Chapter VI: Masters and Slaves (7)

Long and loud was the flourish of trumpets that greeted the day on which Philip the Mighty was born to his father’s dukedom; so rare was the promise of a babe. Need it be said that, nurtured under the eye of his stern sire, he grew in the strength of justice? To such a degree had he inherited the zeal of his ancestors, that while yet in his cradle he strangled a wretched nurse for stealing his spoon; whereat there was another flourish of trumpets. Subsequent reflections upon the loss of so useful a servant taught him to restrain the exercise of his just powers; and hence, when his tutors failed to instruct him within a given time in the arts, sciences, languages, and literatures, he merely broke their heads. We live to learn; and so it proved even to a prince as well endowed as Philip the Mighty. In these early acts we can see the foundations of that character which was afterwards so great a monument among men.

During the famous period in which our prince served his sire in the administration of justice, the dungeons were never empty of thieves and wranglers, nor the axe long idle for want of miscreant heads. To a peasant who once stole an apple, he said, “How now, varlet, dost confess?” Answered the trembling churl: “Nay, most puissant lord, I stole not the fruit.” Then spoke Philip: “By my halidom, I’ll mend thine honesty”; whereupon the fellow was put on the rack till he broke a blood‐vessel, still not confessing, for it was death to steal an apple out of the duke’s garden. At night the peasant died in his bed of a hemorrhage, piously acknowledging in his last moments that he had committed the theft; whereat was another flourish of trumpets. Life is a great lesson, however, and it must not be supposed that our powerful hero could content himself with a few exploits at court when he felt that he had a mission to reform the world.

Therefore it was that Philip the Mighty set out upon a knight’s errand to slay all the witches, devils, malefactors, giants, goblins, and monsters that came in his path. But one squire rode with him, bearing a golden trumpet, which, when Peter had done to death a sour‐faced hag who shrieked at him on the mountain‐side, he blew right merrily. Now, the old witch had asked the valiant knight for justice against her lord at court. Life is a science not to be mastered without blows; and Philip learned to slay and fear not in such stout earnest that soon he won the renown of being, as in fact he was called, the Champion Wrong‐killer of the age.

When a foul, black‐hearted necromancer was tracked to his hiding‐place, what else should our good knight do but put him to the sword? When a five‐ eyed dwarf was accused of deviltry, who else should carve him for the crows but our duke’s son? When a grim ogre, breathing death and fury, beset him whose arm was so mighty, when malefactors pestered the land, when monsters of all kind raged on every hand, who dealt them such lightning doom as the champion wrong‐killer? On every occasion did his trusty squire blow the trumpet of gold right lustily, to the wonder of lords and people. Now, it was whispered that the slain sorcerers had helped husbandmen and artisans with their strange inventions; that the malefactors were slaughtered outright for the crimes of their fellows; that the giants were amiable men, sometimes, but provoked beyond endurance; that dwarfs and witches were poor old people, seldom as bad as they seemed to be. Nevertheless, the real monsters of the land increased day by day, in spite of the champion killer’s sword and his squire’s golden trumpet.

Weary with much slaughter of false knights and caitiff wretches and monsters, the paladin Philip resolved to undertake the deliverance of the poor from the oppressions of the rich. Filled with this noble idea, he slew a yeoman who was chastising his servant without mercy. Seeing a number of slaves at work, he set them all free by killing their master. He divided the estates of the rich among the poor. He distributed largesses among multitudes of the needy. He rescued honest damsels who were being carried away by villain lords. Alas! for an ingrate world. ’Twas rumored that the yeoman had left a widow and seven children to mourn him. The slaves became marauders; the poor quarrelled among themselves; the beggars got drunk; and some of the honest damsels lamented their fallen lords. Howbeit, the faithful squire blew his trumpet louder than ever.

Meanwhile had our good knight grown religious, and burned men at the stake; but the more the fuel, the greater the flame. The more lances he shattered for honor’s sake, the more swords he blunted for justice’s sake; the more money he spent to give feasts to beggars, and the more land he parcelled among the poor, all the more honor, justice, bounty, estate, remained to be won and adjusted. His sharp judgments had, after all, won him nothing but the sound of his trumpet. He had killed the innocent and robbed the poor, when he intended to do otherwise, and, if he executed Heaven’s judgments, it was by a kind of mistake. One thing he had not slain—himself.

All the while, he who had killed so many monsters was growing in bulk and stature out of all proportion. As his legs and arms increased their strength of muscle, his ears grew longer, and his eyes grew blinder. He scorned, nay, devoured the weak he once defended, and, at last, a monster himself, was killed by a conspiracy of those whose champion he once was. For Philip, though a champion wrong‐killer, was blind to his own wrong‐ doing; and, though a reformer, never allowed people to reform themselves; so he destroyed the wheat with the chaff and killed the good with the bad.

New Publications.

THE BOOK OF THE HOLY ROSARY. A Popular Doctrinal Exposition of its
Fifteen Mysteries, mainly Conveyed in Select Extracts from the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church. By the Rev. Henry Formby, of
the Third Order of St. Dominic. Embellished with thirty‐six full‐
page illustrations. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
1872.

The devotion of the Holy Rosary is one of the most beautiful which the Catholic Church proposes to her children, and is also probably the one which has been received by them everywhere, without distinction of nationality or class, with the most sincere delight. Catholics, it is true, are for the most part familiar with the general history and significance of this devotional practice, which in itself forms a compendium of popular theology. Most of the books, however, on this subject, with which we are acquainted, are intended to excite Christians to the frequent and devout use of this form of prayer, rather than to give them a full and clear understanding of its natural connection with the great and fundamental truths which form the basis of Christianity. The book of F. Formby is both doctrinal and devotional; all the more devotional because the piety which it inculcates is enlightened by true Christian science.

The work is divided into three parts corresponding with the three groups of mysteries of which the Rosary is composed. The author prefaces each of these groups with an introduction, in which he carefully compares its mysteries with their corresponding types in the Old Testament. This comparison is again instituted in a more particular manner as each mystery in turn presents itself for elucidation.

In treating of the different mysteries, he first quotes from Scripture those passages upon which they are formed, and then adduces the corresponding types from the Old Testament, still further illustrating the subject by apposite quotations and allusions taken from the classics of pagan literature. These are followed by extracts from the writings of the great Fathers and Doctors of the church, many of which will be new to the English reader. Thus each chapter of the book forms a comprehensive treatise, both doctrinal and devotional, of the particular mystery in the life of our divine Saviour or that of his Blessed Mother to which it is devoted.

Without going out of his way, F. Formby by the simple exposition of the doctrine and practice of the church shows in the most conclusive manner how utterly groundless are the objections of Protestants to Catholic devotion to the Mother of Christ. We have not for a long time read a book with which we are so perfectly pleased as with this of F. Formby. The clergy especially will find in it a rich mine from which to draw instruction for the people. It may be read with profit, however, by all classes of persons, as the plain and simple style in which it is written does not raise it above the comprehension of even uneducated minds. The book is ornamented with thirty‐six full‐page woodcuts, unusually excellent both in design and execution; which, added to the attractions of clear typography and tasteful binding, make it a work of art as well as of religion.

HENRY PERREYVE. By A. Gratry, Prêtre de l’Oratoire, etc.
Translated by special permission. London: Rivingtons. 1872. (New
York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

After a life of singular purity and great activity in the cause of truth, F. Gratry entered upon his rest on the 6th of February, 1872. His impulsive and ardent nature hurried him for a moment, towards the close of his life, into a controversy which, for a time, caused the greatest anxiety to his friends, and threatened to throw a cloud over an existence otherwise so brilliant and precious. His heart, however, always remained loyal to the church and to truth, and, when he was made aware of his error, he himself was the first to acknowledge it, and to do all in his power to atone for it. The writings of F. Gratry have always possessed for us a singular charm. He has in a high degree the gift of making his thoughts contagious. He throws the warmth and life of his whole heart into his writings; his words breathe and palpitate and affect one like the presence of a noble and high‐wrought nature. In Henry Perreyve he found a subject peculiarly fitted to call forth these qualities of his style. The history of the outer life of Henry Perreyve was uneventful and short. Designed by his parents for the bar, disposed by his own vigorous and impetuous nature to the military life, he was called of God to the priesthood. When he had once recognized the voice of God, he devoted to this high vocation all the energies of a most gifted and courageous nature. At an early age he developed remarkable talents both for writing and speaking. He possessed the divine gift of eloquence, and Lacordaire, who loved him more than any other man in the world, looked forward to the day when his own voice, having grown feeble by age, would be born again with redoubled strength and warmth on the lips of Henry Perreyve. Alas, that such hope should be delusive! He to whom Lacordaire wrote, “You live in my heart eternally as my son and my friend,” was destined soon to follow his great preceptor to the grave. He died in 1865, when but thirty‐ four years old. The story of his life, as told by F. Gratry, is a poem full of the most exalted sentiment, and impressed with the highest form of beauty. “All who knew him,” says his biographer, “agree on this point, that the one characteristic which stamps his outward life and his inward soul is only to be expressed by that word Beauty. All the inward beauty wherewith courage, intelligence, devotion, and goodness can invest a soul, and all the outward expression of beauty with which such a soul can stamp the living man, were combined in him. Nature and grace had alike done their very best for him; he overflowed with their choicest gifts.” Whoever will read F. Gratry’s sketch will be persuaded that these words are not too strong. The life of Henry Perreyve is another confirmation of the truth that the ideal type of perfect manhood can be developed only in the Catholic Church. We especially recommend this book to the young men of our country. Even though it should not inspire them with the exalted ambition of consecrating their lives to God, it will at least teach them the transcendent beauty of Christian courage, of self‐devotion, of nobility of purpose.

Henry Perreyve was most ardent in urging his friends to aspire to the priesthood. In this connection F. Gratry remarks: “Truly, I know no wiser enthusiasm than that which stimulates men to become laborers for God. We have too few priests; we have far too many soldiers. No man becomes a priest whether he will or no; but on all sides the strong hand of the powers that be constrains men to be soldiers whether they will or no. Why is the priest’s lot to be counted worse than the soldier’s? He who chooses the sacred toil of God’s harvest‐field for his life’s labor, chooses the better part. Surely his ambition is beyond all comparison the greatest, best and noblest: his work the most fruitful, the most necessary. That is but a sorry delusion by which the world would set the priesthood before men as in the shadow of death, and other careers as in a glow of light and glory.”

THE SPOKEN WORD; or, The Art of Extemporary Preaching: Its
Utility, its Danger, and its True Idea. With an easy and practical
Method for its Attainment. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter, Professor of
Sacred Eloquence in the Missionary College of All Hallows, Author
of “Sacred Eloquence,” etc., etc. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.

One of the most favorable omens attending the great Catholic revival in the English‐speaking world is the appearance of works bearing upon the various duties of the sacred ministry. In the earlier days of struggle in England and America, the missionary priest entered upon a life of toil which gave but scant opportunity for adding to the fund of learning that served as its outfit. Hence, while the greatness of the Catholic champions, who entered the arena armed _cap‐a‐pie_ by a long and thorough training, was brought into striking relief, the depression of minds less trained and of less capacity among the clergy was marked by the absence of a native literature suited to their class.

When a priest rarely had a day free from harassing labors, and was barely able to run into debt for the brick, beams, and shingles of a nondescript building wherein to assemble his flock, he certainly did well if, after reading his breviary and peeping into his moral theology, he kept himself informed of current events. Such circumstances of poverty were not favorable to literature or eloquence. Ecclesiastical art, with its intricate ceremonial and its peculiar music, was in a fair way to be lost; and the refinements of clerical education were rather sources of discouragement in the present than of bright anticipation for the future.

But this phase, having in some measure passed away in England, has lost much of its gloom for us in America. Pastors have more time to prepare instructions for their people. Congregations by their magnitude and intelligence call forth the highest efforts of eloquence. The instincts of Catholic devotion require that God’s house should be made a house of prayer, and demand, for their satisfaction and increase, the sacristy and choir, which shall be “for a glory and a beauty.” Meanwhile, increasing wealth furnishes means for fulfilling the requirements of the Roman Ritual.

The work which we notice is one of many signs of the times, and also one of a series of similar efforts by its earnest and experienced author. It is written in a clear and flowing style, slightly marred, however, by the frequent repetition of the adjective “expedite,” as qualifying the noun “knowledge,” and the perpetual recurrence of “a man who,” or “the man who.” The general effect is nevertheless pleasing, and the book itself ought to be read. The title contains a fair analysis of the work. It remains for us to say that the author is thorough in the treatment of his subject. His hints and warnings are useful to those accustomed to preach extempore; while his suggestions for the composition of sermons are entirely applicable to those who perfect their oratorical preparations before ascending the pulpit.

The appearance of the book is also quite in its favor, and we might adduce it as a sign of the times in a department to which we have not yet alluded.

THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. By the Rev. Father Rawes, O.S.C. London:
Burns, Oates & Co. 1872. New York: Sold by The Catholic
Publication Society.

This is a beautiful sketch of the life of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Father Rawes, in common with S. Jerome, S. Augustine, and S. Bernard, has a great and special devotion to the Evangelist S. John. This little book is well written and is eminently devotional and instructive.

UNAWARES. By the Author of “The Rose Garden.” Boston: Roberts
Bros. 1872.

One experiences a sense of rest and refreshment in reading this unpretending volume. It is a narrative of French life, not at all after the sensational order, but beautifully wrought out, with enough of romance to sustain the interest and chain the attention of the reader, but not a line or word that one could wish unwritten. With a slight plot and few incidents, this pleasing story charms us with a delightfully artistic description of a quaint old town in France, where the grand cathedral stands, the central object of attraction—solemn, steadfast, ever varying—severe or tender, as the case may be—but always inconceivably peaceful.

The characters, drawn with a skilful hand and admirably sustained, the chaste beauty of the language and style, with the gems of thought worthy of life‐long remembrance scattered throughout the volume, lead us to desire an acquaintance with other books this attractive author may have written.

THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER. By George MacDonald. Boston: Roberts Bros.
1872.

If not to be sensational is a merit, this book certainly has that merit. The Introduction, which in most books is apt to be dull, and often is skipped by the reader who wishes to plunge _in medias res_, is here the spiciest part, the sugar‐coating of the pill—if it be not ill‐natured to call this work a pill. A very mild one it is, and the patient, if none the better, will certainly be none the worse for taking it. Its object seems to be to promulgate some Presbyterian ideas concerning the means to be used for elevating the spiritual condition of the poor. The London poor is the class considered, but the general rules laid down may be supposed good for all poor. Some very queer ideas are broached; among others, that it is better to give a workman a gold watch than a leg of mutton, because by so doing you will pay him a compliment for which he will be grateful, but that he should have nothing given him “which he ought to provide for himself—such as food, or clothing, or shelter.” There is a Miss Clare who is possessed by such a missionary spirit and love for the poor, that we cannot help wishing she might find her proper sphere by becoming a Catholic “Little Sister of the Poor,” or some other equally useful sister of charity. The church utilizes such women much more wisely than they manage to find the best way alone. There is a chapter of Miss Clare’s reading and discussing of the Gospel with some workmen, which, if not positively irreverent itself, will be very likely to make the reader, who has any sense of humor, feel so in spite of his better instincts.

The Vicar’s daughter, Mrs. Percivale, is a very sprightly and well‐drawn character, whom we cannot help liking very much. She is the teller of the story, and in this Dr. MacDonald has shown much skill. It is in some parts so like a woman’s way of thinking and writing, that we can hardly believe it to be the work of a man, especially in Mrs. Percivale’s thoughts after the birth of her child. And in this the author approaches very nearly the Catholic ideal:

“I had read somewhere—and it clung to me although I did not
understand it—that it was in laying hold of the heart of his
Mother that Jesus laid his first hold of the world to redeem it;
and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of
saving us it was—to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash
him and dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep! ... Such a
love might well save a world in which were mothers enough.”

But alas! he makes the vicar himself save his faith from shipwreck by marrying the woman he wants—a queer and new argument for the marriage of the clergy, to be able to _believe_ through such means. Not that this is intended by the author for any such argument; he being a Presbyterian, makes no question of the propriety and wisdom of the clergy marrying, but that a clergyman should be taught _belief_ by getting the woman of his choice _is_ “passing strange.” He also prefers giving his daughter to a sceptic rather than to a “thoroughly religious man,” for fear the latter might “_confirm her in doubt_.” To a Catholic, this seems a wonderful conclusion.

The chapter called “Child Nonsense” is nonsense indeed, and much below “Mother Goose” in literary merit. We wonder it found a place in the volume, which contains much genuine wit and good writing.

The illustrations to the book are clever, and the type and binding attractive.

AMBITION’S CONTEST; or, Faith and Intellect. By “Christine.”
Boston: P. Donahoe. 1872.

We cannot, perhaps, give a better idea of the style and scope of this modest volume than by a quotation from the Preface: “It would be presumptuous to say that I have attempted this little work in order to aid in preventing these numerous wrecks of the soul; for where other and gifted pens, essaying so much and so well in this direction, still find it difficult to do all _they_ would, it would be folly to suppose that my crude effort could accomplish anything. Still it is an effort made for the purpose of accomplishing _some_ good, and written under the auspices of her who has never yet failed to assist the weak, the ever‐glorious and Blessed Virgin‐Mother of God, it may perhaps add a mite to that which is now being done for the proper training of our Catholic youth.”

GARDENING BY MYSELF. By Anna Warner. New York: A. D. F. Randolph.
1872.

We cannot imagine a pleasanter way of studying horticulture than by adopting Miss Warner’s volume as a text‐book. We can overlook the little attempts at moralizing, after the evangelical fashion, as she goes along, in view of the dismal theological efforts made by her sister (if we mistake not) a few years since. We advise our lady readers who have space for cultivating flowers to consult this little manual, assured that the occupation of which it discourses, and its results, will bring them a large store of unalloyed enjoyment.

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has in press, and will publish early in November, _The Life and Times of Sixtus the Fifth_, by Baron Hubner. Translated from the original French by James F. Meline.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 92.—NOVEMBER, 1872.

Centres Of Thought In The Past. Second Article. The Universities.

The change from the monastic to the scholastic era was one of which we can hardly form an idea. As radical as that brought about in politics by the tempest of 1793, it was less sudden, and, though to the full as dangerous as the unhappy “Reformation,” it was fortunately shorn of its heretical perils by the vigorous and successful hand laid upon it by the church. Instead of producing an organized system of antagonism to revealed truth, which it seemed at one time on the very verge of doing, it became so thoroughly absorbed into the church’s system that to many minds “scholasticism” is synonymous with “bigotry.” Yet how opposite was the reality to the idea which it conveys to the modern mind! The real temper of the church, the temper which will be hers eternally in heaven, is the temper of Mary; the contemplative, monastic ideal of perfect peace. In the XIIIth century (we say the XIIIth typically, for the change was gradually working some time before, and only grew to its maturity in that age), a giant intellectual convulsion took place, and the church was rudely wakened out of her placid ecstasy, to find herself assailed by brilliant and popular fallacies, urged by men of dazzling talent and fearless powers of questioning. It was as if some holy monk, who from childhood to ripe old age had spent his life on his knees before the silent tabernacle of a huge and perfect abbey‐church, were suddenly to be startled into action by the rude attack of a sacrilegious band on the very altar at whose steps he had worshipped so long. See him spring to his feet, and with unexpected strength throw himself before the priceless treasure, quell by his eagle glance the bewildered assailers of his peace, and convert by his heaven‐ dictated eloquence those very men into saints, those enemies into friends, those proud opponents into fellow‐watchers at the same hallowed shrine. So sprang the church to the defence of those doctrines which hitherto it had been mainly her duty to _guard_, and the struggle, distasteful as it must have been at first, nevertheless ended by producing a new harvest of saints, and increasing the human prestige as well as the spiritual armory of the church. The reader will no doubt be pleased to see what the writers already quoted have to say of this mighty intellectual revolution, and we gladly yield to them the field of description. “It will suffice to reconcile us to the temporary necessity of the change,” says the author of _Christian Schools and Scholars_, “that it was accepted by the church, and that she set her seal to the due and legitimate use of those studies which were to develop the human intellect to its full‐grown strength. Nay, more, she absorbed into herself an intellectual movement which, had she opposed it, would have been directed against her authority, and so to a great extent she neutralized its powers of mischief. The scholastic philosophy which, without her direction, would have expanded into an infidel rationalism, was woven into her theology itself, and made to do duty in her defence, and that wondrous spectacle was exhibited, so common in the history of the church, when the dark and threatening thunder‐cloud, which seemed about to send out its lightning‐bolts, only distils in fertilizing rain.” Speaking of S. Dominic, Prior Vaughan, in his _Life of S. Thomas of Aquin_, says: “He felt that a single man was but a drop in the ocean in the midst of such a vast and organized corruption. Man may be met by man, but a system only can oppose a system. A religious institution, combining the poverty of the first disciples of Christ with eloquence and learning, would alone stand a chance of success in working a regeneration.” He tells us further on that Albertus Magnus, the master of S. Thomas, saw that “Aristotle must be christianized, and that faith itself must be thrown into the form of a vast _scientific_ organism, through the application of christianized philosophy to the _dogmata_ of revealed religion.” The state of men’s minds is thus pithily described by the same author: “For, especially at this period, theory speedily resolved itself into practice; what to‐day was a speculation of the schools, to‐morrow became a fact; men lived quickly, thought quickly, and acted quickly in the days of William of Champeaux and Abelard.” Still, in summing up the character of those strange, contradictory times, so eminently “ages of faith” when contrasted with our day, yet ages of jarring contention when compared with the previous centuries, Prior Vaughan gives us the brighter side of the picture also: “Men were not startled in those days by the unusual deeds and privileges of chosen men. They took God’s word for granted. They believed what they saw; they did not pry and test and examine their souls. They got nearer the truth than we do. Their minds were not corroded by false science.” And in a footnote he adds, speaking of the great difference between heresy in the middle ages and heresy now: “In this (the reverence for authority) is seated the great distinction between the darkness of those days and the darkness of the present. Then, men fell away in detail, they denied this or that truth, or fanatically set up as teachers of novel doctrines, or were cruel, or superstitious, or fond of dress, or of excitement, or self‐display. But they held to the master‐ principle of order and of salvation, they did not reject the authority of the teaching church, or presume to call in question the directive power and controlling office of the sovereign pontiff.”

Now, let us at the outset anticipate one question our readers may very naturally ask themselves: Have we undertaken a sketch of the history of the church, or that of human thought and progress? The latter, undoubtedly. Then, how is it that “the church” runs through the whole, like the ground melody of the system? How is it that, even in the emancipating times on which we have now come, the doctors and masters of the schools are all monks and clerics, the theses chosen from Scripture texts, the disputes all turning on points of doctrine, and those, too, uncompromisingly of _Catholic_ doctrine? We can only answer that such are the facts; secular learning hardly existed, and what there was of it was so tinged with religion that it was hardly distinguishable from that of theologians. Take Dante, for instance, an accomplished scholar, a patriot, a politician, and a keen philosopher. Who would not think him a priest and a theologian, from the way he has cast his grand and unrivalled poem? It is a summary of Catholic doctrine and tradition, a poetical version of S. Thomas’ _Summa_, without some knowledge of which it is absolutely impossible to read the third part, the _Paradiso_, and _understand_ it. We cannot help it if we seem to be sketching ecclesiastical, while we are engaged on intellectual, history. Never before the “Reformation” were they divorced, and no better proof than this could be adduced of the essentially teaching mission of the church.

The proximate cause of the greatness of the University of Paris may be traced through four or five generations of scholars up to our Saxon master Alcuin. His pupil Rabanus, the great Abbot of Fulda, formed Lupus of Ferrières in his own mould; he in turn instructed Henry of Auxerre, the _scholasticus_ or master of the Auxerre school, where he found Remigius, destined to become the re‐establisher of sacred studies at Rheims, the Canterbury of France. From Rheims this Remigius removed to Paris (in the Xth century), and from his time the schools of that city continued to increase in reputation and importance till they developed into the great university. He it was “who opened the first public school which we know with any certainty to have been established in Paris.”(81) The first rudiments of the laws governing the greatest corporate institution of scholastic times seem to have sprung from the very disorders occasioned by the immense numbers and pugnacious national characteristics of the rival students of all nations who flocked to Paris. In 1195, we find a certain John, Abbot of S. Alban’s, associated with the _body of elect masters_,(82) and the year previous Pope Celestine III. ruled that the students should be subject to ecclesiastical tribunals only, and should be exempt from all civic interference in their affairs on the part of the town authorities.(83) In 1200, the university is acknowledged by Philip Augustus as a corporate body, governed by a head who shall not be responsible for his acts to any civil tribunal whatsoever. And now begins in good earnest a system the like of which was never seen, and for brilliancy as for license will never be surpassed. It is like plunging into the seething cauldron of a “witches’ Sabbath” to read of the marvellous and feverish state of things in the Paris of the XIIIth century, and even of that of earlier days. For a vivid description of the turbulent city we can refer our readers to the recent work of the Benedictine, Prior Vaughan, and to the no less graphic pen of Victor Hugo in his _Notre Dame de Paris_. A grotesqueness wholly French pervades the latter work, but gives perhaps a truer picture of the reality than any less fastidious language could convey. In the Paris of old, as in our own day, things seem to have been inextricably mingled: the sage and the buffoon are elbowing each other in the streets; students who have come for fashion’s sake flaunt their vulgar splendor and their disgusting shamelessness in vice in the face of the poor scholar who sits attentive and eager on the _straw_‐covered floor of the lecture‐room; midnight orgies that seldom end in less than murder take place within a few feet of the oases of monastic life, where the canonical hours are still faithfully repeated and _the rule_ still silently kept up. Vanity and frivolity are there, and the arrogance of wealthy dunces. Witness the young man whose father sent him to Paris with an annual allowance of a hundred _livres_. “What does he do?” asks a chronicler of that time, Odofied. “Why, he has his books bound and ornamented with gold initials and strange monsters, and has a new pair of boots every Saturday.” This was at the time that pointed shoes were the “rage,” and the university even passed a decree against them as follies unbecoming a scholar.(84) “We read of starving, friendless lads with their unkempt heads and tattered suits, who walked the streets, hungering for bread and famishing for knowledge, and hankering after a sight of some of those famous doctors of whom they had heard so much when far away in the woods of Germany or the fields of France.”(85) Many had to share their miserable garments with their companions, and take it by turns to wear their _one_ tunic so as to make a decent appearance in the lecture‐hall, while the rest stayed at home. Others spent all they had on parchment, and were in need of oil for their lamps to study at nights. Long before the collegiate system became general, the lay‐students were huddled together in unhealthy tenements, over the shops of the burghers, with whom they had many an affray on the score of extortion and injustice. While the rich students employed their many servants and the tradesmen they patronized as instruments in their shameful intrigues, the poor scholars struggled on, some selling books at ruinously low prices, others absolutely begging their food in the streets or at the doors of the rich shopkeepers, while others again, more miserable because less determined, took refuge in the taverns, and drank away the little remains of vitality left in them, or as often were despatched in the unseemly brawls which tavern‐life was sure to foster. Then, as the brighter side of the picture, there were the monasteries, especially that of the Dominicans of S. James, where eager scholars studied in peace and order; the cloisters of Notre Dame, where venerable orthodoxy was long entrenched; the Sorbonne, destined to be for ages the most celebrated school of theology in Europe, and to hold its own long after the mediæval university had decayed. Disputed cases were sent to the Sorbonne for decision, popes took the advice of its doctors on important ecclesiastical matters, and its students possessed even greater personal immunities than their fellows of other colleges. Then, if we are to take the personal representatives of this wonderful university into account, what a forest of illustrious names starts up before our bewildered vision! In the XIth century, quite at the latter end, we are introduced to the gifted Abelard, who during the first half of the XIIth century gathered together all the stormy elements of the age, and centred upon himself the attention of the intellectual world. “He appears to have possessed,” says Prior Vaughan, “the special gift of rendering articulate the cravings of the age in which he lived.... One day he took into his hands Ezechiel the Prophet, and boasted that next morning he would deliver a lecture on the Prophecy. With bitter irony some of his companions implored him to take a _little_ longer time to prepare; he replied with disdain, ‘My road is not the road of custom, but the road of genius.’ He was true to his word, and mockery was speedily turned to amazement when his companions, overcome with his eloquence, followed him verse after verse as he unfolded the hidden sense of the obscurest of prophecies, with a facility of diction and clearness of exposition and a readiness of resource which subdued the mind and captivated the imagination.” Success was his idol, pride his natural temper. He thought no question above his understanding, no truth beyond his apprehension; he threw down the glove in the face of a system more for the sake of routing its exponent than of impugning its truth, and when all eyes were upon him, and the populace of Paris rushed madly out on its door‐steps and house‐tops to cheer him as he passed, his end was won and his dearest wish fulfilled. One by one all his opponents were silenced; from school to school he rose, till at last the chair of Notre Dame was his; his name eclipsed that of all the masters of Paris, and drove from men’s minds even the fame of the doctors of the church.... And then what was the climax? It is told in three words—Héloïse, Soissons, and Sens. True, there was a long interval between the two misfortunes represented by the first two names, and that galling one which at last proved his salvation at Sens, and during the interval his fame revived, and again at Paris, though at S. Geneviève and no longer at Notre Dame, his _prestige_ broke down all prejudice and his victorious career began afresh. Then see the last drama of his stormy, eventful life. He meets S. Bernard at Sens before a court of bishops, monks, and princes, his own disciples crowding triumphantly around him, a huge concourse of people heaving before him, he “the spokesman of thousands, from whose midst he would, as it were, advance and proclaim the creed of human reason.”(86) Opposed to him stands one whose cheeks are furrowed with tears, and who has made no preparation to meet the irrefragable dialectician, the prince of debate, but who, “though in appearance but an emaciated mystic from the solitude of his cell, would represent as many thousands more who saw beyond the range of human vision, and judged the highest natural gifts of God from the elevation of a life of faith.”(87) History gives us the thrilling _denouement_ in startlingly simple form. When summoned to defend, deny, or explain the heretical propositions drawn from his brilliant works, Abelard turns in sudden contempt from the august assembly, and answers thus: “I appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff.” But all felt that this was defeat, the blow had been struck, the heresy was dead. And the heretic? Let many who have tried to‐day to walk in the dizzy path his footsteps have marked out, strive rather to imitate the end of his life; let them follow him to the solitary Benedictine Abbey where his gentle friend Peter the Venerable led him like a little child, and where his earnest, passionate nature, that could do nothing by halves, soon transformed him into a saint. And let the world which knows him chiefly through his sin and early shame fix its eyes upon him as one who, having abdicated honors greater than those of the greatest throne, having sorrowed with more than David’s sorrow, and taught with more than Solomon’s wisdom, at last found peace and justification in a narrow cell and in his daily avocations of instructing a small and obscure community on “divine humility and the nothingness of human things.”(88) Among the other great names that stand out in the tumult of Paris as stars of learning and holiness are William of Champeaux, Abelard’s chief adversary, and the founder of that saintly school of S. Victor which gathered in one the spirit of the old cloisters with that of the new scholastic teachers, and led the way through its famous doctor‐saints, Hugh and Richard, to the final welding together of the new form of theology, the incomparable _Summa_ of S. Thomas. Then, too, we have the preacher Fulk of Neuilly, who became a scholar at a ripe age, and soon surpassed the young students whose aim was display rather than knowledge—the man who preached the fifth crusade at the tournament of Count Thibault de Champagne,(89) and was followed by such crowds that, to rid himself of them and their inconvenient homage (shown by cutting pieces out of his habit), he called out, “My habit is not blessed, but I will bless the cloak of yonder man, and you can take what you please.”(90) John of St. Quentin, also, a famous doctor, who, preaching on holy poverty and the vanity of all learning, all riches, and all honors, suddenly stops, descends the pulpit‐stairs, kneels at the feet of the astonished prior of the Dominicans, and will not rise before the latter has thrown around him his own black cloak and enrolled him in the army of that holy poverty he had just praised with so much zeal. Then Albert the Great, whose followers were so numerous that he had to leave the schools and speak in the open air, so that the square where he delivered his lectures was called _Place du maître Albert_, which name later on became corrupted into the form it still bears, Place Maubert. Albert brings before us the school of Cologne, inferior of course to the mighty university, but yet a centre, at least for Germany. There S. Thomas of Aquin first studied, and now and then astonished his undiscerning companions by the “bellowings of the great dumb Sicilian ox,” until he was finally sent to Paris, the scene of his matchless and altogether spiritual triumph. In him, the heir of the old Benedictine school of _quies_, sanctity worked that marvellous union of the old spirit and the new which ended by harmonizing the truths of the church with the clamoring aspirations of a new and venturesome age. But, inseparably connected though he be with the crisis of the XIIIth century, when passion was at its hottest, and the intoxication of world‐wide success made Paris reel like a drunken man, we feel nothing but peace in the life of the Angel of the Schools, the greatest scholar of the European university. A divine calm seems to curtain off his soul from the contentions in which his mind and body are engaged; his lessons seem rather to be given from a holy of holies than from a professor’s chair, and, while we see in him the greatest thinker of the age, we feel that above all he was its greatest saint. One might say of him, with all due reverence, that he was the only man of that turbulent and questioning day who had looked upon the face of God and lived. Beside him was his gentle friend, Bonaventure, of whom, though a professor also, we hear but little intellectually, but whom the highest authority on earth has sealed as a doctor of the church, a burning seraph of love.

And here we must leave that greatest of centres, Paris, whose prosperity at that time seemed so unalterable, and take a glance, necessarily a cursory one, at the other continental universities. Bologna undoubtedly claims the first place. It was called the “Mater Studiorum” of Italy, and vied more successfully with Paris than any other of the universities. The great Countess Mathilda of Tuscany, the liberal patroness of learning and protectress of the Holy See, was connected with its foundation, and by the end of the XIth century it was celebrated as the first law school in Europe.(91) This characteristic it always retained, while in the XIIth century canon law began to be equally studied there. Connected with Bologna was the publication of the _Decretals of Gratian_, a summary of the decrees of the popes, of a hundred and fifty councils, of selections from various royal codes, and of extracts from the fathers and other ecclesiastical writers.(92) The few errors in this gigantic work have often served as a peg whereon to hang many calumnies against the church; but the whole scope of the undertaking, so bold in its conception, so lucid in its exposition—has it ever been sufficiently examined outside the church? And will the world be astonished to know who was its compiler and who spent twenty‐five years of his hidden life upon it? A simple Benedictine monk of Chiusi, of whom nothing is known but his immortal work.

M. de Maistre has cleverly said, “_Grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare_,” and we might adapt the pithy saying thus: Raise but the thinnest crust of what we call civilization, and you will find beneath the solid structure, the immovable foundation of monasticism.

In 1138, Frederic Barbarossa consulted the Bolognese doctors as to the framing of a code of laws for his Germano‐Italian Empire, and in return for their help gave them the _Habita_, or series of protective ordinances which raised the Italian university almost to the level of that of Paris. Alexander III., formerly a theologian in its schools, also favored Bologna, and a tide of scholars from all parts of Europe began to flow towards the Apennines. Among these we find S. Thomas of Canterbury, who, as we know, made such brave use of the legal science he acquired there. Bologna was the second centre of the Dominican Order, the teaching order of the church—the instrument raised up in the warm‐hearted but intemperate middle ages to guide aright those lava‐streams of misdirected enthusiasm which at one time threatened to rationalize or fanaticize the intellectual world. It is at Bologna that we read of the miracles of the gentle and bright S. Dominic, and of the angels that constantly followed him to do the bidding of him who through opposition and misunderstanding was always doing God’s bidding. Here, too, S. Thomas of Aquin came once, and, being unknown to the procurator of the convent, was required to carry the basket while his companion collected the friars’ daily pittance through the streets. A true monk, he gladly obeyed, and was pained and confused when some of the passers‐by told the procurator of the mistake he had made.

Italy was fruitful in universities, for, to mention only prominent names, there were Padua, Pavia, Salerno, and Naples, besides Rome, where the tradition of learning, especially sacred learning, was never quite broken. Padua was an offshoot from Bologna, and became famous in the XIIIth century for its devotion to classic literature and the liberal arts. At the time of the “Renaissance” it had become, however, a notorious focus of atheism.(93) Salerno was a school of medicine, and Pavia a brilliant and wicked resort of every intellectual aberration. We remember reading an excellent description of its vices, its dangers, and its attractions, in the life of a Venetian, a poet and child of genius, the friend and librettist of Mozart, whose name we cannot, however, recall. Even in those days of moral decadence the picture seemed appalling, and at Pavia as at Paris, as at Oxford in old times and our own day, there appears to have been no lack of brainless young profligates whose college career was a disgrace to their early education, and must have been a remorse prepared for their more sober conscience in later life.

The University of Naples, as we learn from Prior Vaughan, was the creation of Frederick II., the Sybarite emperor whose splendid barbaric physique knew how to make all Eastern luxury of body and Greek luxury of mind minister to his sovereign pleasure. The description of his harem, his kiosks, his palaces, his gardens at Naples, reads like a page from the _Arabian Nights_, and rival the impossible tales that are told of Bagdad’s lavish magnificence under the caliphs. Utterly pagan the university seems to have avowedly been. It had no being of its own, but was a royal appurtenance, as the other institutions of Frederick II. Learning was a luxury, and it behooved the emperor to have all luxuries at his feet. Students from all parts of his kingdom of Naples were compelled by arbitrary enactments to study nowhere else but in the exotic university; the professors were all paid from the public treasury, and among them, with characteristic pride and contemptuous eclecticism, the imperial patron had canonists, theologians, and monks. Astrology and the wildest theories were broached, Michael Scott, the pretended seer and alchemist, was conspicuous for his brilliant talents and pagan tendencies, the existence of the soul was freely questioned, materialism openly professed, and many _literati_ ostentatiously paraded their preference of the philosophy of Epicurus or Pythagoras over the religion of Jesus Christ. A secret society is also alluded to in a popular poem of the day, its express purpose being the _expunging of Christianity and the introducing of the exploded obscenities of paganism in its place_.(94) This reminds us of Disraeli’s _Lothair_, in which such prominence is given to a secret society called _Madre Natura_, framed for the identical purpose we have just mentioned. It is said to have existed ever since the time of Julian the Apostate, and always with the same intent. The materialistic theories of the artist Phœbus concerning the absolute necessity of “beauty worship” and the superiority of the Aryan over the Semitic races (or principles) are only modern echoes of this pestilential teaching of the deification of materialism. Whether Disraeli, descended from that high race whose history and laws are a standing protest, and have been for ages a bulwark, against the “concupiscence of the flesh,” believes in these theories, is more than we can tell; he has at any rate clothed them with suspiciously gratuitous beauty in his recent work, and has, moreover, tried to fix upon the Anglo‐ Saxon race the stigma of practically adopting them as her own. The monastic history of the countrymen of Bede and Wilfrid tells a very different tale, and nevertheless does not omit to mention the love of sport and athletic exercises peculiar to Englishmen. How far, however, is the character of the young race‐riders(95) and fox‐hunters(96) of monastic England from that of the voluptuous Oriental and sensuous Greek!

Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Spain, and Flanders likewise had their own centres, more local, however, than those of Italy, all of them under the new form of universities, and all more or less emancipated from the strictly monastic spirit of the older centres of learning. Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Wittenberg were the foremost in Germany; Cracow was founded by a saint, the holy Hedwige of Poland; and Prague, which gave so much trouble and anxiety to the church in former times and hardly less in our own day, owes much of its glory to the holy women of the middle ages. Thus Dombrowka, a princess of Bohemia, married to a Polish chief, and Hedwige, the great queen and patron saint of Poland, established colleges there and endowed them liberally. Salamanca had a wider reputation, and fell heir to all the brilliant learning of the Arabian and Jewish schools, whose influence on Christian thought in the days of S. Thomas of Aquin had been so dangerous. All the scientific knowledge of the East thus became its natural property, while the intensely Catholic mind of the Spaniards held them aloof from what was poisonous in Eastern philosophy. And here let us stop to remark that Spain, ranked as it has always been among the Latin nations, nevertheless owes its first Christian traditions, and, no doubt, also its imperial notions of universal sway, to the vigorous Gothic races, mingled with the Frankish and Burgundian blood brought in by intermarriage with the Merovingian princes of France. There is something in Spanish history, in Spanish perseverance, we might almost say in Spanish toughness, that reveals the Visigoth, the man of the northern forests, with his indomitable energy and insatiable thirst for the sole rule of land and sea. Alcala, the creation of Cardinal Ximenes, and Coimbra, besides twenty‐four colleges dignified by the name of universities, make up the quota contributed by Spain to the intellectual progress of Europe. We wish we had more space and time to devote to them.