedberg I do not risk an opinion, not having his work. So
then the author refers the reader to every writer* of conse-
quence who is either distinctly hostile or at best indiif erent to
the papal side of this crucial quarrel between the medieval
papacy and the civil power. But what of the writers favorable
to it? Everyone is omitted. There is no mention of Hergen-
rother's masterly defence of Boniface in Essay IX of his
*^ Catholic Church and Christian State,'' nor of Boniface's
milder critics such as Boutaric (La France sous Philippe le
Bel), though he is mentioned in the general bibliography. Also
^ See for instance his estimate of Saurez in his " R^formateurs et Publicistes
de I'Europe au dixsepti^me sifecle."
^ See p. 457 of Vol. I of work cited by Dunning where he speaks of the
" flots bouillants de son orgueil et de son ambition," i. e., of Boniface.
» P. 317, Vol. I, op. cit.
* For other anti-papal writers, more or less bigoted, see Gosselin passim,
particularly II, 138, 140, 4-5, 19, 137, 20.
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 361
omitted are the excellent works of the Benedictine Luigi Tosti,
(^^Storia di Bonifazio,'' VIII, Monte Cassino, 1846), of Cesare
Cantii (Boniface VIII, Dante e Cecco d'Ascoli in Revue
d'Economie Chretienne for May, 1866), of Cardinal Wiseman
(Essays, Vol. Ill), of J. Jolly (Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1869),
of Christophers ''Histoire de la Papaute au XIV siecle''
(Paris, 1853), of the Ahbe Peltier's ^'Traite de la puissance
ecclesiastique'' (1857), of Gosselin's ''Power of the Popes,'*
of the above mentioned monographs by Bowyer and Molitor,
of Philipps' works on German canon and feudal law published
from 1832 to 1851, of the general church histories of Hergen-
rother and Alzog fully equal to Gieseler, or lastly of the able
essays on these subjects in such Catholic periodicals as the
Dublin Revieiv.
The conclusion is evident. Either our author is ignorant
of or deliberately ignores much of the best literature on his
subject.^
In either case it strikes us as high time to call a halt upon
such high-handed proceedings. We decline politely but none
the less firmly to be brushed aside as ignorant, to have our
ablest advocates contemptuously ignored by writers who are
in no way their superiors and in many respects their inferiors.
A typical instance of this spirit can be found in p. 313 of
Mr. Tout's work. He refers to Hurter's ''Geschichte des
Papsts Innocenz III" as ''rather an old-fashioned book,"
doubtless because published in 1833. Yet both Tout and
Dunning will not hesitate to cite anti-papal writers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries like Du Puy and Baillet,
Mr. Dunning even refers us to Hallam, a gentleman who con-
fessed that he had "hardly any direct acquaintance with the
original sources of medieval history, ' '^ yet omits all reference
to Hurter who gave up twenty years to the study of the age
of Innocent III alone. This present work on "Political
^ If one considers us biassed in referring the reader to the bibliographies of
Catholic writers like Alzog and Hergenrother as a corrective for those supplied
by Mr. Dunning, let him turn to the learned and not Catholic "Histoire
G6n6rale" of Lavisse-Rambaud. In their bibliographies we find mentioned
most of the works referred to by us. Thus (Vol. II, p. 116) we see noticed
Voigt, Gfrorer, Delarc; Hurter on p. 233; Tosti on p. 63— all of which writers
our author disdains to notice.
2 See Dublin Review, February, 1841 ; November 1841.
24 GUB
362 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Theories^* is the latest and most colossal instance of this
crass ignorance and bland contempt of any writing that is
favorable to the Papacy. Such a spirit is unfair; it is un-
critical, and it is bound to keep open the wounds of controversy.
Whatever it is, it is not historical.
Such being the company usually kept by our author it is
to be expected that he should make out a bad case for the
papacy in general. The popes of course ' ' ruthlessly employed
their power *' (p. 144). Gregory I ^^ greatly promoted the
tendency of the faith to ignorance and superstition'' (159).
Then we hear the familiar ring that echoes back to Du Puy,
Gibbon, Fleury of the ** arrogance'' (170) of Gregory VII,
the *' ingenuity" (173) of Innocent III. The popes prevent
the national consolidation of Italy (289) ; seek to govern all
the destinies of mankind without responsibility to any temporal
power (146) ; their ^^ motives" are always therefore ^^ obvious"
(223) i. e., to Mr. Dunning; they are ever opposed to the
sentiment of nationality, for instance in the case of Boniface
(224), though Father Barry pays his respects to that charge
with ungloved hands (p. 416 of his work). And so on with
tiresome monotony the time-worn adjectives and nouns are
dunned into our ears— the same old charges that one can read
better put by Gibbon, Janet, Laurent, Du Puy, Baillet, Bryce,
etc. It is wearisome reading, verily. Although we do Mr.
Dunning the justice to say that his work as a whole is not
marred by apparent bitterness. His style is always temperate
and gentlemanly even when partisan.
To write a full criticism of his book would necessitate a
running commentary, as faults of judgment abound on every
page, and not a few of fact also exist. Take an instance.
He says (p. 216) : ^^ There is some question as to the authenticity
of the words attributed to Boniface VIII: ^We wish you
(Philip) to understand that you are subject to us in spirituals
and in temporals.' " Some doubt? ^^The forgery of this
document" (containing these words) **is now, as Hefele says,
universally acknowledged except by Huber." (Hergen-
rother's ''Church and State," Essay XI, §11.) But space
will not allow us to go further. If the reader wishes us to
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 363
test tlie case for himself let Mm take the opening pages of
Mr. Dunning 's ninth chapter, which deals with Boniface VIII
and read, as it were in parallel columns, the above mentioned
eleventh Essay of Hergenrother's ** Church and State *' en-
titled '^Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair/' This is a
crucial test. Boniface represents the extreme of papal claims,
Philip the extreme of royal. Passion on both sides runs higher
than at any other time. The whole questions of the relations
between Church and State are exhaustively treated by both
parties. It is then the best test case possible from an objective
standpoint. Moreover it is among the best, if not the very best,
piece of work in all of Mr. Dunning 's book. And yet how
one-sided is his whole treatment? By skilful manipulation
of words he attains the same ends as the most malignant of
anti-papal historians without using the savage expressions.
It is a case of suppressio veri, of ambiguous expressions which
can save the writer if he be attacked. Not a word of blame
for the unspeakable outrages to which Boniface was subjected
by the infamous Philip the ^ ^Unfair'' and his agents Marigny,
Nogaret, Paterine, Pierre Flotte, Plasian and Sciarra Colonna;
of the shameless and absurd charges of heresy, sorcery, sodomy
brought against the Pope in open Parliament; of that final
outrage at Anagni on September 7, 1303, when Nogaret and
Sciarra Colonna dragged Boniface from his palace, paraded
him through the streets in derision, stole his treasures and left
him half -famished. All this is seduously avoided. Philip
throughout the chapter appears as an enlightened prince who
was only seeking to safeguard the national honor of France
from a foolish old pope, whereas in reality he was a tyrant
no less to his people than to the Church. Our author takes care
also to present always the views of the most extreme advocates
on the Papal side, such as ^gidius Romanus and Augustinus
Triumphus, although if the reader will consult Hergen-
rotheri at note 2, p. 203, he will find that ^gidius Eomanus is
not quite as extreme as Dunning would have us believe. In
fact all through his work the author seems to avoid as far as
possible any exposition of the more moderate position known
^Op. cit.
364 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
as the ** indirect power '^ of the pope over temporalities held
by the majority of theologians, both modern and medieval. ^
By such a method one could very easily turn the tables and
quote from only the most extreme advocates of the royal party.
Again his expressions are ambiguous. On p. 218 he says that
Augustinus Triumphus ascribed to the Pope divine attributes
because Augustinus claimed for the Pope jurisdiction greater
than that of an angel. Well ! now ! after all is not the Papal
jurisdiction of divine origin according to Catholic belief? Was
not the Bible oi divine origin very largely f And with a modicum
of common sense and fairness can we not easily recognize that
this is all that Augustinus means by the divinity in the papal
jurisdiction? And so it goes all along every line of the chapter
which is radically and persistently disingenuous, as the reader
will easily perceive by a parallel reading of Hergenrother.
To sum up. The present work, though brilliant in its
way, cannot be accepted as anything better than an able expose
of one side of the complex question of medieval papal politics.
It deliberately ignores or is ignorant of all the literature on
the papal side and throughout skillfully presents the papal
arguments in their worst light. As a gentlemanly onslaught
against the medieval papacy it will find a hearty welcome
among those readers to whom history is a lawyer ^s plea, all
the more so as it carries along with it a pretentious apparatus
of ex-parte literature and is written with an easy contemptuous
elegance which Gibbon himself might envy.
A few closing remarks as to the future of historical writing
on this subject. That a better spirit is upon us no one can
doubt. It is surely a sign of the times when a publishing house
like the Macmillans feels itself safe in entrusting to a Catholic
priest the writing of one of its volumes of the Nations Series.
And it is equally a sign of the times when Father Barry writes
of the Papacy with such fearlessness. Yet the above re-
searches are enough to show that much of the old leaven
remains, enough to justify a warning.
Now the non-Catholic will forever be incapable of penning
a fair history of the Medieval Empire so long as he refuses to
2 lb., 217-218.
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 365
recognize that the papacy was a tremendous moral force sus-
tained by the faith of the people. Whether that faith was
wrong or right is another question. As Mr. Tout very gen-
erously admits: *'It was as the protectors of the people, not
as the enemies of their political rights that the great Popes
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had obtained their won-
derful ascendency over the best minds of Europe'' (327).
Moreover it is undeniable that the Medieval Papacy was the
soul and prime-mover certainly in every moral reform of any
consequence and in almost every intellectual movement. It
raised the priesthood out of the mire of feudalism, unaided
by the Episcopate. It brought into life and sustained the
Crusades. It was the only court of appeal capable of shield-
ing a nation from the tyranny of a John or Philip Augustus.
In a word it was the brains, the heart, the very soul of medieval
civilization. Unless then this is granted the non-Catholic his-
torian must necessarily lose his perspective and seek for other
causes totally inadequate to explain the rise of the political
power of the Papacy. To attempt to explain it by the aggres-
siveness of Hildebrand or the ingenuity of Innocent is begging
the question. For how could such popes have succeeded in
their aggression and ingenuity unless the spirit of the times
was sympathetic and made such success a possibility. They
had no armies of their own. They appealed always to law,
Scripture, civil custom, conscience. And for centuries the
world heeded that appeal. Is this not clear proof that their
power fundamentally rested upon the faith and love of the
masses? Mr. Hurter, even when a Protestant, felt the logic
of this reflection.
"L 'existence d'un pape du moyen age est un fragment de I'histoire
universelle, et celle-ci, sans la clef de I'eglise, perd cette base centrale,
la source de cette vie qui circule dans toutes les parties du corps
europeen. ... II (Innocent III) avait le sentiment de la plus haute
destination du Pontificat, la volonte de la realiser, il la regardait comme
une institution etablie par Dieu lui-meme pour la direction de I'Eglise
et le salut du genre humain. Que la croyance qui le faisait agir,
consideree en elle-meme, soit vraie au fausse . . . c'est une question
. . . qui appartient a la polemique theologique, mais dont I'histoire
n'a point a s'occuper. II suffit seulement a I'histoire de savoir que
366 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
cette croyance dominait a une certaine epoque, et qu'elle se liait a une
institution qui exergait une souveraine et universelle influence . . .
Parani tous les hommes . . . nuls n'ont plus souvent eprouve que les
papes . . . le malheur d'etre mal juges, parce qu'ils Tont ete sans
considerer, comme on le devait, le temps oil ils ont vecu et les devoirs
de leur charge. ' '^
Here is the whole difficulty in a nutshell. It is impossible
to narrow the struggles of the Papacy with temporal sovereigns
down to a squabble over temporalities, however much their
quarrels took this form. It was a tremendous conflict of prin-
ciples lying at the very foundation of society, and therefore
nothing but a prevailing consciousness on the part of society
that the popes represented right can explain the long suprem-
acy of the Medieval Papacy in the face of the persistent and
bitter protests of that same society against the wrong in it.
The very failure of the Hohenstaufen legists, the Ghibelline
poet Dante, of the lampoons and satires of Jacopone da Todi,
the bolder speculations of Marsiglio of Padua, Wycliffe and
Pierre Dubois— so maay attempts to bring on the Reformation
before its actual appearance— is undeniable proof that society
revered and sustained the Papacy to the very last extreme of
patience. Is it not all in the medieval mystic cry for a Papa
Apostolico? Mr. Dunning, like most of his Protestant pre-
decessors in this department of history, has completely missed
this great and guiding fact. With all his apparent fairness and
learning his work marks an advance in the study of history
only so far as it necessarily moves along with the mere inertia
of present-day historical investigation.
The second warning. Non-Catholic writers will continue to
misunderstand the Papacy so long as they persist in accepting
only one Catholic theory of Church and State as the theory of
all Catholics. Now there have been and are now held by
Catholics theories which allow the very widest freedom of
opinion. Briefly, they are three: the direct, the indirect, the
^Hurter, III, pp. xxxv-xxxvii. In passing one cannot help recording with
some amusement the contradiction of various writers when criticizing the Papacy.
For instance Mr. Tout (p. 143) grows quite impatient with Paschal II: "the
blundering Pope had betrayed the temporal possessions of the clergy and the
necessary bulwarks of the freedom of the spiritual power." Yet other writers
like Mr. Dunning blame them chiefly for defending their temporal possessions.
Verily the Popes are between the devil and the deep sea of historical criticism !
HISTORIANS OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY. 367
directive. The direct gives the Pope direct, immediate au-
thority over temporals, so that civil rulers are but the servants
of the Church, receive their power from her and can be de-
posed for misconduct by her. The indirect gives the Church
power over temporals only in so far as temporals intrench
upon religion and thus in a way become spiritual concerns;
the Church cannot depose a civil ruler but only declare obed-
ience to him not binding whensoever that obedience becomes
a menace to the Church, to spirituals. The directive allows
the Church no constraining power whatsoever over temporals :
in case of a conflict between her and civil authority she can
only advise, confer, plead, and if these fail, then suffer
patiently. Surely here is a great latitude for opinions, and,
de facto. Catholic theologians have variously held them, the
Church, not even in such apparently positive documents as
the Bull ^^Unam Sanctam" of Boniface VIII and the Syllabus
of Pius IX, having never ofl&cially taken sides on the question.
The direct theory was maintained by a few men in the later
Middle Ages, such as Henry of Segusia, Augustinus Tri-
umphus, perhaps John of Salisbury and Thomas a Becket.
The directive originated first with Gerson and afterwards with
Fenelon. The indirect though even in the Middle Ages the
most generally accepted theory, was formulated and developed
most clearly by Cardinal Bellarmine. Of these three which
has had the most vogue among Catholics? Certainly not the
direct. It was maintained by only a few even in the Middle
Ages and then only after the papal power had reached its
full vigor. The indirect has most adherents in Europe, in
fact is quite the vogue among Catholic theologians generally,
and we do not see how any thinking man can regard it other
than perfectly reasonable from a theoretical point of view.
But in America where the diversity of religions has made us
consider all questions affecting Church and State necessarily
from a practical point of view, it is not unsafe to say that
most Americans adopt the directive theory, Protestant Ameri-
cans not less than Catholic.^
^ For a full exposition of these theories consult Hergenrother's " Church and
State," II, Essay XIII, and Gosselin, II, pp. 359 et sq. Hergenrother favors the
indirect theory, Gosselin is a disciple of Fenelon. Of the two Gosselin seems the
more temperate in style and historical in treatment. Hergenrother is a pleader,
though a masterly one. Gosselin in re is more of an historian.
368 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Now, this being the case, is it not manifestly unfair for the
average non-Catholic historian, like Mr. Dunning for instance,
to pick out the weakest and least prevalent theory (the direct)
to either say or imply that it is the official theory of the Church
and then hold it up to scorn! To leave the wrong impression
that the present-day church still maintains officially the right
of deposing civil rulers and otherwise interfering in matters
purely temporal, a right which she wisely forbears to attempt
exercising now but which she hopes to exercise in the future?
It is not said in so many words, but such is the impression
created by his book and that of pretty much all others from
the pens of English Protestants. As the reader sees it is a
false one. From also this point of view then the work of Mr.
Dunning is fundamentally defective, a defect due to his ap-
parently complete ignorance of Catholic literature on his
subject.
The above is written with a keen appreciation of the candor
displayed by many non-Catholics when treating of the
Medieval Papacy.^ It is written with a still keener regret that
we English-speaking Catholics should have produced so little
that is worth reading, at least on this subject, and that many
of us seem to fear telling the truth about the undeniable fail-
ures and faults of many popes. The Papacy itself, be it said
to its credit, has deliberately condemned such timorousness
and indifference. Leo XIII, in his brief of congratulation to
Dr. Pastor, expressed an ardent wish that Catholics should
write **diligenter ac sincere '^ de '^ rebus gestis Pontificum
Maximorum." Still more recently he has told Father Mann
that *^you must make the Popes known^' (Bisogna far cono-
scere i Papi). Let us then, to quote a hackneyed phrase, be
up and doing, because we are surely doing very little, and let
us do it sincerely and thoroughly. So long as we leave the
field to non-Catholic critics we have none but ourselves to
blame if they write of the Medieval Papacy with little sym-
pathy, often with bigotry. Lucian Johnston.
*A casual reading of both Hergenrother and Gosselin will show a mass of
testimonies from non-Catholic writers in favor of the Popes. Of the services
rendered by the Papacy to Medieval Europe as an international tribunal see the
remarkable article in the review "La Papaut6 et les Peuples " for September-
October, 1902 (Paris). In the same article are quoted a number of writers on
medieval papal politics by the side of whom it were well to place works like Mr.
Cunning's and others simply by way of showing that works of their class are
very rare in English.
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION.
In our review of Mr. Mallock's recent attack on the methods
and arguments of our Catholic apologists for theism, we saw
that, although he pronounces their reasoning to be worthless
and even disgraceful, nevertheless, a cursory perusal of their
works shows that in every case he has utterly failed to under-
stand the position he attacks. Destructive criticism was not,
however, the ultimate purpose of Mr. Mallock's excursion
into the field of theistic Apologetics. His ulterior aim was to
discover a reasonable basis for religious belief, and— the pres-
ent bootless and ineffectual methods having been abandoned—
to point out an intellectual road by which those thoughtful
minds, whose faith had been shaken by the advance of scien-
tific thought, may reach again a position of religious certainty.
In the present paper we shall consider Mr. Mallock's con-
structive attempt and note what measure of success he has
achieved. In order to do this we must recall the fact that his
constructive effort derives its whole significance from the con-
flict and contradiction which he alleges to exist between science
and religion. It is only in the light of his unwarranted con-
cessions to philosophic monism, that Mr. Mallock's theistic
apology becomes intelligible. The substance of these conces-
sions to the enemies of religion, as well as the whole trend of
his destructive criticism, is conveniently and concisely
epitomized in the following characteristic passage regarding
the attitude of science towards the doctrine of human freedom ;
^ ^ Physiology, ' ' he tells us, ^ ^ by its exposition of the facts and
its establishment of the principle of heredity . . . has stopped
the last earth in which the phantom of freedom could hide
itself. It has supplied the last link in the chain by which
man is bound to the mechanism of universal nature— has shown
him to be part and parcel of one single and inexorable process,
and no more responsible for any one of his thoughts or actions
than he is for those of his grandfather, for the colour of his
369
370 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
eyes, or for the history and temperature of the earth which
have rendered his life possible'^ (pp. 147-8).
In the light of this assertion one would naturally expect to
find Mr. Mallock joining forces with Professor Haeckel in
definitely consigning the doctrine of human freedom to the
limbo of obsolete formulas. But nothing could be farther
from his intentions. Having commemorated the ^invulner-
able'' and *^ unimpeachable" arguments of monistic philos-
ophers, he flatly denies their conclusions, and proceeds in the
very teeth of positive science to ' ' exhibit the doctrine of moral
freedom as worthy of a reasonable man's acceptance."
In dealing with Mr. Mallock 's defense of theism we must
distinguish between a preliminary discussion, and the founda-
tion of belief itself. The former consists of an abortive
attempt to show that *' contradictories— such as freedom and
not-f reedom— may be compatible. ' ' This contention, although
entirely prefatory, is nevertheless absolutely essential to the
favorable issue of Mr. Mallock 's argument. For, unless free-
dom and not-freedom can be shown to be compatible in the
same person, it would be the limit of absurdity to ask a rea-
sonable man to give simultaneous assent to such mutually con-
tradictory doctrines. This proposition, however, supposing it
to be satisfactorily established, brings us only to the threshold
of the theistic position; it shows that a belief in the doctrines
of religion is not obviously irrational, that the conclusions of
science should form no antecedent prejudice against the truth
of theism; but it provides no positive ground for assent to
religion. It is to the discovery and elaboration of this positive
basis of religious belief that Mr. Mallock devotes the second
portion of his argument. Here he reveals to our astonished
gaze a moral order, a world of subjective values, altogether in-
dependent of the cosmic order, the world of scientific facts.
And he points out that just as all our knowledge about the
cosmic order is built on the judgment that the external world
exists, so in like manner, our knowledge of the moral and
religious order is based on the ^* judgment" that human prog-
ress, i. e.y the development of man's highest faculties, has a
supreme significance. This instinctive *^ judgment" consti-
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 371
tutes the practical basis and reasonable warrant for an assent
to each of the essential principles of theism, viz., moral free-
dom, human immortality, and an ethical God.
But since this basic *^ judgment'' is an * instinctive and
not a cognitive act,'' the question will arise. What grounds
have we for imputing to it any objective validity? Mr.
Mallock answers that we apprehend and accept this proposi-
tion regarding human progress by an act of instinctive faith
essentially similar to the act by which we apprehend and ac-
cept the existence of the external universe. And of these
mutually independent worlds— the cosmic world and the moral
—the latter has always been, for the highest and strongest
races, and must always continue to be, no less of a reality than
the former. In the recognition of this fact, according to Mr.
Mallock, lies the reasonable liberation of religious belief from
the stifling limitations imposed on it by the recent progress
and present conditions of scientific thought. Mr. Mallock 's
confidence that he has achieved success where, according to
his own expression, the attempts made by the profoundest
minds in all ages have been ^^ ridiculous and ignominious fail-
ures," invites a separate consideration of the two steps which
his argument comprises. The first in order is the practical
synthesis of contradictories.
I.
Mr. Mallock makes no attempt to conceal the serious dif-
ficulties of the problem which, at the very outset, confronts
him. On the one hand he accepts without demur the scientific
disproof of moral freedom; he proposes to vindicate the
reality of moral freedom, on the other. His first task, there-
fore, is to show that two contradictory propositions may both
be true. This thesis Mr. Mallock does not profess to establish
by a direct demonstration; what he proposes to do is to adduce
numerous examples of '> contradictions" involved in the most
elementary religious and *' scientific" beliefs, hoping thereby
to convince the reader that, owing to the constitution of our
own minds and of the universe, no coherent thought would
be possible unless we were continually to give simultaneous
assent to contradictions, not consciously, perhaps, but at least
372 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
by implication. If then, both the religious synthesis and the
** scientific" are at bottom self -contradictory, and if, never-
theless, we may, as perfectly reasonable beings, persist in our
belief in the reality either of the cosmic world or of the moral,
there can be no antecedent reason why we should not assent
to both at the same time : in a word, * ' no greater contradiction
in thought is involved in a deliberate belief in the coexistence of
the two incompatible worlds than is involved in a belief in the
existence of either of these worlds separately" (p. 286).
It will make for clearness if we here state briefly a fact
which will become more evident as we proceed, viz., that the
formal fallacy in Mr. Mallock's attempt to prove his thesis
by an appeal to alleged ** contradictions " involved in the
religious synthesis, lies in the double sense in which he uses the
term * ^ contradiction. " He uses the term, first, in its proper
sense, in which a proposition is said to contain a contradiction
if it at once affirms and denies the same thing. In this sense,
Mr. Mallock's thesis involves a contradiction. He uses the
term, secondly, in an entirely improper sense, i. e., he calls a
proposition self-contradictory if only the human mind is in-
capable of harmonizing the subject and predicate in thought.
Such a proposition may properly be termed incompre-
hensible or inconceivable ; but as John Stuart Mill pointed out,
we should not be warranted in calling such a proposition ' ' self-
contradictory" unless ^^we knew a priori that we must have
been created capable of conceiving whatever is capable of ex-
isting ... an assumption more destitute of evidence could
scarcely be made."^ The supposed *^ contradiction" inherent
in our religious concepts will be found to be, even on Mr.
Mallock's own admission, not self-contradictory at all, but
merely inconceivable.
Putting aside for the moment all consideration of the
formal validity of his argument, let us observe a material
implication of which, strangely enough, Mr. Mallock does not
seem to have been aware. The assertion that a man may be
morally-free and not-morally-free, at the same time, is clearly
an explicit denial of the principles of contradiction, viz., that
^"Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy," Vol. I, p. 85.
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 373
a thing cannot be and not-be at the same time. Now, one of
the peculiar characteristics of the principle of contradiction
is that it cannot be denied explicitly, without being at the same
time affirmed implicitly ; for the very denial loses all sense and
meaning if it does not exclude the possibility that the principle
is true. Furthermore, a disproof of the principle cannot be
undertaken without, at each successive step, surreptitiously
introducing the principle itself and assuming its truth. Thus,
Mr. Mallock must of necessity implicitly repudiate in every
sentence he writes, the very conclusion he professedly aims at
establishing, and finally, when he has stated his conclusion in
words, he has only succeeded in impaling himself on one or
the other horn of this dilemma: either his conclusion is false,
in which case his entire position collapses; or it is not false,
and in that case— there being no repugnance between false
and not-false— every word he utters, every sentence he frames,
is reduced to the level of unmeaning gibberish. The naivete
with which Mr. Mallock sets about disproving the principle
of contradiction is admirable. He is confident that if he only
succeeds in disproving this principle, he will have pointed out
a means whereby a man may reasonably assent both to the
doctrines of religion and to the doctrines of *^ science'' without
any further unpleasant implications. He might as well pro-
pose to get rid of the principle of gravitation, and imagine
that the only practical consequence of so doing would be that
he could carry twice as heavy a burden as he was previously
able to bear.
Mr. Mallock considers his position to be '^sufficiently aad
conclusively illustrated by the admitted coexistence of sin
and evil with a God who is all-good and all-powerful.'' This
example is not merely typical of the '^ contradictions" involved
in our religious beliefs; it is, moreover, such a clear and un-
deniable illustration of his point that it stands in need of no
further corroboration. So, at least, thinks Mr. Mallock. He
has obviously failed to see that it devolves on him to show how
the existence of sin logically involves a denial' either of the
goodness or of the omnipotence of God. Until this be estab-
lished we cannot be justly accused of giving assent— even by
374 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the remotest implication— to beliefs really contradictory. Such
a demonstration, it is clear, cannot reasonably even be under-
taken by any creature whose limited powers forbid his
^* grasping the scheme of things entire.'' For *^Who among
men is he who can know the counsel of God? or who can say
to him: Thou hast wrought iniquity'"?
Not only can Mr. Mallock not show that this or any other
essential doctrine of theism involves a denial of the principle
of contradiction, but it never once crossed his mind to put
forward so extravagant a claim. He admits freely that by
' ' contradictions '.' he is here referring to propositions humanly
inconceivable. Indeed, he sums up his remarks on this ques-
tion by telling us that '^that conception of God implies a co-
existence of qualities in the same nature which cannot be recon-
ciled by any other means than by a frank admission that this
nature is incomprehensible" (p. 224). And he states ex-
plicitly that when he says contradictions need not be incom-
patible, he means *^ neither more nor less than . . . that the
human intellect is an organ of capacities so limited that it is
constitutionally unable to grasp life or existence in its totality"
(p. 281). The source of Mr. Mallock 's error lies, therefore,
not in attributing to an inconceivability the character of
a real contradiction, but in paring down the content of the
term *' contradiction" until he destroys its nature. In a word,
he fails to perceive that self-contradiction is a valid test of
falsity, since it is an appeal to a positive power of the mind:
while inconceivability, on the other hand, is not a criterion of
falsity as it arises from a deficiency, an incapacity of the mind.
If there remain any doubt that Mr. Mallock, instead of trying
to prove that contradictions are compatible, has really been
engaged in showing that inconceivability is not a test of
falsity, it should be dispelled by reading the following passages
from the last pages of his book. We have been ^4ed astray"
he tells, **by the idea that if two cognate beliefs are true, the
human intellect must be able to attest their truth by reconciling
them. . . . Let us only get rid of this utterly false idea that no
two beliefs can be true which the intellect is unable to recon-
cile" (pp. 286-7), and we shall then with equal confidence be
able to accept both monism and theism.
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 375
That inconceivability is no ultimate test of falsity has been
a commonplace in Catholic philosophy for centuries. But,
because the inconceivable may be true, it by no meaas follows
that the self-contradictory may be true likewise. Yet, this
is precisely Mr. Mallock's argument.
Before leaving this preliminary stage of the new Apology,
we must advert briefly to Mr. Mallock's pseudo-** scientific''
antinomies. As might have been anticipated, Mr. Mallock has
here, again, erroneously identified HaeckePs monism with
science. He points to the contradiction involved in the doc-
trine of a continuous ether, infinite in extent, out of which the
existing universe arose by a process of condensation. This
is not an established fact of science at all ; it is not even a scien-
tific hypothesis. Ether as a medium for the transmission of
light, radiant heat, electricity, attraction and repulsion, is a
proper enough subject for scientific theorizing. As long,
however, as its very existence is hypothetical, there is nothing
to prevent scientific philosophers like Haeckel from using it
as a sort of school-boy's ^^Asia Minor" to which anything can
be safely referred, if only its exact location is unknown. But
is it not absurd to say that science has established *Hhe three
following facts: firstly, that the ether is the ultimate cause
of all things ; secondly, that it is homogeneous and non-atomic ;
thirdly, that it is capable of indefinite contraction and expan-
sion" (p. 228)? Indeed, one need only glance through Mr.
Mallock 's pages (pp. 224-36) to be convinced that he is speak-
ing of ^^contradictions" found, not in science, but in evolu-
tionary monism. And in so far as he has pointed out real
contradictions, he has simply dealt another blow to that already
shattered mosiac of contradictions, which Professor Haeckel
boastingly calls his ^^ consistent and monistic theory of the
eternal cosmogenetic process."
The same must be said of Mr. Mallock 's analysis of the
concepts of time and space. For, while the notion of ' ' eternal
time" and 'infinite space," which he shows to be self -con-
tradictory, are fundamental postulates with the monist, it is
an affront to common sense to report reasonable beings as
really believing that *'time is divided by an ever-moving point.
376 CATEOLIO UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the present, into two eternities— the past eternity and the
future" (p. 236), or that actual space is infinite, and supposing
it to be bisected by a plane, *^each of the halves, being on one
side infinite still, will, in respect of its spatial content, be no
less infinite than the two taken together" (p. 237). That
these propositions regarding time and space are really self-
contradictory in the proper sense of the word, proves not that
contradictories are compatible, but that time is not eternal
and space is not infinite. To deny that it proves this is to deny
the possibility of all proof —it is to evict reason.
There is no need of insisting further on the ineptitude of
Mr. Mallock's attempt to show that we may, as reasonable
beings, assent to the principles of monism, and at the same
time assent to the principles of theism. At the beginning
of the chapter in which he undertakes to perform this feat,
Mr. Mallock remarks that, *^To accept contradictory proposi-
tions as not in reality incompatible, is, (the reader) will say,
a procedure which can seem reasonable to a madman only"
(p. 219). At the end of the chapter the careful reader will be
compelled in all honesty to admit that he has been strongly
confirmed in his original opinion.
Consequently— since contraditions still remain incompat-
ible—if science, as Mr. Mallock thinks, *^forms an absolute
affirmation of monism," an inquiry into the second stage of
his argument would clearly be a waste of time. We have seen,
however, in our review of Mr. Mallock 's destructive criticism,
that ^^ science in the sense of * rigorously verified fact' repu-
diates evolutionary monism at every step." Hence, we are
not compelled a priori to regard the belief in God as a super-
stition, nor the belief in moral freedom as a subjective delusion.
Our next concern, therefore, shall be with Mr. Mallock 's at-
tempt to discover a reasonable foundation, independent of
science, for our religious convictions.
II.
The practical basis and justification of religious belief, ac-
cording to Mr. Mallock, is to be found in certain instinctive
** judgments" or appreciations of human worth, which, he
maintains, *^ wholly escape the scrutiny of science." These
BOOK REVIEWS. 377
^^ judgments'^ are capable of various expression: e. g., as a
belief in the dignity and sanctity of the individual human life:
or as an instinctive assent to the proposition that human prog-
ress, i. e., the development of man's highest faculties, is invested
with a supreme significance. This latter statement obviously
embraces all other formulations of the basic judgment, for as
Mr. Mallock himself points out, *^ human progress will have
no significance at all, unless the individual has some personal
destiny beyond that of being sacrificed to a purpose in which
he is not himself included'' (p. 252). The practical basis of
religious belief is therefore found to lie in an instinctive
^'judgment" of mankind that human progress has a meaning.
Before the skeptical mind will acquiesce in the sufficiency
of this foundation of belief, it will propound several anxious
questions which press for a definite answer: First: Has Mr.
Mallock succeeded in showing that the doctrine of human
freedom, which lies at the heart of the theistic position, is
actually involved in the moral and social development of the
human race! Second: As a matter of fact, is not our belief
in the meaning of human progress derived from the very doc-
trines of theism, which Mr. Mallock is attempting to bolster
up with it, i. e., is not Mr. Mallock 's whole Apology a glaring
example of petitio principiif Third: Is this belief really in-
dependent of science— and, if not, does not Mr. Mallock stand
self -convicted of failure by the fact that he is trying to ''meet
science on its own ground"? Fourth, and perhaps most im-
portant: If this basic judgment be an instinctive, not a cogni-
tive act, what grounds have we for supposing it to be object-
ively valid? On the answer given to these question must rest
one's estimate of the value of Mr. Mallock 's contribution to
the literature of theistic Apology. We shall consider them
briefly, beginning with the first.
1. In establishing the doctrine of human freedom, Mr.
Mallock does not pretend to show that it is logically involved
in the very concept of human progress. What he proposes
to establish is that the belief in freedom is practically required
as an essential condition for the moral and social development
of the human race. This belief— so he argues— engenders
25 CUB
378 CATHOLIC VNIYERSITY BULLETIN.
conscience and a sense of moral responsibility: and without
these, progress is simply impossible. For, ^Hhere is no more
effective instrument of self-restraint in existence than the
knowledge on a man's part that, if he acts in a certain way, he
will have to submit to his own condemnation of himself (p.
246). If, on the contrary, man once becomes convinced that
not he, but nature whose creature he is, is responsible for his
acts— *^ self-condemnation will be impossible, his whole dread
of it will be gone, and one entire side of his moral self will be
paralyzed. '' But this is not all. ^^ Besides losing our power
of condemning ourselves or others," continues Mr. Mallock,
*^we shall lose our power of esteeming ourselves or others,
likewise. All the higher developments of friendship, love,
and admiration would sink into the same grave that has en-
gulfed condemnation and hatred" (p. 247). In a word,
eliminate our belief in moral freedom, and you strike from
human consciousness the source from which spring all the
higher, the deeper, the more delicate, the more interesting
elements in life. If we were deprived of the belief that we
are free, we should lose our chief reason for acting and think-
ing after that peculiar fashion which constitutes human prog-
ress: we should lose the motive which determines our will to
choose what is good and elevating, in preference to what is
bad and debasing.
In fact, for human development, according to Mr. Mallock,
the belief in freedom must be present, as a motive for action ;
but the possession of real freedom is by no means essential;
it would, on the contrary, be highly undesirable. For, since
a free being is ^^more than the agent of motives" there is
nothing to keep him from imperilling human progress by ^ ' act-
ing like a drunken man" without motive. Hence man must
be beguiled into acting for his highest interests by a pleasant
fiction, which, to he effective must he delusive. *^Ut pueris
olim dant frustula blandi doctores." Expunge our belief
in freedom whilst leaving us the reality, and you eliminate
all the more valuable elements in life : civilization would decay,
the sky of human progress would be forever overcast. But
if, on the other hand, we were deprived of real freedom whilst
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 379
fondly believing ourselves possessed of it, human intercourse
would lose none of its zest and significance. Such are the
implications of Mr. Mallock's argument. It should be clear
that this line of reasoning would at best prove that the belief
in moral freedom is a practical prerequisite of human prog-
ress: but as regards the correspondence of this belief with
objective reality— which is the only question at issue— it does
not enable us to form the remotest conjecture.
It is important to observe that the objective validity of this
belief is not enhanced by the fact that human progress is in-
sinct with meaning. For whether human progress have any
significance or not, it is only the belief in freedom that is
involved as a practical prerequisite. The only advantage
Mr. Mallock's supposition possesses over its rival is that, if
human progress really has a meaning, it is not obviously irra-
tional to suppose that man is free, as it would be on the con-
trary assumption.
The question-begging character of Mr. Mallock's defense
of freedom may be plainly discerned in the following com-
pendious statement: ^^If we do but succeed in showing that
this one doctrine of freedom is really essential to life as men
are resolved to live it, we shall have established in theory
everything for which we are now contending" (p. 248). In
other words our belief in freedom is valid because it is essential
to life as men are resolved to live it. But why are men re-
solved to live in this particular way! Because, forsooth, they
believe in human freedom and responsibility— as Mr. Mallock
has been at such pains to show. And why do they believe in
human freedom? Because they are resolved to live a certain
fashion, and the belief in freedom is practically essential to
that life. Thus we are led round and round in a circle in-
curably vicious.
One is by no means prepared to admit that Mr. Mallock
has proven even the belief in moral responsibility to be a neces-
sary condition of human development, moral, intellectual, or
social. So eminent an authority as Dr. Martineau is of
opinion^ that an impartial observer would probably find more
^" A study of Religion," Vol. II, p. 186.
380 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
striking examples of moral greatness in the ranks of the De-
terminists than in those of the Libertarians. Without assent-
ing to this somewhat extreme view we may recall the fact that,
in the ancient world, the name of ** Stoic'' was synonymous
with high-mindedness and prudence and moral integrity. Yet
the Stoics were Determinists. In more recent times the self-
restraint and austerity of the Puritan type of character has
become proverbial ; but the Puritans, it is well known, did not
believe in human responsibility. And the people of the far
East, are they not fatalists'? Still it cannot be denied that
great rulers and empires, and even great systems of thought,
have arisen among them.
Enough has been said to make it evident that Mr. Mallock's
practical basis of belief furnishes no warrant for the objective
validity of the belief in human freedom. His view of the
entire theistic problem is identical with that of Voltaire;
^^ although there be no God, we should have to create Him—
although physiology has established as a fact of positive
knowledge that man is no more responsible for his acts than
he is for the acts of his grandfather, still we should embrace
the delusive belief that we are free in order to make life bear-
able." Hence, it is to be feared that Mr. Mallock's solution
for the theistic problem will prove unsatisfactory even to that
limited and anomalous class of readers for whose express benefit
it was excogitated, i. e., for '' those who are doubtful of the
religious view or deny it; but who in doubting or denying it,
do so against their ivill and are looking about them in vain for
some intellectual road by which they may reach again a posi-
tion of religious certainty'' (p. 3).
2. We have seen that Mr, Mallock has failed to derive the
reality of human freedom from the judgment that ^^ human
progress is invested with deep significance." (This basic
judgment is for the moment accepted as objectively valid.)
We must not, however, be understood to imply that no logical
connection exists between the two doctrines; but that the con-
nection which exists between them is the reverse of what Mr.
Mallock imagines it to be. The fact is that the doctrine of
moral freedom is a logical antecedent of the doctrine that
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 381
human progress has a meaning. This is admitted by Mr.
Mallock himself in at least one passage, in which he tells us
that the doctrine of human freedom is a ^^ latent supposition '*
without which it would be impossible for us to believe that
any value inheres in what human beings do or are (p. 248),
And this must be admitted by everyone who reflects on
the subject, that— supernatural revelation apart— our main
warrant for the belief that human development is instinct
with meaning, lies in a previous conviction that we are free
agents morally responsible for our actions.
But, although the doctrine of moral freedom is logically
prior to the belief in the worth of human progress, it is not
an immediate premise to that belief. It is not even a necessary
presupposition, and for a very simple reason, viz., that the
belief in the immortality and spiritual dignity of man,
which constitutes the intermediate step between the doctrine
of freedom and the doctrine that progress has a meaning,
may be established on grounds other than that of moral free-
dom; e. g., it may be arrived at from a consideration of the
intellectual activities of man. Our knowledge of human im-
mortality is the immediate logical antecedent of our knowl-
edge that human progress is invested with meaning. More-
over, unlike the doctrine of moral freedom, it is an absolutely
necessary antecedent. A moment's consideration will make
this evident. A reasonable assent to a proposition requires
that some evidence— intrinsic or extrinsic- be presented in
support of the proposition. In the present case, the only
extrinsic evidence which could command our assent, must
ultimately be divine revelation. But divine revelation pre-
supposes the existence of God. Hence, the belief in the mean-
ing of human progress, if it is to constitute a basis y *^a firm
intellectual basis of religious belief" (p. 284), must compel
our assent on grounds of intrinsic evidence, i. e., it must be
either self-evident or logically inferred from some proposi-
tion to which we have previously assented. Now, surely Mr.
Mallock will not maintain that the supreme worth of human
life is self-evident. On such a supposition it would be im-
possible to explain the stubborn conviction of millions of
382 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Buddhists that the essence of all existence, especially of
sentient and rational existence, is evil. Nor does the ' ' splendid
purpose'' of human development seem self-evident to those
other millions who have been ground down in the competitive
struggle for the bare necessities which sustain life. On the
contrary, were they not supported by a belief in God and
human immortality they would be forced to echo the senti-
ment expressed by Sophocles: ^^Not to have been bom at all
is the happiest fate, and the next best is to die young. ' ' The
truth is that the principles of theism alone are our reason-
able warrant for reprobating the pessimism inherent in the
doctrines of HaeckePs pseudo-scientific monism— according to
which the individual human life is a colorless fragment of a
soulless universe. No one would seem to recognize this fact
more clearly than did Mr. Mallock when he wrote: ^^ Progress
or evolution will have no significance at all unless the indi-
vidual has some personal destiny beyond that of being sacri-
ficed to a purpose in which he is not included" (p. 252).
This is clearly an avowal that the doctrine of human immor-
tality must be admitted before we can have any knowledge of
the value or meaning of development. It is self-evident that,
when this relation exists between two doctrines, the former
is not derived from the latter, but vice versa. Hence, Mr.
Mallock 's whole attempt to base the principles of theism on
the belief in the meaning of human progress is a flagrant
petitio principii.
It may be objected that Mr. Mallock has obviated the force
of this criticism by expressly stating that this basic judgment
or belief is not an act of reason at all, but an act of pure will,
or instinct. Therefore, it might be argued, this act has noth-
ing whatever to do with the appreciation of evidence, and
consequently is not amenable to the rules of reason. To quote
the words of Mr. Mallock himself: *'Life presents to us two
great orders of things. One of them is the cosmos, or the world
of objective facts. The other is the moral world, or the world
of subjective values. . . . The cosmic world we interpret by
the exact methods of science, and the results are such that an
acceptance of them is forced by the evidence on our judgment,
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION, 383
the judgment itself being passive. . . . The moral world we
interpret by standards which we supply ourselves, and our
judgment is not passive but active. ... It is easy to see that
here, where the standard of truth is a variable, no science
strictly so-called can exisf (p. 272).
Mr. Mallock's contention comes to this; judgments of worth
do not involve any action characteristic of the intellect, but
possess a subjective validity of their own independently of the
avouchment of the reasoning faculty that they represent ob-
jective reality. If this claim could be made good, Mr. Mal-
lock's position would not be so obviously obnoxious to the
charge of question-begging. An assertion, however, more
arbitrary and more destitute of foundation could not well be
conceived of. As we shall see presently, even Mr. Mallock
himself is forced to admit that the validity of a value-judg-
ment depends on its correspondence to objective fact.
3. Mr. Mallock 's objection to contemporary methods of
religious defense was that our apologists attempt to ^^meet
science on its own ground.'' We were, therefore, led to ex-
pect that the basis of belief to be proposed by Mr. Mallock
would lie outside of the domain of science. We have just
seen how he has attempted to carry out this project by draw-
ing a hard and fast line between the world of objective facts
and the world of subjective values. Our concern now is to
inquire whether this distinction is well-founded. Is it true
that the validity of moral '^judgment of value'' is altogether
independent of theoretical *' judgments of existence"? This
question can be best answered by a consideration of those very
judgments of value in which Mr. Mallock finds the practical
basis of theism. ' ' Science, ' ' he tells us, ' ' can offer no opinion
as to the truth of the belief in the sanctity of human life"
(p. 243). And again: ^'We are brought to the chief and to
the last of those questions with regard to which science can
tell us nothing, viz.. Is the spiritual, intellectual, and social
development of the human race a fact which has any meaning
or has it none! This is a question which cannot be answered
by an appeal to external evidence. It can be answered only
by an act which is at once an act of belief, of common sense
384 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
and of will, an act wMch for practical purposes, creates the
truth it affirms'' (p. 259). In the first place, is there no
judgment of existence involved in the assertion that human
life possess sanctity? To possess sanctity is to have a certain
spiritual worth. Now it cannot be asserted that a combina-
tion of material particles, no matter how skillfully organized,
by the action of physical forces, has spiritual worth. The
only thing that can have spiritual worth is a spiritual subject
that exists. Secondly, let us consider the assertion that
^^ human progress has a supreme significance.'' The expres-
sion ^* human progress" may be taken in two senses. By
progress the evolutionary monist would understand merely a
continuous change resulting in an increasing complexity of
structure and diversity of function— a readjustment of matter
and motion. In this sort of progress there is no qualitative
difference between higher and lower. If we suppose this
to be a true description of human development, then, as Mr.
Mallock says: ^^What we have been accustomed to call the
highest development of humanity are in no objective sense
higher than what we call the lowest" (p. 273). But when
Mr. Mallock speaks of human progress as having a meaning,
he refers to something quite different. He refers to a process
of development in which the higher is qualitatively and
eternally superior to the lower. This, he tells us, is the only
sense in which human progress can be said to have supreme
value. Hence, Mr. Mallock has plainly involved himself in
a contradiction. He assured us, first that the standard of truth
for value- judgments is entirely subjective : and now he admits
that the most important of all such judgments— ^ 'the one which
embraces all others" (p. 259), depends for its validity upon
the correspondence of its subject, viz., human progress, with
objective reality. If what we have ''been accustomed to call
the highest development of humanity are in no objective sense,
higher than what we call the lowest," then it is clear that
human progress can have no particular worth. Whence we
conclude that this judgment of value, like the former one con-
cerning the sanctity of human life, involves a scientific, i. e.,
intellectual, judgment of the objective existence of its subject.
SKEPTICISM AS A BASIS OF RELIGION. 385
And what is true of these two is obviously true of all judgments
of value whatsoever. If they are not to be mere ^* air-drawn *'
formulas, the subject of predication must have real existence.
It must not be inferred from this that Mr. Mallock's argu-
ment is to be rejected because— contrary to his opinion— it
involves an act of reason. Quite the reverse. What we wish
to make plain is that Mr. Mallock has been unable to discover
any defense of theism which does not involve a judgment of
the intellect, and consequently that he is illogical in clinging
to this particular argument whilst rejecting the numerous
other arguments for theism which have precisely the same
basis. Indeed this very argument which Mr. Mallock employs,
has been familiar to Catholic philosophers, time out of mind.
But they were careful to provide for it a valid foundation, and
to recognize that, at best, it is of a supplementary character.
The source of Mr. Mallock 's error lies, first, in overlooking the
subordinate character of the argument, and secondly, in
repudiating the foundation on which it depends for its validity.
We have already seen his denial of the principle of contradic-
tion. Our next concern is with his attempt to make a non-
rational motive the sole basis of theistic belief.
4. We have now arrived at our fourth and final inquiry
regarding Mr. Mallock 's Apologetics, viz., what grounds have
we for supposing that this basic *^ judgment'' itself corre-
sponds to objective reality! A conclusion possesses no
more validity than its premises. In order, therefore, that
we may have a reasonable basis for believing in the doctrines
of theism, we must be assured of the validity of the belief on
which they are founded.
The act by which we assent to. this fundamental proposition,
Mr. Mallock tells us, is an instinctive, not a cognitive act.
'*It is an act of belief, of common sense, and of will, which for
practical purpose creates the truth it affirms" (p. 259). To
begin with, this marvellous act of will is not an act of belief
or judgment, in any proper sense, at all. The act of assent
necessarily demands an intellectual element. A reasoned
atheist cannot be a deliberate, a voluntary, theist. As Professor
386 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Flint excellently points out, ''There is no mere 'will to believe/
A merely willed belief is a sham belief, no real belief.''^
If this sham belief is the only basis we have for our assent to
the doctrine of theism and the principles of the moral order,
there is nothing left for us but moral skepticism. It is small
consolation to be told this act of the will "for practical pur-
poses creates the truth it affirms,'' if the fact stands that all
the evidence is against the validity of this belief. "All the
facts of the universe, mental and physical,'' Mr. Mallock tells
us, "form an absolute affirmation of monism which is fatal
to each of the essential doctrines of religion." We have,
therefore, not the slightest knowledge, direct or indirect, of
the existence of the moral world. We cannot even legitimately
guess that it exists. In such a condition, to will to believe
that human progress has more than an ephemeral value, that
human life is more than
A moment's halt— a momentary taste,
Of being from the well amid the waste,
would be an act of mental dishonesty, productive only of a
subjective delusion —an act properly reprobated by every rea-
sonable man.
To make confusion worse confounded, Mr. Mallock pro-
ceeds to justify this act of mental duplicity, by telling us that
our assent to the existence of the cosmic world is consummated
by a similar act of self-deception. The external world, he
says, is not apprehended by a cognitive act, for "the senses
merely give men certain internal ideas . . . and reason in-
stead of supporting the inference that the causes (in which
these ideas originate), must be external objects, entirely fails,
as all thinkers now admit, to assure us of the existence of
anything outside our individual selves" (p. 275). The act
by which we apprehend and accept the comic world is instinc-
tive, not cognitive. Consequestly there is no evidence known
to us for the existence of the external world, nor does Mr.
Mallock venture to assert that in case of external existence,
the instinctive act, by which we assent to it, will "create the
^"Agnosticism," p. 453.
SKEPTICISM A8 A BASIS OF RELIGION, 387
truth it affirms''— even ^^for practical purposes.'' Mr. Mal-
lock had in mind to confirm us in the delusion that a moral
world exists; what he had accomplished is to leave our be-
lief in the reality of the external world not a leg to stand on.
In trying to extricate himself from the unsavory implications
of moral skepticism, he has hopelessly entangled himself in
the meshes of universal skepticism.
Not only does his practical basis of theistic belief involve
the denial of the slightest knowledge on our part, con-
cerning even the existence either of the moral order, or of
the cosmic ; it involves, likewise, a denial of the validity of the
reasoning process. For not only does reason not make the
external world known to us, but ^4t is a guide, if we follow
it faithfully, not to belief but to skepticism" (p. 276). Hence,
in order to perform the act of instinctive belief by which we
assent to the existence of external objects, we must repudiate
the cogency of logical inference and condemn the intellectual
faculty as untrustworthy. Since our cognitive faculties are
thus unreliable we cannot even remotely conjecture that we
ourselves exist. The eviction of reason, in the name of reason,
is complete. In his argument for theism Mr. Mallock has
found it necessary to rest the cornerstone of his new edifice
on a triple foundation, viz., first, a denial of the principle of
contradiction; second, a denial of the trustworthiness of our
cognitive faculties; and third, a denial of the validity of the
reasoning process. Such is ^^the firm intellectual basis of
religious belief"— such is the * intellectual road" by which
Mr. Mallock proposes to enable the honest doubter to ^^ reach
again a position of religious certainty"!
It is fortunate for the cause of religion that Mr. Mallock
has not been more successful in his attack on the existing
methods of theistic Apology than he has been in his attempt
to construct a new and more stable basis for religious belief.
For, in view of his *' ridiculous and ignominious failure" to
discredit those lines of religious defense which are traditional
in Catholic philosophy, we may still safely persevere in our
religious convictions.
388 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
While Mr. Mallock lias failed to provide a new basis for
the doctrines of theism, it cannot be denied that his study of
the theistic problem will have a beneficial influence on con-
temporary Apologetics. It is valuable, however, not for its
contribution to the defense of religion, but rather as a sign
of warning against a prevailing tendency in present day
Apologies for theism, viz., the tendency to discredit and
minimize the rational element in religious assent, and to em-
phasize unduly the non-rational element. The absurd extreme
to which Mr. Mallock has carried this tendency will doubtless
do something to restore the study of the basis of religious
assent to saner and safer methods.
Edwin V. O'Haka.
Academy of Apologetics,
St. Paul Seminary.
BOOK REVIEWS.
History of Philosophy. By William Turner, S.T.D. Boston:
Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. x + 674.
The modern demand for good text-books has been met in nearly all
departments of knowledge and even in those sciences which are known
as ''philosophical." That in this line of production American
scholarship has been peculiarly successful is a fact that is in keeping
with the practical tendencies of our country. But hitherto the his-
tory of philosophy has been accessible mainly in the form of trans-
lations from the German. American manuals are rare. Were utility
the only criterion, the present work is timely ; Dr. Turner has given us
an excellent text-book.
Viewing the book as a whole one notes, as its salient features, clear-
ness, conciseness and proportion. The task of presenting within
narrow limits the essentials of the various systems is not easy ; and it
is still more difficult to give each its due share of exposition. In both
respects, Dr. Turner has succeeded. The result is especially im-
portant for mediaeval philosophy. Scholasticism, which has so often
been hurried over with scant justice by historians, appears in its true
character; and its relations to earlier systems and to modern phi-
losophy are well defined. That the work of Schoolmen should receive
sympathetic treatment from a Catholic writer, was to be expected.
But this sympathy does not prevent our author from discovering the
merit in other philosophers whose teachings are far removed from the
thought and the principles of Scholasticism. The treatment through-
out is marked by calm objective appreciation.
The brief introduction which precedes each of the larger divisions,
the references to the literature under each chapter and the statement
of each philosopher's historical position, are details of method which
will prove helpful to the student. Much care has also been taken in
bringing out, under separate paragraphs with appropriate headings,
the more important topics and in grading the print so as to show at a
glance the relative value of the points under discussion.
The book commends itself to all who are interested in the study
of philosophy. The beginner will find in it just that' outline of his-
tory which he needs; and the more advanced student will be en-
couraged by its suggestions and indications to a deeper investigation
389
390 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
of those problems which, in our day as in the past, have called out the
energies of truly great minds.
Edward A. Pace.
The Pope and the People. Select letters and addresses on So-
cial Questions. By His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. New and
Revised edition. New York: Benziger, 1903.
Les Beatitudes De L'Evangile et Les Promesses De La Demo-
cratie Sociale. Par Mgr. Schmitz. Traduit par I'abbe L.
Colin. Paris: Lethielleux, 1903. Pp. 320.
Les Greves. Par Leon de Seilhac, Bibliotheque d 'economic sociale.
Paris : Lecoffre, 1903. Pp. 257.
Cartel Is et Trusts. Par E. Martin Saint-Leon, Bibliotheque
d 'economic sociale. Paris: Lecoffre, 1903. Pp. 248.
1. The Catholic Truth Society has rendered a real service to stu-
dents of the social questions who are interested in the Catholic point
of view, in publishing for us in a popular form the most important
social encyclicals of the Holy Father.
The volume before us contains the three papal letters of 1878,
1891, and 1901, on socialism and social democracy; one addressed to
a delegation from the workingmen's clubs of France, and the letters
on liberty, marriage, the reunion of Christendom, the duties of
Christians as citizens, and the Christian life.
An introduction to the collection is written by Mr. Devas; the
paragraphs throughout are synopsized on the margin of the page.
There is a good table of contents. In this form these important
documents are accessible to all students. There is no reason why the
collection should not be widely circulated among students and Cath-
olics in the United States.
2. The author of this work was the well-known coadjutor bishop
of Cologne who died in 1899. His great and intelligent interest in
the cooperation with social reform wherever his priestly ministrations
brought him, won for him the title der soziale Bischof. As an organ-
izer leader and orator he was especially gifted.
In the volume before us we find a devotional commentary on the
Beatitudes and a comparison for purpose of criticism between them
and what we may call the socialist beatitudes. The spirit and point
of view in the work are traditional ; much stress is laid on conditions
in life and possibly too little on personal or individual superiority to
them. For instance we find riches and the rich generally condemned,
poverty and the poor generally lauded: the vices of the rich and the
BOOK REVIEWS, 391
virtues of the poor are brought to our attention, while the virtues of the
rich and the vices of the poor largely escape notice. The little volume
is useful, as far as a devotional commentary can be useful, but it
would serve the cause of reform much more effectually were it to
stimulate the sense of personal responsibility more and emphasize
less external conditions.
3. This volume on strikes contains a comprehensive survey of con-
ditions in France, of the relation of the strike to the civil law, the
socialistic attitude, the documents concerning a number of recent
strikes, and the various forms of strikes in France. The concluding
portion of the volume contains a digest of the laws on conciliation
and arbitration. The book is full of positive information which is,
of course, interesting to students of strike problems.
4. M. Saint Leon presents in this volume a comprehensive review
of the trust problem. He has taken into account all the available
recent literature produced in Germany, Austria, France and the
United States, and has made a clear, concise resume of information
bearing on the origin, history, structure, financeering, advantages and
the evils of trusts, together with the legislation concerning them. It
is the first work of the kind in French, so far as we know.
William J. Kerby.
Synopsis TheologiaB Moralis. I. De Poenitentia, Matrimonio,
Ordine. Ad. Tanquery, S. S. Paris: 1903. 8°, pp. 628 and 33.
This is the first of a series of volumes on Moral Theology, that are
owing to the scholarly pen of Dr. Tanquery, formerly professor in
St. Mary's Seminary at Baltimore. Readers of the Bulletin are
acquainted with his manual of Dogmatic Theology. (Cf. .)
The volume before us is intended as a text-book, comprising, as it
does, the lectures which the author has regularly given in the
seminary. He follows in general the traditional line, writing under
the guidance of standard theologians. There is, of course, not much
oportunity for newness in the doctrines on penance, matrimony, and
orders, once the historical point of view is excluded. How that point
of view may be yet introduced into doctrinal treatises intended for
seminary use, is still a problem. Otherwise, the work is up to date,
and its ample bibliography shows a wide acquaintance with the most
recent literature, especially in English. Two characteristics will com-
mend this volume to students : the author has abandoned the frame-
work of casuistry, and he has embodied many practical suggestions
bearing on the active work of the ministry. The style throughout is
392 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
direct and clear, and the treatment of subjects is complete. The
work will serve admirably its purpose as a text-book for seminarians.
William J. Kerby.
Our Benevolent Feudalism. By W. J. Ghent. New York: Mac-
millan, 1903. 3d edition.
This volume has had the interesting fate of having been warmly
welcomed and greatly abused by reviewers. The early third edition
gives evidence of the fact that at any rate it has been widely read.
The author in the preface to this edition gives us an amusing resume
of the reviews which the work has received. It contains a history
and a prophecy; a review of present industrial political and social
conditions, and a prediction concerning the benevolent feudalism
which is to succeed the actual organization of society. As a review
of tendencies it is surely interesting, even eloquent, yet it may not
satisfy serious students, and may mislead the superficial. Prophecy
is generally valuable in inverse ratio to its quantity and assurance.
It is difficult to believe with the author that the future state predicted
will be the logical outcome of actual tendencies, or, being the logical
result of actual tendencies, that it will be realized. History does not
run along the lines of logic. Nor is it necessary to believe with the
author that there is no middle term between the cooperative common-
wealth and benevolent feudalism.
William J. Kerby.
The Question-Box Answers : Replies to questions received on mis-
sions to non-Catholics. By Rev. Bertrand L. Conway of the
Paulist Fathers. New York: The Catholic Book Exchange, 1903.
8°, pp. V -f- 589.
In his preface to this book Cardinal Gibbons states that it "ans-
wers in a brief and popular manner the most important questions
actually received by the author during the past five years of mis-
sionary activity in all parts of the United States from Boston to
Denver." These words of praise are weighty, coming as they do
from one who has himself prepared a work of the same nature, long
since become one of the most popular books of the nineteenth century.
Fr. Conway gathers under more than sixty titles a multitude of
objections received by the Diocesan Missionaries on their apostolic
tours here and there in the United States. Not all of them affect
immediately the special tenets of Catholicism. The rule of faith, the
^* notes" of the true Church, politico-ecclesiastical matters, peculiar
institutions of Catholicism like celibacy, abstinence, fasting and
BOOK REVIEWS. 393
indulgences, come in for a large meed of explanation. The Mass,
the Sacraments, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, the life to come,
are other sources of ignorance or misunderstanding. It is remark-
able to what an extent these average objections of the non-Catholic
mind square with the original polemics of Protestanism in the six-
teenth century, or when they are new, are nearly all drawn from
erroneous views of the great lines of the history of the Church. It
needs no profound work like Moehler's Symbolism to grapple with
this material— one would tl^nk after reading the book that the aver-
age American mind had been little touched by the advanced Protestant
theological literature of the last two centuries. If these objections
really represent the elements of religious doubt and hesitation in
the American mind as regards Catholicism, there is reason for be-
lieving the assertion of Mr. Henry Sidgwick in a late issue of the
''Atlantic Monthly," viz., that there is no longer any insurmountable
doctrinal obstacle to the reunion of the Protestant churches with the
Roman Church on the basis of her actual teaching. There are other
instructive thoughts suggested by the examination of these curious
statistics.
This little catechism may rightly hope to become a popular vade-
mecum. Its place is already marked in the average Catholic home
library besides the "Faith of Our Fathers" and the ''Catholic Doc-
trine" of Faa di Bruno not to speak of older works like Hay's
"Sincere Christian" and Milner's "End of Controversy." The
style is quite suitable to the scope of the work— direct, clear, and
simple. There is a sustained effort to make known frankly and
sufficiently the elements of Catholic truth and discipline in a diction
that avoids theological phraseology without losing fulness and pre-
cision. The writer does not try to say all that might be said, but only
what is needed to make clear the immediate vision of his opponent
or disciple. Such a book is equipped to take care of itself, to be its
own tongue, its own commentary. Its circulation should therefore
be an unlimited one. Improvements will no doubt be suggested.
Thus, the titles of all books cited are indeed printed in a special
bibliography, but they might be again grouped with others in a
logical order, to furnish a course of regular and progressive reading
in Catholic theology and history. The titles of chapters ought to
be numbered both in the text and in the table of contents, and with
this might be combined a progressive numbering of all the para-
graphs. Where an index-subject includes several references, it
might be well to introduce the practice of indicating in heavier type
the page or pages where an objection is most efficiently dealt with.
26 CUB
394 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Finally, we cannot help suggesting that a companion volume of
"Select Readings" be issued, drawn, when possible, from eloquent
non-Catholic writers, and by cross-references made to act as a com-
panion or key to certain important lines of objection. We wish
Father Conway and his co-laborers an ever-growing measure of
success in the immense vineyard that has been allotted to them. Here
grow brambles, it is true, and here are the ruins of a rich cultivation
—but here also are fertile soil, abundant sap, racy if wild fruit, the
traces of former success and comfort, consoling and inspiriting evi-
dences of former unity and communion. Only the persistent and
ingenious husbandry of charity may hope to reclaim these lost
provinces from the moral desolation that has fallen or is impending
over them— but it is precisely in Catholicism that the Almighty has
planted the inexhaustible reservoir of charity, as wide as the world
and humanity, and as inexhaustible as the divine love itself.
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Teaching of History and Civics in the elementary and the
secondary school. By Henry E. Bourne. New York: Longmans,
1902. 8°, pp. 385.
Professor Bourne has earned the gratitude of teachers by this
useful compilation. In it is to be found good instruction as to the
origins of historical scholarship, the progress of historical teaching
in Europe and the United States, the value and scope of historical
teaching, the choice of books and of subject-matter, the methods of
teaching. Skeleton courses are then mapped out for the study of
ancient, mediaeval and modern history. As a handbook or guide the
work will render excellent service in the higher grades of our schools.
It is especially useful to teachers. Its tone is habitually respectful
towards Catholicism. The writer betrays a varied learning, good
judgment, and a liberal historical training that enables him to deal
largely and philosophically with our human experience, also to point
out to the non-Catholics who read his book certain pitfalls into which
they are easily led by inherited prejudice.
At the same time we cannot but regret the want of a similar work
written by a Catholic hand. The history of humanity takes on
another appearance when written from the viewpoint of the Catholic
Church. Problems, ideas, institutions, that seem of slight or remote
interest to the non-Catholic mind, are of importance to us. We look
on the Church as a divine and perfect society, and on the other world
as her terminus ad quem. Our sympathies go out naturally to her
great chiefs, and we seize with a subtle instinct certain super-national
BOOK REVIEWS. 395
principles and tendencies that are foreign or abhorrent to non-
Catholics. As to bibliography we are aware of many excellent works,
in our own and in other tongues, that the non-Catholic seldom hears
of, or perhaps traces with some difficulty. There is, perhaps no work
more needed for our Catholic colleges seminaries and academies than
an introduction to the study of history, particularly of mediaeval and
modern history, written from our domestic standpoint. Indeed until
we have produced such a work with its pertinent bibliographies, we
cannot very well complain if our Catholic historical literature is left
in the background. Our own modesty is often the cause of such a
neglect.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Three Letters of Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabbogh (485-519), be-
ing the letter to the monks, the first letter to the monks of Beth-
Gaugal, and the letter to the Emperor Zeno. Edited from Syriac
MSS. in the Vatican Library, with an English translation, an
introduction to the life works and doctrines of Philoxenus, a
theological glossary and an appendix of bible quotations, by
Arthur Adolph Yasehalde, Member of the Society of the Priests
of St. Basil, Licentiate of Theology. A dissertation presented to
the Faculty of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Printed at Rome,
Tipografia della E. Accademia dei Lincei, 1902. 8°, pp. xv + 190.
Disruption and dissolution are written large over the latter half
of the fifth century of Roman imperial history and the Christian era.
In the civil order the barbarian dominated the West, and threatened
the seat of empire itself. In the religious order the subtlest con-
sequences of Arianism were in various ways working themselves out
in heresies that borrowed a curious viability from the confused
political surroundings and from a "renouveau" of national sentiment
that had long been smothered or offset in Egypt and Syria. The re-
sults of these revolutions were far-reaching. To no small extent the
modem world comes down in direct line from the conditions outlined
by the immediate predecessors of Justinian (527-565), and consoli-
dated in his long and memorable reign. Great bodies of Christians
were cut off, from both imperial and religious unity as in the case of
the Nestorians, and from orthodox communion as in the case of the
Monophysites. They could not but take with them many precious
heirlooms of ecclesiastical belief and discipline— our polemical theol-
ogy goes back frequently to their ancient creeds and praxis for con-
396 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
firmation of Catholic teaching. They also took with them old
Christian systems of education, valuable libraries, habits of theolog-
ical defence and attack, a knowledge of the dialectic and the rhetoric
of the schools, and useful traditions of secular knowledge. And
while it is true that the life-sap of unity no longer flowed in these
immense decaying branches, it is also true that for centuries they lived
with a measure of success and prestige on the provisions they took
away from the vast stores of Byzantine life and learning. Indeed, it
was through them that Arabic Islam learned how to administer the
civilization it had conquered, and even competed one day with the
Christian Orient on its own ground and in its own beloved sciences.
Eeaders of Duval's **Histoire de la Litterature Syriaque" (Paris,
2d ed., 1900) do not need to be told to what extent that rich depart-
ment of Christian learning is dependent on the writings of the
Monophysite scholars of the fifth and sixth centuries. As the Council
of Trent roused every Protestant pen to opposition, so the Council
of Chalcedon (451) roused to manifold activity, not only the im-
mediate followers of Eutyches but the more dangerous and numerous
body who read in the outcome of the Council a challenge to both
Alexandria and Antioch. From both quarters came a response in
the shape of polemico-theological literature, but bilingual Syria bore
for several reasons, the brunt of this literary warfare. Philoxenus of
Mabbogh, Severus of Antioch, John of Telia, Jacob of Serugh, Jacob
Baradaeus, are names familiar to every Church historian as vigorous
defenders of Monophysitism and lights of that creed both in Greek
and Syriac.
Until lately, the Syriac writings of this school were comparatively,
not to say entirely, neglected. Philoxenus in particular, has been
almost entirely studied in the 'accounts of his Greek opponents,
although he was a voluminous writer of Syriac prose on the scrip-
tures, liturgy, asceticism and dogma. Competent scholars agree that
his writings are among the best specimens of the golden age of Syriac
literature. Professor Guidi, in particular, praises the exquisite
purity of his diction, as well as the eloquence and strength of his
style. Assemani long ago called him a most elegant writer of Syriac,
though a "most corrupt man" and a "pernicious heretic." Among
his own he is from the beginning one of their four great doctors,
known particularly as The Interpreter, and not inferior to Saint
Ephrem himself. Only a very few of his writings have been pub-
lished in the original. Before 1873, there were accessible to us only
a Latin translation of two liturgical pieces ancj some brief extracts in
the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Assemani.
BOOK REVIEWS. 397
Out of the large body of unpublished manuscripts of Philoxenus,
Dr. Yaschalde has selected the three letters mentioned on the title
page of his work. We leave to the competent public the decision on
the philological merits of his work— so superior a Syriac scholar as
Professor Guidi of Rome was highly pleased with Dr. Vaschalde's
treatment of the Syriac text. He has also carefully collated the
Syriac text of these three letters with the originals in the Vatican
Library.
The introduction sets forth more fully than can be found else-
where the details of the checkered career of Philoxenus, a Persian by
birth, born between 425 and 450, and deceased in exile, probably
murdered, in 523. Violent partisan, active Monophysite bishop,
founder of a long-lived heresy, and versatile writer and preacher-
he may be not inappropriately termed the Saint Jerome of the Mono-
physites. In these three letters are found many interesting con-
siderations on the Incarnation and the Trinity, apart from his
heterodox belief concerning the two natures in Christ— a belief to
which he furnished the philosophical and theological basis on which
it sought to justify itself. These writings furnish several useful evi-
dences and confirmations of the antiquity and universality of certain
Catholic doctrines and practices. Thus, pages 76-78 offer pleasing
proof of the belief of the Syriac Church in the real presence of
Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Elsewhere (p. 32) the consecration
of the bishop of the Alexandrian Acephali shows a ritual identical with
the local Roman ritual described by Mgr. Duchesne in his "Origines
du culte Chretien" (Paris, 3d ed., 1903). His teaching concerning
the Blessed Virgin as Mother of God is perfectly orthodox (p. 43) and
very probably (p. 70) his writings furnish confirmation of the com-
mon Syriac belief in the Immaculate Conception. His teaching on
original sin is in keeping with the doctrine of the Church (p. 69) —
only in the doctrine of one nature in Christ, and the manner of the
union of the humanity with the God-head does his divergence from
orthodoxy become clear. AVith Eutyches he maintained only ''one
nature incarnate," but he differed from the latter in his explanation
of the union— the strict Eutychians teaching a commingling of the
natures, while Philoxenus taught the contrary and held that the two
natures formed after the Incarnation a composite nature, somewhat
after the manner of the union of body and soul in man. He could,
therefore, maintain against the compulsory docetism of the Eutych-
ians that the body of Christ was real. It is interesting also to note
(p. 76) that the teaching of Philoxenus on the procession of the Holy
Ghost from the Father and the Son is in perfect harmony with the
398 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
current belief of the Syriac Church manifested in a canon of the
Synod of Seleucia (410), which is also one of the oldest documents
of Syriac literature, a doctrine also held by Jacob of Serugh and other
famous Monophysite teachers.
The theologian and historian will regret that an index of the sub-
jects treated in the introduction and translation is wanting. The
theological glossary and the index of bible quotations and Greek
words can not replace the * ' index rerum. ' ' St. Gregory of Nazianzen
(p. 7) should be of Nazianzus or Nazianzos.
Thomas J. Shahan.
J. J. Rousseau ct Lc Rousseau isme. Par Jean-Felix Nourris-
son. Paris: Fontemoing, 1903. 8°, pp. xiv + ^07.
M. Paul Nourrisson, son of the illustrious Catholic philosopher
of the Institut and the College de France, has collected in the volume
before us the lectures on Rousseau delivered by his father in the last
period of his life. We have already called attention in the Bulletin
(II, pp. 392-397) to the method and spirit that Nourrisson brings
to the study of master-characters in history. His Saint Augustine
and his Voltaire will long remain as chefs d'oeuvres of a manner that
unites searching analysis of life and writings with a synthesis broad,
equitable, and complete. In these pages we find Rousseau as he
lived— a restless wanderer, vain, immoral, self-opinionated. His dis-
orderly youth, his meanness and ingratitude, his outer subserviency
and inward rebellion, are painted in his own language, no less vividly
than his splendid gifts of style, his intense emotionalism, his sensitive
impressionable fancy, his absolute prophetic attitude. Yet this
bundle of contradictions stands like a Moses at the end of the eight-
eenth century, not to point out a promised land in the future, but to
call society back to the paradise that men had destroyed through love
of civilization. The French Revolution was the result of the little
rift that the music-master of Chambery opened in the public opinion
of France, and more than one other far-reaching innovation owes its
viability to the burning eloquence of this Mirabeau of French prose,
this cosmopolitan vagabond of genius who wrote in the Emile, the
Contrat Social, the Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard, the
Nouvelle Heloise and his * ' Confessions ' ' the great conquering evangel
of modern naturalism. Into it he infused as none before or after
him a proselytizing aggressive spirit— above all, he broke in rudely
and disastrously on the time-honored influences of Christianity on the
education of Europe. How ill qualified he was to take up the role of
an apostle of the new education may be seen from the twenty chapters
BOOK REVIEWS, 399
through which M. Nourrisson follows his career from his birth in
Geneva to his death in the solitude of Ermenonville.
Thomas J. Shahan.
History of the Roman People. By Charles Seignobos, translation
edited by William Fairley, Ph.D. New York: Henry Holt and
Co., 1902. 8°, pp. 528.
This elementary history of the Roman people has certain advant-
ages. The style is graphic and pleasing, and the information is
quite up to the latest standards. Brief tables of the '* sources" and
of the best works in English are given at the end of the chapter, also
(Appendix F) a list of such English translations of the original
sources as have been printed. The maps are admirably done, and
of the numerous illustrations most are satisfactory. It is an ad-
vantage that the story of the Roman Empire should be carried on to
the death of Charlemagne, as the youthful student thus acquires
some sense of its power and charm. It might have been well to
indicate the fact that, theoretically, the Roman Empire ceased only
with the Fall of Constantinople (1453). In treating of the Christian
religion and Rome, M. Seignobos is habitually correct and sympa-
thetic—the editor attempts in a foot-note to offset the weight of his
statements concerning St. Peter at Rome and the early preeminence
of that see— a fact openly acknowledged by Harnack in the
famous "excursus" of the first volume of his History of Dogma,
likewise in his late essay on certain lost letters of the Roman clergy
to Saint Cyprian. Elsewhere, M. Seignobos himself does not give
(p. 469) a sufficient account of the development of the papal au-
thority. It is not correct to attribute loosely to the Church the
''sophistication with Greek philosophy" that the Gnostic heresies
were responsible for. That churchmen in a Grseco-Roman world
spoke the philosophical language of their time is no proof that they
diluted Christian teaching with Greek speculation. We miss in the
"literature" on Christianity any reference to De Rossi's great labors
made known in English by Northcote and Brownlow, also by Lowrie
—indeed all Catholic literature seems neglected. The word "monk-
ish" on page 466, is out of place, especially as the translator is not
consistent, using elsewhere the proper term "monastic." The judg-
ment on the religion of Charlemagne (p. 479) is simply false. With
these reserves, the work may be commended to teachers as an excel-
lent personal help in the school-room.
Thomas J. Shahan.
400 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Mediaeval Europe from 395 to 1270. By Charles Bemont and
G. Monod, translated by Mary Sloan, with notes and revisions by
George Burton Adams. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1902.
8°, pp. 556.
The names of MM. Bemont and Monod are well enough known
in historical schools to compel a respectful reading of any work due to
their collaboration. This manual of mediaeval history is not un-
worthy of their great learning, critical sense and narrative skill.
Even in a translation these qualities are manifest. For its peculiar
purpose we know no school summary of mediaeval history more intel-
ligently planned. The text is rich and varied, the historical maps
numerous, the sources and literature well chosen. Were it not that
good English works on mediaeval history are not numerous, we might
complain of the paucity of English books recommended. There is
room for improvement, especially in the citation of English Catholic
literature— thus, the work of Lingard on *' Anglo-Saxon Antiquities"
and the "Essays" of Cardinal Moran on the Early Irish Church are
writings of classical character that might well be mentioned.
We are more inclined to complain of the Gallican, even Erastian,
tone of the manual. It is Launoi and Fleury all through. In spite
of a courteous phraseology the papacy seems grasping, ambitious,
selfish. Mediaeval emperors like Otto I. and Henry I. reform the
ecclesiastical conditions ''for the benefit of the state" — a formula
that the ''sources" do not justify. The relations between Charle-
magne and the papacy, and between the Ottos and the same, are
treated from an unhistorical and partisan angle. The unhappy
circumstances of the tenth-century papacy are relieved by no suit-
able narration of the circumstances through which the fine gold lost
its color and the rich perfume its savor. It is not admitted by all
critics that the famous "dictatus papae" are from the hand of
Gregory VII. Nor is it certain that Hadrian I quoted for Charle-
magne (p. 182) the Donation of Constantine. There is no better
expose of that fateful quarter of a century than Mgr. Duchesne's
"Premiers Tempts de I'Etat Pontifical" (Paris, 1898). In his sane
and critical pages (notably 79-91) all that the sources make known
with certainty about the origin of the Donation is set down, nothing
therefore of a knowledge or participation of Hadrian I. There is
altogether too much passion among certain historians in dealing with
this period, too much "reading into" the texts of their own fixed
views, too much "Nuancirung" that would be given an ugly name
were Catholic historians to indulge in it. The right of appeals was
not first claimed or established by Nicholas I ,(P- 222) nor did he
BOOK REVIEWS. 401
thereby shatter the royal authority in the Carolingian world. Neither
was the Frankish Church forced (p. 178) to acknowledge its de-
pendency on the Roman See. This is all better and more honestly
told in Godefroid Kurth's "Origines de la Civilisation Moderne/'
or in Lecoy de la Marche *'La Gaule Merovingienne, " not to say in
the original texts themselves. In the latter the reader will look in
vain for the shadings of feeling and assertions of principle, for the
antithesis and suspicion that modern historians too often detect where
they never existed. The portrait of St. Leger of Autun (p. 98) is
not that which the learned Benedictine Cardinal • Pitra has drawn in
his fine life of that personage. The popes never took part in
ecumenical councils on the same degree (p. 120) as other bishops—
in the very first years of the Church's political triumph we see Pope
Julius rebuking such great Eastern bishops as those of Antioch for
violating the ecclesiastical law that reserved to him the convocation
of important councils.
After all, it is not the errors of detail that affect the use of such
a book— it is rather the unsympathetic attitude that it assumes
wherever the political role of the papacy is up for consideration.
Then the latter seems always an evil and dangerous culprit, somehow
an enemy of society, the state, humanity, while its opponents are
vaguely declared to be the representatives of enlightenment and
equity. It is only just to say that very often distinctive Catholic
institutions of the Middle Ages are treated in this work with profound
respect and a sure sense of their place and workings in the raw
centuries that beheld the rise of mediaeval European humanity out
of its wretched beginnings.
Thomas J. Shahan.
La Vie Univcrsitairc Dans L'Ancicnnc Espagnc. Par Gustave
Reynier. Paris: Picard, 1902. 8°, pp. 220.
It is a charming portrait of student life and habits that M. Reynier
sketches for us in this little volume. All the romance of medieval
Spain is in it, though it treats only of students and teachers, of
"pupilos, camaristas and capigorrones, " of the Goliardic corporation
of the "Tana," of the "Oposiciones" and ''grados," the feasts and
the fasts of the thousands who once sought learning at Salamanca
and Alcala. The former is the Oxford of Spain, and right proudly
did she once inscribe on stone and bronze and parchment the inspiring
words : Omnium scientiarum princeps Salmantica docet Alcala is the
creation of Ximenes, almost at the gates of Madrid, and while the
work of Ximenes endured, his splendid school flourished. To write
402 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the history of universities in any land is to write the history of all
profounder study as well as to measure their influence on society in
all its forms— hence the instructive chapters on the rise, flourishing,
and decadence of the universities of Spain. It is not necessary to
subscribe fully to every appreciation of M. Raynier in order to enjoy
his delightful book— perhaps no pages are more fascinating than
those in which he describes the ''Tana" or freemasonry of university
vagabondage, and the " universitates silvestres," those lonely and
decadent little schools that Spanish generosity and individualism
created in certain backwater-stretches of peninsular life.
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Story of the Mormons from the Date of their Origin to the
year 1901. By William Alexander Linn. New York : Macmillan,
1902. 8°, pp. 637.
No more fascinating book of American history has come before us
in some years. The purpose of the writer is to present the actual
facts of the origin, growth and consolidation of the most peculiar
phenomenon of American religious life in the nineteenth century.
Writings of the original Mormons, their periodical publications and
correspondence, their autobiographies, histories of Utah and of Salt
Lake City, by friend and foe, the national civil records,— above all,
the Berrian collection of books, early newspapers and pamphlets on
Mormonism owned by the New York Public Library, are the main
sources of the narrative, and they permit a very accurate study of its
external public life.
The student of Church History is arrested at every step by
strangely familiar suggestions of primitive Christian life that are at
once disflgured in the grotesque institutions of a Joseph Smith and a
Brigham Young. Similarly all the outlines of a Jewish theocracy
shine through the constitution of the Latter-Day Saints. That they
have been able to reach the flgure of 300,000 and control politically
one of the great new states of the Union, not to say several, is an-
other consideration of momentous import. The book of Mr. Linn
deserves thoughtful reading. His plain unimpassioned narrative is
a more powerful arraignment of Mormonism than any flaming de-
nunciation of its evils could possibly be.
Thomas J. Shahan.
BOOK REVIEWS. 403
The Papal Monarchy. By William Barry, D.D. New York: Put-
nams, 1903. (Story of the Nations.) Pp. xxii + 435.
It is highly creditable to the publishers that they should have had
the courage and good taste to select a Catholic for the historian of a
subject which concerns Catholics so vitally. It is equally creditable to
the historian that he has written with such fearlessness of the political
errors and sins of the Papacy. Moreover, the work is above criticism,
as a specimen of modern book-making. The style is easy, often bril-
liant. The portraiture of character is frequently vivid.
This said, we decline to subscribe unconditionally to the almost
unanimous praise bestowed upon the book by reviewers, because, all
in all, it strikes us as fundamentally weak by reason of its one-sided-
ness. Whether this be due to the author's embarrassment at being a
Catholic or to lack of power of perspective we cannot say, but at all
events he has given a picture of the mediaeval papacy which can
hardly cause either its friends or its enemies to increase their respect
for it. This is apparent not so much in any error of fact, as in a
certain tone, spirit, style which remind one continually of Gibbon.
Verily it reads much like Gibbon whom, we venture to suspect, the
author has followed rather closely despite the very good bibliography
noted in the preface. Perhaps this is a harsh judgment, but it is at
least curious to note the remark on p. 309. "I happen to be writ-
ing this page of history in the garden at Lausanne where Gibbon
added the last stroke to his immense and as yet unrivalled panorama
of the Roman Empire in decline." Now, ordinarily Father Barry's
post-office address, even when engaged in his literary labors, would
excite in us only a very languid interest, but it becomes of some im-
portance in the present case when we read further down his endorse-
ment of Gibbon as a "not unkindly" critic. Well! tastes differ. We
have read Gibbon from cover to cover, and separate chapters fre-
quently, and the impression created was that his work is by all odds
the most insidious and dishonest arraignment of the Papacy yet
written, and that is saying a good deal. If an author then has this
opinion of Gibbon it is not unjust to class him as a disciple.
The effect of his book is as likely to be injurious as otherwise.
The average non-Catholic will not have his prejudices against the
Papacy lessened; and he will fail to see the truth of the closing
eulogium to the effect that the benefits of the Papal monarchy "out-
number by far its abuses." Such a conclusion does not logically
follow from the facts as presented. At best it might be taken as a
funeral oration over the corpse of a poor relative. What is worse, this
prejudice will be extended to the spiritual side of the Papacy because
404 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the author does not clearly separate the political from the spiritual
aspects. In fact, we fail to see exactly what he means by ** Papal
Monarchy." On the other hand, the ultramontane will not be con-
verted from his political allegiance to the dead past, and thus will
be defeated one of the objects which we suspect Father Barry had
mainly in view. On the whole, then, despite the many excellencies
of the book— its brilliancy in style and arrangement, its fearless
candor— we must regret that the author let slip a splendid opportunity
to write a first class essay. Whatever his work be, it is not an ade-
quate presentation of the subject; it marks another failure among
the many that have gone before it. The fundamental defect of all
is a lack of perspective, and the presence of too much subjectivity.
LuciAN Johnston.
The Lords Baltimore and the Maryland Palatinate. Six lec-
tures on Maryland Colonial History delivered before the Johns
Hopkins University in the year 1902, by Clayton Coleman Hall,
LL.B., A.M. Baltimore: John Murphy Company, 1903. Pp.
xvii + 216.
It is worthy of note that some of the best monographs on Maryland
colonial history have come from the pens of lawyers. Perhaps this
is due to their legal training which gives them both the ability to
handle evidence and the proper temper in which to discuss contro-
versy. Both these qualities are strikingly evident in the present work
from the pen of a distinguished member of the Baltimore bar. In his
treatment of "Religious Toleration in Maryland" his method has been
strictly objective, stating facts as he thought he found them and ex-
pressing no hypotheses. His views on this question are the same as
those now generally accepted by Maryland's leading historians,
though there is a freshness in the presentation of them which lends
them a peculiar interest. His general view is that religious toleration
in Maryland was "due to one man, the broad-minded proprietary, and
not to any religious body." Whilst accepting this view in general
we venture to be somewhat sceptical anent the opinion expressed on
same page (page 83). "It is not necessary to assign the credit of this
act" (of Toleration) "to the Roman Catholic Church or to any other
religious body or to the Protestant majority in the Maryland Assem-
bly." Now we fully agree that this Act was not due to either
Catholicity or Protestantism, but, as said before, to the liberality of
one man who was reflecting in himself the nascent tendency of his
time towards religious freedom or, what is the same, religious com-
promise. But that sentence is awkward. The author will surely
BOOK REVIEWS. 405
pardon a little sensitiveness on the part of a Catholic who is quite
anxious to give the credit of this Act to Catholicity merely in order
to silence the current Protestant suspicion of the same as a foe of
religious liberty. In which sense the question of authority does
assume considerable importance, however little logical connection it
may have with the fact in the eyes of. the more intelligent few. Still
less can we imagine the author asserting that the Maryland Assembly
actually at the time had a "Protestant Majority," as he surely would
not have thus gone against the accepted opinion to the contrary with-
out giving proof. At best the sentence is squinting, and we confess
our inability to make out just w^hat it means.
However, this only by the way. As a whole the book is an able
temperate and interesting contribution to the history of Maryland.
The fact of its considering the subject chiefly from a biographical
point of view lends it a novelty of its own. It is to be hoped that
Mr. Hall will continue on in the work so well begun, and that all who
come after him will write with the same objectivity.
LuciAN Johnston.
An Introduction to the History of Western Europe. By James
Harvey Robinson, Professor of History in Columbia University.
Boston: Ginn and Company, 1903. 8°, pp. xi + 714.
All in all. Professor Robinson has written an excellent manual.
Obliged by the short space at his disposal to notice only the salient
facts of history, he has used good judgment in his selection. From
a typographical point of view, it is above criticism— the binding at-
tractive, printing clear, profusely illustrated with maps and pictures
of prominent places and personages, and well indexed. The style is
easy and natural.
Great praise is also due the treatment of the matter. Above all,
is the author to be congratulated upon the prevailing tone of im-
partiality when treating delicate periods of history such as the Refor-
mation, French Revolution, and the like. Certainly, the book shows
evidence that he has tried to be fair and tried with marked success.
Although, of course, he writes from the standpoint of a non-Catholic
he has succeeded generally in stating Catholic doctrines and practice
correctly. It is therefore, with the most profound respect for the
author's learning and spirit that we venture to point out some of the
few blemishes in his book.
Not all Americans share his admiration for the works of Henry
C. Lea (p. iv) ; in fact, that abler writer has vitiated his work with so
406 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
much bigotry and not a little ignorance that his labors are doomed
to oblivion the very moment that an equally voluminous and more fair
history is written. And, by the way, if Professor Robinson has time,
he would do well to look up Catholic authorities for insertion in his
contemplated ''Readings in European History." A short reference
to any general histories like those of Alzog or Hergenrother will
supply them all.
Again, a confession of mortal sins is not (p. 211) a necessary con-
dition of salvation in all cases. It is necessary only when possible.
Then, too, ''tradition, that is the practices and teachings of the
Church" is not bound up with "inspiration" (p. 370) ; nor does it
concern all "practices," whatever is meant by them. Also, it is hard
to see what the author means by saying that the Franciscans came
"under the spiritual authority of the Roman Church" because they
received the "tonsure (224). Still more ambiguous is the statement
that the saints "came to be invoked" in somewhat the same way as
the ancient pagan gods (p. 19) ; and that the "protection of the papal
possessions" was "made one with the observance of Christian faith"
(p. 45). As to the divine origin of the Papacy, the author is, as
might be supposed, not at all sympathetic (see pp. 21, 50, 64, 159, 163).
But he is not abusive. Of Part I, the best and fairest chapter is that
on the "Monks." That on the Crusades is neither sympathetic nor
altogether fair, strange to say, whilst that on "Heresy and the
Friars" shows the malign influence of Mr. H. C. Lea.
The treatment of both the Renaissance and the Reformation is in
most respects admirable, although the author, perhaps unconsciously,
does not give a fair comparative view of religious persecutions: he
dwells upon those suffered by Protestants and refers rather casually
to those inflicted by them upon Catholics. The chapters on the
French Revolution are masterly and by far the best we know of in any
similar manual. On the whole, the book is unusually able fair and
interesting. Lucian Johnston.
Saint Victricc, Eveque de Rouen (lY-V century) . Par E. Vacandard.
Paris: Lecoffre, 1903. 8°, pp. 186.
Saintc Hlldcgardc (1098-1179). Par Paul Franche. Ibid., 1903.
8°, pp. 209.
1. This pen-picture of Saint Victricius of Rouen is quite a
nouveaute. Students of history will be grateful to the Abbe
Vacandard for the local color and the scientific dress of his little
book. From the standpoint of the history of ecclesiastical institu-
BOOK REVIEWS. 407
tions and canon law, Saint Victricius is a figure of interest. His life
illustrates the relations of the Church and the army in the Theodosian
times, the development of the translation and veneration of the
relics of martyrs, the revival of the missionary or apostolic tem-
perament, the growth of monasticism, the history of Latin style, the
universal character of papal authority and other details of ecclesias-
tical life previous to the overthrow of the civil prestige of the Eternal
City. We recommend the perusal of this book to all lovers of early
Church history— it is enough to say that it comes from the pen of the
historian of Saint Bernard and Saint Ouen.
2. Such modern German historians of Sainte Hildegarde as
Ludwig Clarus and Dr. Schmelzeis have not exhausted the perennial
charm of the character and writings of the great mediaeval prophetess.
Gorres ** Mysticism, " the Romantic movement in early nineteenth-
century Germany, coupled with the completion of Cologne Cathedral
and the mystical phenomena of Catharine Emmerich and others, did
much to revive the cultus of the Sibyl of the Rhineland. Then
Cardinal Pitra's enlarged reedition of her curious "Opera Omnia"
gave a new impetus to the study of her times and her writings. In
a way she recalls St. Catharine of Siena and St. Bridget of Sweden.
An overpowering love drives her out upon the highways of the world
as a voice of the Holy Spirit, to preach to the highest authorities a
renewal of justice, charity, and faith. Her slight figure dominates
the scene whereon moved a Conrad III and a Frederick Barbarossa,
an Eugenius III, an Adrian IV, an Alexander III. Her extensive
correspondence with the summities of civil and religious life, her
position on the central Rhine as counsellor of all German society, her
splendidly picturesque and Dantesque revelations, the possession and
cultivation from infancy of an '^nner light" or perlucid state in
which the highest moral consciousness of her time reached its most
acute stage, raise this extraordinary woman to a place among the
permanent historico-religious influences of mediaeval Catholicism, at
a time when the Empire and the Church, the Orient and the Occident,
feudalism, democracy and monarchy, were engaged in that multi-
tudinous conflict whose consequences, foreseen and foretold by the
prophetess, were the Renaissance and the Reformation.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Lc Theatre Fran^ais Au Moyen Age. Par Johan Mortensen,
traduit du suedois par Emmanuel Philipot. Paris : Picard, 1903.
8°, pp. 254.
To what an extent is the French theatre of Corneille and Racine
408 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the direct successor of the religious dramatic activity of the Middle
Ages? Dr. Mortensen answers this question in a series of charming
conferences delivered at Gothembourg (Sweden) in 1899, and now
rendered into elegant French. He traces the growth of the grave
and ancient liturgical drama from the musically read * ' Lectiones ' *
and the ''antiphonal" chant of the mass, then that of the biblical
drama from the representation of scenes and personages, chiefly
typical of the Old Testament. In time the beloved lives of the
saints furnish new material, especially elements of the marvelous
and supernatural. Thus we have the ''Mysteries" and the
"Miracles" that abound from the early part of the twelfth century.
Originally written in Latin, the vernacular French is substituted
about the same time. Eventually local and comic features or ' ' traits
de moeurs," as well as subjects of romance and chivalry, get them-
selves adopted in these great popular representations which enthused
the mediaeval multitudes in a way that we can no longer easily com-
prehend. Vocal and instrumental music, absolute religious faith,
native and popular artistic sense, mediaeval love for democratic enjoy-
ment, are auxiliary elements in the genesis of these original Christian
manifestations of the dramatic temperament. In time this religious
drama was organized, chiefly at Paris. As the Middle Ages wear
away, the satirical, the personal, the didactic, gradually destroy or
imperil the primitive theological character and purpose of all such
plays. At Paris the Basoche, the Enfants sans souci, and the Con-
frerie de la Passion are the intermediaries of the dramatic novelties
gradually introduced through the new forms of moralites, farces,
soties, histoires and the like. It seems curious enough that it was the
reaction against the Reformation that brought about in France the
suppression of the last phases of the old mediaeval religious drama.
But long ere this, it had been the common training-ground of the
peculiar French genius for light comedy and delicate satire. There
is much to glean in the work of Dr. Mortensen, even after the ex-
haustive treatises of the modern historians of French literature, like
Aubertin and Petit de JuUeville and specialists like Marius Sepet.
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Creeds. An historical and doctrinal exposition of the Apostles',
Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. By Rev. Alfred G. Mortimer,
D.D. New York: Longmans, 1902. 8°, p. 316.
Dr. Mortimer presents in this work a judicious selection of the
most approved conclusions concerning the oldest formulas of Christian
BOOK REVIEWS, 409
faith. Caspar! and Kattenbusch, Harnack and Zahn, Heurtley and
Swainson, McGiffert and Swete, Ommaney and Burns, have left un-
studied almost no detail or phase of investigation that could throw
light on the process by which the primitive Christians came to look
on these great "Creeds" as the mirrors or equivalent of absolute or-
thodoxy. In this work the reader may acquaint himself, in a sum-
mary way, with the chief details of the literary history of the creeds
as drawn from the exhaustive works already mentioned. As a rule, the
theological commentary of Dr. Mortimer adheres to the old line of
Catholic exposition. In an appendix he reprints the oldest historical
references to the Apostles' Creed. As a brief expose of the history
of the latter we prefer the little volume of Dr. Swete (The
Apostles' Creed, London, 1894) and the erudite pages of our own
Dr. Bardenhewer (Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur, Frei-
burg, 1902, Vol. I). The student of historical theology will always
read with profit the article of the Abbe Yacandard on the history of
the Apostles' Creed in the "Revue des Questions Historiques"
(Vol. ^Q, pp. 329-377), similarly the learned disquisitions of the
" Theologische Quartalschrift" of Tuebingen.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Un Siecle Dc L'Eglise Dc France. Par Mgr. Baunard. 3d ed.
Paris: Poussielgue, 1902. 8°, pp. 538.
The former Rector of the Catholic University of Lille was an
indefatigable writer in the service of Catholic truth and ideas.
His "Victims of Doubt" and "Victories of Faith" are well known,
likewise his lives of Saint Ambrose, of Cardinals Pie and Lavigerie,
of Madame Barat, Madame Duchesne, and General De Sonis. His
"Dieu dans I'Ecole" is a favorite work of Christian pedagogy for
teachers and students in Catholic colleges. Experience office and
talent made him fit to draw an eloquent outline of the ecclesias-
tical history of France in the nineteenth century. The twenty-two
chapters of the work deal with Pius VII and Napoleon, Gallicanism,
the Catholic Party and Liberty, Learning and Eloquence, Pius IX
and France, Christian Teaching, Priests and Religion, the Bishops
and Roman Unity, Anti- Christianity and its results, the Kingdom
of Jesus Christ, Mary Immaculate, Worship and Christian Art,
Charity, Leo XIII, Anti-clericalism, the Political and Social Crisis,
Theology and Philosophy, Pulpit and Press, Mission, Martyrdom,
Saints and Holiness, the Two Cities. Under these .rubrics Mgr.
Baunard disposes a multitude of interesting phenomena of the life of
French Catholicism since the Revolution. France has been so long
27 CUB
410 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
in the foremost rank of Catholicism that a century of her church
history is equivalent to that of the entire Church as far as general
experience, institutions, policy, action and suffering go.
The political institutions of the New World differ so much in their
history spirit and operation from those of the Old "World, most
deeply rooted in France, that much of the political experience of
Catholicism in that land is intelligible to us only by a serious effort
of reflexion. Yet these political issues apear, from one point of
view, to dominate and affect seriously the life of the Church in
France. It is only when we are compelled to study it in miniature,
as it were, that the far-reaching consequences of tradition and habit
manifest themselves. Hence, all who would go to the root of the
present situation in France would do well to peruse this book, not
to adopt all the views of its author, but to rise with him to a view
d 'ensemble. He is inexact when he refers to the losses of American
Catholicism — neither his figures nor his explanation will bear in-
vestigation. His judgments on the episcopate of France are marked
by a certain severity; they do not, perhaps, allow for the great prac-
tical difficulties of the episcopal office in that land. One cannot say
that Mgr. Baunard has refused to touch on the weakness of French
ecclesiastical life and government; he is, however, quite conservative
•and stationary in his attitude toward all the later developments in
the clergy of France— in more senses than one a priest ''de la vieille
roche.''
Thomas J. Shahan.
Memoires Dc Langeron, General d'infanterie dans I'armee russe,
Campagnes de 1812-1814 publiees d'apres le manuscrit original.
Par L. G. E. Paris: Picard (Societe d'Histoire Contemporaine),
1902. 8°, pp. cxx + 524.
Memoire Dc Ma Detention Au Temple i797-i799. Par P. Fr.
de Remusat, Introduction notes et commentaire, par Victor Pierre.
Paris: ibid., 1903. 8°, pp. xlii -f 191.
1. The French nobleman and emigre, Langeron, relates in this
second volume of his memoires the events of Napoleon's campaigns
of 1812 to 1814, as seen from the Russian standpoint. The details of
the retreat from Moscow and the passage of the Beresina are partic-
ularly interesting, likewise the portrait of Bliicher. A lengthy
preface brings to the study of these campaigns such information as
only a military scholar can appreciate.
BOOK REVIEWS. 411
2. In the brief account of his two years imprisonment in the Temple
during the Terror, M. de Remusat, a respectable and innocent mer-
chant of Marseilles, causes us to assist day by day at the reckless
injustice and violence practiced in those trying years upon a multi-
tude of harmless persons, caught up daily in the drag nets of the
police, and left to languish in filth and starvation, when not borne
away to instant execution. On the list of prisoners of the Temple
as made out by M. de Remusat we come across the names of Irishmen
from Cork, Englishmen from London, and Americans from New
York Boston and Philadelphia.
Thomas J. Shahan.
La Bienheureuse Merc Marie De L'Incarnation (Madame Acarie)
1566-1618. Par Emmanuel de Broglie. Paris: Lecoffre, 1903.
8°, pp. 210. .
Intimate knowledge of the social and political life of France in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is almost an heirloom in the
De Broglie family. This little volume narrates the events which led
to the foundation at Paris in 1602 of the first Carmelite monastery
in France. Apropos of the share which fell to the lot of Madame
Acarie, the distinguished author of "Fenelon a Cambrai" and of the
literary existence of Mabillon, has drawn for us an exquisite portrait
of the religious spirit and activity of France in the latter half of the
sixteenth century. This rich "veuve parisienne," mother of six
children, half ruined by her husband's political misfortunes through
the overthroAv of the Ligue and the triumph of Henri IV, finds time
nevertheless, to devote herself to works of piety and charity, so well
that all Paris soon recognizes in her a soul of exquisite distinction.
Her salon is the rendevous of a genuine spiritual Catholicism, and
from it goes forth the generous idea of endowing France with estab-
lishments after the heart and the rule of Saint Theresa. M. de
Broglie has sketched with a sure sense of proportion the role of
Madame Acarie in this enterprise, the future record of which is
equivalent to the moral history of the century of Bossuet and
Fenelon— so closely interwoven is the Paris Carmel with the history
of the governing classes of seventeenth-century France. His heroine
died in the odor of sanctity; the cause of her canonization has been
introduced at Rome since 1627. There is every reason to believe
that France still produces specimens of that ''ame francaise" which
M. Brunetiere declares profoundly and socially Catholic.
Thomas J. Shahan.
412 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Histoire Du Moycti Age, depuis la chute de TEmpire Romain
jusqu'a la fin de I'epoque franque (476-950). Par Ch. Moeller,
prof esseur a 1 'Universite de Louvain. Paris : Fontemoing, 1898-
1902. 8°, pp. XV + 397.
Professor Charles Moeller of Louvain is favorably known for his
edition of the useful work of his father, Jean Moeller, entitled
''Traite des etudes historiques" (Paris, 1887-1892). The volume
before us presents the general political history of the first period of
the Middle Ages. The special history, or that of mediaeval institu-
tions, is touched on but lightly, being reserved for another work. In
each chapter only the substantial and necessary facts are narrated —
there is but little philosophic consideration. The original author-
ities are always indicated in large type, also the classical works that
deal with the subject. This book has many advantages as a manual
for teaching and for self -instruction, and we hope that it will be
much used in our Catholic colleges, at least by instructors. It needs
an alphabetical index— without such a help manuals of history are
stripped of half their value to the busy teacher and student.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Die Peschitta Zum Buche Der Weisheit, eine kritisch-geschicht-
liche Studie. By Joseph Holtzmann. Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1903. Pp. xii -f 152. $1.25 net.
The author of this important contribution to the textual criticism
of the Book of Wisdom examines (1) the condition of the textus
receptus as we have it now; (2) the original from which it was trans-
lated; (3) the method followed by the translator; ^4) the history of
the translation.
His conclusions are briefly as follows: The various recensions
of the Peschittian Book of Wisdom do not differ essentially. Indeed,
they agree so well, even in their defects, that they all appear to come
from one official text, much defaced by errors and interpolations.
That original text was certainly in Greek. Once published, the
Syriac translation was several times collated and brought into more
perfect harmony with the same Greek original. At the same time it
remained free from Syro-hexaplaric influence. Later, it was again
corrected or revised, from mere internal evidence however, quite in-
dependently of the Greek original. Indeed, the reviser was evidently
ignorant of the Greek language. This Greek original differs from
any known text in the same idiom, while it betrays close kinship with
BOOK REVIEWS. 413
the *'Vetus Latina'* and must have come from the same source.
More than that, the author of the "Vetus Latina" seems to have con-
sulted the Peschitta.
It is hardly necessary to emphasize the usefulness of Dr. Holtz-
mann's study. The Peschitta, like most of the other important
versions, counts almost as many authors as there are books in the
Bible. Each Book therefore has to be studied separately. This has
been done for most of the Protocanonical Books, while so far only
two of the DeuterOrCanonical Books have enjoyed such a privilege
(Baruch and the First Book of Maccabees). We regret that the
author had to use Hebrew type for the Syriac quotations. Otherwise
his work is thorough and cannot be commended too highly.
Henry Hyvernat.
A Reply to Professor Bourne's "The Whitman Legend." By
Myron Eells, D.D. Walla Walla, Wash., 1902. 12°, pp. 123.
Long before missionaries of any denomination had crossed the
Rocky Mountains north of the Mexican possessions, French Canadians,
and Iroquois and Nipissing, domicilated Indians of Canada, employees
of the British fur companies, had imparted the elementary principles
of Christianity to the tribes in the old Oregon Territory. Rev. Jason
Lee founded the first mission, that of the Methodists, among the
Canadians and Calapooya Indians in the Willamette Valley in 1834;
Rev. Herbert Beaver and wife, who came from England by sea,
founded an Anglican mission at Fort Vancouver in 1836, and Marcus
Whitman, M.D., and Rev. H. H. Spalding and their wives, founded
the Presbyterian missions at Waiilatpu and Lapwai, on the Upper
Columbia, later in the same year. Very Rev. Francis Norbertus
Blanchet founded the first Catholic missions at Fort Vancouver
and Cowlitz Prairie in 1838; and Rev. Fr. P. J. De Smet, S.J.,
founded the Flathead mission of the Rocky Mountains in 1841.
From these missions sprang others, until November 29, 1847—
two days after the establishment of the Umatilla mission by Rt. Rev.
Maglorius Blanchet, Bishop of Walla Walla, and Very Rev. J. B. A.
Brouillet, his vicar-general— when Dr. Whitman, catechist and
teacher at the Waiilatpu mission, was inhumanly murdered by his
Cayuse Indians, together with several members of his household. This
event brought on Indian wars and caused the abandonment for some
years of all the Upper Columbia missions.
After the rescue of Rev. Mr. Spalding from his Lapwai mission,
among the Nez Perces, his mind, always unstable, gave way, and
414 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
in Ms degeneracy he basely charged the Catholic missionaries with
inciting the Protestant Indians to the breaking up of their missions.
This story was eagerly taken up by ultra-Protestant writers and
served a purpose during the Know-Nothing agitation on the Pacific
Coast in the middle of the last century. Feeling himself and his
missionary companions to be neglected by his missionary association,
Mr. Spalding in 1865, then more of an illusionist than ever, advanced
the preposterous proposition that the missionaries, and Dr. "Whitman
in particular, had saved Oregon to the United States from the
machinations of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholic mis-
sionaries, by his undertaking a journey to Washington in the winter
of 1842, to advise the Tyler administration against trading off Oregon
for a cod-fishery privilege off the coast of Maine, and to bring immi-
grants to settle and occupy the Oregon country. This is the basis
of the **Whitman-Saved-Oregon" claim, designed to illustrate the
ultimate success of the Presbyterian missions of the Upper Columbia,
which as a matter of fact, were unsuccessful, from various causes,
chief among which were dissensions between the missionaries them-
selves, and the eventual substitution of grasping commercialism to
the missionary principle.
In 1871, Rev. Mr. Spalding, still deeming himself neglected, ap-
pealed to the civil authorities for employment, under the Grant
''Peace Policy,'' through the means of his ''Early Labors of the
Missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions in Oregon, commencing in 1836," which he succeeded in
having published as Senate Ex. Doc. No. 37. This is one of the most
extraordinary publications that ever issued from the presses of any
Government. It is a scandalous fabrication of most glaring untruths ;
yet it is the unavowed source of the writings of the propagators of the
"Whitman-Saved-Oregon" claim, the principal of whom are the
Rev. Messrs. Barrows, Eells (father and son), Craighead, and Mowry.
To their honor and credit Principal Marshall of Chicago and
Professor Bourne of Yale University— the first by the collation of
the entire bibliography and historical sources on the subject, the
results of which he has given in newspaper articles, to be fol-
lowed by a formal history, and the latter by a most scholarly essay
based on Mr. Marshall 's data as well as on his own intelligent original
researches, have placed the question on a new basis, contradictory
of the thesis expressed by "The "Whitman Legend."
The pamphlet before us is an attempt to turn away the stream
which is devastating the fabric of "The Oregon Myth." Like the
mighty Columbia, sweeping down to the ocean, the fabrications of
BOOK REVIEWS. 415
man are unavailing to stem its flood. As a composition the pamphlet
is scarcely above mediocrity, and as an argument it is exceedingly
weak, the author apparently lacking literary training and histowcal
acumen to cope with such an historical athlete as Professor Bourne.
The principal source of his weakness, however, lies in the fact that,
having in the past written too much and too confidently on the
Oregon question, he is not now susceptible of being impressed by the
truth; nor would he be free to admit the fact if he were convinced
of the weakness of the cause he has so zealously espoused, since filial
duty would make it unseemly.
Edmond Mallet.
Washington, D. C.
Oxford and Cambridge Conferences. Second Series: 1900-1901.
By Joseph Eickaby, S.J. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1902. Pp. 246.
There are very few educated Catholics, clerical or lay, for whom
the reading of Father Rickaby's Conferences would not be an enter-
taining occupation. His talks possess so much of what is called
actualiU, that if, when first delivered, they came forth with any
thing like the facility that appears on the printed page, they must
have won the strictest kind of attention from his audience.
Father Rickaby is already well known to the world, both as a
philosophical writer and as the author of a previous volume of con-
ferences. The present book contains no surprises, but is what might
be reasonably anticipated from the writer; that is, a work solid
and instructive in matter, pointed and original in expression. Some
very difficult questions are touched upon, but only for popular, not
for scholarly treatment, and the impression left is a general sense of
a clearing-up and illuminating process. In presenting the Catholic
doctrines concerning Holy Scripture in the light of the ' * Providentis-
simus Deus," our author gives a very helpful and very attractive treat-
ment of matters that could easily have been made to appear obscure
and incomprehensible. One is tempted to quote in support of this
verdict, but justice would demand too long a quotation. Let the
reader consult the conference ''Inspiration and Historical Accuracy
of the Holy Scripture" as a sample of the author's style and as a
model of a popular method of imparting instruction. As there is no
attempt at profundity of research in these pages, so neither is there
any attempt at sonorous phrasing; the tone is conversational in its
freedom. This, however, does not prevent the book from being quite
suitable for a library of apologetical literature; for it teaches much
416 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
about many things, clearly, pleasantly, and in brief compass. Like
every properly prepared volume, this one has an index.
Joseph McSorley.
St. Thomas College.
Thcofogia MoralFs Fundamcntalis. Auctore Thoma Joseph Bou-
quillon, S.T.D., et in Universitate Catholica Americana Theologiae
Moralis Prof essore. Editio tertia recognita et adaucta. Brugis :
Beyart, 1903. Pp. 743.
This third edition of the Fundamental Theology was issuing from
the press when the illustrious author died. Failing health had some-
what dulled his keenness of mind, while he was engaged in the work
of revision, but he had completed his task when he was called to
his reward.
The new edition is somewhat enlarged, but there are no essential
changes. The introduction contains a more detailed discussion of
fundamental notions, and the historical part has been perfected. It
includes the most recent literature bearing on the relations of Moral
Theology. The purpose of this notice, therefore, need not be other
than to call attention to this splendid monument of learning and to
recommend it without qualification to all clergymen and others who
desire to possess a clear and comprehensive presentation of the prin-
ciples of Moral Theology.
When the second edition appeared it won for its author the un-
stinted praise of two continents. He was declared Summus Magister,
for he had shown a mastery of his science that was unexcelled among
his contemporaries. He had given to it the elasticity, progressive-
ness and system which it had greatly needed. From the view-point
of ''literature" alone, the Fundamental is a remarkable book. The
author's knowledge of the literary sources of his science was extra-
ordinary. He skilfully drew out what was permanent and best in
all preceding literature of every question which he treated ; he added
to that fund by his own keen insight and wide knowledge of the
reasons and relations of truths, and he presented the results in his
text with great clearness. Yet, his erudition never made him a
pedant, nor did his skill in thinking ever convert him into a skeptic.
The place that the volume occupies in the literature of Moral
Theology cannot be better described than by drawing from the la-
mented author's study on "Moral Theology at the End of the Nine-
teenth Century," in Bulletin for April, 1899. The thought in
brief is as follows.
BOOK REVIEWS. 417
Moral Theology deals with practical revealed truth and its rela-
tions. A gradual disintegration has robbed the science of its dignity,
and it has become a mere technical necessity for the priest. Through
political and religious revolutions theology had lost contact with other
sciences and was driven from the universities to seminaries and sac-
risties. Later, Moral Theology was separated from Dogmatic Theol-
ogy; then the laws of Christian perfection were taken into Ascetical
Theology ; those of the religious life were taken up into Liturgy, those
of public life into Law. Thus reduced to the narrowest limits, and
confined largely to the consideration of private life, Moral Theology
was converted into a set of conclusions and applications, while the
principles on which these rested were neglected. Finally, in the
teaching of the science, different aspects of moral questions were
treated by different professors. The science had disintegrated, it
had lost its dignity, its nature was misunderstood.
The author understood this historical process thoroughly, and he
made it the purpose of his life to assist in restoring the science to
its proper place. His Fundamental Theology is the supreme effort
of his career. The concluding words of the study to which we refer
express directly the scope of his work and the spirit of its accom-
plishment.
**A more intimate union with the theoretical truths of revelation
is necessary, so that the laws of right living may be seen to spring
from the very heart of dogma. Critical study and extended research
into the development of the fundamental ideas and principles of
moral life and their applications, not alone in Christian times, but
in Old Testament times as well, and back to the beginning of humanity,
must be made. The intelligent application of these principles to the
problems of modern individual, social, religious and civil life is
essential to the reestablishment which we seek, as is also a more
constant contact with the other social sciences from which, rightly
understood, only good can come. There is reason to hope that the
coming century will see this done, for the impetus has already been
given in the admirable encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII."
The Fundamental is a magnificent contribution to the literature
of Moral Theology. When the science shall have been reconstructed,
no one can doubt that Professor Bouquillon's name will stand high
among the great ones in its history.
William J. Kj:rby.
418 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The Social Unrest. By J. G. Brooks. New York: Macmillan,
1903. Pp. 394.
The author of this volume is one of the best known as well as
most highly appreciated students of our social conditions. He has
done much of his studying in and among the events that have char-
acterized the recent industrial life of the nation. *' Social Unrest"
is a fascinating volume. The author tells us with great directness
and force of the results of many years of painstaking observation
The volume is full of real information about labor unions, labor
leaders, socialism, employers, recent changes in socialistic thought in
Europe, and it contains an accurate appreciation of some of the
deeper tendencies in economic activity.
The author's personality appears on every page; the use of his
own experience on which he largely draws, does not require the
apology which he makes, but on the contrary enhances the value and
the charm of the book.
This well-merited praise might be all that a reviewer would be
required to write, did not the positive and direct way of the author
tend somewhat to mislead readers. That trait of the volume may
be referred to without diminishing in any way, we hope, the welcome
which the book merits and is undoubtedly destined to receive.
The introductory chapter conveys the impression that books are
either misleading or largely useless in the study of social questions.
*'It was several years before I learned that for one branch of eco-
nomic study, the live questions like strikes, trade unions, the influence
of machinery, very few books existed that had more than a slight
value.'' The author undoubtedly implies that books rightly made
—as his own— are useful, while books published by mere theorizers
are of little use. There are, of course, useless books, but it would
seem that there is some danger of misleading when one makes a
statement so broad. The right use of books might save many men
from becoming extreme reformers, and right training of writers and
thinkers should enable us to learn how to use and how not to use
books: how to examine and how not to examine life independently
of books. *' Social Unrest" is a creditable combination of the right
use and right avoidance of books. The author has studied them
well, and used them, in fact, throughout his work with good effect.
Yet his main emphasis is on events, men and forces as they actually
shape life.
Mr. Brooks calls attention to his discovery, ** inexcusably late,"
to use his words, that **most men do not put their deepest opinions
into print, or state them before the public." His aim was to find
BOOK BEVIEW8. 419
out those deeper opinions and present them as supplementary evi-
dence in his social study.
It is well known that men who deal with vital questions, with
problems which deeply concern public welfare, do not and can not
always put their deeper opinions into print. It is well that they
do not. The legitimate stability of the social order, public or indus-
trial position, natural fallibility of human judgment and the pros-
pect that to-morrow's knowledge may change to-day's views, are
all elements which tend to deter full frank, general expression of
deeper opinion. Extreme reformers always express their most ad-
vanced thought; as a result we have no patience with them. Had
Ruskin said only half of what he felt about life and its problems, he
would undoubtedly have accomplished much more for the ideals that
he loved so intensely. We must ask that men be entirely honest as
far as they do express opinions; but it seems dangerous to encourage
leaders to go farther in their public teaching than the institutions
and temper of their time can safely allow. Naturally dishonest
teaching is to be reprobated, but prudent reserve and legitimate
caution must be exercised in our teaching when times are as troubled
as they now are.
It is not impossible that the author's frankness itself leads one
to misunderstand him when he makes the observations referred to.
Leaving them aside, as secondary, one must give the author of ' * Social
Unrest" credit for having written a most instructive book. In hav-
ing included such a great variety of topics, he denied to himself the
opportunity of far-reaching analysis and classification. Yet as a
book full of instruction, revealing much sympathy with life and its
problems, written at the cost of great personal effort and possibly the
sacrifice of comfort, ''Social Unrest" merits well of the public. It
can be highly recommended to students of the Social Question.
William J. Ej^eiby.
Lc Compagnonnage. Par E. Martin Saint-Leon. Paris: Colin.
1902. Pp. xxviii + 374.
This volume contains a study of the origin, development and
present condition of that form of labor union known in French as
Le Compagnonnage— corresponding to the stage in craft instruction
which in the Middle Ages preceded mastership.
The work is one of many due to the revival of interest in mediaeval
labor. In a charming narrative and concrete style, the. author tells
us the fascinating story of a very important branch of mediaeval
organization; a combination of faith, religion, industry, mystery and
420 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
good-fellowship, which we scarcely find to-day in our. civilization, not
even in the remnants of the organization itself.
The author shows scholarly caution where his sources are doubtful,
and a good historical sense in his manner of presentation. The
reader may be interested in the main thought of the work which we
briefly indicate. In so doing we invert the order followed by the
author in his exposition.
The Middle Ages reveals organization everywhere; in France the
corporations and in Germany the guilds were of course unions of
laborers or artisans. The confraternities were religious organizations
which united the laboring men as Christians and pledged them to
benevolent work in the interest of one another; the itinerant whole-
sale merchants had their organizations, and later even the free masons
appeared as a form of organized labor..
The Corporations in France included three divisions of artisans:
apprentis, valets, maitres. In earlier days the apprentice might be-
come master directly, but in the fourteenth century the intermediate
stage appears permanently. The term compagnon replaced valet and
it remains in use to-day.
The Companions were therefore logically on the way to master-
ship, but about the fourteenth century this latter distinction was
earned with great difficulty. One was forced to remain companion
for four or five years, or was forced to travel from village to village
to complete one's education. The production of the masterpiece was
difficult and costly, and the whim of the judges determined whether
or not one succeeded. Many laborers were too poor, many too lazy,
many too dull to advance beyond that condition. There they re-
mained during life. They were thus a distinct class; distinct in
intelligence, methods, social standing, and in the fact that they were
forced to travel. Naturally a class sense arose, and that was followed
by organization. Their purpose being self-protection and their in-
terests being distinct from those of the corporations, they naturally
drifted into secrecy; thus the association became a secret society, into
which initiation was attended by deep mystery and sworn pledges of
secrecy. The organization spread pretty generally over France, and ,j
some remnants of it remain to-day. Elaborate ceremony marked
every function. Their members were baptized and named. They;
were at home wherever they went in making the tour de France,
They found in every village a lodging place, whose proprietor wasj
affiliated to the organization.
The records show that the association was based largely on a re-
ligious sentiment, that it exercised originally a strong moral influ-
I
BOOK REVIEWS, 421
ence over its members. The clergy appeared to have been sympa-
thetic with it, though it was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1655 for
secrecy, profanation of God's name, derision of religion, diabolical
traditions, etc.
The origin of the association is obscure. Levasseur, in his history
of the French laboring classes, doubts any records earlier than the
fourteenth century. Though our author finds nothing certain before
the fifteenth century, he is inclined to think that the association dates
from the late twelfth century. In its best days it was divided into
three great branches. Its power waned rapidly towards the eight-
eenth century, though there are some vigorous remnants of the asso-
ciation in France. The author exposes the present condition of the
society with considerable detail.
The work is extremely interesting and valuable on account of
the numerous sources to which reference is constantly made, and be-
cause of the concrete and lucid manner of exposition followed. The
study is a companion to the author's larger work, Histoire des Cor-
porations de Metiers, which appeared in 1897. His last work is
on Trusts, the volume having just appeared in the Bibliotheque
d 'Economic Sociale of Paris. William J. Kerby.
The Girlhood of Our Lady. By Marion J. Brunowe. New York:
The Cathedral Library Association.
There is material for a score of delicate poems in Miss Brunowe 's
handsome little volume. She has connected in a series of short
chapters many of the prettiest legends of the early life of Mary, and
in the rendering from the ancient stories she has managed to keep
the delicious savor of piety that permeates the original legends. Here
and there the authoress has thrown in some topological description
and an occasional bit of actual Oriental custom. They give a tinge
of reality to the devout imaginings of the traditions. There is also
an abundance of delightful pictures, some of them reproductions of
the old masters, others of the modern German pietistic painters, all
of them as soothing to the eye as the text is pleasing to the imagination.
James C. Gillis.
Hermeneutica Biblica Genera lis secundum principia catholica.
Scripsit Dr. Stephanus Szikely, professor p.o. studii biblici K T.
in reg. Hung, scientiarum universitate Budapestiensi. Friburgi,
Brisgovise : Herder, 1902. 8°, pp. iv + 446.
This work deserves a prominent place in the list of excellent
treatises on Biblical Hermeneutics. The book is intended for use in
422 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
seminaries and also as a handbook for more profound study. A larger
type distinguishes the principal theses with their necessary explana-
tions from the more profuse discussions. This well adapts the book
for its two fold purpose.
The prolegomena contain the definition, division, necessity, sources,
and history of hermeneutics. The reader will find the pages on the
history of bibilical hemeneutics especially attractive. They show
the gradual development of the science and give an excellent bibliog-
raphy. Throughout the work the author has not neglected to give the
principal authorities under the various chapters, which adds much to
the value of the book.
The treatise proper is divided into three parts : the first considers
the sense (theoria sensus, hosmatica) ; the second discovery of the
sense (investigatio sensus, heuristica) ; the third, the exposition of the
sense (propositio sensus, prophoristica) .
The author gives almost twenty-five pages to the first part. His
definitions are clear, easily understood and generally very exact. The
importance of a firm grasp of the difference between the verbal and
real sense and between the symbolical and typical justly lead us to
wish for a longer discussion.
The greater part of the book is taken up with the discovery of
the sense. The author follows the most logical plan, treating in order
the rational interpretation, Christian interpretation, and Catholic
interpretation. The Bible is indeed a Divine book, but the words
expressing the thoughts are human, and the manner of expression is
modified by circumstances of time and place, by the condition of the
persons for whom the sacred books were primarily written and by the
subjective dispositions and qualifications of the writers. Dr. Szikely
therefore speaks of the logical, rhetorical and psychologico-historical
sense. In condensed form he gives a good idea of the rhetoric of the
sacred writings, of the character of the biblical poetry, and the
peculiarities in the language of the Bible.
A discussion of the nature, possibility, necessity and extent of
inspiration serves as an introduction to the pages explaining the
laws of Christian interpretation. The distinction of inspiration
into positive and negative is not very happily chosen nor very clear.
Positive inspiration, says the learned author, required, first, motionem
ad scribendum, second, influxum positivum in intellectum, scilicet
inti'mationem notionum novarum, and third, directionem voluntatis.
In negative inspiration the first and third of these acts are the
same as in the positive, but the positivus influxus in intellectum is
absent, and in place of it we have impeditionem meram erroris. The
I
BOOK REVIEW8. 423
distinction can be easily understood. Dr. Szikely very properly con-
siders the systems of the Jews and rationalists as opposed to the laws
of Christian interpretation. Though rationalists are one in eliminat-
ing from the Bible all that is supernatural, the methods they follow
to attain this end are many and various. The author describes their
systems in a very interesting manner.
The laws for interpreting Scripture are modified by the rule of
faith and therefore the laws of Catholic interpretation must be opposed
to the Protestant systems where the Bible alone is recognized as a
guide. The author closes this second part with a very useful article
on the attitude of the Church in regard to the reading of Sacred
Scripture.
The history of biblical exegesis is very instructive. The author
details the progress of exegesis among the Jews. Christian exegesis
began with Christ, was carried on by the apostles and early writers,
flourished especially in the schools of Alexandria and Antioch, and
among the Latin Fathers. Dr. Szikely then traces the development
during the Middle Ages, continuing the list of Catholic exegetes down
to our own time, and mentioning in a separate paragraph the prin-
cipal Protestant interpreters. Dr. Szikely has given us an admirable
book, written in pure, simple, correct language, a book that will be
appreciated by every student.
John G. Schmidt.
Dcr Schopfungsbericht Dcr Genesis, mit Beriicksichtigung der
neuesten Entdeckungen und Forschungen erklart von Fr. Vine.
Zapletal, O.P., Ord. Professor der alttest. Exegese an der
Universitat Fribourg (Schweiz). Fribourg: B. Veith, 1902. 8°,
pp. vi + 104.
The author well compares the literature on the first chapter of
Genesis to a great pyramid. Many books have been written on the
scriptural account of creation and we suspect that many more will
be written before the problem is finally and satisfactorily solved.
Fr. Zapletal's work should be welcomed as a scientific contribution.
He shows a thorough acquaintance with the latest writers and newest
discoveries. He leaves aside questions no longer of interest and
discusses the controversies of the present.
In the first chapter the author justifies the assumption that
Genesis I, l-II, 3, is a complete and independent record. The second
account is so different in form and order, that the tw'o cannot be
traced to the same source of information. Genesis II, 4, is not a
conclusion of the first account, nor is it the title to what follows, but
is a later addition.
424 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
In the second chapter the author examines the text critically and
exegetically. The treatise is brief but thorough, with constant
reference to the best and latest writers. The discussion of the word
*'Bara" is very interesting. The reasons for and against the mean-
ing, creatio prima ex nihilo, are clearly stated. The Hebrews were
influenced by the views of the neighboring people. Their cosmogony
cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the theories cur-
rent among other nations. The Egyptian, Phoenician and Babylonian
cosmogonies are discussed in the third chapter.
Fr. Zapletal next reviews the various explanations of the account
of Genesis that have hitherto been given. He classifies the various
theories under the literal, ideal, periodistic or mythical interpretation.
The author draAvs the following conclusion: All the systems contain
partial truth, but none gives a complete solution. The literal theory
justly insists that the writers of this chapter uses the word "day"
in its natural meaning ; the ideal explanation is not wrong in asserting
that the order of the works of creation is not necessarily historical;
mythicism is not mistaken in finding words from Oriental mythologies
in Genesis ; the periodistic theory is right in contending that creation
did not take place in six natural days but extends over various
periods. But because each system contains truth in part only, a
final solution must be sought elsewhere. We need a system that will
combine and harmonize the truths already established and will give
a satisfactory answer to difficulties still remaining.
Fr. Zapletal's explanation of the biblical account of creation is:
the author wished to teach his readers that the world was created by
God without the assistance of any intermediary Demiurge; that the
world is anthropocentric ; that the Sabbath must be kept as a day of
rest. The account is apologetic in character. The neighboring
people adored the sun, moon, and stars; worshipped animals, plants,
and other creatures. The Israelites are here told that all these have
been brought into existence by the word Elohim. To be clear and
pointed, the author had to adapt his language to the time and people,
take into consideration their views. He offered a plan of creation
which could be understood easily and which might serve as a subsi-
tute for the current heathen cosmogonies. The writer can speak of
light on the first day and of the sun on the fourth because the popular
mind considered light independent from the sun.
What was the scheme of creation as intended by the writer of
Genesis? Fr. Zapletal finds the key for its solution in Gen. II, 1.
The scholastics speak of "opus distinctionis et opus ornatus." They
depended on the Latin translation : Igitur perf ecti sunt coeli et terra
BOOK REVIEWS. 425
et omnis ornatus eorum. This must be corrected to read '*exercitus
eorum." The two ternaries are "productio regionum et productio
exercituum. " This explains why the plants are mentioned on the
third day. Without the plants the earth would not have been pre-
pared to receive the army which was to inhabit it. In the last
chapter the author treats of the literary and historical characters of
this account.
John G. Schmidt.
Dc Libri Baruch Vetustissima Latina Versione usque adhuc
inedita in celeberrimo Codice Cavensi, Epistola Ambrosii M.
Amelli Archivarii Casinensis ad Antonium M. Ceriani Praefectum
Bibliothecae Ambrosianae. Typis Archicoenobii Montis Casini,
1902. 8°, pp. 15.
The untiring efforts of the Benedictines and of Don Ambrogio
Amelli, the scholarly archivist of Monte Casino, are again manifested
in this study of the Book of Baruch. These pages offer a specimen
from a recension heretofore unedited and supposed by scholars of
repute to be one of the oldest versions of Baruch, found in the famous
Cavensis Codex. This Codex was written in Spain in Yisigothic
characters, by Danila, and is preserved at present in the Benedictine
Abbey of Corpi di Cava, near Salerno. Such scholars as Wordsworth,
Berger, Zeigler, Coorsen and others favor the antiquity of this Codex,
but there is no agreement as to its date. Cardinal Mai places it be-
tween the seventh and eighth centuries, though others put it as late as
the tenth century.
Don Amelli, after a thorough critical study of it, in the light of
other Yisigothic codices preserved at Monte Casino, is of the opinion
that its date is not earlier than the ninth century. The specimen of
this version of the Book of Baruch is taken from the third chapter,
verses twenty-four to thirty-seven. In this small portion, Amelli
notes some remarkable likenesses between the Codex Cavensis and
Sabatier's edition of the Vulgate (Y), the Codex Casinensis (C), and
the text of the Ambrosian Missal (A). From the concordance be-
tween these Books and their slight differences Don Amelli concludes :
(1) Texts A. C. V. depend upon the Codex Cavensis as on a common
archetype, so they are three recensions of one and the same version.
(2) Codex Cavensis agrees with A and C more than with V; thus A
and C rather constitute one text and are one recension.
Don Amelli believes that this version of the book of Baruch came
into use before 347 A. D. From the wording of the version it is easily
28 CUB
426 CATHOLIC UNIVER8ITY BULLETIN.
proved that the *'Epistola" attached to the book of Baruch was
really from the "Vetus," while the Liber belonged to that Vulgate
which Jerome has styled * ' Communis, ' ' because in common ecclesiasti-
cal use from the remotest times. The graecisms of the version and its
latinity betray the plebeian language, so much disliked after the days
of Damasus and Jerome. In Codex Cavensis, '*plebs'' appears not
infrequently; but the new Vulgate substitutes ''populus."
Another interesting feature of the Codex is the marginal annota-
tion. In the margin of Micheas V, 2 is written in purely Visigothic
characters: ''In LXX habet: domus Ephrata modicus es ut sis in
milibus lude." Jerome in his commentary on Micheas has "et tu
Bethleem domus Ephrata nequaquam minima es ut sis in millibus
luda." But in the Vulgate we read : Et tu Bethleem domus Ephrata
modicus es ut sis in milibus Juda.
Probably the author of these notes was some pious monk, as
seems evident from the following allusions to the question of predestin-
ation. In the margin of Acts XV, 18, we find: ''Audiant hoc testi-
monium qui predestinationem, non ex praescientia sicuti est, sed
proposito et voluntate divina dicunt esse decretam." Acts XV, 20,
''Audiant haec qui pene homnia quas venatione capiuntur suffocatum
manducant. ' ' The date of this annotator may have been from A. D.
848 to 855, for in Gaul about that time, the question of predestination
was being much discussed. In fact three councils, at Mayence in
848, at Quiersy in 849, and at Valence in 855, were held against the
monk Gottschalk who died for his opinions on this mystery.
The study of Don Amelli, so recently honored by an appointment
to the Biblical Commission, is of value not only to the student of
Sacred Scripture, but also to the philologian, and is a new proof of
the genuine interest which the Benedictines have ever kept up in all
that pertains to ancient ecclesiastical literature.
Henry I. Stark.
Histoire dcs Livres du Nouveau Testament. Par E. Jacquier.
Tome I. Lecoffre, 1903. Pp. xi -f 488.
This is one of many volumes forming, when united, the ''Biblio-
theque de I'Enseignement de I'Histoire Ecclesiastique/ ' an enter-
prise for which the great publishing house of Lecoffre has assumed
the responsibility. AVhen completed, it promises to give to readers
of the laity and of the clergy an excellent series of manuals on the
origin and on the development of the Christian religion.
The present volume deals mth the life and writings of the Apostle
Paul. It will be followed by other volumes on the Gospels, on the
i
BOOK REVIEWS. . 427
Acts, on the Catholic Epistles, and on the Apocalypse. The first two
chapters of the volume deal with such preliminary questions as the
chronology and the language of the New Testament. The author
places the birth of our Lord in the third or fourth year before the
Christian era, the beginning of his public life in the twenty-sixth or in
the twenty-eighth year, and the Crucifixion in the twenty-ninth or
thirtieth year of the Christian era. According to this calculation our
Lord was about thirty-three years of age at the time of his death. St.
Paul was converted to Christianity about the year A. D. 34, that is to
say, about four or five years after the Ascension. His apostolic
journeys began about A. D. 44 and continued to A. D. 60-62. His
martyrdom took place at Rome in A. D. 67. Our author places, as
is generally done, the Epistles to the Thessalonians first in order of
time among the writings of the Apostles. They were written towards
the close of the year 52, and during the early part of Paul's residence
at Corinth. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the last in the order of
time. The composition of this splendid Epistle M. Jacquier does not
ascribe in very positive terms to the Apostle.
Considering the number and the variety of the subjects discussed,
we have no hesitation in affirming that this is one of the most thorough
and independent investigations of New Testament history that has
appeared among Catholics for some time.
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Mystery of Sleep. By John Bigelow, LL.D. Second Edition.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1903. 8°, pp. xiii + 215.
This is not a technical, psychological study of sleep phenomena,
but an attempt to determine the value of sleep as a recuperative
process for the upbuilding of the spiritual, as opposed to the sensible
life. The author discusses in a popular way the problem why we
spend one third of our lives in an unconscious state. He endeavors to
dispel some popular delusions that sleep is merely a state of rest, of
practical inertia of body and soul, or at most a periodical provision
for the reparation of physical waste. Sleep dissociates us from the
world in which we live, interrupts all conscious relations with the
phenomenal world and thus becomes one of the vital processes of
spiritual regeneration. Our moral side has been free, secluded from
all the distractions of the world, and thus affords our spirit help to
a direct, prolonged and undisturbed communion with God. Sleep
helps our moral growth, thus infants sleep longer than adults.
Fatigue does not create a need for repose, for if so, argues Mr. Bigelow,
why should the octogenarian trembling with weakness sleep less?
428 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Fatigue in its nature, the author does not discuss. Then the desire
and the necessity for sleep should be regarded as a providential ar-
rangement to induce us to cultivate the virtues most favorable to its
enjoyment, just as hunger and thirst are the agents of Providence for
teaching us to be frugal, industrious, and temperate, that they may be
reasonably gratified.
Henry I. Stark.
Sermons and Discourses. Vol. II. By Rev. John McQuirk,
D.D., LL.D. New York: St. Paul's Library, 1903. 8°.
This volume is published with the view of contributing to the
restoration of family reading, a custom once quite prevalent and pro-
ductive of much fruit, but now almost obsolete. There can be no
doubt that the success of the preacher depends upon a clearly recog-
nized and acted-upon duty on the part of the faithful to profit by his
preaching. So the author gives a volume of sermons which are well
done, very readable, replete with good thought, plain, pleasant and
persuasive. The sermons on the Real Presence, Christian Charity,
Infallibility, the Holy Ghost, are especially worthy of attention for
the solidity of their expression and the soundness of their theology.
The volume is well deserving of the perusal of the clergy and laity
alike; we hope it will contribute to the restoration of the beautiful
and Christian custom of family-reading.
Henry I. Stark.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
A Little Chaplet for the Queen of Angels, or A Short Meditation for
every evening in May. By Rev. B. J. Raycroft, M.A. New York :
Pustet, 1903. 8°, pp. 137.
Wreaths of Song from a Course of Divinity. Dublin: M. H. Gill
and Son, 1903. 8°, pp. 80.
The Sheriff of Beach Fork, a Story of Kentucky. By Henry S.
Spalding, S.J. New York: Benziger, 1903. 8°, pp. 223.
Nothing New, A few words of hope and Confidence, etc. By Rev.
Patrick J. Murphy. New York: H. C. Clinton, 413 W. 59th St.,
1903. 12°, pp. 64.
The Our Father analyzed according to the doctrine of St. Thomas
Aquinas. By Rev. J. G. Hogan, S.J., translated from the Ger-
man by a Visitation Nun, Georgetown, D. C. New York : Benziger,
1903. 12°,Vp. 22.
The Holy Family Series of Catholic Catechisms, No. 2. By Rev.
Francis J. Butler, Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston. Boston:
Thomas J. Flynn & Co., 1903. 8°, pp. 249 + 62.
NOTES AND COMMENT.
History of Education. —Father Magevney's articles on the history
of modern education will repay the reader. Their original shape
as review articles compelled, perhaps, the rather crowded presenta-
tion of his materials. There is, occasionally, something of a de-
clamatory tone that detracts from the solid merit of these outlines
of a long and interesting development. In a future edition it might
be well to add in a separate bibliography the full titles of all the
educational works described or used. Le Bee in Normandy (viii, 6)
usually reads the Abbey of Bee. In the same number (p. 10) is it
not unjust to say of Luther that his temperament was ' * unassthetic ' ' ?
His devotion to music is well known, and his lovely "Frau Musica"
is one of the choicest gems of praise that were ever bestowed upon
this art. Dr. Baeumker, a Catholic historian of Church music, calls
him "ein feiner Kunstkenner, ein grosser Freund und Liebhaber der
Musik, ' ' in genuine intelligent sympathy with such masters as Josquin
de Pres (Zur Geschichte der Tonkunst, Freiburg, 1881, p. 153).
Given the scarcity of Catholic literature in English on all that per-
tains to the history, principles and methods of modern education,
these brochures of Fr. Magevney are both welcome and useful. (The
Reformation and Education, 1520-1648; Systems and Counter-Sys-
tems of Education, 1648-1800, Nos. 8 and 9 of the Pedagogical Truth
Library, published by the Cathedral Library Association, New York,
1903, 8°, pp. 56 and 53).
Some New Works of Edification.— In ''The Gift of Pentecost" Fr.
Meschler offers us a volume of theological considerations on the office
and function of the Holy Spirit in the theology and constitution,
sacraments and daily life, aspirations and ideals of the Catholic
Church. The translation is correct and idiomatic, and there is room
for such a work even after the classical text of Cardinal Manning.
C'The Gifts of Pentecost," Meditations on the Holy Ghost, by M.
Meschler, S.J., translated from the German by Lady Amabel Kerr,
St. Louis, Herder, 1903, 8°, pp. xi + 498, $1.60.) Fr. Girardey
offers us an English edition of certain ascetical considerations com-
piled from the writings of the Jesuit theologian, Fr. Schneider. To
them he has added other thoughts and reflexions drawn from the
works of Saint Alphonsus. The little book recommends itself to
429
430 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
those whose estate calls them to the higher Christian life, and to
others whom the Holy Spirit calls along that mystic path. ("Helps
to a Spiritual Life," from the German of Joseph Schneider, S.J.,
with additions by Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.E., New York,
Benziger, 1903, 8°, pp. vi + 257, $1.25.) It is long since we have
read a devotional book so admirable for content and temper as this
volume of Fr. Clifford. In form and style it leaves little to be
desired. Nothing in our literature of piety corresponds to this
sanely religious piece of exegesis of the opening lines of each Sun-
day's liturgy. It is Prayer Book and Homily combined. Through-
out, its thought is elevated dignified, healthy, and appeals to every
sincere Christian as the expression of genuine religion, removed at
once from the insipidity of some books of piety and from the adiaphor-
ous or intangible exhortations of others. In the commentary of Fr.
Clifford we seem to note a serenity, "sweet reasonableness" and
gentle piquancy, such as the troubled modern mind may easily
admire, and admiring follow in the paths indicated. ("Introibo,"
a series of detached readings of the Entrance Versicles of the Eccles-
iastical Year, by Rev. Cornelius Clifford, Cathedral Library Asso-
ciation, 534 Amsterdam Ave., New York, 1903, 8°, pp. 304.)
Religion and the Religious Sense.— Is religion worth studying as a
great fact of modern life? Is it something visible, measurable,
something quite on a level with all the objects of personal and social
psychology? Is the religious sense itself something native in man,^
imperishable, useful? Can we answ^er these questions, not only
from the materials of revelation and tradition, but with the aid of
the methods and the conclusions of modern science? To these ques-
tions the Abbe Klein, professor in the Institut Catholique of Paris,
replies in a very suggestive volume made up of discourses delivered
in the Cours Superieur for young ladies (1897-1901) and in the church
of the Sorbonne (1902). The book abounds in luminous apergus,
there are breadth and clearness in his vision of the large province of
fact that he outlines, and the method that he advocates is based at
once on the sanest traditions of Catholic theology and the undeniable
advances of modern science. As introductory to a greater work on
"Dogma and Apolegeties" these pages of the distinguished professor
of Paris are replete with good sense and moderation, both of claim
and style. The Abbe Klein is well known in France as a translator
of American Catholic works and as a genial and sympathetic friend
of our country and our institutions. ("Le Fait Religieux et la
maniere de Tobserver," Paris, Lethielleux, 8°, 1903, pp. 212.)
NOTES AND COMMENT, 431
Spiritual Marriage in the Primitive Church. — Dr. Hans Achelis, well
and favorably known for his edition of the Canons of Hippolytus,
contributes an interesting chapter to the story of platonic love in
Eoman antiquity. He has collected all the references in primitive
ecclesiastical history to the "Virgines Subintroductas, " a peculiar
custom or abuse soundly denounced by Saint Cyprian as early as the
middle of the third century. According to Dr. Achelis, who follows
a hint of Mosheim, this custom vigorously and rightfully rooted out
by the bishops of that time, was in reality only a long-enduring
reminiscence of the earliest Christian times when such unions were
solely spiritual. Intensity of religious enthusiasm, clear vision of
the nearness of Christ's second coming, heroic renunciation of life
itself, let alone its pleasures, certain peculiarities of the antique
temperament, go far to explain the persistency of these relations,
which certain historians only too easily describe as a sheer abuse and
a sign of early degeneracy of Christian morality. The study of Dr.
Achelis is one of extreme interest for its content, and of equal utility
for its fulness and its good method. ("Virgines Subintroductae, " Ein
Beitrag zu I Cor. vii, Hinrichs, Leipzig, 1902, Marks 2.80.)
A General History of Modern Commerce. —Modern history needs
more and more to be studied from the view-point of economico-social
movements and progress. It is to this conviction that we owe the
many excellent histories of commerce that have seen the light in the
last twenty years. Their solid and varied erudition needs to be recast
for ordinary readers, likewise the numberless special researches in
the history of commerce need to have their conclusions enumerated
in some reliable manual. Dr. Webster has done this with great
success, and we can recommend his summary of the history of com-
merce as resting on reliable and exhaustive works. Such a conspectus
is of incalculable service to all teachers of history, since it appeals
to the spirit the training and the tastes of the majority of our modern
states. Dr. Webster uses rather strong language when he says (p.
37) that the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries encouraged
brilliant services and festivals to ''pamper the fancies of masses of
ignorant and rude communicants" and to hold them in subjection.
This is the view of a narrow iconoclastic school, and not at all justified
by a liberal consideration of the development and preservation of the
fine arts by great ecclesiastics from Saint Ambrose to Nicetius of
Trier. Moreover, his summary (p. 97) of the merits -and demerits
of the Church with regard to mediaeval commerce does not seem to
us fair or complete. He does not count in the incalculable service
432 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
of the Church as a consumer and a producer in the Middle Ages, nor
the fact that most fairs were held in the vicinity of churches and
cathedrals, on the occasion of patron days, nor the decrees of councils
in favor of merchants, nor the fact that such trading centres as
Venice, the Hanseatic cities, Bruges, were highly religious centres
at the same time. We think these pages altogether unsatis-
factory and misleading, tainted with old-time Protestant prejudice,
and the weakest in an otherwise very good book. ("A General
History of Commerce," by William Clarence Webster, Ph.D., Boston,
Ginn and Co., 1903, 8°, pp. 526.)
The Early History of Oxford and Cambridge.— We have read
with equal pleasure and profit the doctorate dissertation of Mr. James
F. Willard on the influence which the royal authority exercised in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries over the growth of the two
sister universities of England. In the definition of membership, in
the confirmation and extension of the authority of the chancellor,
in the granting of protection against the local civil authorities or
''borough," and later of a substantial privileged position in all
matters of mixed character, the English kings so cherished these twin
seats of learning that by the end of the fourteenth century they had
grown from bodies of students held together by a loose code of pro-
fessional customs or etiquette to a position of almost complete
theoretical independence of the local and royal authorities. The
clerical chancellors of the sees of Lincoln and Ely had become self-
controlling heads of universities formed out of the episcopal schools;
the archdeacons' power had waned completely, and in the "borough"
each university had gradually secured a dominating influence in all
legislation and institution affecting its students. We could have
wished that the original ecclesiastical character of the chancellor had
been more clearly set forth, also that the numerous positive papal
enactments in favor of the universities had been gathered from Bliss'
"Calendar of Papal Registers 1198-1362," and worked into a distinct
chapter. This step would tend to offset the action of the papacy by
that of the national authority and would thereby bring out more
clearly the exact limits of the royal action on the development of
mediaeval Oxford and Cambridge. ("The Royal Authority and the
Early English Universities," by James J. Willard, Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania 1902, 8°, pp. 89.)
Christianity and the Civil Law of Rome.— Among the half for-
gotten classics of the nineteenth century, one might reckon the work
NOTES AND COMMENT. 433
of M. Troplong entitled "De 1 'influence du Christianisme sur le droit
civil des Romains" published first in 1843. The Abbe Bayle, of the
diocese of Tours, gives us the latest edition of this indispensable study
of the process by which the gradually infiltrating Christian spirit
saturated at last the old civil law of Rome. The task was slow and
painful, accompanied with many a cessation and reaction— but in
the end the gentle charity of Christ affected profoundly that archaic
law once so stern and heartless toward slaves, women, and children,
so unfeelingly consistent in its application of an artificial family
system. The doctrine of M. Troplong is that of one of the most dis-
tinguished of modern French jurisconsults, and his erudition is
everywhere "de bon aloi." The sixty-one commentaries of M. Bayle
are at once brief and pithy, abounding in good citations that are
always apropos and helpful. The book is of much value to every
student of Roman law as well as to students of the history of canon
law and ecclesiastical institutions. ("De I'infiuence du Christianisme
sur le droit civil des Romains, Nouvelle edition commentee aux
points de vue philosophique, juridique et theologique de tous les
temps," par M. I'Abbe Bayle, Tours, Cattier, 1902, 8°, pp. viii + 259.)
Mediaeval Marian Hymns and Canticles.— Out of the forgotten
musical lore of the Middle Ages Dom Pothier makes known fifty-six
beautiful antiphons, proses, hymns, sequences "rhythmi" and canti-
cles, all dealing with the Blessed Virgin, and all, more or less, in the
original text. It is a bit of artistic no less than palseographic work.
The simple gravity of this music recalls the Romance basilica while
its delicacy and sweetness remind one of the sculptured Gothic
capital. After the ' ' Analecta Liturgica ' ' of Fr. Dreves, there seems
to be yet more than one sheaf to be gathered. These texts offer
often a profound theology, apt uses of Holy Scripture, archaic sim-
plicity of diction, with a free and original inspiration. Dom Pothier
says of them rightly that they are "egregia pietatis avitaa monu-
menta," and compares them picturesquely with the dried flowers
that the botanist's herbary has preserved. ("Cantus Mariales quos
e fontibus antiquis eruit aut opere novo veterum instar concinnavit
D. Josephus Pothier abbas sancti Wandregisili, O.S.B.," Paris,
Lethielleux, 1903, 8°, pp. 147.)
M. Amedee Gastoue contributes to the sam'e good cause of Church
music, at once traditional and scientific, a little volume that will
please all lovers of the medieval plain chant. It offers a transcrip-
tion into modern musical terminology of a number of mediaeval
musical texts whose antiquated neumatic notation can now be read
434 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
by few. Without any sacrifice of palaeographico-Mstorical accuracy
M. Gastoue succeeds in placing before all with photographic exact-
ness specimens of the liturgical chant of the ninth century and
later. It is the mediaeval music of the ordinary of the mass, the
Kyriale, the Missa pro defunctis, vespers, burial service, confirmation,
the toni psalmorum, litanies, Via Crucis, Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament, and the like. (''Les principaux chants liturgiques du
choeur et des fideles, etc., Plain-Chant Gregorien traditionnel d'apres
les manuscrits,'* par Amedee Gastoue, Paris, Poussielgue, pp. 200,
1903.)
The Tribes of Latium.— We could not recommend to teachers and
students of Latin in the higher classes a more useful and entertain-
ing work than that of the Abbe Dedouvres on the Latin life and char-
acter as betrayed in their literature. We have here the substance
of Roman literature in as far as it is a popular product, with a point
of view that may lay claim to novelty at least in statement. The
Latin was eminently a man of the fields and the market place, and
his language dealt originally with cows and oxen, beans and peas
and fodder, trees and hedges, the plough and the yoke, the furrow
and the ditch. He is no poet, no philosopher, by nature, and though
eventually he acquires an intellectual realm of poetry, philosophy
and drama, he is always less at home in those borrowed habiliments
than he is in his law-courts and his fortified camps. This book is well
suited to help the youthful scholar to comprehend, in the original
sources, the vast difference between the folk-genius of the Latin and
the Hellene. ("Les Latins peints par eux-memes,'' Paris, Picard,
1903, 8°, pp. 450.)
An Excellent Modern Work on Divorce. —The second enlarged edi-
tion of the book of Dr. Lorenzo Michaelangelo Billia on divorce,
first published in 1893, is deserving of perusal by all who are inter-
ested in the sancity of the Christian family. It contains many apt
considerations, theological, philosophical and historical; the latter are
particularly useful. In a series of pertinent notes he adduces the
opinions of many prominent scholars and statesmen of the nineteenth
century against the growing evil of divorce. The work has actually
a very special value since the Italian state threatens to adopt a divorce
legislation and thereby to offend the consciences of the majority
of the people of the peninsula. ("Difendiamo la famiglia, saggio
contro il divorzio e specialments contro la proposta di introdurlo in
Italia," Torina, Nuovo Risorgimento, 1902, 8°, pp. 275.)
N0TE8 AND COMMENT. 435
The Denial of Ecclesiastical Burial in Antiquity,— Professor von
Thiimmel of Jena bases his description of modern Lutheran discipline
in the matter of denial of ecclesiastical burial on a lengthy historical
study of the same. With patience he has collected all that seems
referable to that subject out of the early ecclesiastical annals, the
documents of the Middle Ages, and the history of the Church down
to our own time. The historical facts are of more than ordinary
interest when mustered in orderly array. The brochure will have a
permanent value to historians of ecclesiastical discipline, even if the
standpoint of Professor Thiimmel be the partisan confessional one.
(''Die Versagung der kirchlichen Bestattungsfeier, ihre geschichtliche
Entwickelung und gegenw^artige Bedeutung, Hinrichs, Leipzig, 1902,
8°, pp. 196, Marks 2.80.)
The Katipunan and the Filipino Commune.— The principles and
methods of Filipino Freemasonry, or what passes for it, are ex-
plained in this pamphlet of 283 pages. The reader may make therein
acquaintance with the marvelous charm that secret societies exercise
over the Oriental mind, and the grave danger they constitute for the
ordinary civil authority whenever it is distasteful to them. The
actual perils of the neighboring Chinese state are an instructive com-
ment on the tenacity and efficiency of these subterraneous organiza-
tions. It is a pity that this work of reference should be provided
with neither table of contents nor alphabetical index. (The Kati-
punan, or the Rise and Fall of the Filipino Commune, Boston, T. J.
Flynn and Co., 1903, 3d ed., pp. 283.)
Portraits of Julius Caesar.— Mr. Frank J. Scott has added a valu-
able chapter to the classic ''Roemische Ikonographie " of Bernouilli
by the publication of some thirty-six marble heads, profiles, statues,
coins, casts, busts, masks and statuettes that purport to represent the
figure and features of the ''foremost man of all the world." The
illustrations are accompanied by an erudite and critical text that
lends especial value to this work. (Portraits of Julius Caesar, Long-
mans, New York, 8°, pp. 182.)
The New Dioceses in Cuba.— We owe to the courtesy of Archbishop
Chapelle, Apostolic Delegate to Cuba and Porto Rico, a copy of the
Papal Brief, "Actum Praeclare" by which two new dioceses, Pinar
del Rio and Cienfuegos, have been established in the island, also
three parishes cut off from Havana and added to the archdiocese of
Santiago. Photographs of the new cathedrals and an ecclesiastical
map of Cuba accompany the valuable document.
INSTALLATION OF THE NEW RECTOR.
The Et. Eev. Denis Joseph O'Connell, M.A., D.D., was
installed as third Eector of the Catholic University of America
on Wednesday, April 23, by His Eminence the Chancellor
in presence of the Board of Trustees assembled for their An-
nual Meeting.
Mgr. O'Connell is a native of South Carolina. He was
educated in the public schools and at St. Mary's College, Co-
lumbia, S. C, whence he entered Saint Charles' College in
Maryland in 1868. He graduated therefrom in 1871 and in
the same year began the study of philosophy and theology at
Eome, as a student of the American College. He spent five
years in these studies and in June, 1877, was ordained a priest.
In July of the same year he was declared Doctor of Theology
after a public examination which won for him the unanimous
vote of his professors. In August, 1877, he returned to his
diocese of Eichmond, but was shortly afterward, in September
of the same year, sent to Eome as the postulator for the pal-
lium for Cardinal Gibbons, recently made Archbishop of Bal-
timore. In February, 1878, he returned to the United States
and for several years had charge of various missions along
the James Eiver in Virginia. As pastor of Winchester he
dedicated in 1883 the Church built at Front Eoyal through the
generosity of the Jenkins family of Baltimore.
In October, 1883, he was sent to Eome to prepare for the
Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. He returned in Jan-
uary, 1884, and was constantly employed during the following
months in the preparation of the Council, its promulgation,
the extensive correspondence that followed, and in preparing
at Saint Charles College, in company with the distinguished
theologians of the Council, the decrees of the same. In the
Council itself he was one of the four principal secretaries, the
others being Mgr. Corcoran, Dr. Messmer and Dr. Gabriels—
the latter two are now respectively bishops of Green Bay
and Ogdensburg. In March, 1885, Mgr. 0 'Council returned to
436
INSTALLATION OF THE NEW RECTOR. 437
Eome with the decrees of the Council, to submit them, as is
the ancient custom, to the Holy See for approbation. Bishops
Moore, Gilmour, and Dwenger went at the same time as a com-
mittee of the American episcopate. In June of that year he
was made Rector of the American College at Eome, but did
not assume the duties of that office until the spring of 1886.
In the meantime he was occupied with the printing and final
publication of the legislation prepared by the Council.
As Eector of the American College, Mgr. O'Connell de-
voted close attention to multiplying the number of students,
providing for their greater physical comfort, and placing the
finances of the College on a solid basis. During his incum-
bency, six life-scholarships were founded, all debts paid off,
and a notable sum left in the treasury of the institution. Dur-
ing the same period, he was constantly at the service of the
American episcopate, a task that meant much self-sacrifice and
devotion, since at that time the Apostolic Delegation to the
United States had not yet been established.
Thus, during the year 1886, he aided His Eminence Car-
dinal Gibbons in the now famous question of the condemnation
of the Knights of Labor. The counsel and services of Mgr.
0 'Council were constantly called on during this important
episode. Similarly, he cooperated with Archbishops Keane
and Ireland in the matter of the Constitutions and papal ap-
proval for the University that was being founded at Washing-
ton. In October, 1892, he accompanied Archbishop Satolli
as papal representative to the Committee of Archbishops.
Shortly afterwards Archbishop Satolli was raised to the posi-
tion of first Apostolic Delegate to the Catholic Church in the
United States. Since 1896 Mgr. 0 'Council has held the office
of Vicar of His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, in his cardinalitial
church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
From this brief statement of the career of Mgr. 0 'Council,
it will be seen that he brings to the University ripe and varied
experience. His acquaintance with the problems and needs of
the Catholic Church in the United States has been gained at
first hand, and in daily contact with the hierarchy and the
Eoman authorities. His acquired knowledge, quick sympathy
438 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
with all noble educational ideals, and other similar qualities,
give every reason to trust that his administration will be a suc-
cessful one; that it will justify all the hopes aroused by his
nomination, and leave the University in every sense an assured
fact.
f
RT. REV, THOriAS J. CONATY, D.D.
Et. Eev. Thomas J. Conaty, D.D., received in April the
papal brief appointing him to the see of Los Angeles, as suc-
cessor to the Et. Eev. George Montgomery, D.D., who was
recently designated Coadjutor to the Archbishop of San
Francisco.
Dr. Conaty was named second Eector of the University by
Pope Leo XIII., November 22, 1896, and was installed January
19, 1897. He was promoted to the dignity of Domestic Prelate
June 2, 1897, and was consecrated, November 24, 1901, Bishop
of Samos.
The term of Dr. Conaty 's rectorship began shortly after
the Schools of Philosophy and of the Social Sciences had been
added to the School of Theology. This development of the
University involved numerous problems and details of organ-
ization which could be settled only as time and experience sug-
gested a solution. Dr. Conaty ^s efforts were accordingly di-
rected, in the first instance, upon the internal relations of the
University— the coordination of the various departments in the
several schools and the consolidation of all the schools with a
view to greater efficiency. To this work the Eector brought a
knowledge of educational conditions which enabled him to
adjust university requirements and policy to the needs of the
secondary schools without lowering the standards of the Uni-
versity itself.
The same period witnessed an active growth of the institu-
tions immediately connected with the University. Consider-
able additions were made to St. Thomas ' College, the novitiate
of the Paulist Fathers. The Marists, in 1897, transferred their
College to the new building adjoining the grounds of the Uni-
versity, and, in 1902, began the construction of a second build-
ing for their Juniorate. In 1899, the new College of the Holy
Cross was opened. In the same year, the Franciscans dedi-
cated their College of the Holy Land. The Sulpicians opened
St. Austin's College, their house of studies, in 1901; the
439
440 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Dominicans purchased, in 1902, the ground on which they are
now erecting their college ; and, in the same year, arrangements
were made for the location, on the University grounds, of the
Apostolic Mission House, whose first students had found a
temporary residence in Keane Hall. Provision was also made
for the higher education of women under Catholic auspices
by the establishment of Trinity College, which opened its
courses in 1900. The varied interests represented by these
religious communities necessitated a careful study of their re-
lations to the University, and of the whole question of affilia-
tion, which was finally placed, towards the end of Dr. Conaty's
rectorship, upon a definite basis.
While these movements were grouping the orders about
the University, Dr. Conaty was equally earnest in his endeavor
to make the University the center of Catholic education in the
United States. The Holy See, in giving the University its
constitution, urged this unification of our institutions ; and the
Eector used all his influence to make the Catholic system a
concrete reality. With this object in view, he organized the
Conference of Catholic Colleges and presided at its annual
meetings, the first of which was held in 1899. A similar im-
petus was given to the work of the theological seminaries and,
quite recently, to the work of elementary instruction in the
parochial schools.
In the conduct of these different undertakings, within the
University and without. Dr. Conaty was uniformly courteous
and forbearing. While deeply interested in making the Uni-
versity a power for good in the country at large, he was no
less solicitous in maintaining its high standards. That the
same breadth of view will characterize his action in the new
field of labor to which he is called, there can be no doubt. The
success which awaits him there will be the natural outcome of
sincere and laborious efforts in pursuit of worthy ideals. We
wish him a hearty godspeed in the work of episcopal adminis-
tration. The diocese of Los Angeles will find in him a fatherly
ruler, well acquainted with the real needs of our American
Catholic population, unsparing of himself, and filled with that
large charity that is the outcome of manifold experience with
all kinds and conditions of men.
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES, 1902-1903.
The commencement exercises were held, as usual, in the Assembly
Room, McMahon Hall, Wednesday, June 10, at 10 A. M., in the
presence of a distinguished assembly of clergy and laity. After a
brief introductory discourse by the Dean of the Faculty of Theology
on the origin and nature of university degrees, the successful candi-
dates were presented to the Rt. Rev. Rector by their respective Deans.
At the close of the simple but impressive ceremony the Rt. Rev. Rector
delivered a discourse of encouragement to the assembled students, in
which he brought out strongly the fact that theological studies were
of a necessity the living center of a Catholic University. The har-
monious union of all the sciences was the true ideal of the members
of a university, and this ideal could best be realized when all cooper-
ated to raise to her proper position the oldest and the most queenly
of all. Theology had, indeed, to receive illustration and cooperation
from all other sciences, but she in turn was destined to bring to all
of them a still nobler benefit, viz, the knowledge of God, His place
in the universe and its relations to Him. After the ceremony, re-
freshments were served to the assembled guests and an informal re-
ception was held by the Rt. Rev. Rector.
The degrees conferred were as follows:
Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.).
McQuilkin DeGrange, Frederick, Md.
A.B. (Johns Hopkins University) 1900.
William Augustine Feuchs, Wurtshoro, N. Y,
Frank Joseph Noonan, Creston, Iowa.
Master of Laws (LL.M.).
James Richard Lawlor, Waterhury, Conn.
LL.B. (Southwestern Baptist University, Jaclfson, Tenn.) 1902,
Doctor of Law (J.D.).
Kiyomihi Seshimo, Tokio, Japan.
LL.B. (Tokio Hogakuin Law College) 3888.
Dissertation: — "A Comparative Review of the Patent Systems of the Leading
Countries of Europe, America and Asia."
Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.).
Theodore Papazoglow Ion, Smyrna, Turkey.
LL.B. (Faculty de Droit, Paris), LL.L. (ibid.), J.D. (The Catholic University of
America) 1899.
Dissertation: — ^"Comparative Study of the Roman Law with the Mahometan
Jurisprudence and of the Influence of the Former on the Latter."
29 CUB 441
442 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
John Weitzel Forney Smith, Washington, D. C.
LL.B. (Columbia University) 1892; LL.M. (ibid.) 1893.
Dissertation: — "The Historical Evolution of the Pretorian Law."
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.).
Rev. Charles Albert Dubary, S.M., Washington, D. C.
S.T.B. (The Cattiolic University of America) 1899.
Dissertation: — " Tlie Theory of Psychical Dispositions."
Rev. Thomas Verner Moore, C.S.P., New York, N. Y.
Dissertation: — "A Study in Reaction-Time and Movement."
Bachelor in Sacred Theology (S.T.B.).
Rev. John Walter Healy Oorbett, Archdiocese of Boston.
A.B. (Fordham College) 1898; A.M. (Georgetown University) 1899.
Rev. John Edward Flood, Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
A.B. (Catholic High School, Philadelphia) 1895.
Rev. Emil Lawrence Gerardi, C.S.P., New York, N. Y.
A.B. (St. Francis College, Quincy, 111.) 1899; A.M. (ibid.) 1900.
Rev. John Joseph Greaney, Diocese of Pittshurg.
A.B. (Manhattan College) 1898.
Rev. Ralph Hunt, Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Rev. William Patrick McNamara, Archdiocese of Boston.
Ph.B. (St. John's Seminary, Brighton) 1899.
Rev. Edward Joseph Mullaly, C.S.P., New York, N. Y.
A.B. (St. Mary's College, Oakland, Cal.) 1899.
Rev. Michael Joseph Neufeld, Archdiocese of New York.
Rev. Jerome Louis O'Hern, C.S.P., New York, N. Y.
Rev. William Ignatius Phelan, Diocese of Springfield.
A.B. (Holy Cross College, Worcester) 1898.
Rev. John Peter Ries, S.M., Washington, D. C.
Rev. John Gerard Schmidt, Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Rev. Henry Joseph Seiller, S.M., Washington, D. C.
Rev. Henry Ignatius Stark, C.S.P., New York, N. Y.
A.B. (St. Mary's College, Oakland) 1899.
Rev. Matthew Aloysius Schumacher, C.S.C., Washington, D. G.
A.B. (Notre Dame University) 1899.
Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.).
Rev. William Patrick Clark, Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews: A Study of
some early Christian Evidences in the Alexandrian Church."
Rev. John Joseph Crane, Archdiocese of Boston.
Ph.B. (St. John's Seminary, Brighton) 1898; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1902.
Dissertation:— "The Synoptic Question: Its History and Present Standing."
Rev. Thomas Gaffney, Archdiocese of Chicago.
A.B. (Christian Brothers' College, St. Louis) 1888; A.M. (ibid.) 1890; B.S. (ibid.)
1893; A.B. (St. Viateur's College, Bourbonnais, 111.) 1897; A.M. (ibid.) 1900;
S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1901.
Dissertation:— "The Bible a Witness to Its Own Inspiration."
Rev. James Aloysius Gallagher, Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
A.B. (La Salle College, Philadelphia) 1893; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1902.
Dissertation:— "St. Paul's Testimony to the Credibility of the Gospel Nar-
rative as regards the Resurrection of Christ."
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES, 443
Rev. James Martin Gillis, C.S.P., 'New York, N. T.
Ph.B. (St. John's Seminary, Brighton) 1898; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The Agap6: Its Existence and its Relation with The Holy-
Eucharist."
Rev. William Hugh Grant, Archdiocese of Boston.
Ph.B. (St. John's Seminary, Brighton) 1898; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The History and Criticism of the * Satisfaction Idea' in the
Doctrine of the Atonement."
Rev. Thomas Patrick Heverin, Archdiocese of San Francisco.
A.B. (St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore) 1895; A.M. (ibid.) 1896; S.T.B. (ibid.)
1899.
Dissertation: — "Authority and Reason and the Relations Between Them."
Rev. Timothy Peter Holland, S.S., • Moira, N. T.
A.B. (Ottawa University) 1896 ; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The Condition of the English Clergy in the Last Half of the
Fourteenth Century."
Rev. James Patrick McGraw, Diocese of Syracuse.
A.B. (Manhattan College, New York) 1897; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "Excommunication in the First Three Centuries: A Study in
Church Discipline."
Rev. Thomas Edward McGuigan, Archdiocese of Baltimore.
A.B. (St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore) 1897; A.M. (ibid.) 1898; S.T.B. (ibid.)
1900.
Dissertation: — " Origen in Reply to Celsus."
Rev. William Bernard Martin, Archdiocese of New York.
A.B. (St. Francis Xavier's College, New York) 1897; S.T.B. (The Catholic Uni-
versity of America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "Religion among the Huron, Iroquois, and Algonkin Indians:
An Historical Study based upon the Relations of the Jesuits."
Rev. Leo Francis O'Neil, Archdiocese of Boston.
A.B. (Boston College) 1897; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The Doctrine of Original Sin in the First Four Centuries: A
Positive Study.'
Rev. John Stephen Shanahan, Archdiocese of Dubuque.
S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1902.
Dissertation: — "The Constiti^tion of the Church as portrayed in the Ignatian
Epistles."
Doctor in Sacred Theology (S.T.D,).
Rev. Patrick Joseph Healy, Archdiocese of New York.
S.T.B. (The Catholic University of America) 1898; S.T.L. (ibid.) 1899.
Dissertation: — "The Valerian Persecution (A. D. 257-260)."
Rev. John Webster Melody, Archdiocese of Chicago.
A.B. (St. Ignatius College, Chicago) 1885; A.M. (St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore)
1887; S.T.B. (ibid.) 1889; S.T.L. (The Catholic University of America) 1893.
Dissertation: — "The Physical Basis of Marriage."
Rev. Maurice Joseph O'Connor, Archdiocese of Boston.
Ph.B. (St. John's Seminary, Brighton) 1894; S.T.B. (The Catholic University of
America) 1898; S.T.L. (ibid.) 1899.
Dissertation: — "Responsibility and the Moral Life."
THE UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE.
The Dominican House of Studies.— Ground was broken on Wednes-
day, April 23, for the new Dominican House of Studies, on the Bunker
Hill road, opposite the University. Cardinal Gibbons conducted the
ceremony, surrounded by many members of the episcopate and clergy.
This institution will form a quadrangle of 200 feet each way, and will
be a notable addition to the group of buildings located on the grounds
or in the immediate vicinity of the University.
The Apostolic Mission House. — On Wednesday, April 23, the cor-
ner-stone of the new Apostolic Mission House was laid by Cardinal
Gibbons, in the presence of many members of the episcopate and
clergy and a large concourse of laity. The sermon was delivered by
the Most Rev. Archbishop Keane of Dubuque.
The new building will be erected under the auspices of the Catholic
Missionary Union, a corporation organized six years ago under the
laws of the State of New York for the purpose of placing missionaries
in the south and west of this country. The new institution will be
national in character, in that the diocesan priests from the various
dioceses of the United States will receive training for missionary work
within its walls.
The Mission House will cost about $50,000. It faces Bunker Hill
road and will occupy a plot of ground 200 feet square located near
the easterly gate of the campus, and about 400 feet from Keane Hall.
The site has been leased by the University Trustees to the Catholic
Missionary Union for an indefinite period. The basement of the
building will include the kitchen and apartments for the employes,
the storerooms and the boiler rooms. On the first floor will be a large
chapel and a few class rooms. The remainder of the building will
consist of private rooms.
Gift of Books from Bishop Messmer.— The University has received
from Bishop Messmer of Green Bay a gift of more than 150 valuable
books. It returns him sincere thanks for this expression of his con-
tinued interest in the library of the Faculty of Theology.
444
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
VOL. IX. OCTOBER, igoj. No. 4.
" Let there be progress, therefore ; a widespread and eager prog-
ress in every century and epoch, both of individuals and of the
general body, of every Christian and of the whole Church, a progress
in intelligence, knowledge and wisdom, but always within their na-
tural limits and without sacrifice of the identity of Catholic teach-
ing, feeling and opinion."— St. Vincent of Leeins, Commonit, c. 6.
Ptjbwshed Quarteri^y by
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA,
LANCASTER, PA., and WASHINGTON, D. C.
Press of
fai HEW EUA PmMTmo Commm.
Lahcaster. pa.
The
Catholic University Bulletin.
Vol. IX, October, igoj. No, 4,
LEO XIII.
The great personalities of history justly demand from their
critics a large background of time. They are not unlike the
great phenomena of nature and the great masterpieces of the
artist that in one way or another overwhelm the onlooker. His
troubled judgment regains its poise and security only when it
is free to compare, to estimate relatively, and to master piece-
meal the unusual and the extraordinary. It is not too bold to
say that we understand Julius Caesar better to-day than his
contemporaries did, that we are better informed on the growth
of the Eoman city than Livy, that the full significance of the
French Revolution is only now dawning on our minds. Such
thoughts are not unnatural when we come to deal with Leo
XIII, no longer as the pilot at the wheel, but as functus officio,
called home to render an account of his long and memorable
pontificate. The papacy is preeminently a service of the
Christian world— for immemorial ages the pope has loved to
style himself *^the servant of the servants of God.'' The
natural criterion, therefore, of any pontificate is the service
rendered the Christian cause. The person of every pope is
usually merged in the work of his great office. The great ma-
jority were heads of the Church for the time being, and are
remembered only as such. Occasionally, however, a giant
personality appears on the scene, and so dominates by strength
of character, fixity of will, and clearness of vision, the multitu-
dinous forces of the Church that they bear for a long time the
447
448 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
impress of his direction. Leo XIII was such a pope, and we
may believe that his name will never cease to shine with pecu-
liar brilliancy in the catalogue of those Bishops of Eome who
did most to realize the purpose of their high office, who saw to
it that the * * E-espublica Christianorum'' suffered no detriment
and that the boundaries of its spiritual influence were widened
and consolidated.
He has been called the last of the mediaeval popes, and there
is some truth in the assertion. The intellectual revolt that
began with Martin Luther has rounded itself out with a certain
universality and finality only in our own days. The political
changes inaugurated by the French Eevolution have reached
a certain fixity of type in all that pertains to the gov-
ernment of humanity— in one way or another the actual will
of the people is the predominant factor. For over a century
the legislations of Europe have been undergoing modification
and adaptation to the new circumstances of civil life. In the
material order a century of invention lies behind us that has
profoundly modified all past influences of space and time on
human affairs. Our native earth has been thrown open from
pole to pole, and its last secret places given over to universal
curiosity and utility. Nor could these new conditions of
human life have reached their present ^^assiette" without
affecting the temperament of the average man. He has become
more cosmopolitan, more conscious of natural rights, more
proud of his rights and capacities, more inclined to make him-
self the measure of all things. Printing now scatters all men's
thoughts with the velocity and accuracy of the subtlest forces
of nature. Travel and reading have made of history and
geography educational forces in a sense and a degree hitherto
unconceivable. Whatever be the outcome of this far-reaching
revolution there can be no doubt that civilized humanity has
finally moved out and away from the political, social, and
economic conditions of the past ; that in the Western world, at
least, as compared with the Orient, the end of one great era
coincides with the opening of another.
When Leo XIII took up in 1878 the succession of Pius IX,
all this was true; since then each decade has more strikingly
accentuated such considerations. Naturally, they were the
LEO XIII. 449
very first to commend themselves to a bishop grown old in the
service of Catholicism, and finally raised to its supreme gov-
ernment amid local and general circumstances of a kind more
complex and adverse than had surrounded the papacy for
centuries. His resources were neither few nor contemptible.
He had around him a corps of bishops who were the flower of
Catholic education and life, most of them prominent factors
in all the religious and mixed problems of the time, and many
of them veteran centurions in the unceasing warfare of ideas,
systems and policies. The pope is no Inca, no Grand Llama,
and though his directive and judicial powers are great, they
are translated into acts and systematic efficiency by reason of
the episcopate. He is the *'episcopus episcoporum, " but no
one recognizes more readily, or has confessed more eloquently,
than the Bishop of Eome that his brethren share the same
apostolic origin, the same divine mandate, the same unfailing
promises. Leo XIII could also count on the vast and universal
institutional strength of Catholicism, both in men and things,
a power so intimately interwoven with all civilized life, so
rooted in immemorial Catholic habit, so saturated with tender-
est affection and holiest hopes, that for efficiency it was like a
sixth sense. The humiliations, perils, and degradation of a
century had quickened this great force in an incredible degree.
A growing charity had informed it with fresh vigor, and the
new channels of human intercourse were no less useful to it
than the unity of the Eoman Empire and the Greek tongue had
been to the first missionaries of Catholicism.
In all Catholic lands an identity of doctrine and discipline
had been preserved; only archaisms of heresy and schism
afflicted the sound remnant of Catholicism that had come
through the French Eevolution. The Catholic people were
united in the Old and the New World ; they were confident that
the chalice of sufferings had been drained to the dregs, and
that amid the new conditions of human life, conditions won by
and favorable to the democracy, the Catholic Church could not
but find herself again in a position to confirm and consecrate
those just rights and aspirations of the common people for
which she fought so constantly in the thousand years from
Chlodwig to Charles the Fifth, and for defending which she
450 CATHOLIC UNIVEE8ITY BULLETIN.
lias ever been detested by those men of violence and cunning,
those doctrinaires and bureaucrats, who from century to cen-
tury afflict mankind with their selfishness and their narrowness.
Such was the equipment of the venerable office of Leo XIII,
rated at its highest efficiency, and with reservation of a multi-
tude of local and temporary drawbacks. To these advantages
the new pope brought certain peculiar quantities of mind and
heart ; above all a long experience as Christian shepherd in the
heart of a land more than any other given over to the discus-
sion of ecclesiastical questions and interests, where countless
thousands of monuments recall daily the beneficent action of
Catholicism through twenty centuries, where the character of
the people is, in an absolute sense, the creation of Catholicism,
and where the language itself, both that of literature and that
of its endless dialects, is one enormous thesaurus of the varied
influence of religion on the Italian man in his entirety. Thirty
years in that old Umbrian stronghold, where one can even now
stand in the sombre city-gate built in the time of Augustus and
named for him, and look out over the valleys and slopes and
knolls made sacred forever to our common humanity by the
footsteps and the high dreams of the ^ ^ Poverello ' ' and his holy
brethren— thirty years in such a retired nook of modem life
seem to have been a fitting vestibule to the splendid theatre on
which Leo XIII was one day to appear as spokesman of Jesus
Christ to a humanity bewildered, confused, morally headless
and hopeless. Already this humanity was subtly and pro-
phetically conscious that government and legislation, human
knowledge and material comfort, were no final and impregnable
barrier to certain human instincts that make always for the
oppression and enslavement of the multitude, and no less
surely to-day than when they were harnessed to the chariot of
a Pharaoh, and bore him securely over the prostrate necks of
a care-worn and broken-hearted multitude. It was soon seen
that in the Vatican there sat a philosopher on the throne of
Peter, a Christian philosopher it is true, yet a man of experi-
ence well digested, of elevated views, of solid working princi-
ples, temperate withal in action and speech, content to stand
on a certain common ground with the representatives of a
sane and useful conservatism in all that pertained to the
LEO XIII. 461
strengthening of Christian life and persuasion among modernr
men.
Each succeeding year added to the esteem and affection
that went out to him from the beginning. Mild and concilia-
tory by his habit of life, his calling as a priest, and the breadth
of his reading and observation, he seems to have felt in-
stinctively that he was moving along a dividing-line in the
history of mankind ; that his eye was better occupied in fore-
casting each immediate advance, rather than in dwelling on
the silent past that had no clear message for the tangle of new
situations which he was called to unravel. He dealt in turn
with burning questions and intricate problems that brought
him into close personal contact with rulers of nearly all civilized
states, as the large annual volumes of his ** Acta" make known
to us. He found among his clients whole peoples and races
approaching him with a novel directness and an affectionate
importunity. He held daily confidential conversation with all
kinds and conditions of men, from the venerable senators of
his council to genuine persecutors of his people and enemies
of the faith of Christ. An endless procession of miscellaneous
humanity clamored for a view of his person, a word from his
lips, a blessing from his aged heart. Probably no pope since
the days of Peter was ever in such intimate touch with all the
actual currents of human thought and sentiment as Leo XIII.
The world of to-day, above all of to-morrow, was his library,
and the books of the most value to him were those human
hearts that came in throngs to reveal the secret of their woes,
the arguments of their hope, the reasons of their despair.
No one lives long in Rome with impunity for any intel-
lectual narrowness he may have brought with him. And a
society like that of the nineteenth century, smarting with an
undefined sense of injustice that it could not track beyond
itself, was the last to escape the soothing influence of a kindly,
if aged, physician whose diagnosis of its ills it more than half
acknowledged to be true. Behind him there arose dimly the
figure of the Ecclesia herself, no longer the caricature of vio-
lent and embittered partisans, but the superb matronly figure
that fascinated the souls of mediaeval men, until they carved
it in an immortal eloquence of stone on the walls of Chartres
452 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
and Strassburg, and in a no less immortal eloquence of poetry
in the Paradiso of Dante. Immovable faith and rock-like con-
viction are a dynamite capable of shattering the most appalling
obstacles— they shook and overthrew the Empire of the
Cffisars, than which a more reasonable and compact state has
not yet appeared among men. They were visible and tangible
in the White Shepherd of the Vatican, while the multitude no
longer saw them in the universal opportunism of the times,
and the equally universal and irresistible decay of the original
timbers of Christian faith outside of Catholicism. No doubt
many natural reasons conspire to explain the movement of
Christian mankind towards Rome in the latter quarter of the
nineteenth century. Yet, it is by no stretch of self-interested
imagination that the personality of Leo XIII is made to account
for this fascination. During more than a quarter of a century
of pontificate he had withstood the usual tests of popularity,
and revealed in himself a superior human soul rich with all the
culture of education and life, liberal and sympathetic in an un-
expected degree, in an age of philanthropy devoted without
reserve to the welfare of our common society. If his remedies
for its woes were only those of the gospel, it was because he
had nothing substantial to offer from himself, being no more
than a mouthpiece of Jesus Christ, doing for Him vicarious
duty, and preaching to all humanity those remedies of the
God-Man that can alone allay the fever and the pain of our
complicated ills. That he did not preach in vain the great
social lessons of the gospel may be inferred from the unex-
ampled outburst of sympathy that his illness and death pro-
voked in the non-Catholic world. When we have made all just
deductions, it remains true that for the first time since the
death of the tenth Leo has there been anything like a common
sorrow among Christians over the death of a common spiritual
father. The potential quality of such sympathy is infinite;
it honored at once the recipient and the givers. At the least,
it added no new barrier to the hope of reconciliation ; to some
optimistic spirits it appears like the faint flushing of a dawn
long-waited for, when the prayer of Jesus Christ shall again
have its fulfilment, and unity of faith be once more a reality
among all Christians.
LEO XIIL 453
Whatever the future interest of mankind in Leo XIII, the
Catholic clergy will long cherish his memory for his unfalter-
ing devotion to the education of its members. The twenty-six
volumes of his public documents contain hundreds of refer-
ences to this all-important subject. Around it is already
springing up a notable literature that gives evidence of the
deep feelings that have been stirred in every Catholic land and
in all Catholic peoples by these clarion notes of Leo XIIL It
is not possible that there should be a retrogression— such in-
tellectual currents once let loose are no longer controllable.
There is no large department of ecclesiastical science that he
has not illustrated by the light of his genuine genius for exposi-
tion. He wrote frequently to the Catholic episcopate concern-
ing the creation and reformation of studies in all seminaries.
He established academies, high schools, and special institutes
at Rome, and encouraged similar works elsewhere. He was
prodigal of approval to Catholic scholars, and aided efficiently
private literary enterprise likely to honor the cause of Catholic-
ism. It was only to be expected that in these countless utter-
ances he should always insist on the purity and integrity of
Catholic faith— but he also insisted on vigor, enterprise, spon-
taneity in that holy cause. More than one of his crisp phrases
has become a watchword to ardent young clerics of France and
Germany and Italy. He was a man of inspiring and sug-
gestive power, in whom ardor and ambition for the cause of
God were at least the equal of any similar devotion in his own
time to purely profane ideals.
The need, scope, and utility of universities, that would not
only refrain from injury to the interests of Catholicism, but
positively aid them, were never absent from his mind. He
knew that any Catholic primary and secondary education that
does not culminate in a higher Catholic education of the uni-
versity type, is only a feeder of infidelity— at long range if you
will— but destined either to shut off Catholic youth from the
offices, emoluments and benefits of such a higher education, or
else to abandon it completely at the end to those very influences
against which so great and costly provision had. been made
in the foundation of Catholic parochial schools, academies and
colleges. Wherever an opening occurred for the foundation
464 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
of a Catholic university, his cooperation and advice were freely,
given. His interest in such works was constant and his dis-
appointment keen when they failed to prosper with the rapid-
ity of his own ardent desires. His mind was constituted
broadly and generously, and easily leaped over, by the eager-
ness of anticipation, the inherent difficulties of similar enter-
prises, difficulties that only severe experience reveals and only
time can remove.
He was the founder of the Catholic University of America,
and the most precious documents in its ^^Chartularium^' will
always be those that emanated from him. His colossal statue
graces its halls as an eternal momento of the hopes that he
based upon the enterprise. It is well known that, as his ponti-
ficate wore on, he came more and more to believe that in the
United States was to be looked for the freest and most gener-
ous development of Catholic Christianity. Correspondingly
he was persuaded that our Catholic education should be
crowned with a university suited to the needs of our religion
and our fatherland. Almost at the hour of his death he was
engaged in plans for its welfare, especially for the more active
execution of the original plans approved by himself, after fre-
quent and minute consultation with the representatives of the
American hierarchy. May his spirit long live with us, and
spur us to some completion of his holy ambition! Leo XIII
will surely be put down among those popes who have deserved
best of ecclesiastical learning. It is not too much to say that
he did more than any of his predecessors to revive the ideals
of a Benedict XIV. May we not hope that in the centuries to
come this Alma Mater will always strive to be held worthy of
its descent from such a noble lineage?
Thomas J. Shah an.
THE ETHICS OF THE LABOR UNION.
During the summer just past, we have seen many important
events in the history of organized labor. Although no great
strike has disturbed industrial life, yet countless minor
troubles have caused inconvenience and have invited severe
criticism. Manufacturing and building operations have been
seriously interfered with, an element of great uncertainty has
entered into all contract work undertaken under a time limit
and into all business that requires stability among its factors.
Evidences of fraud on the part of some representatives of
labor have been discovered, strong threats by a few leaders
have attracted the attention of the press, which has begun,
in a certain way, a determined campaign against unionism.
The courts in some localities have been liberal with the in-
junction, fervent in expressing bitter condemnation of the
principles of unionism and in enunciating theories concerning
inherent rights which they mistake for contingent rights.
With all of this, the conviction that socialism is developing
is wide-spread and there is a feeling that between unionism
and socialism deep sympathy exists. As a result of the situa-
tion, public attention is slowly turning its piercing eye towards
labor unions. The impression is one of condemnation. Now,
no observant man can fail to realize that unionism is not to
be destroyed ; some principles as the unions declare them, will
remain. The concessions of many employers as to the rights
and functions of unions have great and favorable influence
on their growth. Unionism in some form as a social factor
will influence our future. It will lose in radicalism as it
gains in power, but the change will come from within ; not so
much in the change of principle as in improvement of method,
in the elevation of the character of its representative men, and
in the gradual modification of our institutions. To-day, the
world judges unionism by its representatives, its mistakes and
its psychological limitations. It were wiser to judge it also by
its necessity, its historical origin, its feeling and its logic. In
the following pages an attempt is made to show the feeling and
455
456 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
the logic of the unions, without, however, working out a de-
tailed comparison between them and the situation that they
attack.
In making an effort to understand the ethics of the
labor union as a theoretical system according to which the
unions attempt to reconstruct industrial relations, it is neces-
sary to guard against confusion in the points of view. When
exposition is a writer's sole purpose, he is not called upon to
approve or condemn, nor is he required to call attention to
every concrete detail which may bear on the thought in ques-
tion. This is the reader's task. At the same time, one must
guard faithfully against such a presentation as of itself seems
to carry an argument for or against the principles which are to
be merely described. For that reason, it may be helpful to
suggest a few general thoughts before undertaking the ex-
position of the ethical principles which labor unions teach.
In its conflict with capital, labor has placed itself squarely
on an ethical basis. Its demands are inspired by the idea of
justice and right, not by that of economic or social progress
immediately. The unions have evolved a code of rights and
obligations by which they desire to reconstruct industrial rela-
tions. They are in a position to govern themselves to a con-
siderable extent by these principles, but they can not control
the employer or force him to see as they do, except when he
is content to deal with them. Granting union principles to be
true, they connote only general corresponding obligations
which may stand against society as a whole rather than against
any particular individual.
The employer stands practically on a business basis. He
is not ethically obliged to go into business. He studies a
situation carefully, sees an opportunity for successful in-
dustry. He is free, he addresses himself to free laborers—
as he thinks, and he enters into business relations with them
with the thought of mutual interest. The employer studies,
risks, arranges; his individuality appears in the business
world ; he is responsible for the quality of his product. The
laborer's individuality does not appear. The employer was
free, is free; the laborer was free, is free to work or not to
work for him. It is a matter of business, free contract and
THE ETHICS OF THE LABOR UNION. 457
free understanding. Certain conditions of fact limit this
freedom. The employer must pay wages that will attract
men; otherwise they will desert him. He must pay living
wages, or his men can not live. In addition, the general run
of the factors of competitive industry will largely fix wages
without much specific influence on the part of the employer.
The union tries to lift industry to the ethical plane, while the
employer holds it to the plane of business, free contract,
voluntary association for mutual benefit. A complete study
of the situation would require an analysis of the principles of
the unions, the principles of the employers, and the assump-
tions of fact made by both. At present, the principles taught
by the labor unions alone are exposed, with no other view than
to assist the reader to understand the issue.
Striving is the law of all healthy life. Wherever we find
it, be it in the tree, the tiger, the laborer or king, life strives.
It is eager to develop, to preserve itself, to reach full pro-
portions, to realize latent possibilities, and to resist decay.
Hence we see growth everywhere; when growth has ceased,
death has begun. The essential thought of life is perpetua-
tion, increase, progress. This general truth of the physical
order is paralleled in the mental, the moral, the spiritual, the
psychological orders as well, provided no abnormal elements
appear. Discontent with present achievement, eagerness for
a greater, is universally found in normal man. The really
learned man seeks more learning, the powerful seek new
strength, the righteous seek greater justice. From schools
and university chairs, and pulpits, from literature and the
press, from leaders and teachers comes the one cry *'Be eager,
strive, grow. Contentment is death; discontent is divine."
Ambition is merely energetic discontent ; without it the world
would scarcely move.
All of the social classes into which society is ordinarily
divided reveal this same law normally. The rich seek more
wealth, the learned seek more knowledge, the cultured seek
more refinement. Class ideals dominate and support their
members. Were any class to fail to show this striving, this
ambition, it would be doomed. Generally, strong classes show
it more than weak classes, for strength means abundant life
458 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
and weakness means low vitality. The social class wherein
this eagerness, ambition, striving had till recently shown itself
least, is the laboring class. It appeared comparatively late in
the history of the modern laboring class because the class was
socially weak. But where the consciousness of strength came,
labor was awakened to hope, to ambition, to eager striving.
This awakening, in itself the best promise of progress that
society knows, to-day, has created the labor unions. They
represent only a minority of the wage earners but it. is a
minority that is awake, eager, ambitious.
The laborer desires what all life demands plus what nor-
mal growing human beings want; more life, larger develop-
ment, latent powers unfolded and opportunity guaranteed.
The only absolute inalienable human right is that of develop-
ment ; a right prior to and more sacred than all property rights
and institutional rights of human history. Consequently the
enlightened laborer in aiming to enlarge the circle of life, de-
mands that all secondary contingent rights which hinder him,
yield to his basic right. This position of labor means that
the laborer demands leisure, culture, more home life, higher
enjoyment, all extending the margin of life out considerably
beyond the narrow circle of physical existence and labor, and
this at the expense of the property interests of the employer.
This initial demand of labor, therefore, is not the work of
demagogues ; it is nature, history, life. Discontent cannot be
eliminated from society. It represents a law higher than in-
dividuals, one which is permanent in its action and independent
of every form of political and social institution. These last
named give to this demand definiteness and measure but the
law is absolute in life.
Coming now to see the form in which the fundamental
eagerness and striving of labor expresses itself, we are
brought directly into relation with social and political insti-
tutions and standards.
In present conditions, laborers possessing only labor power
work for owners of capital. The former receive a share in the
industrial product which is called wages. Ordinarily the wages
received determine the possibility and opportunity which the
laborer enjoys, of personal development, his opportunity of
THE ETHICS OF THE LABOR UNION. 459
education, moral, spiritual and social refinement, home life.
This being a condition of institutions and fact, by which the
laborer is confronted, he converts his general, natural, striving
for fuller life, development, refinement, into a concrete definite
demand for fair just wages. This demand rests on the idea
of his dignity and rights as a man, or the law of nature which
allows to him opportunity of reasonable development and im-
poses on society the moral duty of adjusting institutions so
that this may be made possible. In addition, laborers believe
that they vitalize capital, that they create the profits on which
capital thrives ; that labor is an integral factor in the industrial
process and consequently that they ask only what is of their
own creation in demanding fair just wages.
The next claim logically made by laborers is that the father
of the family should earn this wage for his family; that the
wife and mother should remain in the home and the children
be at play or in the school. The integrity of the home, its
sacredness against the inroads of industry is here defended.
The protest is not against helpful, educating work for children,
which is regulated to further their growth; this itself is edu-
cation of the most practical kind. This right to a family wage
for the father is not prominently maintained in the labor move-
ment to-day, though it belongs to its logical system.
The laborer now assumes as a fact, that this fair wage
cannot be secured by unaided individual effort in the present
organization of society. He assumes that it can be secured by
organization, and by that means alone. Hence he claims that
unionism, the organization of labor into united bodies for con-
certed action is a right and duty. It is not specifically a for-
mal natural right and duty; it is contingently so. The facts
which make up the situation from which the laborer takes his
inspiration are easily summarized.
Laborers must work in order to live. They must work for
owners of capital. These latter are competitors among them-
selves, each seeking profit and power. Hence the tendency to
reduce expenses to a minimum. Wages are held down, great
risks to life and health are imposed upon laborers (as best seen
in mining and on railroads), sanitation and safety appliances
are neglected, hours of labor are lengthened. The employer
460 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
is immeasurably stronger than the individual laborer. Women
and children are employed in competition with men. All of
these conditions have been seen during the last century. The
physical, moral, social, intellectual and religious development
of the laboring class has actually suffered greatly because of
these conditions. While this was the case, laborers were
hearing much about democracy, equality, the rights of man,
the function of government and its duty to protect the weak.
The modern state busied itself with the political condition of
its citizens but it did not concern itself with their industrial
condition. When therefore the industrial and social condition
of the laboring class became critical the state manifested no
impulse to improve it. At the same time, the new industrial
relations had grown away from traditional law, but having no
actual statutes to fit, our courts have endeavored to stretch the
old to fit the new. Thus neither State nor legislature nor
courts quieted the fears of labor in the threatening develop-
ment which confronted it. Eeligion could not aid it effectively,
no matter how much its teaching showed sympathy for its
wrongs. Schools and universities might teach in sympathy
but such teaching made little headway against the currents of
industry that were sweeping the race into their mad rush.
Thus laborers internally led by nature, to striving and to ambi-
tion, encouraged by political teaching to believe in their human
rights, taught the view of larger life ; led to the knowledge of
development which conditions denied to them, unaided by State
or specific law, convinced that they had wrong to right, they
were driven to the one result— to organize— to unite and ask
gently or secure forcibly the consideration of their rights by
modern society. Thus organization is looked upon as a duty
by laborers ; and as a natural right, as against those employers
who deny or oppose the right of the union to exist and to act.
From now on, in our study, the individual laborer disappears
from view and the class, the union replaces him.
The Union and its Members.
If the reader will hold in mind the thought already ad-
vanced, he will see in what follows only logical deductions,
bold as they may appear. The union believes itself to be
THE ETHICS OF THE LABOR UNION. 461
necessary and ethically sanctioned. It claims consequently
the power to govern the laborers in their work; to ^ wages,
hours, conditions of work for them. The individual is merged
into the class and the class acts in and through the union. This
is the distinctive note of the union. Consequently it aims at
a monopoly of its trade and seeks to control the entire supply
of labor in any given line. In present conditions, it has no
sanction other than to fine or to expel a member. Thus the
individual's total industrial liberty is given up to the union.
In return the union aims to secure higher wages, better pro-
tection for life and limb, shorter hours and improved condi-
tions of labor generally.
The Union and the Employee.
The union exists to coerce the employers into grantmg
better conditions to labor ; hence the two are in tendency antag-
onistic. The employer refuses to recognize a union, refuses
to deal with its members, or he may refuse to employ union
labor. As against him the union claims the right to exist, to
act, to represent the laborers and to deal with him. Once
recognized, the union claims the right to joint jurisdiction with
the employer in conducting business. Conditions at present
give the employer a monopoly of the authority and property of
business ; the former because of the latter. Labor and capital
are cooperating factors, as such they are intrinsically related.
Labor is as much an integral part of the industrial process as
capital. It does not understand why all authority should be
thrown to the capital partner and none to the labor partner.
In the union's demand for joint jurisdiction, labors whole
claim is really voiced. The determination of wages, hours and
conditions is to be made concurrently by representatives of
capital and labor. Logically, then the union claims the right
to make demands for labor, to enforce these demands, if neces-
sary by the strike ; to protect the strike by hindering in any
legitimate manner the non-unionist from replacing the striker
and to withhold patronage from any employer who opposes
organized labor.^
^Mr. Carroll D. Wright describes the nature of this joint jurisdiction in
these words. " The union . . . insists that recognition means a trade agree-
ment with it by which the union shall take part in fixing the conditions, and,
31 CUB
462 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
The Union and the Non-Unionist.
The members of the union are presumably the most advanced
laborers. They are men who take in view the economic ten-
dencies, who believe that they see peril to labor and to society
and civilization in the unchecked power of capital. They be-
lieve that the laboring class must save itself ; in so doing per-
form a noble work for humanity. As this can be done only by
organization, it is the duty of laborers to unite— to enter the
unions. The power of the union depends on its monopoly of
labor, the laborer who refuses to join the union neutralizes its
influence. Most of the energy, time and much of the funds of
unions are expended on organization. Men are sent about the
country to arouse the sentiment, to encourage organization and
effect it. The claim that labor is a trust and merits denuncia-
tion misses an essential difference in that it is the trust of the
weak against the trust of the strong as viewed by laborers
themselves.
The Union and Law.
When as was once the case, the right of association was
greatly restricted, unions had to win right of organization.
To-day in the United States it is universally recognized. The
unions do not incorporate— though this is allowed— because of
the possibility of unlimited prosecution to which they might
easily be subjected. The unions watch legislatures and gen-
erally support legislative committees whose purpose it is to
promote labor legislation and hinder any that might be antag-
onistic to its interests. The unions further claim the right
to represent labor before the courts whenever, as is the case
with granting of injunctions, the interests of labor are threat-
ened. The situation in theory may be resumed in a way some-
thing like the following :
to a certain extent, shall dictate the terms under which labor is employed." The
employer's view is thus formulated in the principles held by the National Metal
Trades Association. " We recognize that as the realization of mutual benefits
represented in the profits and earning from our joint labors, depends largely on
the employer finding a suitable market for the product, he can best determine the
methods of work, the selection of employes and the character of the work to be
performed by each." See Bulletin of the National Metal Trades Association,
Oct., 1903. Only employers unfriendly to unions are kept in mind.
THE ETHICS OF THE LABOR UNION. 463
Fundamental Assumptions.
1. Natural forces theraselves do not insure wages that are
fair and just, the standard of justice being the laborer's human
right to human development.
2. Laborers play the most important part in the production
of wealth, hence they are actually factors in industry, with
the rights of factors.
3. In present conditions the individual cannot secure fair
wages.
4. Organization is the only means available, by which jus-
tice can be secured.
Guided by these assumptions, the following rights are
claimed by laborers.
The Rights of the Individual.
To increasing human development, larger higher life.
To fair just wages— justice being measured by this higher
right.
The father of the family shall normally earn this wage.
Individuals shall unite to secure it by organized action.
The Rights of the Union.
In Regard to Members.
To govern and to represent them in their industrial rela-
tions.
In Regard to Employers.
1. Recognition by the employer.
2. As authorized representative of the labor partner in
industry, the union has the right to joint jurisdiction with the
employer. Hence,
3. The union may make demands for labor, enforce de-
mands by strike, protect the strike by the use of peaceable
means to hinder non-unionists from replacing strikers.
In Regard to Laborers Generally.
1. The union— in view of the assumptions made— has a
right to a monopoly of the trade, the laborer having the correl-
ative duty to join the union.
2. The union has the right to propogate unionism unhin-
dered by law or employer or court.
31CUB
464 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN,
In Regard to the State.
1. The union lias the right to exist and to act.
2. To represent the interests of labor before legislatures
and courts.
Analyzed, the movement shows the following elements in
its spirit. The natural striving of humanity for betterment:
the positive teaching of our political philosophy, extended to
industrial relations ; the neglect of legislatures, courts and the
failure of religion and schools to protect labor effectively ; the
tyranny, inhumanity, injustice and arrogance of capital.
It will be seen at a glance that the whole situation of the
unions reduces itself to the assumptions of fact above referred
to. Once they are granted to be true, the logic of the further
positions is certainly strong. But the task of proving those
assumptions is extremely difficult. We can see readily that a
dangerous social tendency has been checked by the unions and
that they have undoubtedly worked great good. It is not diffi-
cult to believe that they are destined to work still greater
good— in one or another form; but the actual concrete proof
of the assumptions on which the code rests is by no means
easy. Skill or lack of skill on the part of the laborer ; economy
or extravagance, industry or laziness, drink and many other
aspects of individual life and action within the power of men
to a large degree, are factors in fixing the lot of the laborer
and determining his share in culture and happiness. If the
laborers were individually faultless and unable to secure jus-
tice, it seems that the world would be with them in their de-
mand for justice. While there is a large element of personal
individual fault in them, they will have difficulty in proving to
the unwilling world the truth of their assumptions. Those
whose hearts are with the striving and hoping of laborers, are
none the less their friends, when they express the hope that
the unions will realize this— and aim to merit justice fully
before they condemn the institutions under which we live.
William J. Kerby.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE.
The Agape, the **Love Feasf of primitive Christian
times, has recently been called * * one of the obscurest problems,
if not one of the eternal enigmas in the history of the
Church.'' The statement was true when it was made, but
there are signs that it shall be true no longer. The same
writer who, in such strong terms, calls attention to the mys-
tery enveloping the Agape, has started, by his work, a con-
troversy that promises to do away with the mystery.
In 1901, Mr. J. F. Keating, of Edinburgh, presented for
the degree of doctor of divinity in Cambridge University, a
dissertation entitled **The Agape and the Eucharist."^ His
ambition in writing, he admits, was not to add largely to what
was already known on the subject, **but to attempt to bring
together such illustrative sources as are available in heathen
and Jewish literature, to pass under review the various refer-
ences or allusions to the Agape in the New Testament and
the Fathers and to compare the extant * Ordinances' on the
subject with one another. "^
Whether or not, in thus marshalling the forces for the
defense, he intended to provoke the attack of any lurking party
of the opposition, such has been the consequence of his work.
Mgr. Batiffol, rector of the Catholic University of Toulouse,
has taken occasion of Dr. Keating 's array of information, to
make a general attack upon the traditional view of the Agape.
In the fourth of a series of studies in positive theology,^ he
has controverted not alone the details of Dr. Keating 's findings,
but has made bold to deny in toto almost every conclusive state-
ment of his opponent, to undermine every position taken by
him, to question every reasoning urged by him, to contradict
his every exegesis— in a word, to deny not only the liturgical
character of the Agape, its connection with the Holy Eucharist,
but its very existence as an authorized and distinctive feature
of early Christian life.
* London, Methuen, 1901.
'Ibid., pp. V, vi.
" " Etudes d'Histoire et de Thgologie Positive," Paris, Lecoffre, 1902.
465
466 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
There the controversy began. It has not yet ended, but has
already engaged the talents of some of the best archaeologists
of the day.* And it is well that there be an exchange of
opinion on this historico-liturgical question. It has been the
misfortune of the Agape to remain undebated. There has
been until now a most surprising uniformity of opinion among
the learned in this matter. Muratori and Bingham had
spoken, and Augusti, Mamachi, Migne, Martigny, Smith,
Kraus, Herzog, and even Hastings, were content with little
more than variously worded reiterations of the dicta of the
masters.
Their teaching on the Agape has been substantially as fol-
lows: that the custom was a continuation of our Lord's habit
of eating and drinking with His disciples, and especially— as
most maintain— a conscious imitation of the quasi-sacred ritual
of the Paschal supper: that the Agape was, therefore, inti-
mately associated with the celebration of the Blessed Euchar-
ist, so intimately in fact, as to form the preparatory rite
which led up to and culminated in the Sacrament and Sacri-
fice ; that in origin it was strictly primitive ; if it was not in-
cluded in our Lord's memorable ^^ Breaking of the Bread "^
with His disciples after His resurrection, it was at least the
daily action of the Church of Jerusalem in the days imme-
diately following the first preaching of St. Peter f that thence-
forth, it enjoyed a morally continuous existence, and was, pre-
sumably, of universal observance; that,— naturally enough,
though unfortunately,— this habit of taking food and drink in
the assembly, led to serious abuses, and that, consequently, as
early as the time of St. Paul 's first Epistle to the Corinthians,
it was necessary to reform the custom; that the abuses were
corrected, and the Agape took new life and continued down
through the second, third and fourth centuries : that, however,
as early as the beginning of the second century it ceased to
serve its primary purpose— that of a preparation for the Eu-
charist—but it continued as an observance of quasi-liturgical
character, taking place in the Church, being conducted by the
* The first eminent scholar to take up Mgr. Batiffol's criticism is Dr. Funk of
Tubingen. {Revue d'Histoire EccUsiastique, January, 1903.)
^ St. Luke, 24, 30.
*Acts, 2-42, 46, etc.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 467
clergy and accompanied with prayers and blessings. Further,
with the abundant influx of converts after the triumph of
Christianity, the Agape saw the beginning of its doom. It
was made a substitute for the gross feastings to which the
neo-conversi Gentiles had been accustomed, and it was not
long before the sacred ^pper which had once enjoyed the
distinction of being the companion-rite of the Holy Eucharist
degenerated so seriously as to become intolerable. Its end,
long postponed, was imperatively demanded; its death was
decreed, and though it avoided a sudden extinction by adopting
a number of adroit disguises and submitting to many ref-
ormations, it gradually yielded and disappeared, leaving only
a trace, here and there, of its once universal vogue.
Such has been, from the time of Muratori, the coherent if
not very clear and detailed story of the Agape. Without hesi-
tation, Mgr. Batiffol sweeps away this whole chapter with the
clean new broom of modem historical criticism.
There is no trace of the alleged Agape, he maintains, in
any New Testament writing; not a vestige of genuine testi-
mony to it in any of the Fathers of the first three centuries ; or
if there be perhaps a suggestion of it in one or two of their
writings, it is only by way of condemnation of an unauthorized
custom. Its first undoubted historical witness is in the
^^ Church Ordinances," and here its features are outlined
clearly enough to enable us to see that the so-called Agape
was nothing more than a means of almsgiving ; it had no litur-
gical character. The traditional view, he declares, has been
not only wrong but vitiated, for there are evidences of a doc-
trinal intent in this long-standing collusion for the main-
tenance of a teaching that has no historical foundation.
So much for the outlines of the controversy. Whatever
its merits, it enables us to see that any future discussion must
concern itself with two plain questions : First, is there suffi-
cient historical evidence that the Agape was in a true sense a
primitive institution of the Christian religion, and second,
was it, primitive or not primitive, a liturgical custom T
As to the meaning of the word ^ * primitive '' ; "we may be
^ The dissertation, of which this essay is part, considered also the later Agap6j
lack of space prevents our treating of it at length here.
468 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
permitted to use it loosely as indicating apostolic and sub-
apostolic times, or the first and second centuries, for the dis-
pute lies there.
Over the word ^ liturgical,'' we need have no quarrel. Its
accepted specific meaning has been given by many liturgists,
and perhaps most succinctly by Dr. Kraus.^ After giving the
general and untechnical meanings of the word, he says : * * Ac-
cording to the more accurate ecclesiastical usage, the liturgy'
comprises only that group of prayers and actions in connec-
tion with which the Eucharistic sacrifice was offered. ' ' That
this definition is substantially the one agreed upon by all the
authorities, is evident;^ that it is acceptable even to those
who demand most when they apply it to the Agape, is shown
by the fact that Mgr. Batiffol himself frequently uses it or its
equivalent as a touchstone for determining the character of the
Love-Feast.
Our two questions then, in terms a little more precise, are
these : Did the Agape exist in the first two centuries ; and had
it, either at that time or later, so close a connection with the
Eucharist as to form part of the ceremonies which had their
climax and culmination in the consecration of the Body and
Blood of Christr^
The answer to each of these questions, until the appearance
' " Real Encyclopaedie," s. v. Liturgie.
•Cf. Probst, "Liturgie," p. 3; Suicer, "Thes. Eccl./' s. v.; Brightman,
" Liturgies, Eastern and Western," I, p. 580.
" By thus narrowing the investigation, I exclude a host of questions, inter-
esting enough, but too lengthy for discussion here. Among others I may men-
tion that of the possible origin and symbolic signification of the Agap6, whether,
*. e., it was primarily a reminiscence of the Last Supper, or rather a reproduction
of the ordinary Jewish ceremonial meal. The consensus of opinion — I may men-
tion in passing — favors the former view. Muratori, Bingham, Meyer, Kraus, Cor-
blet, Hastings, Probst and Brightman, may be named, at random, as holding
to it. A notable dissenter is Mr. Keating, who is inclined to believe that the
Agap6 was a commemoration not so much of the Last Supper as a reminiscence
of the ordinary "table-fellowship" which the apostles enjoyed with our Lord,
and a symbol " of the central doctrine of Christianity, the doctrine of love, em-
bodied in the word Agapfi" (p. 40). He quotes Spitta (" Ur-Christenthum," L,
p. 263 ) as repudiating the idea that the Agap6 was a " Christian Passover," and
giving two reasons for agreeing with this repudiation : first, " that no description
of the Agap6 shows a characteristic likeness to the Paschal Meal," and second,
the frequent repetition of the act (p. 41). The Agapg, in all probability, was
a daily custom, the Paschal Supper was celebrated only yearly, and " why," asks
Dr. Keating, " was the Agap6 celebrated so frequently if it were intimately asso-
ciated with the Paschal Supper ? "
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 469
of Mgr. BatiffoPs two recent essays^^ on the subject has been
given universally in the affirmative. **A11 the ancients," says
Bingham/ 2 *^ reckoned the Agape an apostolical rite accom-
panying the Communion, ' ' and we may add that all the mod-
erns have held a like view. Bingham himself agrees with
*^the ancients'' whom he quotes. Muratori says: **The
Agapae were known and used every day by the apostles, in imi-
tation of the Sacred Supper of Christ before His death, and
were celebrated in connection with the Eucharist" ;^^ Augusti
declares that **this much is certain, that the Agapae were a
truly liturgical institution y-^"^ Neander says, *Hhe two together"
(viz.. Agape and Eucharist), were called the Supper of the
Lord (to xuptaxbv decnvov) -^^ Bishop Lightfoot maintains that
^^in St. Paul's time, the Eucharist was plainly a part of the
Agape "^^ (he means of course no more than that the two
were celebrated together) ; Dom Cabrol, summarizing the ele-
ments of the primitive Christian assembly says: **A fra-
ternal banquet occupied the greater part of the evening or
night, uniting the faithful in charity, prayers and psalms, and
in conclusion came the celebration of the Eucharistic rite";*"^
Duchesne admits that the Agape was liturgical in the primitive
Church, though he claims that it ceased to be so ^ * one hundred
years after the first preaching of the gospel" ;^^ Corblet says
that the Christian Sacred Meal differed from its Jewish proto-
types in this, that while the latter had **no religious liturgical
character the Agape was inspired at once by charity and by
religious sentiment" ;^^ and Dr. Armitage Robinson writes in
Hastings' ** Dictionary of the Bible" (art. Eucharist), that
* * in scripture there is no trace of the Eucharist being separated
from the Agape. ' '
The latter reason seems to be quite away from the point. Presuming that
the Agap6 was a reproduction of the ceremonies of the Paschal Supper, it would
doubtless follow, in frequency, the celebration of the Eucharist, itself a trans-
mutation of a yearly feast into one that was daily.
" He first discussed the Agap6 in Vacant's " Dictionnaire de Th6ologie *'
(Paris, 1900), s. v. Agapes, Fascicule II., pp. 551-555.
^ " The Antiquities of the Christian Church," V, p. 476.
" " Anecdota Graeca, De Agapis Sublatis," p. 339.
" " Antiquities," II, p. 704, " Eine eigentliche gottesdienstliche Einrichtung."
» " History of the Church, etc.," p. 208, ff.
" "Apost. Fathers," Part II, Vol. I, Ignat. ad Smym., ch. 8.
" " Le Livre de la Prifere Antique," Paris, 1902, p. 78.
Les Origines du Culte Chretien," Paris, 1902, 3d ed., p. 49.
Histoire de TEucharistie " (Paris, 1885), vol. I, p. 584.
19 «
470 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
I need quote no more. These pronouncements are enough
to indicate the unanimity of opinion.^^ Bingham, who had
evidently read everything attainable, could find only one
author who maintained that the Agape and the Eucharist were
not celebrated together, and he brands this opinion as ''with-
out any foundation and against the concurrent sense of both
ancient and modern writers,'^ and Mgr. Batiffol, the solitary
exponent of the new view, admits that his conclusions on the
Agape are contradictory to those of ''all the critics from Bing-
ham to Eenan.''^^
I. The Agape in the New Testament.— To speak of "the
history of the Agape in the New Testament "^2 ig to indulge in
a euphemism. The sum-total of texts, in the canonical writ-
ings, having even the remotest bearing on the subject, does not
exceed a score. Of this possible score, fully one-half show
nothing more than an antecedent probability of the existence
of an Agape ; of the other half-score, all but perhaps three or
four must be alleged only tentatively; of texts generally ad-
mitted as indubitable there are only two or three, and of these,
one depends upon a disputed reading. Evidently this is
slender testimony, and the scholar who is to utilize it in favor
of the Agape must support the actual reading of the Scripture
with some reflex principle— so to speak— that will give color
to his conclusions.
It is only honest to say that Dr. Keating, in his chapter on
the Agape in the New Testament does employ such a principle.
He claims a proving power— perhaps better, merely a persuad-
ing power— for the texts he offers, only on the condition that
they be "read in the light of subsequent practice, as shown,
for instance by the early Fathers, ''^^ and also when they are
interpreted in connection with the known fact of the existence
of sacred meals among the contemporary pagans and Jews.
To pick away these two chief props of the structure that Dr.
Keating has built with the materials of Scripture is to produce,
'" I may add, however, the names of other consenting authorities. Suicer
(8. V.) ; Zahn, " Ign. v. Antioch," p. 34; Achelis, " Canones Hippolyti," p. 202;
Wilpert, " Fractio Panis," p. 16, n. Weizsacher. " Apostolic Age," vol. II, p. 285.
^ Vacant, " Diet, de Th6ologie," Fascicule II, col. 556.
=" Keating, 1. c, p. 36.
^ Ibid., p. 36.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 471
of course, a collapse. This is precisely what Mgr. Batiffol
has done, and he has naturally made the Scripture argument
seem, for the moment, ridiculous. It is scarcely necessary to
insist on the injustice of such a proceeding. It will be more
profitable to avoid it ourselves, and to allow, in our examina-
tion of the possible scriptural references to the Agape, what-
ever additional worth they may borrow from both the prospect
and the retrospect of history.
The New Testament evidences fall into three classes : First,
those which merely show an antecedent likelihood of a Chris-
tian socio-religious meal ; second, those which apparently bear
witness to the existence of such a custom; and third, those
which actually name the custom *^ Agape.''
The first class may be quickly disposed of. We are asked
to note the significance of the fact that a great part of our
Lord's parabolic teaching was illustrated by the image of a
^* supper," and that a symbolism based upon the customs of
the table was constantly employed by Him ; that He spoke of
^ ^ eating and drinking at my table in my kingdom, " of ^ ^ eating
the bread of the children of the kingdom," of supping with
His followers in sign of friendship ; and that not only in His
verbal teachings, but in His example he made His people
understand that there is a sacredness in the act of eating and
drinking together, a symbolism which He would be glad to
have them remember and observe when He was gone. He
'* broke bread" with His disciples. He multiplied loaves for
the people in the desert, and, in short. He so often sat at
table with those who were dear to Him, that the writer who
particularly draws our attention to all these facts, feels justi-
fied in declaring that ^^our Lord's fellowship with His dis-
ciples was, to a large extent, a table-f ellowship. "^^
The significance of these allusions is obvious : it would be
quite natural that the followers of Jesus, when once He was
gone from among them, would be anxious to recall His pres-
ence, by an imitation of His habits, and principally by a con-
tinuation of the especially significant custom of eating to-
gether in token of fraternal affection. Add to' this, that the
most sacred of all the acts of our Saviour, the institution of the
'* Keating, 1. c, p. 37.
472 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Blessed Eucharist, had been in connection with a symbolic
meal, the Paschal Supper, and we may well think it inevitable
that the apostles, when repeating the same awful act, would
enshrine it in a ceremonial, imitative, as far as might be, of
the Lord's own Last Supper .2« Is the likelihood realized in
the event?
The second group of Scripture texts seems to answer
affirmatively, by making mention of an actually existing re-
ligious meal. The discussion centers about the phrase
<Hhe breaking of bread'' (5J Mat<: zoo dpzou),^^ It is beyond
dispute, however, that this formula is used throughout the
writings of St. Luke— in his gospel and in the Acts— to desig-
nate primarily the Eucharist. It was in fact, from the be-
ginning, and for the first two hundred years of the Christian
Church, if not the only name, at least the usual name of the
Blessed Sacrament^*^ Yet the defenders of the Agape cite
the passages in which the words occur as proofs undeniable
of a ''breaking of bread" other than the Eucharist, their con-
tention being that the one formula includes both the sacra-
mental and the non-sacramental rite. Mgr. Batiffol professes
to find no reason for such an interpretation and though it is
well-nigh the universal one, he rejects it as ''arbitrary and
subjective." Here, he would say, is the very fountain-head
of the delusive tradition concerning the primitive Agape, and
he rejects at once all the alleged evidences of its existence.
The case may not be so summarily dismissed. The same
scholars who demonstrate that the phrase in question desig-
nates the Eucharist, are quick to add that in all probability,
it cannot be restricted to the Eucharist alone. They feel that
the formula requires explanation, and they explain it on the
hypothesis that the Eucharist was accompanied by a non-
sacred "breaking of bread" which came in time to give its
"Mr. Keating, it will be remembered, thinks the Agap6 was not a direct
imitation of the Paschal Supper.
"Sec. Probst, " Liturgie," p. 26; Wilpert, " Fractio Panis," p. 16; Kraus,
"Real Encyclopaedie," s. v. " Eucharistie " ; Suicer, " Thes. Theol.," s. v. Kldatg
Tov ipTov, after giving his opinion that the " breaking of bread," is the original
and peculiar designation of the Eucharist, cites for his support the Syriac
version which, he says, translates "fractio panis," in Acts, 2, 42, by "fractio
Eucharistiae"; Blass, Comment, in loc. Acts, 2, 46, 20, 7-11; 27, 35, says "in
omnibus his locis est solemnis designatio coense Dominicae."
"Acts, 2, 42; 2, 46; 20, 11; 27, 35.
THE CHRISTIAN AQAPE, 473
name to the whole service. The ground for the hypothesis
itself is the context in which the debated words are often found.
In Acts 2, 46, for example, *^ breaking bread from house to
house, they took their meat in gladness and simplicity of
heart," the liturgical formula ** breaking bread'' is apparently
in apposition with the ordinary terms, * taking meat," a
merely physical meal. Led by the face meaning of the words,
somp of the commentators (even Catholics who are naturally
anxious to find references to the Eucharist) ^^ have concluded
that in this place at least there is no mention of the Eucharist ;
that the *^ breaking of bread" here is used of the Agape alone.
But this interpretation is unusual and unnecessary. A more
favorite explanation of the passage is that it shows only a
close connection, not an identity, between the customs of
** breaking bread" and ** taking meat."^^
A somewhat clearer case is that of Acts 27, 35, the passage
in which St. Paul is represented as encouraging his com-
panions in shipwreck to break their long fast, **to take some
food for their health's sake," after which exhortation he
*' takes bread," * Ogives thanks," ** breaks it" and **eats,"
whereupon, *Hhey also took some meat." All the circum-
stances of this action would point to a mere satisfying of
hunger, yet the consecrated formula '*he broke bread" is in-
troduced into the passage, and the liturgical significance of
the grouping of the phrases, * * taking bread, " * ' giving thanks, ' '
** breaking," and ** eating," somewhat weakens the supposi-
tion that St. Paul 's action was a non-religious one. Yet if we
may doubt that, in this passage, there is an indication of a
liturgical action, it is evidently beyond question that if there
was such an action, it is in immediate connection with
the taking of an ordinary meal; another possible evidence of
the supposed Christian custom of combining the sacred and
the non-sacred ** breaking of bread."
The reading of the third verse in question. Acts, 2, 42 is a
matter of dispute, and the argument for or against the Agape
^ e. g. McEvilly, in loc.
^ The words " from house to house," are no argument against the Eucharist,
because, as is well known, the exclusively Christian service, which took place
before the Christians repaired in common with the Jews to the Temple, was held
in their homes.
474 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
varies slightly with the reading. The Vulgate reads ^4n com-
municatione fractionis panis,'* which the Rheims translation
renders literally *4n the communication of the breaking of
bread.'' The original Greek, however, inserts the conjunc-
tive particle xm between xocvwvia the ^ * communication, ' ' and
xXdffc^TouapToi), the ''breaking of bread,'' thus differentiating
the ''communication" or the general "fellowship," which
includes the common meal, the Agape, from the actual "break-
ing of bread," the Eucharist.
Upon this latter reading Meyer constructs an ingenious
analysis of the text in question. We may quote it and apply
it, for determining, if possible, the character of the connection
between the common meal and the Eucharist.
He says:^^ "Unless I mistake, St. Luke distinctly enumer-
ates all the parts of the divine worship :
1. Tjj deda^ twd dTToazoXcdu,
2. xac Tji xoiucouca
3. Kac T^ xXdffSi TOO dpzoo^
4. xac ra^c Trpoaewj^at^,
Such an analysis is natural and legitimate enough. It con-
sists merely in grouping graphically parts which in the text
are given continuously. But see the consequence. In virtue
of this coordination of the elements of the Christian service,
^ xocvmoia stands in the same class with ^ ^^^«/^' and with
m TTpoffso^ai and these three together, grouped around the xXd(T7(:
Tou dprooj the Eucharist, form the primitive liturgy of its cele-
bration.
One of two alternative facts, then, is sufficiently manifest
from an examination of these texts of the Acts. Either the
formula "fractio panis" includes both a sacramental and a
social breaking of bread, or, if it more correctly expresses only
the sacramental action, it is yet placed in such close connection
with other non-liturgical formulae as to suggest a companion-
ship of two customs, one a sacrament, the other a common or
semi-religious meal. The fact is significant: the almost in-
evitable conclusion is that in the first Christian Church at
Jerusalem there was an expressly intended union between the
Holy Eucharist and the common meal which tradition has
"Comment, in Acts 2, 42.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. ' 475
called the Agape. This much established, it is no far cry to
the supposition that the infant Church continued the practice,
which our Lord had established, of consecrating the sacred
species at the close of the fraternal meal, making the meal
serve as the preparatory ritual of the sacrament. And what
is this but to say that, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Agape is
indeed a liturgical action?
Mgr. BatifPoPs opinion, therefore, that in all the passages
thus far brought forward, *^the breaking of bread *' means
the Eucharist, and the Eucharist alone, though tenable by one
who insists on the actual meaning of an isolated phrase of
Scripture, is impossible to one who takes account of the con-
text. The weakness of his view is indicated by the fact that
he ignores entirely the significance of the constant juxtaposi-
tion of the two actions of eating an ordinary meal and of
celebrating the Holy Sacrifice. The phenomenon is certainly
worthy of note, yet Mgr. Batiffol quite disregards it.
A further weakness of his view is in its utter lack of the
support of tradition or of authority. He seems to be in the
distinguished but unenviable position of agreeing with nobody
but himself .^^
The center of the discussion over possible references to the
Agape in the New Testament is the eleventh chapter of St.
'^ It ought to be noted here, not by way of controversy, but as a means of
throwing light upon the general discussion, that within the space of a few sen-
tences Mgr. Batiffol has made two important mistakes. He exaggerates the con-
clusions which Dr. Keating draws from the texts thus far quoted, and he misses
a prominent point in his adversary's position concerning the relation of the
Eucharist with the Agap6. After admitting that our Saviour's custom of
" breaking bread " with His disciples would probably give rise to the practice of a
common meal among the brethren, he asks : " But how can you conclude from this
that the Eucharist and the Agap6 are both included in the term Kkaat^ tov aprov,
and that the Agap6 has its justification, basis and object in its intimate con-
nection with the Lord's Supper. Yet Th. Harnack and Lightfoot do so reason
. . . and Dr. Keating so reasons, after bringing together the texts wherein the
Kl&Gtg TOV aprov is mentioned . . . concluding that it is impossible to see in these
texts only the Eucharist and not to include what was later known as the
Agape? " (p. 280) . Now, the truth is, Dr. Keating does not say " it is impossible
not to include the Agap6." He says rather, that, " taking all the passages
where the expression ( Kkaaiq rov aprov ) occurs in the New Testament, while it
would be impossible to restrict it with certainty to the Eucharist proper, it seems
in this passage (i. e., in Acts, 2, 42) to include both" (1. c, p. 44).
Again, Mgr. Batiffol mistakes in saying that Dr. Keatifig agrees with Th.
Harnack that the Agap6 " has its justification, basis and object " in the Lord's
Supper. Dr. Keating expresses his disagreement with that view (p. 39), and
actually confronts it with two objections (p. 41).
476 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
PauPs First Epistle to the Corintliiaiis. It will be best to
quote the passage entire, since almost no word of it is insig-
nificant.
**When you come together it is not now to eat the Lord's supper,
for everyone taketh before his own supper to eat. And one, indeed,
is hungry, and another is drunk. What! have you not houses to eat
and drink in? Or despise ye the Church of God and put to shame
them that have not? What shall I say to you? Do I praise you?
In this I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord," etc. (here
follows the classic account of the revelation vouchsafed him con-
cerniQg the institution of the Blessed Eucharist). "Wherefore, breth-
ren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If any man
be hungry, let him eat at home that you come not together unto judg-
ment. And the rest I will set in order when I come. ' '
Here is a large bone of contention to throw between the
protagonists and the antagonists of the Agape. But we must
be brief with it, for the bulk of our discussion is from extra-
scriptural sources and we may not give this part more than
its proper relative importance.
The questions are : Does St. Paul refer to an Agape ; and
if so, was it held in connection with the Holy Eucharist; and
does he condemn the practice or only legislate for its decorous
observance ?
Both opinions are maintained. The practice of assembling
for a common meal is beyond doubt, after a reading of this
passage, say those who favor the existence of the Agape, but
it gave rise to an abuse. There was selfishness and haste
among those who could bring their own supper, and those who
could not bring their own went hungry. Hence, a true Lord's
supper became impossible, and St. Paul complains of the
irregularity and disorder. As for the text, **have you not
houses to eat and drink in! If any man is hungry let him eat
at home," this may be read, and considering the context, must
be read to mean simply that the Agape was not to be a full
meal, but a slight repast, not sufficient to satisfy hunger, but
only enough to serve a symbolic purpose.
The opposite interpretation— that of opponents of the ex-
istence of the Agape— declares that St. Paul, in the passage
quoted, forbids any eating or drinking whatsoever, in the
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 477
Churcli; that lie pleads not for decorum but for an actual
abolition of the habit of taking food in connection with the
Holy Sacrifice. ^'It would be impossible,'' urges Mgr.
Batitfol, *Ho find a more decided condemnation of a religious
repast. ' '
To give our own summary: We may perhaps safely say
that the passage seems at first to condemn anything like an
Agape. But there is a difficulty in the way of thus under-
standing St. Paul's words, for he seems to contradict him-
self; in one breath, apparently condemning the custom (^^have
you not houses to eat and drink in"), but in the next breath
apparently tolerating it (^'when you come together, wait for
one another").
But condemnation or toleration aside, the fact remains that
the Corinthians were in the habit of eating and drinking in
the Church, and at the very meeting in which the Holy
Eucharist was celebrated. The custom must have had an
origin somewhere. What more natural than to see its origin
in the common gatherings for the ^^ breaking of bread,"
spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles? And if such had been
its origin we may well believe that it was an authorized,
apostolic, and therefore a quasi-sacred custom which St. Paul
would have been slow to condemn.
And this, our expectation, seems to be realized. For St.
Paul seems not to condemn it. If it was, in his judgment,
worthy of rejection, his language of condemnation ought to be
unequivocal. We have seen that it is not unequivocal. Hence
the natural conclusion is that he tolerated the practice.
Again, on the supposition that the Apostle intended to
abolish the custom, why should he, in this very context, remind
his people of the manner of the institution of the Eucharist,
recalling to their minds that our Lord consecrated bread and
wine at the close of an actual supper? Would not this relation
suggest to the minds of the Corinthians an argument in favor
of retaining the supper in connection with the Eucharist, and
does it not suggest to our minds that St. Paul uses the narra-
tion as a means of enforcing what he wished to- say, namely
that the meal in connection with the Consecration ought to be
as decorous as was Christ's meal with His Apostles before
32cuB
478 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
the first Consecration? This much seems certain, then, that
St. Paul made an attempt not to abolish the custom but to regu-
late it.
May we now go further and say that the Agape as it existed
among the Corinthians, was in the true sense a liturgical prac-
tice? The question cannot be answered by an appeal to the
text itself. Accordingly, the defenders of the Agape have
summoned for the support of their view, St. John Chrysos-
tom's commentary on the passage. The appeal is unwise, for
although one may, with some show of reason, extract from the
original words of St. Paul an evidence of the connection be-
tween the Eucharist and the Agape, the interpretation of St.
Chrysostom tells positively against the connection of the two.
It is strange that this fact should have been denied or over-
looked, for the commentary is in no degree ambiguous :
**As in the case of the three thousand who believed in the be-
ginning, all had eaten their meals in common, such also was the prac-
tice when the Apostles wrote— not exactly the same indeed— but to
a certain extent the communion abiding among the first Christians
descended also to those that came later. Since some remained rich
while others were poor, they could not have placed all their good in
common, but they prepared a common table on stated days, as was
natural, and, when the meeting was over, after communicating in the
mysteries, they all came together, for a common feast. But after-
wards this custom fell into disuse." *^
Elsewhere St. John Chrysostom uses practically the same
words :
^' After the communion of the mysteries, they did not immediately
return home . . . but the rich brought meat from their own
houses, and called the poor, and made common banquets in the
Church itself. "«3
This description, as is plain, gives us absolutely no reason
for supposing' that the common meal had any liturgical signifi-
cance. On the contrary, if we may trust Chrysostom as an
interpreter of the apostolic custom, the table set for the poor
"^Chrysostom, Horn. 27, in I. Cor.
«» Horn. 22.
I
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 479
by the rich was nothing more than a banquet of fraternal
charity— not indeed a mere alms, since all, rich and poor, sat
down together— but yet only a social meal taken after the
service, before the people returned to their homes. It was,
perhaps, a ^ 4ove-f east, ' ' a manifestation of Christian affec-
tion and of spiritual equality, but by no means one of the rites
surrounding the Holy Eucharist.^*
Such is the natural deduction from the words of St. Chrys-
ostom. It does not follow, however, that such was the his-
torical truth. The great archbishop of Constantinople, in
spite of all his skill in exegesis and all his familiarity with St.
Paul, may yet be mistaken in a point of fact. His opinion,
that in St. PauPs time the Agape was an accidental appendage,
not an organic part of the Eucharistic service, is rejected by
almost all the modem commentators.
Bishop Lightfoot, for instance takes 1 Cor. as an abso-
lutely certain witness of the union of the Lord's Supper and
the Love-Feast. * * In St. Paul 's time, ' ' he says, * * the Euchar-
'*Dr. Keating assumes from these two descriptions that Chrysostom is
" giving us a perhaps somewhat idealized picture of the Agap6 of his own
time/' and that he " makes it clear that in his day, and for some time previously,
the Agap6 had been held in the Church. Such a deduction is scarcely war-
ranted. Chrysostom is speaking in the way of narrative, describing a custom
of which his hearers apparently knew nothing, what was to them already an
antiquity, a thing obsolete. This is manifest from the whole sense of the pas-
sages. What wonder then that Dr. Keating, in this matter, lays himself open
to the cavil of his keen-eyed critic, Mgr. Batiffol.
But the critic himself, in turn is open to criticism. Answering Dr. Keating,
he says that Chrysostom is speaking of a custom of apostolic days, not of his
own times. Why, then, does not Mgr. Batiffol acknowledge this fact when he is
himself treating of what he calls the " alleged '* Agap6 of the early Church ? Why
not do something towards explaining how Chrysostom could be wrong in under-
standing St. Paul? Mgr. Batiffol is willing enough to use the testimony of the
great student of the apostle when it will refute an adversary, but he neglects it
entirely when it places a difficulty in his own way. This is surely a defect in
Mgr. Batifrol's method. He sets himself in direct opposition to all the recognized
interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, yet never deigns to explain how they could,
one and all, have gone so far astray as to start the tradition concerning an
Agap6.
But — ^to drop the discussion — if we care for a true description of the Agap6
of St. John Chrysostom's own time, we may consult his forty-seventh homily on
Justin the Martyr. He says to his people:
" Wouldst thou participate in a bodily table (as well as a spiritual one) ?
Then it is lawful, after the breaking up of the assembly to take one's ease under
a vine or fig-tree near the monument of the martyr, and to allow the body relaxa-
tion." This passage is quoted by Dr. Keating himself (pp. 148-149), yet he
seems not to be conscious that it contradicts both his statements : " Chrysostom "
(in the other essentially different description) "is giving us a somewhat idealized
picture of the Agap6 of his own time, and in his day the Agape was held in the
Church" (p. 145).
480 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ist was plainly part of the Agape (1 Cor. 11). The Chris-
tian festival both in the hour of the day and in the arrange-
ment of the meal was substantially a representation of Christ's
meal with His Apostles. Hence it was called the Lord's
Supper, the name originally applied to the combination of the
Eucharist and the Agape. ''^^
Now, it is just such confident and sweeping assertion as
this which kindles the indignation of critics like Mgr. Batiffol,
who demand that the statements be either ruled out or sub-
stantiated by an appeal to the letter of the text. As a matter
of fact, it requires more than the letter of the text to justify
a deduction such as that of Bishop Lightf oot. He comes to his
conclusion, not merely by a reference to the actual verbal con-
struction of the passage, but by bringing to the reading a sense
of the value of suggestions, moral proofs, a priori judgments,
elements of exegesis, legitimate enough, in spite of the fact
that they irritate those who find it to their advantage, in any
particular instance, to clamor for a literal rendition of the
words of a text.
The traditional interpretation, then arrives at its con-
clusions by some such method as this: starting with the fact
that St. Paul tolerated a common meal in the assembly (^^when
you come together to eat, wait for one another''), and pro-
ceeding on the assurance that this meal was to serve rather
a symbolic than a practical purpose (^'If any man be hungry,
let him eat at home"), we may see that the apostle is reproving
his people chiefly because by too much eating and drinking,
they profane the Body and Blood of Christ, making them-
selves unfit to receive it in Holy Communion. There must,
then, have been a close connection between the two features of
the service, the Eucharist and the Agape.
Furthermore, in this relation of the two, the Agape must
have come first, else how could the excesses attached to it
directly unfit one for the Holy Communion? Again, to repeat
what has already been hinted at, St. Paul 's concern is to teach
the Corinthians how they may worthily celebrate the Sacred
Mystery, and he proposes to teach them by reminding them
of the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. He therefore
» " Apostolic Fathers," part II, Vol. I, p. 400.
I
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 481
recites to them the story of what took place ^ ^ in the same night
in which our Lord was betrayed. ' ' On that hallowed occasion,
be it noted— the supper came first; afterwards ^^postquam
coenavit/' came the Consecration. This is the model St. Paul
proposes to the Corinthians, and he gives us no reason for
denying that he intended they should follow it in detail.
And, finally, what reason could the Agape have for being
in such close proximity with the Eucharist, unless it was part
of the ritual? It could not have been a merely social meal, else
it would not have been held at the same time and in the same
connection with the Eucharist ; it could not have been an ordi-
nary meal for it was not intended to be sufficient to satisfy
hunger. What, then, remains but that it was a liturgical meal,
a part of the preparation for the Sacrifice of the Body and
Blood of the Lord?
Hence, the conclusion : the Agape probably held the same
position relative to the Eucharist, in the Church of Corinth,
which it had in the cenacle and in the ^ * Hauskirchen ' ' at Jeru-
salem. This is all that the traditional exegesis of I Cor. wishes
to maintain, but this means that the Agape was a liturgical rite.
There remain for consideration the two texts of the New
Testament, which are generally considered as expressly nam-
ing the Agape : Jude 12, and 2 Peter, 2, 13. In effect the two
passages are only one; for either Jude copies from 2 Peter,
or 2 Peter copies from Jude.^^
The texts read: Jude 12, *^ There are spots in their ban-
quets {dyd7:ae(:) feasting together without fear,'' and 2 Peter,
2, 13, ^* . . . stains and spots, sporting themselves, rioting
in their feasts" (dydTrae^)^ or *4n their deceivings'' (adndz^i).
The fruitlessness of contending over these passages is shown
from a comparison of the contrary conclusions reached by our
two contending exegetes. It matters not, says Mgr. Batiffol,
^^ There has been no end of discussion concerning the dates of these epistles
and their relative age. Bacon ("Introd. to the N. T.") gives for Jude A. D.
85-90, 2 Peter A. D. 100-150, and says (p. 170) there can be no doubt that this
is the right order, notwithstanding the genius of Spitta who thought otherwise."
But, on the other hand, Dr. Bigg in the volume " St. Peter and St. Jude," in
the "International Critical Commentary " gives many reasons for reversing the
order, aiming to show that Jude copied from 2 Peter. Among the more con-
servative, though not less able critics, Belser (" Einleitung") gives the dates,
Jude A. D. 66, 2 Peter A. D. 67.
482 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
whether you admit dydTrae^ instead of djtd.rmz^'^ in either of
these texts or in both, for the difficulty remains that the word
d.y6.T:at(: does not necessarily mean ''feasts," on the contrary
it must mean merely love, ' ' dilectio, ' ' ''caritas,'' as elsewhere
in St. Jude.
And, it matters not, says Dr. Keating in turn, whether the
reading be dydTtmc, or dndrac^:, ''in any case, the allusion to the
love-feasts is undoubted!"
This rather amusing contradiction gives us the key to the
situation; neither here nor in any other passage adducible
from the Sacred Scriptures is there sufficient information to
enable the scholar to conclude with strict certainty on the ex-
istence or the character of the Agape. "Whether one sees in
the text thus far considered a proof or a denial of the Agape
depends, in large measure, upon one's previous attitude of
mind, and one 's previous attitude must be produced by some-
thing more convincing than the evidences in the New Testa-
ment writings.
II. The Agape in the Second Century,— ThQ crucial texts
on the Agape are those taken from second-century documents.
They are not many: altogether, strong, doubtful and weak,
they may be easily enumerated : ' ' The Didache, ' ' ch. 10 ; " St.
Clement to the Corinthians," ch. 44; "St. Ignatius to the
Smyrngeans," ch. 8; "Pliny's Letter to Trajan" X., 97; "The
Epistle to Diognetus," ch. 5; "The Octavius of Minucius
Felix, ' ' ch. 31 ; several passages in ' ' Tertullian : The Acts of
Paul and Thecla," ch. 25; the "Passion of St. Perpetua,"
ch. 17; and "Lucian, de Morte Peregrini," ch. 12.
This is the sum of all the texts of sub-apostolic writings
which can have any claim to contain an allusion to the Agape.
And yet of this number more than half are useless as con-
troversial weapons. Any scholar consciously urging a de-
fense of the Agape would do well to throw out of this list of
second-century testimonies all but those of Ignatius, Pliny,
and Tertullian, for the rest are only so much impedimenta in
the battle against hostile criticism.
" This is the disputed reading. The Codex Alexandrinus and the Codex
Ephrffimi give the reading aTrdraig in 2 Pet. 2, 13, which, however, is probably
as Bishop Lightfoot maintains, "an obvious error" ("Apostolic Fathers,*'
Ignatius, II, 312).
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 483
Evidently, this fact— that out of a period well stocked with
Christian evidences, only three texts for the Love-Feast can
be found fit to stand a rigid examination— speaks eloquently
for the opponents of the Agape. And this is not their only
advantage ; they must be given the credit of another significant
fact, the silence of two of the most important Christian writers
of the century under consideration, Justin Martyr, and
Irenaeus. It is not the purpose of this essay to disregard
or to obscure any such notable indications as these: Let it
be plainly stated, then, that the critics who oppose the theory
of the early existence of the Agape may accredit their cause
with these two points: the paucity of second century docu-
ments, and the silence of the two writers who ought, perhaps,
to have especially mentioned it— the apologist Justin, and the
controversialist Irenaeus. The argumentum e silentio is espe-
cially strong in the case of St. Justin, because although he
gives ex professo a full and distinct description of the main
features of Christian liturgical practice, apparently conceal-
ing nothing, hampered by no disciplina arcam (for his first
Apology, and especially that chapter of it which describes the
Eucharist, is one of the main proofs that the ^^ Discipline of
the Secret'' was not yet in force in his time, or that it did not
affect the frankness of an Apology addressed to the Imperial
Court) and having therefore an adequate, indeed an imperative,
reason for naming and explaining the Agape, yet gives not so
much as a hint of its existence.
Such, unless I mistake, is a fair statement of the case
against the Agape in the second century. I shall not attempt
directly to weaken any part of the argument it suggests, except
by mentioning, in the proper place, a possible explanation of
the silence of Justin.
The immediate discussion centers on the few texts I have
named as defensible evidences of the Agape.
The first is ^^ Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, ' ' ch. 8, a short
chapter, but one that for general doctrinal purposes has been
called the most important in all the seven Ignatian Epistles.
The argument demands that we have it, in its entirety, before
our eyes :
484 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
''Avoid divisions as the beginning of evil. Follow, all of yon, the
bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and follow the presbytery
as the apostles. Morover, reverence the deacons as the Command-
ment of God. Let no man do aught pertaining to the Church, apart
from the bishop. Let that Eucharist be considered valid, which is
made under the bishop, or him to whom he commits it. Wheresoever
the bishop is, there let the people appear, even as wheresoever Christ
Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful apart from the
bishop, either to baptize or to hold a Love-Feast. But whatsoever
he approves, that also is well-pleasing to God, that everything you
may do may be secure and valid. ' ' ^^
The usual comment on this passage is that the word
dT-dnr^ here translated ** Love-Feast'^ includes both the Euchar-
ist and the Agape proper, and this very text is used as a proof
that the two parts of the service were so intimately associated
in the time of Ignatius (c. A. D. 112) as to permit of their being
named in one and the same word. But the reasons given for
this opinion are rather unsatisfactory ; the truth being that the
commentators find some perplexity in the grouping of the
phrases of the text.
Lightfoot, for instance, simply says that, ^*In such a con-
nexion the omission of the Eucharist is inconceivable. The
Eucharist must be contained implicitly in the Agape,'' and
Mr. Srawley, an editor of Ignatius, who generally follows
Lightfoot, continues the thought: *^ Otherwise it would be
difficult to see the importance of the mention of the Agape
here or to explain the omission of the Eucharist, if it is not
included in the phrase. "^^
The perplexity of the commentators is the opportunity
of their critics. Mgr. Batiffol asks not, ^^why must we
include the Eucharist," but ^*why attempt to include the
Agape r ' It is not necessary to do so, he maintains ; in fact,
it is not possible to do so, except by reading into this second-
century text a meaning of the word dydn/^ which it did not have
until the fourth century. The plain solution, he continues, is
that the Eucharist and the Eucharist alone is mentioned here,
'"I give the version of Rev. J. H. Srawley ("Early Church Classics," Igna-
tius), who follows, except in some details, Bishop Lightfoot's text and inter-
pretation.
»»L. c, II, p. 43.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 485
the whole context giving us to understand that dydjirj is used
as a synonym, in the abstract sense '^ove,'' for the Eucharist.^^
I can see reason neither for Bishop Lightfoot's perplexity
nor for Mgr. Batiff ol 's solution of it. An analysis of the pas-
sage is the shortest way out of the difficulty, if there be a
difficulty.
St. Ignatius is expressly inculcating not the discipline of
the Eucharistic service or of any other practice exclusively,
but a general obedience to the bishop in ^ ' all things pertaining
to the Church. '^ *'Let no man,'' he says, **do aught apart
from the bishop ' ' ; without him there must be ftrst, no Euchar-
ist, second, no assembly, third, no baptism, fourth, no love-
feast, etc. The Eucharist, then, though it is not mentioned in
the very sentence with the Agape, is not omitted from the
passage. It is mentioned in its place, i, e., first, among the rites
which require the presence of the bishop. How can Bishop
Lightfoot maintain a priori, that it must be mentioned again
in the word dydinj, or that its omission in that precise word is
' ' inconceivable ' ' ? He cannot without entering a vicious circle,
argue that in Ignatius the Agape and the Eucharist are in-
separable, for the chief proof of that possible fact is the
passage in question. He can only insist that to place the
Agape, if it be a separate institution, in such close juxtaposi-
tion to the Eucharist and to Baptism, is to concede too much
importance to it. But supposing for the moment that the
Agape, without being strictly a Eucharistic rite, had the
quasi-sacred character which attached to it later, say in the
Canons of Hippolytus ; in such a case it would have been of
sufficient importance to demand— as it did in the latter text—
the presence of the bishop, and consequently would have been
not unworthy to be named side by side with other features
which require the episcopal supervision.
This supposition, even though it may not be the true solu-
tion, is at least possible, and so sufficient to break the theory of
the necessity of the inclusion of the Eucharist in the word
dydny].
But on the other hand, though we need not agree with
Bishop Lightfoot that the ^' Agape must include the Euchar-
*> L. c, p. 287.
486 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ist '' neither need we agree with Mgr. Batiffol that the Agape
as 'such is not mentioned at all. The context leads ns to con-
clude differently. The mention of the Eucharist, in the first
place, by its own name eh-^apcazia would naturally suggest that
ddynr^, a line or two later, must be something different. What
necessity is there for a repetition of the prescription con-
cerning the Eucharist? St. Ignatius has already said, *'Let
there be no Eucharist apart from the bishop,'' why go on to
say, ''Let there be no Agape apart from the bishop,'' if
Eucharist in the one sentence and Agape, in the other, are
identically the same? The plain conclusion, then, from a
straightforward reading of the text, is that both the Eucharist
and the Agape are mentioned separately in the text. If the
Agape includes the Eucharist, the fact must be proved other-
wise than by the wording of this passage.
But Mgr. Batiffol insists upon the fact that the word
dydTrr^ is to be found twenty-eight times in the Epistles of St.
Ignatius, in its abstract sense of ''love" a synonym for
"caritas," "dilectio," etc., and hence, he would have us be-
lieve, that in this passage it ' ' designates nothing particular in
the concrete," such as an Agape, but is used by a sort of
metonymy for the Eucharist. It is hard to see the significance
of such an argument as this. If Mgr. Batiffol could bring
forward a passage or two in which Ignatius undoubtedly uses
dydTTT^ for the Eucharist, and declare that it must be so used
here, we could understand the argument. But as far as we
know dydTrr^ is never once used interchangeably for the Euchar-
ist. And why, then, call attention to the fact that Ignatius
uses the word when he means ' ' love ' ' ? What other word could
he use? Granted that the word is ordinarily an abstract noun,
it is evidently used here in a concrete sense, else the phrase
dydnr^u notelv is unintelligible.^^ The only question is whether
the concrete thing it expresses shall be Agape or Eucharist,
and this question leaves us at the same point from which we
started.^2
*^ ayanrjv iroieiv the reading of the Short Recension : Soxnt' kTZLr£7.elv of the Long
Recension.
" T^6 word aycLTZT] is the ordinary term for " love " in the New Testament and
the Fathers. Suicer ("Thesaurus," s. v.) quotes abundantly from the Fathers to
show that the word was used to denote " love," human and divine, i. e., love of God
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 487
Agape then, it may be concluded, is, in this passage of
Ignatius, a thing in itself, distinct from the Holy Eucharist.
But our usual second question suggests itself. Is there any
evidence that the Agape was liturgical in the Church of
Smyrna? The answer to the question may be sought in a fur-
ther examination into the reasons which have induced such
good authorities as Lightfoot, already quoted, and with him
Funk and Probst, to maintain that the phrase dydrtrju jtoiecu
must include the celebration of the Eucharist.
Lightfoot and Funk simply state their opinion, resting it
on a priori reasons, but Dr. Probst endeavors to prove it by
the use of an accumulative argument of no little force. He
notices, first, that the word dydndv has been used a few lines
before, in its ordinary sense, indeed, of *Ho love'' but in the
midst of an exhortation to use the Holy Eucharist; hence a
subtle hint that there was a connection between the word
and the Sacrament. Second, he points out, that dydnr^v nocetv
is used in the same construction with the sacramental action
j^aTTTc^scu • hence a possibility that dydni^v Tzoielv is itself sacra-
mental. Third, he calls attention to the fact that the word
tzoce'cv is, in Justin Martyr and elsewhere a sacrificial word
occurring in the phrase Buy^apcariav ttocsTu ; hence a probability
of its being here an indication of the sacrificial act. Fourth,
Ignatius prescribes that no one shall perform this action
** apart from the bishop''; hence, a presumption that it was
a sacred function.^^
Now, it is just possible that this reasoning oversteps the
mark— proves too much. "We can imagine Mgr. Batiffol
thanking Dr. Probst for the exposition and affixing to it his
towards man, and love of man for God; likewise for "charity" in the broader
sense of "kindness," "good-will," "favor," etc. In short, wherever we use
the word " charity " or " love," the first word at the tip of the pen or the tongue
of a New Testament or patristic writer was aydTzn . The immortal praise of
•'charity," in I. Cor. 13, is praise of aydfry.
The word, of course, is not classic in the noun form, but the verbs, both
dya-rrao) and dyaTtdi^o) and the adjective ayairrjrog^ etc., are found frequently in the
classics. 0707777, the noun, occurs first in the Septuagint (cf. Liddell and Scott),
and from that time, as long as Greek was used in the West, it was the ordinary
and standard word for " love."
All the Greek lexicographers, notably Suicer, who discusses the word at
great length, agree that the plural form ayoTra/,, designates primarily, and perhaps
exclusively, the Christian love-feasts. In the face of such facts it seems folly
to attempt to prove that dydizT) in the text of Ignatius means " Eucharist."
"Probst, "Liturgie," p. 64.
488 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
own conclusion: ''Therefore dydTirjv tiocelv means to celebrate
the Holy Eucharist/' This is more than Dr. Probst will
allow, but, to be honest, anyone might naturally draw the same
conclusion from his argument.
To avoid this conclusion which seems otherwise unwar-
ranted, we may, perhaps, best maintain the position we have
already chosen, as most defensible, viz., that while there is
not sufficient reason for asserting that the Eucharist is actually
contained in the precise word dydn'/j, there is, nevertheless,
here in Ignatius, as in the Acts and in St. Paul, a significant
collocation of the actions of celebrating the Eucharist and of
holding the Agape, an indication of a close union between
them. If we may carry forward the conclusion arrived at
from our examination of the New Testament writings, we may,
with sufficient security, declare that in all probability in the
year 112, the date of the Epistle to the Smyrn^eans, the Love-
Feast still remained what it had been in the year 54, a litur-
gical part of the Divine Service. Giving full allowance for
the importance which Ignatius attaches to the Agape, placing
it side by side with the Eucharist and with Baptism, we must
think it a sacred action, and if it were so, we can scarcely con-
ceive that it was made sacred in any other way save by its
organic unity with the Blessed Sacrament.
The second important testimony concerning the Agape in
sub-apostolic times is the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan.^*
This classic source of a thousand controversies contains a text
that is of vital importance for or against the Agape. Accord-
ing to the statement of the Christians apprehended by Pliny
and obliged to confess their customs, there were two Chris-
tian meetings, one in the morning {stato die ante lucem),
the other later in the day, undoubtedly in the evening. At
the morning meeting, according to Pliny's understanding of
the information given to him, a hymn was sung to Christ, and
an oath was taken by the members of the community to abstain
from all manner of evil deeds; at the second meeting the
Christians assembled to partake of a common meal (cibum
promiscuum et innoxium). Was this the Agape? All the com-
mentators and historians have thought so, but as usual Mgr.
**Ad. Traj., n. 97.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 489
Batiffol rejects the traditional explanation. Why? Because,
he says, unless this cihum innoxium, taken at the evening
meal, means the Eucharist, Pliny's informers make no men-
tion of the Eucharist whatsoever. But being apostates, they
had no reason for concealing anything ; they must mention the
Eucharist. Furthermore— c>(i^55e quern ?^sem— the natural
the Eucharist, not the Agape.
We cannot accept this reasoning. For if the informers
were, as Mgr. Batiffol says, in will and in intention apostates,
then not only had they no reason for concealing the doctrine
of the Blessed Eucharist but they had every reason for mak-
ing it known in plain words. Apostates like to justify their
defection before their own consciences and before the world,
and what better justification could there have been in this
case, than a blunt statement of a doctrine which would im-
mediately appeal to their Roman judge as absurd and impos-
sible, the doctrine of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy
Eucharist. Furthermore— ocZies^e quefn l(Bseris—\he natural
antipathy of apostates for their former brethren would lead
them to divulge what they knew to be the dearest secret of
those whose company they had deserted. Why, then, should
these informers, if genuine apostates, carefully veil the most
striking doctrine of the Church, its most intimate and best
beloved secret, as well as its most apparently impossible mys-
tery, the abiding presence of the very Jesus Christ who had
been slain by the Roman power which was now working itself
out in the hands of Pliny and Trajan? Instead of follow-
ing the natural course and exposing Christianity, these apos-
tates, Mgr. Batiffol would have us believe, skilfully shield
the faith they have abandoned, by the use of an equivocal
description of the Holy Eucharist, cihum promiscuum et in-
noxium. The hypothesis of apostasy and the hypothesis of a
delicate concern for the sacredness of the Christian mystery,
do not fit well together.
The more probable theory is that these informers were not
intentional apostates, but only weak-kneed brethren— Zapsi or
sacrificati, as they would have been called in after days— who
had sacrificed under fear of torture, but had still some sense
of Christian fidelity to conscience. Under this supposition
490 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
their conduct is perfectly intelligible. Just as in the later
persecution of Diocletian, when the demand was made upon
the Christians to surrender their '^ magical' ' books, they gave
over, instead of the Scriptures, writings of minor importance,
keeping what was really sacred, so now these informers, still
Christian at heart, tell the governor about the less essential of
their religious practices, the prayers, the hymns, the ''oath,''^^
the common meal, cibum promiscuum et innoxium, but they
conceal under silence the awful and unmentionable truth of
the Holy Eucharist.
A confirmation of the likelihood of this latter interpretation
is to be found in a close scrutiny of the text itself, ^'The
Christians,'' says Pliny, ^^ declared that they had desisted
from this custom after the publication of my edict by which,
according to your commands, I forbade the meeting of any
assemblies." What is the ^^ custom" of which the governor
speaks ? Judging from the construction of the Latin sentence,
he means the custom last mentioned, namely, that of ' ' eating a
harmless meal in common." The text runs, ^* . . . morem
rursus coeundi ad capiendum cibum promiscuum tamen et in-
noxium, quod ipsum facer e desisse post edictum meum/'
Apparently, ^^quod ipsum' ' refers immediately to ^^ad capien-
dum cihum/' which cannot consequently, mean ^* partake of
the Eucharist," since it is inconceivable that the Christians
should abandon the very essential act of their eligion. Pro-
fessor Eamsay ^^ adds the support of his learning to this expla-
nation by a reference to the Eoman Law in regard to societies.
**The Eoman government," he says, ** expressly allowed to all
peoples the right of meeting for purely religious purposes."
The morning meetings of the Christians were religious and
Pliny obviously accepts them as strictly (i. e., in the strict
sense of the term) legal. The evening meeting was social, it
included a common meal, and therefore constituted the Christ-
** This word " oath," " sacramentum," has naturally been an object of dis-
cussion. In view of the aversion of the Christians to taking an " oath," it may
seem possible that the word " sacramentum " already had its later meaning, and
that therefore it means the Eucharist, though Pliny could not understand it in
any other than a judicial sense " oath," However, it is improbable that the
Christian word " sacramentum " is of so early an origin. Tertullian, tran-
scribing the passage, paraphrases sacramento se ohstringere, adds ad confceder-
andam disciplinam. Apolog. C. 2. In any case our argument concerning the
meaning of cibum promiscuum is not invalidated.
••The Church in the Roman Empire," p. 219, f. f.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE, 491
ian community a sodalitas, an illicit assembly. The Christians
abandoned the illegal meeting but continued the legal one.^"^
^ ^ This fact is one of the utmost consequence. It shows that
the Christian communities were quite alive to the necessity of
acting according to the law and of using the forms of the
law to screen themselves, as far as was consistent with their
principles. ' '
This opinion of Mr. Eamsay, if accepted, must prove that
the words of the text of Pliny refer very plainly to a common
meal, an Agape, and not to the Eucharist.^^
" The question whether any meeting of the Christians could have been " in
the strict sense of the term legal " has been vigorously debated. Professor
Ramsay maintains, with the usual authority of his erudition, that " there was
no express law or formal edict against the Christians in particular, nor were they
prosecuted for contravening any formal law of a wider character interpreted as
applying to them." The prosecutions under this theory were instigated by popu-
lar sentiment, and carried out in virtue of an established principle that the
Christians were outlaws, utterly beyond the scope of positive legal enactments.
Mgr. Duchesne appears to corroborate Professor Ramsay's view in a recent article
in the "Miscellanea di Storia Ecclesiastica," etc. (Rome, November, 1902),
holding that it is hardly possible to consider the emperors of the first two cen-
turies as veritable persecutors. The true persecutor in these times was the pagan
public. In the third and fourth centuries, the case was different, special edicts
being issued," etc.
On the other side of the controversy the most considerable figure is M. Paul
Allard ("Histoire des Persecutions," p. 64, ff., and p. 160), who declares it his
conviction that actual edicts, making the Christians nominally and effectively
an illicit association, were issued in the times of Nero and Domitian. Nero,
according to Sulpitius Severus ("Chron.," II, 41), had decreed in terse phrasing
characteristic of the Roman Law " Non licet esse vos." Domitian added the
charge, whether or not it was embodied in an edict " propter atheismum et mores
Judaicos." Tertullian (Apol. 4, 5) argues throughout as if he knew of written
existing laws against the Christians, and to his testimony may be added the less
weighty, but not less decisive words of Melito of Sardis (Eusebius, H. E., IV, 26),
of the author of " de Mortibus Persecutorum " and Orosius ("Adv. Pag.
Hist.," 7, 5).
The controversy, then, is a serious one, not to be settled off hand in a note.
Por our practical purpose we may say that whatever the issue, whether it be
determined that the Christians under Trajan were or were not in a strictly
legal position, the explanation I have given of their conduct in Bithynia under
Pliny, is reasonable. If there were particular laws against them, it would be
well for them to give up such of their meetings as would make them an illegal
society, in order to be able to show themselves in all thing law-abiding, as far
as possible, that is, in matters where the law of the state did not come in con-
flict with the higher law of God. That the Christians did so conduct themselves
was the favorite contention of all the apologists. If, on the other hand, there
were no law against them as Christians, they would again do well to escape the
law against sodalicia, in order to be able to prove that persecution against them
had no legal warrant.
In both hypotheses it would seem very probable that the meeting abandoned
by the Christians in consequence of the edict of Trajan against " Sodalicia," was
such a meeting as brought them under the edict — namely a social meeting ad
capiendum cihum, in effect an Agap6.
**This opinion, however, though we believe it can be demonstrated true, ig
debatable; but strangely enough, Mgr. Batiffol, who for the moment has turned
from Dr. Keating and crossed swords with Professor Ramsay, chooses for his
492 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
From the discussion, then, of the text of Pliny we may
conclude that the probable facts are these : Because of the pres-
sure of the law against societies enacted by the emperor and
actively enforced by his governor, the Christians abandoned
one of their two meetings. The meeting abandoned could not
have been the Eucharistic one, yet it was one in which they
took their cihum promiscuum et innoxium. This common
food, then, was not the Eucharist. There is no reason for
denying the traditional belief that it was the Agape. There-
fore an Agape had probably been in existence in Bithynia
previous to the time of Pliny's letter to Trajan.
But was this Agape connected with the Eucharist? Prob-
ably not. We have seen that there were two meetings. The
social gathering was held in the evening; its feature was the
partaking of food in common. The other meeting was held in
the morning; its feature, in the words of the governor, was
Sacramento se oh string er.e. It has been pointed out by
Lightfoot and others that since the Christians were undoubt-
edly opposed to the taking of an oath of any kind, the word
sacramentum, naturally misunderstood by the Roman lawyer,
may have already obtained its technical meaning of ^ * the mys-
tery, ' ' and so may, in Pliny, indicate the Holy Eucharist.
Tertullian uses the word sacramentum eucharistice, and
speaks of its being celebrated '^in antelucanis coetihus/'^^
Now, the words of Pliny informants are strikingly similar.
They met amie lucem and a sacramentum was the purpose of
their meeting.
If this surmise is correct; if the sacramentum was indeed
the Eucharist, and the cihum promiscuum y on the other hand,
was the Agape, we have come to a conclusion of no little sig-
nificance—that in one of the provinces, in the first years of the
second century, the Love-Feast had ceased to have its litur-
gical character. It does not follow, of course, that the separ-
point of attack the least vulnerable point in his adversary's reasoning, the very-
sound and documentarily defensible statement that strictly religious associations
were not under the ban with mere sodalicia. The very assembling for religious
service, he maintains, was enough to constitute the Christian a sodalitas, and
therefore the morning meeting, as well as that of the evening, was illegal
("Etudes," etc., p. 290). It would be interesting to know by what process of
thought Mgr. Batiffol escapes the plainly contradictory clause of the Lex Julia
" religionis causa coire non prohihentur."
*• " De Corona Militis," c. 3,
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 493
ation took place thus early all over the empire ;^^ still, the
fact arrived at is of essential importance in our investigation,
and deserving of more than passing remark. I shall return to
it again in concluding the discussion of the texts of the second
century.
And now naturally we are led to the promised suggestion
concerning the silence of Justin Martyr, a suggestion that is
a corollary to the thesis of the separation of the Eucharist from
the Agape in the time of Pliny.
If the law against sodalitia was so strictly enforced by Tra-
jan in the provinces, it was, we may suppose, enforced also at
Eome. Hence, in all probability, the Agape was abandoned in
urhe as well as in orbe somewhere in the vicinity of the year
112. It is conceivable, then, that Justin, born in the year 100,
knew little or nothing about it by personal experience, and
whatever he may have known of it by tradition, he would
hardly mention in a petition for tolerance of the Christian
worship. It was enough for him to defend what had to be
defended, without adding to his task the burden of an apology
for a custom already abandoned and not essential. Hence, he
ignores the Agape. There are evidences, however, that it was
suffering, in the time of Justin, only a temporary obscurity.
Its end had not yet come.
The critical text for or against the second-century Agape
and, indeed, for or against the Agape in any century, is found
in the thirty-ninth chapter of the Apologeticus of TertuUian.
Dr. Kraus,^^ summarizing all the passages of Christian and
pagan literature of the first four centuries, which refer to the
Agape selects only six as loci classici. Of these six, four are
taken from the writings of Tertullian, and the most important
of the four is undoubtedly the one I have named. Hence, it is
conservative to say that the fate of this text, under criticism,
must go far to determine whether the story of the Agape be
fact or fable.
Mgr. Batitfol, coming to this discussion, begins with a
retraction. He had, he confesses, considered Tertullian as an
'''At Alexandria, e. g. (to name the extreme exception) the union seems to
have lasted centuries longer (Socrates, H. E., v., 22).
^^ " Real Encyclopsedie," s. v. Agape.
33cuB
494 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
unobjectionable witness of the existence of the Agape,^^ 13^^ ^
more careful study has convinced him that Tertullian really
' ' says not a word about the Agape. ' '^^
Assuredly, there ought to be a powerful reason for such
a complete volte-face as this. What is Mgr. BatitfoPs reason?
Evidently it is not external authority, for here, as elsewhere,
he stands in most conspicuous isolation. ^^ All the critics,'' as
he says, *^have seen— and all except him do still see— an
undeniable evidence of the Agape in Tertullian. It is natural
then, that we should expect some exceptionally luminous criti-
cism, some particularly cogent argumentation in Mgr. Batif-
foPs discussion of the passage before us. Let us see if our
expectations shall be realized.
This famous thirty-ninth chapter of the Apologeticus— it
will be remembered— is alternately a glowing description of
Christian manners and virtues, and a withering excoriation of
the contrasted pagan customs and vices. The pagans, on their
own acknowledgment, are without affection, without fraternal
charity, but the Christians *4ove one another," care for one
another; they have a common treasure, the provision of the
spontaneous generosity of the brethren. This ^^ deposit fund
of piety" is used for the relief of the poor and the ship-
wrecked, for those that are exiled to the mines, for widows and
orphans, and in general, for all such as are in need of charity.
*^One thing the moneys are not used for," says Tertullian—
and there is a savage irony in his allusion— ^* they are not spent
on feasts, drinking-bouts and eating-houses. ' '
Now notice here, says Mgr. Batiffol, the common fund of
the Christian community is not spent on eating and drinking.
Yes, we do notice the statement, but we notice too, with sur-
prise, the insinuation in the interpretation. Mgr. Batiffol will
have us suppose that this passing fling from the ^'perfervid
African" is a downright denial that any Christian money was
spent in providing common feasts. We shall remember this
assertion and refer to it. Tertullian continues: '^So true and
so practical is brotherly love in the Christian society that the
faithful hold all their goods in common. There is com-
""Dic. de Th6ologie," s. v. Agap6.
""Etudes," etc., p. 291.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 495
munity of property among the brethren, just as— and here he
is himself again— there is community of wives among the pa-
gans. ' ' And finally, coming to the matter which is of present
interest to us— the indignant apologist exclaims: **You abuse
our humble feasts; every pagan club can wallow in its glut-
tony; the Megarans feast as if they were to die to-morrow,
. . . the Salii cannot feast without running into debt,*' to
reckon the cost of the public sacrificial banquets would
require the skill of an expert accountant; the official celebra-
tion of the mysteries calls for the most skilful chefs obtain-
able, the kitchens wherein is prepared the banquet of Serapis
vomit forth enough smoke to bring out the fire-department;
all this is not alone tolerated, but encouraged ; while the modest
supper-room of the Christians is the cause of great commotion
and indignation among the Eomans. And now that they may
know what goes on in that modest supper-room. Tertullian
proceeds to describe the Christian custom exactly.
* * Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it Agape
i. e., affection. Whatever it costs our outlay in the name of piety is
gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy. If
the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its fur-
ther regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no
vileness or immodesty. The participants before reclining taste first
of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of
hunger; as much is drunk as benefits the chaste. They say it is
enough who remember that even during the night they have to wor-
ship God. . . . After washing of hands and the bringing in of
lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to
God, either one from the Holy Scriptures or one of his own composing
—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced
with prayer, so with prayer it is closed. We go from it, not like troops
of mischief-makers, nor gangs of vagabonds, nor to break out into
licentious acts, but to have as much care of our chastity as if we had
been at a school of virtue rather than at a banquet. ' '
I have quoted this entire passage, because the narrative
itself is clearer than any transcript that could be made of it.
It requires no particular zealous partisan to see that these sen-
tences are as irrefragable a testimony to the existence of the
Agape as could be constructed. Even Mgr. Batiffol, who,
496 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
when he wrote his article ''Agapes^' in the ^ ' Dictionnaire de
Theologie,'' was anxious to bring its origin down as late as
possible, was compelled to confess that here in Tertullian was
what he called the first historical evidence of the practice of the
Love-Feast. But now after ^'une etude plus attentive/' of the
text quoted, he draws the astounding conclusion: ''Such is
Tertullian 's description, which we consider to be a description
of the Eucharist and not of the Agape/' If any lesser
authority than Mgr. Batiffol stood sponsor for such an opin-
ion, we might say : ' ' Your conclusion is evidently at fault, the
passage stands for itself. ' ' But he is among the first of our
critics and he is in his own field of historical criticism. He
once shared the opinion of the ordinary reader, yes and of ' ' all
the critics'' and he declares that only as the result of more
searching investigation has he changed his mind. Not cour-
tesy, then, but duty demands that we attempt, at least, to
follow along the path of his argument.
His first reason is a sweeping one— a trifle a priori, to be
sure, but not less conclusive on that account. This apparent
feast cannot be the Agape, he says, it must be the Eucharist.
"Why? Because the apologist mu^t speak as Justin Martyr
does, of the Eucharist. But unless Tertullian speaks of it
here, he speaks of it nowhere in the Apologeticus. Therefore,
he speaks of it here ! Was there ever so bold an application
of a priori reasoning !
Everyone knows that this kind of argument is an exceed-
ingly delicate weapon of controversy. If handled at all, it
must be used with great dexterity, and even then, it can be of
advantage only when an opponent is unarmed with any instru-
ment of defence. But to fare forth into the field of criticism
with the slender equipment of a mere a priori dictum and hope
to overcome an adversary armed with an historical testi-
mony as plain and as broad as words can make it, such as
we have seen in the passage quoted, this is to invite defeat.
Yet this is Mgr. BatiffoPs venture, and this his preliminary
argument. We know he counts it his first argument, because
he says he will go on to a second. This second is, if possible,
more unsatisfactory than the first. Tertullian, he says, is
answering the charge of the pagans— ''Your feasts are infam-
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 497
ously wicked/' Now the wickedness the pagans alluded to
was infanticide, and the charge of infanticide grew out of a
gross misunderstanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice. There-
fore, the supper which Tertullian describes is the one the
pagans misunderstood, the Holy Eucharist. So Mgr.
Batiffol.
It is difficult to imagine what may be the function of the
ordinary manuals of historical criticism when a master of
the art runs riot in this manner. If we could grant that Ter-
tullian is defending his brethren against the charge of infanti-
cide alone, and if we could forget the positive statements in
his description of the Christian feast, there might be some
show of plausibility in Mgr. BatifPoPs contention. But we can
do neither the one nor the other. The fact is, the apologist has
already, in his seventh chapter, dwelt at length on the accusa-
tions of infanticide and incest. Here, in the thirty-ninth chap-
ter he is concerned principally with the accusation of extrava-
gance. He contrasts the luxury of the Megarans and the
Salii with the frugality of the Christians, and explains that
there is no extravagant outlay of money for the humble repast
of the community. Mgr. Batiffol should have had a more
plausible foundation for his a priori argument.
But to proceed; the charge of crime (be it of one kind or
another) is brought forth. Tertullian is ready with his
answer. Not the truest and strongest answer which would be
a description of the Holy Eucharist;— no, not this, says Mgr.
Batiffol, for this would be unintelligible to his pagan readers,
but his answer is an appeal to the name of the feast ' ' Agape, ' '
which means *4ove.'' Surely a feast bearing such a name
could not be made an occasion of infamy: this is proof con-
clusive. Can Mgr. Batitfol really be so unacquainted with
Tertullian— Tertullian always exuberant with argument,
always abounding with proof upon proof, Tertullian over-
whelming with the riches of his logic and with the flow of his
reasons? How could such as he be content with an appeal
to a mere word in defence against the accusation of hideous
crime !
^ * Tertullian, ' ' continues Mgr. BatifPol, ^'says not another
word about the nature of the feasts (an unintelligible state-
498 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ment in view of what is to come, but these are the ipsissima
verba of the critic), ^^ but the word he uses is the same which
St. Ignatius applied to the Eucharist/' Now, we can hardly
recall that this was the conclusion of our exegesis of St.
Ignatius; what we do remember is that this is the word Mgr.
Batiffol claims Ignatius gave to the Eucharist, but that a con-
trary opinion was as strong as his. And here again we are
face to face with a fundamental principle of criticism. In the
discussion of the passage from Ignatius, Mgr. Batiffol com-
plained that those who translate drdrry^ by *' Love-Feast, ' ' in the
eighth chapter of Smyrngeans, are in reality reading into the
word a meaning it did not have until the fourth century. But
now Mgr. Batiffol's adversaries might retort that he per-
sistently refuses to read into the word found in a text of the
end of the second century any other meaning than one it
may probably have had in the very first years of the century.
He says : ^ ' If we are to translate dydKif^ by * Love-Feast, ' we must
have no precedent against such a translation in the Epistles of
St. Ignatius. ' ' Can this be a valid principle of interpretation 1
May not a word change its meaning in a hundred years 1 Be-
sides, precedent or no precedent, there is a strong independent
reason for reading ^^Love-Feasf here; namely, the clear
description Tertullian gives of the * ' eating and drinking, ' ' of
reclining, etc.; a description which must, to put the case as
mildly as possible, be taken in a non-natural sense in order
to make it mean anything but a literal meal. In the face of
this description and of the declaration that the feast described
is called dydnif^ any precedent usage of the word argues but
feebly, if at all, against the present translation.
On two points, then, this reasoning of Mgr. Batiffol is
unsatisfactory. He would have us accept the very lame theory
that Tertullian repels the charge of vice in connection with
the Christian ccenula by an appeal merely to the name of the
supper— an almost palpable impossibility when we reflect that
we are dealing with Tertullian— and, secondly, he asks us
to believe that because one very debatable reading extracts
** Eucharist '' from dyd?:!^ in St. Ignatius, the word, whenever
it occurs in Tertullian, must mean Eucharist, the possible
" L. c, pp. 294-5.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 499
precedent in Ignatius having determined the meaning once
for all.
But now we are come to the heart of the matter, the
beginning of the actual description— for Tertullian does give
a detailed description in spite of Mgr. BatiffoPs declaration
that ^ 'he says nothing of the nature of the feast. '^
** Whatever it costs the outlay in the name of piety is gain, for
with the good things of the feast we feed the needy. ' '
Evidently, it was hasty in our critic to say that the one
thing certain about the little fund of the Christian community
is that it was not spent for eating and drinking. There is
*'cost,'^ and *' outlay,*' and the result is ''good things of the
feast."
"The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer
to God.** "So,** says Mgr. Batiifol, "some one will say
there was a reclining, and therefore, a feast. But no, this
word 'reclining* is symbolic! Just as the words 'coenula/
^triclinium' and * convivium/ elsewhere in Tertullian are sym-
bolic, so here ' discumbitur/ 'reclining,* is symbolic.**
Shall we dare accuse the savant of so puerile a fault as
petitio principal Who says ^^ coenuW 'Hriclinium/' ^^convi-
vium^' are symbolic? Only Mgr. Batiffol. And who says
^ ^ discumhitur' ' is symbolic? Again, only Mgr. Batiffol. And
why is ^^discumbitur'' symbolic? Because ^^coenula/' etc.,
are symbolic.
"As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger: as much is
drunk as benefits the chaste. ' '
The language does look more and more like a description
of a substantial meal, but no, it is all symbolic, says the
critic, and he summons his erudition— summons it too, from
afar— to support his theory. The description of Abercius, he
informs us, speaks of a mystical Bread and Wine which is
Christ; so here the faithful eat and drink mystically. They
' ' recline at a table, * * " satisfy the cravings of hunger, * * " drink
moderately,** but we are asked to believe that all this is done
in spiritu and not in veritate because the inscription of Aber-
cius speaks of a mystical Bread and Wine which is Christ.
500 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
** At the close of the meal, each one is asked to stand forth and sing,
as he can, a hymn to Christ- a proof of the measure of our drinking,''
^^ which means,'' says Mgr. Batiffol, ^^that they hardly drank
at all." True, if he will have it so, but Tertullian does not
say so; rather they drank ''as much as befits the chaste.''
It was an ungracious task a moment ago, to convict a
veteran critic of neglect of one of the rudimentary principles
of his art, and we must be loth even to suspect that so capable
a scholar can make the mistakes of a novice ; none the less it
must be recorded that he has, if not mistranslated, yet
strangely manipulated the closing text of the passage. Ter-
tullian says :
^'Ecec coitio Christianorum merito sane illicitae si illicitis par
merito damnanda si non dissimilis dammandis."
Now, the natural translation of these words is: ''This
assembly of the Christians is illicit if it is like (other) illicit
assemblies; it is to be condemned if it is not unlike (other)
assemblies that are to be condemned." that is ''Jkec coitio'' is
the subject of ''est illicita et damnanda/' The reader will
pardon this elementary information when I say that Mgr.
Batitfol translates ''Hcec coitio Christianorum/' this is the
assembly of the Christians," and proceeds to construct an
argument from his translation, ''this/' this alone, and no other
is the Christian assembly. "What," he asks himself, "no
other assembly;" and he likewise answers himself, "None,"
for Tertullian says "this is the assembly of the Christians."
Therefore since there is no other which might be the Euchar-
istic one, this is the Eucharistic one, and "any indea of an
Agape is out of the question. ' '^^
Surely, this is swift logic and extraordinary, but it is pain-
ful to remember that the whole argument rests upon so small
a thing as a punctuation mark, and that the punctuation mark
is of Mgr. Batiff ol 's own insertion. Drop the colon which he
places (and he alone) after "Christianorum/' and the argu-
ment falls to the ground.
One more statement invites comment; he makes it at the
beginning of his consideration of Tertullian, but its value may
"L. c, p. 297.
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 501
be better seen now. *^In this chapter,'' he says,^^ ^^Tertullian
describing the different Christian reunions'' (he has just said,
by the way, that there was only one reunion), ^* mentions as the
exercises of these reunions, prayer, reading of the Scriptures
and the administration of censures . . . but he says nothing
at all about a common repast. ' ' But we ask with all patience,
how can Tertullian speak of a common repast, if when he talks
of reclining at table, of eating and drinking, of suppers, and
banquets, yt)u deny that all this means a repast! In what words
would Mgr. Batitf ol have his author describe a supper if not in
these words ; supposing Tertullian wanted to describe a feast,
how could he be more explicit than he is ?
But, perhaps, I have delayed too long on faults of reason-
ing that are only too evident. Tertullian is clearly a witness
of the Agape and nothing proves it better than the violence
of the attempt we have seen to distort his testimony. The
fact that Mgr. Batitfol is dominated by his thesis is patent.
He has manipulated words and sentences arbitrarily, he has
suggested unnatural and improbable explanations of state-
ments that needed no explanation, he has most strangely
violated elementary principles of criticism, he has misused his
erudition, and, what is worse than all this, he proceeds to
impute motives to those who do not agree with him.
He says, p. 299: ^^Mr. Keating is evidently one of those
dogmatists who are disposed to think that texts never prove
anything against theses ! ' ' But the end and the outcome of the
argument of the leading opponent of the Agape is to settle
our conviction that Tertullian is an undeniable witness to its
existence.^^
As to the character of the Agape in Tertullian, there can
be little doubt. There is no evidence whatsoever that the
feast detailed in Apologeticus 39, had any connection with
Eucharist. On the contrary there is explicit statement of the
fact that it was given primarily to help the poor and needy.
It was not in any sense Eucharistic.
'^'L. c, 292.
" There are several other passages in Tertullian, which ,bear on the Agap6,
viz., "Ad Martyras," c. 156; " de Baptismo," c. 9; " de Jejunio," c. 17 (these
three with Apolog. c. 39 are the " loci-classici " of Kraus) ; "ad IJxorem," ii, 5;
"ad Nationes," 7; " de Corona Militis," 3 (these three are rather irrelevant
though quoted by Dr. Keating).
502 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Thus is completed the examination of the texts we have
named as important among the documents of the second cen-
tury Agape. Two deductions, it seems, may be given as the
result.
First: There are evidences, strong and convincing, of the
existence in the second century of a Christian common meal,
and that in the early part of the century this meal had a pecu-
liar sacred character; that it was, in fact, the liturgical Agape.
Second: This very tangible evidence may be used retro-
actively, so to speak, in support of the less evident evidences
of the first century. It is no violation, but rather an applica-
tion, of sound critical principles to use the certain knowledge
yielded by sub-apostolic documents for the elucidation of un-
certain passages in the New Testament. One need not, by
claiming this, lay oneself open to the charge of ^* reading a
second-century meaning into a first-century text. ' ' Not at all,
for this could only be if the first-century text had a certain
and demonstrable meaning of its own, contradictory to that
of the later text. In the case in hand, the earlier documents
have no such inviolable certainty of meaning. They are, to
say the most— or the least— dubious; they may be read in
either of two ways, and therefore the interpreter of them may
legitimately assist himself by a reference to and a comparison
with the more evident meaning of the later texts.
The question of the liturgical character of the Agape in the
second century, is a little more complex. Outside the canon-
ical writings there are few, almost none, that contribute accur-
ately to our information on this point. It is admitted by all,
that as far as we may judge from written documents, the
Eucharist was separated from its primitive setting, in many
parts of the Church, long before the end of the second century.
Starting with this acknowledged truth, we may, by a process of
elimination push back the date of their disunion until we come
to a point not many decades removed from the time of the
Holy Scriptures themselves. Tertullian, describing the Agape
as it was conducted in the latter half of the second century
gives us, as we have seen, no reason for thinking that it was
part of the ritual of the Eucharist. On the contrary, he in-
clines us to believe, if we compare the passage already dis-
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 503
cussed with the passage '^De Corona Militis/' c. 3,^^ that the
two were held at opposite extremities of the day.
Justin Martyr, describing the Eucharist, as it was cele-
brated fifty years before Tertullian, makes no mention of an
Agape as its accompaniment. Already, then, we are in the
first half of the second century ; how much further back must
we go to find the Agape occupying its primary position of
honor? Mgr. Duchesne gives his opinion that the Eucharistic
Agape had ceased as early as *^one hundred years after the
first preaching of the Gospel,'' and there is no means of
gainsaying his statement. Hence, we are come from the first
half into the first quarter of the second century. And here we
read some definite information, the letter of Pliny to Trajan,
written in the year 112, which, as I have suggested, is the im-
portant document for the determination of the time when the
Agape had ceased to be liturgical. Its testimony is, not only
that the separation had taken place in the year 112, but that
some time previous to that date the Christians had ceased to
observe the common meal.
Farther back than Pliny's letter we cannot go, for no earlier
text yields any sure information relevant to the question of
the character of the Agape.^^
From the extra-canonical writings, we have but a nig-
gardly amount of data from which to argue to the existence of
a Eucharistic Agape. So insignificant, indeed, is the informa-
tion on this point, and so reluctantly is it yielded to the exegete
that anyone having at heart the thesis that Agape was indeed
liturgical after the time of St. Paul, must be often worried for
proofs. Suffice it for us, having no particular thesis, but being
concerned only with the fact, to state the evidence, such as it
is and let it determine its own worth as historical evidence.
III. Conclusion.— The net results of our short research into
the existence and character of the primitive Agape, may be set
down briefly thus :
•* " Eucharistise sacramentum etiam antelucanis coetibus sumimus."
"' I think this is true, in spite of the opinion of Lightfoot and Zahn, that of
the Eucharistic Agap6 there are indications in early documents besides Ignatius,
especially in the Didache. Dr. Bigg, in his edition of "-The Teaching of the
Apostles," denies that the DidacM contains any certain mention, not to say a
description, of the Agap6. An examination of the texts usually cited — 10, 1 ;
11, 9; 16, 2; and 14, 1 — confirms his opinion rather than that of Lightfoot or of
Zahn.
504 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
The Agape remains a phenomenon surrounded by not a
little mystery. Much of the traditional information so confi-
dently asserted in manuals and even in special treatises, is sup-
ported by very meagre documentary evidence. Not only are
the sources usually alleged few, at the best, but perhaps a ma-
jority of them cannot stand scrutiny. Scholars who hold to
the theory that the Agape was the primitive rite of the Holy
Eucharist, and therefore, a prominent feature of early Christ-
ian worship, are confounded with an insoluble problem : Why
is there so little mention of this rite in the Christian docu-
ments of the first two centuries? Out of a score of the so-
called evidences of the second century, not more than three or
four are satisfactory, and the greater part of those rejected
are so patently inapplicable that one can only be astonished to
know that they were ever brought forth in testimony.
Farther, even among what we reckon the valid texts of the
second century, all save one— Tertullian's Apologeticus— are
vague and dubious; they need not a little exegesis and some
application of comparative criticism before they yield avail-
able information. The texts of the Sacred Scripture— they
are few— need the support of one another and of the later
testimonies, if they are to prove that the Agape was of a litur-
gical character.
This is one way of presenting the difficulty. Another way
is to mention the writers who might reasonably be expected
to mention the Agape and yet ignore it : the Didache, Clement
of Rome to the Corinthians, The Epistle to Diognetus, Justin
Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, all the apologists in fact, except
Tertullian. Ignatius, Pliny and Tertullian are the only writ-
ers who give explicit or positive witness to its existence. Let
it be understood, of course, that this number of those who
ought to speak and are silent is not so summarily thrown out of
court by the ex-prof esso counsellors for the defence of the
Agape; many of them are summoned as valuable witnesses,
but I think, whether wisely or unwisely, that they have little or
nothing of value to offer.
Now the question remains : Can the tradition of the exist-
ence of a primitive liturgical Agape be deemed valid when so
many writers ignore it, and when the few who speak of it— with
THE CHRISTIAN AGAPE. 505
an exception or two— use equivocal language? I think the
answer must be in the affirmative. For though I appreciate
the difficulty of the proof, and do not, with Mgr. Batiffol,^^
declare there is no puzzle in the matter save for those who
choose to make one, still I feel that sufficient reasons have been
indicated, in spite of the many lacun<e of evidence, to encour-
age and support a conviction that the Agape existed in the
primitive days of Christianity and that it was primarily a part
of the Eucharistic service. These two points were the main
object of our discussion. We found them both denied, we have
reached an opinion that the denial is unwarranted.
As to the means of arriving at the conclusion, the general
rules of interpretation which I have endeavored to follow have
been insinuated in passing. Suffice it to say, by way of
resume, that I have been unable to accept the stringent canons
of criticism implicitly laid down by Mgr. Batiffol. I have
thought that, provided there be some actual documentary wit-
ness and a considerable tradition for the existence of an al-
leged fact, we must not insist too rigorously upon having posi-
tive and full demonstration of its historicity, especially if we
are dealing with an institution of such remote antiquity. A
thousand difficulties need not make a doubt. Tradition,
rational hypothesis and historical imagination go far to fill
up the gaps in the written and monumental evidences.
The rigid criticism exercised by Mgr. Batiffol, has not been
without its provocation in the placidity with which many
writers have accepted conclusions on the Agape simply because
they are traditional. But we fear the eminent critic, in his
indignation, has wielded the weapons of his warfare recklessly
and has succeeded only in wounding himself and his own
thesis.
Moreover, I imagine there is a trace of animus discoverable
in his effort. He seems to be nettled by a fear of the unortho-
doxy of the old opinion. His final words have in them some-
thing of the bitter savor of controversy: ^^ Perhaps the Prot-
estants have affirmed (the traditional view of the Agape as the
rite of the Eucharist) gladly, seeing in it a fact capable of
weakening the Catholic conception of the mass, and Catholics,
^L. c, p. 279.
606 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
not suspecting this aspect of the question, have just as confi-
dently accepted the traditional view/'
We must confess that we are still among the unsuspecting
Catholics who can see in the Agape even though it be part of
the primitive ritual of the Eucharist, no danger for our con-
ception of the Holy Sacrifice. During the whole investigation
we have met with no suggestion, worthy of notice, that the
idea of the Mass can he in the remotest way affected by the
character of the Agape. As for the possible bias of Protestant
scholars, it is noticeable they have generally been at pains to
explain that the Eucharist and the Agape are essentially dif-
ferent institutions. Dr. Keating, whom Mgr. BatifPol singles
out as his especial opponent, is especially explicit in this
matter. Though he laments a little over the fate of the Agape,
he says (p. 152) : *^But after all, it was the Eucharist and not
the Agape that was of divine institution, and so it was the
Eucharist, the institution of Him who *knew what was in
man, ' and not the Agape, which man had, with the best inten-
tions, added to the Eucharist, that survived. ' ' True it is, that
not all scholars have seen this essential distinction so clearly.
Corblet complains^^ that not only some erudite Protestants, but
Visconti himself (*^De Eitibus Missae,'' I., 2) confounded the
religious ceremony of the Agape with the sacrifice of the
Mass. ' ' But these have been the exceptions to the rule ; their
opinions have had no weight; all modern critics, Protestant
and rationalist as well as Catholic, generally agree that the
Eucharist was always distinct from the Agape, even though
the two were not always separated.
There seems, then, to be no need of fearing for the Catholic
idea of the Mass, because of any researches that have been
made into the question of the Love-Feast. The polemical ele-
ment need not enter the field ; it is a matter for the investigation
of those who are concerned purely with the history of the
liturgy, and when all is said that may be said on the Agape, the
conclusion will be given in the words of the Ordinances of the
Egyptian Church ''It is blessed bread, but not a sacrament,
like the Body of the Lord.''
Histoire de rEucharistie," II., p. 581.
THE CHRISTIAN AG APE. 507
IV. The Later Agape,— li will be impossible to prolong
this paper sufficiently to follow the Agape through the third
and fourth centuries, but a word may be said of this later
Agape merely by way of summarizing conclusions, not of
proving them.
The real enigma in the history of the Agape comes in the
third century. Though we might naturally expect, from what
we have seen, that in that period there would be a develop-
ment and an expansion of the custom, all such expectations
prove delusive. The third century writers who may be cited
by even the most eager partisan of the Agape are only three,
Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Cyprian. Of these
Clement has no commendatory reference to a Christian Agape,
but in two or three places^^ he vigorously denounces what may
have been either a relic of the early liturgical Agape or a sur-
vival of a pagan religious feast. As for Origen and Cyprian
they say so little, and say that little so obscurely, that they
prove nothing.
Hence, after examining the passages carefully, I find
myself changing masters, going over in allegiance to Mgr.
BatifPol, who derides any attempt to show an Agape in these
writers of the third century. This change of base may seem
strange, but it is the only possible move for one who examines
the texts with no disconcerting thesis or prejudice.
True, there is some room for discussion over the passages
in the ^ ^ Paedagogus ^ ' of Clement, but the best defence of the
Agape that can possibly be urged from the writings of the
great Alexandrine is that he reluctantly tolerates the practice
of a religious meal, but reprobates the habit of calling it an
Agape.
There is only one passage in all the voluminous writings
of Origen,^^ that can be alleged as a bare reference to the
Agape, and that one passage is scarcely relevant. At least
it shows nothing definite. Cyprian is even a poorer witness
than either Clement or Origen. In fact, the net result of a
careful examination of the Christian documents of the third
century can be only a conviction that in those one hundred
«^ P^dag. II, 1 ; II, 10, et.
"^Contra Celsum, I, 1.
508 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
years there fell from the pen of not one writer, east or west,
a sure undeniable reference to a phenomenon alleged to have
been of weekly if not of daily occurrence throughout the whole
Church. The significance of this conclusion must speak for
itself.
The fourth century, however, yields a generous supply of
texts, mostly from the various Church Ordinances, which
show a vigorously flourishing Agape. But it was not the
Agape of earlier days. Though it was perhaps, chronolog-
ically, a reminiscence of the primitive liturgical Agape, it was
essentially a survival or a transformation of a foreign and
totally different institution, that of the pagan semi-religious,
semi-social f eastings. Towards the end of the century it de-
generated very rapidly; it become first unrecognizable as a
symbolic feast of love, and then even intolerable as a means
of Christian charity. The AgapaB were changed into funeral
feasts, banquets, or meals at the graves of the dead. We
know the consequences from the indignant remonstrances of
a small host of bishops, synods and councils. Regulation be-
came impossible, tolerance would have been fatal. We hear
of ** gluttony'' ^'debauchery,'' and of drunkenness so common
at funerals as no longer to be considered a sin, and of Chris-
tians urging one other to drink to excess ostensibly in honor
of martyrs, over whose tombs they were carousing. The
abuses must have been notorious. They afforded a weapon
of controversy to Julian the Apostate, and to Faustus the
Manichaean. Augustine and Ambrose stigmatize the feasts as
''quasi-parentalia," ''so-called Agapss," and declared that
they made inns of the churches and Bacchian groves of the
cemeteries.
Evidently this could not endure. The feasts were over-
whelmed with anathemas; all meals in connection with any
sacred service were abolished— outlawed as paganism— a la-
mentable fate for a custom that had been, at its beginning, a
sign and symbol of fraternal love among Christians, and a part
of the solemn ceremony that enshrined the celebration of the
Blessed Eucharist.
James M. Giljlis, C.S.P.
St. Thomas' College, Washington, D. C.
WHO WILL BUILD THE UNIVERSITY CHURCH?
The Catholic University of America needs very badly a
suitable church. Large buildings of every character are
multiplying on its great campus, and in the immediate vicinity.
Libraries, laboratories, and class-rooms are not wanting. But
we all miss the noble architectural pile that ought to rise
heavenward amid this busy scene of intellectual labor, and
consecrate visibly the whole work to the service of Almighty
God.
It is only fitting that the choicest of our University build-
ings should be a beautiful structure destined to shelter the
venerable worship of Catholicism, to be an inspiration to all
lovers of the fine arts, a home for the solemn and incomparable
music of the Church, a stage for the religious instruction fitted
to the needs and quality of our students, and a vantage point
for the great Catholic art of preaching.
The City of Washington is peculiar among all the cities
of the New World for its cosmopolitan character, the high
intellectual average of its population, and the ease with which
great ideas spread from it throughout the civilized world.
Every year an increasing number of conventions and public
meetings take place within its limits. Religious bodies tend
more than ever to meet here as at a natural center. Only this
year the Episcopalians celebrated in this city a kind of General
Council that obtained for their body a universal attention and
recognition. It is only natural that in the future similar
meetings of Catholic dignitaries should take place within the
limits of the National Capital. For such occasions a worthy
architectural edifice is a primary need.
The Catholic Church in Washington should not be without
a noble ecclesiastical building on the grounds of the University
in which the religious life of its professors and of its students,
lay and ecclesiastical, might find suitable satisfaction, and
impulses of a high order.
There ought to be on the most prominent site in the
grounds of the University an edifice in which the dignity of
34CUB 509
610 CATHOLIC UNIVEBSITY BULLETIN.
our bishops and our priesthood might be worthily enshrined
on the occasion of the annual meetings of the Archbishops and
the Trustees of the University, representing the whole epis-
copate.
The growing body of ecclesiastical students need a large
church in which they may carry out the ceremonies of our
religious year on a scale commensurate with their antiquity,
their solemnity, and their profound significance.
As the life of the great National Capital, destined one day
to be the most beautiful and attractive in the world, takes on
wider development, the University is coming well within the
built-up sections of the city. If we had a beautiful and com-
modious church on the grounds of the University, the multi-
tude of our Catholic visitors would always find at hand the
occasion to spend a few minutes of prayer and thanksgiving
to the Almighty in presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and
surrounded by convincing evidences of the devotion of
Catholicism to the highest spiritual and intellectual ideals.
Finally, we ought to construct here an enduring edifice that
would be at once the becoming Tabernacle of the Most High
within our academic city, a nursery of piety and religious
sentiment, an open book in which all who entered would read
the wondrous mercies of God in the redemption of mankind
and His continuous love for all His creatures.
Who will consecrate to the honor of God this beautiful
temple? It should be at once spacious and inviting, the
flower of American Catholic genius in ecclesiastical architec-
ture, a monument visible from far and near. Its tall and
slender spire should lift the Cross of Jesus Christ before men
and angels. Its protecting shadow should fall over all the
homes of religion and the halls of learning that are yearly
dotting these grounds in goodly number. Not only earthly
renown, but the far more glorious, even eternal, reward of
divine approval would forever be the lot and share of those
ardent and generous souls who would devote to this work some
portion of the worldly goods that Almighty God has blessed
them with.
Thomas J. Shahan.
BOOK REVIEWS.
Hrotsvithae Opera : recensuit et emendavit Paulus de Winterfeld.
Berlin: Weidmann, 1902. 8°, pp. xxiv + 552.
The publishing house of AYeidmann in Berlin offers for the use
of schools select volumes of the Monumenta GermanicB Historica,
and among them the works of Hrotsvitha, the nun of Gandersheim,
who in the tenth century, under most unfavorable circumstances^
wrote a number of works with a distinctly literary aim. She became
thereby a precursor of the great poets who were to illustrate the later
mediaeval times in Germany. There could be no more striking proof
than Hrotsvitha 's work of the vitality of mediaeval culture amid the
most distressing environment. Hrotsvitha wrote some century and a
half after the death of the great Frankish Emperor Charles, who had
breathed new vigor into the intellectual life of Europe. Meantime,
the Northmen had devastated the coasts of the Atlantic and pene-
trated far into the interior of the old Emperor's possessions. On the
east the Hungarians had laid waste the borderland of the German
Empire with fire and sword. The sons and descendants of the great
Charles proved themselves sad degenerates, incapable of safe-
guarding the material and cultural interests of their Empire. Men
trembled for their property and their lives. How could they think
of culture and poetry? When Hrotsvitha appeared, it is true, the
accession of the Saxon line of Emperors had brought the dawn of
better days. Still, the gloom of the later Carlovingian era hung over
the land, and endless wars offered scant encouragement to the peaceful
muse. That at such a time she should inspire the inmate of a convent
to sing in the strains of the great classic poets of Rome is at once a
remarkable phenomenon and a clear proof that the mediaeval monas-
teries were truly homes of an intellectual life and nurseries of such
culture as existed. It was a praiseworthy thought to offer to students
of history, and especially to the Catholic students of mediaeval history,
the handsome volume we are bringing to the knowledge of our readers.
The publishers have done their duty well, for they have sent forth
Hrotsvitha in an attractive dress, and withal at a moderate cost.
Paul von Winterfeld, the editor, is a competent scholar, who has
spared no pains to furnish us a reliable text, with an introduction
that gives us its history and sources, and a life of the poet-nun, scant
indeed, but as full as research and criticism could make it. Add
511
512 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
to these ^'indices verhorum et nominum" as well as grammatical
and metrical indexes and it must be admitted that the student is well
equipped to do justice to our poetess.
Hrotsvit, so she always writes her name in the nominative case,
was a nun of the Benedictine convent of Gandersheim in Saxony,
founded in 852 by Liudolf, a descendant of the famous Saxon duke
Widukind. The little we know about her is almost entirely gathered
from her own writings. Hrotsvitha was bom about the year 935 A. D.,
of noble Saxon parents, as is inferred from the fact of her being a nun
of the convent of Gendersheim ; for this monastery was founded and
ruled by at least four members of the imperial Saxon family. It is
likely enough that Hrotsvitha was a relative of the Abbess Hrots-
vitha, who presided over the convent towards the end of the ninth
century. Her first mistress of studies, our author tells us herself, was
Rikardis; afterwards she received higher instruction, including
prosody and metric science, from Gerberg, daughter of Henry, duke
of Bavaria and brother of Otto I. Gerberg was very young when as a
sister nun she taught Hrotsvitha. She was born about 940 A. D., and
became Abbess not very long after 954 A. D. — the precise year con-
not be ascertained. Hrotsvitha was perhaps five or six years older
than Gerberg, and must have shown signs of promising scholarship
when the latter initiated her into the mysteries of poetic composition.
Hrotsvitha ever after was warm in expressing her gratitude to the
Abbess, who not only taught her but encouraged her in her efforts
to cultivate the Latin muse.
The rest of Hrotsvitha 's life is her poetry. There we learn to
know her as a true nun, devout, humble, and filled with the love and
value of holy virginity. Apart from the Latin studies prerequired
for her poetic efforts, she gives us some amusing samples of her inroads
into the theory of scholastic music and arithmetic. Most of her
similes and metaphors, instead of being drawn from nature or life,
are taken from the Bible. She shows a respectable knowledge of
many characters of the Old Testament. Her reading in the lives
of the saints had been wide in range, and her mind was fixed not
only on the incidents of the story and the characters of the heroes,
but also on the reflexions scattered throughout the legend. As regards
her love of the marvellous, she was a true daughter of her age.
In her dramas she shows not the faintest suspicion that the miraculous
is the enemy of the dramatic.
Hrotsvitha 's first efforts lay in the direction of narrative poetry;
she versified the story of the infancy of Our Lord, as told in the
Apocryphal Gospel of St. James. Twelve modest lines dedicated
BOOK REVIEWS. 513
the poem to her teacher the Abbess Gerberg, whom she begs to un-
dertake its correction. These lines, like the poem itself, are written
in elegant distichs, some of considerable rhythmic merit. Others again
are heavy and prosaic, and a few pages suffice to convince us that she
had either never read the great classical elegiac poets, or had failed
to catch their artful charm,— more likely the former. Withal, we are
surprised that in her days, and in the retirement of the cloister,
a German girl should have succeeded so well in mastering the intri-
cacies of Latin construction and rhythms. Let us not be misunder-
stood; Hrotsvitha's syntax is not always immaculate, her quantities
are far from correct at all times and her verse structure often limps.
On the other hand, let us bear in mind that systematic syntax was
only slowly built up by the Middle Ages, and was practically un-
known to the classical grammarians. The poet-nun has a vocabulary
almost free from barbarism. A closer scrutiny would suggest great
familiarity with the most ancient Latin writers, especially Plautus,
were we not reminded ever and anon that it may have been drawn
from Festus and his abbreviators, or from grammarians like Priscian.
No doubt as regards the specifically Christian part of her vocabulary,
Prudentius was one of her chief sources. The more closely we
examine Hrotsvitha's writings from the stylistic side, the oftener are
we surprised by finding that many of her strangest expressions are
supported by ancient authority.
The History of Christ's Childhood, or Maria as it is entitled by
Hrotsvitha, is written in elegiac verse; its successor, The Lord's
Ascension, which critics regard as the completion of Maria, is in
leonine hexameters. But we meet with few double rhymes, and even
the simple rhymes are often neglected.
As to the subject matter of Hrotsvitha's poems, we find precisely
what is to be expected from a nun. She sings the heroism and purity
of the Saints, especially of the holy virgins, the cunning of Satan
and the mercies of God. Her themes are almost without exception
taken from the legends and the martyrologies of the saints. She
celebrates the martyrdom of St. Gongulfus, St. Denis and St. Agnes,
basing her story on written legends, relates the passion of St. Pelagius,
a Spanish martyr of Cordova, as told her by an eye-witness, and tells
two stories of men who sold their souls to the devil but were saved by
the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and St. Basil. In her dramas
subjects of precisely the same character are treated; in " Gallicanus, "
the story of the martyrdom of Sts. John and Paul, that -of Sts. Agape,
Chionia and Irene in * ' Dulcitius, " and that of Sts. Fides, Spes and
Caritas in ' ' Sapientia. " The glories and trials of holy virginity are
514 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
sung in "Abraham," * ' Paf nutius, " and incidentally in nearly all
the plays in which the immediate theme is martyrdom. When we run
over the entire list we must recognize at once that Hrotsvitha's
literary work was the natural outgrowth of her daily life in the
cloister. This would surely suggest the celebration of virginity and its
heroines, while her Saxon nationality, the short time elapsed since
the conversion of her people to the faith, the descent of Liudolf,
the founder of the monastery at Gandersheim, from Widukind the
Saxon chief who first opposed Christianity with all his might and
finally became its zealous advocate, would lead her to praise the
champions of the faith, and to expose the cruelties of its heathen
persecutors. .
If literary appreciation and creative power, as evidenced in her
narrative poems, deserve our attention, her dramatic efforts are still
more worthy of notice. "Whether we compare her language with that
of the mysteries or moralities out of which developed the modern
drama, or consider her taste, her vigor, and at times her power to
conceive the feelings of a character in a given situation, we cannot
fail to see her great superiority over the early mediaeval dramatists.
But what most surprises us is that a pious nun, unacquainted with
the ways of the world should have succeeded so well in a species of
literary composition, which requires, as all agree, a thorough knowl-
edge of men and motives. What led Hrotsvitha to try her powers in
this new and novel species of literature? She herself tells us that
as many in her day read the clever but salacious plays of Terence, she
determined to celebrate in similar compositions the praiseworthy
virginity of holy maidens. The statement is clear and concise, and we
may infer therefrom, without hesitation, that Hrotsvitha's "comedies"
were not written for the stage. But what shall we say of her success
as a follower of Terence? Whoever reads these plays without preju-
dice or favor will agree that, while of a high merit as compared with
similar efforts even of later mediaeval times and by writers more
favored, her poems from their technical side in no way suggest
that Terence was her model. She knows nothing of the three unities.
Her plots, if the plays can be said to have plots, are without dramatic
coherence, while the action jumps from place to place, and extends
over months and years. Her love of the marvellous prohibits a
development of her stories in accordance with probability and
psychological truth. And yet, Terence, wicked as he is, is a master
of dramatic technique. Hrotsvitha says that she wrote these plays
in a dramatic rhythm and the manuscripts exhibit the text so as to
show sentences divided up into periods which not unf requently rhyme ;
BOOK REVIEWS. 515
but the poet has not the faintest suspicion of Terence's metres. In
this respect the poet-nun differs in no wise from her contemporaries
nor from mediaeval scholars in general. Indeed, if anything, her
rhythms suggests the rhythm of the psalms recited daily by her in the
office, with this difference that her lines are rhymed. Wherein, then,
does Hrotsvitha imitate Terence 1 No doubt so far as the difference of
theme and time permitted, first of all in his language, secondly, in de-
picting female characters only, as Hrotsvitha herself tells us, Terence
relates the story of the disgraceful vices of lascivious women, while
she celebrates the purity of holy virgins. Finally, she follows Terence
by telling her story in dialogue.
We have already said that the subject of our author's dramas are
drawn, one and all, from the legends or martyrologies of the saints;
we must add that she follows her sources with almost slavish fidelity,
so that even some of her finest remarks are copied bodily. Of inven-
tion properly so called, she shows almost no trace. Campare her writ-
ings, let us say with Shakespeare's history-plays, in this particular,
and we will see at once the difference between a dramatic artist and a
scrupulous copyist. Her method in this respect forbids all real dra-
matic construction, and justifies Hauck's description of the plays as
a "dialogised narrative."^ In two passages only do we meet with
more lengthy insertions; the part added being in each case taken
from scholastic philosophy. In the * ' Paf nutius, " that saint gives
his disciples a long lesson on music which, while quite curious to the
modern reader, has no connection whatsoever with the action of
the play. We may, however, extract a line or two, to show with what
feelings Hrotsvitha and her sisters looked upon knowledge. ''Not
the knowledge of the knowable," says Pafnutius to his class, ''offends
God, but conscious injustice," and again, "The better one sees how
wonderful are the laws which God has established in number, measure
and weight, the more vivid the love of God is kindled in us." In
the "Sapientia," the mother who bears that name, undertakes to
confuse the tyrant Hadrian by a lecture on scientific arithmetic,
which certainly puzzles the modem reader. Were the passage short-
ened and intended to produce a comic effect it might pass, but as it
stands it is quite tedious, though Hrotsvitha herself, if we under-
stand her remarks about the worth of the philosophical "patches" she
has inserted into her dramas, considers these passages of special value.
It remains to say a word about Hrotsvitha 's power to paint and
develop character. If we bear in mind that her aim was to paint the
^ Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, III, p. 300.
616 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
virtue of holy maidens and the heroism of Christian martyrs, and to
provide edification for her readers, where Terence sowed the seeds
of vice; if we then appreciate her natural directness, her single-
mindedness, and her ignorance of the world, we will not expect in her
plays any marked attempt at developing dramatic character. Ac-
cordingly we find that most of her characters are lay figures. The
martyrs are all of one type, without individuality. Constantine the
Great in the ^^Gallicanus" (her first play) is a sorry creation. Far
more lifelike are the monks she has pictured— St. Paphnutius, St.
Ephrem, and Abraham. Evidently her experience supplied to her the
means of infusing life into these. But her greatest success in this
direction is Maria in Abraham. She is a girl who, after taking the
vow of chastity, falls, leads a dissipated life, and is at last
reclaimed by her uncle the holy hermit Abraham. No little skill is
displayed by Hrotswitha in preparing her conversion. Her fall
is not psychologically pictured, it is merely announced. Her wicked
life is painted in the most general terms; but even during her degra-
dation her return is prepared by her remorse and her remembrance
of her former happiness. When finally Abraham, who has left his
solitude in disguise, sallies forth to lead her back to God and virtue,
we feel that the woman who has never become wholly a reprobate,
must and will listen to the call of grace. The suddenness of her con-
version in no wise amazes us.
The sketch we have given of the character of these plays, will no
doubt suggest to the reader that they are rather akin to the later
mediasval mysteries than to Terence, or any classical dramatist. Their
disregard of the unities, their clear suggestion of narratives in dia-
logue, their popular character, their devout tendency, all suggest this
relationship. Can it be entertained historically? Most historians
of the mediaeval drama date its beginnings at least a hundred years
later. Still Hauck ^ makes it more than probable that in Italy scenic
performances were known in the tenth century. Preachers, like Otto
of Vercelli complain of their demoralizing effects, and they were
prohibited by ecclesiastical authority. As communication between
Germany and Italy in the time of the Ottos was quite frequent, we
may well believe that plays of the same kind were not unknown in
Germany. It is, consequently, by no means improbable that, while
Hrotsvitha was instigated to write her dramas by reading Terence
and seeing him read by others, she followed in the handling of her
themes the current dramatization of sacred subjects.
' Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, III, pp. 308-9.
BOOK REVIEWS. 517
Scherr, the historian of German literature, and others after him,
have inferred from Hrothsvitha's handling of the character of Maria,
and one or two similar personages, that she must have seen no little
of life before entering the cloister. To us this inference seems
wholly unwarranted. The aberrations of Maria are data in the legend
that could not be ignored. Besides, if virtue is to be pictured as
triumphant, the poet must portray its struggles. This Hrotsvitha
does^ and she feels that when she does so even in the most guarded
terms, she has yet touched on a delicate subject. But the materials of
her story were provided in her sources. She neither enlarges nor
dwells on the wrongdoings of her heroine, but simply puts into
dialogue form the tale she found in the legends. That she should
show some insight into the struggles of the sinning woman, is no proof
that she was herself a sinner. A writer may strikingly portray the
struggles of a murderer without having been a murderer himself.
Whatever knowledge of the world is indicated in the writings of
Hrotsvitha, she owed, no doubt, to the Abbess Gerberg, who had
known the court of her uncle the Emperor. This is Hauck's view,
and we believe that it accounts adequately for whatever worldly in-
sight the nun of Gandersheim possessed.
A word about Hrotsvitha 's historical poems and we have done.
Impelled by her loyalty to what she calls her happy home, she wrote
in verse the tale of the foundation and growth of St. Mary's mon-
astery at Gandersheim. Her friendship for the Abbess Gerberg
inspired her with her epic on the Saxon imperial house. She tells
the story in all simplicity dwelling on the virtues of Henry and the
others, without, however, touching on their warlike achievements to
which, she says, a simple nun cannot do justice.
Here we must bid farewell to a most sjrmpathetic character.
Hrotsvitha is always the simple, humble, devout nun, and yet she
feels that she must use for God's honor the talents He has given her.
Her gratitude to her teachers, her true friendship for the Abbess
Gerberg, coupled with profound respect for her as her superior, and
her loyal devotion to the pious and virtuous men of the imperial
family, her love of literature and philosophy, and her truly Catholic
praise of science as God's truth will ever attract the scholar, es-
pecially the Catholic scholar. We therefore again warmly welcome
Dr. Winterf eld's edition and recommend it to all students of mediaeval
literature and of literature in general.
Charles G. . Herbermann.
New Yoek City.
518 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Development of Muslem Theology, Jurisprudence, and Consti-
tutional Theory. By Duncan B. Macdonald. New York: Scrib-
ners, 1903. 8°, pp. 386.
If it be true, as Dr. Macdonald says, that the three antagonistic
and militant civilizations of the world are Christendom, Islam, and
China, this volume is one of the most useful that have lately been
devoted to a philosophical intelligence of these great systems of
human thought. The author is a good scholar in Arabic, which adds
to the reliableness of a work whose materials are almost wholly in
that tongue. He reminds us that the trichotomous division of his
book is the result of necessity, adopted to avoid confusion and com-
plication; only thus could a Western mind gr^sp approximately
the system of Islam in which doctrine law and discipline are really
one, treated by the same authors, touching one another at innumerable
points, and very often unintelligible in separate treatment. '*In
Muslim lands Church and State are one, and until the very essence
of Islam passes away that unity cannot be relaxed" (p. 4). Moreover
the sketch is declared incomplete, not only because the development
of Islam is not yet over, but because important phases of Muslim law
theology and philosophy are passed over entirely, such as Babism,
Turkish and Persian mysticism, the Darwish Fraternities and the
Muslim Missions.
In the first section (pp. 7-63) a brief but luminous account is
given of the domestic contests that divided Islam in the first two cen-
turies of its existence, the rise and fall of the Ummayads and their
replacement by the Abbasids (A. D. 750), the great schism that left
Islam divided into camps of Sunnite and Shiites, the transformation
of the devotion to Ali into the belief in the hidden Imam, the swelter
of revolts and insurrections that have never since been wanting in
Islam and are now represented by those forms of "imperium in
imperio" which are known as the Wahabites and the Brotherhood of
Ali as-Sanusi, whose actual head is the inaccessible Mahdi of the
African deserts. Every student of the early history of Islam can
read with profit this description of the genesis of its government after
Muhammad's death. In the second section (pp. 65-119) it is ex-
plained how Arab custom, Jewish law and the personality of the
prophet are the oldest sources of Muslim law. The text of the Qur'an,
the rapidly gathering traditions of the earliest days, their crystalliza-
tion and the forgery of thousands of new ones, gave to the law
a content and fiexibility that were originally wanting. By the end
of the ninth century of our era these had been logically classified by the
great Moslem canonist Al-Bukhari, who selected some seven thousand
BOOK REVIEWS. 519
t)ut of six hundred thousand then in circulation. Conquest brought
with it responsibility for law and order in the conquered lands;
hence the ubiquitous presence of Muslim lawyers. It was in these new
seats of militant Islam that speculative jurisprudence arose and
moulded the Muslim system, which was no product of the desert
or the mind of the prophet, but rather the labor of men dealing with
gigantic problems. They compelled from the conquered hard tribute,
but they established a reign of law. The conquered world was for
them, but on condition that order and duty were imposed upon all.
Naturally the Roman Law suggested itself in the provinces of Roman
culture and Christian faith. At least something of the old Roman
legal practice in Syria Egypt and Africa commended itself to the
Arab swordsmen of the first generations of Islam. Dr. Macdonald
traces the development of Muslim law through many controversies,
systems, and schools. Perhaps the most instructive paragraph is that
which describes the "Agreement of the Muslim people" as the final
source of all law— the conviction of Muhammad that his people
would never agree in error. Positive legislation, equity, legal fiction,
have done their part in Islam, says our author— ** the hope for the
future lies in the principle of the agreement. The common sense
of the Muslim community, working through that expression of catho-
licity, has set aside in the past even the undoubted letter of the Qur'an,
and in the future will still further break the grasp of that dead hand.
It is the principle of unity in Islam" (p. 111). Elsewhere (p. 286),
he expresses the belief that such future development in Islam can
only come through an extension of education, an interruption of the
slavery of the disciple to his master, and a biological study of the
great world outside Islam, of the concrete realities of life as distinct
from its dreamy infinities. Alas, codo supinas si tuleris manus!
It would take us too far afield to deal in detail with the third
section (pp. 119-268) of this book. Apart from the Jewish and
Christian concepts in Islam, the doctrines of God and the Qur^an
were the first sources of theological contest. The qualities of God,
the Vision of God, the nature of the Qur'an, created or increate,
were the starting point of infinite discussion. The four great Imams
did not settle all doubts, and time and again the antitheses of the
Mu^^tazilites or liberals and the Hanbalites or conservatives, have
shaken Islam to the core. The "odium theologicum" and its conse-
quent persecutions raged wildly, although the sum of it all was little
more than barren speculation and sheer hypothesis. Some highly
gifted minds appear, like the Aristotelian Al-Farabi (d. A. D. 967),
encyclopaedist, mystic, and brightest light of the chosen band of
520 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Fatimid leaders of Egypt in whom Dr. Macdonald inclines to see
(p. 167) "a band of philosophers whose task it was to rule the
human race and gradually to educate it into self-rule." Such an-
other was Al-Ghazzali, the prince of Muslim mystics (A. D. 1078-
1133), whom our author declares (p. 215) the greatest, certainly the
most sympathetic figure in the history of Islam," the equal of Augus-
tine in philosophical and theological importance, and the supreme com-
mentator of Aristotle, who took up on all sides the life of his time,
lived through all its phases, and drew his theology from his experience,
after sweeping away all earlier systems, classifications and logomachies.
In the Muslim West his influence was long felt by Islam, especially in
North Africa where Berber nationalism during our thirteenth century
found its mouthpiece and prophet in Ibn Tumart (d. A. D. 1152).
His own mystico-pantheistic writings, a medley of Zahirite and Ash'-
arite doctrines, coupled with the claim to being the divinely sent and
assisted Imam or Mahdi, secured for him and his Muwahhid dynasty
a long control of Muslim thought among the Berbers. In Muslim
Spain wealth and luxury brought about in the upper classes a deeper
study of the Aristotelian philosophy, a spirit of compromise between
its claims and those of the Qur'an, abandonment of emotional religion
for the contemplations of the one Active Intellect, an effort to create
an esoteric religion of obscurantism in which the thinkers of Islam
might have a free hand to go their own way. Provided the bulk of the
people were taught nothing but the literal sense of the Qur'an the
philosopher, like Ibn-Tufayl, might revel '*in the unwearying search
for the one unity in the individual multiplicity around him," might
lose himself in the one eternal spirit that he holds divine and in final
ecstasy see face to face, either Allah upon his throne, as al-Ghazzali, or
the one Active Intellect and its chain of causes as Ibn-Tufayl.
Passing over the names of Umar ibn al-Farid, the greatest poet of
Arabic mysticism (d. A. D. 1260) and Ibn Khaldun (d. A. D. 1436)
the greatest philosophic historian of Islam, whom Mr. Robert Flint has
so sympathetically treated in the first volume of his ''Philosophy
of History," we come to the conditions of modem Muslim theology.
Its twin poles are the ancient mysticism as represented by Abd ar-
Razzaq (d. A. D. 1358) and formal traditionalism as represented by
his contemporary. Ibn Taymiya (d. A. D. 1356). Against the
adherents of the former, it may be said that the philosophy of the
Muslim mystic has always been of a too subjective character, and leads
always to sheer Plotinian pantheism, while of the traditionalists it is
true that they have pandered to the stupidity and gross tastes of the
illogical multitudes, and encouraged both hypocrisy and a fatal
BOOK REVIEWS. 521
quietism of the reasoning powers. Mu^tazilite and Hanbalite even yet,
servatis servandis, divide the world of Islam.
The thirteenth century saw the incorporation of religious fraterni-
ties in Islam, whose members known as darwishes and * ' faquirs ' ' have
always enjoyed a special reputation for the virtues of asceticism. They
are hierarchically graded and governed, and have their multitudes of
lay adherents, who don their dress on certain occasions. Of the same
type were the reforming Wahabites of Arabia in our eighteenth
century whose militant puritanical spirit has passed over into the
great brotherhood founded in 1837 by Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi.
Its present head is his son, the Mahdi of the African oases, who has
a centre of propaganda and recruitment at Mecca. That this order
spells trouble for Europe is clear to Dr. Macdonald :
*' Sooner or later Europe— in the first instance England in Egypt
and Prance in Algeria — will have to face the bursting of this storm.
For this Mahdi is different from him of Khartum and the southern
Sudan in that he knows how to rule and wait ; for years he has gathered
arms and munitions and trained men for the great Jihad. When
his plans are ready and his time is come, a new chapter will be opened
in the history of Islam, a chapter which will cast into forgetfulness
even the recent volcanic outburst in China. It will be for the
Ottoman sultan of his time to show what he and his Khalifate are
worth. He will have to decide whether he will throw in his lot with a
Mahdi of the old Islam and the dream of a Muslim millenium, or boldly
turn to new things and carry the Successorship and the People of
Muhammad to join the civilized world" (p. 62).
Altogether, this conspectus of Muslim thought in all that pertains
to the state, to philosophy and to the other world, is both novel and
fascinating. The general reader will find it worthy of perusal after
Gibbon and von Hammer, and the student of philosophy will learn
from it to what an extent the thought of Greece permeated the
subtly receptive mind of Arabia. The Catholic theologian will wish
that the relations of Arabic Aristotelianism to the scholastic philosophy
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had been discussed, if only
briefly, on the basis of the sources, as Dr. Macdonald has done for
Greek philosophy and Roman law. Perhaps a chapter on the in-
fluences of Monophysite and Nestorian thought and discipline would
throw some new light on the intricate processes of Muslim intellectual
life. Nevertheless, the reader will find this positive expose of Muslim
theology both instructive and suggestive, especially when he reads the
seven long and valuable extracts from Muslim theologians that illus-
trate the creed and the discipline of Islam. A brief but scholarly
522 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
bibliography enhances the value of this publication, which is a dis-
tinct addition to the best theological books of the season.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Histoirc dcs Croyanccs, Supcfstititions, Mocurs, Usages et
Coutumes (Scion Ic Plan du Decalogue). Par Ferdinand
Nicolay, avocat a la cour de Paris. 4th edition. Ouvrage couronne
par 1 'Academic Fran§aise. Paris: V. Retaux, 1903. 3 vols., 8°,
pp. 393, 548, 465.
When Le Play called the Decalogue an incomparable program
of moral documents for the study of all human history, he only re-
peated what Leibnitz and Montesquieu had said, and what Saint
Thomas had already laid down with the mathematical accuracy of a
mediseval cathedral builder. In ten simple laws, that put eternally
to shame the pompous and confused legislations of ethnic antiquity,
the God of Israel mapped out for all time the world of morality, fixed
for the mind and the heart of mankind the way that should eventually
lead to truth and life in their largest and final sense. That ''scrutator
cordium" could alone perform the proper diagnosis of the weaknesses,
evil tendencies, inherited dispositions, temptations, and common follies
of a humanity that had become thus darkened in mind and enfeebled
in will precisely by reason of its violation of His original behest. A
truly ethical history of humanity could therefore find no better frame-
work for the arrangement of its countless details than the Ten
Commandments. This is what M. Nicolay has undertaken in the
three bulky volumes before us. That his enterprise has met with
more than ordinary approval is clear from the fact that the volumin-
ous work has reached a fourth edition. In ten books are disposed
with order brevity and eloquence thousands of observations concerning
the races nations and states of mankind from prehistoric times down
to the present day, o'bservations drawn from many sources concerning
the foUies and vagaries of humanity in all that pertains to the moral
order. Each book corresponds to one of the divine commandments,
and its pages are replete with facts that illustrate the growing im-
perfection and final degradation of all those peoples and nations
who refused to serve the true God and made to themselves gods of
earth, and even worse. In the first book are dealt with phenomena
of naturism, animism and fetichism, the concepts of prayer and
adoration among non- Christian peoples ancient and modern, the
touching antiquities of Christian prayer and the helpless attempts of
modem philosophic religions to' satisfy these primary needs of the
BOOK REVIEWS. 523
humam heart. Then follows a chapter on superstition, whose horrid
derails defy classification. Only when one has read it over carefully
can he appreciate the intensity of the anti-idolatrous temperament of
the primitive Christian peoples. They lived when \dolatry was a
social force, the living source of all popular morality, the established
throne of Satan among men.
In the second book our author passes in review the historical
antiquities of the oath, both among Gentiles and Christians, likewise
all that concerns vows and blasphemy. It is pleasing to note that
from the drag-net of an universal erudition he has extracted curious
historical data that go to show how the oldest oath known to humankind
is the Celtic oath by the seven elements. He might have added that
it lived on in Ireland until a comparatively recent time. In the
third book we come across a valuable commentary on Christian heortol-
ogy— an account of popular feasts and religious celebrations before
and after the Christian era. Here are described many mediaeval
extravaganzas, likewise the '^antiquities" of Christmas, the Sunday
and the other Christian days, official and popular. It is a kind of
''Medii Aevi Kalendarium" that to some will be the most charming
chapter in a charming book. The fourth book de^is with ancestor- wor-
ship in prehistoric and in historic times, a chapter being devoted to
Europe and Asia and another to Africa, America and Oceanica, like-
wise an appendft on the simian theory of the origin of man. In the
fifth book the destruction of human life forms the theme of M.
Nicolay's researches. Homicide, murder, capital punishment, in-
faijticide, suicide, human sacrifices, suttees, cannibalism— all the
forms, legal and illegal, by which the individual life issues with
violence, are here commented on from the bleeding annals of our
history. In the sixth book the history of luxury is told. Intemperance
in food and drink, the love of the spectacular and the emotional, usual
sources* of concupiscence, are illustrated by many anecdotes that
give an air of "actualite" to these pages. The passions aroused by
**meum and tuum," those horrid words, as St. John Chrysostom says,
come before us in the seventh book. The author deals here with the
antiquities of property, its emblems and symbols, with bizarre and
curious imposts, corvees, and dues, and with memorable facts in the
history of private property. The "antiquities" of thieving and of
such small popular extortions as the "pourboire" in its countless
forms, are, of course, very entertaining. Perjury, false witness, forced
avowals, the torture, are the subject-matter of the eighth book. Here
the reader will find many interesting data on the ' ' Judgment of God, ' '
on ordeals and judicial duels. Indeed, this work becomes often a very
524 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
useful commentary on general mediaeval history. After the same
manner, the history of human marriage is related in the ninth book,
with many an edifying and many a disedifying page. Nevertheless,
the chapter is one of a highly moral import, and the author would have
it read by every maiden. In the tenth book M. Nicolay exhibits a
summary history of robbery, by sea and by land, especially the cor-
porate robbery of brigands, pirates and filibusters. A sad chapter
on slavery and slave-trade, and on the ''razzias" in Africa, closes
the book.
It is, indeed, too often a harrowing story of human wickedness and
stupidity that we are reading, and a certain "taedium" comes over us
as we turn the pages of these annals of shame and impiety. Yet
they are human documents with a vengeance of the kind that once
TertuUian and Amobius were personally acquainted with, and that
once in Modin moved mightily a Matathias to protest on his life
against such dishonor of the Creator. The historian will easily agree
with M. Nicolay when he says in the preface (p. iv) that a deep
satisfaction settles on the mind when, after a patient and sustained
analysis, the suggestive allusion becomes clear in the emblems and
symbols of the non-civilized man, or when these ''shapes of shut
significance, ' * old myths and legends, shine before the eye of the spirit,
or when science and observation enable us to group certain debris and
trace certain puzzling formulae, to allign and unite them, to let in
air through the mysterious labyrinth of facts, and light amid obscure
texts, to lay open the most intimate sentiments of humanity; in a
word, to cause to live again and to bear witness before the tribunal
of history those who were once the contemporaries of these facts
and these texts.
The method of M. Nicolay is a strictly scientific one. He proceeds
habitually "de notis ad ignota," and mingles judiciously the pre-
Christian and the post-Christian elements of religious life among
the non-Christian peoples. The authors of antiquity are used with
moderation, when occasion offers. His erudition is "de bon aloi,"
and his narrative clear, succinct and always entertaining. Judg-
ments and reflections abound throughout these three volumes, that
aim always at being philosophical and helpful to humankind by
showing the universal causal nexus of the great divine laws of morality
as well as the testimony of all mankind to their role and supreme
sufficiency. The foot-notes of these chapters show that the authorities
of M. Nicolay are always of the first order, modem and reliable.
Thus in the first book, the reports and letters of missionaries are
controlled by the travels of laymen and scholars, while the academic
BOOK REVIEWS. 525
studies of ethnologists like Tylor, Lang, Quatrefages and others are
supported by the most modern historians of peoples and nations, by
periodical publications of learned societies, by the publications of
collections and museums destined to illustrate the idea of God among
all peoples, especially extant races of savages and semi-barbarians.
Here and there a blemish appears. Thus (I. 217) the territory of
Utah has long been a state. The work of Mr. Linn (see Bulletin^ viii,
402) is henceforth to be consulted in all that pertains to the political
history of Mormonism. What M. Nicolay says (II. 305-306) about
electrocution in the state of New York needs to be modified in the
light of the latest results covering several years. The pages of each
volume ought to bear the indication of the current chapter. This is
all the more necessary since there is no * ' Index rerum, * ' an intolerable
omission in a very large book that abounds in details, and which is
obliged to touch more than once on the same or similar subjects.
This is eminently a book for preachers, an eloquent and reliable
historical commentary on the Ten Commandments. For whoever
knows how to use the lessons of history in speaking to modern peoples,
trained and fed on the historical method, this book can easily become a
vade-mecum. Moreover, it is unique of its kind, and we may well
believe the fact that it has cost the author a great many years of dilBfi-
cult and manifold research. The letter of warm approval remitted to
him by Leo XIII. was therefore a well-merited one, and makes the
work as desirable in cultivated families of Catholic faith as the
approval of the French Academy vouches for its sound historical
method and elegant literary form. Thomas J. Shahan.
Reallexicon der Indogermanischen Altertumskunde. Grund-
ziige einer Kultur- und Volkergeschichte Alteuropas. Von 0.
Schrader. Strassburg : Teubner, 1901. Pp. xl and 1,048.
The novelty of the work— it is the first Dictionary of Indo-Euro-
pean antiquities— and the impossibility of discussing in detail the
merits of its execution in the space at my disposal, have led to the
conviction that the interests of the readers of the Bulletin will be
best served by a general description of the plan of the work and a sum-
mary of the methodological questions handled in its preface. This
conclusion is strengthened by the fact that upon the answer to
these questions depends the very existence of the method to which the
rather high-sounding title Linguistic Palaeontology has- been given, so
that their discussion is of more than usual importance at the present
when there is a strong tendency to deny, on account of alleged defects
35cuB
526 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
of method, the whole value of these attempts to infer from the vo-
cabulary of the reconstructed Indo-European language the state of
civilization of its speakers.
The purpose of the work is a double one of gaining on the one
hand a clearer idea of Indo-European antiquity and of using this
knowledge to explain the development of early European civilization.
Accordingly, the author takes for his basis the early civilization of
Europe as presented in the monuments of its history, and seeks to
determine what elements in this civilization are inheritances from the
Indo-European period, what are later acquisitions. In the choice of
subjects to be treated, the general principle has been to include all
elements that appear in the civilization of Europe before its conversion
to Christianity and are not confined to a single nation. At this point
may be emphasized as one of the merits of the book, the broad spirit
in which the author interprets the term civilization. As an indication,
may be cited the regret which he feels at the absence, on account of
the lack of the necessary preliminary works, of articles on the different
ethical concepts, cf. s. v. Keuschheit. The wish of Fr. Nietzsche,
quoted from his Genealogie der Moral, Leipzig, 1895, p. 338, may be
especially recommended to members of this University as indicating
a fruitful and congenial field that is lying fallow **dass namlich
irgend eine philosophische Fakultat such durch eine Reihe akademi-
scher Pr.eisauschreibungen um die Forderung moralhistorischer Stu-
dien verdient machen moge. ... In Hinsicht auf eine Moglich-"
keit dieser Art sei die nachstehende Frage in Vorschlaggebracht : sie
verdient ebenso die Aufmerksamkeit der Philologen und Historiker
als die der eigentlichen Philosophie-Gelehrten von Beruf: ^Welche
Fingerzeige gieht die Sprachwissenschaft, inshesondere die etymol-
ogische Forschung, filr die Entwickelungsgeschichte der moralischen
Begriffe ah.'"
The material thus offered is analyzed as far as possible into its
constituent elements, which give the headings for the separate articles.
To contrast the resulting tendency towards separation, related articles
are brought together under a more general rubric, the result being a
number of more readable articles. That this method of arrangement,
which is inherent in the nature of a lexicon, has certain disadvantages,
cannot be denied. But it is to be noted that the author has reduced
them to a minimum both by not carrying the principle of analysis to
an excess and by a liberal system of cross references; and that on
account of the methodological difficulties, the form of a lexicon is in
spite of, or rather because of, these disadvantages especially adapted
to the subject.
BOOK REVIEWS. 52/
As was to be expected from the author of ''Sprachvergleichung:
und Urgeschichte " the method followed in determining v/hat is and!
what is not Indo-European, is a union of the study of language and the
study of Realien. As has already been indicated the value of the
results of the study of language for this purpose has recently been
denied, and so the author finds it necessary to criticize, at some length,
the views of Koetschmer ("Einleitung in die Geschichte der griech-
ischen Sprache") and Kossina {Zeitschrift des Vereins fur Volks-
kunde, vi, 1, ff. ) •
Their objections to Linguistic Palaeontology are based upon certain
undeniable defects in our knowledge of the Indo-European language.
Koetschmer 's argument may be summarized as follows: our recon-
struction of a word of the parent language carries us back not to a
period of absolute unity, but merely to a period of closer geographical
relationship and freer linguistic communication. This does not,
however, exclude quite considerable variations in language and diver-
gences in civilization. Behind this must lie a period in which the
territory occupied by the Indo-Europeans must have been considerably
smaller, and their language and civilization essentially uniform. Only
the phenomena of this earliest period are primitive '^urindogerman-
isch"— only such words as have a common ancestor of that period are
originally related— urverwandt. Now, at any time during the second
of these periods, a word may have originated at any point and spread,
by borrowing from dialect to dialect, over a part, or over the whole of
the Indo-European territory. Such words are prehistoric loan words,
in principle on a par with the loan words of historic times. They may
be common to all branches of the Indo-European iamily—g emein
indogermanisch— Bind yet not -primitive— urindogermanisch.
Now Comparative Grammar has no criterion for distinguishing be-
tween these two classes of words, and consequently we can never say
of a reconstructed word whether it belongs to the first or the second
of these periods. Furthermore, if— as is always possible— it belongs
to the later period, it is not necessary for it to have occurred in all
varieties of the Indo-European speech of that period. Its presence
or its absence may have been a mark of dialectic difference. Con-
sequently, when we have an etymological series that extends to only
certain branches of the family— those that extend to all are exceedingly
rare — we have no right to generalize and assume that because the
word was prehistoric, it existed in all the branches of the family, and
was afterwards supplanted in some by other words.
From this it follows that the sum of all such possible reconstruc-
tions is not the Indo-European language in the sense of being the
528 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
essentially uniform language of the earliest period, nor yet does it
represent an essentially uniform dialect of any portion of the Indo-
European territory at any time within the second period. It is on
the contrary a conglomerate of words of different eras and of different
localities. In this respect it is comparable with a list containing
Greek words— in unknown proportions, and without marks of designa-
tion—dating from every period from Homer to the Christian era, and
coming from every canton in Greece. It is clear that in the absence
of further knowledge the attempt to form even the simplest sentence
might result in the juxtaposition of the most incongruous elements.
Furthermore, the fact that a word does not occur in our list of
reconstructions, may be due simply to a gap in our knowledge— we
have never the right to assert that its absence in prehistoric times
is proven.
These defects, it is claimed, are such as to vitiate all attempts
to infer from this reconstructed language the civilization of its
speakers, and in future, we must look not to Linguistic Palaeontology
but to Prehistoric Archaeology for the solution of the problems of
Indo-European civilization.
This conclusion is, however, much wider than its premises, it is
the position of those who will take no bread unless they can have the
whole loaf. It may be conceded that we cannot reconstruct the es-
sentially uniform civilization of the earliest periods nor can we recon-
struct a picture of the civilization that existed in any homogeneous
part of the Indo-European territory at any time during the second
of these periods. We cannot describe the way in which this civilization
developed, the chronological order in which the different elements of
civilization appeared, nor the geographical range of each phenomenon.
All this we should like to know, but because we do not know it, it does
not follow that we know nothing, or that what we do know is of
no value.
On the contrary, if we consider the main purpose for which we
attempt these reconstructions, we will see that it is not essentially
affected by these limitations of our knowledge. We no longer recon-
struct the parent language to use it for the expression of thought, nor
do we infer from it the civilization of its speakers in order that some
novelist may be enabled to lay the scene of his romance in prehistoric
times. But we value these reconstructions as the basis— the only
available basis— for the understanding of the historical phenomena.
That formerly other views were in vogue when men were not fully
aware of the complicated nature of the problem— when Schleicher
was composing fables in the parent language, and the reconstruction
BOOK REVIEWS, 529
of Indo-European civilization was being undertaken in the same spirit,
is true. It is also true that these difficulties are pitfalls in the
path of the investigator who loses sight of them.
Hence, it is one of the merits of Koetschmer's brilliant work to
have set forth with such clearness the dangers inherent in this
method of investigation. But we must be on our guard against hastily
inferring that because we cannot learn all we can learn nothing, and of
abandoning the road because it is beset with dangers and difficulties.
Of these limitations of our knowledge, Schrader is fully aware.
I have noted but one passage, p. xxxvi, ^ ^ und—wenigstens in der
Theorie — wird die Zusammensetzung der in solchen allgemeineren
Artikeln erzielten Ergehnisse ein einheitliches Bild der indogerman-
ischen TJrzeit ergehen''—m which he claims too much historical reality
for his reconstructions, and even this is essentially modified by the sen-
tences that follow. It must be noted also, a matter to which I have
already alluded, that the plan of a Lexicon, with its consequent anal-
ysis of civilization into its elements, serves of itself to obviate the
most important of these difficulties. Since each element is treated
separately, we are saved from the addition of chronologically incon-
gruous elements, and the citation under each article of the etymological
material on which the treatment is based shows exactly the attested
geographical range of the phenomenon in question. We can make an
Indo-European dictionary, though we cannot compose a sentence in
the language. Similarly, we cannot gain a picture of a single stage
of Indo-European civilization, but we can value and employ a lexicon
of their ambiguities.
To outline Schrader 's discussion of these arguments separately,
the distinction between related and prehistoric loan words is not of
importance for this purpose. It is conceded that the etymological
correspondences were established in prehistoric times, i. e. before the
Indo-Europeans reached the abodes in which history first knows them
(I should prefer to say before the recurrence of certain phonetic
changes which constitute the most characteristic features of the indi-
vidual language), and that is the point on which the question turns.
It might have been added that the deepening of our knowledge
promised by Koetschmer from the consideration of these words can
come only when we are able to designate the point at which the word
started and the direction and the manner of the borrowing, problems
for the solution of which Comparative Grammar at present affords
no prospect.
The danger of the addition of elements of different chronological
periods is real, but does not affect our knowledge of those elements, nor
530 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
must it be held to exclude in practice such combinations as are helps^
comparable with reconstructed paradigms— to our understanding of
these problems.
That we have no right to generalize an etymology is true, but when
we say that a phenomenon is Indo-European, we do not mean more
than that it is known to a greater or less extent within the Indo-Euro-
pean territory. An etymology that extends to only five branches,
provided they have not an especial relationship like Indie and Iranian,
or the Baltic and Slavic, and have not been in especially close con-
tact, like the Germans and the Slavs, or the ' Germans and the Kelts,
is sufficient to establish this. Reactions are always exposed to the
danger of going too far, and the realization that we have no right to
generalize an etymology has given rise to a tendency to explain all
partial etymologies as dialectic differences. It would have been well
to emphasize the fact that this need not be the case, and that the as-
sertion of a lexical dialectic difference, and these are almost the
only ones we know, rests always on the much decried argumentum ex
silentio.
Very interesting is the claim made by Schrader, that a number of
partial etymologies for the same idea taken together, are the equivalent
of an etjnnological series extending to aU branches of the family.
No explanation of this phenomenon is given but I believe that it can
be found in the following considerations. Languages, in their earlier
stages of development, frequently show a surprising number of syno-
nyms ; examples are cited by Jespersen in ' ' Progress in Language with
Especial Eeference to English." That the parent language should
be richer in this respect, as well as in its sounds and forms, than any
of its offspring, is not surprising. The later abandonment of this
superfluous wealth would lead to the state of affairs found e. g. in the
case of the word for * * goat, ' ' when one word is found Sanskrit, Lithu-
anian and perhaps in Celtic, with derivatives from it in Slavic, a
second in Armenian and Greek with derivatives in Avestan, a third
in Latin and German, and a fourth in German, Slavic and Albanian.
With regard to the argumentum ex silentio, Schrader 's position is
that it is always worth while to seek for the cause of this absence of
etymological correspondence for an idea that might be expected to
appear in the Indo-European vocabulary. Distinction must be made
between the absence of a single word and a whole class of names.
Sometimes the obviously late formation of words in the separate lan-
guages will serve to indicate the novelty at a later period of the idea.
The real difficulty of this method Schrader finds in the difficulty
of determining the meaning of a prehistoric word. Here help is to be
(
BOOK REVIEWS. 531
obtained sometimes from further considerations, e. g. from the Indo-
European word for horse, we cannot tell whether or not the animal was
domesticated. But the fact that there is also an Indo-European word
for foal decides the question. Sometimes we must be content with a
more careful framing of our conclusions. Sanskrit dyas, Latin aes,
Gothic aiZf prove at least that one useful metal was known in Indo-
European times.
Another way in which the study of language is of value for the
study of the history of civilization is the consideration of the way in
which names are given to new concepts, because the name generally
indicates an element which seems to the speaker especially character-
istic and hence allows us to better understand the circumstances under
which the concept was formed. Isolated observations of this class
are frequent, but it is only in the study of Indo-European antiquities
that they can be gathered and employed so as to yield a fruitful
knowledge.
So much for what we can learn from the study of language. It
must be supplemented by the study of things. Of the sciences to
which we can look for help, prehistoric archaeology is the first men-
tioned. Schrader recognizes fully its services in giving color to our
linguistic reconstructions. But deserving of especial attention is his
pointing out of the defects inherent in its nature that prevent it from
ever assuming the leading role in these investigations. It can teach
us only of the material, never of the intellectual or moral side of
civilization, and furthermore, it is of itself and especially in the oldest
periods, without any ethnic relations and hence without any real
historical interest. It gains such relationship only from the fact
that the neolithic civilization of Europe as reconstructed by it coin-
cides to such an extent with the civilization of the Indo-Europeans
as reconstructed from their language, that we reach the double con-
clusion that the prehistoric connection of the Indo-Europeans was in
the neolithic period, and that the great portion of neolithic Europe
was peopled with Indo-Europeans.
For the employment to be made of botanical and zoological palaBon-
tology in combination with linguistic investigations, the author re-
fers to his revision, with the cooperation of Professor A. Engler,
director of the Berlin Botanical Gardens, of Victor Hehn's Kultur-
pflanzen und Hausthiere, and calls attention to the portions of the field
that are still uncultivated. Anthropology has in his eyes only a
secondary value.
A third method is the comparison of the Bealien and institutions,
as they exist, or as they are historically attested for the different
532 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
European peoples. In this the author emphasizes, in accord with
Victor Hehn and against Leist the relatively greater importance of
the institutions of the Germans, Lithuanians and especially of the
Slavs, for the reconstruction of the Indo-European civilization.
Towards Comparative Ethnology, however, his position is one of mis-
trust, though he does not deny that it may be able to throw light upon
the explanation of such institutions as can be proved by other means
to be Indo-European.
Such are the plan and methods of the work. That the author has
established the validity of these methods must certainly be admitted.
Of the results of his work, I have no space to speak, but they may be
summed up as the coincidence of Indo-European civilization with the
neolithic civilization of Europe, a thesis that is not novel, as it
had already been presented in the author's * ' Sprachvergleichung und
Urgeschichte " but that has gained much in its second presentation.
In general the etymological basis of the work is sound, in keeping
with the present state of Comparative Grammar, and this in spite of
the temptation that is always present in such work to press too far
suggestive combinations.
In this respect, it has gained much from the attention that the
author pays to the possible changes with the meanings of words, which
is in accord with the importance attached to sematiological questions
in the preface.
The work will undoubtedly prove an indispensable part of the
equipment of every student of Comparative Grammar and of Indo-
European antiquities, and cannot, in fact, be neglected by any student
of the antiquities of any European nation. Besides these, it will
appeal to a large class whose interest in these questions is of a more
general nature. To bring the results of scientific work before a wider
audience is of importance, as it is upon their support that science
must depend, and for the purpose of awakening a wider interest in
such work it is to be hoped that this lexicon will soon be translated
into English. It embodies the work that has hitherto been done
upon the subject, and at the same time affords a stimulus and a
starting point for further investigations. So that it might properly-
had not the term been cheapened by much abuse— be styled epoch-
making.
George Melville Bolling.
BOOK REVIEWS, 533
L'Ame Breton ne. Par Charles Le Goffic. Paris: H. Champion,
1902. 8°, pp. 392.
It mast be the cruel sharp intense materialism of the last century,
natural outcome of an epoch of invention and discovery, that has
called forth, among other refuges for the spiritually minded, a
renaissance of the vague and melancholy idealism of the old Keltic
life. Latin, Teuton, and Anglo-Saxon have, in different degrees and
at different times, exercised a severe tyranny on the native Keltic
soul. Yet they could neither destroy it, nor annihilate it, nor quite
eliminate it, even from the political and social equation. It is some-
thing so ancient, so subtle, so saturated with prehistoric experience,
so buoyant and self-helpful, so rich in memories and fancies of the
borderland of the spirit and matter, so conscious at all times of the
other-worldly phases of human life, so easily projective of self be-
yond the caging limits of fact and reality, that it is endowed with
a practical immortality among the great influences that fashion man-
kind. Since the eleventh-century Jongleurs of Normandy stole out
of Wales and Ireland the material for their great vernacular stories of
Arthur and his Round Table, there has been no such flood of literary
Keltism as we have witnessed in the present generation. Nor is it won-
derful that it should have been loosened in England by those solenin
prophets of modem literature — Matthew Arnold and William Morris.
For the constitutive elements of pure literature we must forever look
to the Kelt, not indeed as the architectonic combining mind, but as the
inexhaustible quarry, the source of inspiration, the bard-like leader
or vates whose distant song forever draws after him all listening
humanity. D'Arbois de Jubainville has shown the close identity of
the Homeric materials and those of the oldest Keltic cycles. Indeed,
who can read Lady Gregory 's * * Cuchulain of Muirthemne ' ' or, better
still, Eleanor Hull's **Cuchullin Saga" without feeling that he is
listening to just such primitive strains of Aryan music as once
charmed the dwellers on steep Chios? Stopford Brooke has proven
conclusively the Keltic origin of the earliest English poetry, and
Powell and Vigfusson have done as much for the Saga literature of
the Northland. Radium-like, the Keltic spirit shines forever with
intensity as the oldest idealistic element and force in our Western
humanity.
Ethnographically, however, the Kelt has been reduced to an island
in the Atlantic and to a rocky peninsula on the mainland of North-
western Europe. His origins in the former are lost, not in the twilight
but in the solid night of history. If any traces of them still exist, they
can be read only by the gifted few and through rare and delicate
534 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
media of combination and intuition. Not so with the history of
Brittany. Brittany the island made Brittany the mainland in his-
toric times. The countless lanns and pious of the latter are the original
semi-religious colonies created between 450 and 550 by an endless
stream of Kelts from Britain, flying before the strong and resolute
pirates of the Weser and the Elbe. Ireland sent indeed, her mission-
aries—where did they not go? The dear old hagiographer and folk-
lorist of Brittany, the Dominican Albert Le Grand, tells us naively in
his seventeenth-century tongue that *'ce sont les moines irois qui ont
verse Teau du bapteme sur la tete des Armoricains. " But it is
from the island of Britain, then peopled by Kelts, that the peninsula
of Brittany was first peopled and civilized in a Christian sense. But
slowly. One has only to read the old but fascinating history of
Brittany by Dom Lobineau, with the new and still more fascinating
history by the late Arthur de la Borderie to learn that in this
deeply religious land the way to Christian life and conviction lay
through an era of violence treachery and impiety. For a long time,
neither nobles nor clergy nor people have much to boast of as followers
of the Nazarene. Abelard's account of the monks of Saint Gildas de
Rhuys, as now accessible in the brilliant paraphrase of Marius Sepet,
may not be typical, but it is suggestive. Only slowly did the land
come under the strong hand of the French kings. A Duke of Brittany
was, until quite modem times, an unruly feudatory of the Crown.
And yet in time the rude independence of its chiefs its churches
and its people was modified. The Breton was merged politically into
the contiguous France. Not so, however, that when his traditional
institutions were touched with hostile intent, he would not rise in
fierce and stubborn defence of them. His religion imports much
tenderness and emotion. It is rooted in a local patriotism, the
** amour de la petite patrie" and nourished by intimate domestic
affections, and a sacrosanct veneration of the past as it yet lives In
numberless monuments, not the least of which is his speech, principal
chronicler of his history and truthful exponent of his thoughts.
M. Le Gofiic has chosen to write of this *'Bretagne bretonnante ' '
the land of Breton speech and customs, with its bards, its '* pardons'*
or pilgrimages, its countless local saints, its costumes and social ways.
The gist of the book is in the chapter entitled **Au Coeur de la Race'*
a really novel and entrancing sketch or croquis. Only one of the
race, one kin to Villemarque, Le Braz and Brizeux, to Albert le
Grand and Emile Souvestre could write with such emotion and pic-
turesqueness, could describe so vividly the infinitely various ways of
BOOK REVIEWS. 535
Brittany, that land of *'a hundred districts, a hundred churches, a
hundred parishes, a hundred customs ' '
Kant bro, kant iliz,
Kant parrez, kant kiz.
The chapter on the "Cure Breton" is exquisite— "il faut le pren-
dre dans son milieu de culture, a Pair libre, parmi les laboureurs et
les matelots. II est du peuple, pour le peuple. On le voit bien a
sa charpente, a ses mains larges, a cette tete dure oii languissent des
yeux de reve, les beaux yeux tristes et fins de sa race. ' '
Exquisite also is the silhouette of Nar.cisse Quellien, the Breton
bard of the Paris boulevards, a *'primitif" who had to die beneath
the wheels of an automobile driven by an Agamemnon Schliemann!
The pages of M. Le Goffic are brilliant with the names of modern
men of Brittany who have illustrated French letters, from Chateau-
briand to Renan. It is a kind of Keltic encyclopaedia in which are
enshrined hap-hazard the names of many Bretons who have arrested
the world's attention and caused the *' little fatherland" to be forever
glorified in the busy haunts of men. Some sad truths are woven into
the story— the growth of intemperance and the loss of Catholic faith
by emigration. * *L 'Ame bretonne " is a very instructive book for those
who would study seriously the Keltic '*Wesen"in its own surroundings,
apart from the stranger and the present, without alloy or admixture
of any kind. It is enough to say of it that it need not fear to be
coupled with the incomparable elegy of Renan on *'La Poesie des
Races Celtiques," perhaps the most spiritual note that ever escaped
from the soul of that gifted chief of Agnosticism.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Portraitures of Julius Caesar. By Frank J. Scott. New York.
Longmans, 1903. 8°, pp. 182. (Illustrated.)
The classical treatise on the statues and busts of the Roman Em-
perors has long been the ''Roemische Ikonographie" of Professor
Bemouilli. Mr. Frank J. Scott has now made a notable addition to
the representations of Julius Caesar that were known to Bernouilli,
and his book will henceforth deserve a place in any catalogue of
works dealing with the imperial sculptures of the best period of
Roman art. The treatment of the subject is somewhat brusque and
unconventional. There is no attempt at any literary history of the
theme, outside of a reference to Bernouilli. And yet the author's own
experience, as related by himself, demonstrates the utility of pursuing
serious bibliographical researches before entering on the study of a
536 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
given subject. Mr. Scott, it must be said, declares (p. 83) that his
intention was merely to illustrate pictorially and to discuss those
statues and busts of Caesar that were subject to his examination.
For this reason he spent several years in travel and investigation,
visited all museums and collections where possible representations of
Caesar existed, and devoted much time and thought to the material
that he secured— many of the busts of Caesar were reproduced for
him in plaster casts. Altogether, his researches appear to have been
thorough and very exhaustive. It is not too much to say that all
future students will want to consult his work. In it he has brought
critical talent and a sculptor's technical training to bear on the
subject-matter, with the result that a definite idea of the appearance
of Caesar can now be had from a conspectus of many representations
in marble, as well as from the portraits made by historians. The
keen intellectual eyes, the large firm mouth, the high broad forehead,
the long large head, are vouched for by the best of the marbles, and
Mr. Scott finds in most of them the proof of his habitual kindliness
of disposition and his dominant force of will. None of them justify
the angry words of Cassius
**What trash is Rome,
What rubbish and what offal, when it serves
For the base matter to illuminate
So vile a thing as Caesar!"
On the contrary, the Chiaramonti, the Pisa, and the British Museum
busts do not belie the eloquent grief of Antony, when he declared
that Rome was looking on
''the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times."
The long digression on the life of Julius Caesar appears to us a "hors
d'oeuvre" in such a book— the space might well have been given to
a discussion of old and new literary portraits of the ''foremost man
of all the world." There are a number of disagreeable misprints —
Delatre (p. 177) for Delattre, Piambino (p. 97) for Piombino, Ludi-
visi (p. 98 and often) for Ludovisi, Medinacelli (p. 161) for Medina
Coeli. When he states (p. 66) that the Roman hierarchy deliberately
destroyed the statues of the emperors, he errs grievously. The studies
of Lanciani in his "Destruction of Pagan Rome," of AUard in his
"Art Paien sous les Empereurs Chretiens," of Grisar in his "History
of Christian Rome," and of Venturi in his "History of Italian Art,"
have placed the responsibility where it belongs— none of them blame
BOOK REVIEWS, 537
the Christian episcopate as solidary for such acts of vandalism. It
was the wholesale pillaging of barbarian leaders like Geiserich that
first caused the destruction of such masterpieces— even then a multi-
tude remained. It is said that over sixty thousand statues have been
recovered from the soil of Rome and the neighborhood. Gibbon him-
self says of the Bishops of Rome (c. 71) that there is no case known of
vandalism encouraged by them. For long centuries the marble
Caesareum of the Fratres Arvales existed at Rome close to the Ceme-
tery of Generosa, intact in its inscriptions and marbles. As late as
the sixteenth century statues of Roman emperors yet graced its niches
dressed in the sacrificial costume of the Arval Brethren ! The Spanish
Christian poet Prudentius, writing at the full noon of Christian
triumph, gives vent to his admiration for the art of Rome :
Marmora tabenti respergine tincta lavate.
0 proeeres, liceat statuas consistere puras,
Artificum magnorum opera: haec pulcherrima nostrae
Omamenta cluant patriae: nee decolor usus
In vitium versae monimenta coinquinet artis.
As late as the first half of the sixth century, the Roman Cassiodorus,
the Christian premier of Theodoric, drew up an eloquent formula in
his **Yariae" for the office of ''Curator Statuarum." Multitudes of
statues perished, it is true, but their worst enemies were not the
Christian bishops, rather the barbarian despoiler of their rich orna-
ments, inexorable time and neglect, economic disaster, the peasant's
limekiln, and the politico-social vicissitudes of the West since the
death of Chlodwig, of the Orient since the death of Herakleios.
Thomas J. Shahan.
As Others Saw Him, a Retrospect, A. D. 54, with introduction,
afterwords, and notes by Joseph Jacobs, New York. Funk and
Wagnalls, 1903. 8°, pp. 230.
This work, that first appeared in 1895, offers itself as an irenicon
to display to Jews the essential Jewishness of Jesus, and to explain
to Christians how the leaders of the Jewish nations helped to put him
to death. The standpoint is the extreme rationalistic and subjective
— only by accepting the attitude of modern Jewish rationalism can
there be any reconciliation of the antitheses between believing Chris-
tians and Jews. Indeed, the work is declared by the author to be
*'an anti-gospel" putting honestly sincerely and without reserve all
that can be said against what the writer holds to be the exaggerated
claims of Jesus or his friends. The story of the life of Jesus is told
538 CATHOLIC UNIVEESITY BULLETIN.
in the shape of a lengthy epistle from Meshullam ben Zadok, a scribe
of the Jews at Alexandria to Aglaophanos, physician of the Greeks
at Corinth. Mr. Jacobs arranges arbitrarily in two sermons much
of the extra-canonical sayings attributed at an early date to Jesus.
To these scattered sayings recovered by many curious processes from
the first three centuries of Christianity, and to the text of the "Duae
Viae" Mr. Jacobs attributes a value ''nearly as great as that of the
gospels." The Talmud seems to be an authority only slightly in-
ferior. Then from certain "outlying purlieus of theological litera-
ture" he collects other original materials. The whole is set forth in
a style of pleasing archaism, and with a running archaeological com-
ment. Through the narrative the cruelty of the Jews is minimized,
the failure of Jesus to convert the Sadduces and Pharisees attributed
to his evasive and dubious answers to their innocent questions, and
His death on the cross is said to be the result of His "sullen and
arrogant silence" before the tribunal of Caiaphas. The crown of
thorns becomes (p. 197) a faded rose- wreath plucked from the head
of some belated reveller, the Good Samaritan (p. 83) is no Samaritan
but an Israelite, the demons driven out of the possessed by Jesus were
(p. 34) spiritual demons of evil passions. So, by the exercise of a
fantastic individualism, the gospel narrative is robbed of all its im-
memorial claims to truth and, under the pretence of popularizing the
vagaries of a highly subjective criticism, the vision of a prejudiced
mind is offered us for the correct portrait of Jesus as the Christian
world has always cherished it. Could we stand by Marcion as he
composed his evangel with a "machaera" or watch the process of
Philostratus in constructing his "Life" of ApoUonius of Tyana, we
should be convinced that the morality of certain phases of modern
literary criticism was quite like that of these ancient opponents of
the true Christian tradition concerning the divine Founder of the
religion. On the treatment of the original Christian scripture-texts
there are some pertinent pages in Carl Schmidt's "Stellung Plotins
zum Christenthum"— when we have read them we no longer w^onder
at the Christian horror and detestation for the writings of a Porphyry.
Mr. Jacobs is best known in the world of scholarship as a f olklorist
and an editor of fairy tales. This may account for his failure to
recognize the broad gulf between the genuine traditions concerning
Jesus and the "profane and vain babblings" that St. Paul denounced
(I. Tim. VI, 20; I, 4) and whose echoes are heard in the "Agrapha"
and heretical gospels, in spite of the abundant orthodox re-editing that
they have undergone.
Thomas J. Shahan.
BOOK REVIEWS. 539
Life and Letters in the Fourth Century. By Terrot Reaveley
Glover. Cambridge University Press. New York: Macmillan,
1901. 8°, pp. 398.
Professor Glover offers us in this very readable volume a sym-
pathetic and scholarly study of many problems of civilization in the
fourth century. His method is not a series of generalizations, but
a group of portraits each of which he places in its actual environment,
literary religious and political. Thus Paganism comes in for a
satisfactory presentation apropos of Ammianus Mar.cellinus, Julian,
Ausonius, Macrobius, Symmachus and Claudian; Christianity is
dealt with in chapters on Saint Augustine's Confessions, Pruden-
tius, Sulpicius Severus and Synesius. A chapter of Women Pil-
grims permits the telling of the content of the * ' Peregrinatio ' * of
Sylvia of Aquitaine (or must we now call her Etheria of Spain?),
and another on ** Greek and Early Christian Novels" reveals a literary
side of the old imperial life little appreciated. In '*Quintus of
Smyrna ' ' we may see how living and personal a force Homer yet was
in educational circles, and in *'Palladas" there is resurrected an
Alexandrine prototype of Omar Khayyam, just such another versi-
ficator insulsissimus, with his budget of * ' quips and cranks and wanton
wiles,*' his flouting jibes and sneers at life, literature. Providence,
Chance, and Destiny. Each chapter of this book is a little mine of
special information, for Professor Glover has embodied in each the
best results of much modem research. To the erudition of the inex-
haustible Gibbon is added that of Boissier, Hodgkin and Bury, not
to speak of other conscientious writers. The reader will rise from the
perusal of this work filled with what the writer justly calls the
** pathos and power" of the fourth century. Read in connection with
Dill's ''Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire,"
Seecks ''Untergang der antiken Welt," and Boissier 's "Fin du
Paganisme," it will fix in the student's mind some true outlines of
a period when civic grandeur and local misery were contemporary,
when life was really mirrored in letters, and yet letters curiously
affected to ignore the crowding signs and warnings of disaster that
were threatening the ship of state.
Here and there are blemishes. The insinuation (p. 289) against
Lourdes and St. Anne de Beaupre is gratuitous. There is no truth,
as Ladeuze and Dom Butler have shown, likewise Volter, in the
theory of the origin of Egyptian monasticism from the so-called monks
of Serapis. The author's judgment on the philosophy of monasticism
(p. 302) is without foundation. And it is not true as stated (p. 279)
that "Antony and Paul are nowadays dismissed very properly from
540 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
history to the realm of fiction." To call (p. 114) the successor of
Julian the '* wretched Jovian" is an injustice. Dr. Bright tells us
(Age of the Fathers, I. 340) that our Christian authorities dwell
fondly on his piety and gentleness, and that he disapproves of the
parallel made by Gwatkin between Jovian and the debauched Michael
the Drunkard. Dr. Glover does not properly describe (p. 9) the so-
called ''Chair of Peter" at Rome, as he would learn by reading the
admirable monograph of De Rossi, or the summary of it in Northcote
and Brownlow. The curious reference (p. 4) to the United States as
holding a "bad repute for lawlessness and want of taste" will be for-
given as emanating from a prejudiced quarter.
Thomas J. Shahan.
The Age of the Fathers, being chapters in the history of the
Church during the fourth and fifth centuries. By the late William
Bright, D.D. New York: Longmans, 1903. 2 vols., 8°, pp.
543, 597.
There is needed no excuse for devoting eleven hundred and forty
pages to the story of the "saeculum mirabile" that begins with Con-
stantine the Great and ends with the Council of Chalcedon. The Due
de Broglie took six volumes to tell the events of those historic decades.
Every historian of the period, general and special, feels that here the
theme enlarges, the actors are filled with new purpose and spirit,
the scope of human energy and the stake of life take on new aspects.
Professor Bright is neither a new-comer nor a weakling in this arduous
but grandiose section of Church History. He taught that science for
many years in the University of Oxford, and devoted himself, with al-
most no exception, to the period before us. He dealt leisurely with
the sources, amid all the bibliographical resources of the great English
school, surrounded, too, by congenial and scholarly companions in the
same department of learning. We are not surprised therefore, at these
stately volumes, in which the public history of Catholicism is told
from the accession of the first Christian Emperor to the death of
Theodosius.
Nothing of importance is omitted, the chronological order is ob-
served, and a due proportion is ever kept in sight, based on the in-
trinsic importance of events and persons, and on the abundance and
reliability of the original documents. Fortunately, many of these are
not only public but official— the authentic records of the Empire and
the Church. Fortunately, too, there arose in the first half of the
fifth century three men, two laymen and one bishop, who collected
sifted and utilized these original and contemporary data. They
BOOK REVIEWS. 541
also made public, leisurely and in detail, the final impressions and
opinions of the thoughtful men of their own day concerning a fateful
century that was dominated and directed by the manifold controversies
usually bulked under the name Arianism. We may add that a
certain tragical finality was stamped on these materials and their first
''Ueberarbeitung" at the hands of Socrates Sozomen and Theodoret
by the political storms of the fifth century, in which Roman culture
government and letters all but perished in the West, and even in the
Orient were grievously disturbed.
Baronius, Tillemont, Fleury, Natalis Alexander and a small host
of Catholic historians, have cultivated this field of history in a way
that leaves little to be desired. Its principal issues and their con-
sequences, its efficient personalities and their work, are fairly well
known to us. And, if we except such a find as the Paschal Letters
of Saint Athanasius, very little has been added in the shape of
original documents to affect seriously these earlier narrations. It is
different, however, if we turn to the collections and editions of the
original materials, to the critical refinement of historical method, and
the multitude of exhaustive monographs. On these lines an incredible
progress has been made since the eighteenth century, a progress large
and solid enough to warrant a revision and adaptation of the ancient
sources in the light of modern method and manner, and with the aid
of modern helps unknown to our predecessors or imperfectly appreci-
ated by them. All former histories, no less than all former views of
the natural sciences, are henceforth subject to this process of revision
and improvement. We do not need, therefore, to deprecate a new
recital of the conflicts and viscissitudes of Christian life in the fourth
and fifth centuries. History stays written in very few cases. Not
only every age but every new generation loves to hear in its own
familiar language the story of the past.
Dr. Bright 's account of the Christological heresies is buttressed
on all sides by sufficient information as to the general conditions
civil and ecclesiastical. He is filled with a dignified enthusiasm
for the great ecclesiastical figures and his attitude towards most
of them is both sympathetic and correct. His style is usually
rich and picturesque, heightened habitually by touches of local
color, and by reminiscences or allusions that lift the forgotten
person or site to a higher plane. The pen-pictures of Rome,
Alexandria, Constantinople, and other centres of the famous conflicts
of mind and policy betray an intimate acquaintance with the cir-
cumstances of the situation. As the book is entirely without notes or
bibliography it cannot fail to interest the average reader, who will hear
36cuB
542 CATHOLIC UNIVEESITY BULLETIN.
in its pages some echo of a voice that for thirty-five years charmed
a multitude of hearers at Oxford.
On more than one point, Dr. Bright ignores the progress made in
certain directions. Thus (I. 35), Dr. von Funk has long since proved
that there was but one order of penitents in the early Church, and
that the habitual division into four classes is erroneous. It is no
longer right to maintain absolutely that Pelagius was a Briton (II.
161). Dr. Zimmer has made out in his ''Pelagius in Irland" a
good case for his Irish origin. His account (I. 38) of the historical
origin of clerical celibacy is open to serious objections. His judgment
on Constantine (I. 45-48), is fair and conservative— some shadings
of it are perhaps unjust to that great man and unwarranted by the
authorities. Dr. Bright would probably have modified them if he
could have used, before his death, the admirable introduction of Heikel
to his edition of Eusebius' ''Vita Constantini" and the "Oratio ad
coetum sanctorum." So, at almost every chapter, there is room for
dissension, not indeed with the principal doctrine of the illustrious
writer, but with statements and appreciations of minor import.
In one respect, however, the work of Dr. Bright does not commend
itself to us. He deals unfairly with the primacy of the Roman See.
Not that he shirks mention of the facts, he touches on many of the
evidences that the period offers in favor of the supremacy of the
Roman Church. But he shades and minimizes each individual proof,
and applies steadily a negative criticism to all the documents and
monuments. Here he is stern and there he is lax, according as the
success of his special pleading demands. Nowhere is there met with
the idea that this great volume of proof should be taken largely and
philosophically, that the characters and situations of the deponents
ought to be weighed, that language should usually be read as it was
pronounced, without finical quibbling. An isolated case like that of
the African Apiarius, concerning which we have not sufficient material
on the Roman side, is made to overbalance a consensus of East and
West. Another specimen is his treatment (I. 29-30) of the letter of
the Synod of Aries (314) to Pope Sylvester, where the term "qui
majores dioceses tenet" is whittled down to mean only Italy, and
especially the City of Rome. Indeed, Hefele has shown (I. 204)
after Noltke, that this reading of the text is faulty; it should be
"qui majoris dicecesis gubernacula tenes." This is quite in keeping
with what the fathers of Aries say of the Holy See as the region
(partes) "in quibus et apostoli quotidie sedent et cruor ipsorum
sine intermissione Dei gloriam testatur." Dr. Bright only echoes
the quibbling interpretation given by Doellinger to the powerful
BOOK REVIEWS. 543
words of St. Irenaeus concerning the See of Peter. Men like the
venerable Theodoret can appeal openly to the Holy See, and con-
fess its rights as based on the apostolic succession, but the argu-
ment must fail because "of any divinely ordained supremacy over
the whole church he says nothing" (II. 499). But hob emus
confitentem reum! As though the wearied old bishop of Cyrrhus
should have written a tome ex professo to prove to the great Leo that
he was the Head of the Church, when the appellant was at his feet
as the court of last resort. It is a case of ^'parole femmine fatti
maschi/' Dr. Bright might at least admit with Dr. Harnack that from
the middle of the second century the Roman Church was '*de facto
if not de jure'* the foremost church in Christendom. He might go
farther and admit that the authorities for that claim usually put
forth as a sufficient reason the apostolic succession. "We need only
refer to the marvellous words of the author of ''De Aleatoribus, "
probably himself a pope of Rome. Both volumes are models of the
English book-maker's art, unsurpassed to-day in the world, and every
way worthy of the great firm whose imprint they bear.
Thomas J. Shahan.
Ubertin Von Casale Und Dessen Ideenkreis, ein Beitrag zum
Zeitalter D antes. Von Dr. Joh. Chrysostomus Huck. Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1903. 8°, pp. 107.
Within a century of the death of the ''Poverello" his work was
brought to the verge of ruin, notably by reason of the heated dis-
cussions that arose among the Franciscans, particularly in Tuscany
and Provence, as to the degree and the character of the poverty that
they should practice. Though to some all such questions seemed as
futile as the ancestry of Melchisedech, to others a positive answer
seemed the first requisite of any sure imitation of the humble man
of Assisi. In time, these domestic dissensions drew pope and em-
peror within their range. The fine arts, history, and even ecclesias-
tical doctrine, were more or less profoundly affected by the agitation
of a multitude of exalted spirits in an age of yet living faith, in the
-crepuscular hour of mediaeval Christendom. A rude and appalling
awakening was even then at hand. Only, a very few suspected from
afar its character and its finality.
Dr. Huck has selected out of the ecclesiastical figures of the period
that of the restless and disturbed Ubertino da Casale, a hamlet in the
diocese of Vercelli, where he was born in 1259. At the age of four-
teen he put on the habit of Saint Francis, studied theology at Paris
for nine years, and was made lector in theology for the province of
544 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Tuscany. He came at an early age under very conservative Fran-
ciscan influence, notably that of John of Parma and Petrus Johannes
Olivi, the latter an ultra-mystic who died in 1305, and about whose
writings there arose in time a conflict that affected seriously the life
of his disciple and admirer Ubertino. After four troubled years as a
preacher in Perugia, Ubertino was relegated, probably at the instiga-
tion of Benedict XI, to the dear but lonely heights of Alvernia where
in 1305 he wrote his famous ** Arbor vite crucifixe Jesu" in which the
*'vilia hujus temporis" are roundly assailed, especially the abandon-
ment of the Franciscan ideal of the perfect life according to the
gospel of Jesus— '^ubique pungit spiritus Jesu in hoc libro pauperes
falsos." During the reign of Clement V., Benedict XI., and John
XXII., we find Ubertino in the front rank of the *' Spirituals" or
**Fraticelli.'* Dr. Huck is of the opinion that he was never a formal
recalcitrant against the supreme authority of the Holy See, nor a
heretic in any true sense of the word. His figure disappears sud-
denly and completely after 1322, when the conflict crosses the thresh-
old of Franciscanism and enters upon a new and broader stage as a
phase of the century-old quarrel between the **Ecclesia" and the
**Imperium.''
Like all the ''Spirituals" of the thirteenth century, from Gerard
of Borgo San Donnino to Petrus Johannes Olivi, our Ubertino was
profoundly influenced by the prophetical writings of Joachim of
Floris, a Calabrian abbot who died in the year 1200 and left behind
him a number of works, mostly prophetical in their tone, announcing
the near approach of a final kingdom of the Holy Spirit, to be realized
in the establishment of a new order of monks, and not later than the
year 1260. The influence of Joachim never died away— his "papa
angelicus" is the "papa santo da venire" of the obstinate "Spirit-
uals." His symbolic signs and symbols were even worked over in
apocryphal writings that did service under his name. As late as
the year 1516 supposed prophecies of Joachim were again given cur-
rency in a work pretending to come from a hermit of Calabria, by
name Telesphorus. It had really been composed in 1386 under the
title "de magnis tribulationibus et statu ecclesiae." In it are found
not only genuine utterances of Joachim, but also apocryphal material
current under his name with fragments of an Oriental twelfth-cen-
tury mystic, Cyril of Jerusalem, bits from the fifth book of Ubertino 's
"Arbor vite crucifixe," and "vaticinia" of the Sibyls, of Merlin,
Dandalus, and other supposed trumpets of the Holy Spirit. The
Italy of the early sixteenth century was, indeed, a deeply troubled
world. The Italian editors of the year 1516 color these miscellaneous
BOOK REVIEWS. 546
prophecies in an anti-German sense. The Empire is odious to them,
and they desire the transfer of its symbols to the King of France.
They foresee three anti-popes, an Italian, a Greek, and a German.
The latter is the worst of his race, ''Germanorum omnium pessimus
et erunt singuli ad invicem impugnantes et omnes contra verum
papam." A bad German Emperor will ally himself with Turks and
pagans, lay waste the Holy City, destroy churches and monasteries,
overthrow the Castle St. Angelo, and level the Citta Leonina with
the ground. Ten years later took place the Sack of Rome, in which,
curiously enough, many of these prophecies were fulfilled. Such
books throw a ''helles Licht" on the religious conditions of the open-
ing decades of the sixteenth century. Janssen and Tocco, and before
them Doellinger, have insisted on other specimens of this literature.
The waning might of the mediaeval empire, now shrunk to a small
Austrian state, was no longer a fitting background for the Ghibelline
**Veltro" of Dante and his sympathizers; he passes away forever as
a political factor. But the new order of holy monks, "the twelve
apostolic men to come," and the perfectly ''angelical pope" lived
on in the hearts and imaginations of the Mediterranean peoples,
somewhat as the legend of Frederic the Second's return once in-
corporated the hopes of the imperial adherents. That such dreams
could continue to affect serious men was chiefly due to the intense
passion of the ' ' Fraticelli " movement, a passion so great that it has
left immortal traces of its raging in the poetry of a Jacopone da Todi,
in the history of an Angelus de Clareno, and in the art of a Fra
Angelico. Heaven never swam so near the eyes of a chosen band of
men— it was they who compelled a pope, John XXII, to formally
take back his personal opinion that the souls of the blessed departed
would not at once enjoy the Beatific Vision. Even when their formal
cause was irretrievably lost, its spirit and temper haunted the pur-
lieus of ecclesiastical life, even as the spirit and temper of Montanus
and Novatian long claimed recognition and tolerance in the primitive
days of Catholicism. In the minds of these defeated but convinced
men we are forever in the state described by Ubertino in the famous
fifth book of his "Arbor vite crucifixe"— forever on the very edge
of the "eternum sponsalitium beatificatae universalitatis humanae
naturae. ' ' As late as 1589 prophecies of their beloved Joachim were
printed at Venice; already, in the same century, several writings,
rightly or wrongly attributed to him had been printed. Their vogue,
always great in Italy, was, no doubt, arrested by that of the new
seer "Malachy," whose prophecies were first printed in 1595— no
manuscript text earlier than that date has ever been known. That
546 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Joachim was not utterly forgotten up to that time is clear from the
remarkable lines that Montaigne devotes to him. Under the name
of "Malachy" the prophetic symbols and *'signa temporum" that
have floated down, through Orient and Occident, with slight re-
touches, for nearly a thousand years have taken a new and long lease
of life and credence.
In the contentions of the ''Spirituals," there was too strong an
admixture of genuine Christianity for them to utterly perish from
the affections of the common multitude. And so they created their
own legend, interwove it with the most passionate aspirations of the
mediaeval heart, and stamped upon it forever the mark of that fur-
nace of tribulations out of which it came. The personal note in
mediaeval history is first strongly accentuated in Salimbene, that
oddest of Joachimites, and is nowhere more keen and insistent than
in the writings of an Ubertino da Casale and an Angelus de Clareno.
This little book is a very important one for teachers of history—
it justifies more than one correction in our manuals. Thus (p. 73),
the tractate "de septem statibus eeclesiae" is assigned to Ubertino
instead of Joachim; an attempt is made (p. 79) to establish a list
of genuine writings of Joachim on the authority of a thirteenth
century codex at Padua; Dr. Huck establishes (p. 39) the correct
spelling of the name of Ubertino 's master in the spiritual life—
Petrus Johannes Olivi, and not Johannes de Oliva; he establishes
against Preger and Doellinger the exact original sense of the
"evangelium aetemum" of Joachim; he reminds us (p. 99) that
the violent denunciations of the Church that Doellinger printed as
from Joachim are not found in his genuine writings ; from Ubertino 's
writings he draws the conclusion (p. 70) that the unhappy division
of the order was already a fact in the time of Saint Francis himself
—a fact that *'fr. Bonaventura in legenda modicum pertranseundo
tetigit, quia nolebat antiquae nostrge ruinae initia legentibus pub-
licare." (Arbor vite crucifixe, V. 7, fol. 1) ; a complete list of all
known writings of Ubertino is given (p. 27) ; here and there a cor-
rection is vouchsafed to Luke Wadding himself (p. 34) ; he defends
(p. 8) Ubertino from the charge of Cardinal Hergenroether that he
was a supporter of the heretical Marsilius of Padua. One rises from
the perusal of the charming study with the haunting cry of Guido
Cavalcanti in one's ears,
"0 poverta, come tu sei un manto,
D'ira, d'invidia, e di cosa diversa!"
We trust that the gifted author will not long delay the promise he
BOOK REVIEWS. 547
has made (p. 107) to present the learned world with a **qiiellen-
massige Untersuchung iiber die Joachimitische Literatur." It will
be a welcome addition to the ''Italie Mystique" of Emile Gebhardt.
Few studies in ecclesiastical history could be more useful than such
an exposition of certain sources of psychological extravaganza, spirit-
ual folly, and disobedient fanaticism. Thomas J. Shahan.'
Irish-American History of the United States. By Very Rev.
John Canon O'Hanlon, M.R.I. A. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and
Walker, 1903. 4°, pp. Ixxxviii + 677. $5.00.
Canon 0 'Hanlon is certainly an indefatigable man. For more than
fifty years he has poured forth the treasures of a manifold and a
reliable erudition in all that pertains to the history of his native land.
The local antiquities of Ireland, her ancient poetry, legends and folk-
lore, her almost countless saints, have been illustrated by him with all
the affection of patriotism and all the accuracy of a scholar. Alone,
this venerable priest has brought almost to completion one of the
most stupendous pieces of hagiographical work known to Church his-
torians—the Lives of the Irish Saints in twelve large octavo volumes,
of which nine have already appeared. It is a work that has demanded
incredible toil, self-denial, research— for the historical materials of
Ireland are as tangled as they are abundant,— a work, too, that should
be in the library of every community where there are men of Irish
descent. And now, at the close of a long and honorable career as a
historian, he offers to the reading public a History of the United
States, written from the point of view of an Irishman, to whom the
share of his people and race in the upbuilding of the world's latest
and most powerful great state is naturally very dear. In this work
the chief events and great outlines of the history of the United
States are related with model succinctness, brevity and clearness—
any one interested in the story of the Union will read these pages
with delight. They are among the best of many thousands that Canon
O 'Hanlon has written. But the reader who cares for the relations of
Ireland and the United States, will find that every chapter abounds
with references to Irishmen and their role in the creation of our
state. A multitude of foot-notes furnish the justification of the thesis
that no European race has contributed more generously to us of its
life-blood, its energies, resolution and daring, than Ireland. Where-
ever ardor, self-sacrifice, idealism, were called for, the Children of
the Green Isle have always claimed the post of honor. They are
548 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
found on the thin red line of battle, on the perilous margin of savage
life, foremost ever in the explorer's party, the mining camp, the
pioneer hamlet, the new state carving for itself a place in the great
procession of communities that have been moving westward with
irresistible destiny for over one hundred years.
Canon 0 'Hanlon has written this work with much historical skill.
His sources are the best general histories of our country, the state
and local histories of repute, autobiographies, and of course, the
collections of original documents as far as printed and accessible.
The reader will rightly wonder that the author should have been able
to compile so learned a work at a distance from our libraries and from
the daily output of fresh material. The work is also a very creditable
specimen of the Irish book-maker's art, solid and free in binding, tasty
in its pilot-blue cover and its delicate green page-decoration of ancient
Keltic ornament. It ought to be in every family that prizes its Irish
origin and in every public library that would feed the fires of
patriotism.
And now some ncenicB of criticism. More than once it has occurred
to us that all readers of this book will not agree with certain apprecia-
tions and judgments of Canon 0 'Hanlon, while recognizing their manly
presentation and the authorities cited for them. This is particularly
true of the chapters on the Civil War. There is lacking an ''Index
Nominum," catalogue of names that are immediately or mediately of
Irish origin. Such a list is essential to the useful and easy consultation
of a book that deals with so many individuals. There is also lacking
a list of the principal works used in the compilation of the book. Such
a list is not only a stimulus to the special student, but an instructive
guide to the average reader. In another edition there might well be a
greater abundance of portraits of distinguished Irish- Americans, photo-
graphs of monuments, sites, and other memorabilia. Not infrequently
the latest and best literature is wanting. Thus we miss the fine mono-
graph of Martin I. J. Griffin on Commodore Barry, and that of
Michael Cavanaugh on Thomas Francis Meagher. Only an Irish-
American historical magazine, devoted to such publications, could
bring them at once and regularly within the range of the distinguished
scholar.
Of the documents published in the appendix, the most valuable for
our readers is the famous appeal "To the People of Ireland" made
May 10, 1775, by the Colonial Delegates assembled at Philadelphia.
Of this noble document Canon 0 'Hanlon says (p. 175) that "it was
drafted with a force and couched in a dignity of language calculated
to chain the sympathies and to arouse the indignation of a freedom-
BOOK REVIEWS. 549
loving people." In art, address and execution, it was *' equal to any-
public declaration made by any powers or upon the greatest occasions. ' '
We could wish that some chapters had been added on the share of
Irishmen in the literary and economic development of the United
States, as well as a conspectus of what has been done by them in the
service of religion. Perhaps the preliminary labors have not yet been
done, notably that ''Biographia Hibernica" which long since should
have been placed beside the noble work of Mr. Gillow on English
Catholics since the Reformation. Thomas J. Shahan.
Les Principes ou Essais sur le Probleme des Destinees de
I'Homme. Par I'abbe Georges Fremont. Paris: Bloud, 1901.
2 vols., 8°, pp. 410, 427.
L'Eglise Cathoiique, Instructions d 'Apologetique. Par I'Abbe
Leon Desers. 2d ed. Paris : Poussielgue, 1902. 3 vols., 8°, pp. 288.
Dieu ct r Horn me. Instructions d'Apologetique. Par I'abbe Leon
Desers. 2 ed. Paris: Poussielgue, 1900. 8°, pp. 228.
Lc Christ Jesus, Instructions d'Apologetique. Par labbe Leon
Desers. 2d ed. Paris: Poussielgue, 1901. 8°, pp. 236.
Discours de Combat. Par Ferdinand Brunetiere, de I'Academie
Frangaise. Paris: Perrin, 1902-1903. 2 vols., 8°, pp. 340, 299.
1. If one would measure the distance traveled by the science
of Catholic Apologetics since, just one century ago, Chateaubriand
dedicated to Napoleon his great didactic poem, the Genie du Christian-
isme, he must read these volumes of the abbe Fremont. They are
admirable for their learning and their critical spirit as well as for the
sincere enthusiasm of the writer and the sustained eloquence of his
exposition. The Destiny of Man is the theme that he develops in six
books. He treats first of the "actualite" of the problem, and main-
tains successfully that Positivism has not yet cast it out from the
minds and hearts of men. In the second book he writes, as it were, the
history of this idea as far as the sayings of great men illustrate it,
and demonstrates that without a grasp of it there is in human society
no unity of thought, no repose of heart, no happiness of our kind, and
that it is the most inevitable preoccupation of all men. In the third
book he considers the question from the point of view of the family,
public instruction, public morality, and good government. In the
fourth, he illustrates it from the masterpieces of literature, poetry
and the fine arts. In the fifth, the great critics of literature and the
great historians, ancient and modern, appear as witnesses to its
universality and ubiquity. In the sixth, a stately and convincing
550 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
procession of philosophers from Socrates to Descartes express their
unanimous agreement on the same lines as the critics, historians, and
men of letters. In every heart the deepest stirrings are those which
Jesus Christ stilled forever when He said (John VIII, 14) : ''Scio
unde veni et quo vado.'* The book of Abbe Fremont is worthy of
frequent and attentive perusal, worthy, too, of translation, at least in
a compact form adapted to our needs and conditions. It abounds in
that saving quality of genuine Frenchmen— good sense.
2. These three volumes of the cure of St. Vincent de Paul at
Paris contain his popular instructions on God, Providence, man and
the world on the genuine meaning of life as set forth by Jesus Christ,
and on the nature, office, and work of the Catholic Church. Good and
reliable doctrine, frank answers and explanations for a multitude of
current objections, a style dignified at once and familiar in its "al-
lure," a great love of truth and anxiety to make it both known and
loved, are the characteristics of these small volumes, somewhat more
popular and unpretentious than the foregoing work, but sharing sev-
eral of its good qualities. The clergy that can produce such books is
neither ignorant nor idle, nor useless to the common weal— on the
contrary, it is deeply to be regretted that their native land does not
profit more by their enlightenment.
3. When the great rhetorician Marius Victorinus became a Chris-
tian, the edifice of pagan literary criticism toppled and fell. We
would not say as much of the value of the accession to the ranks of
Catholicism of M. Ferdinand Brunetiere. Nevertheless, it was in its
own way an epoch when, in the very arx of that delightful science a
great master of modern literary criticism deliberately walked out from
the ranks of the hesitating and took the last place in the army of the
faithful of France. Yet hardly the last place, for this brilliant layman
became soon a spokesman of French Catholicism, a kind of Newman
come out from the Philistines of agnosticism, or rather an under-study
of Pascal, just such a lay preacher and confessor as the suspicious
and timid mind of Gallic "bourgeoisie" is always turning to, be
he the sugary prophet of Treguier or the holy man of Tours. One
of the best modern French ecclesiastical writers admits that it is
necessary for the clerical estate to again secure the adhesion of the
average man in the former stronghold of Catholicism.^
* " H faut renoncer aux injures, aux declamations, aux proph^ties apocalyp-
tiques et chercher h nouer de pacifiques relations avec les instituteurs, les maires,
les magistrats, les d6put6s, les senateurs, les ministres et tous ceux qui tiennent
en main les ressorts du gouvernement. II faut convaincre I'opinion publique
et, surtout, les masses populaires que I'Eglise n'est hostile ni a la science, ni k la
aemocratie, ni au progr6s, ni au hien-etre des classes ouvri^res, et que ceux qui
BOOK REVIEWS. 551
Since 1896, M. Brunetiere has often spoken to his countrymen of
the supreme value and dignity of their national religion. Few know
their France as the editor of the *' Revue des Deux Mondes" and few,
therefore, choose so happily the points of view from which to approach
a multitude of noble souls who suffer mentally and spiritually from
the absence of the ancient elements of faith hope and love, as they
were once common to the average French heart. The mere enumera-
tion of the titles of these discourses has, therefore, a certain signifi-
cance. In the first volume we come across his speeches on the Renais-
sance of Idealism, on Art and Morality, the Idea of Fatherland, the
Enemies of the French Soul, the Nation and the Army, the Latin
Genius, and the Need of Faith. In the second, he has added certain
admirable addresses made in the last two years. Why we should now
have faith, the Idea of Solidarity, Catholic Activity, the Work of
Calvin, Reasons for Hope, the Criticism of Taine, Progress in Re-
ligion. These discourses were delivered at places so far apart as Paris,
Marseilles, Avignon, Lille, Besancon, Toulouse, Tours, Geneva, Lyons,
Fribourg, and Florence ; that is, mostly at great centres of human ac-
tivity, industrial, political, academic and artistic. The work of M.
Brunetiere is therefore apostolic in its nature. This liberal mind,
the fine fleur of the University, long nourished in all the traditions of
modern French secularism, has deliberately opted for what appears
to many of his countrymen a losing cause. The historian of his father-
land's literary glory and the preceptor of all youthful France in the
passionately beloved field of letters and style has become, for him-
self, a herald of the great saving principles of Catholicism as alone
equal to the moral and social regeneration of France. M. Brunetiere
is no ordinary apostle, and his discourses are no ordinary apology for
our religion. In him the historic sense is original, keen and sure. He
is the chief philosopher of literary asstheticism— hence his presentation
of the religion of France to his fellow-citizens is sure to take on all
the attraction of a realism touched with the sacred fire of a harmonious
and persuasive tongue. Doubtless, the regeneration of Catholic France
will be a long and slow process. But no Catholic the world over can
disinterest himself from the task, so widely does the genius of France
always radiate, so centrally located in Catholicism is that great land,
so cosmopolitan is her ancient capital, so old and irresistable are the
ideals, I was going to say the idols, which she holds up to humanity
raccusent de rever la domination politique par la restauration de la monarchie
sont des ealomniateurs, II faut, enfin, et avant toute chose,' rendre a la majority
des 6lecteurs francais la foi religieuse, I'amour des sublimes et eonstantes
v6rit6s de I'Evangile, qu'hglas! ils n'ont plus." (Fremont, " Les Prineipes,"
I, p. 404.)
552 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
for its adoration. In these volumes of M. Brunetiere the reader will
find the practical views and suggestions of a veteran judge in history
and literature. Thomas J. Shahan.
Codex Vaticanus No. 3773 (Codex Vaticanus B). An old Mexi-
can Pictorial Manuscript in the Vatican Library, published at the
expense of His Excellency the Duke de Loubat, Correspondent of
the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres of the Institute
of France, elucidated by Dr. Eduard Seler, professor of American
Linguistics, Ethnology and Archaeology in the University of Berlin.
First Half, Text of the Obverse side. Second Half, Text of the
Eeverse side and Explanatory Tables. Berlin and London : 1902-
1903. 4°, pp. 352.
Gesammelte Abhandfungen Zur Amerikanischen Sprach Und
Alterthumskunde. Von Eduard Seler. Erster Band, illus-
trated. Berlin : Asher, 1902. 8°, pp. 862.
Publications like the above chronicle the high-water mark in the
progress of Central- American ethnology and philology. This volume
of the collected essays of Dr. Seler places before the learned world the
principles and method on which he has hitherto proceeded in the
decipherment of the great Mexican codices and inscribed and sculp-
tured monuments of Yucatan. The students of this attractive lore
will find therein not only inspiration, but models of the most patient
and delicate research, with results of astounding value. It can no
longer be said, as in the time of Stephens, Catherwood, and even of
Desire Charnay, that the old monuments of Central America are
*' perfectly unintelligible."
It is to the immortal credit of the Due de Loubat that he has
placed before the scholars of the twentieth century the ''sources" of
Mexican antiquities— history, theology, chronology, popular manners
and institutions. At an enormous expense he has taken up the
work of the ill-fated Lord Kingsborough and caused it to be executed
with great success, both as regards accuracy and completeness of
materials. It has been a pleasure and a duty to record in the Bulletin
the reproductions of these wonderful codices that we owe to the initia-
tive of the distinguished American whose generosity places copies of
the same in the great libraries of Europe and America. To one
of the finest among them, the Codex Vaticanus 3773 (see Bulletin,
above) Dr. Seler furnishes a commentary in English, that is fascinat-
ing for the perspective it opens of a final intelligence of the written
and inscribed texts that have long been the crux of American phil-
ologists and enthnologists. It is no longer probable that the splendid
BOOK REVIEWS. 553
publications of Mr. Alfred Maudsley will remain forever undeciphered.
A generous Mascenas and a new Champollion seem to have met one
another at a critical moment for the eternal glory of human science
and skill. Thomas J. Shahan.
The Workman. C. Beyaert. Bruges: 1902. 8°, pp. 135,
This is a translation by Rev. P. Grobel of the French volume **Les
Catholiques Beiges" of M. Beyaert. It is a touching appeal to the
faith, humanity and manliness of laboring men, that they make every
effort, individually and by associated action, to improve their moral
and social condition. The language is so simple and direct, and the
spirit of the book is so genuine, that it might easily become a source
of inspiration to many if it could be made known to those to whom
it appeals. William J. Kjjrby.
Dc Religiosis Institutis ct Pcrsonis. Par A. Vermeersch S.J.
Brugis. Beyaert : 1902. Pp. 390.
De Vocationc Rcligiosa. lUd., 1903. Pp. 45.
These two works of Father Vermeersch are practically one study,
the second being a supplement. The author, who is professor of moral
theology in the Jesuit House of Studies in Louvain, is well known
also by his works on moral and social questions. The volume before
us is an exhaustive treatise on the origin, nature, forms, laws and
institutions of religious life, written in accordance with the most
recent decrees bearing on them. The matter is carefully disposed and
printed in a way to make the reading an agreeable task, while a
good analytical table and an index make it easily a first rate reference
work on all points of religious life. William J. Kerby.
Konversations Lexicon. Herder. 3d edition. Vol. I, A-Bona-
parte; pp. 870 or 1740 columns. Vol. II, Bonar-Eldorado. Pp.
879 (1758 columns). $3.50 per volume. 1903.
Staats Lexikon. Von Dr. Julius Bachem. 2 aufl. Vol. IV. Moser-
Sismondi. Pp. 720 or 1440 col. $4.75. Herder, 1903. Complete
in 5 volumes.
1. This third edition of the ''Konversations Lexicon "of Herder is
a splendid achievement from every point of view. The work is
intended to be a popular encyclopseia, bringing within reasonable
compass and making accessible at moderate expense,' all such informa-
tion as current culture and general scholarship demand. Thus it is
that one finds the natural, the biological, the social sciences, history,
554
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
biography, art, theology and religion, not to mention other sources,
furnishing a most interesting variety of information to the general
reader. A carefully prepared system of abbreviation is employed,
by means of which a fairly exhaustive treatment is made possible in
relatively narrow limits. The lexicon, while keeping this general
purpose well in mind, has the added and no less important aim of
presenting subjects in sympathy with the positive doctrinal and his-
torical elements of Catholicity. The Church as an historical institu-
tion and vital element of civilization receives, therefore, such notice
as her character and dignity merit. The illustrations throughout the
work are superb. The plates used with the articles on Egyptian and
Early Christian Art, Architecture and Sculpture, as well as many
others, and the drawings and maps are the equal of any that modern
skill has produced for book purposes. Paper, binding and printing
are up to Herder's usual standard of excellence, hence the Lexicon
may be recommended as in every way worthy of widest circulation.
William J. Kerby.
2. The fourth volume of the ' ' Staats Lexikon, ' ' now issuing from
Herder's press, has just been received. The earlier volumes were
briefly reviewed in former numbers of the Bulletin. Reserving a
general notice of the whole work until the last volume appears it
may be said that Vol. IV is in keeping with all expectations. The best
known and ablest of the Catholic scholars of Germany are among the
contributors to the Lexikon. Further proof of the value of the work
can scarcely be asked. William J. Kerby.
Les Combattants Fran9ais de la Guerre Americaine, 1778-1783.
Listes etablies d'apres les documents authentiques deposes aux Ar-
chives Nationales et aux Archives du Ministere de la Guerre, publics
par les soins du Ministre des Affaires Etrangeres. Paris : Ancienne
Maison Quantin. 1903. 8°, pp. xii + 327.
From February 6, 1778, to September 3, 1782, France was the
ally of the United States in its heroic effort to establish independence
and liberty. The fleets and the armies of France cooperated during
nearly six years with the young republic. All classes and conditions
of Frenchmen found a place in the great struggle— foremost among
them the Irish regiments of Dillon and Walsh. But the names of
most of these brave men were hitherto buried in oblivion in such records
of the French monarchy as are yet preserved at Paris. Owing to the
initiative of the French section of the Sons of the Revolution and
to the zeal of Mr. H. Merou, Consul-General of France at Chicago,
BOOK REVIEWS. 555
these military and naval registers are now printed for the first time.
Of the Irish regiments, however, only the names of the officers are
printed. Some sixty French chaplains who accompanied the various
fleets, are also carried on the rolls, an interesting contribution to the
beginnings of our Church history. The work is handsomely illustrated
with portraits of the principal French officers, and is a notable addi-
of American Revolutionary history.
Repertoire Alphabetique des Theses de Doctorat es lettres des
Universites fran9aises, 1810-1900, avec table chronologique par
universites et table detaillee des matieres. Par M. Albert Marie.
Paris: Picard, 1903. 8°, pp. 226.
This small volume fills a notable bibliographical need. It con-
tains, in alphabetical order, the author-names and titles of very nearly
all the university dissertations offered in France during the last
century for the doctorate. They number 2182, and by far the greater
number wer^e offered to the University at Paris, no slight evidence
of the success of the academic centralization effected by Napoleon.
The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XII L translations
from approved sources, with preface by Rev. John T. Wynne,
S.J. New York: Benziger, 1903. 8°, pp. 580.
The most active minds in Christendom have usually been those of
the Popes of Rome. Our theological literature would be considerably
diminished if we were to lose from it a multitude of important docu-
ments contributed by them, and touching on every large question of
philosophical or theological interest. This is equally true of the
domains of history and political science in its many forms. ^ In the
vast mass of writings that we owe to them it is usually the functions
of headship that appear most prominently— they are the primary
directive force in the life of Catholicism. By reason of their peculiar
position they have always affected the oldest form of Christian com-
position—the epistolary, and the oldest way of reaching the faithful,
through the episcopate. There is no real difference of form between
the Letter of Saint Clement of Rome to the Church of Corinth, the
tractatus of the fourth-century popes to bishops of Spain and Gaul,
the highly personal correspondence of a St. Gregory the Great, and
the Letters of a pope of the nineteenth century. Tn content and
spirit, in argument and purpose, they are chapters in one continuous
story of surpassing solemnity and grandeur. Such correspondence
556 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
as a rule is world-wide in its range, permanent in its interest, and
far-reaching in its consequences. All collections of such superior
historical materials, in any shape, are welcomed by students of his-
tory for they place before all readers a class of public documents
whose value, social, religious, and psychological, transcends that of
all other materials known to man, were they the library of Alexandria.
Leo XIII. lived and worked in a period that may well be called
crucial, whether we consider the magnitude and complexity of the
events that fill it, or the skill and boldness and consciousness of the
chief actors, or the philosophical light and temper in which they
usually approach their work, or the universal and splendid academical
equipment for all studies preparatory to decisive acts and policies.
His masterly exposition of Catholic doctrine had therefore a suit-
able setting. And his long pontificate, his varied experience of life,
his literary taste and skill, his personal attainments in theology and
philosophy, his liberal sympathies with all that was worthy and pos-
sible in our modern aspirations, furnished him with the mental equip-
ment needed for the masterly treatment of so many varied themes.
The **Acta Leonis XIII." contain, of course, the original Latin of
all his important utterances. In that stately language the student
will love to read the teachings of the Church as they came from the
mouth of a genuine scholar. But the translations garnered by
Father Wynne will open the substance of this teaching to many
superior minds and hearts, tossed on the flood of opinion and doubt,
and looking for some broad haven in which to enjoy the peace of
faith and the calm of final conviction. Thomas J. Shahan.
Edgar, or From Atheism to the Full Truth. By Louis von Ham-
mersjein, S.J. St. Louis: Herder, 1903. 8°, pp. 355.
A Systematic Study of the Catholic Religion. By Charles
Coppens, S.J. St. Louis: Herder, 1903. 8°, pp. 370.
1. In the form of an interesting dialogue Fr. von Hammerstein has
dealt with the current objections of materialists and rationalists
against the Christion religion and Catholicism. They centre usually
about God, Redemption and the Church. Hence, in the first section
are expounded the principle of faith, the doctrine of the creation, the
divine origin of justice and duty, of future happiness and the Catholic
concept of miracles. In a second section he deals with the main
facts of Our Lord's life, with the Books of the New Testament, the
prophecies and their fulfilment, and with the usual objections to
these elements of Christian faith. In the third section are treated
BOOK REVIEWS. 557
the true nature of the Church, the principle of authority in religion,
the evidences of it in councils and creeds, the headship of Catholicism.
Justification, Grace, the salient points of the Tridentine Confession
and the Reformation are touched on briefly but instructively. In a
pleasing preface Fr. Conway calls attention to the quiet and dispas-
sionate character of this little work, and declares it *'a clear, concise,
simple exposition of Catholic teaching, warm with fervor of Christian
charity and apostolic zeal, ' ' We subscribe to this judgment, and wish
the work a wide circulation. In spite of an extended table of con-
tents, it very much needs an index. The style of the translation is
good, so good that the work reads like an original.
2. Fr. Coppens has rendered a service to Catholic laymen, and to
non-Catholics by this summary of the larger work of his confrere.
Father Hunter. He follows the general plan of this author's ** Out-
lines of Dogmatic Theology," and reproduces in abridgment many of
its judicious explanations, ''finding them peculiarly well-adapted to
the habits of English-speaking students." For those who have not
at hand the work of Father Hunter, this adaptation will be welcome.
University and Other Sermons. By Mandell Creighton, sometime
Bishop of London ; edited by Louise Creighton. New York : Long-
mans, 1903. 8°, pp. 271.
Discourses on War. By William EUery Channing, with an intro-
duction by Edwin D. Mead. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°,
pp. Ixi + 229.
These discourses of Bishop Creighton breathe his irenic and
scholarly spirit. Occasionally his theology and his reading of history
differ sharply from Catholic positions, but the tone of his speech is
always elevated and inspiring. Not a little of gentle dreamy mysticism
is to be found in these pages. And his reputation for fairness in the
writing of history is well sustained by the discourse "On the Work
of the Monasteries," in which he takes a position quite close to that
of Dom Gasquet.
2. The discourses of William EUery Channing on the evils and
the horrors of war are classical texts among the lovers of peace. Dr.
Channing was profoundly touched by the contradiction between the
true Christian spirit and the military spirit. The one was the em-
bodiment of love and the condition of genuine human progress, the
other the embodiment of hate and all moral degradation. These dis-
courses are always timely and pertinent among us, for they were
brought forth by crises in our own national life, crises that Dr.
37cuB
558 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Channing did not fear to judge from a fundamentally Christian point
of view, however unpopular that might have been with his con-
temporaries. The discourses, or rather essays on the great war-lord.
Napoleon, are good specimens of the splendid eloquence which this
rarely gifted speaker and writer displayed in the early days of our
national life, of the literary perfection of his style, and of the rich-
ness warmth and delicate coloring of his diction.
Thomas J. Shahan.
English History Illustrated from Original Sources, i399-«485-
By F. H. Durham. London: Adam and Charles Black (Mac-
millan), 1902. 8°, pp. 141.
English History Illustrated from Original Sources, 1660-1715.
By J. Neville Figgis. Ibid., 1902. 8°, pp. 207.
These handy volumes contain brief excerpts from the original
materials of each of the great periods of English history. The idea
is an excellent one, to put before the young student of history some-
thing more than a list of dates and names. The chronicles of a period,
its letters, reports, memoires, even the great public documents, have
a lively charm about them that always fascinates. The antiquated
diction alone quickens the interest of a youthful reader, who soon
seizes a personality in the narrator, gauges his interest in the facts,
and thus has his own critical spirit gently but healthily aroused. Each
volume is prefaced by a short introduction, and accompanied by a
select bibliography of published original sources, by notes on the
writers of the same, and by genealogical tables to which brief com-
ments are added in explanation. It would be an admirable work to
prepare a similar series for our Catholic high schools, academies and
colleges, since there are many elements and factors of pre-Reformation
history that we cannot expect non-Catholics to appreciate or to treat
with such intelligent sympathy as we should rightly manifest. This
is all the more important as in the mediaeval period Catholicism was
not only the popular and universal form of religion, but was the
great moulding force of all English life, public and private.
The editor well says (p. vii) that by the use of such books infinitely
better results are gotten from the classes of history than from mere
reading and questioning on a text-book. It compels the teacher to
study and assimilate in order to explain by word of mouth. It moves
the pupil to notice cause and effect, and to draw his own inferences.
It familiarizes him with the views of life taken by contemporaries
and widens his mental horizon in an agreeable and natural way.
Illustrations accompany the text, portraits and historical scenes, that
BOOK REVIEWS. 559
appeal strongly to the imagination of the young reader and satisfy
his curiosity as to details of dress and appearance.
Thomas J. Shahan.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Manual of Mystical Theology. By A. Devine. London, R. and T.
Washbourne. 1903. 8°, pp. 664.
Institutiones Philosophiag Moralis et Socialis quas in CoUegio Maximo
Lovaniensi Societatis Jesu tradebat A. Castelein, S.J. Bruxelles
Societe Beige de Librairie. 1903. 2 vols., 8°, pp. — .
Decreta Synodorum Hartfordiensium in unum volumen coUecta, antis-
titis Michaelis Tierney jussu. Hartfordiae, Conn., 1903. 8°, pp.
334.
Die Heilsnotwendigkeit in der altchristlichen Litteratur bis zur Zeit
des heiligen Augustinus. Von Anton Seitz. Freiburg: Herder,
1903. 8°, pp. 416.
Praglectiones de Missa, cum appendice de SS. Eucharistiae Sacramento,
auctore S. Many. Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1903. 8°, pp. 400.
Die Elemente der Eucharistie in der ersten drei Jahrhunderten. Von
Alois Scheiweiler (Forschungen zur christlichen Litteratur und
Dogmengeschichte III, 4). Mainz: Kirchheim, 1903. 8°, pp. — .
La Vacanza della Santa Sede, II Conclave, TElezione del Nuovo
Papa. Per Mons Pietro Piacenza. Rome: Pustet. 16°, pp. 95.
Ways of the Six-footed. By Anna Botsford Comstock, B.S. Boston:
Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. 152.
The Insect Folk. By Margaret Warner Morley. Boston: Ginn
and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. 196.
Agriculture for Beginners. By Charles William Berkett, Frank Lin-
coln Stevens and Daniel Harvey Hill. Boston: Ginn and Co.,
1903. 8°, pp. 267.
The New Century Catholic Series, First Reader, 8°, pp. 143. Second
Reader, 8°, pp. 177. Handsomely illustrated. New York: Ben-
ziger, 1903.
The Jones Readers, First, Second, Third, Fourth. Illustrated. Boston :
Ginn and Co., 1903.
Moral Briefs, A concise reasoned and popular exposition of Catholic
Morality by the Rev. John H. Stapleton, Hartford Conn.: The
Catholic Transcript, 1903. 8°, pp. 311.
De Carentia Ovariorum relate ad Matrimonium, II. N. Casacca,
O.S.A., Philadelphia: H. Kilner and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. 20.
560 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Creighton University, Reminiscences of Twenty-five years. By M. P.
Dowling, S.J, Omaha: 1902. 8°, pp. 272.
Boston A Guide Book. By Edwin M. Bacon, Boston : Ginn and Co.,
1903. 8°, pp. 190.
The Students' Handbook of British and American Literature, with
selections from the writings of the most distinguished authors. By
the Rev. 0. L. Jenkins, A.M., S.S. Edited by Rev. E. Viger, A.M.,
S.S. Fourteenth edition. Baltimore: John Murphy Co., 1903.
8°, pp. 622.
Allen and Greenough 's New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges,
founded on Comparative Grammar. Edited by J. B. Greenough,
G. L. Kittr.edge, A. A. Howard, Benj. L. D'Ooge. Boston: Ginn
and Co. 1903. 8°, pp. 490.
A Latin Grammar. By William Gardner Hale, Professor of Latin
in the University of Chicago, and Carl Darling Buck, Professor
of Comparative Philology in the University of Chicago. Boston:
Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. 388.
M. Tullii Ciceronis Tusculanarum Disputationum Liber Primus et
Somnium Scipionis. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Frank
Ernest Rockwood, Professor of Latin in Bucknell University. Bos-
ton : Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. viii + 22 + 106.
The Odes and Epodes of Horace. Edited with Introduction and Notes
by Clement Laurence Smith, Pope Professor of Latin in Harvard
University. Boston: Ginn and Co., 1903. 8°, pp. viii + 443.
Why Catholics Cannot be Freemasons: Foreign Freemasonry. By
D. Moncreiff O'Connor, International Truth Society. Brooklyn:
N. Y., 1903. 16°, pp. 68.
Scenes and Sketches in an Irish Parish, of Priest and People in Doon.
By a Country Curate. New Yort: Benziger, 1903. 16% pp. 132.
Sick-Calls, or Chapters of Pastoral Medicine. By Rev. Alfred Mann-
ing Mulligan. New York: Benziger, 1903. 8°, pp. 173.
THE ANNUAL COLLECTION FOR THE
UNIVERSITY.
It is worthy of note that interest in the welfare of the Uni-
versity forms a conspicuous feature in the transition from one
pontificate to another. Leo XIII, but a few months before
his death, appointed the present Eector and charged him, in no
ambiguous terms, to build up the institution according to the
design of its founder. Pius X has scarcely ascended the papal
throne when he addresses a letter to the American episcopate,
urging them to place the University on a sound financial basis
by means of an annual collection. The meaning of the Holy
Father is, or ought to be, quite plain. What one Pope estab-
lished the other proposes to maintain, because the same high
motives are ever in force and the same sacred purposes are
always to be served. The University has become part of the
traditions of the Papacy, so far as the latter deals with the
church in America.
This attitude of the Holy See is of special significance, be-
cause it makes clear the way in which the influence of the
Church, according to the intention of the Holy See, is to be
exerted in these United States. Much has been said and
written of late to the effect that the Papacy is deeply interested
in American progress ; that this country, with its large freedom
of action, opens up a rich field for the work of the Church;
that, in contrast with European conditions, this Republic is a
manifest expression of a high over-ruling Providence, and the
like. That there is truth in such optimistic views, cannot be
doubted. And it is equally certain that there are many diver-
gent opinions as to the particular manner in which the Church
should profit by her opportunity. But to the broader vision
and the experienced insight of the Papacy, the matter is quite
clear. It is by a more thorough cultivation of the intellectual
life among our own people that we must expect to render ser-
vice to the nation, and thereby demonstrate the inherent
necessity of religious and moral education can avail but little
561
562 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
vitality of the Churcli. To discourse eloquently about the
jinless the right measures are taken to show that the Church is
now, as she has been in the past, the best teacher of the people.
To lament the baneful influence of this or that system of in-
struction without providing for real Christian education from
the lowest grade to the highest, is simply a waste of time and
sentiment. The only efficacious means of dealing with the
situation is that which Leo XIII devised and which Pius X evi-
dently means to perfect— the development of a University that
shall be powerful enough not only to present the teaching of
the Church on the great questions of the day, but also to diffuse
that teaching through a system of properly equipped secondary
and elementary schools.
The day is past for imagining, or getting others to imagine,
that the University is so far removed from the life and inter-
ests of the Catholic people, as to make it no concern of theirs.
The very local interests which, in each diocese, and even in
each parish, come nearest to the minds of the clergy and laity,
demand for their proper maintenance and direction the in-
fluence of a central institution. One might as well think of
conducting the affairs of town and country with no regard for
the Federal authority, as to think of improving the educational
facilities of the humblest parochial school without any atten-
tion to the higher and even the highest of our institutions.
In consequence, the letters which we subjoin from the Holy
Father and from the Cardinal Chancellor of the University are
in every way opportune. Appealing through the Episcopate
to the Clergy and people, they prove more forcibly than any
amount of argument that the development of the University
and the completion of its endowment are sacred duties incum-
bent upon all. And because this appeal does base itself upon
the fact that the Church is an organization, not a mere collec-
tion of scattering bodies, it is the more thoroughly in harmony
with that spirit of generous activity which has hitherto accom-
plished so much in the cause of religion.
It is hoped by all the friends and well-wishers of the Uni-
versity that a generous response will be forthcoming to the
appeal made by the Board of Trustees in favor of the great
undertaking. That appeal has been ratified by the Episcopate
ANNUAL COLLECTION FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 663
of the United States, in whose name the Board of Trustees
administers the University. The august sanction of the Holy
See, both in the persons of Leo XIII and Pius X, has been
granted to this significant decision. It has therefore, all the
authoritative approval that could be required. At every step
careful attention has been given to all considerations worthy
of attention, and now the action of the Board of Trustees goes
before the millions of our Catholic laity for that practical
adhesion that they always give to the decisions of the
Hierarchy.
By means of this collection the meaning of a Catholic Uni-
versity will be brought home easily and directly to every
Catholic man and woman in the land. We may rightly expect
from it a relief in the immediate future from the anxieties and
fears that not unnaturally beset the hearts of all who had given
to this holy enterprise their lives or their sympathies. We
may also expect a still greater result, an aroused conscience
and interest on the part of all the Catholics of our land. A
very small number of individuals and a few generous, high-
minded associations have carried the burden for fifteen years.
Their donations have kept alive the work in the first two de-
cades of its existence, covered the period of its infancy, and
given a sufficient shelter to the first organization of a teaching
that we hope will one day grow to rival the noblest and most
useful of the Catholic Universities of the past.
There are nearly one hundred dioceses in the United States,
with about thirteen thousand clergymen, twelve thousand
churches, and fully twelve million Catholics. If this immense
and united organization would only contribute for each person
a very modest sum, the result would be such as to astonish the
entire nation and reveal, what we all know to exist, a sincere
universal desire to elevate our system of Catholic education
to the very highest level, and to make, even in our pioneer
period, such large and intelligent provision for its future as
would compel in the centuries to come the admiration of all.
Collective enterprises, it is true, are some time in com-
mending themselves. Local parochial needs not unjustly
appeal to the individuals whose toil and devotion alone can
create and sustain them. All honor to the brave and patient
564 CATHOLIC UNIVEB8ITY BULLETIN.
generations of priests and sisters, of laymen and laywomen
who have lifted the Catholic cross in every hamlet from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and assured the works of Catholicism
in all quarters of this great land. But larger works constantly
invite us, and with urgency ; for they are needed to secure what
has been already done. The Catholic University is such a
work of universal Catholic significance ; were it otherwise, the
Holy See would not tolerate for a moment the appeal to Ameri-
can Catholic generosity that it now repeatedly urges, and with
that grave and noble insistency that befits the Supreme Head
of Catholicism.
[v' LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER, PIUS X.
Dilecto Filio Nostra Jacoho Tit. S. Marice Trans Tiberim S. B. E.
Presh. Card. Gibhons Archiepiscopo Baltimorensium et Magni
Lycei Washingtoniensis Cancellario Baltimoram, Pius PP. X.
Dilecte Fill Noster, Salutem et Apostolicam benedictionem.— Quae
de Washingtoniensis lycei magni fortuna, minus sane quam sit e votis
laetabili, baud ita pridem significabas, magno in eadem animo curas
Nostras soUicitudinemque convertimus. Yestigiis enim ut est optimis
consentanemn rebus, Decessoris Nostri, in causa praesertim' gravi
maximarumque utilitatum, insistentes, libuit studia Nostra, quae in
illustrem Americae Academiam jamdudum fovimus, servare in Summo
Apostolatus munere, atque etiam pro f acultate exaugere. Quapropter
jucunde admodum novimus sic esse ab episcopis laudati lycei modera-
toribus provisum, ceterisque, quorum interest, probatum ut primo
quoque dominico die Adventus Sacri redeunte, aut, ejusmodi prae-
pedito tempore, quo proximo dominico die liceat, in omnibus Foedera-
tarum Civitatum ecclesiis symbolae ad amplificandum Washingtonensis
Academiae decus conquirantur decem per annos. Initum communiter
consilium frugiferum maxime censemus, cupimusque propterea atque
optamus ut in propositum Academiae bonum et universae reipublicae
istius episcopi et studiosi doctrinarum religionisque fideles omni ope
contendant. Rem autem uti adjuvare gratia sua Deus benigne velit,
Apostolicam Benedictionem vobis et gregibus vestris ex animo imper-
timus.
Datum Romae apud S. Petrum die IX Septembris MCMIII, Pon-
tificatus nostri anno prime.
PIUS PP. X.
ANNUAL COLLECTION FOB TEE UNIVERSITY. 665
(Translation.)
''To Our Beloved Son, James, Cardinal Gibbons, Cardinal Priest of
the Holy Roman Church, with the Title of Santa Maria in Tras-
tevere; Archbishop of Baltimore and Chancellor of the Catholic
University at Washington:
* ' Beloved son : Health and apostolic benediction : The condition of
the university at Washington has enlisted Our deepest sympathy and
concern, inasmuch as the report recently submitted by your eminence
deposes that its affairs are not altogether so encouraging as we could
wish. It is meet that We should follow the example of Our prede-
cessor in the furtherance of noble projects, more especially such as
are of great moment and hold out the promise of large advantage.
In this spirit We are pleased to continue in the fulfillment of Our
apostolic office the interest which we have long cherished toward
this distinguished American foundation and even, when opportunity
offers, to manifest the same more earnestly.
* ' Wherefore We learn with genuine satisfaction that, with the ap-
proval of all others interested in its welfare, the Trustees of the
University have decided that a collection be taken up in all the
churches throughout the United States annually for ten years, on the
first Sunday of Advent or the first convenient Sunday thereafter,
with a view of enhancing the dignity and enlarging the influence of
this noble seat of learning.
**This plan, the result of their joint deliberations. We consider
most likely to produce excellent results. It is, therefore. Our earnest
wish and prayer that all the bishops of the country, as well as the
faithful who have at heart the progress of learning and religion,
should labor strenuously for the good of the university.
"That God may be pleased graciously to help this undertaking by
His grace. We lovingly impart to you and the faithful committed to
your care, the apostolic benediction.
''Given in Eome at St. Peter's on the 9th day of September, 1903,
the first year of Our pontificate.
PIUS PP. X.''
LETTER OF THE CARDINAL TO THE HIERARCHY OF
THE UNITED STATES.
Cathedral Residence, Baltimore,
Nov. 12, 1903.
Rt. Rev. Dear Sir:
I would hesitate to address you this appeal in behalf of the Catholic
University of America were it not that I have been expressly re-
566 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
quested to do so by several members of the American Hierarcby.
I trust that in complying with this suggestion, I am not insisting too
far on a subject which has already been brought to your attention
by the recent letter of our Holy Father, in which he appointed the
first Sunday of Advent, as the day on which the annual collection
for the University was to be taken up, in all the churches of each
Diocese in this country.
This action of the Sovereign Pontiff renders more specific the
decision reached by the Trustees, at their meeting in April last, re-
garding the support and development of the University. The Trus-
tees, according to the Constitutions granted the University by Leo
XIII., are the representatives of the Bishops of the United States,
and the University is placed, by the same authority, under the direct
control and protection of the Hierarchy. It is an Institution for
whose maintenance and further development we have assumed re-
sponsibilities, which we must fully discharge, for the honor of the
Episcopate, as well as for the reputation of the Church.
As the day appointed for the collection is at hand, I deem it my
duty, in behalf of the Trustees, to place before you the needs of the
Institution to meet which an appeal is now made to all the faithful
of this country. That these needs are fully appreciated by the Holy
Father, is evident from the fact that one of the earliest measures of
his pontificate, is in favor of the University, and that his first com-
munication to the Hierarchy of the United States, expresses his con-
cern for the welfare of this pontifical Institution. The example which
he thus gives of devotion to the interests of the Church, is worthy of
his exalted station, and it behooves us, in conformity with his express
desire, to carry out the undertaking, which we unanimously recom-
mended in our Plenary Council, and for which we asked and obtained
the solemn approval of the Holy See.
The reigning Pontiff, no less than his illustrious predecessor,
realizes keenly the necessity of so strengthening our system of Cath-
olic education that the generosity of our people and the devotion of
our clergy, in maintaining elementary and secondary schools, may
reach its fitting consummation in the work of the University. It is
plain that the sacrifices made in so many ways for the education of
Catholic youth, should not have as their final result the sending of
those same young men, at the most critical period of their intellectual
and moral formation, to institutions placed beyond Catholic control.
On the other hand, if our schools and colleges are to serve successfully
the purpose for which they have been founded it is necessary that
their teachers be fully as well prepared as the teachers in other insti-
ANNUAL COLLECTION FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 567
Titions of like grade, and this preparation should be received under
the salutary influence which only a well equipped Catholic university
can exert.
The generous endowment of educational institutions by non-Cath-
olics is one of the most significant movements in our national life.
That Catholics, who have contributed so freely to so many other needs
of the Church, are ready, in respect of educational zeal, to rival their
non-Catholic fellow-citizens, we may take as an assured fact. What
is requisite to direct their generosity towards the work of higher edu-
cation is a clear perception of its importance and necessity.
Signal proofs of this willingness have been given already in the
endowment, by individuals and by Associations, of Chairs in our
University, an evidence of generosity which the Holy See, on various
occasions, has greatly approved. But, in justice to their founders
and benefactors, the work which they began for the advantage of the
entire Catholic body, should now be brought to completion by the
united endeavor of all our people, that thus every Catholic in this
country may feel a direct and personal interest in the University, its
work and its success.
This work is of such a nature that it must progress : it cannot safely
be allowed to remain stationary. The University has a plant and
endowments, amounting in all to about $2,000,000 contributed by the
generosity of our clergy and laity. It is now necessary that we make
good what has already been done, by adding such endowments as will
complete the Faculties, meet extraordinary expenses, and place the
institution on a self-sustaining basis. For the Church in our country
to do this would not require such an extraordinary effort. And once
fully equipped, the University would be the source of blessings in-
numerable for ages to come to the young and vigorous Church of the
United States. New demands are made each year upon the Univer-
sity for better equipment of the existing departments, and even for
the establishment of other departments, without which the several
courses of instruction must be fragmentary, and for that reason in
no condition to attract the large number of students, for whom they
are intended. An exhibit of the financial condition of the University
is now being prepared, and will, as soon as possible, be placed in the
hands of the Bishops ; this will be done hereafter annually.
How much good our University may do in the future, when it is
thoroughly equipped for its work, we may infer from the good which
it has already done in the short period of fifteen years, despite adverse
circumstances, and its unfinished condition. How much good it may
do for the Church in this country, we may also infer from what the
568 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Catholic University of Louvain has done for the Catholic people of
Belgium. It is admitted that it has saved that nation to the Catholic
faith;— a magnificent recompense for the annual collection which the
Bishops order in the interest of that great school. It is an instructive
fact that the Catholic University of Louvain, notwithstanding its
vast student body, and the fees thence accruing, would be unable to
prosecute its work, were it not for this annual collection. Leo XIII.
of happy memory, has publicly registered his hope that the Catholic
University of America should be to the American people what the
Catholic University of Louvain is to the people of Belgium,— the bul-
wark of Religion and the crown of our Catholic educational system.
In all earnestness, therefore, as Chancellor of our University, I
make this appeal to you, and through you to our clergy and people,
in order that this first recommendation of our Holy Father, Pius X.,
may meet with such a generous response as to prove publicly our
loyalty to the Vicar of Christ, who has asked us to make a united
effort on behalf of a work, which is identical with the cause of the
Catholic religion in the United States, and promises so much for the
welfare of Church and country.
JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS,
Chancellor of the Catholic University of America.
LETTER OF THE CARDINAL TO HIS CLERGY.
Abchdiocese of Baltimore, Chancery Office,
408 N. Charles Street, November 10, 1903.
Eev. Dear Father:
At a meeting of the Archbishops in Washington not many months
ago the decision was unanimously adopted to appeal to all the faithful
in the United States on the First Sunday of Advent, November 29,
1903, for funds to carry on successfully the noble enterprise of higher
education through the great University at Washington. Those Arch-
bishops who were not present at that meeting heartily endorsed the
project of their fellow prelates. The wisdom of their action cannot be
questioned. Men of large experience, keenly alive to the country's
needs, fully appreciating its progress in all other directions, they felt
compelled to urge equal advancement in the intellectual and religious
development of both clergy and laity. The judgment of these men,
who are the divinely appointed leaders of Christ's flock, should, and
certainly will, be accepted without demur by the faithful at large.
But a more authoritative voice has spoken. The decision of the
Archbishops has been accepted, approved and emphasized by the de-
ANNUAL COLLECTION FOB THE UNIVERSITY. 569
cision of the Holy See. His Holiness Pius X. has written to me as
Chancellor of the University, and through me to all the Bishops of the
United States, expressing his fullest sympathy with this contemplated
movement, exhorting the faithful to correspond generously to the
appeal, and promising the Apostolic Benediction to all who cooperate
in the larger and fuller endowment of this University. And who
comprehends more fully than he the benefits which the Catholic
Church must derive from a University well equipped and amply
endowed? The sovereign Pontiff in every age of the Church has
always held universities to be a most potent factor in the spread and
preservation of Christ's kingdom upon earth. Hence it was that the
early history of universities is marked by the special favors and priv-
ileges conferred by the Popes on all University students, and by the
rich legacies and foundations made to those high seats of learning by
both clergy and laity. In a word, the Church has ever realized that
the University is a great intellectual force for clergy and laity; for
the clergy, since it adorns them with all the culture of their age and
thereby makes them skillful in meeting the objections of adversaries
of the Faith ; for the laity, since it offers them the best advantages for
the most scientific training.
It was then in keeping with its most venerable traditions that the
Church established in the United States the Catholic University. And
surely no one can deny that its foundation was timely. Behold the
number of non-Catholic universities in our country! It is moreover
but right that all should contribute to the support of this great project,
because a University needs for its support far greater resources now
than in the past. Our brethren in Europe have generously supported
their universities by diocesan collections. And surely we should not
be less generous nor less broad-minded than so many of our fellow-
citizens, who, from no religious motive contribute so munificently to
the numerous non-Catholic universities of our land. Moreover in its
short life the Catholic University has already won for itself an intel-
lectual prominence which few other universities have reached in the
same period of time. All this gives good reason for presuming that
its future will be bright indeed if the faithful contribute to its sup-
port with a self-sacrificing generosity born of faith in the usefulness
of a university to the Church, and if at all times they lend the moral
support of their sympathy and well-meaning admiration. Finally,
this is the first appeal of our Holy Father, Pius X., to us, his Amer-
ican children, to support a work in which he manifests so much in-
terest. Shall we not then justify his expectation to the full and make
this occasion memorable by our cordial and generous support?
670 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
Kindly announce this collection at all the Masses on Sunday, No-
vember 22, as well as on the day of collection.
Faithfully Yours in Christ,
JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS,
Archbishop of Baltimore.
P. C. Gavan, Chancellor.
LETTER OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE.
St. Raphael's Cathedral, Dubuque,
Nov. 3d, 1903.
To THE Clergy and Laity of the Archdiocese of Dubuque :
Venerable and Beloved Brethren:— One of the first acts of our
Holy Father, Pope Pius X., has been to appeal to all the Catholics
of the United States in behalf of the Catholic University of America.
The text of the Papal Brief, addressed to his Eminence Cardinal
Gibbons, is as follows:
Beloved Son: Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The condition of the University at Washington has enlisted our
deepest sympathy and concern, inasmuch as the report recently
submitted by Your Eminence deposes that its affairs are not alto-
gether so encouraging as We could wish. It is meet that We
should follow the example of Our Predecessor in the furtherance
of noble projects, more especially such as are of great moment and
hold out the promise of large advantage. In this spirit We are
pleased to continue, and, as far as may be, to increase in the exer-
cise of the Apostolic office, the interest which We have ever cher-
ished towards this distinguished American foundation. Where-
fore, We learn with genuine satisfaction that the Bishops, charged
with the administration of this worthy institution, have proposed,
with the approval of all others interested in its welfare, that a
collection be taken up in all the churches throughout the United
States, annually for ten years, on the First Sunday of Advent or
the first convenient Sunday thereafter, with a view of enhancing
the dignity and enlarging the influence of this noble seat of learn-
ing. This plan, the result of their joint deliberations. We con-
sider most beneficial.
It is, therefore. Our earnest wish and prayer that all the
Bishops of the country, as well as the faithful who have at heart
the progress of learning and religion, should labor strenuously
for the good of the University. That God may be pleased gra-
ciously to help this undertaking by His Grace, We lovingly impart
ANNUAL COLLECTION FOB THE UNIVERSITY. 571
to you and to the faithful committed to your care, the Apostolic
Benediction.
Given in Rome, at St. Peter's on the 9th day of September,
1903, the first year of Our Pontificate.
PIUS PP. X.
To respond to this appeal of our Holy Father is for me a labor
of love. Ten of the best years of my life were, in obedience to our
Holy Father Leo XIII., consecrated to the task of laying the founda-
tions of the Catholic University of America. The seven years which
have since elapsed have only deepened my conviction that the future
of the University is inseparably bound up with the future of the
Church in our country.
In the century now opening, the welfare of religion everywhere,
and especially in our land of popular liberties, will above all depend
upon the perfection of the system of Christian Education. It must
be a system embracing not only the elementary schools which are such
a blessing to the masses of our people, and the colleges in which our
picked youth are carried still further in their studies, but also the
University, in which the very broadest and deepest and highest educa-
tion is offered to those whom nature and Divine Providence have
fitted to be the leaders of popular thought and action. If it is essen-
tial, as we all hold, that the rank and file of humanity should be
rightly drilled and fitted for a life that will be both intelligent and
Christian, still more imperative is it that the training of those who
are to be the leaders of men should be thoroughly Christian as well
as scientific.
To supply this great need was the object of the Third Plenary
Council in decreeing the University, and of our lamented Holy Father
in urging its establishment. Like all other institutions of great im-
portance, its beginnings have been accompanied with many difficulties.
But it has lived bravely through them all, and stands to-day the
unquestioned head of the Catholic Educational System in the United
States. This fact is attested by the action of most of the Religious
Orders in grouping their houses of study around the University.
Thus far, the great work has been developed and carried on chiefly
through the bountiful offerings of a limited number of individual
Catholics, who have had intelligence enough to recognize that the
noblest use they could make of a portion of their wealth was to con-
secrate it to the central institution of Catholic learning, so earnestly
commended to them by the Holy Father and the Bishops. Now the
time has come to solidify the foundations of the University forever,
and to give needed development to some of its most important depart-
572 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
ments, by the combined action of all the Catholics of the entire
country. Hence, this appeal made to them by the Bishops and by
our Holy Father.
In compliance therewith, I hereby direct that in every church of
the Archdiocese a collection for the Catholic University of America
be taken up on the first Sunday of Advent. If in any locality impos-
sible on that day it must be taken up on the earliest possible Sunday
thereafter. And I earnestly request the Eev. Clergy to enter with all
their hearts into the wish of the Holy Father, and to commend the
cause to the generosity of their people with all earnestness.
JOHN JOSEPH KEANE,
Archbishop of Dubuque.
UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE.
University Appointments. —Rev. John "Webster Melody, D.D., has
been appointed Instructor in Moral Sciences. Dr. Melody is a priest
of the archdiocese of Chicago. He received the degree of A.B. from
St. Ignatius College, Chicago, in 1885, that of A.M. from St. Mary's
Seminary, Baltimore, in 1887, and in 1889 that of S.T.B. from the
same school. In 1893 he received the degree of S.T.L. from the Cath-
olic University, and in 1903 was graduated from the University with
the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology.
Rev. Patrick Joseph Healy, D.D., has been appointed Instructor
in Church History. Dr. Healy is a priest of the archdiocese of New
York. He was ordained in 1898 at St. Joseph's Seminary, Dun-
woodie. New York. Dr. Healy received from the Catholic University
in 1898, the degree of S.T.B., in 1899 that of S.T.L., and in 1903 was
made Doctor of Sacred Theology. Dr. Healy has also been made
Librarian of the University.
Rev. Maurice M. Hassett, D.D., has been appointed Instructor in
Church History. Dr. Hassett is a priest of the diocese of Harrisburg.
He was ordained at the Seminary of Mt. St. Mary's, Emmitsburg,
Md., in 1896. He received from the Catholic University the degree
of S.T.B. in 1896, and that of S.T.L. in 1897. He was created Doctor
of Theology at Rome in 1903.
Rev. Francis Ignatius Purtell, S.T.L., has been appointed Instruc-
tor in Hebrew. He is a priest of the archdiocese of Philadelphia, and
was ordained at St. Charles Seminary, Overbrook, in 1900. He took
the degree S.T.B. at the Catholic University in 1900, and that of
S.T.L. in 1901.
Rev. Dr. John Spensley has been appointed Registrar of the Uni-
versity and Vice-Proctor of Keane Hall. Dr. Spensley is a priest of
the diocese of Albany. He was ordained at Rome from the American
College in 1896. He was made Doctor of Philosophy at Rome in
1893 and Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1898.
Rev. George A. Dougherty has been appointed secretary and as-
sistant to the Rector. He is a priest of the archdiocese of Baltimore,
and was ordained at Rome from the American College in 1890.
Solemn Opening of the University.— The University opened its
courses on Tuesday, October 6. On Sunday, October 11, took place
the Solemn Mass of the Holy Ghost. It was sung by Very Rev.
38 CUB 573
574 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN,
Charles P. Grannan, D.D., Acting Rector. He also presided at the
taking of the oath by the professors.
Doctorate Examinations.— Three Doctors of Theology were created
at the Commencement on "Wednesday, June 10. They were Rev.
John W. Melody, S.T.L. (Catholic University), of the archdiocese of
Chicago; Rev. Patrick J. Healy, S.T.L. (Catholic University), of the
archdiocese of New York, and Rev. Maurice O'Connor, S.T.L. (Cath-
olic University), of the archdiocese of Boston. On the same occasion,
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred on Rev. Charles A.
Dubray, S.M., and Rev. Thomas V. Moore, C.S.P.
The Apostolic Mission House.— The edifice destined for the work
of the Apostolic Missionary Union is about completed. It is hoped
that at an early date it will be ready to receive its first students.
The Dominican House of Studies.— The comer stone of this edifice
was laid on Sunday, August 16, by Most Rev. Diomede Falconio,
Apostolic Delegate, in the presence of a numerous assemblage. Rt.
Rev. William H. 0 'Council, D.D., Bishop of Portland, preached the
discourse of the occasion.
The Institute of Pedagogy —The Institute which, through the
courtesy of the Jesuit Fathers, had been located, during the academic
year 1902-03, at St. Francis Xavier's College in New York, was trans-
ferred in October to the Cathedral College Building at the corner of
Madison Avenue and Fifty-first Street. The courses of Instruction
for 1903-04 are as follows:
History of Education: Rev. Edward A. Pace, Ph.D.
Principles and Methods of Education: John H. Haaren, LL.D.
Psychology: Rev. Thomas Y. Moore, Ph.D.
American History: Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D.
English Literature: John Y. Crowne, Ph.D.
Genetic Psychology: Rev. Francis P. Duffy, S.T.B.
Bequest from Archbishop Katzer.— The late Archbishop of Mil-
waukee has bequeathed to the University the sum of $1,800. The
University acknowledges with gratitude this generous gift. Its pro-
fessors and students will not fail to remember in their prayers the
soul of the deceased prelate.
CONTENTS OF VOL. IX, 1903.
MAIN ARTICLES.
The Old English Chantry — Cornelius Holland 3
Marriage of Near Kin — John Webster Melody 40
Religious Liberty in the United States — Lucian Johnston 61
Religion as a Credible Doctrine — Edwin V. O'Hara 78
Vatican Syriac MSS : New Press Marks — Henri Hyvernat 94
John Casper Zeuss, Founder of Celtic Philology — John J. Dunn 179
The Puzzle of Hamlet — ^Maurice Francis Egan 191
Harnack and His Critics — Humphrey Moynihan 206
Old Testament Conditions and Concepts of Earthly Welfare — George J. Reid. 225
The Mining Question — Leo Dubois 238
On the Italian Renaissance — Thomas J. Shahan 315
The Comparative Method in Literature — ^Maurice Francis Egan 332
Historians of the Medieval Papacy — ^Lucian Johnston 347
Skepticism as a Basis of Religion — Edwin V. O'Hara 369
Leo XIII— Thomas J. Shahan 447
The Ethics of the Labor Union— William J. Kerby 455
The Christian Agap6 — James M. Gillis 465
Who will Build our University Church — ^Thomas J. Shahan 509
BOOK REVIEWS.
Allard — Julien I'Apostat 265
Amelli, S. — Hieronymi presbyteri tractatus contra Origenem de visione Esaise 119
Angot des Rotours — St. Alphonse de Liguori 263
Bachem — Staatslexikon 124
Bacci-Antrobus— Lif e of St. Philip Neri 263
Bain — Selections from the Poems of Ovid 136
Barry — The Papal Monarchy 403
Baunard — ^Un SiScle de I'Eglise de France 409
Bachem — Staats Lexicon 553
B^mont and Monod — ^Mediaeval Europe 400
Bennett and Bristor — Teaching of Latin and Greek 137
Beyaert— The Workman 553
Bludau — ^Die beiden ersten Erasmus- Ausgaben des Neuen Testaments 286
Bouquillon — Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis 416
Bourne — The Teaching of History and Civics 394
Bremond — Ames Religieuses, L'Enfant et la Vie 112
Bright— The Age of the Fathers 540
Brooks— The Social Unrest 418
Brooks — The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus of Antioch 131
Bruneti^re— Discours de Combat 551
Channing — ^Discourses on War -. 557
Cone — Rich and Poor in the New Testament 285
Conway— The Question-Box 392
Coppens — A Systematic Study of the Catholic Religion 556
575
576 CONTENTS.
Creighton— University and Other Sermons 557
Dalton— Letters of Saint Theresa 135
Darmstetter— Abraham 120
De Broglie— Mfere Marie de I'Incarnation ^ 411
Defourney— La Sociologie Positiviste 278
De Loubat — Codex Vatieanus 3773 , 552
De Seilhac— Les Graves 390
De Salviac— Les Galla 261
D^aers— L'Eglise Catholique 550
Dieu et L'Homme 550
Le Christ J6sus 550
Durham— English History Illustrated from Original Sources, 1399-1485 558
Eells — Professor Bourne's Whitman-Legend 413
Fairbairn — Philosophy of the Christian Religion 283
Field— Letters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton 113
Figgis — English History Illustrated from Original Sources, 1660-1715 558
Fischer — The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America 279
Frakn6i — Innocenz XI und die Befreiung Ungams ". 281
Franche — Sainte Hildegarde 406
Fr§mont — ^Les Principes 549
Gairdner — The English Church in the Sixteenth Century 268
Ghent — Our Benevolent Feudalism 392
Glover — ^Lif e and Letters in the Fourth Century 539
Gu6rard — Petite Introduction aux Archives du Vatican 105
Hall — ^The Lords Baltimore 404
Herder — ^Konversations Lexicon 553
Holtzmann — ^Die Peschitta zum Buche der Weisheit 412
Huck — Ubertin von Casale 543
Jacobs — ^As Others Saw Him 537
Janssens — Tractatus de Deo Homine 256
Keane — Onward and Upward 277
Kohlhofer — ^Die Einheit der Apokalypse 120
Lamed — Literature of American History 122
Laveille — Jean Marie de La Mennais 254
Lawler — Essentials of American History 115
Lebarq — (Euvres de Bossuet 134
Linn — The Story of the Mormons 402
Loisy — Etudes Bibliques 140
MacDonald — Development of the Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Con-
stitutional History 518
Marie— Repertoire Alphab6tique des Th6ses de Doctorat Ss lettres des Uni-
versit^s f rangaises, 1810-1900 555
Mention— Rapports du Clerg6 avec la Royaut6 262
Moeller — Histoire du Moyen Age 412
Moncrief— A Short Story of the Christian Church 126
Mortensen— Theatre Frangais au Moyen Age 407
Mortimer — ^The Creeds 408
Nicolay — Histoire des Croyances 522
Nourrisson— Rousseau et le Rousseauisme 398
O'Hanlon— Irish American History of the United States 547
Paulot— Urbain II 266
CONTENTS, 577
R6musat — M6moire de ma detention au Temple 410
Reynier — La Vie Universitaire dans Tancienne Espagne 401
Rickaby — Oxford and Cambridge Conferences 415
Risi — Sul Motivo Primario della Incarnazione del Verbo 259
Robinson — Introduction to the History of Western Europe 405
Roger — ^Die Eschatologie des Buches Job 120
Rose — Etudes sur les Evangiles 123
Saint-L6on — Le Compagnonnage 419
Schrader — Reallexicon der Indogermanischen Altertumskunde 525
Scott — Portraitures of Julius Caesar 535
Seignobos — History of the Roman People 399
Seler — Gesammelte Abhandlungen, etc 552
Spalding — Socialism and Labor 125
Specht — Geschichte der Universitaet Dillingen 112
Tanquerey — Synopsis Theologise Moralis 391
Turner — History of Philosophy 389
Vacandard — Saint Vietrice 406
Van Den Ven — St. Jerome et la Vie du moine Malchus le Captif 118
Vaschalde — Three Letters of Philoxenus 395
Vermeersch — De Religiosis Institutis et Personis 553
De Vocatione Religiosa 553
Voisin — ^L'Apollinarisme 271
Von Hammerstein — Edgar, or From Atheism to the full Truth 556
Von Winterfeld — Hrotsvithse Opera 511
Weis-Liebersdorf — Christus und Apostelbilder 264
Wynne — The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII 555
MISCELLANEOUS.
The University and the Apostolic Delegate 144
Necrology : Very Rev. Dr. Bouquillon 152
Very Rev. Dr. Magnien 164
Rev. Thomas Leo Barry, S.T.L 298
The Pontifical Jubilee of Leo XIII (1878-1903) 288
Ninth Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association 293
The Baronius Society 308
Installation of the New Rector 436
Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, D.D 439
Commencement Exercises, 1902-1903 441
The Annual Collection for the University 561
University Chronicle 170, 311, 444, 753
Notes and Comment 165, 300, 429
GENERAL INDEX.
Abraham, historical character of, . 121
Agape, The Christian 465
Alumni Meeting 293
America, and Norsemen 279
American Antiquities, Essays on . . 552
Americana, Early 306
Annual Collection 561
Anthropologists, modern 59
Apocalypse, unity of 121
Apollinarism 271
Apostles, Portraits of 264
Apostolic Delegate, visits the Uni-
versity 144
discourse of. . . 149
Architecture, Italian 324
Assemani, Joseph Simon 94, 96
Atheism 556
Baltimore, The Lords 404
Baronius Society, The 308
Barry, Thomas Leo 298
Baruch, oldest Latin Version of . . . 425
Bible Studies 140
Bibliographies, Critical 165
Black Death 6
Books, Pedigrees of 332
Bossuet, Sermons of 434
Bouquillon, Thomas 153
Memorial Ex-
ercises 157
Brunetifere, Ferdinand 549
Burial, Ecclesiastical, in antiquity. 435
Carroll, Charles of Carrollton 113
Chantry, Specimen Charter of 17
Old English 3
Priest 17, 33
Schools 24
Chantries, three kinds of 14
and parish priests 16
Suppression of 28
Literature of 36
Chapels, Domestic 9
Chaucer, place of 333
China, marriage customs of 50
Christ, Portraits of 264
Christianity, Harnack on 208
and miracles 209
and the Resurrection
of Christ 217
and the Fourth Gos-
pel 210
and Person of Christ 217
law of the land 74
Church and State, 73
Catholic Theo-
ries of 367
Church, The University 509
Clergy of France, and Royal House 262
Commerce, History of Modern. . . . 431
Compagnonnage, Le 419
Comte, Sociology of 278
Conaty, Rt. Rev. Thomas J 439
Congregations, religious 553
Creeds, The 408
Creighton, Mandell 557
Decalogue, the, and Superstitions. 522
Decoration, Mediaeval 12
Democracy, Social 390
Destiny, of Man 549
Determinism 89
Dillingen, History of University.. 112
Divorce, Billia on 434
Doctorate Examinations 443, 514
Dougherty, George A 573
Dualism, Theistic 83, 84
Duchesne, Louis 110
Dunning, on mediaeval papacy. 357, 362
Earthly Welfare, Old Testament
Concepts of 225
ICbel, Hermann Wilhelm 184
Echellensis, Abraham 95
Education, History of 428
Bishop Spalding on.. . . 312
Dr. Pace on Moral. ... 311
Egypt, Marriage in Ancient 44
Emerson, and the Ancients 335
Europe, Mediaeval 400
Introduction to history of
Western 405
Exogamy 55
578
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BULLETIN.
679
Fathers, Age of the 541
Feudalism, Benevolent 392
Fleury, and papal history 350
Florence, artistic capital of Italy. 329
Fourth Century, life and letters in 539
France, Church History of 409
Fraticelli, the 545
Free-will 89
Fremont, Abbe 549
Galla, The 261
Genesis, Creation account 423
Gibbons, Cardinal, Letter to
American Hierarchy 565
Goldsmiths, Italian, and the Re-
naissance 328
Gospel, Studies in the 123
Grannan, Dr. Charles P 311
Greece, marriage in ancient 51
Hamlet, Puzzle of 191
Hannis Taylor, Hon., Discourse of. 311'
Harnack, Adolf, and his critics . . . 206
Hassett, Maurice M 573
'Healy, Patrick J 573
Hermaneutic, General 421
Hindus, Marriage customs of 49
History, Sources of 303
Hand of God in American 303
Mediaeval 412
and Civics, teaching of . . . 394
Literature of American. . 122
Essentials of American. . 115
English, illustrated from
original sources 558
Papal and Gallicanism. . . 349
Hrotswitha, Works of 511
Hungary and Innocent XI 281
Hymns, Medieval Marian 433
Incarnation, The 257, 259
Incas, marriage customs of 45
Indogermanic Antiquities 525
Industrial Commission, Report of
238, 250
Innocent XI, and Liberties of Hun-
gary 281
Ireland, and Edward Bruce 166
Israel, marriage in ancient 45
Israelites, economico-social condi-
tions 232
Italy, in fifteenth century 316
Jeanne d'Arc, Abjuration of 303
Jesus Christ 537
Job, Eschatology of 120
Julian the Apostate 265
Julius Caesar, Portraits of 435, 535
Katzer, Archbishop, Bequest of . . . 574
Keane, Archbishop 277, 570
Keats, and the Greek spirit 343
Keltic Philology, in Germany 188
Labor Union, Ethics of 455
La Mennais, Jean-Marie de 255
Langgron, Memoirs of 410
Latin and Greek, Teaching of 137
tongue 321
Latium, Tribes of 434
Leo XIII 165, 288, 290, 447, 555
Liberty, Religious in Maryland and
Rhode Island 304
Religious in the United
States 61
in the Colonies 63
Motives of 65.
and the American Revolu-
tion 6T
Literature, Comparative, Method in 35ij:
Loubat, Due de 552
Magians, marriage customs of ... . 42"
Magnien, Very Rev. Dr 164
Mallock, William 369
Marie de I'lncarnation 411
Marriage, Spiritual, in primitive
Church 431
Medici, The 322
Melody, John Webster 573
Middle Ages, The 133
Miners, Complaints of 243
Mining Questions, The 238
Monarchy, Papal 403
Monism, Evolutionary 83, 85
Mormons, History of 402
Municipal Government 139
Near Kin, Marriage of 40
New Testament and Poor in 285
Erasmus' Edition
of 286
History of Books
of 426
Norsemen and America 279
580
GENERAL INDEX.
O'Connell, Rt. Rev. D. J 436
Old Testament, Eschatology of . . . . 225
Oxford and Cambridge, Early his-
toiyof 432
Painters, of Italy 325
Palestine, and world-commerce. ... 234
Papal Claims, Truth of 303
Papacy, Historians of mediaeval
347, 351, 354, 356
Pedagogy, Institute of 574
Persia, influence of on Jews 230
Philippine Islands, Annals of 167
Civilization of 303
Philosophy, History of 389
Philoxenus of MabbOgh 395
Pictorial Manuscript, Mexican 552
Pius X, Letter on University 564
Plato and Christianity 323
Prophets, eschatology of 229
Purtell, Francis 1 573
Recluses, Female, in Middle Ages. 300
Reformation, in England 268
Religion, Philosophy of Christian. 283
Credibility of 78
and scepticism 369
and the religous sense. . . 430
the Catholic 556
harmony of Religious life 131
R6musat, Memoirs of 410
Renaissance, The Italian 315
Causes of 319
Revolution, Frenchmen in the
American 554
Rich and Poor, in New Testament. 285
Riverside Law Suit 174
Roman People, History of 399
Rome, Marriage in ancient 53
Civil law and Christianity , 432
Rousseau, et le Rousseauisme . . . . 398
Schools, Mediaeval grammar 24
Administration of 139
Severus of Antioch 131
Skepticism, as a basis of religion . . 369
Sleep, Mystery of 429
Socialism and Labor 125
Sociology, Positivist 278
Soul, the Breton 533
Spensley, John 573
St. Alphonsus Liguori 263
Cecelia, Martyrdom of 301
Jerome and Vita Malchi 118
tractate against Origen 119
Francis of Assisi 301
Hildegarde 407
Philip Nero 263
Theresa, letters of 135
Victricius of Rouen 135
Subintroductae, Virgines 431
Theatre, French mediaeval 407
Tennyson, and Theocritus 330
and Sir Thomas Malory 338
Theses, doctorate, in French Uni-
versities 555
Theology, Moral 391, 416
Tout, and the Mediaeval papacy. . . 365
Thurneysen Rudolf 187
Trusts and Strikes 390
Turin, Holy Shroud of 165
Turner, History of Philosophy 389
Ubertino da Casale 543
United States, Irish American His-
tory of 547
Universities, the First 166
Spanish 401
the Catholic 661
Unrest, The Social 418
Urban II 266
Vatican, Syriac MSS. in 94
Archives of 105
War, Discourses on 557
Whitman Legend, The 413
Windisch, Ernst 185
Wisdom, Syriac Translation of
Book of 412
Workman, The 553
Worship, Origins of Christian 110
Zeuss, John Casper 179
Grammatica Celtica 183, 184
Zimmer, Heinrich 186
LH 1 .C3B7 V.9 SMC
Catholic University Bulletin
BCZ-0780