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THE 
 
 THREE AGES OF PROGRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIUS K. DKVOS, 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, SPALDING, NEB. 
 
 With Preface by the Lord Bishop of Ogdensburg. 
 
 M. H. WILTZIUS & CO., 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 
 
 MILWAUKEE, Wis. 
 
 1899. 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
 NIHIL OBSTAT. 
 
 SIMON LEBL, D. D., 
 
 CENSOR LIBRORUM. 
 
 Imprimatur. 
 
 *FREDERICUS XAYERIUS, 
 
 Archiepiscopus Milwauchiensis. 
 
 Milwaukee, Dec. 30th, 1899. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY M. H. WILTZIUS & Co. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 TTHE book, presented by Father Devos to readers of 
 Church history under the name of "Three Ages of 
 Progres", is not a chronicle of events as its size might 
 suggest, but it is a series of tableaux of the principal 
 ecclesiastical events which have occurred in the world since 
 the coming of Christ with an interspersion of philosophical 
 considerations, from a Catholic standpoint, of their causes 
 and their effects. The conspiracy against truth which 
 originated with the Centuriators of Magdeburg has, during 
 this century, received many mortal blows, not only at the 
 hands of Catholics like de Maistre, Lingard, Stolberg, 
 Hurter, Cantu, Rohrbacher, Veuillot, Gorini, Wouters, 
 Jungmann, Brownson, Janssen, Parsons, Pastor and others, 
 but from non-Catholics as well, such as Roscoe, Yoigt, 
 Gregorovius, Guizot and many more in the old country, 
 and it is actually being pulverized by Starbuck of Andover 
 on our side of the ocean. It is time therefore that Catholics 
 take a more decided stand against the calumnies of their 
 enemies, not only by defending the Church as they have 
 always done, but by making positive moves against the 
 hostile lines, carrying the war into Africa itself. This has 
 become easier indeed since the illustrious Pontiff who so 
 marvelously continues to hold the rudder of Peter's bark 
 has proclaimed the "open door policy" in regard to the 
 rich archives of the Vatican. Henceforth there can not 
 
 594 
 
IV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 
 
 only be no room in serious works for the invented bulls 
 and grievances and tariffs and oaths which made the 
 delight of anti-Catholic writers and lecturers, but the very 
 original reports and communications from the enemies as 
 well as from the friends of the Church to and with the 
 Centre of Christendom, in all centuries, will bring out in 
 their true light the victories and the defeats, the gains 
 and the losses of Christ's kingdom on earth. And surely 
 neither the Church at large, nor the Papacy, on which she 
 is founded, will lose anything by this better acquaintance 
 with the facts. 
 
 The author appropriately calls his book " Three Ages 
 of Progress"; for progress indeed there has been and there 
 is in the life of the Church. Progress, not in the newness 
 of doctrines or in alterations of the constitutional organi- 
 zation of Christ's mystical body, or in more abundant 
 communications of the Holy Ghost. "For who, when going 
 over the history of the Apostles, the faith of the rising 
 Church, the struggles and slaughter of the valiant martyrs, 
 and finally most of the ages past, so abundantly rich in 
 holy men, will presume to compare the past with the 
 present times and to assert that they received a lesser 
 outpouring of the Holy Ghost?" (Leo XIII, Testam Bene- 
 volentiae.) But the progress has been in a fuller under- 
 standing of the doctrines, brought about by the very 
 denials of heresy and the consequent discussions and con- 
 demnations of errors against the once delivered truth; 
 progress there has been in the practical application of the 
 constitution given to the Church by her Founder ; progress 
 there has been in the larger extension of the Divine king- 
 dom and the consequently greater number of its soldiers 
 and of its citizens. Must not the whole creation finally 
 acknowledge the sceptre of the incarnate Son of God? 
 (I Cor. xv, 28.) 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 All this the " Three Ages of Progress" places before the 
 reader in a simple but attractive manner. For the proofs 
 of the facts and the grounds of the deductions the student 
 is to consult critical essays and ex professo histories; the 
 ordinary reader will be satisfied with the knowledge of the 
 portrayed events, which, he may rest assured, have been 
 drawn from certified sources. The book is complete enough 
 to make the Church appear, as she has been and as she 
 is, the true continuation on earth of the Divine Teacher 
 and Ruler of mankind, and to furnish arms with which to 
 attack and defeat her enemies ; it is not too large to pre- 
 vent its admission into the humblest households and into 
 all libraries, parochial and private. We wish it all success 
 both for the sake of our holy religion and as a reward 
 of his labor for its humble but learned and zealous author. 
 
 t H. GABRIELS, 
 
 Bishop of Ogdensburg. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Chapter First. DEGRADATION OF THE WORLD 1 
 
 I. Orginal Fall 1 
 
 II. Idolatry among Savages 2 
 
 III. Idolatry among Civilized Peoples 2 
 
 1. Pantheism of Eastern Asia 2 
 
 2. Dualism of Western Asia 5 
 
 3. Man-worship of Europe 5 
 
 IV. The Ruin Irremediable 7 
 
 Chapter Second. BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 9 
 
 I. The City of God and the City of Satan 9 
 
 II. Religious, Social and Liberal Progress 9 
 
 III. A Conspiracy against the Truth 12 
 
 EARLY AGE. A. D. 1476. FROM JUPITER TO CHRIST. 
 
 Chapter Third. CHRISTIANITY AGAINST PAGANISM 19 
 
 I. Nature of the Contest 19 
 
 II. Threefold Triumph 20 
 
 1. Triumph over Jewish Prejudice 20 
 
 2. Triumph over Roman Power 21 
 
 3. Triumph over Greek Science 22 
 
 III. Appeal to the Philosophers 23 
 
 Chapter Fourth. DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 25 
 
 I. The Central Figure of History 25 
 
 II. The Desired of the Nations 25 
 
 III. The Lord of Nature 26 
 
 IV. The Ruler of Mankind 28 
 
 Chapter Fifth. UNWILLING WITNESSES 32 
 
 I. Sad Fall of the Jewish Nation 32 
 
 II. Election of a People 32 
 
 III. Unique Crime and Imcomparable Punishment 34 
 
 IV. Undying Hostility 38 
 
VIII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Chapter Sixth. THE TWELVE FISHERMEN 41 
 
 I. The Apostles Too Busy to Write 41 
 
 II. Foundation of a Worldwide Empire 42 
 
 III. The Two Apostolic Types 46 
 
 1. Peter the Wise Governor 46 
 
 2. Paul the Eager Conqueror 47 
 
 IV. Contrast to Mohammedanism 48 
 
 Chapter Seventh. POWERLESS TYRANTS 49 
 
 I. The Pagan Empire Wars on the Church 49 
 
 II. Cruel Assault by Two Monsters 50 
 
 III. Systematic Persecution by Two Statesmen 51 
 
 IV. Warlike Attack by Five Soldiers 52 
 
 V. Culminating Persecution and Miraculous Victory 53 
 
 Chapter Eighth. TRIUMPHANT VICTIMS 55 
 
 I. The Eloquence of Blood 55 
 
 II. Sublime Virtues of the Martyrs 55 
 
 III. Immense Number of the Martyrs 57 
 
 Chapter Ninth. CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 59 
 
 I. Doctrine Cast into Scientific Form 59 
 
 II. The Philosophers Accept Christianity 59 
 
 III. The Sophists Pervert Christianity 61 
 
 IV. Triple Condemnation of the Sophists 62 
 
 1. Condemnation by Doctors 62 
 
 2. Condemnation by Councils 63 
 
 3. Condemnation by Divine Providence 65 
 
 Chapter Tenth. HALFWAY CHRISTIANITY 67 
 
 I. Is Jesus God or Man? 67 
 
 II. The Two Champions 67 
 
 III. The Solemn Judgment 68 
 
 IV. Fortyfive Years of Struggle and Triumph 70 
 
 Chapter Eleventh. HERESY DISCARDED 74 
 
 I. Doctrines Put to a Test 74 
 
 II. Heresies Against the Fall and the Redemption * 74 
 
 1. Donatism 74 
 
 2. Manicheeism 75 
 
 3. Pelagianistn 75 
 
 III. Heresies Against the Blessed Trinity 76 
 
 1. Arianism 76 
 
 2. Macedonianism 76 
 
 IV. Heresies Against the Incarnation 76 
 
 1. Nestorianism 76 
 
 2. Monophysitism 79 
 
 3. Monothelitism 81 
 
 Chapter Twelfth. RUINOUS SCHISM S3 
 
 I. Decav of Greek Church... 83 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 II. Causes of the Schism 84 
 
 1. Decline of Clerical Celibacy 84 
 
 2. Iconoclasm of the Emperors 84 
 
 3. Constantinople's Jealousy of Rome 86 
 
 III. Instruments of the Schism 86 
 
 IV. Terrible Consequences of the Schism 88 
 
 MIDDLE AGE, A. D. 476-1517. FROM BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Chapter Thirteenth. CHRISTIANITY AND AIOHAMMEDANISM 95 
 
 I. Definition of Civilization 95 
 
 II. Christianity a School of Civilization 97 
 
 III. Mohammedanism a Camp of Barbarism 99 
 
 IV. The Torch of Enlightenment 101 
 
 Chapter Fourteenth. BARBARISM OF WESTERN EUROPE 103 
 
 I. Europe a Whirlpool of Nations 103 
 
 II. The Migrations of the Peoples 103 
 
 III. The Inroads of the Barbarians 105 
 
 Chapter Fifteenth. CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS 109 
 
 I. The Papal Missionaries 109 
 
 II. Tribes Settled in the Old Empire 110 
 
 1. Franks 110 
 
 2. Visigoths. Longobards and Anglo-Saxons 110 
 
 III. Teutons on their Native Soil 112 
 
 1. Germans 112 
 
 2. Scandinavians 113 
 
 IV. Slavs and Mongols 113 
 
 1. Moravians 113 
 
 2. Bohemians 114 
 
 3. Prussians 114 
 
 4. Poles 114 
 
 5. Russians 115 
 
 6. Hungarians 115 
 
 V. Apostolic Success Lacking Among Sectaries 115 
 
 Chapter Sixteenth. EDUCATION OF THE BARBARIANS 117 
 
 I. St. Benedict a Providential Man 117 
 
 II. The Gospel of Industry 118 
 
 III. Stability of Benedictine Order 120 
 
 IV. Making Haste Slowly 122 
 
 Chapter Seventeenth. CONSTITUTION OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 123 
 
 I. Distinct but Harmonious Powers 123 
 
 II. The Papacy and its Temporal Powers 123 
 
 1. Local Independence 123 
 
 2. International Authority 125 
 
 III. The Empire and the Feudal System 126 
 
 1. Bond of Union 126 
 
 2. The Lord and his Fiefs... .. 127 
 
X THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Chapter Eighteenth. DEFENCE OF CHURCH'S LIBERTY 130 
 
 I. Intrusion of Unworthy Clerics 130 
 
 II. Leaders of the Conflict 130 
 
 III. Hildebrand's Heroic Struggle 132 
 
 IV. St. Gregory's Triumph after Death 134 
 
 Chapter Nineteenth. DEFENCE OF POPULAR LIBERTY 136 
 
 I. The Rebukers of Tyranny 136 
 
 II. Frederic Barbarossa 136 
 
 III. Frederic II 138 
 
 IV. The Popes the Friends of Republics 140 
 
 Chapter Twentieth. THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH 142 
 
 I. A Pontiff-President 142 
 
 II. The Arbiter of Nations 143 
 
 III. The Enforcer of the Christian Law 144 
 
 IV. The Defender of Christendom 146 
 
 V. The Ideal Court of Arbitration 147 
 
 Chapter Twenty first. DECLINE OF TEMPORAL SUPREMACY 148 
 
 I. Cunning of Philip the Fair 148 
 
 II. Resistance of Boniface VIII 148 
 
 III. Concessions of Clement V 150 
 
 IV. A Temporary Expedient 153 
 
 Chapter Twentysecond. PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 154 
 
 I. Unity of Obedience 154 
 
 II. Disputed Papal Succession 155 
 
 III. The Outcome 158 
 
 1. Conciliar Theory Exploded 158 
 
 2. Papal Authority Vindicated 160 
 
 IV. Visible Protection of Providence 161 
 
 Chapter Twentythird. UNITY OF FAITH 165 
 
 I. The Foundation of Society 165 
 
 II. Faith Enlightened by the Doctors 165 
 
 III. Faith Guarded by the Statesmen.... 168 
 
 IV. Measures in Conformity to the Times 171 
 
 Chapter Twenty fourth. HOLINESS OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY "..... 172 
 
 I. Salvation the Great Aim 172 
 
 II. Fulness of Christian Life in the World 172 
 
 III. Heroic Sacrifices in Religious Orders 173 
 
 1. Ancient Orders 173 
 
 2. Mendicant Orders 174 
 
 3. Charitable and Military Orders 176 
 
 4. The Glory of True Religion 178 
 
 Chapter Twentyfifth. PROSPERITY OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 179 
 
 I. Material and Spiritual Progress 179 
 
 II. Chivalry 179 
 
 III. Free Cities and Guilds 181 
 
 IV. Universities and Cathedrals 183 
 
 V. Progress Stopped by Protestants and Freemasons 185 
 
CONTENTS. . XI 
 
 Chapter Twentysixth. A NEW BARBARISM THREATENED 187 
 
 I. Mohammed not Qualified to Found a Religion 187 
 
 II. An Incongruous System 187 
 
 III. Fanatical Warfare 189 
 
 IV. Social and Economic Degradation 191 
 
 V. America's Debt to the Church 193 
 
 Chapter Twenty seventh. ASSAULT OF THE ARABS 194 
 
 I. Instruments in God's Hands 194 
 
 II. Punishment of the Sectaries 194 
 
 III. Trial of the Catholics 196 
 
 1. Resistance of France 196 
 
 2. Expulsion of Moslems from Italy 197 
 
 3. Liberation of Spain ,... 197 
 
 4. Spain a Queen, Greece a Slave 190 
 
 Chapter Twentyeight. THE CRUSADES 200 
 
 I. United West Takes the Offensive 200 
 
 II. Origin and Results of Crusades 200 
 
 III. First Crusade 202 
 
 IV. Later Crusades 20& 
 
 V. St. Louis a Type of Christian Chivalry 206 
 
 Chapter Twentyninth. INVASION BY OTTOMAN TURKS 208 
 
 I. Necessity of Union 208 
 
 II. Ruin of Schismatic Greeks 208 
 
 III. Triumph of Catholic Europe 211 
 
 IV. The Church Alone Saved Civilization 214 
 
 MODERN AGE, A. D. 1517-1899. FROM LIBERALISM TO LIBERTY. 
 
 Chapter Thirtieth. THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY 219 
 
 1. The Enemies of Liberty 219 
 
 II. Liberalism in Religion 220 
 
 III. Liberalism in Politics 222 
 
 IV. Leo XIII on True and False Liberty 225 
 
 Chapter Thirtyfirst. LAX PROTESTANTISM 228 
 
 I. Luther a Second Mohammed 228 
 
 II. Despotism in Fact 228 
 
 1. A False Prophet 228 
 
 2. A Presumptuous Doctor 229 
 
 3. An Intolerant Anti-Pope 230 
 
 III. License in Principle 231 
 
 Chapter Thirty second. RIGORISTIC PROTESTANTISM 234 
 
 I. Mohammedan Features of Calvinism 234 
 
 II. A Gloomy System 234 
 
 1. Fatalism 234 
 
 2. Intolerance 235 
 
 III. Evil Fruits of Calvinism..., .. 236 
 
XII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Chapter Thirtythird. AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM 239 
 
 I. Spirit of English Revolt 239 
 
 II. Schism of Henry VIII 239 
 
 III. Heresy Introduced bj' Somerset 242 
 
 IV. Catholic Reaction Under Mary 243 
 
 V. Final Establishment of Protestantism by Elizabeth 243 
 
 VI. Evil Means and Results 246 
 
 Chapter Thirtyfourth. PERSECUTIONS IN IRELAND 248 
 
 I. A Nation of Martyrs 248 
 
 II. Futile Efforts of Henry and Somerset 248 
 
 III. Systematic Attempts at Extermination 249 
 
 1. Elizabethan Persecution 249 
 
 2. Treachery of the Stuarts 250 
 
 3. Persecutions by Cromwell and William 250 
 
 4. Persecutions by the Georges 252 
 
 IV. Infamous Penal Laws 252 
 
 V. Honor to Whom Honor is Due 254 
 
 Chapter Thirty fifth. PROTESTANT DESPOTISM 255 
 
 I. Separatists Enslave Both Body and Soul 255 
 
 II. Tyranny of Episcopalian Kings 256 
 
 III. Violence of Lutheran Princes 256 
 
 IV. Intolerance of Calvinistic Peoples 258 
 
 1. Liberty's Worst Foes 258 
 
 2. Germany and Switzerland 258 
 
 3. Scotland 259 
 
 4. England v 260 
 
 5. France 261 
 
 6. Netherlands 262 
 
 V. The Spanish Inquisition Outdone 263 
 
 Chapter Thirtysixth. PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION 264 
 
 I. No Means of Unity 264 
 
 II. Workings of Leaven of Revolt 264 
 
 III. Disintegration of Sects 267 
 
 1. Endless Subdivisions 267 
 
 2. Lutheran Sects 268 
 
 3. Calvinistic Sects 269 
 
 4. Episcopalian Sects 269 
 
 5. Methodist Sects 270 
 
 6. Baptist Sects 271 
 
 7. Strange Superstitions 271 
 
 IV. A Worm Cut to Pieces 272 
 
 Chapter Thirty seventh. THE REAL REFORMATION 273 
 
 I. Reform Versus Revolt 273 
 
 II. The Council of Trent 273 
 
 III. Revival in Catholic Countries 275 
 
 IV. Reconversion of Three Lands 277 
 
 V. The Church Alone Renews Her Youth..., .. 27 
 
CONTENTS. X11I 
 
 Chapter Thirtyeighth. DIVINE APOSTLESHIP 280 
 
 I. Conversion by Study of Foreign Alissions 280 
 
 II. The Apostolic Spirit 280 
 
 III. The Apostolic Method 281 
 
 IV. A Typical Missionary 283 
 
 V. Actual Results of Foreign Missions 285 
 
 1. Asia 285 
 
 2. Oceanica 286 
 
 3. Africa 287 
 
 4. Levant 287 
 
 5. Human Means Not Sufficient 288 
 
 Chapter Thirtyninth. MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD 289 
 
 I. Character of American Aborigines 289 
 
 II. Uplifting of Natives by tile Church 289 
 
 1. Protection from Cruel Adventurers 289 
 
 2. Half-civilized Indians of the Pacific 290 
 
 3. Cannibals of the Atlantic 291 
 
 III. Ruin of Natives by the Sects 293 
 
 1. A Contrast 293 
 
 2. Destruction of Spanish Missions 293 
 
 3. Hampering of French Missions 294 
 
 4. Results of Protestant Interference 297 
 
 Chapter Fortieth. SPREAD OF INFIDELITY 299 
 
 I. The Outcome of Protestantism ,.. 299 
 
 II. Weakening of the Catholic Forces 299 
 
 III. "Freethinkers" of Eighteenth Century 302 
 
 IV. Neo-Pagans of Nineteenth Century 304 
 
 V. Infidelity Reactionary and Unreasonable 306 
 
 Chapter Forty first. THE ANTICHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY 307 
 
 I. Liberalistic Machinations 307 
 
 II. Freemasonry Unmasked 307 
 
 III. The League of Darkness and of Death 309 
 
 IV. Membership ; 310 
 
 V. Antichristian Aims 311 
 
 Chapter Forty second. FRENCH REVOLUTION 313 
 
 I. A Freemasonic Experiment 313 
 
 II. First Phase, 1789: Constitutional Liberty 313 
 
 III. Second Phase, 1790: Antichristian Revolution 314 
 
 IV. Third Phase, 1793 '94: Reign of Terror 315 
 
 1. Destruction of the State 315 
 
 2. Destruction of the Church 315 
 
 3. Destruction of Civilization 316 
 
 4. Destruction of Life and Property 317 
 
 5. Devastation of Whole Provinces 317 
 
 V. Attempts at Worldwide Destruction 318 
 
 VI. National Apostasy Drowned in Blood 318 
 
XIV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Chapter Fortythird. THE CANCER OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES 320 
 
 I. Tactics of the Enemy 320 
 
 II. Attacks on Faith and Morals 321 
 
 III. Periodical Revolutions 323 
 
 IV. Plundering Governments 324 
 
 V. Betrayal to Foreign Powers 324 
 
 VI. Apathy of Catholic Laity 325 
 
 Chapter Fortyfourth. COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY 328 
 
 I. Plutocracy the Outcome of Liberalism 328 
 
 II. Theory of Socialism 328 
 
 III. Some Socialistic Experiments 330 
 
 IV. The Only Safeguard 333 
 
 Chapter Forty fifth. RALLY AROUND THE PAPACY 335 
 
 I. Effects of Infidel Persecutions 335 
 
 II. Pius VI Killed but Replaced 335 
 
 III. Pius VII Enslaved but Liberated 336 
 
 IV. Pius IX Despoiled but Exalted 338 
 
 V. Leo XIII a Prisoner but Heard Throughout the World. 340 
 
 VI. Solemn Answer of Christianity to Liberalism 342 
 
 Chapter Fortysixth. THE VICARS OF CHRIST 344 
 
 I. Only Claimants of Peter's Keys 344 
 
 II. The Best of Princes 333 
 
 III. The Wisest of Statesmen 346 
 
 IV. The Greatest of Civilizers 348 
 
 V. The Christian World's Demand 350 
 
 Bibliography '. 351 
 
TABLE OF ERRATA. 
 
 Page 3, line 5, for "exist" read "exists". 
 
 " 4, " 3, " "Lavist" read "Taoist". 
 
 " 23, " "Delai" read "Dalai". 
 
 " 33, " "Tacism" read "Taoism". 
 
 " 15, " 15, " "principle" read "principal". 
 
 " 26, " "centuries extinction" read "centuries extinction". 
 
 " 22, ' 13, " "symstems" read '^systems". 
 
 " 36, " 35, " "superceded" read "superseded". 
 
 " 37, " 15, " 'Aelid Capitoland" read "Aelia Capitolina and". 
 
 " 48, " 11, " "cause of the end" read "cause and the end". 
 
 " 54, " 12, " "D/e/eto" read "De/eto". 
 
 " 60, " 24, " "principals" read principles". 
 
 " 65, " 26, " "dissention'' read "dissension". 
 
 " 67, " 16, " "immensty" read "immensely". 
 
 " 73, " 8, " "governements" read "governments". 
 
 " 78, " 25, " "extermenated" read "exterminated". 
 
 " 83, " 3, " "on" read "in". 
 
 " 86, " 14, " "tne" read "the". 
 
 " 87, " 6, " "requeatedly" read "repeatedly". 
 
 " 89, " 1, " "seperatists" read "separatists". 
 
 " 92, " 39, " "Chrisitianity" read "Christianity". 
 
 " 95, " 14, " "Simondi" read "Sismondi". 
 
 " 96, " 32, " "everythink" read "everything". 
 
 " 97, " 27, " "eflfetually" read "effectually." 
 
 " 28, " "escablished" read "established". 
 
 " 101, " 7, " "flourished" read "flourished". 
 
 " 111, " 33, " "who" read "whose". 
 
 " 127, " 31, " "fourtheenth" read "fourteenth". 
 
 " 135, " 3, " "Pashal" read "Paschal". 
 
 " 148, " 4, " "Thon" read "Thou". 
 
 " 8, " "childeen" read "children". 
 
 -^ "comparativey" read "comparatively". 
 
 " 27, " "Clement VII" read "Clement V". 
 
 " 150, " 14, " "Philipp" read "Philip". 
 
 " 153, '' 29, " "allowd" read "allowed". 
 
 4 ' 158, " 28, " "Three" read "three". 
 
 " 29, " "Fourteen" read "fourteen". 
 " 160, " 28, for "constition" read "constitution". 
 
 " 38, " "omong" read "among". 
 " 167, " 13, " "saps" read "says". 
 " 14, " Aeterni Patris". 
 
XVI THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Page 174, line 26, for "occasition" read "occasion". 
 
 " 177, " 33, " "the" read "they". 
 
 " 180, " 4, " "sworn" read "sword". 
 
 " 185, " 35, " "knight" read "knights". 
 
 " 196, " 4, " "the" read "they". 
 
 " 201, " 18, " "Hetrait" read "Hermit". 
 
 " 202, " 28, " "Euroye" read "Europe". 
 
 " 203, " 8, " "the" read "they". 
 
 " 204, " 25, " before "the" insert: "in an excess of indignation 
 
 put". 
 
 " 231, " 28, " "wrore" read "wrote". 
 
 " 235, " 23, " "Swingli" read "Zwingli". 
 
 " 236, " 6, " "Servatus" read "Servetus". 
 
 " 237, " 26, " "matyrs" read "martyrs". 
 
 " 240, " 10, " "exercice" read "exercise". 
 
 " 242, " 26, " "out-an-out" read "out-and-out". 
 
 " 254, " 23, " "cline" read "clime". 
 
 " 263, " 24, " "Lloreutel" read "Llorente". 
 
 " 268, " 20, " "Armsdorf ' read "Amsdorf '. 
 
 " 271, " 22, " "Pork" read "pork"'. 
 
 " 274, " 29, " "Peotestant" read "Protestant". 
 
 " 280, " 13, " "Christians" read "Christian". 
 
 " 281, " 34, " "Apostels" read "Apostles". 
 
 " 282, " 21, " "Pamphlets" read "pamphlets". 
 
 " 32, " "Chsistians" read "Christians". 
 
 " 284, " 17, leave out "the Moluccas"; for "Cannibals" read 
 
 "cannibals". 
 
 " 287, " 14, for "Evangelization" read "evangelization". 
 
 " 297, " 13, " "successfull" read successful". 
 
 " 301, " 25, " "veci" read "feci". 
 
 " 306, " 15, " "now" read "not". 
 
 " 316, " 24, " "slole" read "stole". 
 
 " 318, " 36, " "APOSTACY" read "APOSTASY". 
 
 " 320, " 25, " "Catolic" read "Catholic". 
 
 " 325, " 27, " "'68" "'66". 
 
 " 33, " "II" read "I". 
 
 " 327, " 17, " "be." read "be?" 
 
 " 333, " 2, " "destrution" read "destruction". 
 
 " 27, " "affairs" read "absolutism"; for "necessity" read 
 "necessitarianism". 
 
 " 29, " "Pope" read "people". 
 
 " 334, " 19, " "the the" read "the". 
 
 " 26, " "of life" read "of". 
 
 " 336, " 19, " "established" read "established". 
 
 " 24, " "Chiarimonti" read "Chiaramonti". 
 
 " 337, " 15, " "Jnly" read "July". 
 
 " 347, " 24, before "to" insert "and these". 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER FIRST. 
 DEGRADATION OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Because that when they knew God they have not glorified 
 Him as God or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, 
 and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing them- 
 selves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the 
 glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of 
 a corruptible man and of birds and of fourfooted beasts and of 
 creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of 
 their hearts, unto uncleanliness, to dishonor their own bodies 
 amongst themselves ; who changed the truth of God into a 
 lie, and -worshipped and served the creature rather than the 
 Creator, who is blessed forever. ROMANS i, 21 25. 
 
 I. ORIGINAL FALL. 
 
 traditions of all nations show that mankind fell from 
 the blessing of Monotheism into the evils of Poly- 
 theism. They describe the happiness of the first man united 
 to God, and his fall and consequent misfortunes. The holy 
 books of the Hindoos, the Parsees and the Chinese, like 
 the sacred songs of the Greeks and the Teutons, celebrate 
 a Golden Age similar to the Paradise of the Bible. They 
 also tell of the unhappy fall, and attribute it to a woman 
 and a serpent, and bewail the evils of the ages of Silver, 
 Brass and Iron. 
 
 The striking description of the degradation of the civil- 
 ized Pagans given by St. Paul, in the passage quoted above, 
 may be applied to all Gentiles. Bossuet, in his Discours 
 sur THistoirz Universelle, exclaims: "All was god except 
 God Himself, and the world which had been made to 
 manifest His power seemed to have become a temple of 
 idols." 
 
 And we may add that the earth which had been made 
 a paradise was turned into a den of vice and slavery. 
 
 A 
 
2 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Indeed the whole world sank into abominable idolatry 
 and a fearful corruption. The very religions which took 
 the place of the pure faith of Eden were a worship of 
 devils and a consecration of vice ari affront to God and 
 a curse to man. So worldwide and so deeprooted were 
 the evils that they could not be exterminated by any 
 human agency. 
 
 Accustomed to the blessings of a Christian civilization, 
 we do not realize the evils which have always afflicted the 
 Non-Christian peoples. A rapid survey of the unregenerate 
 world will give us a faint idea of its hopeless and univer- 
 sal degradation. 
 
 II. IDOLATRY AMONG SAVAGES. 
 
 The barbarians of Africa, America and Oceanica adored 
 fetiches, that is, anything and everything in which they 
 suspected some hidden virtue. They worshipped animals, 
 trees and stones, and other most common and inferior 
 objects, and feared them as evil spirits whose wrath needed 
 to be appeased by self-torture or even by human sacrifices. 
 They had no respect for the rights of others whom they 
 regarded as enemies. Hostis, the Latin word for "stranger", 
 signifies "enemy", as well. Living in a state of incessant 
 warfare they preyed upon the property of their neighbors, 
 reduced their persons to slavery and sometimes devoured 
 their very flesh. To this day some of the islanders of 
 Oceanica cannot resist the temptation of taking whatever 
 is within their reach. Certain tribes in Africa have no 
 other occupation than to carry off peaceable villagers and 
 sell them as slaves. The Indians of North America decim- 
 ated each other by interminable wars, and those of South 
 America fought many a battle to procure human flesh for 
 their great feasts. The Mexicans were the most civilized 
 among the American tribes, and yet they offered every 
 year to their war-god mor..' than 20,000 victims. 
 
 III. IDOLATRY AMONG CIVILIZED PEOPLES. 
 
 1. Pantheism of Eastern Asia. 
 
 The false religions that grew up among the civilized 
 nations took divergent views of man's life in this world. 
 Eastern Asia considered it as a time of expiation, and fell 
 
DEGRADATION OF THE WORLD. 3 
 
 into pessimism; Western Asia as a time of lust, and sank 
 into sensualism ; and Europe as a time of pleasure for the 
 masters, and developed an optimistic humanism. 
 
 In the East Pantheism arose and still remains. Accord- 
 ing to it the universe is God. Everything that exist is in 
 some way an evolution of the Divine Substance. However, 
 the Pantheists are completely divided in regard to the 
 nature of the world and of God. The Materialists hold it 
 as material: Everything is matter or a development of 
 matter. The Idealists hold it as spiritual: Everything is 
 an idea of God or an evolution , of His ideas. The human 
 soul is a part of God violently separated from Him for 
 some crime, and eager 'to return to His bosom. But first 
 she has to expiate her sin, by migrating through many 
 beiugs as so many steppingstones to God. These migrations 
 are called metempsychosis, and their principal stages are 
 called castes. The principal religious leaders of India taught 
 that the only way of salvation is to pass through all the 
 castes, and they established such burdensome rules of social 
 intercourse as to seriously hamper the relations of persons 
 belonging to different castes. Any one who violated these 
 petty regulations was condemned in many cases to become 
 an outcast or Pariah, he and his descendants forever. 
 
 It was largely on the question of caste that Pantheism 
 split into Brahminism and Buddhism. In the sixth century 
 before Christ Buddha tried to break down the iron barriers 
 of the caste-system, and prescribed renunciation of self and 
 devotedness to others as the way to salvation. When a 
 soul is entirely detached from this world she becomes 
 merged into God and lost in Him; she enjoys Rest or Nir- 
 vana. The principles of Buddhism are: Pain exists, and 
 is caused by earthly attachments ; it will cease by perfect 
 detachment, the migrations thus ending in the Allgod, or, 
 as some say, in absolute nothingness or "Nirvana". 
 Brotherly love was one of the precepts of Buddha, but it is 
 little observed by his followers. Self-torture to destroy their 
 personality is practised by many poor Buddhists as well as 
 Brahmmists, and renders their lives nearly unbearable. 
 
 Through the efforts of the Brahmins Buddhism was 
 expelled from India, but it conquered several other parts 
 
4 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 of Asia. At about the beginning of the Christian Era it 
 penetrated into China and Japan, where it caused idols to 
 be multiplied. So far the Chinese had followed the Lavist 
 animism or the hollow moral code of Confucius, paying 
 great respect to their living parents and Divine worship 
 to their deceased ancestors. Now they began to accept 
 the Buddhistic idols. The Japanese, also, who had pre- 
 viously been content with the comparatively simple super- 
 stitions of Shintoism, sank deep into the mire of idolatry. 
 In some of their temples as many as 30,000 images of false 
 gods are to be seen ranged around some chief idol. The 
 morals of these peoples are selfish and licentious, and 
 childmurder and other crimes are common among them. 
 
 In Tibet, under the influence of early Christian mission- 
 aries whose labors seem to have remained otherwise in- 
 effectual, Buddhism has taken on certain superficial resem- 
 blances, in worship and organization, to the Christian 
 Churches of the Orient. In the fourteenth century the 
 Mongol conqueror Kublai Khan established one of the 
 Buddhist leaders as his vicero}^ and the spiritual as well 
 as temporal head of the country. At present there are two 
 such Grand Lamas who are reputed to be re-incarnations 
 of Buddha. The Delai Lama, in particular, who is the 
 temporal sovereign, or a sort of Abbot-King, is always 
 surrounded by thousands of monks and courtiers, adored 
 by throngs of trembling pilgrims. 
 
 Brahminism is estimated to have about 125,000 fol- 
 lowers, and Buddhism, notwithstanding the assertions of 
 certain writers, certainly does not possess at the present 
 day much more than that number. Besides these, there 
 are several hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants of 
 China and Japan who must still be counted as adherents 
 to some extent of Confucianism, Tacism and Shintoism, 
 Buddhism having been losing ground of late in those lands. 
 
 These religions form no compact organizations, and 
 their followers have little in common except their names; 
 they are divided by doctrine, worship and government 
 into numberless rival sects. On account of their great 
 diversity no general statement can apply with perfect 
 exactness to them all. But as a whole thev are lost in 
 
DEGRADATION OF THE WORLD. 5 
 
 their dreams of gods and ghosts and absorbed in the 
 pursuit of illusory ends. Dragged down and kept back by 
 their pantheism and pessimism they have become the prey 
 of peoples which follow the lights of reason and revelation 
 and make intelligent use of the forces of nature. 
 
 2. Dualism of Western Asia. 
 
 In the great monarchies occupying the center of the 
 ancient world there prevailed the idea that two opposite 
 principles created this universe, to wit : the good principle, 
 the spiritual, and the bad principle, the material. It 
 resulted in the worship of the gods of light and the devils 
 of impurity. But the worship of Satan and of the flesh 
 finally prevailed. Centuries before Christ, Zoroaster, 
 gathering together, as best he could, some of the scattered 
 rays of the primeval revelation, instituted the worship of 
 the Eternal Spirit under the symbol of fire, and to the 
 tribe of the Magi was assigned the duty of keeping the 
 sacred fire ever burning on the hilltops. Even this com- 
 paratively pure system was unable to resist the corrupting 
 influences of the, sensualism and diabolism which prevailed 
 throughout the great Semitic empires. Magism soon 
 declined, and its priests gave themselves up to such sorcery 
 that it has bequeathed the name of magic to the black 
 art. It was reformed in the third century of our era, but 
 in the seventh its domains were conquered by Moham- 
 medanism. A colony of Persians or Parsees fled to India, 
 .and their ancient religion now has its headquarters in 
 Bombay and counts about a hundred thousand adherents. 
 
 The worship of devils and of the flesh was carried on 
 all about the people of God, with such alluring temp- 
 tations that the Bible is full of warnings against these 
 horrors. In Egypt unnatural crimes were practiced. In 
 Tyre the impure Astarte was honored by vice. In Babylon 
 the temples of the "goddess of love" were homes of lust 
 where all had to sacrifice their virtue at least once in 
 their lives. 
 
 3. Man-worship of Europe. 
 
 In Europe man-worship and t} r ranny reigned supreme. 
 The people deified their military and other heroes, with 
 
6 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 their virtues and vices. Thus vice was made an object of 
 religion and was freely indulged in. Jupiter, a king of 
 Thrace reputed to have conquered and civilized Southern 
 Europe, was adored as the god of Heaven ; his brothers, 
 Neptune and Vulcan, were the gods of the seas and of the 
 subterranean regions. Other heroes were similarly deified, 
 and Jupiter was supposed to hold his court on Mount 
 Olympus, with twelve principal divinities and a host of 
 lesser gods and demigods. The Romans accepted the gods 
 of the conquered nations, and Yarro estimates the number 
 of their idols at 30,000, to whom they built the magnificent 
 temple of the Pantheon. Not only did the great men 
 receive honor after death, but, what was more practical, 
 they seized all the power during life, and made themselves 
 the absolute masters of their inferiors. They reduced to 
 slavery the weak and the conquered, with all their posterity. 
 A slave was the property of another, just like a domestic 
 animal. His very life belonged to his master, and might 
 be taken without any process of law. Aged slaves were 
 often left to starve to death on an island of the Tiber. 
 If a master was murdered all his slaves were required to 
 be put to death. In the most refined cities the great 
 majority of the people were slaves. Sparta had 36,000 
 citizens and 360,000 slaves; Athens 20,000 citizens and 
 400,000 slaves. At Rome it was a common thing for 
 citizens to own twenty slaves or more, and some great 
 patricians had as many as 20,000. Thus the great bulk 
 of mankind were not allowed to live for themselves but 
 were compelled to serve others. They had no right to 
 pursue their own happiness ; their only duty was to procure 
 that of their tyrannical owners. Slavery was a curse to 
 the masters themselves, for it accustomed them to idleness 
 and exposed their children to corruption. During the 
 empire the Roman people had no idea of working; they 
 asked on-y for food and amusement: panem et circenses. 
 The government had to feed hundreds of thousands, and 
 to provide them with the bloody spectacle of men and 
 beasts devouring one another. That idleness was one of 
 the causes of the ruin of the empire. Moreover the slaves 
 wreaked a terrible vengeance for their sufferings upon the 
 
DEGRADATION OF THE WORLD. 7 
 
 children of their masters, for, being entrusted with the 
 care and the education of the young, they imbued their 
 pupils with their own incredible vices. 
 
 IV. THE RUIN IRREMEDIABLE. 
 
 The corruption was so universal and profound that no 
 human agencj- could bring relief. The sacred traditions of 
 Eden were soon perverted by human weakness and per- 
 versity, very few of the Gentiles were willing to unite their 
 destinies to those of the chosen people and share the 
 advantages of the Mosaic dispensation; and no human 
 philosophy or man-made cult could ever avail to rescue 
 mankind from its desperate predicament. All religions, and 
 especially the great historic systems, are full of vestiges of 
 the Primeval Revelation, and many of their followers made 
 great efforts to serve their Maker and raise themselves to 
 a high standard. But they all finally rendered Divine 
 honors to the demons and sank into a more and more 
 hopeless degredation. Not only were the Gentiles unable 
 to resolve the problems of the future life ; but even their 
 greatest thinkers fell short of the true solution of the most 
 important questions of this world. After four thousand 
 years the Hindus have not yet emerged from their fatal 
 errors of pantheism and metempsychosis, and they live 
 miserably divided into castes and sects and adore the 
 works of their own hands. The Greek philosophers, who 
 were princes of science, did not overturn a single idol- 
 altar; still less could they stop the general corruption of 
 morals. Socrates attempted to reform his fellow-citizens, 
 but he was condemned to death. Plato said: "It is diffi- 
 cult to find God, and when found impossible to make Him 
 known to the multitude."- In order to preserve alive the 
 true religion in at least one little corner of the globe, God 
 had selected one people and separated them from all 
 others. They too sometimes fell into idolatry, which is a 
 still greater proof of the necessity of a Divine Redeemer. 
 
 At last Our Lord Jesus Christ came and restored the 
 glory of God and the happiness of man wherever His sway 
 was accepted. But whenever any nation has rejected or 
 neglected Him, it has inevitably relapsed, sooner or later, 
 
g THE THREE AGES. 
 
 into the evils of Paganism. In the seventh century Moham- 
 med undertook to establish a Monotheism of his own 
 make ; but he revived some of the worst errors and insti- 
 tutions of antiquity; such as fatalism, militarism, poly- 
 gamy, slavery, and the pursuit of a sensual beatitude. In 
 modern times the Liberals have rejected the Christian 
 Church and State, and reconstructed society, so far as in 
 their power, on rationalistic principles. But superstition 
 and anarchy have been the results : their followers have 
 returned to the idle dreams of Pantheism and the crying 
 tyranny and lawlessness of Paganism at large. They are 
 undermining every beneficent institution, and have already 
 accomplished more ruin than was wrought by the Huns 
 and the Vandals. 
 
 Many of the victims of these false teachers pretend 
 that it matters little what a man believes, provided he 
 lives well." But thought is the most important part of 
 human life, and evil thought is not right living. False 
 religions and irreligious theories cannot lead to the beati- 
 tude of Heaven, or even secure solid happiness on earth. 
 In the presence of the degradation that has always and 
 everywhere been the result of separatism and unbelief, it is 
 evident that the greatest of all misfortunes is the loss of 
 the true religion, and that the greatest of all crimes are 
 heresy, schism and apostasy. 
 
 Infidelity, heresy and schism are the most grievous ol 
 scandals, often on an immense scale, involving whole 
 nations, and many generations. Those sects which have 
 broken away from the faith and unity of the Church during 
 the Mosaic and Christian dispensations have in conse- 
 quence undergone, though in a lesser degree, the same 
 degeneration that may be observed in the polytheistic 
 systems that arose by alienation from the faith and fellow- 
 ship of the Holy Patriarchs in the primeval ages. In fact, 
 the early Fathers were in the habit of comparing heresy 
 to the sin of our first parents, and calling it the second 
 great fall of man, after his Redemption by Jesus Christ. 
 
CHAPTER SECOND. 
 BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I came not to send peace but the sword. MATTHEW x, 34. 
 
 I. THE CITY OF GOD AND THE CITY OF SATAN. 
 
 TJNBELIEVERS pretend that Christianity is an obstacle 
 to progress, and persist in harping on certain local or 
 transitory abuses to prove their assertion. But Leo XIII. 
 justly appeals to the facts of history and in several encyclicals 
 shows that the Church is the most potent agency of civili- 
 zation that ever came into this world. Indeed its era is 
 the very era of progress, and its domains form the paradise 
 of the world. Its history is the history of the City of God 
 set up over against the City of Satan, and relates the 
 most momentous struggles ever waged for the weal or 
 woe of mankind. The wars for the political empire of the 
 world were only of national or temporary interest, whilst 
 the perennial struggles of the Church of God against the 
 wicked world vitally concern the interests of the whole 
 race. 
 
 II. RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL AND LIBERAL PROGRESS. 
 
 In the course of centuries Christianity has met in turn 
 the evil powers of Paganism, Barbarism and Liberalism. 
 It attacked and fought each of them for centuries, and it 
 is replacing the last-named, as it replaced the two earlier 
 forms of Satanic aggression, by the Heavenly blessings of 
 true religion, civilization and liberty. The great question 
 has never been which people would rule the world; but 
 whether Christ could conquer, improve and guide it. 
 Could He convince the Pagans, civilize the Barbarians, 
 and control the Liberals? Was He a God adorable, bene- 
 
10 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ficent and almighty ? The Pagan world denied His Divinity, 
 the Barbarian world challenged His power, and the Liberal 
 world rejected His authority. But they have all been com- 
 pelled to recognize these attributes, not only by the force 
 of argument but also by the convincing logic of events. 
 
 The Ancient Ages (A. D. 1476) witnessed the trial of 
 Christian worship, and the religious progress from Jupiter 
 to Christ. When Jesus Christ claimed the adoration of the 
 mankind, Paganism was master of the civilized world. It 
 stood up for its idols and its vices, and attempted to 
 smother Christianity in the cradle. It failed. It was aban- 
 doned by all, and Jesus was recognized as the Son of God. 
 
 The Middle Ages (A. D. 4761517) witnessed the trial 
 of Christian civilization, and formed the period of social 
 progress from barbarism to civilization. During five 
 hundred years the Barbarians rushed into and over the 
 land from all sides. They were conquered. The fierce 
 Northmen were civilized, the ferocious Mongols were sub- 
 dued and absorbed, and the fanatical Mussulmen were 
 driven back into the Dark Continent. During the next five 
 hundred years wonderful advance was made in the arts 
 of peace. 
 
 The Modern Ages (A. D. 15171900) witnessed the 
 trial of the Christian authority and form the epoch of 
 progress from liberalism to liberty. Protestants and Free- 
 masons revolted against Christ and His Church, and 
 attempted to make their own religion and their own com- 
 mandments. But they fell into scepticism and anarchy. 
 The Church assures the fulness of true and reasonable 
 liberty by upholding faith and order in the world. 
 
 Our Neo-Pagans, when they do not wilfully shut their 
 eyes to these great works, are prone to question their 
 utility or their superiority. Nevertheless, these remain not 
 only the greatest achievments of our era, but by far the 
 most important part of the development of mankind. 
 
 Before the Incarnation only a few persons enjoyed 
 some knowledge of God, some comforts of cililization and 
 some personal rights. The Christian Church extended 
 these blessings to all, and established on a permanent 
 footing the most sublime religion, the most perfect civiliz- 
 
BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 
 
 ation, and the most reasonable liberty, that were possible 
 under the circumstances ; and thus secured for its follow- 
 ers, even in this world, a happiness unknown to other 
 peoples. If Christendom today exercises a dominating 
 influence among the nations, it owes this to Christ and 
 His Holy Church, and not to the quarrelsome sects and 
 the dark lodges, which date only from yesterday and 
 produce nothing but strife and desolation. Even for our 
 material improvements we are indebted to centuries of 
 Christian life, education and struggle. Our modern 
 scientists are only applying and extending what the 
 monks, the doctors and the crusaders produced, taught 
 and defended. 
 
 Christianity has undergone a threefold test, in its 
 fundamental principles of worship, civilization and consti- 
 tution. Three ages have attacked it, and each in turn has 
 acknowledged its supernatural power, and ministered to 
 its supremacy. The Early Age established the worship of 
 Christ, as perfect God and perfect Man; the Middle Age 
 spread His civilization among barbarians who had spurned 
 the splendors of Greece; and the Modern Age has vindi- 
 cated the constitution which human society has received 
 from Him. The Three Ages of the New Dispensation have 
 not only promoted the highest progress of mankind, but 
 also form three unanswerable proofs of the Divinity of 
 Christ. 
 
 There was no less a labor to accomplish than to over- 
 throw the whole previously existing order of things, and 
 to renew the face of the earth. All the forces of the world 
 and of Hell combined for the defence of these evil systems 
 and the destruction of the Christian religion; and fierce 
 struggles and terrific persecutions raged for centuries. 
 Not only did the Church successfully resist her persecutors, 
 but she overthrew and subjugated them. These wonderful 
 \vorks she accomplished not by any earthly means, but 
 by the special assistance of Almighty God. The evils were 
 deeply entrenched in the passions of man, fortified by the 
 powers of the times, and defended by the malice of Satan. 
 But the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world ; it does 
 not insinuate itself through the passions, nor impose 
 
12 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 itself by the sword. Who then established that strange 
 institution of the Nazarene? Who protected it against 
 persecution? Who forced it upon the reluctant world? 
 Who overcame those monster-evils, of which the philosoph- 
 ers despaired and by which the nations were perishing? 
 Who bestowed upon Christendom those unique blessings 
 that make it the paradise of the earth? The Almighty 
 alone could bring about such a tremendous transformation ; 
 and His hand has been clearly visible in thousands of 
 miraculous events. 
 
 It is in vain to object that some natural causes helped 
 the Church to work these momentous changes-; for these 
 did not enable any other institution to produce such 
 effects. They were simply Providential circumstances of 
 which she took advantage to further the work of God. 
 
 It is still more useless to adduce any sort of tem- 
 porary, local or personal abuses, for they only serve to 
 strengthen the proof of Divine intervention. Where human 
 means or agents are manifestly inadequate, the effect can 
 only be ascribed to supernatural causes. Thus the three 
 ages of Christianity are so many evident stages in a 
 supernatural process, and the whole history of the Church 
 is a multiple proof of her Divinity. 
 
 III. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE TRUTH. 
 
 De Maistre has said: "For three hundred years history 
 has been a conspiracy against the truth". Protestantism, 
 turning its back upon fifteen hundred years of vigorous 
 and live Christianity, perpetrated a wholesale misrepre- 
 sentation of the facts of history in the enormous volumes 
 of the Centuriators of Magdeburg; which has been re- 
 echoed and continued in every form of its popular literature 
 ever since. Infidelity openly declares that all weapons are 
 licit in fighting the great enemy the Church of God. 
 Voltaire advised his followers to "lie boldly, for something 
 will always stick"; and they have never ceased to besmear 
 the Church with the most flagrant calumnies. The Jews 
 and the Freemasons own most of the great printing- 
 presses and control most of the governmental schools of 
 to-day, in nearly every land. By dint of incessant slander, 
 
BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 
 
 they have made many people believe that the Church has 
 done little really grand and useful, and that they alone 
 have promoted the material progress of our times. They 
 have flooded the world with cheap anticatholic books and 
 papers which find their way into almost every library, 
 while in many places Catholic literature is practically out 
 of reach. 
 
 Innumerable times, especially since the development of 
 the art of historical criticism, these charges have been 
 pulverized by the most erudite and impartial historians ; 
 but they have rarely been honorably retracted, and they 
 still pass as established facts in a great many secular 
 publications. The Protestant Doctor Maitland, in his 
 "Dark Ages", shows how stupid and unreliable are the 
 assertions made by Robertson in his life of Charles V., 
 and still this third-class writer is sometimes quoted by 
 respectable Protestants as an unquestionable authority! 
 Such noble Catholic scholars as Lingard, Janssen, Pastor, 
 and, in our own country, Dr. Reuben Parsons, have done 
 justice to these slanders by simply exposing the facts and 
 publishing or citing authentic contemporary documents. 
 Among the countless Noncatholic historians of modern 
 times who have boldly proclaimed the beneficent action of 
 the Church are Engelhardt, Hase, Cobbett and Pusey. 
 Many men of true science, after studying for many years 
 the history of some period or some person, have been so 
 struck by the evidences of Divine life which they found in 
 the old Church, that they have returned with eagerness 
 to her bosom, like Schlegel, Goerres, Stolberg, Haller, Man- 
 ning, Newman, Marshall, Rivington, Brownson, Hecker, 
 Ives and M. Snell. Since the year 1830, tens of thousands 
 of Englishmen distinguished for their learning, wealth, 
 rank, or official dignity have been converted to the Catholic 
 religion, of whom thousands were previously ministers of 
 the Protestant State church, and many others were doctors 
 of the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. In 1896 alone, 
 in response to the appeal of Leo XIII., for the return to 
 Holy unity of all who called themselves Christians. 15,000 
 persons were reconciled in the English dioceses. But the 
 reports of conversions are hushed up, as soon as possible 
 
14 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 by the enemies of the Church, and every day the same old 
 calumnies are dished up anew. The great Pontiff now 
 reigning has undertaken to restore the history of Christ- 
 ianity to its former position of honor. In 1883 he opened 
 up the archives of the Vatican, and invited the scientists 
 of the whole world to come and study the official records 
 of the Holy Mother-Church of Rome ; and he urges the 
 Christian doctors to study and write history in order to 
 "ably confute the accusations which have too long accum- 
 ulated against the Church". Notwithstanding his world- 
 wide administration he has taken time to compose popular 
 treatises to show that the Church has produced the highest 
 achievements among men. In his encyclical of 1885 on 
 "The Christian Constitution of States" he exhibits the 
 evidences, the benefactions and necessity of the Christian 
 religion. He says : 
 
 ''The Church secures even in this world advantages so great that she 
 could do no more even had she been founded primarily and especially to 
 secure prosperity in this life. There are proofs of great number and 
 splendor, as for example the verification of prophecy, the abundance of 
 miracles, the extremely rapid spread of the faith in the midst of its enemies, 
 and in spite of the greatest hindrances; the testimony of the martyrs, 
 and the like: From which it is evident that it is the true religion, which 
 Jesus Christ Himself instituted and then intrusted to His Church to 
 defend and spread abroad. 
 
 "If Christian Europe subdued barbarous peoples and transferred them 
 from a savage to a civilized state, from superstition to the truth ; if she 
 victoriously repelled the invasion of the Mohammedans, so that civili- 
 zation retained the chief power ; if she has won for the people true and 
 manifold libertj'; if she has most wisely established many institutions 
 for the solace of wretchedness : beyond controversy all this is chiefly due 
 to the religion under whose auspices such great undertakings were com- 
 menced and with whose aid they were perfected. 
 
 "The Church rejects immoderate liberty, which results in license or 
 in servitude; she cannot approve that 'liberty' which generates a con- 
 tempt of the most sacred laws of God and puts aside the obedience due 
 to legitimate power. For it is license rather than liberty ; and it is most 
 correctly called by St. Augustine 'the liberty of perdition', and by the 
 Apostle Peter 'a cloak for malice' (I Peter n, 16). Indeed, since it is 
 contrary to reason, it is true servitude, for 'whosoever committetb sin 
 is the servant of sin (John vm, 34)'. 
 
 "Above all the Church approves a liberty worthy of man, and has 
 never ceased striving to keep it steadfast and entire among the people. 
 In very truth whatsoever things in the State chiefly avail for the com- 
 
BLESSINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 
 
 mon safety; whatsoever have been usefully instituted against the license 
 of princes and in view of all the interests of th*e people; whatsoever 
 forbid the governmental authority to intrude in municipal or domestic 
 affairs ; whatsoever contribute to maintain the dignity and the character 
 of man by preserving the equality of rights in individual citizens : of all 
 these the monuments of former ages witness the Catholic Church to have 
 always been the author, the promoter or the guardian." 
 
 The present writer has attempted to give the outlines 
 of the great process of the -uplifting of mankind by the 
 Church of God. His aim is to show in a popular way 
 that the progress caused by Christianity is greater than 
 that resulting from any other instrumentality, and is only 
 explicable on supernatural grounds. His method is to 
 group together the main facts of every age and to present 
 in their unity their principle causes and effects. He will 
 give the grand spectacle of the gradual transformation of 
 the earth; without stopping at the sideshows of local 
 abuses to which the Liberals invite us. This work is use- 
 ful for sermons, lectures and discussions. For it brings 
 together the historical facts that decided the destinies of 
 the race and solves by striking examples the great prob- 
 lems that agitate the world today. It throws light upon 
 the vital questions of religion, civilization and liberty upon 
 which many have only confuse or false notions. It shows 
 what has been the fate of all the separatists of the past 
 centuries extinction. " Every plant which My Father hath 
 not planted shall be rooted up." Matt. XVI, 13. Some 
 try to connect the sects and to patch up a history of 
 Evangelical Christianity; as if separated limbs were the 
 main body. But first there is no connection whatsoever 
 between the different revolts against the Church of Christ. 
 Secondly, where there is any similarity, it contains some 
 fatal element that ruined their predecessors and is bound 
 to ruin them. Most all the heresies of our day have been 
 broached and abandoned long since, and smashed up in 
 the irresistible march of true Christianity through the 
 course of time. What is the use of rehashing heresies that 
 have vanished centuries ago? What is the advantage of 
 sticking to dead issues, \vhich the most powerful empires 
 of the world could not and cannot keep alive, and which 
 are doomed to perdition? 
 
EARLY AGE 
 
 A. D. J-476 
 
 FROM JUPITER TO CHRIST. 
 
 L- 
 
EARLY AGE 
 
 A. D. J 476 
 FROM JUPITER TO CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRD. 
 CHRISTIANITY AGAINST PAGANISM. 
 
 The Jews require signs and the Greeks seek after wisdom ; 
 but we preach Jesus crucified : unto the Jews indeed a stumbling 
 block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are 
 called, both Jews and Greeks', Christ the power of God and the 
 wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, 
 and the weakness of God is stronger than men. I. CORINTHIANS 
 I, 2225. 
 
 I. NATURE OF THE CONTEST. 
 
 INFIDELS pretend that the belief in the Divinity of Jesus 
 Christ could not have been established in the present 
 enlightened age. But Jesus came in the most brilliant 
 period of ancient times ; He affirmed His Divinity and 
 claimed the adoration of mankind, and He subdued the 
 civilized world. Could He not have subdued as successfully 
 the wavering infidels of our day ? 
 
 Faith in the Divinity of Christ was reasonable on 
 account of His great miracles and His heavenly teachings. 
 But the Christian religion was repugnant to the world on 
 account of its profound mysteries and its austere virtues. 
 If the worship of Christ had only signified the giving Him 
 of a place among the gods, and the holding of His doctrines 
 and His laws as a free system of philosophy, which could 
 be accepted or rejected at will, it would have been easily 
 established in the world. For there had never appeared a 
 greater wonder-worker and a loftier philosopher than Jesus 
 
20 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 of Nazareth. But His worship implied the acceptance of 
 Him as the only true God, the obedience to all His com- 
 mandments, and the curbing of the strongest passions. 
 Therefore the civilized world stood up to defend its idols 
 against the God of Calvary. 
 
 The ancient nations loved the gods of their own 
 making. Deifying their ideals and their lusts they made 
 gods of their great men and even of their passions. They 
 peopled Mount Olympus with a court of divinities. Jupiter 
 was the god of power, Mars the god of war, Minerva the 
 goddess of reason, Venus the goddess of love, and Pluto 
 the god of gold. The Romans worshipped their arms, the 
 Greeks their science and the Jews the riches of this world. 
 If the unfaithful among the chosen people had no idol on 
 Mount Olympus, they had a golden calf in their worldly 
 ambition and greed. If the Oriental heretics recognized 
 Christ, they rejected some of His doctrines and put their 
 intellect and their science before Him and made their god 
 of them. There is only a difference of degree between the 
 heretics and the Pagans. The former are partial unbe- 
 lievers, and the latter are total unbelievers. Jesus Christ 
 was a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the 
 Gentiles. One after another they stood up against Him; 
 they crucified His person, exterminated His followers and 
 altered His doctrines. Naturally speaking, they were fully 
 able to stifle the infant Church in its cradle. But what 
 appeared weakness and foolishness to men was the 
 strength of God and the wisdom of God. Jesus Christ 
 overcame His enemies and brought them to His feet, and 
 He was recognized by the civilized world as the God of 
 Heaven. Thus ended the struggle between the false gods 
 of Olympus and the true God of Calvary. Thus was 
 established the worship of Christ among the civilized 
 nations. 
 
 II. THREEFOLD TRIUMPH. 
 
 1. Triumph over Jewish Prejudice. 
 
 The people of Israel inherited the promises of a 
 spiritual Redeemer, who would spread the true religion 
 over the world ; and for centuries they had longed for His 
 
CHRISTIANITY AGAINST PAGANISM. 21 
 
 coming. But finally they became worldly-minded and 
 wished instead a political leader, to deliver them from 
 their foreign rulers and make them the masters of the 
 world. Jesus Christ appeared among them as the Incar- 
 nation of the Eternal, Almighty and All-wise God. He 
 fulfilled the ancient prophecies, controlled the elements of 
 nature, and revealed Heavenly mysteries. However, the 
 official class would not consider His prophetic marks, nor 
 admit His striking miracles, nor listen to His superhuman 
 teachings. They indignantly rejected the humble Prophet 
 of Nazareth, and nailed Him to the cross between two 
 thieves. But His blood cried for vengeance. Revolting 
 against the Romans, they were crushed and buried beneath 
 the ruins of their city and their temple ; or sold as slaves 
 over all the Roman empire. 
 
 The true Israelites had recognized the Redeemer. 
 Among them Jesus chose twelve poor fishermen to estab- 
 lish His Kingdom on earth. They went to the end of the 
 world and convinced the nations of His Divinity ; and they 
 created for Him the greatest empire that ever existed on 
 this planet. 
 
 2. Triumph over Roman Power. 
 
 The Roman Empire had conquered the world, and, 
 when it awakened to the presence of a mysterious rival, 
 it girded itself to conquer also the new religion. There 
 never was a more unequal contest. On the one side, there 
 was a crucified Jew, who claimed the prerogatives of the 
 Supreme and Only God ; on the other there was a haughty 
 people which had conquered Judea and all the other 
 civilized countries. On the one side there was the infant 
 Church, whose cradle stood in the very domain of the 
 enemy; on the other the giant of the colossal empire 
 attempting to smother that tender infant under its im- 
 mense weight. On the one side there was the fisherman 
 of the little lake of Galilee, trying to raise his chair against 
 the throne of the Caesars; on the other these mighty 
 rulers, the high priests of the gods whom all the nations 
 adored, using all their power to maintain the imperial 
 religion, and to destroy the contemptible sect from the 
 
22 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 obscure town of Nazareth. The struggle lasted three 
 hundred years, and ten times the Church seemed wounded 
 unto death. But the crucified God proved stronger than 
 the conquerors of the world. He invaded their empire and 
 braved their violence. He drove their gods from the 
 capitol and was enthroned at last upon their altars. 
 
 3. Triumph over Greek Science. 
 
 The Greek philosophers constructed an original and 
 profound philosophy upon human reason, with the aid of 
 a few surviving fragments of the Primeval Tradition. 
 Plato discovered the creative mind of God. Aristotle framed 
 the unchangeable laws Of logic. Epicurus and Zeno devised 
 ingenious symstems for the promotion of human happi- 
 ness. At first the votaries of reason scorned the Apostles 
 of faith. But soon they began to examine and scrutinize 
 their subline doctrines and finally thej r accepted them. 
 The Teacher and Reformer dreamt of by Socrates was 
 found, and the children of the philosophers bowed in adora- 
 tion before him. 
 
 But there were also sophists or philosophasters who 
 by their intellectual arrogance were blinded to the most 
 exalted truths of the Gospel, and these men attempted to 
 reduce it to the human level and to classify the Redeemer 
 of Mankind among the gods of the Pagans. They became 
 the stubborn heretics and schismatics. In vain did they 
 disfigure the Christian doctrines to confuse the simple 
 people ; in vain did they gain the support of the temporal 
 princes to uphold their doctrines. They were confounded 
 by the science of the Doctors, condemned by the authority 
 of the Bishops, and crushed by the retribution of Divine 
 Providence. They only succeeded in causing a closer scru- 
 tiny of the Christian mysteries and their exact scientific 
 definition. Thus Jesus Christ was accepted as God by 
 the most philosophic people of antiquity. 
 
 When the gods of Olympus had been routed, Julian the 
 Apostate (A. D. 361) made a last struggle in their behalf. 
 He concentrated in his vindictive policy all the hostility of 
 the Jews, the Romans and the Greeks. He re-established 
 the Pagan rites in all their pristine splendor. He encouraged 
 
CHRISTIANITY AGAINST PAGANISM. 23 
 
 and embittered the disputes between the Catholics and the 
 heretics, in order to weaken the cause of Christianity. He 
 outlawed all the Christians by denying them the rights of 
 education, property, office and judicial recourse. In order 
 to contradict the prophecy of Jesus about the temple of 
 Jerusalem, that not a stone would remain upon a stone, 
 he attempted to rebuild the temple ; and the Jewish sectaries 
 hailed him as another Cyrus. But he failed signally. He 
 had just resolved to revive the bloody persecutions of his 
 predecessors when he perished, in the twentieth month of 
 his reign. In a war against the Persians, he was mortally 
 wounded by the dart of an unknown soldier. Flinging a 
 handful of his blood towards heaven, he cried out: "Thou 
 hast conquered, O Galilean." It was the death groan of 
 Paganism. The gods of Olympus had made place for the 
 God of Heaven ; and the world had achieved the greatest 
 religious progress ever dreamed of the step from Jupiter 
 to Jesus Christ. 
 
 III. APPEAL TO THE PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 The modern infidels question anew what was demon- 
 strated to, and accepted by, the civilized world of old. 
 They are mostly shallow or vicious men, prompted by the 
 desire of evading the laws of Christ, and they decide the 
 greatest questions according to the dictates of prejudice, 
 and with little or no study. From these noisy sophists 
 Leo XIII appeals to the great masters of thought, the 
 Greek philosophers (400 B. C.). the Fathers of the Church 
 (400 A. D.), and the Scholastic Doctors (1300). He recurs 
 to Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose 
 works are a striking condemnation of infidelity. In the 
 second year of his pontificate (1879) he recommended the 
 study of the majestic philosophy of St. Thomas. It will be 
 profitable to give a few extracts from that Encyclical. 
 
 Philosophy leads to faith and is guided by it. The 
 Apologists proved Christianity from the philosophies of 
 old and converted the Pagans. The Schoolmen reduced 
 into unity and system the results of the labors of all who 
 had gone before them. The greatest among them, St. 
 Thomas, exalts both faith and reason, and is at once the 
 
24 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 glory of the theologians and the dread of the philosoph- 
 asters. His philosophy should be assiduously studied, for 
 the refutation of falsehood and the promotion of true 
 science. 
 
 " Philosophy leads the way to the true faith; and quietty prepares 
 
 the mind of the student for the reception of Revelation. Hence it has not 
 been inaptly called by the ancients the first step to Christian faith, the 
 prelude and aid to Christianity and the teacher of the Gospel " 
 
 "Those who bring to the study of philosoplvy a dutiful submission to 
 the Christian faith are the best philosophers; since the splendor of the 
 Divine truths taken into the mind assists the intelligence; and, instead 
 of lessening in any degree its dignity, imparts to it more ability, acumen 
 and solidity." 
 
 "The Fathers and Scholastics point out with sufficient clearness and 
 force the foundation of faith, its Divine origin, its unshaken truth, the 
 arguments on which it rests, the benefits it has conferred on the human 
 race, and its perfect harmony with reason, to bend the most unwilling 
 and most refractory mind to its yoke." 
 
 "Among all the Apologists, St. Augustine appears to have deservedly 
 carried off the palm of excellence, as a man of unusually powerful endow- 
 ments; and, skilled in the fullness of sacred science, he warred mightily 
 against all the errors of his time with a faith and learning equally 
 profound." 
 
 "The very characteristics which cause the Scholastic philosophy to 
 be so dreadfully feared by the enemies of the truth are that fitness of 
 mutual connection of things among themselves, that cohesion of causes, 
 that order and plan, as of soldiers in battle array, that solidity of 
 argument, those keen controversies and pellucid distinctions and defini- 
 tions, by which truth is distinguished from error, and before which the 
 lies of centuries, covered up under countless cunning devices, are as a 
 vesture rent in pieces, exposed and laid bare." 
 
 "As their prince and master St. Thomas of Aquinas far outshines all 
 the rest of the Scholastic Doctors, He nourished like the sun the whole 
 universe with the warmth of his virtue, and filled it with the lustre of 
 his learning. There is no point in philosophy that he has not handled 
 fully and thoroughly. He warred single-handed against all the errors of 
 former ages, and supplied the most invincible weapons to scatter to the 
 winds all those who might in the course of time spring up in the future." 
 
 "Reason was borne by the wings of Thomas so near the pinnacle of 
 human perfection, that it dare scarcely mount any higher; while faith 
 cannot be honored by reason with any more valid arguments in its favor 
 than it has secured through the instrumentality of Thomas " 
 
CHAPTER FOURTH. 
 DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 To the King of Ages, Immortal and Invisible, the Only God, 
 be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1. TIMOTHY i, 17. 
 
 I. THE CENTRAL FIGURE OF HISTORY. 
 
 ^"Phere is one person who compels the attention of every 
 man. He is the central figure of history. He is the key 
 to the greatest events of the past. His coming was heralded 
 thousands of years beforehand. His presence was hailed 
 by the elements of nature, obeying His orders. His work 
 has caused all the highest progress of our race. That 
 unique person was not only a man, but a God-Man, sent 
 from Heaven to save mankind, and to uplift and enlighten 
 it. He proclaimed His Divinity before the jealous Jews and 
 He died in testimony to His teachings. The Almighty does 
 not recommend an impostor centuries in advance. The 
 elements do not tremble in awe, nor change their invari- 
 able laws, at the word of a simple mortal. The most 
 distant and hostile nations have never willingly followed 
 one and the same leader, especially in the steep and narrow 
 path of virtue. 
 
 Jesus is the Eternal, the Almighty, and the All-good. 
 The world expected Him anxiously, nature obeyed His 
 word, and ever since His coming mankind adores Him as 
 God. He who does not study this predominant personality 
 remains ignorant of the greatest factor of history. 
 
 II. THE DESIRED OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 Immediately after the fall of our first parents, God 
 promised to mankind a Redeemer. This promise was still 
 remembered in the religions of all tribes and nations, after 
 they fell away into Pagan separatism. Later on He renewed 
 
26 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 and accentuated the promise, and instituted the Mosaic 
 rites and institutions to preserve it among men and pre- 
 figure the Universal Church to be founded by the Messias. 
 The Old Testament types and prophecies of the Redeemer 
 are so clear and manifold that they are unmistakable. 
 His birth, life, preaching, passion, death, resurrection and 
 universal reign are graphically portrayed. David and Isaiah 
 glowingly describe Him as God, and St. Paul proves to 
 the Heorews of his day how clearly a Divine Saviour had 
 been promised. The predictions were complete five hundred 
 years before Christ. Drach,the famous converted rabbi, says: 
 
 "The prophecies taken in their entirety form a most complete picture. 
 The oldest prophecies give the broad outlines; as time passes, others fill 
 in the features left imperfect by their predecessors; the more they 
 approach the event the more they enliven their colors. When the portrait 
 is complete, the artists disappear. The last (Malachias) when he retires 
 indicates the person who must lift up the veil (John the Baptist)." 
 
 When the prophecies had been made in full, the Jews 
 were thrown in contact with foreign nations. It was the 
 age of the great reformers Lycurgus, Cyrus, Buddha, Con- 
 fucius, Lao Tse, and, some would add, Zoroaster, some of 
 whom seem to have actually taken their best institutions 
 from the Bible. The preciser prophecies of the seers of 
 Israel spread everywhere, and revived the primitive tradi- 
 tions. Thence arose a general expectation of the Messias 
 just before His birth. The Hindus looked for a great 
 avatar of Vishnu, the Persians for the virgin-birth of the 
 Savior whom Zoroaster had foretold, and the Chinese for 
 the great saint who alone can oifer a holocaust worthy 
 of the majesty of Heaven. The Romans had heard that 
 "in these times the East would prevail and men coming 
 from Judea would overpower the world". Jesus came and 
 fulfilled every Scripture. He declared Himself God and 
 claimed the adoration of mankind. But God alone foresees 
 the future, and He would certainly not foretell anything 
 in behalf of an impostor; consequently Jesus is God, as He 
 claimed to be. 
 
 III. THE LORD OF NATURE. 
 
 All four Gospels show the Divinity of Jesus Christ ; but 
 St. John wrote especially to demonstrate it against the 
 
DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 27 
 
 rising heretics. The Evangelists narrate how Heaven and 
 earth, life and death, rendered homage to Christ as to 
 their Sovereign Lord. 
 
 When Jesus was born in the stable of Bethlehem the 
 Lord moved Heaven and earth to bring Him His first 
 adorers, and to protect Him against the cruelty of Herod. 
 A star summoned the wise men of the East. Angels called 
 the shepherds ; and it was they who warned Joseph and 
 Mary of the murderous order of Herod and told them to 
 flee and save the Infant in Egypt. God Himself spoke 
 distinctly three times to proclaim Jesus His Son : at His 
 baptism in the Jordan (Matt, iii, 17), at His glorification 
 on Tabor (Matt, xvii, 5), and during His great contest 
 in the temple (John, xii, 28). 
 
 All nature mourned at His death. The sun was darkened 
 and hid his face, the earth quaked and sighed; the graves 
 were opened and the dead appeared ; and the veil of the 
 temple was rent from top to bottom. The Roman officer 
 exclaimed: "Indeed this was the Son of God". These pro- 
 digies extended over all the earth. The Emperor Tiberius 
 ordered an inquiry into all that happened at the death of 
 Jesus, and Tertullian cites the official reports as testimony 
 to his Divinity. The Pagan writer Plutarch relates that 
 in the island of Paxas a voice was heard, saying: "The 
 great Pan is dead". Pan is a Greek word meaning the 
 All the Supreme Being. Dionysius of Athens was so struck 
 by the phenomena of nature on that occasion that he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "Either the Author of Nature is suffering or the world 
 is perishing." 
 
 Jesus acted as the absolute Master of the earth, and 
 performed miracles as easily as any other actions. At His 
 word water was changed into wine, bread was multiplied, 
 the storm was calmed, health was restored to the sick, 
 and life was given back to the dead. It was not only a 
 few times that Jesus operated miracles, but so often that 
 He was continually surrounded by crowds of people seeking 
 relief. The Gospels give the details of about thirtyeight of 
 His miracles, including three restorations of the dead to 
 life, two multiplications of bread, etc. 
 
28 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The greatest of all His miracles was His Resurrection 
 from the grave. Joseph of Arimathea had buried Jesus in 
 his own new tomb, hewn in rock, and had rolled a huge 
 stone to the door of the monument. The high priests had 
 put a seal on the sepulchre and placed guards before it, 
 lest His disciples should steal His body and pretend that 
 he had arisen. On the morning of the third day Jesus rose 
 triumphant from His grave. One of His angelic ministers 
 frightened the soldiers away. The hostile priests held coun- 
 sel with the ancients, and gave a great sum of money to 
 the soldiers, instructing them to say: "His disciples came 
 by night and stole the body while we were asleep." St. 
 Augustine remarks : 
 
 "This lie is a device of sleeping persons. If the guards were asleep, 
 how could they know what happened? If awake, why did they not 
 prevent the stealing of the body?" 
 
 Christ remained forty days on earth instructing His 
 disciples and organizing His spiritual kingdom, and then 
 ascended gloriously into Heaven before the eyes of one 
 hundred and twenty disciples, whom He had prepared and 
 commissioned to bear witness to His Resurrection and pro- 
 claim His Gospel to the utmost boundaries of the world. 
 Ten days later He sent the Holy Ghost upon His followers : 
 that very day Peter publicly proclaimed His Divinity, 3000 
 people were converted and the Church was definitively 
 founded. 
 
 IV. THE RULER OF MANKIND. 
 
 On the island of St. Helena, Napoleon frequently asserted 
 the Divinity of Christ in the presence of his doubting 
 followers. One evening he said to General Bertrand that 
 He who had not only won to Himself, but continued to 
 rule, through so many centuries, the best part of man- 
 kind, without worldly means, could not have been a 
 mere man. 
 
 Having only a few poor ignorant disciples, Jesus is put to death, 
 and dies accursed by the Jewish priests, despised by His own nation, 
 and abandoned by His very Apostles. But He rises from the dead, and 
 His Apostles go forth to conquer the world. The God-Man's instrument 
 of torture is their weapon. They carry the cross from nation to 
 nation, and their faith spreads like wildfire. Their cry is: ''Christ, the 
 Son of God, died for the salvation of mankind." What a storm those 
 
DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 29 
 
 simple words raise up around the standard of the God-Man! It is not 
 one day, nor one battle, nor one human life that decides the contest. 
 It is a persevering war, a long struggle of three hundred years, com- 
 menced by the Apostles, and carried on under their spiritual heirs by 
 many successive generations of Christians. The first thirty Bishops who 
 succeed to the supremacy of St. Peter are all martyred like himself. 
 Thus for three centuries the Roman See is a scaffold which infallibly 
 brings death to its occupants. During that long period the other Bishops 
 have no easier lot. In this struggle all the earthly powers are on one 
 side, and on the other there are no arms, but only a spiritual society of 
 men without any other bond than a common faith in the Divinity of 
 Jesus Christ, and a common allegiance to Him. 
 
 Either admit or reject the miracles. If you admit them, you must 
 admit the miraculous propagation of Christianity and its Divine charac- 
 ter, because God could not allow the whole world to be deceived in His 
 name by false miracles. If you reject them you must, as St. Augustine 
 says, explain the greatest of all miracles: the conversion of the world 
 without miracles. Christ expects everything from his death. He shows 
 that He is the Son of the Eternal by His contempt of time. The horizon 
 of His empire is expanded and prolonged indefinitely. Christ alone rules 
 beyond death, and the past and the future equally belong to Him, You 
 talk of the conquests of Caesar and Alexander, and of the enthusiasm 
 they aroused in the hearts of their soldiers. But how many years did 
 the empire of Caesar subsist ? How long did the zeal of the soldiers 
 of Alexander last ? Did it survive beyond the grave ? Can you imagine 
 a dead person making conquests, with an army faithful and devoted 
 to his memory ? Can you imagine a ghost who has soldier without 
 pay or worldly hope, and who inspires them to endure with patience 
 and joy all kinds of suffering ? Can you conceive Caesar as eternal 
 emperor of the senate, from his mausoleum governing the empire and 
 presiding over the destinies of Rome ? 
 
 Such is the history of the invasion and conquest of the world by the 
 Christian religion. Nations pass, thrones fall, empires disintegrate, but 
 the Church endures. What is the arm that for eighteen hundred years 
 has preserved her from all the frightful storms that have threatened to 
 engulf her ? 
 
 The Christian doctrine presents itself with the precision and the clear- 
 ness of the algebra; you must admire in it the connection and unity of 
 a science. The dogmas are as closely connected as the welded links of 
 one and the same chain. I admit that the life of Christ from one end 
 to the other is quite a mysterious texture; but it solves all other 
 difficulties. Reject it and the world is a riddle. Admit it and you have 
 an admirable solution of the history of the human race. 
 
 The Gospel is an original book, unlike all other books, immensely 
 different from anything which preceded or followed it. Its mysteries are 
 the secret of Christ alone. It comes from a superhuman mind. There is 
 there a profound originality, which creates a series of words and maxims 
 before unknown. 
 
30 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The Gospel contains a secret virtue, a strange efficacy, a warmth 
 which acts on the intellect and delights the heart. The Gospel is not a 
 mere book, but a living being. In meditating on it you experience what 
 you ieel in the contemplation of the sky. You can find nowhere else such 
 a series of beautiful ideas and moral principles, which pass along like 
 the batallions of the celestial hosts, and which produce in your soul the 
 same sentiments you feel in contemplating on a beautiful summer night 
 the immense canopy of heaven brightened by the splendor of the stars. 
 I search in vain in history to find anything equal to Jesus Christ and 
 His Gospel. 
 
 Without contradiction the greatest mystery of Christ is the reign of 
 charity. Christ alone conquered the love of men ; and how ? By a miracle 
 which surpasses all miracles. He wishes the love of men. That is what 
 is most difficult to obtain in this world ; what a wise man asks in vain 
 of a few friends, a father of his children, a wife of her husband. The 
 heart that is what He wants. He absolutely requires it, and He fully 
 succeeds in obtaining it. Hence I deduce His Divinity. Alexander, Caesar, 
 Hannibal, Louis XIV, with all their great genius, could not secure love. 
 They conquered the world ; they could not succeed in making friends. 
 Perhaps I am today the only one who loves Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal. 
 We love our children; we obey the instinct of nature and the will of 
 God, and fulfill an obligation which the animals themselves acknowledge. 
 But how many children remain insensible to our love! Our children may 
 remember us when they are spending our fortune, but our grandchildren 
 will hardly know that we existed. How could we fail to recognize in 
 this miracle of His will, the Word, the Creator of the universe? 
 
 I impassioned multitudes who died for me, but they wanted my 
 presence, the magnetism of my look, my accent, my voice. Thus I en- 
 kindled the sacred flames in their hearts. But I have not the secret of 
 perpetuating my name and my love, and the power to work miracles 
 without matter. Now that I am at St. Helena, now that I am alone 
 and nailed to this rock, who fights and conquers empires for me ? Where 
 are the courtiers of my misfortune ? Who thinks of me ? Who moves for 
 me in Europe? Who remains faithful to me? I die before my time, and 
 my body will be returned to the earth to become the food of worms 
 that is the fast approaching fate of the great Napoleon ! What an abyss 
 between my profound misery and the perpetual reign of Christ, beloved, 
 adored and alive in the whole universe! To me death will bring oblivion. 
 To Him it has brought true life. Therefore the death of Christ is the 
 death of a God-Man. 
 
 There is no God in Heaven if a man has been able to conceive and 
 to carry out with full success the gigantic idea of stealing for himself 
 the supreme worship by usurping the name of God. Jesus is the only 
 one who dared do it. He is the only one who clearly and imperturbably 
 affirmed of himself, ''I am God". 
 
 History does not tell of any other individual who qualifies himself 
 with the title of God in its absolute sense. A Jew whose historical 
 existence is better proved than that of any one else of his time, the son 
 
DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST. 31 
 
 of a carpenter he alone, of all others, gives himself out as God, the 
 Supreme Being, the Creator of all things ! He claims Divine adoration ; 
 He builds up His worship by His own hands, not with brick, but with 
 men. We wonder at the conquests of Alexander. Behold here a conqueror 
 who confiscates for his own benefit, who unites and incorporates with 
 Himself, not one nation, but the whole human race. What a wonder! 
 the human soul, with all its faculties, has become an annex to the 
 existence of Christ ! 
 
CHAPTER FIFTH. 
 UNWILLING WITNESSES. 
 
 I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart. 
 For I would wish to suffer everything for my brethren, who are 
 my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom 
 belongeth the adoption as of children, and the glory, and the 
 testament, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, 
 and the promises ; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ 
 according to the flesh, Who is over -all things God blessed for- 
 ever. Amen. ROMANS ix, 2 5. 
 
 I. SAD FALL OF THE JEWISH NATION. 
 
 /~\NE cannot consider the fall of the Jewish nation with- 
 out participating in the sorrow and sadness of St. Paul, 
 and trembling for the Christian nations which prevaricate 
 against Jesus Christ. Selected among all others to intro- 
 duce the Messias to the world, the Jews turned against 
 Him and His followers and became outcasts and vagabonds 
 on the face of the earth. The people of Judea recognized 
 Christ and thronged around Him, but the leaders refused 
 to recognize Him and put Him to death, thus drawing 
 down most fearful punishment upon their posterity. What 
 a terrible example for the apostate Christians! What a 
 striking contrast between the fallen nation and the 
 glorious Apostles, with their immortal Church ! 
 
 II. ELECTION OF A PEOPLE. 
 
 When the great truths of the Creation, the Fall and 
 the Redemption were being lost in the dark night of 
 Paganism, God selected a nation to preserve them intact, 
 and to spread them anew among the Gentiles in the fulness 
 of time, Abraham was its father (B. C. 1921); Moses its 
 lawgiver (B. C. 1491); and judges, kings and priest its 
 leaders, each in turn for five centuries. 
 
UNWILLING WITNESSES. 33 
 
 The Lord prepared the Hebrews for their mission in a 
 natural as well as a supernatural way. He endowed them 
 with a vitality and an endurance which was capable of 
 withstanding the greatest stress, and he enriched them 
 with a genius and an activity which would secure them 
 prominence everywhere. He gave them the most precious 
 revelations and the most flattering promises. In the Book 
 of Genesis and the Tables of the Decalogue he expressed 
 the fundamental truths of all religion and all morality. 
 He promised that the Redeemer would come from their 
 own race, and He destined them to extend His sway to 
 all nations. By the admirable legislation of Moses, he 
 united them intimately to Himself, and bound them closely 
 together for all future generations. The glory of the 
 Twelve Fishermen, who spread the Gospel over the world, 
 and of the French who in their days of faith performed 
 the work of works of God "Gesta Dei per Francos", and 
 of the Italians who possess the Vicars of Christ in their 
 midst, to say nothing of other supernatural achievements 
 of the true seed of Abraham, show to what pre-eminence 
 Israel was called. 
 
 Finally God kept the future Messias continually before 
 the eyes of the chosen people by the striking types of Old 
 Testament history and ritual, and the precise predictions 
 of the Prophets. Full details were given concerning His 
 birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, triumph over His 
 enemies, and universal and everlasting reign. Five hundred 
 years before His coming the Prophets had so well depicted 
 the portrait of Jesus, that it should have been unmistakable 
 to any man without prejudice. 
 
 He was to be the son of Abraham (Genesis xii, 3) and 
 of David (Jeremias xxx, 15); miraculously born of a virgin 
 (Isaias vii, 14) in the city of Bethlehem (Micheas v, 2), 
 490 years after the edict for the reconstruction of the 
 temple (Daniel ix, 25). He was to preach admirably in 
 the mountains and in Zion (Isaias Ixi, xxi, Ixi, xlii and Ixi); 
 by Him the eyes of the blind were to be opened, and the 
 ears of the deaf unstopped. At His word the lame man 
 was to leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb be 
 made free (xxxi and xl). 
 
 3 
 
34 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Zacharias described His triumphant entry into Jerusa- 
 lem (ix, 9), the treason of Judas (xi, 12, 13), the flight of 
 the Apostles, the wounds of His hands and feet (xiii, 6, 7), 
 and His ascension from the Mount of Olives (xiv, 4). 
 Jeremias laments the sufferings of Jesus. Isaias gives *a 
 more touching description of the Passion than the Evan- 
 gelists themselves. He says : "He hath borne our infirmities 
 and carried our sorrows, and we have thought Him as it 
 were a leper, and as one stricken of God and afflicted. 
 But he was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised 
 for our sins (Hii, 5)." David describes the scenes of Calvary 
 in the twenty first psalm, and the Ascension in psalms Ixvi 
 and Ixvii. Osee predicts the resurrection on the third 
 day (vi, 3). Our Lord's judgement of the earth and eternal 
 reign in heaven is referred to in psalms ii and cix, and in 
 Zacharias xiv. Isaias predicts that the Gospel will be 
 preached first in Zion (chapter i, 26, 27) and afterwards 
 proclaimed by faithful witnesses throughout the world 
 (xl, 317, xliv, 3, 26, and Ixvi, 19). A covenant will 
 unite all peoples (lix, 19 21, Ixii, 2, Ixvi, 23 and Jeremias 
 xxxii, 37 41), and an acceptable Sacrifice will be offered 
 in every place (Malachias i, 11), by priests from every 
 nation (Isaias Ixvi, 21). 
 
 The obstinacy and ruin of the carnal Jews was no less 
 clearly foretold (Isaias Ivii). The prophecies will be for 
 them like a sealed book (Isaias xxix, 10 14). But they 
 will be rejected, punished and scattered '. They will be 
 without a king or a leader; without a sacrifice or an 
 altar (Osee iii, 4). 
 
 III. UNIQUE CRIME AND INCOMPARABLE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 Jesus came at the appointed time, literally fulfilled all 
 the prophecies, and proved that every one of them was 
 accomplished in His person. St. Matthew wrote his Gospel 
 to show this fulfilment to the Jews. 
 
 Not only did Jesus appear as the messenger of God, 
 but as God Himself. In His own name, He commanded 
 the elements and revealed Divine mysteries. He Himself 
 appealed to His miracles as demonstrations of His Divinity, 
 
UNWILLING WITNESSES. 35 
 
 as St. John shows in His Gospel. Many of the people 
 acknowledged the Savior and thronged around Him. But 
 most of their leaders rejected Him, without examining His 
 claims, for, having lost their religious spirit and become 
 lilce to the Gentiles, they could not bear the humble Prophet 
 of Nazareth. They looked for power and riches, not for 
 religion and virtue. They wished for a hero who would 
 make them universal conquerors. Seeing in Jesus a teacher 
 who would destroy their hopes, they publicly rejected Him 
 and crucified Him as an impostor. The refusal of the 
 worldly-minded element among the Jews to recognize the 
 Messias does not disprove the Scriptures, but is rather a 
 confirmation of their distinct predictions. Moreover, the 
 true Israel consisted of that remnant of men of good will, 
 who adhered to the Messias for Whom all the law and 
 the promises were a preparation. At the head of the 
 faithful sons of the covenant stood the Twelve Fishermen 
 who established the spiritual reign of the King of Israel 
 over the whole face of the earth. The hostility of the 
 sectarian Jews left the texts of the prophecies in the hands 
 of the bitterest enemies of Jesus, without any possibility 
 of alteration in His favor. That secured their authenticity 
 and integrity in the eyes of the unbelieving world, insured 
 their investigation, and gave them the irrefragable value 
 of unwilling testimonies of the enemy. The world is sure 
 to have the genuine Scriptures in those which the Apostles 
 possessed as Jews and carried through the earth as mes- 
 sengers of Christ. 
 
 The Deicide of the Jews is a crime which stands alone 
 in history, both for its heinousness and its punishment. 
 It never had a parallel in the past, and it can never have 
 one in the future. God visited with His vengeance the very 
 generation which had crucified His Divine Son. Thirty three 
 years after His death the sectarian Jews revolted against 
 the Romans, their Catholic fellow-countrymen taking no 
 part in the movement, but flying (into the desert) according 
 to the warning of Jesus. The rebels numbered only ten 
 million against 120,000,000. There were about one 
 million men at Jerusalem to defend the capital and its 
 temple. 
 
36 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The Holy City, strong in her mountainous location, 
 was protected by a double, and in some places by a 
 triple, enclosure of walls and towers. The temple, built 
 out of solid white marble, looked like a mountain of 
 strength. Titus, the Roman general, resolved to reduce 
 the city by famine, and surrounded it with a wall to 
 prevent the introduction of victuals. Soon all the horrors 
 of civil and foreign war, of famine and of epidemic disease, 
 were raging in the same place. Three factions pursued one 
 another to the death. A fearful famine prevailed. Leathern 
 girdles, shoestrings, and hay were used for food, and even 
 the common sewers were ransacked. The people died in 
 such numbers that it was impossible to bury them. The 
 tops of the houses, the squares and the streets were covered 
 with putrefying corpses. Pestilence speedily invaded the 
 city, and the people died of it in the thoroughfares. No 
 less than 600,000 corpses were thrown over the walls into 
 the ditches outside. Many of the Jews fled from the doomed 
 city, but were caught by the Romans. Titus gave orders 
 to erect crosses for the fugitives around the walls of 
 Jerusalem. Every day more than 500 were crucified, and 
 thus a forest of crosses, laden with their dying friends and 
 relatives, arose in view of the people who had nailed Jesus 
 to the cross. When the city was captured the remaining 
 inhabitants retired to the temple and defended it foot by 
 foot. They fell in heaps around the altar of holocausts; 
 and the Roman soldiers waded to their knees in blood. 
 Notwithstanding the order of Titus to spare the temple, a 
 firebrand was thrown into it, and the flames burst out 
 with fury and consumed it to the ground. Ninety seven 
 thousand Jews were taken captives, and sold as slaves all 
 over the empire. The ruin of the nation was complete 
 and irrevocable. 
 
 As long as the temple existed the Christians frequented 
 it, to inter decently, as it were, the now superceded 
 rites of the Old Law. But with the destruction of the 
 temple the last tie was broken between the sectarian Jews 
 and the true religion which they had forsaken by their 
 rejection of the Messias. They immediately proceeded to or- 
 ganize their new sect in an entirely novel fashion, without a 
 
UNWILLING WITNESSES. 37 
 
 sacrifice or a priesthood, and ere long went so far as to 
 finally discard all the beautiful Old Testament books 
 written in the Greek language, which they hated because 
 of its adoption as the principal medium of the Gospel. In 
 the meantime a large proportion of the members of the 
 diaspora, or Jewish communities scattered throughout the 
 civilized world, had accepted Christ, and thus remained 
 true to the hope of Israel; though by the tremendous 
 influx of converts from Gentilism the Jewish blood in the 
 true Church was so much diluted, that the separatists, 
 who preserved the blood but not the faith of Abraham, 
 have ever since been allowed to retain almost exclusive 
 possession of the name of "Jews". The true Israel 
 has preferred to bear the name of the God-Incarnate, 
 the Lion of the House of Judah, and the designation 
 of Catholic, which expresses the universality of the truth 
 she possesses, the universal jurisdiction of her Chief 
 Pontiffs, and her oneness with the Church of God 
 throughout the universe in Heaven, in Purgatory, or 
 elsewhere. 
 
 A hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the 
 Jewish sectaries revolted anew against the Caesars. They 
 were put down with frightful slaughter, and thousands 
 more of them were carried into slavery. Jerusalem was 
 given the Pagan name of Aelid Capitoland and the Jews 
 were forbidden to so much as enter its limits. In 361, 
 Julian the Apostate, out of hatred to Christianity, attempted 
 to rebuild the temple, but was prevented by dire portents 
 from carrying out his design. After that time the Jews 
 seemed to give up their country altogether. Notwith- 
 standing the immense wealth they have acquired in all 
 parts of the world, they have never since shown the desire 
 to rebuild the temple, or to restore the merely symbolic 
 worship of the Mosaic law to which they profess to adhere, 
 a worship which is represented on earth to-day only by 
 the Eternal Priesthood and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ in the 
 Catholic Church, to Which it pointed, from Which it 
 derived all its efficacy, and into Which it was merged 
 during the period between the Great Pentecost and the 
 fall of Jerusalem. 
 
38 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 IV. UNDYING HOSTILITY. 
 
 We do not deem the Jewish sectaries of today guilty 
 of the Deicide of their forefathers, nor the masses of that 
 people animated with hostile intentions against the Church 
 of God which they have forsaken. But their leaders have 
 been the eternal enemies of the Christians, and whenever 
 possible have robbed them of their possessions and perse- 
 cuted their religion. 
 
 Having given up their Heavenly mission, the Jews have 
 concentrated all their efforts on the acquisition of the 
 goods of this world. Gifted with an extraordinary talent 
 for business, they embarked by preference in trading and 
 banking. Defeating competition by unscrupulous means, 
 and multiplying their wealth by merciless usury, they 
 became princely merchants and royal bankers, and monopo- 
 lized the wealth of the nations. Thus they became the 
 capitalists of the Persian and the Roman empires and of 
 Mohammedan Spain and Turkey. Now they have made 
 themselves the masters of continental Europe. At the 
 Congress of Christian Democracy assembled at Lyons in 
 1897 it was shown by facts and figures that this class of 
 separatists have seized upon the principal instruments of 
 power in Europe, to wit, the newspapers, the universities, 
 the banks and the governments. In Paris all the papers 
 except a few Catholic journals are in their power; the 
 chamber of commerce is at their mercy, and 120 banks are 
 in their possession or under their direction. In Austria all 
 the great journals except two or three are in their hands. 
 In Hungary it is only thirty years since they were first 
 permitted to purchase land, and already they own one third 
 of the soil. In Berlin, out of 87,000 merchants 41,000 are 
 Jews, whilst out of 108,000 persons engaged as servants 
 or porters only 314 are Jews. Since the governments of 
 Europe have thrown off the sweet yoke of Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, God has delivered them to the galling yoke of the 
 grasping Jews. 
 
 The secret chiefs of the Liberals know how to turn 
 and use all that power and that wealth against the Church 
 of Christ, even against the wish and knowledge of the 
 
UNWILLING WITNESSES. 39 
 
 rank and file of the busy Jews, who prefer not to be 
 hampered in their trade. History relates that the Jewish 
 leaders were at the bottom of the bloody persecutions of 
 the Romans and of the fanatical warfare of the Moham- 
 medans. They excited the Romans by calumnies against 
 the followers of Christ, and they aroused the Mohamme- 
 dans by false reports of the wealth of the Christians and 
 of the ease with which they might be conquered. The 
 present state of continental Europe shows that they are 
 united with the Protestants and Freemasons in one grand 
 conspiracy against the Church of God. The leading Free- 
 masons are Jews, such men as Lemmi and Nathan being 
 established as Grand Masters of that gloomy empire under 
 the very Shadow of the Chair of Peter. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the Christians have at all times 
 dreaded and hated such enemies and resented their rob- 
 beries and persecutions? Is it any wonder that, notwith- 
 standing their knowledge, their power and their wealth, 
 the Jews remain the most despised and the most unhappy 
 people on the face of the earth ? They are the most united 
 of nations, and still they are scattered to the ends of the 
 earth. They are the richest of peoples ; still they hold no 
 country of their own. They control the great powers of 
 our time, still they are often denounced by furious mobs, 
 driven into exile, or threatened with death. At certain 
 periods, to rid the people from their oppressive usury, all 
 the nations proscribed them, and the Popes of Rome were 
 their only protectors, allowing them a quarter of their 
 own in the capital of Christendom. Whilst in Protestant 
 Germany and schismatic Russia many are incensed against 
 the rich Jews and wish them treated harshly, the Vicar of 
 the God of mercy has once again of late raised his voice in 
 their behalf. 
 
 The present sad state of affairs has originated because 
 the salutar\- barriers against the monopoly and usury of 
 the Jews established by the Catholic Church have been 
 abolished. These were a protection for the Christians 
 and a safeguard for the Jews, so inclined to accumulate 
 riches. The existing hostility will last so long as the Jews 
 are not limited to that proportion of wealth and power 
 
40 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 to which their numbers and their work entitle them, and 
 their lives and civil rights are not secured against the fury 
 of mobs and the prejudices of rulers. 
 
 The Jews would have disappeared long ago had not 
 Divine Providence endowed them so richly, and persistently 
 protected and preserved them as visible examples of His 
 justice and, as Fredet says, "unquestionable witnesses of 
 the truth of the ancient Scriptures, in which we read alike 
 our claims and their condemnation." 
 
 As members of the Church of God the Jews cherished 
 the prophecies with a loving hope; as its enemies they 
 have preserved the documents in which the prophecies are 
 written, to their own condemnation. 
 
CHAPTER SIXTH. 
 THE TWELVE FISHERMEN. 
 
 Go ye into the -whole world and preach the gospel to every 
 creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved : but 
 he that believeth not shall be condemned. And these signs shall 
 follow. But they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord 
 working withal and confirming the word with signs that 
 followed. MATT, xvi, 14 20. 
 
 I. THE APOSTLES TOO BUSY TO WRITE. 
 
 THE Apostles were sent to teach all nations, and they 
 did so by means of preaching. Their mission was not 
 to write but to evangelize. They took no time to compose 
 treatises on Christianity ; they had no desire to hand their 
 deeds down to posterity. It was only occasionally that 
 they devoted any time to writing ; and then they recorded 
 only particular facts and events, or discussed some burn- 
 ing question. Only two Apostles committed the Gospel to 
 paper, and two others caused it to be written down by a 
 chosen disciple. Only five wrote Epistles that are still 
 extant. Luke alone gave a few details of the history of 
 the primitive Church. John alone wrote prophecies regard- 
 ing the Church in the future. It was only in the fourth 
 century that the inspired books were gathered into one 
 volume; and the first complete catalogue was made by 
 St. Augustine in the Council of Carthage, A. D. 397, and 
 officially approved by Pope Innocent I. 
 
 The words of Christ "Go ye into the whole world 
 and preach . . ." rang in the Apostles' ears, and the all- 
 absorbing zeal with which they had been filled by the 
 Holy Spirit moved them to carry the Gospel to the ends 
 of the world. From the fragments of history that are still 
 extant, it is evident that God worked with them, accord- 
 ing to His promise, and used them as His instruments in 
 
42 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the foundation of His Kingdom on earth. They introduced 
 the Church among all nations, and thus made it in fact 
 what it had been of right from the day when they received 
 their Divine commission Catholic, i. e., universal the 
 Church of the whole world. 
 
 II. FOUNDATION OF A WORLD-WIDE EMPIRE. 
 
 The names of the twelve Apostles were: The first, 
 Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; 
 James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother; 
 Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the Pub- 
 lican; James the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus; Simon 
 the Cananean and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him 
 (Matt, x, 2 4). Matthias was elected instead of the 
 traitor, and Paul was called miraculously by Christ. 
 
 The Apostles were fishermen of the little lake of Galilee 
 called Genesareth, except Matthew, a public officer, and 
 Paul, an influential Pharisee. If they were not learned 
 men, they had that keen eye for the observation of details, 
 and that sure faculty of remembering every word pro- 
 nounced, which are strongest in those whose faculties are 
 not distracted by too many other matters. The Apostles 
 were upright and sincere, and had no interest in deceiving 
 others or intention of doing so. Either Jesus had wrought 
 miracles and arisen from the dead or not. If not, they 
 knew it well, and they had nothing to expect from Him, 
 and therefore would not speak in His favor. If He had 
 risen, they could expect the highest position in His Heavenly 
 kingdom. But He had risen in very deed; they had seen 
 and heard and touched Him, and they were eager to 
 announce to the world the glad tidings of the Savior risen 
 from the dead. 
 
 On the day of Pentecost, they were equipped for their 
 great mission and transformed into prophets and heroes. 
 The Holy Ghost descended upon them in the form of fiery 
 tongues, and gave them power to speak divers languages. 
 "There were at Jerusalem men out of every nation under heaven, 
 and every one heard them speak in their own tongue (Acts ii, 5 6)." 
 
 Peter proved to them that Jesus is the Son of God. 
 Three thousand men were converted and baptized, and 
 
THE TWELVE FISHERMEN. 43 
 
 many of them became the apostles of the countries from 
 which they came. Hence from Pentecost dates the in- 
 auguration, in its mature and ultimate form, of the Uni- 
 versal Church (A. D. 34). There never was a conqueror 
 more eager for combat, or more confident of victory, than 
 were these twelve fishermen. For their zeal no distance 
 was too great, no country too desolate, no people too 
 fierce. Persecutions had only the effect of sending the 
 Apostles into new countries. It was Herod Agrippa I who, 
 by killing James the Greater and arresting Peter, finally 
 scattered the Apostles all over the world, in the year 42. 
 All gave their lives for Jesus Christ. All are represented 
 in sacred art as martyrs, accompanied by the book of the 
 Gospels, a palm branch, and the instruments of their 
 passion, which are more glorious tokens of nobility than 
 the most ancient coats-of-arms. 
 
 Many went through a number of different lands, and 
 sometimes in the track of their colleagues; hence in 
 some instances several countries invoke the same Apostle 
 as the founder of their Church, whilst some honor more 
 than one Apostle. Their veneration as patron saints by 
 the decsendants of their converts is, in the case of some o 
 the Apostles, the only memory left of their labors. Andrew 
 preached in the basin of the Black Sea, and died on a 
 cross. The two Jameses taught especially in Palestine: 
 the Greater preached a mission in Spain also, but on his 
 return was beheaded at Jerusalem ; the Lesser was thrown 
 from the summit of the temple and despatched with a 
 fuller's club. Philip announced Christ in Phrygia, and is 
 represented with a cross. Bartholomew labored in Meso- 
 potamia, and was slain with a c ub. Thomas advanced 
 into Persia and India, and is represented with a lance. 
 Matthew evangelized Asiatic Ethiopia (Arabia) and was 
 put to death with a hatchet. Matthias went to African 
 Ethiopia or tropics and was murdered with a battle-ax. 
 Simon labored in Northern Asia and was sawn to pieces. 
 Judas Thaddeus was martyred with him. John was thrown 
 into a caldron of boiling oil, from which he came forth 
 unhurt; and he lived until the end of the century, testify- 
 ing to the true Divinity of Jesus at Ephesus against the 
 
44 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 rising heretics. Peter and Paul were the great mis- 
 sionaries of the Roman empire, the first preaching chiefly 
 to the Rabbinical Jews and the latter to the Hellenistic 
 Jews and the Gentiles. Peter was crucified, and is repre- 
 sented with the keys ; Paul was beheaded and holds a 
 sword. 
 
 There never were more rapid conquerors than the 
 Apostles. Paul writes to the Romans that their sound 
 had gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto 
 the end of the known world. The Pagan Seneca, who 
 died A. D. 65, could already write: "That race of Christians 
 is received everywhere. The conquered have given the law- 
 to the conqueror." At the end of the second century, 
 when the labors of the Apostles had produced their fruits, 
 Tertullian exclaims: "We are but of yesterday and we fill 
 every place. The temples alone are left to you." Then he 
 enumerates the most distant nations among those where 
 Christians existed. 
 
 It was not only, or even chiefly, among the Gentiles 
 that the Gospel was originally diffused. It reached the 
 Gentiles through the hands of the faithful of Israel. The 
 vast majority of the Jews at the time of our Lord's coming 
 lived outside of Palestine. Immense numbers were to be 
 found in Persia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and Spain, especially. 
 Among these diaspora, as the scattered Jewish communities 
 were called, the message of salvation spread with amazing 
 rapidity, and from them it was radiated throughout the 
 surrounding Paganism. Wherever Jews were found, and 
 this was in every part of the known world, some of them 
 recognized the Apostolic authority, and others, by reject- 
 ing that authority, which was no other than the rule of 
 the long-expected Messias, fell into schism. Although most 
 of the Jewish blood in the true Church is lost sight of, on 
 account of the immense infusion of Gentile elements in the 
 course of its world-wide expansion, it is highly probable 
 that nearly every Christian of European or Levantine 
 descent has some strain of Jewish lineage. There are ten 
 times as many descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
 even according to the flesh, in the Catholic Church as there 
 are among the adherents of the Jewish sect. 
 
THE TWELVE FISHERMEN. 45 
 
 While the Apostles, endowed with the supernatural 
 gift of tongues, spoke at times in all the languages in 
 use among the peoples to which they went, the sacred 
 languages, and the principal media of Christian doctrine 
 and worship, were those three which had been used in the 
 superscription upon the Cross : namely, Latin, Greek, and 
 that vernacular variety of Hebrew now called Aramaic, 
 or, in its modern form, Syriac. Thus, according to the 
 liturgical language used, the Church has been divided, ever 
 since the Apostolic times, into the Latin, Greek and S3 r rian 
 Churches, which, with their subdivisions and offshoots, 
 constitute the fourteen or fifteen officially recognized Rites 
 that now make up the Catholic Church. 
 
 The only Churches which are not counted under these 
 three heads are the Armenian and the Coptic. The Ar- 
 menian is very ancient and has been flourishing since the 
 fourth century. So far as known, it has always used the 
 Armenian language, but it derived both its liturgy and its 
 Scriptures from the Syrian Church, of which it may there- 
 fore be considered a daughter. 
 
 The Coptic Church may similarly be viewed as an 
 offspring of the Greek. It is the national Church of Egypt, 
 and the Coptic or ancient Egyptian tongue, which at a 
 very early period began to be used for liturgical purposes 
 in the remote country districts, is now its official language, 
 except in Abyssinia, where the Ethiopic has been sub- 
 stituted and other liturgical and disciplinary peculiarities 
 have arisen, thus constituting the Coptic-Ethiopic Rite. 
 
 At the present time the Church is divided into five 
 great Rites: the Latin, Greek, Syrian, Coptic and Ar- 
 menian. The Latin has one or two branches or sub- 
 ordinate Rites, notably the Latin-Slavonic; the Greek has 
 at least four the Melchite, Ruthenian, Roumanian and 
 Bulgarian; and the Syrian three the Maronite, Chaldean 
 and Malabric. 
 
 All this rich development of organic divisions within 
 the Church only serves to make more conspicuous its 
 Apostolicity and unity, as well as its universality and its 
 vigorous vitality. 
 
46 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 III. THE TWO APOSTOLIC TYPES. 
 1. Peter the Wise Governor. 
 
 To every one who reads the Bible without prejudice 
 Peter appears as the Prince of the Apostles. Everywhere 
 he is named the first ; everywhere he is the principal actor 
 and the most devoted disciple. Jesus changed his name of 
 Simon into that of Peter that is, Rock to signify that 
 he was to make him the cornerstone of His Church. 
 Three times he solemnly proclaimed him the head of His 
 Kingdom, promising him the keys of Heaven (Matthew 
 xvi, 19), and charging him to maintain the faith of his 
 brethren (Luke xxii, 32), and to feed His sheep as well as 
 His iambs (John xvi, 15 17). The other Apostles under- 
 stood Jesus well, and gave Peter the preference in every 
 matter of importance. He presided over two councils at 
 Jerusalem. He addressed the Jews in the name of all the 
 Apostles. He promoted the development of the Syrian 
 Church, visiting its different congregations to give them a 
 solid organization. In one of these visits he raised from 
 the dead the charitable Tabitha (Acts ix, 36). His miracu- 
 lous power was so well known that the people placed the 
 sick on the sidewalks, that at least the shadow of Peter 
 might fall upon them and cure them (Acts v, 15). 
 
 If we have not many details of the labors of Peter, 
 we have proofs of his brilliant success in the Churches 
 which he founded, governed or promoted, and which became 
 the most famous churches of the first centuries and the 
 seat of the great Patriarchates ; to wit, Jerusalem, Antioch, 
 Alexandria and Rome. Although James was Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, Peter labored in the interests of the whole 
 Church of Palestine, and visited many places in person 
 and with authority. He founded the Church of Antioch, 
 the capital of Asia, where he resided for a time. To 
 Alexandria, the capital of Africa, he sent his disciple Mark, 
 who established a very flourishing community there. He 
 passed through Asia Minor and went to Rome, the capital 
 of Europe and the mistress of the world. Wherever Peter 
 went, even by proxy, an impression was made which 
 lasted for centuries. He dispatched missionaries all through 
 
THE TWELVE FISHERMEN. 47 
 
 Italy, Spain and Gaul, and made of the West what it has 
 ever since been the most solid part of Christendom. 
 Rome was the capital of Paganism, the seat of the Pagan 
 pontifex maximus, who was no less a person than the 
 emperor himself. Peter made her the central seat of the 
 true religion. For he founded there such a fervent Church 
 that she became renowned the world over (Romans i, 
 8, 12; xvi, 19) and gave more martyrs to Christ than 
 any other Church, so that she richly deserves her name of 
 Mother of Martyrs. After three hundred years of struggle 
 she became the capital of Christendom, and later on the 
 property of the Popes. 
 
 2. Paul the Eager Conqueror. 
 
 The Acts of the Apostles relate four apostolic journeys 
 undertaken by St. Paul. In A. D. 42 the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles went to the region about Tarsus, his birthplace. 
 In the years 52 and 54? 57 he went around the ^Egean 
 Sea. When he returned to Jerusalem to perform a vow, 
 mobs formed and would have killed him if the tribune had 
 not rescued him. The Sanhedrim itself would have torn 
 him to pieces if he had not been rescued a second time. 
 A conspiracy formed against his life was discovered, and 
 he was dispatched by night to Cassaria, where he was 
 detained two years in prison. Sent to Rome, for the 
 hearing of his appeal to Caesar, he suffered shipwreck on 
 the way, but he was saved and, by his prayer, all the 
 ship's company with him. Bitten by a serpent, on the 
 coast where they landed, he was not hurt. After three 
 years more of imprisonment he was set free again 
 (A. D. 63). He made a journey around the Mediterranean, 
 and later on was captured and martyred with Peter under 
 Nero (A. D. 67). 
 
 In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes 
 the immense labors and burning zeal of the Apostles for 
 Jesus ; for what he says of himself can be applied to all 
 the Apostles. 
 
 "I am in many labors, in prisons frequently, in stripes above measure, 
 in deaths often. Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes save 
 one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once was I stoned; thrice have I 
 
48 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 suffered shipwreck a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. 
 In journeying often, in perils of wars, in perils of robbers, in perils from 
 my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils 
 in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren, in 
 labor and painfulness, in much watching, in hunger and thirst, in fasting 
 often, in cold and in nakedness (II. Cor. xi, 2327)." 
 
 In his fourteen epistles Paul breathes constantly the 
 love of Jesus. He commences and finishes every one with 
 His Holy Name. He ascribes all to Jesus, he calls Him the 
 central point of all time, the beginning and the end of the 
 human race, and the cause of the end of every event. 
 (Romans xi, 36). 
 
 IV. CONTRAST TO MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 The reign of Christ does not depend on any man or 
 any nation or any human means, but on God alone. 
 Jesus chose twelve poor fishermen of the little lake of 
 Galilee to spread His authority over all the earth. With- 
 out learning or influence or money they set forth and 
 reached the utmost boundaries of the known world ; and 
 they made such an impression that they left disciples 
 everywhere, and that their works remain until today. 
 They could not produce such results by themselves, con- 
 sequently they were the instruments of Almighty God in 
 the conversion of the world. But the reign of Mohammed 
 in the lands of Islam, like every other temporary triumph 
 of heresy, was established through worldly means and by 
 brutal force. The false prophet enkindled the martial spirit 
 of the Arabs, and drove them sword in hand through the 
 world, with the savage motto, "Become a Mohammedan 
 or die." The vast conquests of the Mussulmen were the 
 result of military force and tactics, and they are no more 
 miraculous than the victories of Napoleon. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTH. 
 POWERLESS TYRANTS. 
 
 The weak things of the world hath God chosen that He 
 may confound the strong. I. CORINTHIANS i, 27. . s , r <. 
 
 I. THE PAGAN EMPIRE WARS ON THE CHURCH. 
 
 Romans had erected the most magnificent empire- 
 that ever existed. Rome had subdued and plundered 
 the great cities of old ; she had conquered commercial 
 Carthage, classic Athens and holy Jerusalem. Enthroned 
 near the shores of the Mediterranean sea, she ruled the 
 finest parts of the world, and she gathered into her bosom 
 the richest treasures of gold and jewels, and the finest 
 masterpieces of all the arts and sciences. The cu>tured 
 Greeks made themselves the slaves of the caprices and 
 passions of her citizens. The sturdy barbarians descended 
 into the arena, and the wild beasts were thrown into the 
 amphitheatres to amuse her kingly people by deadly 
 struggles. 
 
 The Romans attributed all their glory to the favor of 
 the Superior Powers who rule the universe. Not only did 
 they honor their own national gods, but they also accepted 
 and propitiated those of their enemies, and built temples 
 in their honor. They recognized no* less than 30,000 gods; 
 to whom they erected the great temple of the Pantheon. 
 But lo ! a crucified Galilean brands their heavenly pro- 
 tectors as demons, and claims for Himself Divine worship 
 from the masters of the universe. The high priests of the 
 gods were no others than the mighty Caesars themselves, 
 who rose up to defend their national religion and customs, 
 and to crush out this new and contemptible worship. 
 For three centuries they brought to bear all the resources 
 of their vast power against this strange religion. There 
 
 4 
 
 t, 
 
50 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 were always laws in force against the Christians which 
 were being applied in some part of the world. But ten 
 powerful emperors enforced them everywhere, and enacted 
 new ones, thus enkindling the fire of persecution all over 
 the empire. Each century had its own particular torments, 
 according to the temper of the persecutors and the spirit 
 of the times. Thus the Pagans of Rome attempted to ex- 
 terminate ten generations of Christians. But the disciples 
 of Christ constantly grew in numbers under the very fire 
 of the enemy. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of 
 the Church, says Tertullian. God multiplied miracles to 
 arouse the courage of His witnesses and to confound the 
 fury of His enemies. For one that fell, he raised up ten 
 new champions of His cause; and He slew the cruel 
 tyrants with speedy and horrible deaths. 
 
 II. CRUEL ASSAULT BY TWO MONSTERS. 
 
 In the first century there was a brutal assault upon 
 the Church by two monsters of cruelty, to wit, Nero and 
 Domitian. Nero, stained with unnatural crimes, and steeped 
 in the blood of his mother, brother and friend, set flre to 
 the capital of the world and accused the Christians of the 
 savage deed. To punish such a public outrage, the first 
 persecution was started, and raged with incredible fury 
 for nearly half a decade (A. D. 6468). Some of the 
 Christians, after being covered with the skins of wild 
 beasts, were hunted with dogs, and by them torn to 
 pieces and devoured. Others were besmeared with resinous 
 substances, fastened to posts along the streets or in the 
 alleys of the imperial gardens, and then set on fire and 
 burned like torches to light up the scenery. SS. Peter and 
 Paul were Nero's foremost victims (A. D. 67). Soon the 
 hand of God fell upon him ; he was declared a public 
 enemy by the Senate, and, in his desperation, finally be- 
 sought one of his freedmen to put an end to his life. 
 
 Domitan, his equal in cruelty, carried on the second 
 persecution (A. D. 9396). He tormented the last of the 
 original Apostles, St. John. He, too, was so despicable in 
 character that his wife put him to death, and the Senate 
 degraded him and caused his name to be erased from the 
 
POWERLESS TYRANTS. 51 
 
 public records. It redounds to the eternal honor of Christi- 
 anity to have been first attacked by two monsters of 
 cruelty, who found their chief delight in tormenting their 
 fellowmen, and who were killed in their own households 
 and loaded with contumely by the public powers of their 
 own country. 
 
 III. SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTIONS BY TWO STATESMEN. 
 
 In the second century, there were methodic persecutions 
 by two great statesmen who were anxious to maintain 
 the state religion of Paganism : Trajan and Marcus Aure- 
 lius. The Pagan priests and the Jewish rabbis represented 
 the Christians as the enemies of the gods, the emperors, 
 the laws, public morals, and society at large. They accused 
 them of awful crimes of impurity, impiety and cruelty, and 
 represented them as the cause of all the calamities that 
 befell the empire. No wonder that popular mobs attacked 
 the Christians and that the fierce cry for blood often 
 echoed through the amphitheatres: "The Christians to 
 the lions!" The Pagan philosophers undertook to demon- 
 strate the absurdity of Christianity. Celsus raised all 
 possible objections and sophisms against our faith; to 
 such an extent that modern infidels can only repeat his 
 hackneyed charges. But these were forever refuted by St. 
 Justin, the Martyr, Tertullian and Origen, and were even 
 contradicted by the Pagan author Pliny. However, the 
 great statesmen who ruled the empire did not consult 
 reason or examine into the facts. They looked only at 
 what they considered reasons of state, and strove to 
 exterminate the Christians lest their false gods might be 
 offended and the national customs changed. The warlike 
 Trajan and the peaceful Adrian prolonged the third perse- 
 cution from 105 to 127. SS. Simeon of Jerusalem and 
 Ignatius of Antioch were among the most illustrious mar- 
 tyrs who testified before their magistrates. The philo- 
 sopher Marcus Aurelius was the fourth persecutor, and 
 perpetrated horrible cruelties in Lyons, Vienna and Smyrna. 
 St. Polycarp shone by his fortitude in the last-named city. 
 
 The base means of calumny and mockery resorted to 
 by these Pagans show the weakness of their cause and 
 
52 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the strength of Christianity. God did not spare these 
 statesmen, and visited His wrath upon them even in this 
 world. The conqueror Trajan saw his new provinces 
 revolted. Hadrian met his death by gluttony. Marcus 
 Aurelius was cursed with a bad son, and brought to an 
 untimely end by a barbarian tribe. 
 
 IV. WARLIKE ATTACK BY FIVE SOLDIERS. 
 
 During the third century the empire was under the 
 control of the soldiery, who crowned and uncrowned the 
 emperors. Five tyrants attempted to exterminate those 
 Christians who remained firm in their faith and to frighten 
 the weaker ones into apostasy by refined and prolonged 
 tortures. The ordinary punishments were too lenient for 
 them, and prodigious ingenuity was expended in devising 
 new and most barbarous torments. The Roman amphi- 
 theatres where the scenes of horrible butcheries. Amid the 
 howls of the pitiless mob, defenseless Christians were 
 thrown to the lions, tigers, elephants, bears and bulls, to 
 be trampled, dragged, torn and devoured by the ravenous 
 brutes. Some of the martyrs were tied together and hurled 
 into the sea, or imprisoned in sacks with poisonous ser- 
 pents. Others were dipped in honey, and laid, with their 
 hands and feet bound, in the burning sun, to be devoured 
 by worms and insects, or to rot alive. Others were tied 
 to trees to become the prey of wild beasts. Some were 
 bound to the tails of wild horses and dragged to death 
 over thorns and stones. Still others were fastened to 
 boughs of trees, bent forward, to be lacerated in their 
 rebound. Women -were subjected to alluring temptations 
 and shameful humiliations. The feet of men were pressed 
 in blocks, their limbs dislocated by means of racks or 
 wrenched off joint by joint, till nothing but the head and 
 trunk of the victim were left. The eyes and tongue were 
 torn out, and needles were stuck under the nails. Some 
 martyrs were rolled naked on sharp shells and pieces of 
 glass, and their wounds afterwards rubbed with salt and 
 vinegar. Others were cast into the midst of the flames, 
 or placed upon heated iron grates or chairs. Decius sought, 
 by a prolongation of torment, to wear out the Christians, 
 
POWERLESS TYRANTS. 53 
 
 endeavoring to starve them into apostasy. But Christ and 
 His Bishops were watchful. The Church frightened her 
 childred away from the Pagan altars by a severe discipline 
 of public penances, which subjected the apostates to many 
 years of humiliation at the doors of the churches. 
 
 God did not forget His soldiers in their trials. He 
 shortened the time of their persecutors during this century 
 to less than one year, with the exception of Septimius 
 Severus, who had ten years in which to persecute (A. D. 
 201211). The Almighty also punished the Empire with 
 civil and foreign wars, with pest and black plague. From 
 259 to 271, thirty tyrants tormented the Roman world; 
 the barbarians invaded the provinces, and the plague deci- 
 mated the inhabitants. 
 
 Septimus Severus, the fifth of the persecutors, martyred 
 St. Irenaeus, \vith nineteen hundred other Christians, at 
 Lyons. His son Caracalla tried to murder him, and 
 brought him to an early death. The sixth perse- 
 cutor was the barbarian Maximin, A. D. 235. He was 
 killed by the African army, and his head carried at the 
 end of a lance. The seventh persecutor Decius was one of 
 the fiercest enemies that ever afflicted Christianity. He 
 terrified the Christians by the cruelty and the length of 
 the torments. So great was the carnage he wrought 
 among them that they had to enlarge the catacombs to 
 bury their dead and to conceal their living. This emperor 
 was killed by the Goths and left, without burial, to be 
 devoured by the wild beasts. Valerian (A. D. 257258) 
 put to death SS. Cyprian, Stephen, Sixtus and Lawrence. 
 Captured by the enemy in a war against the Persians, 
 he served for ten years as a footstool for the king of that 
 country, from which to mount his horse, until he was 
 flayed alive and his skin hung as a trophy in a Persian 
 temple. Aurelian commenced a ninth persecution in 275; 
 but he was killed by the officers of his own army. 
 
 V. CULMINATING PERSECUTION AND MIRACULOUS 
 VICTORY. 
 
 After three hundred years of vain rage, six strong 
 emperors combined all the policy, all the power and all 
 
54 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the cruelty at the command of the masters of the world 
 to exterminate Christianity forever, by one supreme effort, 
 from the face of the earth. It was the tenth persecution, 
 carried on under the names of Diocletian and Maximian 
 (A. D. 303313). Galerius, one of their associates in the 
 empire, was the new Nero to enkindle the fires. Setting 
 the palace twice on fire, he accused the Christians of that 
 crime, and thus aroused the emperors against them. The 
 persecution was so violent that all exterior signs of 
 Christianity disappeared, and that columns were erected 
 to commemorate the complete annhilation of the Christ- 
 ians, with the words: Dieleto nomine Christiana. "The 
 very name of the Christians having been wiped out." But 
 at the precise moment when Paganism was celebrating its 
 triumph, God was preparing its ruin. Galerius compelled 
 Diocletian and Maximian to abdicate their power, and in 
 their chagrin these once mighty sovereigns did themselves 
 to death. Galerius was the monster who had fed his bears 
 with the living flesh of Christians, and roasted their 
 members over a slow fire. He was most visibly struck by 
 God. He was devoured alive by vermin, and the odor of 
 his sores drove the courtiers from his palace. Maxentius, 
 son of Maximian, who was master of Rome, and had 
 250,000 men to defend it, declared war against Constan- 
 tine, the Caesar of Gaul, who could only dispose of 40,000 
 men. But Constantine, whose mother was a saint, had 
 confidence in the God of the Christians, and boldly marched 
 on Rome. A luminous cross appeared in the sky to the 
 whole army, with these words, shining in letters of gold: 
 In hoc signo vinces "By this sign thou shalt conquer." 
 Maxentius was routed and fled. He was drowned in the 
 Tiber. The Cross had conquered. It entered Rome in 
 triumph, and drove the Pagan gods from the Capitol. 
 Thus were the conquerors of the world overcome by the 
 crucified God of Calvary. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTH. 
 TRIUMPHANT VICTIMS. 
 
 When they shall deliver you up, take no thought how and 
 what to speak ; for it shall be given you in that hour what to 
 speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your 
 Father that speaketh in you. MATTHEW x, 19 20. 
 
 I. THE ELOQUENCE OF BLOOD. 
 
 A MARTYR is a person who voluntarily sheds his blood 
 for the defense of his faith. He must be fully convinced 
 of the greatness of his cause, and of the truth of the fact 
 or doctrine, to be willing to give up his life for it. Jesus 
 was the first to die to assert His Divinity. His disciples 
 died by the millions to assert that same Divinity, and 
 their heroic sacrifice convinced the Pagan world of their 
 sincerity, and of the truth of their religion, and brought 
 it to the feet of the crucified God. 
 
 II. SUBLIME VIRTUES OF THE MARTYRS. 
 
 The martyrs are braver than the soldiers who die for 
 their country; for such heroes sell their lives dearly and 
 are crowned with laurels, while martyrs are subjected to 
 a painful death, covered with disdain and consigned to 
 the oblivion of the world. Their only ambition is to testify 
 to the glory of Jesus Christ, and to suffer something for 
 His name. They are moreover the noblest of men in their 
 moral virtues, such as justice, chastity and charity. 
 St. Ignatius, the eminent Bishop of Antioch, is a striking 
 example of a true martyr. In the year 106, the great 
 emperor Trajan summoned him to appear before him. He 
 rebuked him as a malignant devil, who had dared to 
 violate his command, and he boasted that the gods of the 
 Romans had helped them to conquer the world. Ignatius 
 replied : 
 
56 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 "You err in calling those gods who are no better than devils. There 
 is but one God, Who has made heaven and earth, and one Jesus Christ, 
 the only Son of God, to whose kingdom I aspire." 
 
 The Emperor condemned him to be torn in pieces by 
 "tHe wild beasts at Rome. The saint thanked God, who 
 had so honored him as to allow him to be bound with 
 ,the chains of Paul the Apostle. Fearing lest the Roman 
 Christians might try to obtain his pardon from the 
 emperor, or to ask his miraculous preservation from the 
 Almighty, and thus prevent his martyrdom, he wrote to 
 theniinot to oppose his sacrifice. 
 
 "I fear your love, lest you do me an injury. If you love my body, I 
 shall have to run my course again. Therefore you cannot do me a 
 greater kindness than to suffer me to be sacrificed unto God, while the 
 altar, is now ready. Suffer me to be the food of the wild beasts ; this is 
 he shoril; way to Heaven. May I enjoy the wild beasts that are pre- 
 pared for me ! May they exercise all their fierceness upon me ! If they 
 will not do it willingly I will provoke them to do it. Forgive me. I 
 know what is profitable to me. Permit me to imitate my Savior. Come 
 lire! Come cross! Come beasts without number! Let my bones be 
 crushed and my whole body be rent! Let all the torments of the Devil 
 be let loose upon me, so only that I become a partaker of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Ignatius arrived at Rome during the Saturnalia feasts. 
 he people were gathered in the immense Coliseum to 
 witness the wild fights of beasts and men. They were 
 .satiated, with the blood of the fallen ones, and now they 
 craved to see the undaunted Bishop of the Christians 
 before the lions. The venerable man, covered with white 
 garments and crowned with snow-white hair, is led into 
 the bloody arena. Standing immovable he cries: "I am 
 the wheat of the Lord. I must be ground by the teeth of 
 .these beasts so as to be made the pure bread of Jesus 
 Christ." The iron gates turn; two hungry lions bound into 
 the arena. They seize the martyr in their huge claws and 
 quickly devour him. There remain only the large bones, 
 .which are gathered by the deacons of Antioch, and pre^ 
 served as the most precious of treasures. 
 
 The heroic fortitude of the martyrs always struck the 
 crowd of spectators and often their very tormentors. It 
 was not rare to hear the people, and even the tormentors, 
 suddenly declare themselves Christians in the presence of 
 the threatening judges. 
 
TRIUMPHANT VICTIMS. 57 
 
 Moreover, God multiplied miracles in the solemn hour 
 of trial. Often the most deadly weapons could not kill 
 the champions of Christ; while their unjust judges were 
 stricken blind or dead 011 the bench, and the cities guilty 
 of their blood were shaken by frightful storms and earth- 
 quakes. Large crowds at once, and whole towns at a 
 time, declared themselves Christians during the testimony 
 of blood given by these heroic soldiers of Christ. 
 
 III. IMMENSE NUMBER OF THE MARTYRS. 
 
 People of every age and sex, rank and condition, gave 
 one and the same testimony to the God of Calvary. 
 Victor, Eulalia and Agnes were children of twelve years, 
 and yet they undoubtedly proclaimed the Divinity of Jesus 
 Christ even in the face of the burning fire. The young and 
 noble Pancratius braved the lions of the Coliseum at 
 Rome, and the learned princess Catharine confounded the 
 philosophers of Alexandria and was mutilated on a wheel 
 of knives. Pope Sixtus II. was slain on the altar in the 
 Catacombs. His deacon Lawrence complained that he was 
 not allowed to offer his own sacrifice with that of the 
 Pontiff. But the third day after, he was roasted alive on 
 a gridiron in one of the public squares of the city. In the 
 midst of the flames he had the courage to offer his roasted 
 flesh as a fit food for the tyrannical judge. Agatha in 
 Sicily resisted the threats and allurements of the governor 
 who sought her hand. Ordered to renounce Jesus Christ 
 under pain of torment, she said: ''Renounce yourself your 
 gods of wood and stone and adore Jesus Christ, or else 
 you will be tormented forever." Polycarp, the fearless 
 Bishop of Smyrna, was challenged to choose between 
 apostasy and death. He answered: "I have served Christ 
 for eighty years ; how can I now blaspheme my King and 
 Savior?" He was condemned to be burned alive on a heap 
 of fagots blazing in the public square. But the flames sur- 
 rounded him in the form of an arch. To end his life a 
 Pagan had to come and pierce him. 
 
 Did ever any other person than Jesus Christ have such 
 generous champions? In the numerous and huge folios of 
 the Bollandists, there are authentic records of thousands 
 
58 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 of matyrs. But that is an insignificant number in com- 
 parison to those whose deeds are known to God alone. 
 All the ancient documents speak of innumerable multitudes. 
 The Catacombs of Rome are the most conclusive proof of 
 their great number. The Catacombs are underground 
 cemeteries hewn in the rock. They consist of narrow cor- 
 ridors, lined with rows of tombs on both sides like the 
 shelves of a store. They are often three and sometimes 
 five stories deep, and many of the cemeteries have more 
 streets than a good-sized town. There have been discovered 
 fortynine Catacombs around Rome, which form nine hun- 
 dred miles of vaults and afford room for five millions of 
 people. The martyrs that are buried therein have five 
 signs by which they can be recognized, and which are 
 found in great numbers. The surest of these signs are a 
 phial of blood and a palm branch. The Catacombs served 
 also as a shelter for the living. When the thunder of per- 
 secution rolled over their heads, the Christians had no 
 secure place of refuge except the city of the dead. Thither 
 they fled. There they offered up the Precious Blood of the 
 Son of God upon the bleeding bones of the martyrs. There 
 they received the same sacraments with which our souls 
 are nourished. All the seven sacraments are represented 
 in the fresco paintings which remain to this day. Thence 
 they parted breathing fire like lions, and ready to give 
 their blood for Jesus Christ. Ten generations passed 
 through those dark and damp necropoles. Is there any 
 separated religion for which millions of civilized people 
 have been willing to be torn to pieces or to be buried alive 
 in the bowels of the earth ? 
 
CHAPTER NINTH. 
 CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 If thy brother shall offend against thee, go and rebuke him 
 between thee and him alone. If he will not hear thee, tell the 
 Church; and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee 
 as the heathen and the publican. Amen, I say unto you, 
 whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in 
 Heaven. MATTHEW xvm, 15 17. 
 
 I. DOCTRINE CAST INTO SCIENTIFIC FORM. 
 
 4{TJELL," says St. Cyprian, "beholding its idols overthrown, invented 
 ^^ a new means of destroying the peace of the Church, by exciting 
 heresies and schisms, which strove to corrupt the faith and to disturb 
 its unity. But the new efforts of the demons afforded her an opportunity 
 for still greater triumphs." 
 
 Indeed, radical heretics soon arose, who attacked the 
 Divinity and the Work of Jesus Christ, and tried to reduce 
 Him to the level of the Pagan divinities and to make of 
 Christianity practically a mild form of Paganism. Then 
 ambitious schismatics revolted against the authority estab- 
 lished by Jesus Christ, and separated whole nations from 
 the rest of Christendom. But God knows how to draw 
 good out of evil by making attacks on Christian truths 
 an occasion for defining them forever. It is a law of history 
 that whenever a Christian tenet is attacked it is sure to 
 be defined so clearly and formulated so accurately that 
 there can be no further misunderstanding on the subject 
 for all time to come. 
 
 II. THE PHILOSOPHERS ACCEPT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The Greeks were the most intellectual people of the 
 earth, and the leaders in the arts and sciences. Many 
 centuries before Christ, their philosophers had made deep 
 investigations into the problem of the origin of man and 
 his consequent duties. At first Pythagoras introduced the 
 brilliant dreams of Asiatic pantheism and metempsychosis. 
 But soon, under the influence of a purer tradition, the 
 
 
60 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Greeks created original systems of philosophy, which were 
 the most exact and the most sublime ever produced by the 
 human mind alone. Four hundred years before Christ, 
 Socrates sacrificed his life for the love of wisdom and virtue. 
 After him were established the four great philosophical 
 schools which have divided the civilized world ever since. 
 Plato developed lofty ideas on the creative mind of God, 
 the soul of man, and the government of society. His 
 philosophy reaches so high that it has been called the 
 human preface of the Gospel. Aristotle studied our faculties 
 and our senses, and formulated the great laws of intel- 
 lectual operation which have continued to be the guide of 
 the civilized world until the present day. Other philosophers 
 examined the practical questions of the end of man and the 
 conditions of human happiness. Epicurus found the chief 
 felicity of man in the satisfaction of his desires or passions ; 
 Zeno in the control of the same passions and the practice 
 of the most austere virtue. For hundreds of years the 
 Greeks were disputing over those and other systems. 
 About the time of Our Lord able exponents of the Platonic 
 school appeared in the persons of Cicero and Plutarch. 
 In the fourth century after Christ, Julian the Apostate 
 revived that school, and introduced into it some of the 
 principals of Oriental pantheism. Against this Neoplatonism 
 arose the Christian schools of Alexandria and Antioch, at 
 the central seats of the Greek and Syrian culture. The 
 Syrians, it may be remarked, were intellectually dependent 
 on the Greeks, having been pretty thoroughly Hellenized; 
 so that it is common to include the S3 7 rian and Greek 
 Churches, as well as the Coptic and the Armenian in a 
 loose sense, under the head of Greeks. The school of 
 Alexandria was more distinctively Greek, and was mystical 
 and speculative in its tendency; while the Syrian school 
 of Antioch inclined to a shallow rationalism and empiricism. 
 The first was the bulwark of orthodoxy, while the latter 
 produced several heresiarchs. 
 
 The Greeks, as we have seen, were a highly philosophical 
 people, and they brought to the Church that spirit of 
 inquiry and contention that had distinguished their fathers. 
 They made long investigations into the mysteries of Christ- 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY. 61 
 
 ianity, and they were struck by their loftiness and exacti- 
 tude, and humbly bowed their knees before the Prophet of 
 Nazareth. What a security for the justness of our faith! 
 The most intellectual and subtle people of antiquity carefully 
 examined all our dogmas, at the beginning of their diffusion, 
 and found them supremely reasonable. They explored them 
 thoroughly, and expressed them forever in imperishable 
 forms. 
 
 III. THE SOPHISTS PERVERT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 If Greece had true philosophers, she had also pseudo- 
 philosophers who, unable to grasp the great systems, 
 quarreled and disputed about small details of the same, 
 and tried to break up the work of the great masters. 
 These miserable philosophasters where called Sophists. 
 
 If the great minds accepted the whole of Christianity, 
 fully and generously, the small minds accepted it only in 
 part, and in a grudging and critical spirit. There were 
 superficial and vain men who wanted to reconcile the 
 Pagan systems with the Christian faith, and to make an 
 eclectic religion of their own by fusing them together. 
 Men dominated by petty ideas, or little-gifted in intellect, 
 who could not grasp the unity or the loftiness of 
 Christianity, wanted to fit everything into their own 
 narrow system. Disappointed men, whose ambition could 
 not be satisfied by such positions as their merits entitled 
 them to, hoped to rise in the midst of confusion, and did 
 not hesitate for their own personal ends to involve the 
 Church and State in endless disputes and quarrels, and 
 even civil wars. Such men formulated new doctrines and, 
 when their errors were exposed, they obstinately clung to 
 them, and thus became formal heretics. A heresy is a 
 stubborn adhesion to a doctrine condemned by the Church 
 of God. Those who simply secede from the Church of God, 
 and refuse obedience to it, without renouncing the Apostolic 
 faith, are called Schismatics. A schism is the breaking off 
 of some part of the Church from the living whole. It is 
 a revolt against the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, ordinarily 
 caused by personal or national jealousy, as in the case of 
 the great Greek Schism, to be described hereafter. 
 
62 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The Heretics attacked the fundamental tenets of 
 Christianity, and went to opposite extremes. Some affirmed 
 the total depravity of man, and others denied that any 
 depravitv exists. Some denied the Divinity of Christ, 
 others affirmed the personal separation of the Divine and 
 human natures, while others denied all distinction between 
 them, and so on. 
 
 The schismatics, who came at the eleventh hour, 
 attacked the Divine Kingdom of Christ, denying obedience 
 to His one Vicar on earth. Christ had established but 
 one Church (Psalms xiv, 1, John xvii, 21, Ephesians v, 
 23 32) and prayed and suffered for her alone; and now 
 the presumptuous Byzantines would fain establish a second 
 one in the seat of their empire! Christ had chosen but 
 one Divine Spouse, and made her independent of the 
 powers of this world. Will He now accept at human 
 hands a second one, who is the slave of the Caesars of 
 Constantinople ? 
 
 Heretics and schismatics were faithless to Christ, and 
 prostituted themselves to strange imaginations or political 
 idols, just as the Jews of old had gone gadding after the 
 gods of the nations, thus meriting the oft repeated re- 
 proaches of the Prophets for their spiritual adultery. 
 
 IV. TRIPLE CONDEMNATION OF THE SOPHISTS. 
 1. Condemnation by the Doctors. 
 
 Against these bold innovators arose the Fathers of the 
 Church, men remarkable for their extraordinary virtue and 
 their universal learning. They are called Fathers because 
 they lived and wrote in the early centuries of Christianity, 
 and by their labors preserved the life of the Church safe 
 and sound. The most illustrious among them are called 
 Doctors because they taught and defended the Apostolic 
 doctrines in an especially masterly way, exposed the errors 
 of the heretics, and stopped their mad ravages. There were 
 four particularly great Doctors in the Greek, and as many 
 more in the Latin Church. The names of the Greek Doc- 
 tors were Athanasius and Chrysostom, Basil and Gregory 
 of Naziana. The names of the Latin Doctors were Ambrose 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY. 63 
 
 and Augustine, Jerome and Gregory the Great. The Syrian 
 Church also produced two distinguished Doctors, namely, 
 S. Ephraem, and St. John of Damascus. All of them were 
 true disciples of the great philosophers of old, and deserve 
 to be called their sons. The time of their labors consti- 
 tuted the second great period of philosophy, and it was 
 by them that the Christian doctrine was reduced into 
 scientific form. 
 
 The leaders of the heretics and schismatics were only 
 pigmies beside them, and did nothing but pervert the salu- 
 tary doctrines of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Doctors of the Church confounded the heretics by 
 revelation as well as by reason. They had one great 
 advantage, the comparative recentness of the revelation 
 contained in the Bible and the Apostolic Tradition. In 
 those times the preaching of the Apostles was still green 
 in the memory of the people as well as in the precious 
 manuscripts long since lost. Thus the Doctors had the 
 very identical text of the inspired books which were 
 recognized as such in A. D. 397. They had also the living 
 and full traditions on all the essential points of the faith 
 fresh from the Apostles. With such recent sources of evi- 
 dence, it was easy to confound the false teachers. 
 
 2. Condemnation by Councils. 
 
 The characteristic trait of the heretics is stubborn 
 adherence to their own ideas, and devouring activity in 
 the propagation of these. But God protects His flock 
 against the wolves in sheep's clothing by the ministry of 
 the Bishops, and especially those of the great Apostolic 
 See of Rome. 
 
 "The Holy Ghost has placed the Bishops to rule the Church of God, 
 which He has purchased with His own blood (Acts xx, 28)." 
 
 The Bishops are the official judges of the faith in their 
 respective dioceses; they must examine and judge new 
 doctrines. When there are important and difficult matters, 
 all the Bishops of the whole world met in what is called 
 an Ecumenical or General Council. Such a council is infal- 
 lible through the assistance of the Holy Ghost. 
 
64 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The first council of Jerusalem proclaimed itself inspired 
 by the Holy Ghost, saying: "It has seemed good to the 
 Holy Ghost and to us (Acts xv, 28)." 
 
 The first four Ecumenical Councils were held in such 
 esteem as documents of Tradition, that they were com- 
 pared to the four Gospels. At the following General Coun- 
 cils their Acts and Decrees were placed beside the Gospels, 
 and no one was allowed to question again what had been 
 judged by them. There have been in all nineteen Ecumeni- 
 cal Councils, which makes one for every century, though 
 they have in fact been held at irregular intervals. The 
 decisions of an Ecumenical Council are most solemn and 
 effective. The eyes of the world are fixed upon the cosmo- 
 politan assembly during its sessions, and when its mem- 
 bers are at home again they possess more zeal and more 
 facility for putting the decrees into execution. Divine Pro- 
 vidence seems to give by this means a greater sanction to 
 the true faith, and a livelier impulse to reformation. In 
 fact, whenever the spirit of evil seems to be seducing whole 
 nations and to threaten the very existence of the Church, 
 an Ecumenical Council puts an end to its ravages. Such 
 a gathering combines the science of the Doctors and the 
 wisdom of the Bishops; it is visibly seconded by Divine 
 Providence, and always produces the most salutary effects. 
 It is a remarkable fact of history that all the Ecumenical 
 Councils have been preceded by alarming disorders and 
 followed by a period of true peace and extraordinary 
 virtue. The symptoms were frightful, and the Church 
 seemed devoured by an incurable disease. The Fathers 
 convened; they searched into the evil, and prescribed the 
 remedy; and lo! the Church renewed her youth, and pro- 
 duced abundant fruit of salvation. Thus out of evil comes 
 good. A salutary reaction follows, and a great movement 
 in the direction of learning and virtue sets in. How won- 
 derful are the works of God ! 
 
 However, the Pope remains the supreme judge, whom 
 all the Bishops recognize as their head, whether singly or 
 collectively. They meet at his call, or with his approval, 
 and send their decrees for his approbation, so that he is 
 the final judge. Moreover, at times he has to be the only 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY. 65 
 
 judge, in order to check at once the harm intended by 
 heretics. Sometimes the Bishops could not be gathered 
 immediately, and the field would be open to the frantic 
 innovators. But, even when acting alone, as the mouth- 
 piece of the teaching authority of the Universal Church, 
 the Pope is endowed with infallibility in all questions of 
 faith and morals, and can decide them with sovereign 
 authority. The Holy Ghost assists Peter and His succes- 
 sors "to confirm their brethren in the faith." (Luke 
 xxii, 32). 
 
 3. Condemnation by Divine Providence. 
 
 The heretics were men who put themselves above the 
 whole of Christianity. Beaten on scientific and religious 
 grounds, they tried to spread their tenets through political 
 machinations. By dint of servility, intrigue and conces- 
 sions they had gained princes and governments to their 
 side and caused terrible revolts. Thus no heresy or schism 
 has ever been established except through despotism or 
 revolution. The emperor Cons tan ti us imposed Arian 
 confessions of faith upon ecclesiastical councils and thrust 
 Arian Bishops into many of the great episcopal sees. 
 Other emperors were found to prop up every heresy that 
 arose, and the future seemed to belong to the misbelievers. 
 But at the very moment of seeming triumph the heresies 
 have always been attacked by their constitutional disease 
 of internal dissention, which sooner or later undermines 
 and destroys every sect. The most powerful heresies of 
 the early centuries were in the end abandoned by their 
 followers, who either apostatized from Christianity al- 
 together, or returned to Catholic faith and unity; so that 
 those great sects have long ago either utterly disappeared 
 or dwindled into insignificant factions. The nations which 
 persevered in heresy or schism invariably declined, and, as 
 in the case of the unfaithful Jews of the Old Law, fell 
 under the power of their neighbors. The once flourishing 
 East has become the prey of the unspeakable Turk. The 
 Nestorians and Eutychians, the Arian Goths and Vandals, 
 and the Schismatic Greeks have groaned for centuries under 
 his galling yoke. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 In modern times Protestantism seemed destined to 
 conquer and rule the world. In a few years it triumphed 
 throughout all northern Europe; but it soon came to a 
 standstill and lost all its southern outposts ; and it separ- 
 ated into hundreds of sects, undergoing so many trans- 
 formations that its founders would hardly be able to 
 recognize most of the Protestants of to-day as their 
 followers. It sowed the seeds of doubt, and now millions 
 are relapsing, under its influence, into Paganism; while 
 great numbers of learned men are returning every year to 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 The present political situation, in its relation to 
 religion, may appear, at the first glance, to be very 
 alarming. Nearly all the powers of the world are in the 
 hands of the enemies of the Church. Germany and England, 
 two of the nations which were first infected by Protes- 
 tantism, together with the colossal empire of the Czar, 
 seem to dominate the world. 
 
 Even in Catholic lands, the governments far from 
 upholding the Church have, for a century past, been, in 
 most cases, openly or secretly hostile to it, and have made 
 laws which, in their cruel enmity to our holy religion, 
 outdo the worst official crimes of the Protestant nations. 
 But this state of affairs only results in arousing the 
 Catholics of the whole world to unprecedented activity, 
 and in drawing down the vengeance of God upon their 
 oppressors. 
 
 The Church regards her enemies of the present day 
 with the same equanimity and serene confidence with which 
 she has again and again in past ages faced far more 
 formidable foes. Standing firm upon the rock of Divine 
 truth, she knows that the gates of Hell can never prevail 
 against her. Matt, xvi, 18. 
 
CHAPTER TENTH. 
 HALF WAY CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water; and 
 lo ! the heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descended as 
 a dove ; and behold a voice from heaven, saying : This is My 
 beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. MATTHEW in, 16, 17. 
 
 I. IS JESUS GOD OR MAN? 
 
 A FTER Constantino the Great had proclaimed Christi- 
 anity the religion of the empire, many persons 
 entered the Church who were imbued with rationalistic 
 principles, and actuated by worldly motives. They at- 
 tempted to make a compromise between Pagan mytho- 
 logy and Christian theology, and to place Christ among 
 the gods, although at their head. Arius formulated these 
 ideas, and taught that Christ is only a creature, al- 
 though immensly superior to all other creatures. The 
 Christian Bishops pronounced the doom of Arianism at 
 the Council of Nicea, and Anthanasius fought for half a 
 century to maintain the belief in the true Divinity of Jesus 
 Christ. The Greek empire strove to impose the false doct- 
 rine upon the world, but it failed, just when it seemed to 
 have succeeded. 
 
 II. THE TWO CHAMPIONS. 
 
 Arius was a priest of Alexandria, distinguished for 
 learning and eloquence, but actuated by the spirit of pride 
 and violence. When a deacon, he compromised himself in 
 the Meletian schism. However, he was absolved and 
 ordained a priest. He aspired to the Patriachate of Alex- 
 
68 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 andria, and when, in the year 311, St. Alexander was 
 elected, he rose up against him and took this occasion to 
 broach a new heresy. At a meeting of the clergy in Alex- 
 andria, he declaired his belief that the Son of God is not 
 equal to the Father. The rest of the clergy regarded this 
 as a direct insult to Our Savior. The Archbishop endeav- 
 ored to gain the innovator by kindness, but that only 
 gave him time to spread his error abroad. Finally Arius 
 was condemned by a Council of the Egyptian Church, at 
 which a hundred Bishops were present. Then he went to 
 Palestine, where he succeeded in deceiving the Bishops of 
 the Syrian Church, and in being illegally relieved trom 
 censure. There, too, he gained to his cause the tw^o Euse- 
 biuses : the first, a Bishop of Caesaria who was a re- 
 nowned historian; the second, a courtier who by the 
 influence of Princess Constantia succeeded in usurping the 
 sees of Nicomedia and Constantinople. Under their pro- 
 tection Arius spread his heresies, which he propagated 
 especially by popular songs. 
 
 Anthanasius, whom God raised up to oppose this 
 formidable heresiarch. was endowed with deep penetration, 
 incisive logic, enrapturing eloquence, extraordinary prudence 
 and invincible fortitude. Trained in the austere school of 
 St. Anthony of the Desert, he acquired that undaunted 
 courage and persevering energy which he exhibited against 
 innumerable adversaries. While he was yet a deacon, he 
 was a friend and counsellor of the Patriarch of Alexandria, 
 and notwithstanding his youth he was elected the succes- 
 sor of that prelate in 328. For half a century he carried 
 on gigantic struggles againse the enemies of Christ. His 
 name means "immortal", and his fame will live as long 
 as the world stands and as long as Christ reigns in Heaven. 
 
 III. THE SOLEMN JUDGEMENT. 
 
 In order to stop the dissensions, Constantine the Great, 
 in concert with the Pope, convoked the Bishops of the 
 Catholic world to the first Ecumenical Council, which was 
 held at Nice, in A. D. 325. There never was a more vener- 
 able assembly. Many of the Bishops had already been 
 confessors of the faith, and still bore the marks of the 
 
HALF WAY CHRISTIANITY. 69 
 
 wounds received for Christ's sake. Paphmutius, a Bishop 
 of Upper Egypt, and Osius, of Cordova, in Spain, had lost 
 their right eyes for the faith. The latter presided over the 
 Council as the legate of the Pope. St. Alexander of Alex- 
 andria was accompanied by the young deacon Anthanasius, 
 whose name became the bulwark of the faith, and the 
 central figure in the ecclesiastical history of the fourth 
 century. Three hundred and eighteen Bishops came from 
 all parts of the world to confirm by their solemn testimony 
 the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which the\' had confessed be- 
 fore their tormentors. The living echo of the Apostolic 
 Tradition, they linked together the present and the 
 Apostolic times. Arius, regarding the Fathers more as a 
 legion of undaunted martyrs than as a body of intellectual 
 athletes, hoped to lead them into his opinions. 
 
 But Eustatius of Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra ably 
 refuted him, and Athanasius, the theologian of Alexandria, 
 overwhelmed him by the clearness of his refutations. Arius 
 maintained that the Word was made from nothing, and 
 was the creature of God, albeit more perfect than all His 
 other creatures. He thus lowered Christ to the rank of 
 the Pagan gods, and made of Christianity only a new 
 form of idolatry. The orthodox Bishops were unanimous 
 in amathematizing his impiety. During one of the solemn 
 sessions, the emperor, clothed in brilliant vestments, occu- 
 pied a throne of gold in the council chamber. Arius was 
 confounded before him. As his disciples resorted to subter- 
 fuges, the Bishops defined the perfect equality of the Son 
 with the Father, by the word "consubstantial", i. e., "of 
 the same nature and substance", and they emphasized 
 their declaration, in the symbol of faith then drawn up, 
 which is now known as the Nicene creed, by the follow- 
 ing words: 
 
 "I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, 
 born of the Father before all ages; God of God, Light of Light, true 
 God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, 
 by Whom all things were made." 
 
 Constantine declared the Counciliar decrees to be laws 
 of the land. Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and three other 
 recalcitrant prelates, were banished into Illyria. 
 
70 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The Council also decreed the uniform celebration of 
 Easter on SundaA^, acknowledged the traditional Primacy 
 of the Roman Pontiffs, and declared what qualifications 
 were necessary in candidates to the priesthood. 
 
 IV. FOTRYFIVE YEARS OF STRUGGLE AND TRIUMPH. 
 
 Athanasius fought for half a century to defend the 
 Divinity of Jesus Christ. He was exiled by all the Govern- 
 ments of his time, but he overcame their rage, and was 
 the foremost instrument of Divine Providence in maintain- 
 ing throughout the world the belief in that fundamental 
 dogma of our religion. By dint of intrigues, the Arians 
 won the emperors over to their side, and strove to gain 
 possession of the Patriarchal sees. On her deathbed Con- 
 stantia, the sister of Constantine, asked for the restoration 
 of Arius and obtained it. The Arians commenced to accuse 
 Athanasius of all kinds of crimes, such as adulter\ r , sacri- 
 lege and murder, and succeeded in having him brought 
 before the Council of Tyre, composed of their own parti- 
 sans. However, their accusations were victoriously refuted. 
 But they invented another calumny that of monopolizing 
 the grain. During a famine Athanasius had bought a 
 quantity of grain to feed the poor, but this was made the 
 occasion of accusing him before the Emperor as a speculator, 
 and he was exiled, on this trumped-up charge, to Treves 
 in Gaul, were he remained for twenty-eight months. The 
 Arians thought of seating their master on the Patriarchal 
 throne of Alexandria, but he was driven from the walls 
 of the city. Then they introduced him with great pomp 
 into Contantinople, but the holy Bishop with his people 
 had fasted for seren days and called down the Divine 
 vengeance upon the heresiarch. As soon as Arius had 
 reached the public square, he was seized with a nervous 
 trembling, and asked leave to retire into a private room. 
 As he did not return, his partisans entered in, and found him 
 lying drenched in his own blood, with his entrails gushing 
 out. They themselves trembled before this horrible spectacle, 
 and the spot of his tragic death ceased to be frequented. 
 
 In 337 Constantine died and left the empire to his 
 three sons. The East was allotted to the bitter Arian 
 
HALF WAY CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 Constantius. Eusebius soon usurped the see of Constan- 
 tinople, and sent two intruders to the see of Alexandria. 
 Athanasius fled to the Pope, who held a council at Sardica 
 to reinstate him. But five years elapsed before that could 
 be effected. In 350 Constantius became the sole emperor, 
 and for ten years used all the power of the Roman Empire 
 in behalf of the half-Pagan Arianism. He continually 
 called the Bishops to councils at which he forced them to 
 follow his dictation. At an anti-council of Sirmium, in 
 Pannonia, the Arians drew up the first symbol of Sirmium, 
 in equivocal terms, and upon the strength of new calumnnies 
 condemned Athanasius. 
 
 Pope Liberius convoked two Councils, one at Aries in 
 353 and one at Milan in 355. But the emperor intimidated 
 them. Entering the latter with drawn sword, he exclaimed : 
 "My will must be your law;" and he commanded the 
 Fathers to sign the condemnation of Athanasius, under 
 pain of being sent into exile. Five Bishops refused and 
 were banished at once. Others signed tremblingly, and 
 the document was sent to Pope Liberius. The undaunted 
 Pontiff repelled it with indignation, and was also sent 
 into exile, while an antipope was intruded into the see of 
 Peter. At Alexandria soldiers were sent at midnight to 
 storm the church in which Athanasius was officiating. 
 The Bishop refused to flee; but he fell into a swoon, and 
 was borne away like a corpse. A few days later he was 
 in the desert, amidst the holy monks, were he remained 
 for seven years. An illiterate Cappadocian named Gregory 
 attempted to occupy his see, and this man forced his way 
 into the church by the aid of Pagan soldiers, who burned 
 the sacred books and vessels, and brutally outraged 
 Christian women and virgins. Such a sacrilege aroused 
 a general indignation; the intruder was killed by the 
 populace, his body burnt, and the ashes thrown into 
 the sea. 
 
 Arianism seemed so triumphant that St. Jerome after 
 the anti-council of Sirmium exclaimed: "The whole world 
 groaned to find itself Arian". Entrenched in the foremost 
 bishoprics of the world, and supported by the power of 
 the Caesars, it held a second anti-council at Sirmium 
 
72 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 (A. D. 357), to proclaim the false faith that they dreamed 
 was to rule the earth. The Arian bishops of the West 
 drew up a formula of faith teaching that the Son is 
 entirely different from the Father. But that same year 
 the Arian bishops of the East met at Ancyra, and pro- 
 claimed that the Son is similar to the Father. Thus 
 Arianism was split into the factions of Arians and Semi- 
 Arians. It found itself a prey to that internal dissension 
 which infects, undermines and finally destroys all heresies. 
 Constantius assembled a third anti-council at Sirmium, 
 and imposed a compromise that satisfied nobody. In 359 
 he gathered the Eastern Bishops at Seleucia and the Western 
 Bishops at Rimini, and tried to impose upon them all his 
 formula of faith, lacking the word "consubstantial". At 
 Rimini they resisted for seven months and, though they 
 finally gave way, under compulsion, they retracted the 
 following year, as soon as they could act freely. Pope 
 Liberius, who, at the request of the ladies of Rome, had 
 been allowed to return from exile, condemned all these 
 false councils. 
 
 At the moment when Constantius thought that he had 
 successfully altered the Christian religion according to his 
 plans, he was dethroned by his nephew, Julian the Apostate, 
 and all his works fell to the ground. Athanasius returned 
 admidst the joyous acclamations of the people. He was 
 again exiled by Julian and by Valens, but was every time 
 reinstated, and he died in 373 in undisputed possession of 
 the Patriarchate. Yalens endeavored for ten years (367-378) 
 to revive the perishing heresy, but without any success, 
 within the empire. He succeeded, however, in infecting 
 with the heretical poison and intolerance the barbarian 
 tribes, which were still too ignorant to detect and reject 
 it as the Greeks had done as soon as left to themselves. 
 The Ostrogoths and the Vandals became very violent in 
 their persecutions against the Church, but they were soon 
 punished. They were conquered by the Greeks in the years 
 534 and 554, and their names disappeared from history. 
 The other tribes were more intelligent, and under Gregory 
 the Great (600) embraced the true faith. As for Yalens 
 he was attacked by the Goths, and, having been defeated, 
 
HALF WAY CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 he was burned alive in the hut where his wounds were 
 being dressed. 
 
 What is most striking here is that all the snares of 
 hell, all the violence and all the wiles of the heretics, were 
 in vain, and failed chiefly as a result, humanly speaking, 
 of the holiness, the eloquence and the energy of one man. 
 Although he was five times sent into exile, and although 
 all the governements of the world were arrayed against 
 him, the opposing heresy fell just when it seemed to have 
 completely triumphed. Athanasius was Providentially 
 brought back to his great see to uphold the Divinity of 
 Tesus Christ before the world. Arianism disappeared from 
 the empire and in course of time from the whole world. 
 
 
CHAPTER ELEVENTH. [ 
 HERESY DISCARDED. 
 
 There must be heresies, that they also who are approved 
 may be made manifest among you. I. CORINTHIANS xi, 19. 
 
 I. DOCTRINES PUT TO A TEST. 
 
 heretics attacked one after another all the funda- 
 mental doctrines of Christianity, and for centuries sub- 
 jected them to a searching trial. In the West the Pelagians 
 denied the corruption of human nature by original sin, 
 while the Donatists and the Manicheans exaggerated its 
 effects; and they thus impugned the doctrine of salvation 
 by Christ alone. In the East Arius and Macedonius 
 attacked the Divinity of the Second and Third Persons of 
 the Blessed Trinity; and Nestorius and Eutyches the 
 Incarnation of the Second Person ; while some of the 
 emperors represented the homage paid to His images and 
 those of His saints as idolatry. The heretics would have 
 demolished all Christianity, had not God protected it, and 
 the Church maintained unflinchingly the true and moderate 
 doctrine against the quarrelling extremists. The Church 
 is always consistent with herself, and always keeps the 
 middle path between the opposite errors. The average or 
 intermediate teaching, resulting from the fusion of the 
 positive elements of all the heresies and false religions, as 
 if by a composite photograph, would correspond with the 
 Catholic doctrine. 
 
 II. HERESIES AGAINST THE FALL AND THE REDEMPTION. 
 
 1. Donatism. 
 
 In the fourth and fifth centuries the West and especially 
 Africa was grievously disturbed by schism and heresy. 
 The Novatians refused absolution to those who had 
 
HERESY DISCARDED. 75 
 
 apostatized from the faith, excluded them from the church 
 forever and taught that there remained for them no hope 
 of salvation. The Donatists denied the Sacramental power 
 in apostates, and arose against those ordained by them. 
 These uncompromising rigorists, who excluded from the 
 ministry forever even those who had lapsed into external 
 conformity with the established religion under the stress 
 of the fiercest persecution, disturbed and terrorized Africa 
 for a whole century. In the Council of Carthage, St. Au- 
 gustine succeeded in bringing many of them back to the com- 
 forting truth of Catholicity and taught that every crime can 
 be forgiven which is sincerely repented of. Thus they were 
 restored to the fellowship of the Church, which they had 
 abandoned, strangely enough, precisely out of excessive 
 zeal for her honor! 
 
 2. Manicheeism. 
 
 There arose in the West two heresies diametrically 
 opposed to each other, denying the Fall of man through 
 Adam and his Redemption by Jesus Christ, to wit, 
 Pelagianism, which denied any depravity of our nature, 
 and Manicheeism, which affirmed its total depravity. Not 
 only science, but experience as well, made of St. Augustine, 
 Bishop of Hippo, a powerful antagonist of these heresies. 
 From the Persian ideas about the creation of the material 
 world by evil spirits, the Manicheans derived the theory 
 that our bodies are evil and all our inclinations are 
 corrupt. Driven by violent passions, St. Augustine became 
 the prey of this heresy for nine years. But in 389 he found 
 out the vanity of these Asiatic dreams, and he worked 
 during the remainder of his life to expose their falsity. 
 
 3. Pelagianism. 
 
 In 411 the British monk Pelagius tried to fasten upon 
 Africa a heresy diametrically opposed to Manicheeism. He 
 pretended that man received no supernatural gifts at the 
 beginning, lost none by original sin, and needs none to 
 attain his end in the future world. St. Augustine knew 
 the corruption of our nature by his own experience in 
 heresy and sin, and stood up against these flagrant errors. 
 
76 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Pelagius came to Carthage, but he was confuted by 
 St. Augustine. He and his followers went to other places, 
 but the disciples of St. Augustine followed in their track 
 and exposed their errors. In the year 416 great Councils 
 were gathered at Carthage and Mileve, which solemnly 
 affirmed the Apostolic doctrine that the sin of Adam has 
 passed into all his descendants, and that without a super- 
 natural strength we cannot work out our salvation. The 
 acts of these Councils were sent to Pope Innocent I, and 
 returned with his approbation. Augustine said to his 
 people: "Rome has spoken, the case is ended. Would that 
 the error would also end!" The heresiarch afterwards 
 deceived the Pope by an artfully-worded profession of faith, 
 but a new Council of two hundred and fourteen Bishops 
 exposed his fraud and informed the Pope, who excommuni- 
 cated the heretics and sent an encyclical letter on the 
 subject to the whole world. 
 
 Some priests of Marseilles endeavored to introduce a 
 mitigated form of Pelagianism under the name of Semi- 
 Pelagians (427), but they too were put down by the vigi- 
 lance of St. Augustine and of his disciples Fulgentius, and 
 others. 
 
 III. HERESIES AGAINST THE BLESSED TRINITY. 
 
 1. Arianism. 
 
 The history of Arianism has been given at length in 
 the foregoing chapter, and illustrates the course of all the 
 
 heresies. 
 
 2. Macedonianism. 
 
 Macedonius drove St. Paul, Patriarch of Constanti- 
 nople, from his see, and passed over the bodies of 3,000 
 people who opposed his usurpation of the Patriarchate. 
 He denied the Divinity of the Third Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity, and was refuted by St. Athanasius and condemned 
 ~by the Second Ecumenical Council, which was held at Con- 
 stantinople A. D. 381. 
 
 IV. HERESIES AGAINST THE INCARNATION. 
 
 1. Nestorianism. 
 
 Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, was very zealous 
 in upholding the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He declared It, 
 
HERESY DISCARDED. 77 
 
 however, to be entirely separate from His humanity, and 
 admitted only an accidental union between the two beings. 
 He said that in Christ there are two different persons: 
 the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who is God ; and 
 the human person, Jesus, who was brought forth by the 
 Virgin Mary. The Divine Person only dwells and works 
 in the human person, and Mary cannot be called the 
 Mother of God. When this blasphemy was first heard the 
 people left the church in disgust; when it was uttered 
 again they rushed out with loud cries of indignation. 
 
 St. Cyril of Alexandria defended the true doctrine that 
 the Diviue Son took to Himself a human nature, drawing 
 it to His own personality, and thus constituted the one 
 Person of Jesus Christ. He showed that Mary must be 
 called the Mother of God, because 
 
 "she brought into the world the Person of the Eternal Word, clothed 
 with our nature. In the order of nature, although the mother has no 
 part in the creation of the soul, still we do not hesitate to say that she 
 is the mother of the whole man, and not simply of the body." 
 
 With the consent of Pope St. Celestine I, Emperor 
 Theodosius, the Younger, convoked in 431 at Ephesus an 
 Ecumenical Council which was the third of the series. St. 
 Cyril presided in the name of the Roman Pontiff. Nestorius 
 came surrounded by a guard, under Count Candidian, so 
 strong as to constitute a real army. His friend John of 
 Antioch, with the other Bishops of Syria, delayed on the 
 road, and Nestorius refused to appear before the Council, 
 which had finally to be opened without them. The Gospel 
 was placed, as usual, in a central position in the church, 
 because Jesus has promised to be in the midst of His 
 Bishops gathered in His name. The Fathers defined that: 
 
 "Christ is one Divine Person, the Eternal Word of God, substantially 
 united to human flesh, so that He, true God, and the Son of God by 
 nature, was born, according to the flesh, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 
 who consequently is truly the Mother of God." 
 
 The people of Ephesus received this definition with great 
 joy, and the Fathers added to the Ave Maria the words : 
 "Holy Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the 
 hour of our death." John of Antioch, arriving after this 
 decision, assembled an anti-council, and Count Candidian 
 intercepted the letters of Ephesus to the Emperor, until 
 
78 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 they were carried to Constantinople in the hollow of a 
 beggar's cane. 
 
 The other Bishops finally submitted, but Nestorius per- 
 sisted in his error and was exiled. After twenty years of 
 banishment, he died in Egypt, his impious tongue being 
 devoured by worms before his death. 
 
 There were three Nestorian writings, called the Three 
 Chapters, whose authors, having by the condemnation of 
 Nestorius implicitly retracted, were not condemned at the 
 time. These were subsequently made the occasion of great 
 trouble by the Monophysites, so they were condemned at 
 the fifth general council (Constantinople, A. D. 553), which 
 condemnation occasioned dissatisfaction in the West and 
 even a schism in Northern Italy. 
 
 A large portion of the Syrian Church fell away from 
 Catholic unity on occasion of the heresy of Nestorius. 
 Nestorian sectaries, all of them of the Syrian (Syro-Chaldaic) 
 Rite, were for centuries to be found in almost every por- 
 tion of the Asiatic continent, and some have gone so far 
 as to claim that in the eleventh century they, together 
 with the Monophysites were as numerous as the Catho- 
 lics and the Orthodox combined. Their literary activity 
 was very great, lasting down to the thirteenth century. 
 It has been the fate of all the heretics to dwindle away. 
 The Nestorians, too, died out, were extermenated, or forced 
 to apostatize, the Mongols being their especial scourge. 
 Some of them reverted to Paganism, others apostatized to 
 Islam. The half of those of India, called the Christians of 
 St. Thomas, became Catholics, the other half accepted a 
 Monophysite Patriarch. Most of those of Persia, called 
 the Chaldean Christians, returned to Rome especially under 
 their Patriarch Elias ix in 1780. Of late years a few have 
 been enticed into Protestant sects, while quite recently 
 most of them that were left were swallowed up by the 
 Russian Schism. There are not 100,000 of Nestorians left. 
 The whole Syro-Chaldaic and Syro-Malabric Rites of the 
 Catholic Church, contain 200,000 and 300,000 souls 
 respectively, and are composed of the descendants of Nes- 
 torians who at various times have abandoned their errors, 
 and returned in large bodies to the Church. 
 
HERESY DISCARDED. 79 
 
 2. Monophysitism. 
 
 Eutyches, an aged abbot of Constantinople, in opposing 
 the heresy of two persons in Christ fell into the opposite 
 error or confounding His Divine and human natures. He 
 thought that in the Incarnation one new substance was 
 formed by the fusion of the two, the Divinity taking the 
 place of the soul and the flesh being raised to a higher 
 nature. He admitted only one nature, which error was 
 expressed by the Greek word Monophysitism. He was 
 condemned in the council convened by St. Flavian, Patri- 
 arch of Constantinople, and by a dogmatic letter of Pope 
 Leo the Great. His partisans pretended to relieve him 
 from censure by the act of the "Robber Council of Ephe- 
 sus", so called because its proceedings were like a meeting 
 of brigands. Soldiers entered the halls with heavy chains, 
 threatening those who would not absolve Eutyches. They 
 maltreated St. Flavian so horribly that he died three days 
 after the adjournment of this utterly irregular synod. 
 
 In 451 the Emperor Marcian and his wife Pulcheria 
 convoked the fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, a 
 suburb of Constantinople. Six hundred Bishops attended. 
 The Papal legates presided. The dogmatic letter of Pope 
 Leo was read and received with acclamations by the 
 Bishops, who exclaimed: "This is the faith of the 
 Fathers. This is the faith of the Apostles. All of us 
 have the same belief. Peter has spoken by the mouth 
 of Leo!" The Council drew up a profession of faith 
 designed to meet both the Eutychian and Nestorian here- 
 sies, both of which it distinctly and finally condemned. It 
 defined that "there are two natures in Christ, one Divine, 
 the other human, united, without mixture or alteration, 
 in one Person, which is that of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 Hence it was equally hated and dreaded by the followers 
 of both heresies. The Eutycheans drove away or killed 
 the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and 
 made themselves the masters of their sees. They formed a 
 schism from 484 to 519, but quarreled among themselves. 
 Emperor Zeno tried to unite them by his decree of union 
 called "Henoticon", but he only caused new divisions. 
 Their power, after being greatly weakened by dissensions, 
 
 I 
 
80 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 was broken by the Emperor Justinian the Great (527 568), 
 who ordered all his subjects to receive the Four Councils. 
 However, the energy of Jacobus Barnadeus, Bishop of 
 Edessa (A. D. 541) prevented their extinction. He reunited 
 them, and ordained thousands of priests, and after him 
 the Monophysites of Syria are called Jacobites. After a 
 few centuries of feverish activity and apparent success, 
 Monophysitism entered upon the inevitable period of de- 
 cline. That portion of the Syrian Church which had held 
 out against Nestorianism succumbed to the error of 
 Eutyches, with the exception of the ever-faithful Christians 
 of Mt. Lebanon, and a small fraction of the population 
 most directly under the Imperial influence, chiefly in the 
 vicinity of the great capitals. Nearly all the Egyptian 
 Church fell into the same error, and in Egypt, as in Syria, 
 the city population who remained orthodox became popu- 
 larly known as the Melchites, or " Imperialists". The 
 Armenians failed to take part in the Council of Chalcedon, 
 or to give in their adhesion to its decrees. Isolated in 
 their distant mountains, they lapsed into seperatistn at 
 that time, and, while some charge them with having ex- 
 plicitly adopted the Monophysite heresy, some of their 
 apologists deny this, and assert that it was by accident, 
 and not from any attachment to the doctrines of Eutj^ches, 
 that they failed to be represented at Chalcedon or to hold 
 any further communication with the Catholic Church. 
 
 There remain at the present time forty or fifty thousand 
 Monophysites of the Syrian Rite, called Jacobites, about 
 100,000 of the pure Coptic or Egyptian Rite, and about 
 800,000 of the Ethiopic or Abyssinian branch of the Coptic 
 Rite, these constituting distinct but friendly sects. There are 
 also about 2,300,000 members of the Armenian Rite in the 
 Gregorian sect, which is usually reckoned as Monophysite. 
 
 All the Catholics of the pure Coptic and Coptic-Ethiopic 
 Rites, numbering between 40,000 and 50,000, and rapidly 
 increasing by a steady stream of conversions since the 
 reastablishment of the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria 
 in 1897, are the descendants of Monophysite heretics who 
 have from time to time returned to the true religion. The 
 same is true of all, or nearly all, of the Catholics of the 
 
HERESY DISCARDED. 8.1 
 
 pure Syrian Rite, about 65,000 in number. The ancestors 
 of the Catholics of the Armenian Rite, about 225,000 in 
 number, were for several generations members of the 
 Gregorian sect. 
 
 3. Monothelitism. 
 
 Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, endeavored to 
 unite Catholics and Monophysites by the compromise 
 doctrine that, although there are two natures in Christ, 
 there is only one will. Stormy debates followed. In 638 
 the Emperor Heraclius published his "Ecthesis", or explan- 
 ation of the faith, imposing silence regarding the question 
 of the two wills; and Pope Honorius did not make any 
 objection to Sergius. After a series of horrible tragedies, 
 Constant II. (642668) ascended the throne and, although 
 the Mohammedans had invaded the country, he spent his 
 time meddling with religious controversies, and again for- 
 bade all discussion, by his document called the "Type". 
 Pope Martin condemned him, and also the Ecthesis 
 published by his predecessor, at the Lateran synod of 649 ; 
 but the bold Pontiff was made a prisoner, dragged to Con- 
 stantinople, publicly insulted, and finally sent into exile, 
 where he died four month later. 
 
 With the consent of the Pope, Constantine IV. convoked 
 at Constantinople the sixth Ecumenical Council (680), 
 which condemned Monothelitism and excommunicated all 
 its ecclesiastical abettors. It also seems to have blamed 
 Pope Honorius for his negligence in putting down the 
 heresy ; \vhich fact certain misguided persons have adduced 
 against the doctrine of the infallibility of the Roman 
 Pontiffs, though without any ground whatsoever. 
 
 Monothelitism soon died out. Some have charged the 
 Maronites or Christians of Mt. Lebanon and northern 
 Galilee (numbering about 175,000), with having been at 
 one time followers of this heresy, but they vehemently 
 resent this unflattering charge, and glory in their un- 
 deviating loyalty to Catholic faith and unity, through all 
 the vicissitudes of the Oriental Church, ever since the time 
 when they first received the Gospel from the lips of Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 
 
 6 
 
82 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Superficial men see only questions of words in the long 
 and bitter disputes which agitated the Church in those 
 times, but they were matters of fundamental importance, 
 for the very Divinity and work of Our Savior was at stake. 
 If they had not been settled by the Church of God, they 
 would have destroyed the very essence of Christianity. 
 But the ingenuity of the Greek mind discarded the fatal 
 heresies, after they had been tested and found wanting by 
 the Doctors, and condemned by the proper authority. The 
 heresies that seemed to possess the whole empire, and 
 agitated it for generations, were abandoned and dis- 
 appeared ; while the true Church of God remained impregn- 
 able in the midst of the stormy discussions. 
 
CHAPTER TWFLFTH. 
 RUINOUS SCHISM. 
 
 I besech you brethren on the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ 
 that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms 
 among you, but that you be perfect in the same mind and the 
 same judgment. There are contentions among you . . . Every 
 one of you saith : I indeed am of Paul, and I am of Apollo, and 
 I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided ? Was Paul 
 crucified for you ? 1. CORINTHIANS 10 13. 
 
 I. DECAY OF GREEK CHURCH. 
 
 Greek Church had produced an immense number of 
 Confessors and a brilliant school of Doctors. No 
 wonder that at all times the Evil One had tried to sow 
 the poisonous seeds of heresy and schism among her 
 members. She eluded the sophisms of the heretics, to which 
 the Syrian, Coptic and Armenian Churches had so largely 
 succumbed, but she fell a prey to the intrigues of the 
 schismatics. She had borne the brunt of the shock of the 
 great heresies which had attacked the fundamental dogmas 
 of the Christian faith. It was in her bosom that the first 
 eight Ecumenical Councils were held, the first four of which 
 settled forever the mooted questions about the manner of 
 the union of God and man in Jesus Christ. However, 
 several causes conspired to lower her high standard. The 
 growing custom of the marriage of the clergy cooled the 
 zeal of the priests, the vandalism of the Iconoclasts shoock 
 the piety of the people, and the jealous spirit of the "new 
 Rome" towards the old, finally led to a formal schism of 
 the Greek Patriarchates from the Church of God. The 
 result was oppression by emperors, czars and sultans, 
 internal divisions, and complete sterility, which weighed 
 like a tombstone upon the miserable (populations of even 
 the "Orthodox" East. 
 
84 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 II. CAUSES OF THE SCHISM. 
 1. Decline of Clerical Celibacy. 
 
 By celibacy the clergy not only renounce the pleasures, 
 but also escape the cares, of family life, and are enabled 
 to devote themselves wholly to the interests of the family 
 of Jesus Christ, which is the Christian flock. Thus they 
 secure independence and effective influence. 
 
 The Apostles and their first successors lived according 
 to that high ideal of the priesthood. If in the pressing 
 need of priests and missionaries married men were some- 
 times admitted to holy orders, they were never raised to 
 the Episcopate unless they became celibates. In the West 
 the Councils of Elvira (A. D. 305) and Aries (314) required 
 that all clerics in major orders should abstain from 
 marriage. In the East the Council of Ancyra (314) gave 
 deacons permission to marry after having taken holy 
 orders, but this was done in defiance of the prohibitory 
 decree of the first Ecumencial Council ofNicea (A. D. 325). 
 
 In 692 the Thrullian Council of Constantinople allowed 
 marriage to priests before their ordination, and denied it 
 only to Bishops. Pope St. Sergius, refusing to sanction 
 this measure, was threatened with prison by Greek soldiers, 
 but saved by the Italians. The Emperor Justinian II. sent 
 the decrees again to John VIII., who for several reasons 
 returned them without comment, and his silence was 
 represented as an approbation. The marriage of clergy- 
 men became more common and subjected them to wordly 
 cares and ambitions. The sublime spirit of the priesthood 
 had in great measure departed from them, aud their zeal 
 for God's cause became tepid or wholly disappeared. 
 Centuries later certain tyrannical emperors of Germany 
 attempted to intrude incontinent clergymen into the sanctu- 
 ary, but they were combatted and effectually thwarted by 
 the heroic Pope Gregory VII., who was largely successful 
 in freeing the Western Church from a lustful and worldly 
 clergy. 
 
 2. Iconoclasm of the Emperors. 
 
 Adopting the Mohammedan ideas concerning the use 
 of images, the soldier-emperor Leo the Isaurian pretended 
 
RUINOUS SCHISM. 85 
 
 that all religious pictures and statues are idols, and declared 
 (A. D. 726) a war of extermination against them. Although 
 he was without learning, having been born and bred in a 
 camp, he maintained his views against the learned demon- 
 strations of St. John of Damascus, and the official declara- 
 tions of the Popes. He ordered the destruction of the 
 images, whence he and his successors were called Image- 
 breakers or Iconoclasts, and he threw the whole empire 
 into convulsions, and would have lost all Italy had not 
 the Popes Gregory II. and III. defended his side. Leo's 
 son Constantine V., called Copronymus (741 755), was 
 still more violent against images. He forced the Bishops 
 gathered in a schismatical council to decree that the art of 
 painting is accursed and an invention of the Devil. 
 Libraries were destroyed and monasteries demolished ; and 
 the monks, who were the best artists of the time, were 
 the object of the most violent persecution. Some were 
 thrown into the sea with a stone on their necks; others 
 had their eyes plucked out or their hands cut off. When 
 Stephen was cast into jail, he found there 343 monks who 
 had all been deprived of some of their members and were 
 awaiting death. Copronymus died of ulcers, and his bones 
 were burned in the place of execution. The general pro- 
 fanation of objects of devotion and the desecration of all 
 that the people had respected as holy, shook their piety, 
 destroyed their fervor and weakened their allegiance to the 
 Catholic religion. 
 
 With the Pope's consent, the Empress Irena convened 
 the seventh General Council at Nicea in 787, which decreed 
 that images of Our Savior and His saints should not 
 only be put in churches, but also in houses and on 
 the roadsides, because they remind us of those they re- 
 present. As for the charge of idolatry, it was answered 
 that the homage is not paid to the image, but to the 
 original, in his title of God or servant of God. The 
 Emperor Leo V., "the Armenian", began a new de- 
 struction of images, but the Empress Theodora (A. D. 
 842) restored their veneration, and celebrated a pompous 
 procession in their honor, which is still observed to this 
 da. 
 
86 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 3. Constantinople's Jealousy of Rome. 
 
 Constantinople claimed to be the new Rome. Her am- 
 bitious Patriarch, though their dignity was of recent 
 creation, aspired to rank as high as the Patriarchs of old 
 Rome, pretending that this was due to them as Bishops 
 of the capital city of the empire ; and tyrannical emperors 
 who had a mania for meddling in Church affairs favored 
 the idea of minimizing the Papal sovereignty, because that 
 would make them the masters of the Greek Church. 
 
 II [. INSTRUMENTS OF THE SCHISM. 
 
 The wily Photius and the haughty Cerularius were the 
 instruments to bring about the secession. St. Ignatius 
 excommunicated the Caesar Bardas for his numerous 
 crimes and his oppression of tne empress St. Theodora, 
 whereupon the emperor pretended to depose him, in 857. 
 In five days a layman by the name of Photius was, by 
 the imperial orders, consecrated Bishop and intruded into 
 the Patriarchal see. He was one of the most learned, but 
 also one of the most crafty men of his age. He \vrote to 
 Pope St. Nicholas I, with feigned humility, that he had 
 been forced to assume the burden of the Episcopate, and 
 asked the Pontiffs approbation; and he even succeeded in 
 deceiving the Apostolic legates sent to investigate the 
 matter. But Ignatius repaired to Rome, where a Council 
 was held in which he was vindicated and the intruder 
 deposed. In these straits, Photius, not to be foiled in his 
 evil ambition, decided to take a step of incalculable conse- 
 quences: a formal schism from Rome. He pretended that 
 with the seat of empire the Primacy had also be ?n trans- 
 ferred from Rome to Constantinople, and he held a synod 
 which purported to excommunicate the Pope himself, in 
 the year 866. He also, in his insane malignity, accused 
 the Popes of heresy, for the addition to the Nicene Creed 
 of the word Filioque, signifying the procession of the Holy 
 Ghost from the Son as well as the Father. 
 
 That same year Basil the Macedonian killed Bardas, 
 and the following year he ascended the throne, which his 
 dynasty occupied during two centuries. He drove Photius 
 from his usurped see, and re-installed St. Ignatius, in accor- 
 
RUINOUS SCHISM. 87 
 
 dance with the Papal decision. In 869 the eigth Ecumenical 
 Council condemned Photius and his puerile quibbles, and 
 insisted anew upon the supremacy of the Roman Pontiifs. 
 This was a solem testimony of the Greek Hierarchy to 
 the obligation, which it has so frequently violated and so 
 reqeatedly recognized anew, of adherence to Catholic unity. 
 But the wily courtier knew how to gain the vain and low- 
 born emperor ; he forged a pedigree in which Basil appeared 
 as a descendant of Tiridates, an ancient king of Armenia, 
 and thus he threw the lustre of antiquity and royalty over 
 his house. At the death of Ignatius, Photius was accord- 
 ingly promoted by the emperor to the Patriarchal throne 
 he had before unlawfully occupied. Rome was asked to 
 recognize him, in spite of his own refusal to submit to the 
 authority of the Vicar of Christ. He convoked a schis- 
 matical council at Constantinople, at which he and his 
 satellites accused the Popes of having usurped unlawful 
 power, and changed the belief of the Church concerning 
 the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son. They 
 deceived the Papal legates, who were ignorant of the Greek 
 language; declared the Eight General Council abrogated, 
 rejected the doctrine of the Pilioque clause, and utterly 
 disregarded the Acts of the Sovereign Pontiffs. But the 
 Emperor Leo the Philosopher (886) finally deposed the 
 schismatic patriarch, relegated him to a monastery, where 
 he died, and returned, with the now utterly subservient 
 Greek Hierarchy, into the communion of the Universal 
 Church. 
 
 In the year 1054 the narrow-minded and stubburn 
 Michael Cerularius was made Patriarch, who revived the 
 ridiculous pretensions of Photius by claiming independence 
 of Rome. Together with the metropolitan of Bulgaria he 
 renewed the silly charges against the Latins, and pretended 
 to excommunicate the Pope and the whole Western Church. 
 Pope St. Leo IX. dispatched a legacy to the haughty pre- 
 late, which was not recognized or received by him. See- 
 ing that he rejected every offer of reconciliation, the 
 Apostolic legates, on the 16th of July, 1054, solemnly 
 deposited a bull of excommunication upon the altar of the 
 Patriarchal cathedral of St. Sophia, and departed. The 
 
88 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 emperor recalled them, but he was accused of betraying 
 the Greek interests and dethroned, through the machi- 
 nations of Celarius, in 1057, and Michael Comnenus 
 ascended the throne. The schismatic patriarch became 
 so overbearing, however, that the new emperor had to 
 remove and exile him to an island where he died in 1059. 
 Nearly all the Greek Rite was involved in the schism, 
 which now became chronic, with the exception of that 
 portion of it within the limits of the Roman Patriarchate. 
 But the Russian Church knew nothing of what was going 
 on and did not voluntarily participate in the crime of the 
 mother-Church of Constantinople until the twelfth century. 
 Divided as it was into isolated principalities, and subject 
 after the first quarter of the thirteenth century, to the 
 Kakhans of the Pagan Mongols, it probably did not, as 
 a whole, become consciously schismatic, until the rise of the 
 modern Russian empire, under Ivan the Great (1462 1505). 
 
 IV. TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE SCHISM. 
 
 By their selfish ambition the schismatic patriarchs 
 enslaved to the Byzantine tyrants nearly all the Greek 
 Rite, including the feeble remnant of the orthodox Syrian 
 Church (outside of Mt. Lebanon and vicinity), which they 
 hastened to despoil of their venerable Rite, imposing their 
 own in its place. The ultimate result of the schism was 
 to fasten the yoke of Islam on the whole Christian orient. 
 
 Left to itself and deprived of the unfaltering authority 
 of the Roman Pontiffs, the Greek episcopate became the 
 tool of the meddling emperors, who treated the sect they 
 had founded as a department of the State. The lower 
 clergy, burdened with families, had to struggle to make a 
 living, and lost all influence. The dignities were auctioned 
 off to the highest bidder, and the higher clergy, losing 
 sight of the glory of God, were absorbed with temporal 
 concerns. Wide-spread corruption of all kinds among clergy 
 and people, an increased despotism on the part of the 
 emperors, and the rapid decline of the empire in every 
 respect, even as regards its material prosperity, were 
 among the most marked consequences of the schism. The 
 
RUINOUS SCHISM. 89 
 
 greater part of the Eastern seperatists are now subject, 
 both politically and ecclesiastically, to the Czar of Russia, 
 who is yet more despotic than the Greek Emperors, and 
 banishes into Siberia those who refused to obey his orders. 
 The schismatics have, on no less than fourteen distinct 
 occasions, solemnly acknowledged the supremacy of the 
 Roman Pontiff, and thus returned to Catholic unity; but 
 the reconciliation has in most cases been only of short 
 duration, and the bitter and unreasonable prejudices 
 created by the wicked men who first inaugurated the 
 schism have continued to find expression in many and 
 diverse \vays. When the Seljukian and Ottoman Turks 
 threatened all the Christian nations with utter destruction, 
 the schismatic Greeks refused to join the Crusaders in 
 resisting the aggressions of Islam. Even at the last 
 moment, when the magnanimous Constantine XII, the 
 last representative of the enfeebled and depopulated rem- 
 nant of the Byzantine empire, fought on the ramparts of 
 the doomed city, the infatuated population insulted the 
 Genoese and Venetian soldiers who had hastened to 
 their defense. But they had filled up the measure of 
 the God's patience. Four centuries after the Apostolic 
 legates had left St. Sophia, Constantinople was taken 
 by Mohammed II, in 1453; and on that occasion 
 40,000 Greeks were slain, and 56,000 more were made 
 bondsmen to the Turks. At the Council of Florence 
 the Orthodox East had become Catholic again, but the 
 repentance was too late, and too imperfect, to avert the 
 Divine vengeance so repeatedly provoked. The Byzantines, 
 Who had so often preferred the rule of worldly tyrants to 
 that of Almighty God, were now forced to accept a schis- 
 matic patriarch, or rather anti-patriarch, at the hands of 
 their Mohammedan conquerors, in lieu of their good 
 Catholic Patriarch who was deposed and banished. The 
 insolent prelates who had revolted against the authority 
 of the Vicar of Christ were now henceforth obliged to 
 receive their pastoral staffs from a barbarian infidel. The 
 cathedral and all the stone churches were taken by the 
 Turks and used as mosques. The Greeks, crushed under 
 excessive taxes, and deprived of all civic rights, were 
 
90 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 quickly decimated. Multitudes of their daughters from 
 that time to this have become the prey of Mohammedan 
 polygamy. Multitudes of their sons have been snatched 
 away and reared as Mohammedans, to be incorporated 
 into Turkish armies. It is now already 400 years that 
 the Greeks have groaned under that bitter yoke, which 
 has not been lifted to this very day. 
 
 The Greek Schism is a purely state institution, and 
 extends, declines and perishes with the governments of 
 which it is a parasite. After the Byzantine empire fell, the 
 schismatic see of Constantinople, which was its creature, 
 rapidly lost its prestige. In 1585 the Russians bought 
 from Jeremiah II, anti-patriarch of Constantinople, the 
 right of having a "patriarch" of their own in the person 
 of the Bishop of Moscow. About the same time (1593) 
 the old metropolitan see of Kiew returned to the Catholic 
 communion, with all its suffragan sees. Previous recon- 
 ciliations had taken place in the 13th and 15th centuries 
 between this most venerable portion of the Russian Church 
 and the Holy Roman See, but owing to the influence of 
 the newly established czardom none were lasting. 
 
 In 1723 Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, suppressed 
 the Moscow "patriarchate", which he found still to inde- 
 pendent to suit his purposes, and replaced it by the so- 
 called Holy Synod, composed of fourteen members, several 
 of them lay officials. Against the authority of that auto- 
 cratic court there soon arose innumerable sects, whose 
 followers are indiscriminately termed by the members of 
 the state church Raskolniks (dissenters), and number about 
 15,000,000. Several times the Czars have forced millions 
 of their unwilling subjects, most of them Catholics and the 
 remainder chiefly Protestants or Pagans, into the sect by 
 law established. They have always shown themselves 
 especially hostile towards the Greek Catholics, and only a 
 few months ago the reigning Czar granted toleration to 
 several thousand Greek Catholics of Poland only on the 
 condition that they should pass over to the Latin Rite. 
 
 Every state springing up among the Slavonic popula- 
 tions of southeastern Europe declares itself ecclesiastically 
 independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Besides 
 
RUINOUS SCHISM. 91 
 
 the Turkish Orthodox (Constantinopolitan) and Russian 
 Orthodox sects, there are in Europe five other independent 
 schismatic bodies of the Greek Rite, one subject to the 
 anti-archbishop of Carlowitz in Hungary, and the others 
 constituting the state religions of Greece, Montenegro, Bul- 
 garia and Roumania respectively. The Patriarchs of Con- 
 stantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem had been 
 the most guilty parties in the schism, and the schismatics 
 who pretend to be their successors have sunk into utter 
 insignificance, having less than 9,000,000 adherants left. 
 The Russian Schism has about 50,000,000, though the 
 Russian government claims a much larger number by 
 counting in most of the Raskolniks and many Pagans; 
 the Greco - Hungarian has 2,000,000, the Roumanian 
 3,500,000, the Bulgarian about 1,000,000 and that of 
 Montenegro about 125,000. Although the Eastern Church 
 produced so many great men in the days of its glory, and 
 was the seat of such important Councils, the group of 
 sects that have arisen on its ruins and have presumed to 
 usurp its name, are absolutely sterile. Not a single great 
 saint or Doctor has arisen among them for eight centuries, 
 though the ruined fragment of that once most splendid 
 part of Christendom which has remained faithful to Catholic 
 unity has not been lacking in great names, among which 
 it is sufficient to mention that of Cardinal Bessarion. Not 
 a single great movement stirred up those servile masses, 
 not even the passing of the crusaders on their march 
 against the eternal foes of the Christians. What was the 
 cause? The Christian spirit had departed from that human 
 fabric, just as the life of the body disappears from an 
 amputated limb. 
 
 The Greek Schism calls itself the "Orthodox Greek 
 Church". It has a right to call itself orthodox as it has 
 never officially repudiated the Catholic faith, most of which 
 it explicitly professes. On the contrary it has nobly 
 resisted the efforts made by the Protestants to gain it 
 over to their side. Cyril Lucaris, anti-patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople, was bought out by the "reformers" and tried 
 to introduce Protestantism, but he was exiled three times 
 and finally executed, 1638. But it is not the Greek Church, 
 
 I 
 
92 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 that title belonging to that faithful remnant which adheres 
 to Catholic unity, and is therefore in fellowship with the 
 Holy Apostolic Roman See. There are many millions of 
 Catholics whose ancestors were reclaimed from this form 
 of separatism, including about 8,000,000 of Greek-Ruthe- 
 nian (Old Russian) Rite; although 2,000,000 of them were 
 forced back into schism by Nicholas I. 500,000 of the 
 Greek-Bulgarian Rite, 1,200,000 of the Greek-Roumanian 
 Rite, and 75,000 of the Greek Melchite Rite, besides a 
 portion of the pure Greek Rite, numbering about 65,000; 
 to say nothing of the countless multitudes who have from 
 time to time taken refuge in the Latin Rite to escape the 
 bitter persecutions for which the Greek Catholics are 
 singled out as special victims by the ferocious schismatics. 
 
 The Greek Schism, supported by the predominating 
 empire of the times, seemed destined to rule the world. 
 For the Roman Church was oppressed by petty Italian 
 princes, and the whole Latin world was hardly emerging 
 from the barbarism which ensued on the fall of the Western 
 empire. Humanly speaking, old Rome was sure to be 
 superseded by the new Rome, and the anti-patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople must inevitably become the Pope of Christen- 
 dom. But that would have destroyed the organization 
 established by Christ Himself, and no power can ever avail 
 against the cornerstone of His Church. From the hour 
 that the Greeks separated from the Vicar of Christ they 
 rapidly declined, and they were in the course of centuries 
 abandoned by the Savior to their direst enemies. Nearly 
 all the Mohammedans of Turkey are the descendants of 
 apostates from the Greek Schism. 
 
 The wrath of God has been visited upon all the here- 
 tics and scismatics who have attempted, age after age, to 
 rend in pieces His Kingdom on earth. All, without ex- 
 ception, have sooner or later been crushed under the heel 
 of barbarian caliphs and sultans, powerful emperors and 
 Czars, who exile or murder those who refuse to obey 
 their orders. History repeats itself. The nations which 
 to-day persecute the Church of God will fare no better 
 than those of old, unless they return to true Christianity, 
 or at least cease to oppress the Spouse of Christ. 
 
MIDDLE AGE 
 
 A. D. 476-1517 
 
 FROM BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION. 
 
MIDDLE AGE 
 
 A. D. 476 1517 
 
 FROM BARBARISM TO CIVILIZATION. 
 
 c/ 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. 
 CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I 
 have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a 
 man lay down his life for his friends. JOHN xv, 12 13. 
 
 I. DEFINITION OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 COME people say that the Church is opposed to civili- 
 zation, because they find barbarism in the Middle Ages. 
 They call them the "Dark Ages"; but they are themselves 
 in the dark concerning that most fertile period of history. 
 The best Noncatholic authors, like Maitland, Simondi, 
 Emerson and Hallam, notice the absurdity of this charge ; 
 and Sir Francis Palgrave wishes that such ignorant revilers 
 could be transported back to the Middle Ages, to see how 
 they would civilize the barbarians. The fact is that the 
 Church brought light out of darkness, and that, too, in 
 the face of Mohammedanism, an effectful agency of barbar- 
 ism. Not only did she promote civilization among savages, 
 but she had also to protect it against the armies of 
 Mohammedan barbarians. Hence she may be called the 
 mother of civilization in a two-fold sense; first, as having 
 produced it, and secondly as having protected it against 
 its direst enemy. 
 
 Civilization is transformation from a savage state to 
 that of more perfect civic life. It is the transition from 
 
96 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the violence, ignorance and privation of a wild horde to 
 the order, knowledge and comforts of a commonwealth. 
 Civilization means the blessings of a well-ordered society, 
 extended not only to certain classes, but to the whole 
 people; and consists as much in moral as in plrysical 
 ameliorations. Individual comforts and new inventions 
 minister only to a few favored ones, and they cannot con- 
 stitute more than a one-sided and partial civilization. 
 True civilization rests on mutual charity and personal 
 virtue ; it demands regard for others and control of self; 
 it requires sacrifices for the public comfort and efforts at 
 self-improvement. Only self-sacrificing people work for the 
 public welfare; selfish people want the earth and the ful- 
 ness thereof. 
 
 The controlling powers of the Middle Ages were 
 Christianity and Mohammedanism. But the former is the 
 religion of self-sacrifice ; while the latter is the consecration 
 of self-indulgence. Christ taught the brotherhood of man, 
 and enjoined the love of others as his chief commandment. 
 His disciples held all men as brothers, and often gave 
 their goods and even their lives for their fellow-creatures. 
 Mohammed taught to hate and combat all w r ho refuse to 
 accept his prophetic pretensions, and caused a perpetual 
 war among the children of men. His followers attacked 
 all other nations, in order to enslave them, and the un- 
 daunted Crusaders alone could arrest their fanatical asaults. 
 
 The character and influence of these two factors are 
 strikingly represented by their emblems. The sign of Christ 
 is the star of day, the bright sun ; the sign of Mohammed 
 is the crescent, the pale moon. The warm and radiant 
 sun gives light to all creation, but under the cold and 
 pallid moon every think sinks into darkness and sleep. So 
 did Christianity dispel the darkness of barbarism, and 
 bring light and activity into the world ; whilst Mohamme- 
 danism brought perpetual warfare, and plunged its followers 
 into sleep and vice among their many slaves and wives. 
 For more than a thousand years have Christianity and 
 Mohammedanism stood before the world as the sun and 
 moon. The former came in a dark night of barbarism, 
 and transformed it into a bright day of progress and 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 97 
 
 civilization ; the latter came in a brilliant day of civiliza- 
 tion, and transformed it into a dark night of degradation 
 and barbarism. The former created an oasis in the .wilder- 
 ness; the later made a desert out of the Eden of the world. 
 
 II. CHRISTIANITY A SCHOOL OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 As the Roman Empire tottered to its fall, the Teutonic 
 tribes of the north dashed against it with ever-increasing 
 audacity, until at last (A. D. 4-76) it was swept entirely 
 away. The barbarians rushed through its rich domains, 
 levelling everything to the ground, and dividing among 
 themselves all its fair provinces. Hardly had they settled 
 down, when still fiercer barbarians poured in from all sides 
 and again laid everything in ruins. Europe became a 
 battlefield of savages, and a whirlpool of nations. The 
 nature of its conquerors was so wild and their migrations 
 so continuous that it took centuries to convert them and 
 transform them into civilized nations. The Benedictine 
 monks were the chief Providential agents in that great 
 work. They built their monasteries among the roving 
 tribes, cleared the forests and raised the first crops. Their 
 establishments were frequently overthrown, but they rebuilt 
 them just as often, until they had rooted them in the hearts 
 of the people as firmly as in the soil of the country. Thus 
 they taught the barbarians the first elements of agriculture 
 and letters and gradually accustomed them to a civilized 
 life. However, the instincts of barbarism remained in them 
 for centuries. To more effetually eliminate them, the 
 Bishops of Rome escablished among the Germanic peoples 
 the "Holy Roman Empire" to unite the warlike tribes; 
 and sanctioned the feudal system, which gave local autho- 
 rity to powerful warriors, able to maintain order among 
 the stormy elements of new Europe. 
 
 Around the Popes grew up a Christian Commonwealth, 
 which made gigantic strides in the path of progress. The 
 Papal curia formed an ideal court of arbitration, which 
 settled without bloodshed many national and international 
 questions. The Popes undertook long wars against the 
 formidable Henrys and Frederics of Germany, for the 
 defense of the liberties of the Church and of the people. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 They also stirred up the Christian nations of the West to 
 unite and fight for centuries against the fanatical Mussul- 
 mans for the defence of the Christian religion and 
 civilization. 
 
 Gregory VII., Urban II., Alexander III. and Innocent III. 
 must be gratefully remembered as the undaunted champions 
 of religious and political liberty. 
 
 Those were ages of strong faith and true progress. 
 The nations of Europe were one in faith, and one in 
 obedience to the Vicar of Christ. Salvation was their 
 principal concern, and they led holy lives, in the world as 
 well as in the cloister. The} r advanced equally well in 
 temporal matters, made wonderful progress in the arts 
 and sciences, and were happy and contented. The knights 
 protected virtue and weakness; the guilds safeguarded 
 labor in the thriving republics of the south aud the power- 
 ful communes of the north. Time and money were lavished 
 in the foundation and development of sixty six universities 
 and the building of hundreds of splendid churches and public 
 halls which to this day evoke the admiration of the world. 
 
 The Liberals disdain that progress, and parade as their 
 own the great material improvements of our times. But 
 what could they have done with the warring tribes of 
 Europe but fight with them? Where would we be today 
 without the tireless labors of the monks? The way for 
 the inventions of our times was prepared in the Middle 
 Ages. Copernicus opened up the immense heavens above 
 us, Columbus the wide world around us; and processes of 
 art and industry were then discovered that have since 
 been lost and cannot be rivalled in our own days. The 
 world was on the eve of still greater strides in progress, 
 when this beneficent movement was interrupted through 
 the fanaticism of Protestantism, which inaugurated another 
 era of war and vandalism. The universities were depopu- 
 lated, the libraries burned, the paintings torn to pieces 
 and the monuments blown up. It is only now, after a 
 lapse of more than three centuries, that the achievements 
 and discoveries ot the Middle Ages are beginning to be 
 taken up again, studied, admired, made use of, and carried 
 on towards perfection. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 99 
 
 III. MOHAMMEDANISM A CAMP OF BARBARISM. 
 
 Mohammed arose in the fairest portion of our planet, 
 which had been civilized from the beginning. He came after 
 Christ and His sublime Gospel, but yet fell back into Pagan 
 ideas and methods. In order to attract followers, he 
 allowed polygamy and slavery, and thus sacrificed the 
 bulk of mankind to the passions of a few selfish masters. 
 In order to propagate his sect, he proclaimed warfare in 
 its interests as the first commandment of Allah. He stirred 
 up his soldiers by the promise of the most sensual rewards, 
 and made them undaunted in the battlefield by his doctrine 
 of fatalism. He taught them to die like Stoics, calmly 
 repeating: "It was written", For the sake of this impostor 
 a war was started that lasted a thousand years, and that 
 threw the East into an abyss of misery. Wherever Moham- 
 medanism passed, it withered everything like the burning 
 simoon of the desert. It made barren the finest countries 
 of the world, it cheked the population, it lowered women, 
 it enslaved men, it ruined agriculture and industry, and it 
 put an end to intellectual progress. The splendors of 
 Bagdad and Cordova were derived from the former civiliz- 
 ations, and disappeared in a few centuries. 
 
 For a thousand years the appeal to arms for the 
 imposition of the Koran resounded through Asia and 
 Africa; and thirty successive generations strove to subdue 
 Europe to the yoke of the False Prophet and its ensuing 
 barbarism. Religion as well as civilization seemed doomed 
 to destruction. But God raised up valiant Pontiffs to 
 resist the arch-enemy, and to unite and organize the 
 nations of Europe for the common defense. For a thousand 
 years the Popes stood as sentinels on the hills of the 
 Eternal City, and uttered the cry of alarm whenever the 
 fierce Mussulmans made a new onslaught upon Christen- 
 dom. Again and again the Catholics responded to the 
 warning, and stood up as one nation for their God and 
 their country; so that they never became the permanent 
 slaves of savage Islam. But the heretics and schismatics 
 remained in their isolation, and one after another they 
 became the prey of the fanatical armies of the Caliphs. 
 
100 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Those of them who refused to renounce the very name of 
 Christ were reduced to the most galling servitude, from 
 which they have never been freed. 
 
 Although the sons of the False Prophet were always 
 on the warpath, there arose among them three peoples, 
 each fiercer than the other, which made supreme efforts 
 for the subjugation of Christendom, to wit; the Arabs, 
 the Seljuks and the Ottoman Turks. Hence there are three 
 periods in the deadly war of Mohammedan barbarism 
 against Christian civilization : the Arabian, beginning A. D. 
 622; the Seljukian, A.D. 1000, and the Ottoman A.D. 1300. 
 
 In one century the Arabs subdued the heathens, the 
 heretics and the schismatics of Asia and Africa, and the 
 Visigoths of Spain ; but they were brought to a halt by 
 the arms of the Catholic Franks under Charles Martel. 
 The Catholics of Spain then began a war for independence 
 which lasted, with brief intermissions, for eight hundred 
 years and at the end of which the Mohammedans were 
 driven from the peninsula. In the eleventh century the 
 Seljukian Turks were the masters of Asia and threatend 
 Europe. The Christian nations had just reached their 
 vigorous adolescence. Pope Urban II aroused them to 
 meet the emergency. They assumed the cross as their 
 emblem, and took the offensive against the threatening 
 infidels. The undaunted crusaders went into the Holy 
 Land, attacked the enemy in his own country and broke 
 his power. In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks 
 brought the terrible -war into the heart of Europe. In five 
 crusades the Hungarians, aided by Catholic volunteers from 
 all over Europe brought them to a stop in the valley of 
 the Danube; but schismatic Constantinople fell into their 
 hands. When Protestantism had hopelessly divided the 
 Christian nations Solyman the Magnificent made desperate 
 efforts to reduce all Christendom under his yoke. He laid 
 siege to Vienna, the capital of the Christian empire, but 
 he fled before Charles V. The power of the Ottomans was 
 forever broken by Catholic warriors at the battles of 
 Lepanto and Vienna. Thus did the Catholics, all unaided, 
 withstand and repel the Mussulman hordes ; thus did they 
 save mankind from the most degrading barbarism. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM. 101 
 
 IV. THE TORCH OF ENLIGHTENMENT. 
 
 The slightest knowledge of geography shows that the 
 Christian lands are the paradise of the world, and proves 
 that the Church is the most potent agency of civilization. 
 The simple perusal of a true history, which gives the great 
 dramas of the past in their causes and effects, shows that 
 real Christianity has blessed every country and every 
 century where and when it has flourished. Still the blinded 
 Liberals do not blush to represent the Church as an enemy 
 of civilization in the whole world, but especially at Rome. 
 Accordingly they had confiscated the Patrimony of Peter, 
 and robbed the Mother-Church of her property, all in the 
 name of progress, when Leo XIII. was elected to the See 
 of Peter. In his first encyclical the great Pontiff refuted 
 this glaring slander and proved from reason and history 
 that the Church is the mightiest instrument of civilization 
 that ever appeared on the face of the earth. He says : 
 
 "Who can deny that it is the Church which, by the preaching of the 
 Gospel to the nations, brought the light of truth among barbarous and 
 superstitious peoples and moved them to recognize the Divine order of 
 things and to respect themselves; which, by abolishing slavery, recalled 
 man to the justice and dignity of his noble nature; and which, by un- 
 furling the banner of redemption in every clime of the earth, introducing 
 and protecting the arts, and founding excellent institutions of charity, 
 that provide for every misery, has cultivated the human race every- 
 where, raised it from its degradation, and brought it to a life becoming 
 the dignity and destiny of man ? If these benefits are the real works of 
 civilization, the Church, so far from abhorring and repudiating it, makes 
 it her glory to be its nurse, its teacher and its mother. 
 
 "But that kind of civilization which is opposed to the holy doctrines 
 and laws of the Church is only a shadow of civilization, as appears from 
 the example of those peoples upon which the light of the Gospel has not 
 shone; in whose state a glimmer of civilization is sometimes to be seen, 
 but its real and solid benefits do not exist. 
 
 "Moreover, considering what has been done by the Holy See, what 
 can be more unjust than to deny the eminent services rendered by the 
 Bishops of Rome to the cause of society ? It was the Apostolic See that 
 gathered up the remnants of the ancient world : it was the torch to shed 
 light on the civilization of the Christian times, it was the anchor of 
 safety in those violent tempests, by which the human race was tossed 
 about; it was the sacred bond of concord which united nations of diverse 
 customs together; finally, it was the common center whence all men 
 derived, together with the doctrines 01 religion, encouragement and 
 counsels of peace. It is the glory of the Sovereign Pontiffs that they 
 
102 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 have ever thrown themselves into the breach, that human society might 
 not sink back into its ancient superstition and barbarism. 
 
 "Italy being nearer to the source, received more abundant blessings. 
 For to the Roman Pontiffs Italy is indebted for the glory and greatness 
 in which she surpassed other nations. Their paternal authority and 
 solicitude often protected her from the assaults of her enemies and brought 
 her assistance. These services of our predecessors are recorded in the 
 history of St. Leo the Great, Alexander III, Innocent III, St. Pius V, 
 Leo X, and other Pontiffs, by whose zeal and protection Italy escaped 
 from the utter ruin threatened by the barbarians, retained the old faith 
 incorrupt, and, amid the darkness and degradation of an uncultured age, 
 nourished and maintained the light of science and the splendor of the 
 arts. This fair city, the seat of the Pontiffs, bears witness to their 
 benefits, of which it received so large a share; becoming not only the 
 fortified citadel of faith, but also the asylum and home of the fine arts 
 and of learning, which have won for her the respect and the admiration 
 of the whole world. 
 
 "Nothing but base calumny and malice could have published that the 
 Apostolic See is a hindrance to the civilization and the happiness of the 
 people of Italy." 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. 
 BARBARISM OF WESTERN EUROPE. 
 
 The ten horns [kings] which tkou sawest in the beast 
 [Kingdom of Satan], these shall hate the harlot [Empire of 
 the Caesars] and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall 
 eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. APOCALYPSE XVH, 16. 
 
 I. EUROPE A WHIRLPOOL OF NATIONS. 
 
 A CERTAIN class of persons compare the Middle Ages 
 with our own times, and seem surprised at not finding 
 as much enlightenment, of every kind, even in their earliest 
 portion, as there exists at the present time. They betray 
 an ignorance worthy of those very same troubled ages. 
 The most elementary study of history shows that for 
 centuries Europe was like a whirlpool of ever-shifting and 
 contending peoples, where nothing solid and permanent 
 could be established. About the year 476 there took place 
 the irruption of the barbarian tribes, and hardly had they 
 settled down (A. D. 814) when the inroads of still fiercer 
 savages began, which lasted for two more centuries. 
 Every human institution fell under their ravages; the 
 Divine Church alone withstood their rage, because she 
 possessed the means to tame and civilize them. 
 
 II. THE MIGRATIONS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 In 376 the Huns of Mongolia made their appearance 
 in Europe and, like an irresistible wave, pushed the other 
 wild tribes westward. Twenty years later the Roman 
 Empire was split into the Greek Empire of the East and 
 the Latin Empire of the West. It was the policy of the 
 Eastern Emperors to ward off the migratory barbarians 
 from the East to the West. The Slavs were driven as far 
 as the Elbe, and a deluge of Germans was thrown over 
 the boundaries of the Latin Empire. Gaul was over-run 
 
104 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 by a swarm of Vandals, Suevi and Burgundians. Italy 
 was laid waste by several hordes of savages, amongst 
 whom the Visigoths were the most terrible. Their king 
 Alaric was bent on capturing Rome, and besieged her three 
 times. The first two times he spared her, but he exacted 
 such heavy ransoms that the Romans could not find money 
 to pay it without melting down the golden statues of 
 their ancient gods. The third time he demanded such an 
 enormous sum that it could not be paid at all, and so he 
 captured the queen of the nations and plundered her for 
 three days, A. D. 410. 
 
 A quarter of a century later Attila, "The Scourge of 
 God", as he called himself, united the Huns into one king- 
 dom and wasted the northern countries of Europe. In the 
 year 451 he set out with 700,000 men to destroy Rome. 
 The frightened population of northern Italy fled into the 
 islands of the Adriatic Sea, where they laid the foundation 
 of Venice. Rome trembled before this destroyer of nations. 
 But the undaunted Pope Leo the Great went out to him, 
 in his Pontifical robes, as the ambassador of God, and 
 ordered him to return, whereupon the fierce conqueror 
 quitted Italy. The following year he died suddenly; his 
 sons were slain by the Ostrogoths, and his hordes retired 
 towards the Black Sea. 
 
 Three years later Genseric, king of the Vandals, came 
 with an immense fleet to destroy the city of the Caesars. 
 Again Pope Leo went out with a procession of his clergy. 
 He obtained the life of the people and the preservation of 
 the monuments ; but the city was plundered for a fortnight. 
 
 In 476 the Latin Empire was annihilated, and its rich 
 provinces became the prey of the German tribes. Great 
 Britain was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, Gaul by the 
 Franks and the Burgundians, Spain by the Visigoths and 
 the Suevi, Italy by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, and 
 Africa by the Vandals. 
 
 As the great deluge of old swept over the face of the 
 earth and destroyed everything in its passage, so did the 
 barbarian hordes sweep over Europe and level everything 
 in their course. Farms were devastated, castles over- 
 thrown, and towns and cities destroyed. The terrified 
 
BARBARISM OF WESTERN EUROPE. 105 
 
 people were overwhelmed by the mighty influx of savages, 
 or fled into the hollows of the rocks or the wilds of the 
 woods. All human institutions were submerged. Just as 
 in the Scriptural narrative Noah's ark alone escaped the 
 general cataclysm, so now there was but one institution 
 that survived the fury of the barbarian deluge. It was the 
 Catholic Church that stopped the fierce tribesmen in their 
 mad course. She effectually converted them, and trans- 
 formed them into new men. 
 
 The nomadic and independent nature of the barbarians 
 was diametrically opposed to civilization and religion. 
 Hunting and fighting were there pastime, their pleasure 
 and their glory. However, the Church of Christ tamed 
 their wild nature. Within two centuries she had conquered 
 the tribes settled in the old Empire; and during the two 
 following centuries she converted the Germans of the 
 Black Forest. 
 
 The Frankish people after entering the Church became 
 the leaders of the Teutonic race. Charlemagne ( A. D. 768-814) 
 united and organized the German nations, and gave an 
 immense impulse to civilization. But his empire was divided 
 after his death, and new barbarians came and to a great 
 extent destroyed his work. 
 
 III. THE INROADS OF THE BARBARIANS. 
 
 The Northmen were Teutonic tribes living in frozen 
 Scandinavia ; and they were as savage as the wild elements 
 of-their native country. Starting from their dense forests 
 and their stormy seas, they were constantly traversing the 
 seas in their little ships to plunder the coasts and valleys 
 of Western Europe. They were as innumerable as the 
 swarms of locusts ; their light craft often covered the rivers 
 for miles. They destroyed everything in their passage. 
 Their depradations were carried on unremittingly until 
 their conversion in the tenth century. In 911 Rollo, one 
 of their chiefs, obtained Normandy in France. His 
 descendants conquered England, and Southern Italy. 
 
 The Hungarians were a Mongoloid tribe as fierce as 
 the Huns. Called by the Emperors of Greece and of 
 Germany to assist them against other barbarians, they 
 
106 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 conquered Pannonia, which has since been called Hungary ; 
 and thence they made incursions into many lands of Western 
 Europe. They were stopped by the victory of Otho the 
 Great, at the Lech (955), and converted to Catholicity 
 under their king St. Stephen, in 1,000. 
 
 The Saracens were Mohammedan pirates, who thought 
 that everything was permissable against the Christians. 
 In Italy they ruined the growing crops and burned the 
 rising towns. Their course could be traced by the flames 
 and smoke arising from the burning places. Pope Leo IV, 
 John X, and Benedict VIII made a valiant stand against 
 those cruel plunderers. The Norman Robert Guiscard 
 expelled them from Southern Italy, a little before the reign 
 of Gregory VII. However, the Mussulmans continued to 
 molest the Christians for five centuries more, attacking 
 them at all points of the Meditenranean, from Palestine 
 to Spain. But this tremendous war will be considered in 
 full later on. 
 
 The invasions were -so terrible that the people prayed 
 in their litanies: "From the fury of the Normans deliver 
 us, o Lord". Ruins were piled up on all sides, and evils 
 multiplied until the terrified people thought that the end 
 of the \vorld was coming. Before the year 1000 so great 
 was their fright that they stopped building and planting, 
 plowing and sowing. The harm done by the barbarians 
 was so appalling and so general that some historians have 
 styled this epoch the "Iron Age". 
 
 In the first place, everything was overthrown as soon 
 as it was begun, and the work had to be done over again 
 many times. Secondly, a terrible chaos prevailed: Crime 
 and lawlessness were bold; vice and ignorance were 
 common; local wars were waged for centuries between 
 rival places. Thirdly, the Church found little material out 
 of which to make a clergy fit for such troubled times. 
 She had to take her pastors from a half-civilized people, 
 and naturally it was difficult to raise such subjects to the 
 high standard necessary for the worthy ministry of the 
 Gospel. Finally, the Church was afflicted by the meddling 
 of petty tyrants who thrust into office their favorites, 
 friends and tools, who, very naturally, were less anxious 
 
BARBARISM OF WESTERN EUROPE. 107 
 
 for the glory of God than for the worldly interests of their 
 human master. Thus dissolute laymen and simoniacal 
 clergymen rose to the highest dignities of the Church, and 
 disgraced the sanctuary by their scandalous lives. At Rome 
 itself, from 900 to 1050, the powerful Tuscan and Tusculan 
 princes often controlled the Pontifical elections, and 
 succeeded in thrusting into the See of Peter their own 
 relatives and friends, whether worthy or unworthy. In 
 the tenth century the two Theophoras and Marozia, and 
 in the eleventh Adalbert, exerted a baleful influence in the 
 Pontifical elections. However, after their elevation most 
 of those Popes were changed into better men by a visible 
 grace of God. That most reliable historian Flodoard 
 testifies to this fact. Most of the charges made by Luit- 
 prand, the German re viler of the Italian Popes, are proven 
 to be libels, and are rejected by all historians worthy of 
 the name. Even in those troublous times there were only 
 two Popes, John XII. and Benedict VIII., whose conduct 
 cannot be justified. 
 
 How striking an evidence of God's watchful Providence 
 over His Church! With inferior or vicious men in her 
 highest offices, she not only does not succumb to the 
 mighty forces of disintegration and destruction, like all 
 the human institutions around her, but succeeds in carrying 
 the work of civilization steadily forward under these most 
 difficult circumstances. In the earlier history of the people 
 of God the Church had often seemed to be on the verge of 
 perdition ; thus at certain periods under the Old Covenant 
 the people were corrupt, the Pontificate in unworthy hands, 
 and the temple ruined. But some unexpected event, some 
 Providential man, always arose to restore everything; as 
 in the case of Cyrus and the Machabees. So, in the midst 
 of the chaos of eleventh-century Europe Gregory VII. will 
 arise like a giant ; he will break the chain of bondage and 
 restore the Church of God to her independence and make 
 her holiness once more resplendent. He will wipe out the 
 abuses introduced by the barbarians, and instead of becom- 
 ing the plaything of petty Italian princes, the position to 
 which she seemed about to be reduced, she will become 
 the glorious savior and queen of the nations. 
 
108 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 During the Dark Ages the Church of God was threatened 
 with a double ruin: First, with the material ruin brought 
 upon all other institutions by the migrations of the nations 
 of Europe; and secondly by the moral ruin occasioned by 
 the inroads of the barbarians and intensified by the 
 intrusions of the petty princes. Why did she alone survive 
 the general flood? How could she conquer these bar- 
 barians who had conquered the conquerors of the world ? 
 How could she make of those fierce savages her most 
 faithful children and her most valiant soldiers? Who has 
 adapted her so admirably to times and circumstances? 
 The Lord God Almighty, who has said: "Upon Peter do I 
 build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail 
 against it". 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. 
 CONVERSIONS OF THE BARBARIANS. 
 
 Going therefore teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost ; teaching 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you : 
 and behold I am with you all days even to the consummation 
 of the world. MATTH. xvn, 19 20. 
 
 I. THE PAPAL MISSIONARIES. 
 
 AT the fall of the Roman empire, the Catholic Church 
 was surrounded on all sides by barbarian heathens 
 and heretics. The Roman Pontiffs immediately undertook 
 the work of their conversion, and for six hundred years 
 they sent missionaries all over Europe until they had 
 entirely converted it. The savages paid little attention to 
 arguments, but they were forcibly impressed by suber- 
 natural facts. The undaunted courage and the wonderful 
 virtues of the messengers of the Gospel who penetrated 
 into their midst, and the brilliant miracles wrought by the 
 Almighty in confirmation of their doctrines, won to God 
 those simple children of nature. However, there always 
 remained some obstinate heathens who for centuries fought 
 against the new religion. The struggle between Paganism 
 and Christianity lasted about two centuries in most of 
 the countries, and the work of civilization required a much 
 longer time. By the year 1000 nearly all Europe was 
 Christian. In the first two centuries the nations settled 
 in the old empire were converted (476 700), in the follow- 
 ing two centuries the Teutons of Germany and Scandinavia 
 (700865), and in a third period of about the same length 
 the Slavs and the Mongols (8651073). 
 
 The Celts of Ireland, converted by St. Patrick, were 
 the first and greatest apostles to the new masters of 
 northern Europe. Later on, Englishmen joined in the 
 
HO THE THREE AGES. 
 
 work of the missions. Ireland had been free from the 
 conquest of the Romans and from the inroads of the 
 barbarians, and possessed a high degree of civilization of 
 its own. When converted, it became for centuries an island 
 of saints, the nursery of missionaries and the school of 
 northern Europe. 
 
 II. NATIONS SETTLED IN THE OLD EMPIRE. 
 I. Franks. 
 
 The Pagan king Clovis was married to the Christian 
 princess Clothildis, who often spoke to him of our Redeemer 
 Jesus Christ. When the Allemani invaded Gaul, Clothildis 
 told her husband that if he desired victory he should 
 invoke the aid of the God of the Christians. The armies 
 met at Tolbiac, where the Franks were at first routed 
 and began to flee from the battlefield. In his extremity 
 Clovis exclaimed: "O God of Clothildis, come to my help. 
 Give me the victory, and I will henceforth adore no other 
 God but Thee." Hardly had he finished this invocation 
 than the Franks rallied and, rushing furiously upon their 
 foes, put them to flight. The war-like nation recognized 
 the finger of the God of battles, and put themselves under 
 his orders. Clovis and 3,000 officers were baptized on 
 Christmas eve, A. D. 491, in the cathedral of Rheims, with 
 the greatest solemnity. The Bishop, St. Remigius, in 
 baptizing the king, said : "Bow thy neck humbly, proud 
 Scamber. Adore that which thou hast burned, and burn 
 that which thou hast adored." The Franks were the first 
 Germanic nation to embrace the true faith, and therefore 
 France was called "the Eldest Daughter of the Church". 
 Christianity made her so superior to the other peoples 
 that she soon became the queen of the German tribes. 
 
 2. Visigoths, Langobards and Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 Pope Gregory the Great (590 604) promotes the con- 
 version of three nations. 
 
 The Visigoths of Spain were bitter Arians, and perse- 
 cuted the Church with a ferocity only excelled by that of 
 the Vandals of Africa. The crown-prince, St. Hermenegild, 
 who embraced the true faith, was put to death on that 
 
CONVERSIONS OF THE BARBARIANS. HI 
 
 account by his own lather. But his brother, Reccared the 
 Catholic, when he ascended the throne formally abjured 
 Arianism, in a council of Bishops and nobles, and worked 
 with Gregor}' the Great for the conversion of his people to 
 Catholicity, and his assiduous efforts were in the end 
 crowned with success. The older racial elements of the 
 Iberian peninsula blended with the Visigoths, the conquer- 
 ors of the soil, and thus the Spanish nation was formed. 
 The seventeen councils of Toledo (400 694) show how 
 prosperous were the Spanish Church and nation in those 
 early days. 
 
 The Langobards, who conquered northern Italy in 569, 
 were likewise Arians, und they showed themselves very 
 hostile to the Holy See and very cruel to the ancient in- 
 habitants. The influence of the Catholic queen Theode- 
 linda, and the zeal of Pope Gregory the Great, commenced 
 their conversion, which was not completed until another 
 century had elapsed. 
 
 The Angles, Saxons and Jutes drove the Christian 
 Britons into Wales, and these seemed to have no inclina- 
 tion to evangelize their enemies. One day Pope Gregory 
 saw some captives from England exposed for sale in the 
 slave-market at Rome. He asked of what nationality they 
 were, and when informed that they \vere Angles he ex- 
 claimed : "If these Angles were Christians they would be 
 angels." He at once formed the resolution to become the 
 apostle of their nation. Unable to go himself to England, 
 on account of his election to the Pontificate, he selected 
 the holy Benedictine abbot Augustine, who set out on his 
 glorious mission with forty zealous companions. The mis- 
 sionaries landed on the cost of Kent in the realm of King 
 Ethelbert, the breatwalda or chief king of the Anglo-Saxons, 
 who wife was a Catholic princess, and who allowed them 
 full liberty to spread the Gospel. They preached like the 
 Apostles themselves, and on Christmas eve, A. D. 597, 
 they baptized 2,000 persons. So many miracles were per- 
 formed by St. Augustine that the Pope thought it prudent 
 ;o warn him against vainglory. So many people were 
 converted that two archiepiscopal sees were erected, one 
 it Canterbury and the other at York. The Britons and 
 
112 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons could now unite and form one nation; and 
 so England was made one under King Egbert, in 802. 
 This new Church was distinguished among all the nations 
 by her devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, her love for 
 the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ and Apostle of 
 England, and her zeal for the conversion of the remaining 
 heathens of the continent of Europe. From the British 
 Isles came most of the greatest missionaries by whom 
 Germany was converted to the faith of Christ. 
 
 III. TEUTONS ON THEIR NATIVE SOIL. 
 1. Germany. 
 
 Many saints had labored among the wild Teutonic 
 tribes. Fridolin, Columban and Gall preached among the 
 Allemanni ; Rupert and Emmeran among the Bavarians ; 
 Kilian among the Franconians; Eloy, Amand and Lievin 
 among the Flemings, and Willibrord among the Frisians; 
 but they had not fully succeeded in weaning the people 
 from their false gods. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon priest Winfred extended and perfected 
 their work, converting the most stubborn heathens, and 
 solidly organizing the German Church. In 719 he went to 
 Rome and was formally appointed by Pope Gregory II., 
 Apostolic missionary to the Germans. After spending three 
 years among the idolatrous Frisians he penetrated into 
 Pagan Hesse and Franconia, where he had immense success. 
 Pope Gregory summoned him to Rome, and with his own 
 hands consecrated him Bishop, giving him the name of 
 Boniface. After his return this great prelate overthrew the 
 Sacred Oak of Eichstadt, which was held in such veneration, 
 that the Pagans expected him to be struck dead by the 
 gods. As nothing happened to him, and as he quietly 
 proceeded to build a church upon the very spot where the 
 sacred tree had stood, they gave up their powerless idols 
 and the whole nation was converted to Christ. Through 
 the number of his miracles and the splendor of his virtues 
 Boniface was renowned all over Europe as a man of God. 
 He was called to Bavaria to reform and organize the 
 Church of that country, and to France to consecrate its 
 
CONVERSIONS OF THE BARBARIANS. 113 
 
 new king, Pepin the Short, the first of his dynasty to bear 
 the royal title. After fifteen years of untiring labors, the 
 great Apostle of the Germans repaired again to Rome and 
 received from Gregory III. the archiepiscopal pallium, with 
 jurisdiction over the whole of Germany. Mentz became the 
 metropolitan see, with thirteen suffragans. To perpetuate 
 his work Boniface built a great number of monasteries 
 and convents, as religious are especially necessary in 
 missionary times. The celebrated abbey of Fulda is the 
 most famous of his institutions. 
 
 However, he could not rest as long as there remained 
 heathens on German soil. Resigning his see, he went to 
 Frisia, which had hitherto resisted the efforts of all the 
 missionaries. There he was attacked by the Pagans and 
 put to death (A. D. 755) for the faith he was so zealously 
 preaching. 
 
 2. Scandinavia. 
 
 The kings of Denmark . and Sweden asked for mission- 
 aries, but Scandinavia was the home of the plundering 
 Northmen, who for centuries had spread awe and desolation 
 everywhere. Who would venture into that nest of robbers? 
 St. Ansgar (827 865) was ready, and he found a worthy 
 co-laborer in St. Aubert. The intrepid missionary met with 
 great success, and established a seminary for missionaries 
 to continue his work. Created Metropolitan of the North, 
 and Archbishop of Hamburg, he continued to labor with 
 his hands in making nets; he also lived on bread and 
 water, in order to save something wherewith to support 
 missionaries and to offer presents, when occasion required, 
 to the princes. 
 
 IV. SLAVS AND MONGOLS. 
 1. Moravians. 
 
 The two brothers SS. Cyril and Methodius were sent 
 to the north as missionaries by the Patriarch of Constan- 
 tinople. When they arrived in Moravia they found great 
 opposition to a foreign tongue, and they invented an alpha- 
 bet for the Slavonic language and translated the Bible and 
 liturgy into it. They baptized the princes Wratislaw and 
 
 8 
 
114 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Swatopluk, and had great success. In the middle of their 
 labors they went to Rome (A. D. 867) to receive the bless- 
 ing of the Vicar of Christ upon their work, St. Cyril died 
 in that city, and Methodius was made Archbishop of 
 Moravia and Pannonia. He returned to Rome in 879 to 
 submit to the Pope some controverted questions, and to 
 receive the Papal approbation for the use of his Slavonic 
 liturgy in the Church of which he was the metropolitan. 
 This was the first of the Slavonic liturgies, which are now 
 used in the Latin-Slavic, the Greco-Ruthenian, the Greco- 
 Bulgarian and the Greco-Rumanian Rites. 
 
 2. Bohemians. 
 
 The Bohemian duke Borziwoy and his wife Ludmilla 
 who had entered into alliance with Swatopluk, were con- 
 verted by St. Methodius and received baptism at his hands. 
 They labored most effectually in the midst of innumerable 
 difficulties to spread Christianity through the length and 
 breadth of their domains. The Pagans revolted and put 
 to death St. Ludmilla and her son, the Duke St. Wences- 
 laus, but they were conquered by Otho the Great and com- 
 pelled to restore the Christian Church in Bohemia (930). 
 
 3. Prussians. 
 
 The first Bishop of Prague was the great St. Adelbert, 
 who gave up his see and consecrated his life to the heathens. 
 He went to the Prussian tribe, settled along the shores of 
 the Baltic Sea, and was put to death by the Pagans in 
 987. Ten years later St. Bruno was martyred among the 
 same people. For two hundred years the Prussians con- 
 tinued to make the greatest opposition to Christianity. 
 Finally they were forced to accept it by the Teutonic 
 Knights. 
 
 4. Poles. 
 
 Duke Mieczvslav married a Bohemian princess and 
 embraced Christianity. In 867 he published an order 
 that on a certain Sunday all the idols should be broken 
 in pieces and cast into the rivers. 
 
CONVERSIONS OF THE BARBARIANS. 115 
 
 5. Russians. 
 
 First the miracle of a copy of the Bible remaining un- 
 hurt in the midst of the flames converted many Russians. 
 Then the princesses Olga and Ann labored zealously to 
 bring the bulk of the people to Christ. Finally Vladimir 
 the Great (972 1024), who was the grandson of the former 
 and the husband of the latter, ordered the idols to be 
 destroyed and the people to be instructed in Christian 
 doctrine and receive the sacrament of baptism, 
 
 6. Hungarians. 
 
 SS. Cyril and Methodius had visited the Khazars and 
 the Bulgarians and made many conversions among them. 
 In Hungary- Duke Geysa was converted by his pious wife 
 Sarolta. Their son St. Stephen (9971038) was the true 
 apostle of his subjects. He often prayed prostrate on the 
 ground that before his death he might see his whole king- 
 dom converted to Christ. He died on the feast of the 
 Assumption, commending his subjects to the Mother of 
 God. Pope Sylvester II proclaimed him the Apostle of the 
 Hungarians, and conferred upon his successors in perpetuity 
 the title of " Apostolic King". The Hungarians were trans- 
 formed into thorough Christians. They were destined to 
 become devoted crusaders, and to form the bulwark of 
 Europe against the formidable Solyman the Magnificent. 
 
 V. APOSTOLIC SUCCESS LACKING AMONG SECTARIES. 
 
 In the conversion of Europe there are two facts which 
 show that the Divine mission to preach with real and 
 lasting effect exists in the Catholic Church alone. In the 
 first place, it was the Bishops of Rome who sent forth the 
 missionaries, who all received their jurisdiction directly 
 from their hands, or at least sought their formal appro- 
 bation. Secondly, the Catholics alone thoroughly con- 
 verted Pagan nations, and neither heretics or schismatics 
 ever did it. It is true that there have been some apparent 
 exceptions, but they were so evanescent that they only 
 serve to prove the rule. For example, the Nestorians and 
 Monophysites made great efforts in Asia during the first 
 
116 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 centuries of their existence, so that they gained a foothold 
 in all parts of that continent. But they did not have the 
 true Christianity to impart, nor the blessing of God upon 
 their labors, so that their missions have long ago dis- 
 appeared, leaving scarcely a trace behind. The separated 
 Christians of the Orient were conquered by the Mussul- 
 mans, and did not convert them. History does not record 
 any great missionary efforts made by these sectaries for 
 the diffussion of such Christianity, as they possessed, among 
 their Mohammedan conquerors, but shows, on the con- 
 trary, a steady falling off on the Christian side. What a 
 difference it would have made had the heretics of the East 
 been Catholics! The Catholic countries of the West were 
 invaded by wilder barbarians, who overthrew the great 
 colossus of the Roman empire without being able to replace 
 it by any civilized organization. Resistance was impossible, 
 but conversion was immediately attempted ; missionaries 
 sprang up everywhere, and by the year 1000 they had 
 reconquered to Christ almost all Europe. When the Greeks 
 were zealous and loyal to the Apostolic See they converted 
 neighboring tribes ; but they ceased to do so, to any great 
 extent, after they were torn from the Center of Unity. 
 Where is the evangelical spirit ? Where is the helping hand 
 of God ? With the Eastern separatists or with the Catho- 
 lics of the West? The response of history is clear and 
 emphatic. 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. 
 EDUCATION OF THE BARBARIANS. 
 
 He was the true Light, which enlighteiieth every man that 
 cometh into this world. JOHN i, 9. 
 
 I. ST. BENEDICT A PROVIDENTIAL MAN. 
 
 AT the fall of the Roman empire, Europe became for 
 centuries the battlefield and hunting-ground of bar- 
 barian hordes. Every sign of agriculture, learning and 
 religion disappeared before them. But the Benedictine 
 monks settled in their midst and built monasteries which 
 were veritable schools of civilization. 
 
 Monasticism is a life of seclusion; it is a state of per- 
 fection, in \vhich are practiced the Evangelical counsels of 
 poverty, chastity and obedience. It flourished in the 
 deserts of Egypt under St. Anthony, and it was propa- 
 gated by St. Athanasius in the West, where it blossomed 
 especially under St. Martin and St. Patrick. But human 
 frailty led to abuses. St. Benedict not only reformed these, 
 but also adapted the monastic institutions to the needs of 
 the times, and multiplied and organized them for the civili- 
 zation of the Barbarians. 
 
 At the age of fourteen Benedict fled from the dangers 
 of the corrupted world, and buried himself in a deep canon 
 near Subiaco. During three } r ears he had no communi- 
 cation with man, except to receive food daily from a re- 
 cluse of the mountain. The food was let down in a basket, 
 provided with a bell to notify the hermit. Finally Bene- 
 dict was discovered by shepherds. The monks of Yicovarro 
 asked him to become their abbot. He protested that his 
 ways were not their ways and would not suit them. In 
 fact, after he had yielded to their entreaties and consented 
 to be their superior they became so incensed against him 
 that they tried to poison him. But by a miracle the 
 
118 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 poisoned cup broke to pieces, and St. Benedict left them 
 and walked back to Subiaco. Many holy men flocked 
 around him, and he built twelve monasteries for twelve 
 monks each. He also erected convents for nuns, under the 
 direction of his sister Scholastica. His order spread rapidly 
 throughout all Italy ; it was also established and propa- 
 gated in France by St. Maure and in Sicily by St. Placid. 
 Prophecies and miracles were ordinary occurrences with the 
 saint, and gained him the greatest veneration even among 
 the barbarian kings. 
 
 In 529 God directed His servant to erect a great 
 monastery at Monte Cassino, a mountain situated between 
 Rome and Naples and overlooking the whole country. He 
 found there a temple of Apollo, which he overthrew; 
 and he converted the poor heathens who frequented it, 
 thus foreshadowing the apostolic labors of his spiritual 
 children in all future ages. It was here that the patriarch 
 of the Western monks wrote his admirable rule, which 
 has lasted already 1200 years, and which has given to the 
 Church no less than 85 Popes, 700 Bishops, and, among 
 innumerable holy religious, 55,000 subjects publicly honored 
 for sanctity of life. At one time the Order of St. Benedict 
 had 60,000 monasteries. 
 
 Benedict impressed upon his followers two great virtues, 
 especially necessary in the presence of the barbarians, to 
 wit, activity and stabil^. He succeeded in enlisting in 
 his order all the most potent civilizing forces that were 
 available. Montalambert says: 
 
 "The result of Benedict's works are immense. In his lifetime, as after 
 his death, the sons of the noblest races of Italy and of the best of the 
 converted barbarians came in multitudes to Monte Cassino. They re- 
 turned and descended from it to spread themselves over all the West; 
 missionaries and husbandmen, who were soon to become the doctors and 
 pontiffs, the artists and legislators, the historians and poets of a 
 new world. Less than a century after the death of Benedict all that the 
 barbarians had wrested from civilization was reconquered." 
 
 II. THE GOSPEL OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 The roving tribes had no other occupation than hunt- 
 ing, fighting and warring. They wanted to live without 
 working, and to feed upon the birds of the heavens, the 
 
EDUCATION OF THE BARBARIANS. 119 
 
 animals of the forest, the fishes of the waters, and the 
 crops of the poor serfs, compelled to work for their con- 
 querors. The barbarian was too idle too \vork and the 
 Roman too lazy. From the sixth century woods, marshes 
 and deserts appeared again, and wild animals took pos- 
 session of many parts of Europe which had once been 
 inhabited and cultivated. But the sons of Benedict pene- 
 trated into the dense forests, advanced along the marshy 
 river-banks and ascended the arid mountain slopes. 
 
 They pray, they work, they teach, and they find docile 
 followers among the wild conquerors, who commence to 
 work and to learn; thus they reclaim the country from 
 its barrenness and wildness. Seven hours of the day are 
 allotted to labor, and two hours to pious reading. The 
 matins are sung during the night; then comes the medi- 
 tation until the break of day. A wide range of occupation 
 is allowed, according to the talents, skill and requirements 
 of each individual and to the wants of the community, 
 which must needs supply itself with everything necessary. 
 There is manual labor to be done, reading, transcribing 
 manuscripts, and giving instructions to the young and 
 the ignorant. 
 
 The Benedictine monks were the pioneers of agriculture 
 and the fathers of the cities. For they taught the warlike 
 tribes to settle down on the land : to fell the dense forests, 
 to drain the moors of the north and irrigate the marshes 
 of the south, to exterminate the wild animals and fill the 
 land with cattle. Around the monasteries the half-savage 
 tribesmen erected their huts, and their they learned the 
 rudiments of civilized life and the more simple trades. 
 Such settlements formed the nucleus of many of the future 
 capitals and commercial centres of Europe. 
 
 The monks also were the saviors of arts and letters, 
 and the teachers of nations. The barbarians had swept 
 everything away. Books and works of art had disappeared 
 among the rude masters of Europe. The monks searched 
 for them everywhere, and collected them together at much 
 cost of time and money. As there was no paper, they 
 procured parchment at great expense; and as soon as 
 possible each monastery provided itself with immense flocks 
 
120 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 of sheep, whose skins furnished this precious material. 
 Many religious spent their life in copying one work, and 
 some of the products of their skill are worth a fortune 
 to-day. Before all, they copied the Bible countless times, 
 in every known tongue, and thus rendered the service of 
 evangelists. But they also preserved the monuments of 
 human genius in the profane sciences. Not only did they 
 copy the masterpieces of literature, but they studied and 
 explained them. They also gave shape to our modern 
 languages. At the time when the princes gloried in igno- 
 rance, the monks and clergy were the onlj^ classes expert in 
 reading and able to write ; whence the name of clerk (con- 
 traction of cleric, a person in either major or minor orders) 
 came to signify a writer. The monks also gathered and 
 preserved the monuments of ancient art and architecture; 
 and they not only imitated them but immeasurably im- 
 proved upon them in their own constructions. Thus they 
 were the most progressive men of their times. Still, Luther 
 accuses them of laziness and ignorance ! To those despised 
 monks, O Luther! we owe our Bible, we owe the great 
 masters of Greece and Rome, we owe the most glorious 
 monuments of our architecture, and the inimitable master- 
 pieces of our museums ! Much more of their work, and of 
 the classical literature which they so carefully preserved, 
 would remain to us today were it not for the wholesale 
 destruction of monastic libraries, of which, at various 
 times and in various countries, the Albigenses, Hussites, 
 Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Epis- 
 copalians, Freemasons and other sectaries have been guilty. 
 It is safe to say that nine-tenths, at the very lowest 
 estimate, of the work of the Medieval monks has been 
 annihilated by the Protestants and infidels of various 
 stripes, in their blind and ignorant rage against every- 
 thing connected in any way with Catholicity. 
 
 III. STABILITY OF THE BENEDICTINE ORDER. 
 
 The second invasion of the barbarians everywhere 
 multiplied material and moral ruins ; but it could not 
 destroy the work or extinguish the vitality of the Bene- 
 dictine order. As soon as the monks started their in- 
 
EDUCATION OF THE BARBARIANS. 121 
 
 stitutions they were overthrown, and when rebuilt they 
 were destroyed again and again. But the men of God 
 restored them twenty times if necessary. In times of 
 extreme danger they fled with their treasures of religion, 
 art and science to the mountain-tops, where they built 
 fortified convents, wherein to store and defend the last 
 remnants of the legacy of the past. Such were St. Gall in 
 Switzerland, and Mont St. Michel in Brittany. 
 
 The evils of the Iron Age effected even the order of 
 St. Benedict, and at one time threatened to ruin it. But 
 a simple return to the old rule saved it and saved the 
 world. Two causes had conspired to undermine its strength 
 and its virtue. The continual influx of barbarians kept up 
 a savage spirit in the world, which penetrated also into 
 the cloister. Wealth and power naturally came to the 
 monastic insitutions because of their great benefactions to 
 society ; and on this account greedy princes tried to thrust 
 themselves or their tools into the rich abbeys. Such men 
 would have utterly corrupted and destroyed any merely 
 human institution. But St. Benedict had received from an 
 angel of Heaven the promise of immortality for his order. 
 In 910, St. Berno founded the abbey of Cluny in France, 
 were he restored the primitive rule and fervor of the 
 Benedictines. Soon the convent of Cluny blossomed out 
 like the convents erected by St. Benedict himself; and it 
 showed itself capable of reforming the world. 
 
 From Cluny came many of the greatest men and 
 movements of the Church; such as St. Gregory, the true 
 reformer of his age, and the institutions of the truce of 
 God and the right of asylum, so useful in those warlike 
 times. The truce of God was introduced by St. Odilo, the 
 third abbot of Cluny, in 1031. From Wednesday night to 
 the following Monday morning, during Advent, Lent and 
 Eastertide, and on every feastday and fastday of the year, 
 all acts of hostility, violence and revenge were forbidden. 
 The multitudes received these measures with hands uplifted 
 in thanksgiving, crying joyfully "Peace! Peace!" The 
 Bishops gathered at the council of Limoges placed the ban 
 of excommunication upon those warriors who might dare 
 to trample these laws under their feet. 
 
122 THE THREE AGES, 
 
 The right of asylum was granted to places consecrated 
 to God. When men were seeking to wreak vengeance with 
 their own hands, any one who was being pursued unto 
 death was safe if he could reach a church. There he was 
 considered under the protection of Jesus Christ, and no foe 
 dared disturb him in that sacred shelter. 
 
 IV. MAKING HASTE SLOWLY. 
 
 Superficial men have sometimes said that the bar- 
 barians should have been civilized in a shorter time; but 
 gradual transformation is the only practical method in 
 the education of savages. The Benedictines did not at- 
 tempt to force nature, but only to second it, and they 
 thus formed nations of saints and races of heroes. In our 
 own time and on our own continent the monks did not 
 attempt to civilize the aborigines all at once, but allowed 
 generations for such a tremendous task; and they thus 
 preserved them and placed them on the road to full develop- 
 ment and complete culture. There are now 30,000,000 of 
 civilized and half-civilized Indians in Central and South 
 America, who, in a few centuries, at most, will make 
 powerful nations. The Protestants, on the contrary, have 
 tried to rush the education of the Indians ; but they suc- 
 ceed only in giving them the vices of the white men 
 without their virtues, and thus killing them off. In the 
 immense territory of the United States there are only 
 250,000 Indians. Only 100,000 of them are Christians, 
 the great bulk of these being Catholics ; all the others are 
 still Pagans, and they live in the most miserable condition 
 and are dying out year by year. If our own barbarian 
 forefathers had had to depend on Protestant missionaries, 
 and the tender mercies of Protestant rulers, they would 
 not have been the progenitors of the leading nations of 
 the world, but would have been exterminated like our 
 unhappy ludians. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. 
 CONSTITUTION OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 Let every soul be subject to the higher powers ; for there is 
 no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of 
 God. ROMANS xm, 1. 
 
 I. DISTINCT BUT HARMONIOUS POWERS. 
 
 Christian society was governed by a spiritual and 
 a temporal head ; who, though entirety different in 
 their functions and prerogatives, were completely one in 
 their aims and influence, and, so far as the unwritten 
 constitution of Christendom was strictly adhered to, gave 
 each other an effective cooperation: the Pope and the 
 Emperor. The Prankish kings donated or confirmed tem- 
 poral states to the Popes, to make them independent in 
 their spiritual administration. The Popes consecrated them 
 and their successors as the defenders of the Church and 
 the bond of union between the various tribes and fiefs that 
 divided Europe. The Popes, independent at home, found 
 in the emperors powerful executors of the Christian laws; 
 and the Emperors, consecrated by the Yicar of Christ, 
 were accepted as over-lords by the Christian states. It is* 
 remarkable that in those days of force and violence, these 
 supreme offices were elective and that by the best qualified 
 ecclesiastical and temporal princes. 
 
 II. THE PAPACY AND ITS TEMPORAL POWERS. 
 1. Local Independence. 
 
 The Popes need a temporal sovereignty. They are the 
 exponents of the Gospel for nations as well as for indi- 
 viduals, and they need the assistance of a large number 
 of officials for their world- wide administration. To inspire 
 confidence in their official decisions the must be free from 
 
124 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 secular interference and from temporal rulers ; consequently 
 they must have a territory of their own. Moreover, to 
 provide for the numerous officials of their court, they must 
 have a steady and large income, which a state alone can 
 be counted on to give. The Popes have a right to the 
 States of the Church by the fivefold title of cession, choice, 
 prescription, preservation and improvement. 
 
 Rome is the city of the Popes by right of gift, of 
 popular election and saecular prescription. From the time 
 of the conversion of Constantine, lands and cities had been 
 granted to the Holy Roman Church aud considered the 
 Patrimony of Peter. During the invasion of the barbarians 
 the Popes had been the only protectors against their 
 devastations, and had been recognized by the common 
 consent of the people as the heads of the Roman common- 
 wealth. When the fierce Aistulph, king of the Lombards, 
 conquered from the Greeks the old Exarchate of Ravenna 
 and marched on Rome, thus threatening the independence 
 of the Holy See, Pope Stephen III repaired in person to 
 Pepin, the new king of the Franks, to ask him to rescue 
 the Supreme Pontificate and the Roman people from the 
 yoke of the invaders. Pepin twice descended into Italy, 
 and each time laid siege to Pavia, the Langobardian 
 capital. Aistulph ceded to the Frankish king all his con- 
 quests in middle Italy, consisting of twenty two cities, and 
 Pepin bestowed the title to the whole territorj^ upon the 
 Roman Pontiffs. 
 
 Not only did the Popes legitimately acquire their 
 temporal States, but they possessed them for a thousand 
 years, and found in them the prestige and maintenance 
 humanly necessary for the ruling of the Christian world. 
 No government of Europe can exhibit such a long and 
 undisputed possession. The present usurpation of the 
 Freemasons cannot destroy the right of the Sovereign 
 Pontiffs, and can no more last than any of the similar 
 spoliations that have taken place in the past. 
 
 Rome is also the city of the Popes by title of pre- 
 servation and improvement. They alone saved it from 
 utter destruction and made it the capital of the Christian 
 world. Rome, which had destroyed so many cities, would 
 
CONSTITUTION OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 125 
 
 itself have been wiped out forever by the avenging nations 
 had it not been the seat and capital of the Vicars of 
 Christ. Cardinal Manning says: 
 
 "Rome has been assailed nine times by invading hordes, who have 
 never been able to root themselves there. Three times it has been sacked 
 with all manner of terrible outrages. The city has been twice destroyed, 
 and rebuilt by the Popes, aided by the gifts of the Christian world. 
 And once the city was so desolate, that for forty days it had not an in- 
 habitant and no human voice was heard in it; there was only the bark 
 of the foxes on the Aventine hill. Fortyfive Popes have either been 
 driven out of Rome, or martyred, or never been permitted to set foot 
 in it." 
 
 Not only did the Popes preserve Rome, but they made it 
 the most splendid city of the earth, and, as Leo XIII says : 
 
 "The asylum and home of the fine arts and of learning, which have 
 won for her the respect and admiration of the whole world." 
 
 2. International Authority. 
 
 The Prankish princes Charles Martel, Pepin the Short 
 and Charlemagne had united the German tribes under 
 their sceptre and thus established peace among Christians. 
 Moreover, they were the faithful protectors of the Roman 
 Pontiffs against their violent neighbors, and the undaunted 
 defenders of Christendom against the fanatical Mussulmans. 
 Leo III, desirous of securing permanently such eminent 
 services, conceived the lofty plan of restoring the Roman 
 Empire, and of bestowing its title upon the most powerful 
 of the Christian princes. It was a stroke of Papal genius 
 to establish, without the shedding of a single drop of 
 blood, an empire which was to last a thousand years and 
 render innumerable services to the cause of Jesus Christ. 
 At Christmas, in the year 800, Charlemagne, wearing the 
 insignia of a Roman patrician, attended Divine service in 
 the church of St. Peter, and was praying before the altar. 
 The Sovereign Pontiff, draped in his stately vestments, 
 approached the kneeling monarch, and placed upon his 
 brow a diadem sparkling with jewels. The lofty arches 
 of the temple rang with the enthusiastic acclamations of 
 the people : "Long life and victory to Charles the Augustus, 
 crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the 
 Romans!" The Pope anointed Charlemagne and was the 
 first to pay homage to the new Emperor. 
 
126 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 "From that time/' writes Archbishop Kenrick, "the Bishop of Rome 
 necessarily enjoyed an immense influence over the Empire and the king- 
 doms which arose within its shadow ; and he was regarded by princes 
 and peoples as their father and their judge. He created a new order of 
 things; assigning to each potentate his place in the political world, and 
 controlling by law the movement of each to maintain the general har- 
 mony. His relations to the Empire were most direct, since he determined 
 who should elect the Emperor and exercised the right to determine 
 whether the individual chosen was admissible. The power exercised by 
 the Popes in designating the emperor and giving the royal title to the 
 chiefs of the various nations cannot be fairly branded as a usurpation, 
 since it is vested in them by the force of circumstances; their spiritual 
 office placing them at the head of the Christian world and inspiring con- 
 fidence in the justice and wisdom of their acts. It was not the result of 
 positive concessions made by the respective nations; although it was 
 acquiesced in and confirmed by the free acts of princes and peoples. 
 Neither was it a Divine prerogative of their office ; but it naturally grew 
 up out of their ecclesiastical relations; and was strengthened and sus- 
 tained by their sacred character." 
 
 III. THE EMPIRE AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 
 1. Bond of union. 
 
 The German race had not entirely emerged from the 
 tribal condition, and it was still more subdivided by the 
 feudal relations. The Holy Empire created a sacred bond 
 of union among the tribes and fiefs. Italy and Germany 
 were divided into several tribes or nations and subdivided 
 into many fiefs or principalities; but they were all united 
 in one powerful commonwealth by the consecration of the 
 Christian Emperor of the Germans. France and England 
 were also divided into tribes and fiefs ; but they were con- 
 trolled by their hereditary kings and reduced by them into 
 one nationality. Moreover they were Celto-Teuton, and 
 far away from the center of Europe, and they did not 
 form an actual part of the Holy Empire of the German 
 nations although they were great factors in the Christian 
 Commonwealth that sprang up under the guidance of the 
 Vicars of Christ. The role of Holy Emperor soon was 
 fulfilled by the sturdy kings of Germany, and Otho the 
 Great passed into Italy in the most lawless times and 
 reestablished order. Immense services were rendered to the 
 Popes by most of the German Emperors, which being of 
 ordinary occurrence are but slightly mentioned in history. If 
 
CONSTITUTION OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 127 
 
 we read of the tyranning of two Henrys and two Fredericks 
 it is because they are exceptions to the rule ; and moreover 
 they were put down mainly by the upright German princes, 
 under the direction of the Popes. Alzog says: 
 
 "Another object of the Church in establishing the Empire was to 
 unite all nations by the bond of Christian fellowship; and she impressed 
 upon the mind of the Emperor that he was called of God as mediator 
 and pacificator of all the states of Christendom. The establishment of 
 the Western Empire put an end to the conflicts of the migratory Ger- 
 manic tribes, and served as the keystone to the great political fabric in- 
 to which the Germanic nations were consolidated. Each of the Germanic 
 nations, possessing individual and well-defined traits of character, would 
 consent to no S3^stem of centralization, if the Empire representing such 
 did not itself recognize some superior and universal power, which might 
 form a point of contact and a center of unity for all. They all recog- 
 nized the Church as such; and thus the Western Empire, being estab- 
 lished on a thoroughly Christian basis, was called the Holy Empire of 
 the Germanic nations." 
 
 2. The Lord and his Fiefs. 
 
 The savage nature of the barbarians was not softened 
 at once, but continued to manifest itself for centuries in 
 many deeds of violence. Often ambitious kings and emper- 
 ors strove to establish absolute monarchies, while petty 
 princes oppressed their subjects and attacked their neigh- 
 bors. The feudal system was a check to such abuses, for 
 it clearly denned the rights and duties of every one, and 
 secured order and liberty among the stormy elements of 
 new Europe. The Church blessed this feudal constitution 
 as the best possible under the circumstances. 
 
 Europe was completely organized under the feudal 
 system from the ninth to the fourtheenth century. Lands 
 were granted under conditions of personal service during 
 war and peace. They were called fiefs or feuds, on 
 account of the mutual obligations of faithfulness (fides) 
 between the two parties. A fief is an estate held from a 
 superior on condition of personal and especially military 
 service. The superior granting the land is called a suzer- 
 ain; the inferrior receiving it a vassal. The vassals had 
 to attend their suzerain personally in court as judge or 
 peer (par curiae) ; and in war with material contributions, 
 horses and men. They were usually called, according to 
 
128 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 their rank, dukes, earls or counts, marquises, viscounts 
 and barons. Before receiving their titles, they had to pay 
 homage to their lord. Kneeling before him, without helmet, 
 sword or spurs, they placed their hands between his and 
 promised under oath to become his men and to serve him 
 with life and limb, faithfully and loyally. Then they re- 
 ceived the investiture of their fief, either by actual or sym- 
 bolical conveyance. They were either really put into pos- 
 session of the ground, or given a stone, a wand or a 
 branch thereof in token of the transfer. The vassals exer- 
 cised an independent authority in their several domains. 
 Fortified in their castles, they controlled the whole neigh- 
 borhood; they rendered justice and coined money. This 
 system of local jurisdiction gave the authority to those 
 who were able to maintain order in the country. It also 
 prevented the foundation of a universal and uniform 
 monarchy which would have checked the development of 
 the national character of each people. But it cut up the 
 land into isolated districts, and it left it possible for a lord 
 to oppress his subjects and to attack his neighbors if he 
 chose to do so, their own suzerains being often too much 
 occupied elsewhere to redress the \vrongs of the petty 
 vassals and the tenantry. There arose and raged many 
 and long wars between neighboring castles for private 
 interests or personal revenge. But checks were put upon 
 the violence of the landed nobility by the creation of a 
 knighthood and official peerage, and by the granting of 
 franchises to the communes. 
 
 The knights were the sworn and consecrated champions 
 of the weak, the widows and the orphans. By their strict 
 rules of justice and honor they created a lofty spirit among 
 the nobles, so as to shame them from violating the rights 
 of others, and from oppressing the feeble who were under 
 their power. From the twelfth century onward, the suzer- 
 ains created a personal and an official nobility, for the 
 knights, the landless younger sons of the nobles, and the 
 officers of the state. Moreover, they granted franchises 
 and privileges to the burgesses of the cities and the com- 
 munes ; who where thus enabled to withstand the exactions 
 of the fortified landlord. 
 
CONSTITUTION OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 129 
 
 The former slaves, and sometimes the prisoners of war, 
 with their descendants, \vere at that time in the condition 
 technically called serfdom. Serfs are persons attached to 
 the land, to work it for the benefit of others, at the same 
 time deriving from it a livelihood for themselves and their 
 families. They were also called villeins or farmhands, be- 
 cause they were to occupy and work the farm (villa) for 
 the free man's benefit. Although deprived of a part of 
 their liberty, they were protected in their lives and other 
 rights. If ill-treated they could flee to free cities or to 
 churches, where they could not be molested. If they re- 
 mained away from their lord a whole year they acquired 
 full liberty. But ordinarily they were well treated and 
 stayed with their masters, and often they were in more 
 comfortable circumstances than many farmers of Europe 
 and America in our days. 
 
 The feudal constitution was not the best possible, but 
 it was the most practical for the times. The temporal 
 power of the Popes, when in firm hands, restrained the 
 ambition of the petty princes of Italy. The Empire de- 
 manded respect for the laws of Popes, from the proudest 
 and boldest monarchs themselves. The sacred character of 
 the Emperor made a bond of union between hostile tribes, 
 and the landed princes maintained order and liberty in 
 their different fiefs. Independence and order were alike 
 safe-guarded, and there thus grew up the greatest nations 
 that have ever appeared, and the ones that today rule the 
 whole world. 
 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. 
 DEFENSE OF CHURCH'S LIBERTY. 
 
 He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the 
 ends of the earth. PSALMS LXXI, 8. 
 
 I. INTRUSION OF UNWORTHY CLERICS. 
 
 TN the ninth century it became a common abuse for royal 
 barbarians to thrust their friends into the sanctnary, 
 on account of the benefits attached to certain ecclesiastical 
 posts. They often sold such places for money to corrupt 
 and worldly clergymen, whom they installed in office as if 
 they really had the power of conferring ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction. This sacrilegious practice filled the Church 
 with unworthy or scandalous men and caused a wide- 
 spread degeneracy of morals. When St. Gregory VII 
 ascended the throne of St. Pete,r, Henry IV of Germany 
 was carrying that nefarious traffic to its last excess. The 
 holy Pontiff arose like a lion to extirpate the crying 
 abuse, and to reclaim for the Church the right of choosing 
 her own ministers. For half a century Henry and his son 
 opposed the reform of the clergy, and carried on that 
 terrible war of investitures, which crimsoned all Europe. 
 Though Gregory died during the struggle, he lived again 
 in his successors, who continued his noble combat, and 
 the ninth Ecumenical Council, held at the Lateran in 1123, 
 absolutely forbade the princes to invest prelates with 
 ecclesiastical insignia. 
 
 II. LEADERS OF THE CONFLICT. 
 
 Henry IV (10561106) lost his father at the age of 
 five years, and, having fallen into the hands of vicious 
 masters, grew up with strong and unbridled passions. At 
 sixteen he repudiated his wife, and thenceforth respected 
 
DEFENSE OF CHURCH'S LIBERTY. 131 
 
 neither virginal purity nor conjugal chastity. He cruelly 
 oppressed the Saxons, and he attacked the Church all his 
 lifetime. But he was a hero strong enough to fight 
 sixtysix battles and a genius able to cope with the host 
 of enemies made through his crimes. 
 
 Hildebrand was the son of a carpenter, and became a 
 monk. But his genius, his activity and his holiness made 
 him the greatest man of the Middle Ages. First he was 
 the guide and counsellor of seven Popes, whom he rescued 
 from the tyranny of the local princes. As Pope himself, 
 under the name of Gregory VII (10731085), he carried 
 on singlehanded a gigantic war against the powerful Henry 
 of Germany. His first seven successors, formed by his hands 
 and animated with his spirit, carried on his great struggle 
 and the Church was at last emancipated from the thralldom 
 of princes and free again to select her own ministers. 
 
 The practice of lay investiture had intruded into the 
 Church incontinent and sch smatical prelates; Gregory 
 attacked the evil at once by a method which revealed his 
 genius and his power. In the Paschal Synod of 1074 he 
 interdicted the religious services held by incontinent priests 
 if they refused to amend. Heretofore suspension and 
 deposition had been resorted to, affecting only the un- 
 worthy pastors, who had lost all conscience and continued 
 to exert their faculties. But the interdict seperated them 
 from the iaithful, who could receive no sacrament at their 
 hands and ceased to give them support. That reduced 
 these worldly men to terms. The great cause of all the 
 abuses was the nomination and installation of prelates by 
 lay princes. Henry IV of Germany practiced this openly, 
 and was publicly selling benefices to the corrupted canons 
 of Goslar, where his court resided. In vain did Gregory 
 entreat the prince to cease that scandalous traffic, which 
 was a source of great revenue to the prince but of sacri- 
 legious extortion for the Church. In the second Council of 
 Rome, 1075, the undaunted Pope issued a decree ''for- 
 bidding any layman, of whatsoever rank, whether emperor, 
 marquis, prince or king, to confer the investiture; and any 
 cleric, priest or Bishop, to receive it for benefices, abbeys, 
 bishoprics or ecclesiastical dignities of any kind." 
 
132 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 III. HILDEBRAND'S HEROIC STRUGGLE. 
 
 Henry was exasperated at what it pleased him to call 
 a Papal aggression. First he formed a conspiracy to seize 
 the Pope at Rome and to replace him by another man. 
 The plot was carried out at Christmas by a party of 
 ruffians in the Emperor's pay, and Gregory was made a 
 prisoner, but the people rose in a body and compelled 
 Henry's trembling emissaries to liberate their beloved Pon- 
 tiff. Then the Emperor openly proceeded to the "depo- 
 sition" of Gregory. He convoked an anti-council of sub- 
 servient German Bishops at Worms, whither went also 
 the degraded Cardinal Candidus, who libellously accused 
 Gregory of simony, murder, adultery and witchcraft; and 
 the pliant courtier-prelates decreed the deposition of the 
 Pope without so much as hearing a witness. This * 'sen- 
 tence" was defiantly read in the Paschal Synod of 1076. 
 Gregory, after protesting that he had been compelled to 
 assume the Pontificate, continued: 
 
 "In the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and by 
 His authority, I forbid Henry to govern the German realm and Italy. 
 I release all Christians from the oath by which they have bound them- 
 selves to him, and I forbid any one to serve him as king. Since he has 
 refused to obey as a Christian, rejecting the counsels given him for his 
 salvation, and withdrawing from the Church which he seeks to rend, I 
 hereby declare him anathema; that all nations may know, even by 
 experience, that 'Thou art Peter', and that upon this rock the Son of 
 the living God has built His Church against which the gates of Hell 
 shall never prevail." 
 
 A bull of excommunication announced this deposition 
 to all Christendom, and the hand of God struck dead many 
 of Henry's impious followers. The German princes met at 
 Tribur and threatened to provide a new sovereign unless 
 Henry would agree to publicly seek absolution from the 
 Pope, and in the meanwhile to lay aside all royal insignia 
 and functions. Henry resolved to gain Pope Gregory in a 
 private audience, and he crossed the Alps in the cold of 
 a bitter winter. The Pontiff, who was on his way to 
 German}^, withdrew into the impregnable fortress of Ca- 
 nossa, the owner of which, the Countess Mathilda, was 
 ever the loyal friend of the Pope, though she was closely 
 related to the imperial family. Henry had to do penance 
 
DEFENSE OF CHURCH'S LIBERTY. 133 
 
 for three days before he was admitted to the presence of 
 His Holiness ; after which Gregory received him honorably, 
 and absolved him from excommunication under condition 
 that he should appear before the Diet of Augsburg and 
 abide by its decisions. 
 
 Those who find this treatment too severe must re- 
 member that the Pope had to safeguard the interests of 
 the German princes and people, and had to test in some 
 way the sincerity of the often faithless prince. The mistake 
 was that absolution was granted at all. Had Gregory 
 left his enemy to the mercy of the indignant German princes 
 Henry \vould have been deposed forever by the Imperial 
 Diet, and would not have troubled Christendom nearly a 
 quarter of a century longer as he did. Henry's escort 
 revolted against his submission, and, their evil counsels 
 prevailing with him, he immediately occupied the passes of 
 the Alps, to prevent the Pope from going to the Diet, at 
 which he himself refused to appear. The princes declared 
 the throne vacant and selected another emperor in the 
 person of Rudolph of Suabia; but the Pope, in his scru- 
 pulous anxiety to avoid doing any injustice to Henry, 
 withheld the confirmation which was necessary to give 
 effect to the sentence of deposition and the new election. 
 The perfidious Henry protracted negotiations for three 
 years, with no other object than to wear out the patience 
 and undermine the influence of his competitor, while in- 
 dustriously strengthening his own position. Finally, after 
 having exhausted all milder expedients, Gregory in a 
 Council at Rome excommunicated and deposed Henry for 
 the second time and recognized the election of Rudolph. 
 But Henr\- now felt himself in a position to defy the sen- 
 tence. He convoked two schismatic Councils of twentynine 
 simoniacal Bishops, who pretended to depose Hildebrand 
 and elected an antipope in the person of the degraded 
 Bishop of Ravenna, Guibert, who took the name of 
 Clement III. Rudolph fell in a battle, and Henry was able 
 to direct his troops towards Italy. The princes elected as 
 his successor Herman of Luxemburg, but he, nothwith- 
 standing great personal bravery, was unable to withstand 
 his powerful antagonist or vindicate his right to the throne. 
 
134 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 From 1081 to 1083 Henry several times laid siege to 
 Rome, and made overtures to the Pope and to the people. 
 In 1083 Gregory convoked a Council at Rome to settle 
 the civil war; but Henry intercepted the envoys of Herman. 
 The undaunted Pontiff excommunicated all those who had 
 been a party to the crime of detaining or misleading them. 
 The following year Henry besieged Rome for the fourth 
 time, and offered such bribes to the people that they 
 opened the gates to him. Gregory withdrew into the 
 strong castle of St. Angelo, and Henry was crowned 
 Emperor by his antipope. That very day, hearing that 
 the Norman king of Naples was hastening to the rescue 
 of the Pontiff, the German troops retired in haste. The 
 Norman troops, to punish the treason of the Romans, 
 terribly pillaged the faithless city, and the Pope withdrew 
 with his liberator to Salerno. Here he held a last synod 
 and renewed his excommunication against Henry; here he 
 addressed his last letter to Christendom, testifying that 
 he had fought for the liberty of the Church ; here he died 
 (1085), saying: <l l have loved justice and hated iniquity, 
 therefor I die in exile''. 
 
 III. ST. GREGORY'S TRIUMPH AFTER DEATH. 
 
 If Gregory died in the middle of the struggle, neither 
 his spirit nor his work was dead. He lived again in 
 Urban II. (10S8) and Calixtus II. (1119), and the liberty 
 of the Church in the choice of her ministers was won 
 forever. Henry continued to war against the Kingdom of 
 Christ on earth for a score of years ; but his tyranny 
 became so unbearable that his own wife and sons took 
 part against him. First his eldest son Conrad fought him 
 for eight years, and then his second son Henry revolted 
 and, after many battles, finally captured and put him 
 in prison, in 1104. The Papal legates in a solemn assembly 
 proclaimed his deposition, and he was obliged to abdicate 
 and to deliver his imperial insignia to his son. When he 
 died, the following year, all Christendom rejoiced as Israel 
 did at the death of Pharao ; for he had been its plague for 
 fifty years, and had raised up five antipopes to disturb 
 the Church of God. 
 
DEFENSE OF CHURCH'S LIBERTY. 135 
 
 His son Henry V. did not profit by Henry's experience. 
 He renewed the warfare against the liberties of the Church ; 
 and even succeeded in capturing Pope Pashal II. and 
 extorting from him the ecclesiastical fiefs with the privi- 
 lege of investiture. But the Catholic world protested 
 against his violence, and the concessions were retracted. 
 Pope Calixtus II., a man of noble birth and personal 
 power, excommunicated the tyrant, who was soon reduced 
 to the necessity of opening negotiations with the intrepid 
 Pontiff. By the Concordat of Worms (1122) and the 
 ninth General Council, held at the Lateran in 1123, the 
 lay investiture with ring and crozier was forever abolished, 
 but installation by the imperial sword was allowed after 
 the titulary had been duly elected by the Church. The 
 following year Henry V. died, and with him that race of 
 traitorous persecutors of the Church of Christ. 
 
 St. Gregory VII. found the Church almost a slave and 
 made her a queen. Not only the great kings but even the 
 petty princes of Italy had begun to treat the Bishops, 
 even the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves, as their dependents 
 and hirelings. They sometimes thrust into the sanctuary 
 men devoid of every qualification, steeped in vice and 
 degradation, and ready to obey their every whim. Gre- 
 gory arose in the name of God to claim for the Church 
 the right to select her own ministers : and behold ! the best 
 men enter the sanctuary and illustrate it by their virtue 
 and their science ; and the noblest princes, ceasing to attack 
 their mother the Church, stand up for her and turn their 
 arms against the Mussulman, the eternal enemy of Christ. 
 The Church has regained her normal place in the world: 
 she is once more most manifestly the Spouse of Christ and 
 the queen of the nations ; and for five centuries her Pontiffs 
 are the undisputed masters of Christendom. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEENTH. 
 DEFENSE OF POPULAR LIBERTY. 
 
 You, brethren, have been called unto liberty. GALATIANS Y, 13. 
 
 I. THE REBUKERS OF TYRANNY. 
 
 Popes had been the protectors of the Italians 
 against the barbarian warriors, who conquered their 
 land and covered it with fortified castles, whence they 
 issued to prey upon the people. About the year 1000 two 
 Emperors favored the emancipation of the Lombard 
 cities, which soon adopted republican forms of government. 
 But the Hohenstauffen Emperors (11381256) wished to 
 establish a universal and absolute monarchy, and strove 
 to annex Italy to Germany and to subject them both to 
 their own arbitrary power. If they were the masters of 
 those two countries they could control the world. The 
 Popes put themselves at the head of the Italians and 
 entered into alliance with the German rivals of the imperial 
 family. The populists were called Guelphs from the leader 
 of the German nobles, Welf or Guelph of Altdorff. The 
 imperialists were called Ghibellines, after Wayblingen, the 
 first family seat of the Hohenstauffen. Gigantic wars were 
 waged to repel the tyrants. Italy became the classic land 
 of liberty and culture. More than two hundred republics 
 arose, where all the arts and sciences flourished for 
 centuries. 
 
 II. FREDERIC BARBAROSSA. 
 
 Frederic I (1152 1190) was a great prince, but he 
 was possessed with too extravagant an idea of his own 
 prerogatives. He could not tolerate the liberty of the 
 republics of Italy nor the independence of the Bishops of 
 Rome. In A. D. 1158 German armies passed the Alps to 
 
DEFENSE OF POPULAR LIBERTY. 137 
 
 reduce the thriving cities of Lombardy. The Milanese had 
 -either destroyed or fortified the bridges of the Adda, but 
 the German cavalry succeeded in crossing it. Siege was 
 laid to Milan, and famine forced that city to capitulate. 
 The emperor agreed not to enter the gates ; but he erected 
 a throne at a distance of two leagues, where he effectively 
 humiliated the proud republicans. There the Archbishop 
 and the nobles were compelled to appear before him bare- 
 footed and bareheaded ; thither the people had to come 
 with ropes around their necks, and, all prostrate on the 
 ground, to take the oath of allegiance. Then Frederic 
 summoned a diet in the plain of Roncaglia, and had his 
 alleged imperial rights enlarged on in great detail by four 
 Doctors of the University of Bologna. Nothing less was 
 claimed than the same absolute power once wielded by 
 the Pagan Emperors. This was expressed by such adages 
 as: "The will of Caesar is law," and "The good pleasure 
 of the prince has the force of law." Thus the municipal 
 constitutions of the Lombard cities and the freedom of the 
 Papal states were virtually abolished. A podesta or judge 
 foreign to the town was appointed to enforce the imperial 
 laws. 
 
 The Milanese flew to arms. Frederic besieged them, 
 and again resolved to starve them to death. Their crops 
 were mowed down, their vinestocks cut, and their trees 
 felled or barked. They he'd out for two years; but in 
 1162 their provisions, already nearly exhausted, were 
 destroyed by fire, and they were therefore compelled to 
 surrender at discretion. Frederic delayed their sentence 
 for a month. Then he ordered the town completely 
 evacuated, and had the soldiers of the Ghibelline cities 
 level it to the ground. The people were distributed between 
 four villages, built at two leagues distance from their 
 former city; but the higher classes fled to the neighboring 
 cities, and spread everywhere their love of liberty and their 
 thirst for vengeance. Frederic had long before attacked 
 . the Papal rights and had been threatened with excommuni- 
 cation for so doing by Adrian IV. When Alexander III 
 (11591181) was elected to the Roman Pontificate by 
 the College of Cardinals, three imperialist cardinals pro- 
 
138 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ceeded to elect an antipope, and Alexander had to flee to 
 France, where he excommunicated the schismatical emperor. 
 
 Frederic's tyranny caused a general uprising in Italy, 
 and his exactions were so exorbitant that the taxes 
 amounted to five-sixths of the revenues. The Lombard 
 cities made secret leagues against him, and drove away 
 his hateful podestas. The despot was powerful enough to 
 reduce them all into submission, and even to capture Rome. 
 But there God's vengeance awaited him; for the fever of 
 the Roman marshes carried off the flower of the German 
 nobility. 
 
 Fifteen Lombard cities now bound themselves by a 
 solemn treaty to unite in resisting the imperial aggressions 
 and upholding the Pope; and even all the Ghibelline cities 
 joined them, except Pavia. Their first step was to rebuild 
 Milan; which arose from her ashes as an aggressive and 
 uncompromising republic. Their second step was to build 
 a new city to check Pavia, and they gave it the name of 
 Alexandria, in compliment to the liberty -loving Pope (1168). 
 
 Frederic I. prepared to take a signal revenge. In 1174 
 he burned Suzes and encamped before Alexandria. But he 
 was driven off by the Italian patriots, and abandoned by 
 the German Guelphs. Beaten at Legnano, he escaped from 
 the field alone and disguised, with little hope of raising a 
 fresh arnry, and he was reduced to sue for peace. He 
 solemnly recognized the rights of the Popes and of the 
 people, and he faithfully respected them till the end of his 
 days. For two centuries the cities of northern Italy 
 flourished as republics under the protection of the German 
 Emperors and the guidance of the Roman Pontiffs. 
 
 III. FREDERIC II. 
 
 Barbarossa's eldest son, Henry VI., married Con- 
 stantia, the heiress of Naples or the two Sicilies. He was 
 a tyrant and died young. Pope Innocent III. protected 
 his widow and his infant child Frederic, and, upon the 
 promise of separating Italy from Germany and of under- 
 taking a crusade, obtained for the latter the election to 
 the German Empire. But Frederic II. (12241250) proved 
 to be an ungrateful man and a refined hypocrite: he was. 
 
DEFENSE OF POPULAR LIBERTY. 139 
 
 a tyrant, an infidel and a libertine, and he sacrificed 
 everything to the Hohenstauffen idea of universal and 
 absolute domination. He deceived Pope Honorius III., 
 but he was unmasked by Gregory IX. and put down by 
 Innocent IV. Under various pretexts Frederic put off the 
 Crusade, although Damietta was besieged and captured 
 by the Mohammedans. Far from punishing the infidel 
 Saracens who had devastated Italy, he selected 20,000 of 
 them for his guard. Meanwhile he strengthened the in- 
 fluence of his family in Italy and in Germany, where his 
 eldest son Henry was selected as his successor. Milan 
 flung to the breeze her carrocc/o, or war-standard, and 
 fifteen cities pledged themselves again to the Lombard 
 confederation. It was only after many halts, and after 
 an excommunication by the aged but energetic Pope Gre- 
 gory IX., that Frederic went on the crusade to the Holy 
 Land to which he had pledged himself. But he shamefully 
 compromised with the enemy, as if he had been a Mussul- 
 man himself. Meanwhile he had all the old Pagan laws 
 of Sicily collected by his chancellor Peter de Vineis, in order 
 to justify the re-establishing of the absolute Caesarism of 
 the Roman Emperors, upon the ruin of the Christian con- 
 stitutions. To these dangerous pretensions the Pope con- 
 tented himself with opposing the Five Books of the 
 Decretals compiled by St. Raymond de Pennafort. When 
 Frederic's eldest son and successor-elect revolted, Pope 
 Gregory showed his magnanimity by writing to the German 
 princes to assist in putting him down. As a result, the 
 rebel-prince was conquered, and the right of succession was 
 transferred to his brother Conrad. 
 
 Frederic put at the head of the Ghibelline faction Ecce- 
 lino the Fierce, a man without virtue, pity or remorse; 
 he granted him a bodyguard of Germans and Saracens, 
 and gave him his natural daughter in marriage. He 
 invested his natural son Enzio with Sardinia, a fief of the 
 Holy See. The undaunted Gregory IX excommunicated the 
 aggressive Emperor, proclaimed a crusade, and summoned 
 a General Council. Frederic besieged Rome, whence he was 
 driven away by the crusaders. Enzio in the meantime 
 killed a hundred of the Bishops coming to the Council. 
 
140 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The news of this outrage gave such a terrible schock 
 to the nonagenarien Pontiff that he died shortly after. 
 For seventeen months the cardinals were unable to choose 
 a successor. Finally Innocent IV was elected, and he com- 
 menced negotiations with Frederic, who tried to surprise 
 and capture him. But he fled to Genoa and thence to 
 Lyons, where he convoked the thirteenth General Council, 
 which deposed the faithless Emperor in 1245. On hearing 
 of his sentence, Frederic II put on his crown, exclaiming: 
 "Torrents of blood shall flow ere it fall from my head." 
 In vain did he appeal to the Ghibellines of Italy and to 
 the princes of Europe; he was abandoned. Defeated by 
 the Guelphs at Parma, and left alone, he was forced to 
 retire to a small town of southern Italy, whence he sent 
 to offer reparation. In the midst of his trouble he was 
 overtaken with sicknes, and he died over whelmed with 
 grief and humiliation. His sole surviving legitimate son, 
 Conrad IV was driven from Germany by William of Hol- 
 land, and retired to Italy, where he had to wrest his king- 
 dom of Sicily from his natural brother Manfred. But he 
 died in his youth and Manfred again seized the reins of 
 power in Naples. The Pope, who was the suzerain, there- 
 upon called in Charles of Anjou, who conquered the usurper. 
 The new king showed great cruelty towards the friends of 
 the old dynasty, and Conradin, Conrad's son, was sum- 
 moned from Germany, but he was defeated and beheaded 
 at Naples. 
 
 Thus perished the Hohenstauffen dynasty, which had 
 threatened to enslave Church and State alike. Thus perish 
 all the persecutors of the people of God ! 
 
 IV. THE POPES THE FRIENDS OF REPUBLICS. 
 
 Ignorant people alone accuse the Roman Pontiffs of 
 being the enemies of liberty. It was under the vigilant eye 
 and fostering care of the Popes that the first republics 
 which afforded true liberty for all were established and 
 flourished, and that northern Italy became the land of 
 freedom and equality, as the republics of ancient Greece 
 never were even in their most halcyon days. It was by 
 their assistance that these republics were defended against 
 
DEFENSE OF POPULAR LIBERTY. 141 
 
 the encroachment of ambitious neigbors, and that many 
 preserved their independence until the Protestant Revolt 
 deprived the Sovereign Pontiffs of much of their political 
 influence. The Republic of Venice subsisted from 457 to 
 1797, and for centuries was the metropolis of commerce 
 in the southern world. 
 
 There never has been a period in all history, when 
 independent republics were so numerous as they were when 
 the temporal ascendancy of the Papacy was at its height ; 
 and nearly all of the republics of the present day are in 
 Catholic lands, while almost all lands with a separatist 
 majority, whether Pagan, Mohammedan, Protestant or 
 Schismatic, have monarchical governments. 
 
 Our own young American republic gained her autonomy 
 chiefly by the aid of Catholic allies, and her most devoted 
 citizens adhere to the faith and fellowship of the Universal 
 Church. May she live longer than the oldest of the Italian 
 republics ! May she stand, like the Church of God, till the 
 end of the ages ! 
 
CHAPTER TWENTIETH. 
 THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 That you may know . . . what is the exceeding greatness of 
 His power toward us .... which He wrought in Christ, raising 
 Him from the dead, and setting Him on His right hand in the 
 heavenly places ; above all principality and power and virtue 
 and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this 
 world, but also in that, which is to come. And He hath sub- 
 jected all things under His feet ; and hath made Him head over 
 all the Church, which is His Body, and the fullness of Him Who 
 is filled all in all. EPHESIANS i, 19 23. 
 
 I. A PONTIFF-PRESIDENT. 
 
 THE nations of Europe were Christian to the marrow 
 of their bones. Their first object was eternal salvation ; 
 their greatest treasures were faith and virtue, which they 
 promoted by their laws and defended by their arms. They 
 formed a Christian commonwealth under the presidenc} r 
 or leadership of the Popes. A president of a republic has 
 to maintain the constitution, to enforce the laws and to 
 repel the enemy. The Roman Pontiffs performed these duties 
 with more zeal and success than any other line of rulers. 
 No Pope was more really the President of the Catholic 
 world than Innocent III ; none was more powerful and 
 respected, and few did more good. Innocent was a born 
 leader: he belonged to the great family of the Conti, which 
 gave four distinguished Popes to the Church. He studied 
 theology and law at the famous universities of Paris and 
 Bologna. Elected Pope at the age of thirty seven, he 
 entreated the cardinals not to compromise that august 
 dignity by placing it in his young and inexperienced hands. 
 Seated on the throne of Peter, he gathered around himself 
 the wisest men of the age, and examined personally and 
 attentively every question that came before him, and thus 
 won universal confidence for his administration. For half 
 a century the Roman citizens and the German emperors 
 had striven to lower the Papal power; the former to 
 
THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. 143 
 
 restore their ancient republic, the latter to establish an 
 absolute power in Europe. By his magnaminity Innocent 
 won the admiration of the Romans and dissipated their 
 dreams of civic reorganization. By his diplomatic skill he 
 became the undisputed leader of the Tuscan and Lombard 
 cities and of the two Sicilies. Thus seated unhampered on 
 the throne of Peter, Innocent was free to employ all the 
 resources of his mastermind in promoting the general 
 interests of Christendom. 
 
 II. THE ARBITRATOR OF NATIONS. 
 
 Innocent III was chosen as arbiter in almost all 
 national and international questions. He granted royal 
 titles to the rulers of Armenia, Bulgaria and Bohemia, he 
 settled the disputed successions of Hungary, Poland and 
 Sweden, and he alleviated the great troubles, which 
 afflicted Italy, Germany and England. 
 
 After the death of Henry VI and of his wife Constantia 
 of Naples, Pope Innocent III became the tutor of their son 
 Frederic II, then three years old. In Italy he protected 
 that prince's hereditary kingdom of Sicily against enemies 
 of all kinds. In Germany he favored the election of the 
 Guelph Otto IV, who, against all expectations, became a 
 despot and persecutor, and who therefore was in the end 
 excommunicated and abandoned by all. Meanwhile the 
 Sovereign Pontiff had reared his pupil with the greatest 
 care, and now he secured for him the election to the Empire. 
 Nothwithstanding that Frederic owed everything to Pope 
 Innocent III, he turned against his benefactor and against 
 the Christian people, and within half a century his dynasty 
 
 (was extinguished, as described in the foregoing chapter. 
 In England John Lackland murdered his nephews with 
 his own hands and usurped their throne. Beaten by Philip 
 Augustus of France, he had recourse to the Pope, who 
 obtained for him a truce of five years. But this ungrateful 
 prince likewise turned against his benefactor. He refused 
 to admit to the See of Canterbury Stephen Langton, an 
 Englishman who had been canonically elected by the metro- 
 politan chapter and officially confirmed by the Holy See. 
 After vain and long negotiations, the Pope laid England 
 
144 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 under interdict, and sent Geoffrey to promulgate the 
 Pontifical degree. By order of the king the intrepid herald 
 was covered with a ponderous cope of lead, and left with- 
 out food or assistance until he expired. Moreover, John 
 made alliance with the Socialist Albigenses, and with the 
 king of Morocco, promising the latter to become a Moham- 
 medan. Then Innocent III deposed him from the throne 
 he so dishonored, absolving his subjects and his vassals 
 from their oaths of allegiance. Philip Augustus undertook 
 the execution of the sentence, and John, whose subjects 
 were not willing to be partakers in his iniquities, had to 
 submit. He recognized Langton as Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, promised to repair the evil he had done in other par- 
 ticulars, and even -went so far as to declare himself a vassal 
 of the Roman Pontiffs, in order to secure their protection 
 against the enemies whom his crimes had raised up against 
 him, outside of England as well as within its borders. 
 
 Langton became the leading spirit of the league for the 
 restoration of the ancient English rights which had been 
 curtailed by the Norman kings. The barons assembled, 
 under the name of "the army of God and of His Church", 
 and were ready to enter London by force of arms. John 
 was driven from his capital, and soon came to terms, 
 signing the Great Charter of English liberties, in the presence 
 of the Primate and the nobles, on an island of the Thames 
 called Runnymede. According to this constitution the king 
 was to levy no taxes without the consent of the great 
 national council; no freeman could be arrested, outlawed 
 or executed save by the sentence of his peers, and the 
 liberties of the English Church were to be respected by the 
 Crown. The faithless king violated his promises; where- 
 upon the barons flew to arms, and offered the crown to 
 Louis, the Dauphin of France, who entered London in 
 triumph. John Lackland died soon after his disaster, truly 
 a king "without land." 
 
 III. THE ENFORCER OF THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 
 
 Innocent III was a vigilant pastor in promoting virtue 
 and removing scandals. In the famous twelfth Ecumenical 
 Council, held at the Lateran in 1313, he reduced the 
 
THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. 145 
 
 number of obligatory communions, but he enforced the 
 annual reception of the sacraments by every Christian, 
 under pain of mortal sin and ecclesiastical censure. He 
 approved and favored the mendicant orders of St. Francis 
 and St. Dominic, who by their virtue and their preaching 
 exerted a most salutary influence upon the whole Church. 
 He attacked vice and scandals everywhere, and put an end 
 to the adulteries that defiled the thrones of France and 
 Leon. 
 
 The king of France, Philip Augustus, had married the 
 Danish princess Ingelberga, from political motives. Soon 
 he felt an uncontrollable aversion for his wife, and, under 
 pretext of relationship, he had his marriage annulled by a 
 council of venal bishops. Ignorant even of the language 
 of the judges, the wretched queen was utterly defenceless, 
 and when the sentence was translated to her she cried in 
 a mournful tone: "Rome! Rome!" She refused to return 
 to Denmark, and was relegated to the convent of Beau- 
 rep aire. 
 
 Philip at once pretended to espouse Agnes of Merania, 
 the object of his criminal passion. Innocent III knew no 
 hesitation in the path of duty. He sent a legate to France 
 with orders to bring Philip to conform to the law of God, 
 or else to cast an interdict upon his realm. A Council 
 was convened at Dijon, to which the king was summoned, 
 but where he refused to appear. The Papal legate pro- 
 nounced "the ecclesiastical interdict upon all the provinces 
 subject to the king of France, so long as that king refused 
 to break off his adulterous commerce with Agnes of 
 Merania." This interdict threw a veil of mourning over 
 the whole of France. The churches were closed and the 
 Divine offices suspended. Philip's attendants shunned his 
 presence and fled from him as from the enemy of God and 
 man. In vain did he exile Bishops and threaten the general 
 body of the clergy, in vain did he entreat the Pope to 
 alter the sentence, in vain did he try to touch the nobles 
 by his misery. Bringing his abashed and troubled Agnes 
 into their presence, he asked them: "What shall I do?" 
 "Obey the Pope," they cried; "Put away Lady Agnes and 
 restore Queen Ingelberga." The king yielded; Agnes was 
 
 10 
 

 146 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 sent away, and died soon after ; and Ingelberga reascended 
 the throne. In thus conquering himself, Philip appeared 
 even greater than in conquering his enemies at the glorious 
 battle of Bouvines. 
 
 It is the eternal glory of the Catholic Church to have 
 rebuked the adultery of the most powerful kings, especially 
 in face of the degrading polygamy of Mohammedanism. 
 That same unbending policy, in cases where the immutable 
 law of God is at stake, the Church followed against the 
 crowned libertine of England, in the very teeth of threaten- 
 ing Protestantism. What a pity for Henry's six wives 
 and victims that the Popes had lost control of Christian 
 Europe! The Catholic Church was always the first and 
 best defender of woman's most precious rights. 
 
 IV. THE DEFENDER OF CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 The communistic Albigenses, a sect sprung out of the 
 Manichean stock, were undermining Christian society by 
 their immoral teachings and practices, their attacks upon 
 all the institutions of religion and civilization, their lawless 
 destruction of property and their cruel slaughter of priests, 
 religious and faithful people in the regions in which they 
 ran riot. The Mohammedans, also, were still warring to 
 wipe Christianity from the face of the earth. In the twelfth 
 Ecumenical Council Innocent III condemned the fatal 
 heresy of the Albigenses, as well as the errors of several 
 other kinds of sectaries, and proclaimed a Holy War 
 throughout all Christendom. Not less than five Crusades 
 were inaugurated under his impulse: The war against the 
 foul and savage Albigenses, the league of the Spaniards 
 against the Moors which crushed the Mohammedan 
 power in Spain at the battle of Tolosa, and three crusades 
 to the East. The Fourth Crusade was deviated to Con- 
 stantinople, through the wiles of the unscrupulous doge 
 Dandolo, where it erected a Latin empire. Innocent dis- 
 approved of that course, and moved heaven and earth to 
 form a new crusade against the Turks. He created such 
 an enthusiasm that 50,000 children arose, without 
 authority, and, full of ardor, but disregarding the dictates 
 of the most common prudence, went towards the Holy 
 
THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH. 147 
 
 Land, perishing miserably on the road. A result more in 
 accordance with his wish was the Fifth Crusade, under- 
 taken soon after his death, under Andrew II of Hungary. 
 Two great military orders were organized under his 
 Pontificate : the Teutonic Order for the defence and spread 
 of Christianity, and the Order of the Trinity for the 
 redemption of the captives who had fallen into the hands 
 of the Mohammedan pirates and brigands. 
 
 V. THE IDEAL COURT OF ARBITRATION. 
 
 Ignorant and prejudiced people attack the political 
 power of the Popes during the Middle Ages as usurpation 
 and despotism. But it was the most legitimate and the 
 most beneficent power that ever existed. It was founded 
 on the general consent of the Christian world, and it 
 formed an ideal court of arbitration during the growth 
 of the modern nations out of the tumultuous half-civilized 
 tribes. The Papal Curia was the supreme judicial court 
 of Europe; in its decisions peoples and kings, abbots and 
 bishops, laity and clergy, sought that justice which could 
 not be found elsewhere. The Popes were like angels of 
 peace amid the warlike nations, and prevented thousands 
 of bloody conflicts. Think of how many wars the American 
 Indians would have avoided if they had been Christians, 
 and under the Pope's influence! In our own times the 
 great statesman Bismarck chose the Pope as arbiter in 
 his dispute with Spain about the Caroline islands. Modern 
 philanthropists are laboring to bring about the establish- 
 ment of an international court of arbitration, to put an 
 end to the barbarous practice of war. Since the breaking 
 up of the unity of Christendom by Protestantism there 
 has never been found any court or commission which 
 could wield the influence once possessed by the incorrupt- 
 ible court of the Bishops of Rome. It would be an immense 
 step toward the abolition of war to once more recognize 
 the Pope as the international arbitrator of the Christian 
 nations, and even of all the nations on the face of the earth. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYFIRST. 
 DECLINE OF TEMPORAL SUPREMACY. 
 
 And the Lord said to Moses : Behold I have appointed thee 
 to be the god of Pharao . . . Thon shalt speak to him all that 1 
 command thee . . . that he let the children of Israel go out of his 
 land. EXODUS vn, 1 2. 
 
 And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharao the king of 
 Egypt and he pursued the childern of Israel, but they were gone 
 forth in ci mighty hand. EXODUS xiv, 8. 
 
 I. CUNNING OF PHILIP THE FAIR. 
 
 TN vain had the two great Frederics of Germairy attacked 
 the supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs ; in vain had they 
 striven to reduce them under their own control. But what 
 the immense power of the Empire had failed to accomplish, 
 the crafty policy of Philip the Fair of France (12851315) 
 successfully achieved. He brought the Popes into a com- 
 parative y dependent condition at Avignon; and thus 
 rendered their temporal sway over the Christian nations 
 impossible, and even jeopardized their spiritual supremacy. 
 He thus wished to control the Christian world; but he 
 signally failed in this scheme. His dynasty did not dictate 
 to many Popes, and it was soon extinguished. Moreover, 
 the French Popes were not the docile tools of the king, 
 as he intended to make them, but true pastors, full of zeal 
 for the welfare of the Christian world. 
 
 The intrepid Boniface VIII resisted the designs of Philip 
 the Fair, but the feeble Clement VII fell into his snares. 
 
 II. RESISTANCE OF BONIFACE VIII. 
 
 Boniface VIII (12941303) was a worthy relative of 
 Innocent III and, like him, a great statesman. Endowed 
 with extraordinary talents, skilled in canon and civil law, 
 and gifted with an iron will, he was the Providential 
 champion of the Church against her most dangerous enemy. 
 
DECLINE OF TEMPORAL SUPREMACY. 149 
 
 The whole world was in turmoil, but he pacified it. He 
 immediately rescued Rome from the control of the haughty 
 nobles. Obliged to interfere in the family troubles of the 
 Colonnas, he incurred the enmity of the two Cardinals of 
 that name. War was raging between Spain and Naples 
 for the possession of Sicily. Boniface generously offered 
 the Papal fiefs of Corsica and Sardinia to the Spanish 
 sovereign, that he might grant Sicily to the French dynasty 
 of Naples. 
 
 In the war between Philip the F'air of France and 
 Edward I of England, those kings were taxing the churches 
 to pay their military expenses. Boniface threatened ex- 
 communication, and thus compelled them to conclude a 
 truce. Philip resented this intervention. He was a Machi- 
 avelian politician, bent on raising an absolute monarchy 
 upon the ruins of the feudal system and of the Papal 
 power; and he trampled indiscriminately upon all rights, 
 human and divine, debasing the coin and despoiling the 
 Church He sent to Rome the insolent Peter Flotte. The 
 Pope revoked the so-called Gallican privileges, which, 
 though referred to by their defenders as "liberties of the 
 French Church", were, in point of fact, instruments for its 
 enslavement to the Crown. In the Bull Ausculta Domine 
 he enumerated many acts of injustice, violence and rapacity 
 committed by the king, and convoked the Bishops to a 
 Council at Rome. Philip publicly burned the Bull, and his 
 wicked minister circulated a spurious document in which 
 the Pope was made to claim France as a fief of the Holy 
 See. The Three Estates of the kingdom were convoked 
 and called upon to maintain their ancient independence, 
 and they swore to do so at the cost of their lives. Not- 
 withstanding the threats of the king fortyfive prelates 
 went to Rome. The Supreme Pontiff had prepared, and 
 the Council discussed and adopted, the famous Bull Unam 
 Sanctam, which was mostly extracted from French writers, 
 and simply placed on solemn record the public right of the 
 Middle Ages. He stated that there are two swords or 
 powers, a temporal and a spiritual, the latter being the 
 superior. When the temporal power deviates from the 
 right way, it is to be judged by the spiritual power. 
 
 I 
 
150 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Meanwhile the Flemings revolted against the debased coin 
 circulated by Philip, and his manifold acts of tyranny, and 
 slew the flower of his nobility at the battle of Courtray. 
 Philip maintained his defiant attitude, arrested the bearer 
 of the Bull, accused the Pope of all sorts of crimes, and, 
 as all schismatics do, appealed from the Pope to an 
 Ecumenical Council. Immediately Boniface issued five Bulls 
 referring to his contest with Philip, and was preparing to 
 excommunicate him when he was prevented from doing 
 so by a brutal attack upon his sacred person. William 
 de Nogaret and Sciara Colonna, with bands of warriors, 
 forced the doors of the palace of Agnani, the Pope's birth- 
 place and temporary place of residence, crying: "Death to 
 Boniface! Long life to Philipp!" ''Open the doors of my 
 apartments," said the Pope to those who surrounded him: 
 "I shall know how to die for the Church of God." Robed 
 in his Pontifical vestments, with the cross in one hand 
 and the keys of Peter in the other, he seated himself upon 
 the Apostolic throne, calmly awaiting the approach of his 
 enemies. Nogaret threatened to put him in fetters, and to 
 send him to the Council of Vienne, where he would be 
 deposed. Meanwhile the Sovereign Pontiff was cast into 
 prison and his palace plundered. The third day the people 
 rescued him and restored him to his throne, but he died 
 from the effects of the brutal treatment he had received. 
 He would have succeeded, like his predecessors, in defend- 
 ing and maintaining the public rights of the Christian 
 Commonwealth during the Middle Ages, had it not been 
 for the cunning of Philip, and the reaction which was 
 taking place in Europe against the temporal supremacy of 
 the Popes ; a reaction due in part to the spirit of worldli- 
 ness resulting from Mohammedan and Jewish influence, and 
 in part to the renewed study of the Justinian code, or legal 
 system of the ancient Roman Empire, which proclaims the 
 Divine rights of kings and their irresponsible autocrac}'. 
 
 III. CONCESSIONS OF CLEMENT V. 
 
 Philip the 'Fair succeeded in creating a French party 
 among the Cardinals, which brought about the election 
 of Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux. The new 
 
DECLINE OF TEMPORAL SUPREMACY. 151 
 
 Pontiff, who took the name of Clement V (13051316), 
 was crowned at Lyons, and remained in France, notwith- 
 standing the protestations of the Sacred College; and 
 thus inaugurated the seventy years' exile of the Popes at 
 Avignon (13091378). His reign was a series of blunders 
 and concessions. He absolved those who had conspired 
 against Boniface VIII, and even consented to listen to 
 their absurd charges against their august victim. He 
 granted to Philip the tithes of all the churches in his 
 kingdom for five years, and he himself levied heavy contri- 
 butions. He consented to the suppression of the Knights 
 Templar, which was contrived by Philip the Fair and 
 solemnly decreed at the fifteenth General Council, that of 
 Vienne (1311 1312). It is true he declared this measure 
 to be a matter of expediency rather than of condemnation, 
 and he reserved the disposition of the Templars to himself. 
 But the cruel Philip burned to death fiftynine members of 
 the Order, and appropriated to himself the best of their 
 possessions within his domains. However, Clement's 
 greatest mistake was to abandon Rome and retire to the 
 obscure town of Avignon. Every Bishop is expected to 
 reside within the limits of his own see. Furthermore, in 
 Rome Providence had provided for the Vicar of Christ a 
 temporal dominion large enough to secure prestige, inde- 
 pendence and maintenance, and yet too small to inspire 
 fear in the minds of the secular princes. But Clement V 
 gave up all these advantages. He virtually renounced his 
 temporal supremacy, and even jeopardized his spiritual 
 supremacy. Retiring to that obscure provincial town, he 
 exposed himself to the influence of the kings of France, or 
 at least to the suspicion of such an influence, incurred the 
 distrust of the other kings, and lost the control of the 
 nations. This appeared clearly in the ensuing troubles with 
 Louis the Bavarian, Emperor of Germany (1313 1347); 
 a settlement was impossible because it was against the 
 interest of the king of France. But the final result of the 
 residence of the Popes at Avignon was that unfortunate 
 period of a disputed Papal succession often incorrectly 
 termed the Great Schism of the West (13781415). The 
 departure of the Bishops of Rome from their episcopal city 
 
152 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 shook the universal veneration in which they had been 
 held, and their final return gave an opportunity for 
 criminally ambitious men, with the countenance of the 
 French kings, to erect a series of antipopes at Avignon. 
 Secondly, by abandoning Rome Clement V lost the best 
 revenues of his Italian States, and ruined completely the 
 city of the Popes. Rome fell alternately into the grasp of 
 tyrannical nobles and impractical demagogues. Nicholas 
 de Rienzi (13471353) thought of nothing less than 
 reestablishing the glory of the ancient Roman republic, but 
 he made such mistakes that he was murdered by the dis- 
 gusted people. When Urban VI reentered Rome, he found 
 everywhere ruined dwellings, scattered temples, deserted 
 streets, impassible roads and famine on all sides. Naturally 
 such lawlessness contracted the income of the Papal states. 
 Heavy taxes were laid on all the churches, and provoked 
 loud complaints and universal dissatisfaction. 
 
 However, the Avignon residence was no Babylonian 
 captivity, as the Germans and Italians call it. For it was 
 freely commenced by legitimate Popes and never degener- 
 ated into practical slavery. The German Emperors by 
 their tyranny and the Roman people by their turbulence 
 had often rendered the residence of the Popes at Rome 
 impossible. The very predecessor of Clement, Benedict XI 
 (1303 1305) who was an Italian, could not stay in 
 Rome. How then could a Frenchman? The Roman 
 people did not realize the Providential part assigned to 
 them in Christendom. Often they abandoned or even 
 betrayed the Yicar of Christ for a Caesar or a demagogue. 
 A Pope arose who said: "Rome is no longer in Rome; it 
 is altogether where I am." 
 
 The removal of the Holy Father was a lesson and a 
 punishment to the Romans. On the contrary, Avignon 
 was a quiet place, long a free city, and then a fief of the 
 empire. It was only under the influence of the king of 
 France through its proximity to his domains and the 
 French sympathies of its people. He was never able to 
 completely control it, and in 1348 Pope Clement VI pur- 
 chased it from Joanna I of Naples, so that the territorial 
 independence of the Papacy might be preserved inviolate. 
 
DECLINE OF TEMPORAL SUPREMACY. 153 
 
 Moreover, the seven Popes of Avignon were zealous and 
 distinguished men. 
 
 Finally, the residence of the Popes at Avignon afforded 
 a new and striking evidence of the protection of the 
 Church by Divine Providence. A hundred-3 r ears' war was 
 raging between England and France, which threatened the 
 ver} r existence of the latter country and prevented it from 
 undue interference with the Church. If Philip had humbled 
 the Papacy, he failed to secure to his dynasty the glory 
 and prosperity he dreamed of. Twentytwo years after his 
 death, his line was extinguished, and the house of Yalois 
 ascended the throne. The kings of England disputed its 
 right for more than a century (1339 1454), and twice 
 France was brought to the verge of ruin. The war con- 
 tinued to rage to punish the French who raised and kept 
 up antipopes at Avignon. As the Church was torn by the 
 rival claims to the Chair of Peter; France, the primary 
 occasion of this great evil, was devastated by civil and 
 foreign war. 
 
 IV. A TEMPORARY EXPEDIENT. 
 
 When there was no other check to the violence of the 
 princes than the Church of God, she enjoyed political 
 supremacy among the nations. When, by means of parlia- 
 ments, communes and free cities, the third estate became 
 a power, it furnished a new check to the tyranny of the 
 princes, and the temporal supremacy was no longer abso- 
 lutely necessary for the freedom and welfare of mankind, 
 although it would still have remained very useful. God 
 allowd it to be suppressed, to show that the Church needs 
 only her spiritual power to stand and to thrive. But the 
 exile of Avignon had given the idea of national churches 
 independent of the Center of Unity, and was the occasion 
 of experiments in this direction for half a century, which 
 put to a severe test the spiritual supremacy. But God 
 was watching over the constitution of His Church, and 
 significant events showed the necessity of the spiritual 
 supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs. The temporal supre- 
 macy fell because it was accidental and human; the spiri- 
 tual supremacy stood because it is essential and Divine. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYSECOND. 
 PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 
 
 Carefully keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 
 One Body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your 
 calling. One Lord, one faith and one baptism. One God and 
 Father of all, who is above all and through all and in us all ... 
 that we may in all things grow up in Him who is the Head, 
 even Christ, from Whom the \vhole Body, being compactly and 
 fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according 
 to the operation in the measure of every part, making increase 
 of the Body unto the edification of itself in charity. EPHESIANS 
 IV, 316, 15, 16. 
 
 I. UNITY OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 JESUS Christ constituted Peter the head of His Church 
 on earth. He promised him the keys, He commissioned 
 him to strengthen his brethren in the faith, and He em- 
 powered him to feed His sheep and His lambs. This Divine 
 commission was well-known and universally received. 
 Throughout the centuries the Bishop of Rome, the suc- 
 cessor of Peter, was the recognized head of Christendom. 
 But the exile at Avignon, and the rise of two or three 
 claimants to the Roman Pontificate, threatened to unsettle 
 the old veneration for the Apostolic See. Some prelates 
 now invented the theory that the college of Bishops is 
 superior to the Pope, and certain kings endeavored to 
 profit by this occasion to curtail the Papal power, which 
 has always been an unwelcome obstacle to the greed and 
 oppression of tyrants. But nothing could destroy the 
 universal belief of the Christians in the supremacy of the 
 Holy See over the whole Church. Accustomed to the serene 
 unity with which Our Lord endowed His Church, the 
 faithful were dismayed and alarmed to hear of several 
 Popes at the same time. A Council was gathered at Pisa 
 to put an end to this scandal, but it only increased it by 
 setting up a third claimant to the Papacy. The Council 
 
 
 
PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 155 
 
 at Constance settled the dispute, aided by Pope Gregory 
 XII, but the anti-council of Basle opened it anew and 
 that in presence of the unquestioned and generous Pope 
 Eugenius IV. 
 
 In 1439 it actually went to the length of electing an 
 antipope. This proceeding opened the eyes of the Christian 
 world, which forthwith met together to solemnly reaffirm 
 the Apostolic doctrine of the Papal supremacy. The people 
 were so alarmed at the evil consequences of the attempts 
 to minimize the prerogatives of the Vicar of Christ that 
 they thenceforth clung faithfully to the Popes, even when 
 they appeared to be worldly or of doubtful character. 
 
 II. DISPUTED PAPAL SUCCESSION. 
 
 The apparent division in the Church often called the 
 Papal Schism, or the Great Schism of the West (1378 
 1415), was not a real schism, as it was neither permanent 
 nor wilful, nor did it involve any separation from the True 
 Church. All agreed that Christ established one flock, with 
 but one head, the Bishop of Rome; but it was difficult to 
 determine who was the lawful incumbent of that office. 
 The most sincere and the most learned men of the age, 
 and even saints now canonized, were divided in opinion. 
 Every means was resorted to put an end to the dispute, 
 and finally a dangerous expedient was hit upon, which 
 only increased the discord, and in the sequel was turned 
 into an assault on the unchangeable constitution given to 
 the Church by Christ. 
 
 Seeing all the evils consequent on the exile of the Popes 
 at Avignon, the Romans demanded a Pontiff who would 
 reside in the capital city. Urban VI (13781389), Arch- 
 bishop of Bari, received the unanimous vote of the con- 
 clave; but he shrank before the burden, and accepted it 
 only on the earnest entreaty of the Cardinals. He proved 
 to be harsh in his manner, and severely proscribed all 
 worldly pomp and display in the Roman Court. This gave 
 a chance for Philip to work up French interests. Through 
 his suggestion the French Cardinals fled, and, under pre- 
 text that the election had not been free, and was therefore 
 
156 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 invalid, they elected the Prince-Bishop of Geneva, who 
 took the name of Clement VII (13781394), and retired 
 to Avignon. Aided by French diplomacy he secured the 
 recognition, not only of France, but also of Naples, Spain 
 and Scotland, whose clergy and people for the most part 
 believed him, in good faith, to be the real bishop of Rome. 
 He was succeeded by the crafty Spaniard Peter de Luna, 
 tinder the name of Benedict XIII (13941424), who pro- 
 longed the schism in spite of the efforts of all the princes 
 of Europe. When this ambitious and obstinate man was 
 dying, at the age of ninety, in the little village of Peniscola 
 in Valencia, he had only two cardinals left, but neverthe- 
 less he obliged them to elect a successor to his claims, 
 who, however, soon reconciled himself with the Church. 
 In the meantime the line of the true Vicars of Christ was 
 continued at Rome. Gregory XII (14061414), the third 
 successor of Urban, was intent upon calling a Council, to 
 settle the question as to who was the legitimate Supreme 
 Pontiff, and for a long time endeavored to induce the 
 Avignon claimant Benedict XIII to consent to a con- 
 ference. 
 
 The evils of discord weighed heavily upon the Church. 
 The uncertainty of the people and their consequent anxiety 
 of mind, as well as the cost of keeping up two Papal 
 courts, was a terrible burden. Each of the claimants 
 sought recognition by all sorts of means, often with no 
 other effect than to render himself contemptible in the eyes 
 of those with whom he negotiated. Each nominated 
 Bishops and other prelates with a view to the strengthen- 
 ing of his own cause, and levied heavy contributions to 
 meet the expenses of his administration, the French anti- 
 popes being particularly exacting in this respect. 
 
 Various plans of reconciliation were developed, such as 
 resignation, arbitration, forcible deposition etc., but all in 
 vain. The Cardinals of the two rival parties finally decided 
 to meet together in a Council at Pisa in 1409. So great 
 was the eagerness of all Christians for the restoration of 
 harmony, that all the notabilities of Church and State, and 
 all the lights of theology and canon law, came together. 
 The Council was opened with extraordinary solemnity. 
 
PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 157 
 
 Gerson, the Chancellor of the University of Paris, in a 
 work on "The Deposibility of the Pope by the Church", 
 maintained that there were certain cases in which the 
 Pope might be legally deposed: 
 
 "When the Church has no visible head, either because he is corporally 
 or civilly dead, or because that there remains no hope that the faithful 
 will ever submit to him or his successors; she may then proceed to give 
 herself a new and undisputed head by means of a General Council con- 
 voked by the Cardinals, or even by the assistance and instrumentaHt\>- 
 of some prince or other Christian." 
 
 The two claimants to the Papacy were summoned to 
 appear before the Council, but they refused and were 
 deposed. The Cardinals then met in conclave and elected 
 Alexander V; and on his death, which took place soon 
 after, they gave him a successor in the person of John XXIII 
 (14101415). 
 
 The two former claimants still held out, so that there 
 were now three Bishops who each claimed to be the lawful 
 incumbent of the See of Rome. The very means resorted 
 to to remedy the evil had increased it. Through the 
 exertions of the Emperor Sigismond, John XXIII was 
 induced to convoke another Council at Constance in 1414. 
 This gathering was of such vast importance that it 
 attracted the attention of the whole world. There came 
 to the city, which had only 15,000 inhabitants, no less 
 than from 100,000 to 150,000 strangers, of whom no less 
 than 18,000 were in one way or another connected with the 
 Council John XXIII, who had presided at the first sessions 
 in person, secretly withdrew from the city when he found 
 that his private character and history were being inquired 
 into, and fled to SchafFhausen, to be under the protection 
 of his friend the Archduke of Austria. Fearing lest he 
 might dissolve the Council, Gerson, the Chancellor of the 
 University of Paris, claimed that an Ecumenical Council 
 had a right to depose doubtful Popes, as well as to sit in 
 judgment on their claims. 
 
 The Council deposed John XXIII, who thereupon, in 
 accordance with a promise previously made, handed in his 
 formal resignation of the Pontificate. Gregory XII on the 
 supposition that he was the true Roman Pontiff, as is 
 
158 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 generally held, first legitimated the Council, because no 
 Council can have a truly ecumenical character unless con- 
 voked or at least recognized by the Pope and then he 
 resigned also. Peter de Luna, the so-called Benedict XIII, 
 obstinately refused to resign, even after the Council had 
 formally rejected his claims and decreed his deposition. 
 The Cardinals, with six deputies from each nation, now 
 elected to the Roman Pontificate the noble Otho Colonna, 
 who took the name of Martin V (14171431). The 
 Council had already lasted four years, and notwithstanding 
 that many abuses still remained to be redressed, it could 
 not be protracted airy longer. 
 
 Pope Martin made many important concessions, in 
 matters of administrative detail, and arranged concordats 
 with various nations for the accomplishment of needed 
 reforms. 
 
 III. THE OUTCOME. 
 1. Conciliar Theory Exploded. 
 
 The generous and indefatigable Pope Eugenius IV 
 (1431 '47, nephew of Gregory XII) anxious to remedy 
 the countless ills occasioned by the depression of the Papal 
 prestige, authorized the holding of the Council of Basle 
 (1431 '47), which had been convoked by his predecessor 
 Martin V. It was attended by only a few Bishops, most 
 of whom were of small mental calibre and seemed bent, 
 not so much on the reformation of abuses as on interfering 
 with the liberties of the Apostolic See. The first session 
 was attended only by Three bishops and fourteen Abbots, 
 the second by only Fourteen Bishops. 
 
 It was precisely when, after the most painful struggles, 
 the Church had finally found an indisputed head, that the 
 coterie of prelates who controlled the Council of Basle had 
 the audacity to bring into question the supreme authority 
 of the Pope, which is the most efficient instrument for the 
 reform of abuses, and which alone is the Divine principle 
 of unity that keeps the Church together. After the first 
 session the Sovereign Pontiff deemed it advisable to remove 
 the Council to a place convenient for the Oriental sepa- 
 
PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 159 
 
 ratists, who wished to be reconciled to the Church, and 
 in the meantime suspended its sittings. The synod als 
 refused to obey, whereupon he formally dissolved the 
 Council. So obstinate were they, that they proceeded to 
 hold a pretended second session in which they proclaimed 
 that the Pope had no right to remove or dissolve the 
 Council without its own consent; thus attempting to 
 define as a general principle, what had been resorted to 
 at Constance as a desperate expedient to settle a disputed 
 Papal succession. Impelled by the spirit of rebellion which 
 animated the governments they represented, they attempted 
 to hamper the liberty of the Papacy and even usurp some 
 of its functions. They claimed for themselves the supreme 
 direction and government of the Church, and went so far 
 as to deny to the Pope part of his revenues and appro- 
 priate them to their own use. The magnanimous Pontiff, 
 for the sake of peace and harmony, reconvoked the Council, 
 and was even so gracious as to confirm the acts of its 
 lawful sessions held in the meantime, so far as these were 
 consistent with the rights of the Holy See and the Divine 
 Constitution of the Church and the Council on its part 
 came to itself long enough to recall in the XVII. session 
 everything that had been said against either the person 
 of the Pope or the dignity of his office. 
 
 Meanwhile the Greek Emperor was asking that a 
 Council might be held in Italy, where he could assist at 
 it, and Eugenius IV, in 1437, after trying in vain to induce 
 the Baselian Fathers to remove thither freely, decreed the 
 transfer of the Council to Ferrara, whither the majority 
 of its members, including the most distinguished, speedily 
 repaired. 
 
 Twentyfive Bishops and seventeen Abbots remained at 
 Basle and held a schismatic council, which they alleged to 
 be the true continuation of the Council of Basle. This 
 little anti-council, after giving the right of suffrage to all 
 persons present, now declared the Pope suspended; and in 
 1439 they presumed to choose in his stead Amadeus VIII, 
 Duke of Savoy, who, under the name of Felix V, was the 
 last of the antipopes. These schimatics wished to make 
 of the Church a federal republic with the Pope as its 
 
160 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 removable head. Forgetting that Christ had charged Peter 
 to rule His Kingdom, they proposed to commit the 
 administration of the Church to General Councils held 
 every ten years. The governments which encouraged and 
 abetted them, especially France and Germany, desired to 
 make their national Churches almost independent of Rome, 
 so far as administration was concerned. The Baselians 
 had already lost the respect of Europe, and had earned 
 the contempt of every one by their rebellion and their 
 high-handed and presumptuous measures. When they 
 elected an antipope, they lost the most able of their 
 remaining defenders. Felix himself withdrew from the 
 city under pretext of ill-health, and in 1449 he resigned 
 his claims and was appointed by Nicholas V an Apostolic 
 Delegate, the miserable remnant of the Baselian anti- 
 council coming to an end at the same time by the return 
 to Catholic Unity of the few recalcitrants who still 
 clung to it. 
 
 2. Papal Authority Vindicated. 
 
 The plague having broken out at Ferrara the Council 
 was transferred to Florence in 1439. The theologians 
 who had at first embraced the new theory of the super- 
 iority of the Councils to the Popes, such as Nicholas de 
 Cusa and ^neas Sylvius, were entirely disabused by the 
 petty acts and the unlimited pretensions of the clique of 
 prelates who had ended by organizing the anti-council of 
 Basle. Experience had vindicated the wisdom of Christ in 
 giving a monarchical constition to His Church. Thus the 
 very attempt at division served to unite the West forever. 
 In the meantime, the dangers which threatened the Oriental 
 separatists temporarily weaned them from their stubborn- 
 ness and pride. Seeing themselves isolated from the family 
 of Christian nations, and threatened more and more by 
 the Mohammedan agressions, they sought a reunion with 
 the Catholic Church. The Byzantine Emperor John VII 
 came with the most representative Orthodox Bishops of 
 the East, and seven hundred men of great learning or 
 high standing. The most prominent omong the Oriental 
 
PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 161 
 
 prelates were Joseph, the Patriarch of Constantinople, 
 Isidor, the zealous Archbishop of Kieff, Bessarion, the 
 upright and scholarly Archbishop of Nicea, and Mark the 
 Archbishop of Ephesus. The first-named was found dead 
 at his table with this solemn testimony at his side: 
 
 "I admit all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome 
 believes. I confess that the Pope is the Pastor of Pastors, the Sovereign 
 Pontiff and the Vicar of Christ on earth, appointed to confirm the faith 
 of the Christians." 
 
 His dying words completed the conversion of any of 
 the Greek prelates who may have still been hesitating, 
 with the exception of the stubborn Mark of Ephesus, and 
 all defined and subscribed that: 
 
 "the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Blessed Peter, the Prince of the 
 Apostles, the true Vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, the 
 father and teacher of all Christian nations, and that to him, in Blessed 
 Peter, full power has been given by Our Lord Jesus Christ of feeding, 
 ruling and governing the Universal Church, as is also contained in the 
 Acts of the Ecumenical Councils and in the Sacred Canons." 
 
 The Fathers also agreed on the question relating to 
 the Holy Ghost. Several heretical branches of the Syrian 
 Rite likewise expressed their desire to return to the one 
 true faith, among them several thousands of Gregorian 
 Armenians and Jacobites (Monophy sites) of Syria, Meso- 
 potamia and Chaldea. To favor these returns the Council 
 was prorogued until 1445. 
 
 A part of the lower clergy and people of the Patri- 
 archate of Constantinople instigated by Mark of Ephesus 
 expressed their dissatisfaction with the submission of the 
 leaders. It was their last act of hostility as a people; for 
 a dozen of years later they were conquered and enslaved 
 by the Turks. The act of reunion, to which the Patriarch 
 and the Emperor adhered to the end, was like the solemn 
 testament and testimony of the dying Greek Empire, which 
 in its last moments of liberty returned to the fellowship 
 of the Mother-Church. 
 
 IV. VISIBLE PROTECTION OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 From the trials of the Papacy certain superficial men 
 try to deduce the conclusion that it is a mere human 
 
 11 
 
162 THE THREE AGES, 
 
 institution. But schisms and scandals are ordeals which 
 make its Divine institution, its necessity and its benefits 
 only the more manifest. At the very time when the 
 natural course of events threatened to divide the Kingdom 
 of Christ and wreck the Bark of Peter, precisely then the 
 impracticability of the parliamentary system in the govern- 
 ment of the Universal Church was made strikingly manifest, 
 the supremacy of the Pope was proclaimed by the whole 
 Christian world, and the unity of the Church was estab- 
 lished so firmly that it had never since been jeopardized 
 even in appearance. 
 
 The loyalty of the Christians was soon put to a severe 
 test. The public disputes over the possession of the Papal 
 dignity had allowed many abuses to spring up in the 
 Church. During the depression of the Apostolic See the 
 clergy had become more worldly and lawless. Cardinals 
 and other prelates lived in princely style, and some of the 
 Popes acted like worldly princes. Alexander VI (1492 1503) 
 has been accused of most heinous sins, though learned 
 historians have endeavored to prove that his conduct was 
 blameless after his elevation to the Chair of Peter. All 
 these causes tended to lower the general esteem for the 
 Papacy. Nevertheless, the people clung to those worldly 
 Popes, as to the Vicars of Christ, to whom obedience is 
 due, not for their personal qualities, -but for their Divine 
 office. 
 
 Moreover, God watched over His Vicars on earth, He 
 preserved them, according to His promises, from any 
 departure from sound doctrine in their official utterances, 
 and helped them, when seated on the throne of Peter to 
 lead good lives, in the midst of the terrible temptations 
 incident to the Renaissance of Pagan traditions in the 
 field of art and letters. The only serious charge against 
 them in most cases was that of nepotism, that is, the 
 advancement of nephews and other relations to honorable 
 and lucrative positions. But almost all rulers favor their 
 own families, and the Popes often thought that they 
 needed to surround themselves with trusted relatives as a 
 protection against wily courtiers and secret foes. At all 
 events even these Popes were still the most virtuous and 
 
PERPETUITY OF SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY. 163 
 
 the most progressive rulers of their times. They delivered 
 Italy from the invading armies of the French and the 
 Germans, and they preserved Europe from the terrible 
 yoke of the Mussulmans. The aged Pius II was .about to 
 sail in person against the Turks, when he died in the port. 
 Leo X (1513 1521) was so great a protector of arts and 
 letters that his name is given to one of the most brilliant 
 periods of human culture. The great Council of Lateran 
 (1512 1517) decreed many useful reforms and there arose 
 a great number of eminent saints and doctors of renown. 
 Finally, the Popes sent out armies of missionaries to the 
 newly-discovered lands in Asia and America. Thus, not- 
 withstanding evil suspicions, the Popes preserved the 
 recognition of the Catholic world, and were its respected 
 leaders in the road of progress and in the work of 
 evangelization . 
 
 Providence seems to have allowed this attempt on the 
 supremacy ol Christ's Vicar on earth before the revolt of 
 the Protestants, in order to warn them into what con- 
 fusion and anxiet\- they would throw their folio wers. 
 In fact they established national "churches" wherever they 
 could, which they maintained by the bayonet; but they 
 could not keep together the Christians of a single land, 
 and, on the contrary, hopelessly divided them on questions 
 of government as well as faith, worship and discipline, 
 making of all northern Europe a camp of bickering sects. 
 Innumerable petty preachers practically lay claim to more 
 infallibility than is attributed to the Pope; and the poor 
 bewildered sectaries know not where to look to find the 
 real representative of Christ and the trustworthy preacher 
 of His Gospel. 
 
 Contemplate the majestic line of the two hundred and 
 fiftynine successors of St. Peter, following each other like 
 the stars ot the firmament, obscured by only a few passing 
 clouds and by one great storm which simply made the 
 brilliancy of the Apostolic succession more apparent than 
 ever. Consider that this is the most important office on 
 earth, and is subject to election every seventh year (as 
 this has been the average life of the Roman Pontiffs, after 
 their elevation) and that there is no hereditary kingdom 
 
164 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 of any antiquity which has not had many and grievous 
 succession troubles. These reflections should inspire us to 
 thank Jesus Christ, from the bottom of our hearts, that 
 He has established such faithful Vicars on earth for the 
 security of His children. Our Lord is with His Church 
 always, and so it will be, as His promises assure us, till 
 the consummation of the ages. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYTHIRD. 
 UNITY OF FAITH. 
 
 I pray . . . that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art 
 in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us : that the 
 world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. JOHN xvn, 20-21. 
 
 I. THE FOUNDATION OF SOCIETY. 
 
 pAITH was the foundation of the Christian society, which 
 it kept one and indivisible during the thousand years 
 of the Middle Ages. It was enlightened by great phil- 
 osophers and protected by wise statesmen. The Scholastic 
 Doctors made much solid demonstrations and such clear 
 illustrations of the Christian doctrine that in all the 
 centuries that have since elasped no Protestant or infidel 
 has ever made any serious attempt to refute them. The 
 rulers protected faith as the basis of society and prevented 
 the spread of heresy as a dangerous revolution against 
 the commonwealth. They established courts of inquisition 
 to prevent false prophets from deceiving the unwary people, 
 and they undertook holy wars, or crusades, to compel 
 fanatics to cease disturbing the public peace, and protect 
 society from the violent aggressions of unbelieving bar- 
 barians. 
 
 II. FAITH ENLIGHTENED BY THE DOCTORS. 
 
 The magnificent unity of faith, which reigned during 
 the thousand years of the Middle Ages, was not the result 
 of ignorance or indifference ; but of enlightened science and 
 spiritual earnestness. It was due to the powerful teach- 
 ings of the missionaries and the profound expositions of 
 the Scholastic philosophers. 
 
 It is certain that the Gospel was not accepted by the 
 heathens except after ample proofs of its claims and clear 
 explanation of its truths. The apostles who sacrificed 
 their lives to spread the glad tidings of Christ's redemption 
 
166 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 among the barbarians knew how to lucidly explain the 
 truths and maxims of the Gospel and indelibly impress 
 them upon the people. Beside their own zeal and natural 
 fitness, they had the assistance of the Holy Ghost, which 
 Je-3us had promised (Matthew x, 19, 20) : 
 
 "It shall be given you what to speak, for- it is not you that speak 
 but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." 
 
 They explained the Gospel so simply and so forcibly 
 that it could not be forgotten for centuries. Neither the 
 ignorance of letters among the barbarian tribes, nor the 
 abuses of heathenism still lingering among the new converts, 
 nor the consequent scandals of the times, could alter or wipe 
 it out of memory, and all the principal dogmas remained 
 intact and incorrupted for centuries. In the eleventh 
 century the great Scholastic Doctors began to appear, who 
 explored and demonstrated every department of theology, 
 and instilled into the j^oung nations of Europe an intimate 
 knowledge of God and his Kingdom on earth, and a lofty 
 ambition for all that is noble and good. The Scholastic 
 Doctors were masters as exact, as profound and as universal 
 as ever have arisen in the scientific world. St. Anselm, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, was the first to follow closely the logi- 
 cal method of Aristotle, and Peter Lombard followed with 
 his Four Books of the Sentences. In the thirteenth century 
 many of the Franciscan and Dominican friars won immortal 
 fame, especially Alexander of Hales, called the Irrefragable 
 Doctor, Albertus Magnus, the Universal Doctor, St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, Roger Bacon, the Wonderful 
 Doctor, Duns Scotus, the Subtle Doctor, and St. Bona- 
 venture, the Seraphic Doctor. 
 
 St. Thomas was the master among these prodigious 
 masters. An extraordinary genius, protected by an angelic 
 virtue, allowed his eagle mind to soar into the loftiest 
 regions of thought, and his vast learning enabled him to 
 reduce into most admirable unity the whole body of sacred 
 and profane science. He kept busy from six to twelve 
 secretaries, to whom he dictated on different subjects. 
 Beside the lights of his sublime intellect, and a full 
 knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and all the extant 
 sources of Apostolic Tradition and ancient philosophy, he 
 
UNITY OF FAITH. 167 
 
 was assisted by Divine illuminations: for he declared to 
 St. Bonaventure that he learned everything at the foot of 
 the Cross. His works are an impregnable texture of 
 definitions and classifications, syllogisms and dilemmas, 
 and prove and illustrate everything from reason as well 
 as from Revelation. Chief among them are the Summa 
 Theologica and the Summa Philosophica (or Summa Contra 
 Gentiles) , so called because they sum up and exhaust the 
 two great sciences of theology and philosophy. The 
 Council of Trent put his Summa Theologica next to the 
 Holy Scriptures and the Acts of the Councils. In our day 
 the great Pope Leo XIII has ordered it to be studied in 
 all the Catholic universities. He saps in his Encyclical on 
 the study of the Christian philosophy Aeterni (Patris): 
 
 "Thomas of Aquin far outshines every one of the Scholastic Doctors, 
 as their prince and master. He gathered together the doctrines scattered 
 through the works of the Fathers and the philosophers, bound them 
 together in an organic unity, and made such copious additions to them 
 that he may be rightly and deservedly regarded as the glory and the 
 matchless defender of the Catholic Church. He nourished like the sun 
 the whole universe with the warmth of his virtue, and filled it with the 
 lustre of his learning. There is no part of philosophy that he has not 
 fully and thoroughly explored. He has treated so clearly of the laws of 
 reasoning, of God, of incorporeal substances, of man and the senses, of 
 human acts and their principles, that nothing is wanting under those 
 heads; neither in his ample store of questions, nor his neat arrangement 
 of the parts, nor in his choice method of proceeding, nor in the solidity 
 of his principles, nor in the strength of his arguments, nor in the per- 
 spicuity and propriety of his diction, nor in his peculiar faculty in ex- 
 plaining the most abstruse things. 
 
 Sixtysix universities arose, and covered Europe from 
 one end to the other; and in them the Scholastic phil- 
 osophers taught their lofty doctrines to thousands of 
 students. Salvation being the great care of men, theology 
 was their principal study, and the Christian doctrines 
 became so well known in all their bearings that any 
 twist or alteration or misunderstanding of the same was 
 immediately noticed by the learned world and was speedily 
 eliminated. That is the main reason why no heresy of any 
 strength sprang up in the Middle Ages. The teachers were 
 too well versed in first principles to deviate from the well- 
 known doctrines of Christ. If inferior or restless men 
 
168 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 tittered doctrines that seemed to be novel they had first 
 to meet the men of learning of the universities; and if 
 they were beaten by their fellow-doctors, and their positions 
 shown to be false, they were not allowed to deceive the 
 unwary masses unable to discern the poison of heresy. II 
 they attempted in any way to spread their doctrines among 
 the simple people they were prevented by the authorities 
 of State and Church, as disturbers of the public peace and 
 underminers of the Christian commonwealth. 
 
 III. FAITH GUARDED BY THE STATESMEN. 
 
 Faith being the basis of the Christian society, heresy, 
 which is a denial of it, was consequently a crime against 
 society as much as theft and murder were. Therefore 
 heretics were watched and repressed by the civil authori- 
 ties. If they actually disturbed the public peace, they 
 were punished, like any common offenders, by the police, 
 and if they became a public danger they were put down 
 by holy wars called crusades. In the twelfth century the 
 Albigenses of the south of France, and in the fourteenth 
 the Hussites of Bohemia, made terrible disturbances in 
 those countries, and could not be quieted down except by 
 crusades led by the champions of Christian civilization 
 against the rebel hordes of those dangerous anarchists. 
 
 The Albigenses (11471229) were communists of 
 Southern France who held dualistic principles borrowed 
 from the ancient Manicheans. According to them the 
 spirit is good, the body evil; hence governments, property 
 and marriage, which deal with material things, are evil 
 and must be suppressed. They even held that the God of 
 the Old Testament was a devil, whose works Christ came 
 to overthrow! These impious heretics actually overturned 
 every institution and every monument in southern France, 
 and delivered themselves to the foulest crimes. In vain 
 did the Popes send the most holy and the most eloquent 
 preachers to teach them; in vain did St. Dominic, fasting 
 and barefooted, cross and recross their country and speak 
 as a saint alone can speak. They remained insensible to 
 his burning words until an apparition of the Mother of 
 God showed him a new method of making an impression 
 
UNITY OF FAITH. 169 
 
 upon them. One day when Dominic was praying before 
 the picture of Our Lady of La Prouille, Mary appeared to 
 him, gave him the Rosary, and bade him go and preach 
 the mysteries of the Gospel. His beads in his hands, the 
 mysteries of the Gospel on his lips, he revived the piety 
 of the Catholics and excited the interest of the heretics. 
 While they were praying, they were meditating upon the 
 life of Jesus and Mary, and impressing upon their minds 
 the great truths of our salvation. By this method Dominic 
 alone converted nearly a hundred thousand people. After 
 ten years of hard missionary toil, he founded the Order of 
 the Friars Preachers, to continue his apostolate among 
 the erring and the ignorant. However, the bulk of the 
 heretics remained stubborn and threatening, on account of 
 the protection of Raymond, the powerful count of Toulouse. 
 There were no other means to pacify them save crusades 
 and inquisitions. 
 
 Pope Innocent problaimed a holy war against those 
 wild dreamers and terrible destroyers. The counts Simon 
 and Amaury de Montfort fought like lions against them, 
 the kingdom of France sent its best troops, and it was 
 only after five campaigns that the stubborn heretics were 
 reduced to peace. The Episcopal Inquisition was instituted 
 against those formidable disturbers of social and religious 
 order. It was a court of clergymen under the guidance of 
 the Bishop, instituted to discover and judge heretics and 
 to prevent their proselytism. The eleventh General Council 
 published the following decree: 
 
 "Such heretics and their abettors as are not content to act silently 
 aud in private, but boldly insist upon preaching their errors publicly, 
 thus perverting weak and ignorant people, and inflicting cruelties upon 
 the faithful, sparing neither churches, widows nor orphans, should be 
 denied all intercourse with the orthodox." 
 
 At the Council of Verona Frederic Barbarossa insisted 
 that all Bishops should have their inquisitors to watch 
 the heretics. The twelfth Ecumenical Council granted full 
 freedom of defence to the accused, but recommended the 
 Bishops to visit all portions of their respective dioceses at 
 least once a year, in order to nip all outcroppings of 
 heresy in the bud. In the Council of Toulouse, 1229, the 
 
170 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Episcopal Inquisition was formally organized. When a 
 man was found guilty of spreading heresy and would not 
 make due reparation he was handed over to the civil 
 authorities as a disturber of the public order. The govern- 
 ment applied the ordinary penalties of those ages, which 
 were exile, prison, torture or death, either by the sword 
 or by fire. 
 
 Different from the Episcopal Inquisition of the Church 
 was the Royal Inquisition of Spain, constituted in 1484 
 to destroy the power of the Moors and their allies the 
 Jews, the eternal enemies of that Christian nation, which 
 they had once annihilated and had for so many centuries 
 oppressed. Ferdinand the Catholic asked the consent of 
 Pope Sixtus IV, without fully explaining the case, and 
 obtained it. However, this Pope and his successors often 
 endeavored to mitigate the severity of its sentences. Far 
 from being an ecclesiastical tribunal, the Spanish Inqui- 
 sition was a royal court, against the doings of which the 
 Roman Pontiffs frequently had occasion to protest, some 
 of them going so far as to threaten excommunication to 
 the chief judge unless a reform was made. However, it 
 was no more severe than the other secular tribunals of 
 that time. 
 
 It was the most popular court of the Spaniards, wha 
 felt that it was their chief protection against the worst 
 enemies of their national existence. Finally, it prevented 
 Protestantism from being smuggled into the Iberian pen- 
 insula, and spared it the horrors of the religious wars 
 which crimsoned northern Europe for two centuries. 
 Gibbon, Cobbett, and De Maistre remark that, even con- 
 ceding the thousands of victims alleged by the infidels, 
 they were far less numerous than the millions slaughtered 
 during the Protestant wars of religion and by the blood- 
 thirsty infidels of the French Revolution. Moreover, there 
 always remains the essential difference that the Catholics 
 acted only in self-defence, to protect the existing religion 
 and the order of society, without forcing the dissenters to 
 believe in it; while the Protestants and infidels used most 
 atrocious violence to force unwilling people into their novet 
 and absurd systems. 
 
UNITY OF FAITH. 171 
 
 During the remainder of the Middle Ages there arose 
 only one other heresy of importance, which was a 
 forerunner of Protestanism. It attacked the Church of 
 God, her clergy and her sacraments. John Wickliffe ad- 
 vanced certain theories contrary to the Apostolic faith and 
 inimical to the authority of the State, at Oxford in Eng- 
 land, but he was confuted by all the learned men of his 
 age and country, and condemned at the Council of London 
 in 1373. He had no other followers in England than the 
 fanatical Lollards, who afflicted that country for a quarter 
 of a century by their disorders and their anarchy. How- 
 ever, he found ardent disciples in two Bohemians, John 
 Huss and Jerome of Prague, who were the leading men of 
 the university of Prague, and spread the poison of heresy 
 all over Bohemia. Condemned by the Council of Constance, 
 they were executed by the secular authorities. Without 
 passing judgment on such executions, it is well to know- 
 that these men had caused the death of many priests, and 
 their followers commenced a ferocious civil war which 
 devastated Bohemia for thirty years. 
 
 IV. MEASURES IN CONFORMITY TO THE TIMES. 
 
 If the measures against the heretics were harsh, they 
 were necessary and effective. They were only measures of 
 self-defence against the horrors of civil and religious 
 anarchy. They kept Europe united for a thousand years; 
 and they enabled Christendom to present one compact 
 front against its formidable Arabian and Turkish foes, to 
 offer one certain and undisputed faith to the newly-dis- 
 covered continents, and to stand firm as the rock of ages 
 against the swelling waves of infidelity. On the other 
 hand, divided Protestantism offers the sad spectacle of 
 thousands of warring sects questiontioning every mystery 
 of the Gospel ; not only is it unable to impart faith to the 
 heathens, but it is itself relapsing into Paganism. 
 
CHAPTFR TWENTYFOURTH. 
 HOLINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 You are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy 
 nation, a purchased people; that you may declare His virtues 
 who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 
 I PETER 11, 9. 
 
 I. SALVATION THE GREAT AIM. 
 
 Middle Ages were Christian Ages, whose great aim 
 was the promotion of the reign of Christ and the 
 salvation of souls. They vigorously rooted out heresy, 
 schism and scandal, which are the deadly foes of Christian 
 life; and they made strenuous efforts to practice the most 
 difficult virtues. People in the world attained a high 
 degree of holiness. Man}' retired to the cloister to practice 
 the Evangelical counsels and lead a life similar to that of 
 the Savior. Sanctity was not rare in the world, and it 
 was common in religion. 
 
 II. FULNESS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE WORLD. 
 
 The Christian society consecrated all the great events 
 and facts of the year by religious ceremonies. The Church 
 multiplied her holidays for the joy of the people as well 
 as for the glory of God. "Happy is the people that knows 
 rejoicing." All the phases of the year were consecrated by 
 special religious services. Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament 
 and His mother Mary were like the sun and the moon of 
 the religious world. Triumphal processions carried the 
 Sacred Host through the thronged streets of the capital, 
 as well as through the quiet roads among the fields and 
 through the forests. 
 
 The Blessed Virgin Mary was called "Our Lady" or 
 "Our dear Lady," and the proud knight vied with the 
 poor woman in paying homage to the Mother of God. 
 
HOLINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 173 
 
 In 1290, a month after the last Christian fortress in 
 Palestine had fallen into the hands of the Turks, the house 
 of Mary was taken away from Nazareth by the ministry 
 of angels, and by them was carried, first into Dalmatia, 
 and then to Loretto in Italy. From that day until this, 
 multitudes of pilgrims have streamed continually towards 
 the Holy House. 
 
 Persons of every rank, sex and age arose to a high 
 degree of sanctity. Among hundreds of others shone the 
 following saints: Isidore, a farmer, Homobonus, a 
 merchant, Charles the Good, a count, Godeliva, a princess ; 
 kings and queens of every Catholic nation, such as 
 Edward, Olaf, Henry II, the two Elizabeths, Louis IX, 
 with his mother Blanche and his sister Isabel, Cassimir, 
 Stephen and Margaret ; the priests Ives and John Nepomuk ; 
 the Bishops Lawrence, Malachy, Anselm, Raymond, 
 Andrew, Justinian and Peter Damian ; and the Popes 
 Leo IX and Gregory VII. 
 
 It was natural that among such pious people, many 
 should have consecrated themselves entirely to God by 
 still greater sacrifices in religious orders. However, if the 
 religious received enthusiastic Christians from the world, 
 they enkindled all the more fervor in the world, which 
 thus regained indirectly what it had lost. 
 
 III. HEROIC SACRIFICES IN RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 
 1. Ancient Orders. 
 
 There arose many new branches from the grand old 
 Benedictine trunk. Notable among these were the congre- 
 gations of Cluny and Citeau, each of which grew until 
 they numbered hundreds of monasteries 
 
 St. Bernard, the abbot of the Cistercian house of 
 Clairvaux, was like the soul of the twelfth century. Born 
 of a noble family, he persuaded his brothers and parents 
 and many noblemen to enter the religious life, and thus 
 secured the best energies of the century for the service of 
 God and man in the cloister. Preaching the Second 
 Crusade, he aroused half a million of warriors to leave 
 their homes and go to the rescue of the Holy Land. 
 
174 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 From his convent he inspired and directed the Christian 
 world. He refused to leave his cell when the greatest 
 Churches sought him as Bishop and the Popes as counsellor. 
 
 However, he wrote a book for the guidance of Pope 
 Eugene III, his former pupil. 
 
 In 1086 St. Bruno founded an order exceedingly severe. 
 Penetrating into the desert of Carthusium (the Chartreuse) 
 near Grenoble he bound his followers to a lifelong silence, 
 and prohibited fleshmeat to them forever. Manual labor 
 and contemplation, a board for a couch, a narrow cell for 
 a room, and twice a day an allowance of cold herbs ; 
 such is the life of that contemplative order. It became 
 famous for its masterpieces of manuscript illumination, 
 and for its literary works. 
 
 St. Norbert founded the order of Premonstratum in 
 the diocese of Laon, and, having become Archbishop of 
 Magdeburg, he spread it over all Germany and Poland. 
 
 2. Mendicant Orders. 
 
 The age however required more than the regeneration 
 of the ancient orders. The monasteries had grown rich in 
 consequence of the improvement of the land they had tilled, 
 and of the donations received from those whom they had 
 benefitted. They employed their possessions for the building 
 up and perfecting of the Church and State. Personalty the 
 individuals were poor, but as members of the communities 
 they were rich. Sometimes this was an occasition of 
 torpor to the religious and a stone of scandal for the 
 seculars. Then arose the mendicant orders which gave to 
 the world the example of absolute evangelical poverty. In 
 1210 St. Francis of Assissi founded the first order of 
 mendicant friars. The love of God. and man was his life. 
 As a reward of his devotion to the Passion of Our Lord, 
 he received in his body the Impression of the five wounds 
 of Christ. He esteemed evangelical poverty as the greatest 
 of treasures, and he took literally the words of the Savior: 
 
 "Do not possess either gold or silver, nor money in your purses, nor 
 scrip in your journey, nor two coats nor a staff (St. Matthew x, 10)." 
 
 He abandoned a fortune, and many followed his example. 
 He adopted the habit of the poor peasants of Italy, to-wit, 
 
HOLINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 175 
 
 SL long brown tunic of coarse woolen cloth, surmounted 
 by a hood and confined at the waist by a hempen cord. 
 With Francis absolute poverty was a principle and 
 dependence on alms an actuality. 
 
 With the other orders it was a negative principle, for- 
 bidding individual posessions to the members. The Francis- 
 cans could hold no property even as an order, and were 
 dependent on others for their support therefore they were 
 called mendicant friars, that is, "begging brothers". When 
 Innocent III received Francis in audience he exclaimed: 
 " Where are you to get the means to carry on this work?" 
 "I put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ," answered the 
 saint; "He who promises glory and life eternal will not 
 fail to provide the necessaries of life here below." The 
 great Pope was struck with admiration for the heroical 
 poverty of Francis. The new order spread* rapidly. Ten 
 years after its foundation the general chapter was attended 
 by 5,000 friars; half a century later the order counted 
 200,000 members and possessed 5,000 convents. 
 
 St. Francis was burning with zeal for the conversion 
 of unbelievers; he actually went in person to the Musul- 
 nian camp at Jerusalem to preach Jesus Christ, and he 
 communicated this apostolic spirit to all his children. In 
 1241 the Franciscans arrived in Middle Asia at the court 
 of the conquering Mongols. John of Monte Cor vino pushed 
 his way into China, where he baptized many thousands 
 of people, built churches, and became Archbishop of Pekin, 
 in 1331. When the New Worlds were discovered, the 
 various branches of the Franciscans worked with apostolic 
 zeal in both the East and the West Indies, and converted 
 millions to the religion of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Conjointly with St. Clara, St. Francis established the 
 order of the Poor Clares, and there were still more women 
 than men devoting themselves to a life of poverty. Finally, 
 lymen wished to partake of the spirit and the blessings 
 >f the mendicant orders. So St. Francis drew up a rule 
 unpatible with every state and condition of life in the 
 , which he called the "Third Order," and which was 
 
 ipted with incredible eagerness. Thus not only the 
 spirit of the world did not invade the monasteries, but 
 
176 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the austerities of the cloister reached the heart of the 
 world, and made it bloom with flowers of virtue and 
 holiness. 
 
 St. Dominic, the apostle of the Albigenses and the 
 friend of St. Francis, similarly established a mendicant 
 order of preachers and of nuns, with a third order for lay 
 persons, which were called Dominican Orders. 
 
 Besides these and other new institutions the Carmelites 
 and the Augustinian hermits also adopted the rule of 
 the mendicant orders. These men of poverty exerted an 
 overwhelming influence in the Church, and everywhere 
 enkindled the spirit of Christ and the love of eternal 
 goods. 
 
 So many new congregations sprang up that the Church 
 had to forbid for a time the introduction of new rules. 
 Among these we find in Spain the Hieronymites, and in 
 Italy the Olivetans and Jesuats, the Servites, and the 
 Minims of St. Francis de Paul (1457). Beside the poverty 
 of the Franciscans, the Minims aimed also at an extreme 
 humility, and therefore called themselves Minims, i. e., the 
 last and least of the orders. In the north of Europe 
 flourished the societies of the Beguines and the Brothers 
 of the Common Life. 
 
 3. Charitable and Military Orders. 
 
 A. CHARITABLE ORDERS. 
 
 Terrible plagues often swept over Europe and gave 
 occasion to the rise of charitable orders for the care of 
 'the sick and the needy, such as the Antonins in 1098, the 
 Humiliati in 1134, etc. Noble men and women devoted 
 themselves in the leperhouses to a slow but sure death, 
 with the wretched lepers who were shunned by everybody. 
 
 B. MILITARY ORDERS. 
 
 The everlasting wars of the Mohammedans against 
 the Christians called forth noble orders for the defence of 
 the faithful and the redemption of the captives. Besides 
 the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience the knights 
 pledged themselves to defend the Holy Sepulchre and to 
 
HOLINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 177 
 
 fight the Mohammedans. There were three great military 
 orders spread throughout Christendom, besides a number 
 of others in Spain. The general orders were the Knights 
 Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem (founded 1098), the 
 Knights Templar (1127) and the Teutonic Knights (1190). 
 The Hospitallers of St. John not only took care of sick 
 pilgrims, but also defended them against the infidels. They 
 were the strong rampart of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 
 and after its fall the impregnable bulwark of Christian 
 Europe against the threatening Turks, both at Rhodes 
 and at Malta, over which they successively ruled. The 
 sieges they underwent in 1522 at Rhodes and in 1565 at 
 Malta will be forever glorious in history. 
 
 The Knights Templar, established in 1178, rendered 
 great service, but they were accused of corruption by the 
 greedy king Philip the Fair, and suppressed by the Holy 
 See, and all their possessions were confiscated except in 
 Spain and Portugal, where they were allowed to reorganize 
 under the name of Order of Christ. The Teutonic Knights 
 or Hospitallers of St. Mary of Jerusalem, at first per- 
 formed functions similar to those of the Knights of 
 St. John, but afterwards devoted themselves to the con- 
 version and pacifying of the Pagan tribes of Livonia and 
 Prussia. 
 
 Spain was the battlefield of Christendom and Moham- 
 medanism for eight centuries, and became the land of 
 heroism and chivalry; there flourished several military 
 orders instituted to repel the Moors, especially the Knights 
 of Calatrava (1158), St.Iago (1170) and Alcantara (1179). 
 
 C. ORDERS FOR REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES. 
 
 The Mohammedans reduced to cruel slavery their cap- 
 tives of war and of piracy, and allured them to apostasy 
 by promising liberty if the would adjure Christ. God Him- 
 self and His blessed Mother appeared to heroic men to 
 send them to the rescue of the prisoners. Two orders 
 were established for the special work of the redemption 
 of captives: The Trinitarians in 1198, and the Order of 
 Mercy of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1218. 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 D. THE GLORY OF TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 Thus did the spirit of self-sacrifice take every shape and 
 form to promote the glory of God and the salvation of 
 souls. The Benedictines excelled in piety, the Franciscans 
 in poverty, the Sisters in Charity and the knights in 
 bravery. There were not only a few individuals who 
 practised these virtues, but armies of men and women 
 during many centuries. Did they not live the life of Jesus 
 Christ ? Was not their sacrifice an imitation of the Sacri- 
 fice of Calvary ? Did the sects ever produce such flowers 
 of heroic virtue, and in such enormous numbers ? 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYFIFTH. 
 PROSPERITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all 
 things else shall be added unto you. MATTHEW vi, 33. 
 
 I. MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 
 
 TT is natural that the people of the Middle Ages, one in 
 faith and fervent in piety, should have reached Heaven 
 easier than the people of our day, divided in their faith 
 and immersed in worldly affairs. But those who pretend 
 that they led miserable lives in this world, and that liberty, 
 progress and pleasure were deficient among them, are 
 utterly in the wrong. The feeble were protected by the 
 knights; all the interests of the workingmen were safe- 
 guarded by the powerful guilds; hopeless and helpless 
 poverty, such as is so rife at the present day, was alto- 
 gether unknown ; and there was time and money to spare 
 to erect universities, churches and commercial and public 
 buildings which today elicit universal admiration. The 
 blessings of Heaven are promised to those who serve the 
 Lord, and they are never found wanting. 
 
 II. CHIVALRY. 
 
 Treachery and violence, the usual vices of savages were 
 not absent among the conquerors of the Roman Empire; 
 but they were counteracted by the refining influence of 
 chivalr}'. Christian knighthood was the consecration of 
 valor to the defence of virtue. It was called chivalry, from 
 the French word for horse, because most of the fighting 
 was done on horseback. Only noblemen were admitted to 
 this dignity, and that only after a long military training, 
 
 ' 
 
180 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 in the service of some old warrior. The reception or initi- 
 ation was impressive. After an all-night vigil in the church, 
 with confession and communion, the knight placed his 
 sworn on the altar and the Bishop consecrated it, that it 
 might be used in defence of the Church, and of the feeble, 
 the orphan and the widow. Chivalry helped to remedy 
 the evils of the military system of feudalism, and to soften 
 the wild manners of the times. When half-barbarian princes 
 attempted to trample upon the rights of others, or to 
 oppress the weak and defenceless, or to despoil the churches, 
 the knights stood up for justice, innocence and religion. 
 While the wild nature of the barbarians pushed them to 
 perfidiously destroy their enemy, the knights introduced 
 that fidelity to the plighted word by which a simple pro- 
 mise became more trustworthy than is a solemn oath in 
 our days. They always paid to women that attention and 
 respect which kad to a polite and exquisite society. If 
 they conquered an enemy they treated him kindly and 
 courteously. If a poor knight or pilgrim knocked at their 
 gates they received him honorably and relieved him in his 
 distress. Thus did the knights contribute to create a 
 refined society where honor was considered a treasure and 
 virtue a necessity. Duty and right, respect to the feeble 
 and defence of the oppressed were the mottoes of the 
 Catholic knights. The tournaments of the knights offered 
 more magnificent displays in the middle Ages than the 
 Olympian and Isthmian games in Greece. 
 
 It was in France about the year 1000 that chivalry 
 was first instituted. It was in the holy wars against the 
 Mohammedans that it rendered its greatest services. The 
 most famous warriors entered the military orders instituted 
 for the defence of the Christian society and devoted their 
 whole lives to that noble cause. They became the regular 
 army of the Church, and her bulwark in the most threaten- 
 ing danger. Such were the Hospitallers, the Templars, the 
 Teutonic and the Spanish Knights. Not only did they 
 defend individuals, but society itself, with all the devoted- 
 ness of monks and all the eagerness of warriors. Would 
 not the people cherish such noble defenders? Would not 
 the serfs love to work for such devoted masters? 
 
PROSPERITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 181 
 
 III. FREE CITIES AND GUILDS. 
 
 Certain superficial and prejudiced writers have made 
 the extraordinary assertion that there was neither liberty 
 nor comfort for the masses of the people during the Middle 
 Ages. But history asserts that many cities acquired the 
 fullest freedom and great wealth, in the north as well as 
 in the south of Europe. As soon as the invasions of the 
 barbarians had subsided, some cities of northern Italy took 
 their governments into their own hands. When the Hohen- 
 staufen Emperors attempted to reduce them into servitude, 
 they formed the Lombard League, with the Popes at their 
 head, to defend their rights. They kept up a struggle of 
 a whole century, and thus maintained their independence 
 till the end of the Middle Ages. They were rich and 
 powerful enough to dispute with great kings the dominion 
 of land and sea. Venice, Milan, Genoa, Pisa and Florence 
 then had more power and more freedom than at any other 
 time; and the neighboring kings, jealous of their wealth, 
 made many and long wars to subdue them. 
 
 Venice defended her independence until the end of the 
 eighteenth century, and was subdued by no other conqueror 
 than Napoleon the Great (1797). For several centuries 
 she reigned as queen over the Adriatic and the Mediter- 
 ranean ; she also constituted a strong bulwark of the west 
 against the progress of the Ottoman Turks. She was the 
 metropolis of the trade between the Orient and the Occi- 
 dent, and, so far as the conditions allowed, her trade was 
 as brisk as that of our great commercial centers. 
 
 About the eleventh century the cities of northern 
 Europe commenced to govern themselves. St. Louis IX 
 of France recognized the citizens 7 privilege of choosing their 
 own judges and magistrates. In 1215 the English wrung 
 from John Lackland the * 'Great Charter of English liber- 
 ties." Under the benign rays of the sun of freedom the 
 northern communes soon became popular and thriving, 
 and constituted leagues for the defence of their trade 
 against rapacious princes. Bruges, Antwerp, Ghent, Ham- 
 burg, Novgorod and London were carrying on an active 
 commerce with inland cities and with Venice and Genoa, 
 
182 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Great was the wealth and power of Bruges. The queen 
 of France, Joan of Navarre, in a visit to the Flemish 
 capital, was overshadowed by the toilettes and jewels of 
 the Flemish ladies, and full of spite she exclaimed: "I 
 thought that I alone was queen; but I see a hundred 
 queens around me." When, in later times, the Emperor 
 Maximilian undertook to curtail the privileges of that 
 proud city, he was arrested and kept in prison for three 
 months, notwithstanding the protestations of all the 
 courts of Europe. 
 
 Society enjoyed more peace than today. The Church 
 had solved the social questions of the times, and regulated 
 the relations between the laborers and the masters in a 
 spirit of justice and charity which gave satisfaction to all. 
 The rich merchants did not combine together to form a 
 monopoly of grain and wool, such combinations being 
 treated by the laws as criminal; and the poor working- 
 men were not forced to resort to strikes to vindicate their 
 right to receive in return for their daily labor a livelihood 
 for themselves and their families. Everyone had plent3' of 
 food and clothes, of air and room, and the most isolated 
 serf was better fed and housed than many day laborers in 
 our wealthy modern cities. In every commune the people 
 of the same trade were associated in societies called 
 guilds, under the spiritual direction of a priest of God, and 
 they regulated their prices and settled among themselves 
 all difficulties between capital and labor. Everybody had 
 to be an apprentice and to master his trade before being 
 admitted to a body of tradesmen. The laborer had always 
 his share in the profits produced by his work, and lived in 
 ease and comfort. The public accounts of London show 
 that the workingmen wore woolen clothes and that they 
 had meat every day; while now hundreds of thousands 
 have nothing but cotton to wear and potatoes to eat. 
 The condition of the villeins or serfs seems less satisfactory, 
 as they were attached to the lands of their lords. But 
 these masters were, for the most part, practical Christians, 
 and treated their subjects with charity as their brethren 
 in Jesus Christ. What these serfs lacked in liberty they 
 gained in peace and abundance. They were free from that 
 
PROSPERITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 183 
 
 struggle for existence and fear for the morrow, which now 
 is the nightmare of the laborer of the factories. There 
 were fewer wants than now and they were better satisfied. 
 
 IV. UNIVERSITIES AND CATHEDRALS. 
 
 After St. Gregory VII had replaced the clergy at the 
 head of the Christian people, they resumed their function 
 of educating those who were under their charge. Every 
 church and every monastery had to have a school, and 
 there arose in all parts of Europe cathedral, parochial and 
 cloister schools. However it was impossible to impart 
 elementary instruction to every one; the chief obstacles 
 being the want of paper and of printed books, and the 
 lack of inclination and aptitude for study among the 
 lowest classes and even among the more warlike element 
 of the nobity. 
 
 However, the Church carefully instructed all the people 
 in Christian doctrine, and inculcated upon every one pure 
 morals, respect for the marriage tie and the order of 
 society, and love of family ; and this is worth more for 
 the true happiness of mankind than a superficial book- 
 knowledge. 
 
 If instruction was not as common as in our days, it 
 was more profound and more thorough. A lively desire 
 for higher studies gave rise to numerous universities in 
 which a universal knowledge was taught, and all the 
 sciences -were cultivated. The Popes were the originators 
 and protectors of these great institutions. In the south 
 the universities were erected about the year 1200, in the 
 north one or two centuries later. The masters who broke 
 the bread of science in these great schools occupy the first 
 'ank in the history of genius and of learning. St. Thomas 
 and St. Bonaventure are among the brightest stars in the 
 irmament of knowledge. Such masters drew legions of 
 iger students around their chairs. Fifty years after its 
 foundation Oxford could count 30,000 members. At Paris 
 the number of university men and women exceeded that 
 of the other inhabitants. Bologna had tens of thousands 
 of students, and in 1408 Prague counted 36,000. So it 
 
184 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 was with the other universities, like Salamanca in Spain. 
 Not only were there lady students but also lady professors 
 in those Catholic universities. The graduates were truly 
 learned, and they occupied all the leading places, not only 
 in the large cities, but also in the most humble villages. 
 This was a time of poetical inspiration as well as of scientific 
 research. The Divina Commedia of Dante is the noblest 
 creation of human genius. It lends the charms of poetry 
 to the truths of religion, leading the reader through Hell, 
 Purgatory and Heaven, with truly Homeric genius. 
 
 The artists created their great masterpieces which 
 compel the admiration of posterity, and the scientists laid 
 up stores of knowledge which paved the way to our modern 
 inventions. The compass was improved, and rendered 
 possible the new maritime discoveries in Asia and America. 
 Firearms and gunpowder were invented. The art of print- 
 ing with moveable type was originated by Guttenberg 
 (14001468), and before the century closed the Bible 
 was printed in a hundred editions and many different 
 languages. 
 
 Wonderful progress was made in algebra, trigonometry, 
 engineering, mining, geography, astronomy, medicine and 
 other sciences ; in architecture, metal working, the weaving 
 of cloth, the painting of glass, and scores of other industries ; 
 and as a result and crowning of all these efforts Columbus 
 discovered the Western hemisphere in 1492. 
 
 Great monuments are unmistakable signs of great 
 nations, and there never arose more artistic monuments 
 than in the latter part of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Until the eleventh century the churches of northern 
 Europe were mostly built in wood. After the year 1,000, 
 however, innumerable brick and stone churches were raised 
 in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, England and Germany, 
 which excite the admiration of the world in our own age. 
 Not only did great cities erect such monuments, but even 
 remote villages, and these edifices stand until today, where 
 Protestant or Revolutionary vandals have not overthrown 
 them. Italy, Spain and Belgium, which were relatively 
 free from the ravages of either species of anarchists, are 
 covered on all sides with monumental churches. 
 
PROSPERITY OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 185 
 
 What gives a special beauty to a majority of these 
 structures is the Gothic style, a superb creation of Christian 
 genius. The arts of painting, carving and metal- working 
 all lent their charms to the vast edifices. Their stained- 
 glass windows were made so perfectly that it has never 
 been found possible to reproduce them ; and both interiorly 
 and exteriorly they were adorned with masterpieces of 
 painting and carving. The cathedral of Cologne is con- 
 sidered by many to be the most perfect monument of Gothic 
 architecture. Hardly do its feet appear to touch the earth ; 
 its pointed arches and lofty vaults rise to the sky, and 
 seem to carry heavenward the prayers of the worshippers. 
 The masterpiece of the Renaissance style and queen of all 
 human buildings is the great basilica of St. Peter's of the 
 Vatican at Rome, of which the infidel Voltaire said : "When 
 I stand at the gates of St. Peter's, I believe." It was 
 planned and commenced at the end of the Middle Ages, 
 and it may be called the solemn will and testament of 
 their faith. It measures 613 feet in length, 4-50 in width 
 and 152 in height. But the laws of proportion are so 
 well observed that the eye cannot appreciate its immensity. 
 It is only when one walks for a quarter of an hour around 
 its colossal columns that one begins to have any adequate 
 idea of it. 
 
 The other public buildings were characterized by grace 
 and majesty. The belfries, or archive towers, the court- 
 houses and the guild-houses are structures comparable in 
 strength to the best of our modern buildings, and far 
 superior to them in style and elegance. The light steeples 
 and the graceful outlines of the Brussels and Lou vain city 
 halls, the delicate tower of Pisa, and the palaces of Florence, 
 have never yet been surpassed. 
 
 V, PROGRESS STOPPED BY PROTESTANTISM AND 
 INFIDELITY, 
 
 The ages of valiant knight and dauntless crusaders, 
 the ages of proud republics and powerful commonwealths, 
 the ages of the Scholastic Doctors and their great univer- 
 sities, the ages of the majestic cathedrals and magnificent 
 halls, were a time of brilliant and solid progress. But 
 
186 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 this progress was interrupted by the outbreaks of fanaticism 
 and vandalism that took place in the 16th and 18th centu- 
 ries. Knightly valor, popular liberty, general comfort, open- 
 handed hospitality, university learning and cathedral build- 
 ing were things of the past, and the world was checked in 
 its onward march for three hundred years. Our century 
 has perfected and applied many of the inestimable in- 
 ventions of the Middle Ages; and our wonderful material 
 progress is greatly due to the patient researches of our 
 ancestors. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYSIXTH. 
 A NEW BARBARISM THREATENED. 
 
 O God, Thy enemies have taken a malicious council against 
 Thy people, and have consulted against Thy saints. They have 
 said: Come and let us destroy them, so that they be not a 
 nation, and let the name of Israel be remembered no more. 
 They have contrived \vith one consent ; they have made a 
 covenant against Thee ; the tabernacles of the Edomites and the 
 Ishmaelites. PSALM LXXXH, 4 7. 
 
 I. MOHAMMED NOT QUALIFIED TO FOUND A RELIGION. 
 
 TN the seventh century Mohammed established a new 
 religion. He had neither the requisite virtue, nor a 
 mission from above. But he had a genius mighty enough 
 to move and to enflame the Arabian tribes, for the propa- 
 gation of his system. He appeared before them as the 
 greatest of the prophets ; he gave them as a decree of 
 Allah (their name for Almighty God) the command to 
 make war for the spread of his doctrines, and he allowed 
 them the gratification of the strongest passions. So his 
 followers went forth to subdue the world by force of arms, 
 and thus a perpetual war was begun which lasted a 
 thousand years, and in the heart of Africa has continued 
 on a small scale down to our own day. But the very 
 causes which led to the subduing of continents to Moham- 
 med's rule the rule of Mohammedanism, prepared also its 
 inevitable ruin. .His usurpation of the prophetic office ex- 
 >sed him to the greatest errors, his military propagandism 
 :hausted his followers, and his allowance of polygamy 
 tnd slavery enervated and debased them. 
 
 II. AN INCONGRUOUS SYSTEM. 
 
 Mohammed was born of a Pagan father and a Jewish 
 lother. Left an orphan at the age of six years, he was 
 brought up by his uncle Abu Taleb. When a boy, he 
 
188 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 earned his living as a shepherd, and had no opportunity 
 for learning ; and he could neither read nor write, as he him- 
 self admitted. In his youth he led caravans of merchants 
 to the fairs of Damascus and Bassorah, and thus he became 
 acquainted with the commercial world of his region and 
 time. At twentyfive he entered the service of a rich widow 
 called Cadijah, who entrusted to him her trade with Syria. 
 Later on, he obtained her hand, and thus acquired wealth 
 and position. At forty Mohammed gave up trading and 
 undertook to form a new religion. He had always been 
 inclined to meditation, and every year he used to retire 
 to the mountains for a whole month. But he was no less 
 inclined to sensualism, and he is known to have had nine 
 wives at a time. He had no call from Heaven, as he never 
 performed a single miracle in proof of a Divine mission. 
 His great mistake was to undertake the work of God 
 without qualification or authority. 
 
 Borrowing from the Bible the imagery of the great 
 revelations, he rerelated that he had been before the 
 Throne of the Almighty, who had signed his forehead with 
 the prophetic sign, and shown him the following inscription 
 in letters of dazzling light: "There is but one God, and 
 Mohammed is his prophet." He pretended to be in com- 
 munication with the Archangel Gabriel ; and he represented 
 as messages from the Holy Ghost the epileptic fits to 
 which he was subject. Sometimes he was really possessed 
 by the Devil. After long and solitary broodings he was 
 moved with fearful vehemence, and roared like a camel, 
 his eyes turned red, his mouth foamed, and his whole body 
 streamed with perspiration. During his real or pretended 
 frenzies the monk Sergius noted his words as they fell 
 from his lips. His successor Abu Bekr collected them in a 
 book called the Koran, which is a confused medley of 
 narrations and visions, sermons, precepts and counsels, in 
 which nearly every aphorism is contradicted by some con- 
 trary maxim. 
 
 Arabia was mostly settled by the Ismahelites, and 
 portions of it followed the three religions of Parseeism, 
 Judaism and Christianity, but in a corrupt way; while 
 the rest of the country adhered to its traditional Paganism. 
 
A NEW BARBARISM THREATENED. 189 
 
 There was a national sanctuary at Mecca, called the 
 Kaaba, which contained 360 idols ranged around the 
 black stone of Abraham, and to which thousands of pil- 
 grims flocked every year. Mohammed belonged to the 
 family which had control of the Kaaba. He claimed a 
 Divine mission to overthrow the idols, but his own relations 
 sought to put him to death, and for eight years he had 
 to fight for his life. Finally he fled from Mecca to Medina 
 in 622, from which time dates his Era, which is called the 
 Hegira or Flight'. With robbers and runaway slaves he 
 attacked the Meccan caravans; soon he had an army and 
 captured Mecca and destroyed the idols. Without any 
 prophetic marks he pretended to be a greater prophet than 
 either Moses or Jesus. Notwithstanding the supernatural 
 light of the Old and New Testaments, shining before him, 
 he fell into the worst of Pagan errors, such as fatalism 
 and sensualism, denying the the very liberty and dignity 
 of man. According to him we are not free agents, but are 
 driven by Fate or blind destiny; i. e., our life is irrevocably 
 fixed by God, our lot is cast and we cannot change it. 
 The end of man is sensual pleasure, here and hereafter, 
 and every man may have several wives and many slaves. 
 Such concessions were sure to attract followers among the 
 half-savage tribes of the desert. Moreover, Mohammed 
 gave the Arabs exterior rites and ceremonies capable of 
 dulling their religious cravings, to wit: circumcision, 
 prayers, five daily ablutions, a month of fasting every 
 year, perpetual abstinence from wine, alms to the poor, 
 at least one pilgrimage to Mecca during life, and, above 
 all, war for the propagation of the Koran. 
 
 III. FANATICAL WARFARE. 
 
 When Mohammed was asked to perform miracles in 
 >roof of his claims, he answered that he was not sent to 
 form miracles, but to subdue the world and that his 
 iccess was the Divine seal upon his mission. However, 
 tis conquests were no more supernatural than the con- 
 [uest of Alexander or Napoleon. They were the result ot 
 iis great military genius, organizing the warlike tribes of 
 Arabia for the subjugation of the surrounding nations. 
 
190 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 He fascinated them by the prestige of his personality, by 
 his fatalistic doctrines, and his sensual pleasures, and thus 
 drove them into an interminable warfare against the rest 
 of mankind. 
 
 He dispensed his followers from the obligations of any 
 treaty made with strangers, whether Pagan or Christian; 
 and he made 'war against the whole world his chief com- 
 mand. He said: 
 
 "The sword is the key to the kingdom of heaven. One night spent 
 under arms is worth more than two months of prayer. If any one fall 
 in battle, his sins are forgiven, and his wounds will be bright as ver- 
 raillion and fragrant as musk. Seventyfive of the black -eyed girls of 
 paradise will await him." 
 
 Mohammed imbued his followers with a spirit of blind 
 obedience to the pretended decrees of Allah, as proclaimed 
 by his prophet; and thus obtained an unbounded sub- 
 mission to his orders, even when this involved exposure to 
 the most threatening dangers. He taught them how to 
 fight desperately, and how to die like Stoics, calmly 
 repeating the words: ''It was written." Then he enrap- 
 tured them by his eloquence and his promises. He allowed 
 all the enjoyments of the senses by legalizing polygamy; 
 and he freed men from manual labor by imposing it upon 
 the women and the slaves. He promised a paradise of 
 sensual pleasures hereafter, the spiritual paradise with the 
 Vision of God being only for a few select ones who care 
 for it. Streams of milk, honey and wine roll their per- 
 fumed waves in that Eden promised to the poor children 
 of Arabia's burning deserts. It is an abode beautiful with 
 gushing waters, murmuring foliage, golden couches, bright 
 jewels, and full of infinite and eternal delectations. There 
 will be the ravishing songs of the Archangel Israfil and of 
 the innumerable girls of paradise. Each "believer" -will 
 have more wives than on earth, and 80,000 servants. 
 
 So great was the enthusiasm excited by Mohammed 
 that within ten years his warriors spread his power over 
 the fairest countries of the Levant, and for centuries they 
 continued to aim at universal conquest. Not only did his 
 system inflame the Arabs during his own century, but also 
 the Seljukian and the Ottoman Turks of later times. The 
 
A NEW BARBARISM THREATENED. 191 
 
 long-continued warfare inflicted upon the world by Moham- 
 med is divided into three periods: Arabian, beginning 
 A. D. 622, Seljukian, 1000, and Ottoman, 1356. 
 
 The Mohammedans came with the Koran in one hand 
 and the sword in the other. "Die or become a Mussulman !" 
 was their watch-word. They shed the best blood of Asia, 
 Africa and Europe, and drained away the men and means 
 of every nation. Was not that a return to barbarism? 
 Is it not the custom of the wild beasts of the forest to 
 destroy every animal within their reach ? And all that for 
 the sake of an impostor ! Did there ever appear a greater 
 enemy of mankind than Mohammed ? 
 
 IV. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEGRADATION. 
 
 The very causes which at first promoted the Moham- 
 medan power assisted in the end to hasten its overthrow. 
 
 First, polygamy and warfare drained its population, 
 which had to be constantly replaced by foreign blood. 
 
 Secondly, Islamism degrades woman. It questions 
 their immortality, doubts their honor and denies their 
 rights. Women are deemed so corrupt that they can never 
 go out in public without a veil covering their whole 
 person from head to foot. As soon as married they are 
 confined to the harem, a part of the house inaccessible to 
 strangers. If the poorer women go out, it is for hard 
 work in the fields. Women are deemed so inferior to men 
 that many doubt whether they have a soul. A man can 
 have five wives and as many concubines as he pleases. 
 He is the absolute master of his wives ; he may send them 
 away, he may beat and even kill them, without any fear 
 of the law, which does not consider women. 
 
 Thirdly, Islam reestablished slavery in its worst forms. 
 Not only did it reduce to bondage the victims of war and 
 piracy ; but it hunted slaves, and still hunts them. 
 Hundreds of thousands of Christians have been treacher- 
 ously captured in the waters or on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean Sea by the Saracens, the Moors and the 
 Turks, and transported as their slaves to far-off countries. 
 Millions of negroes have been, and are still being, surprised 
 in their fields by invading bands of robbers. Captured 
 
192 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 and chained like cattle, they are led to distant slave- 
 markets to be sold to the highest bidder. At the present 
 time 2,000,000 negroes are being sacrificed every year for 
 the benefit of the Mohammedan slave-hunters, who only 
 succeed in bringing one-fourth of them to the market, the 
 others being killed in the onslaught, or dying on the road 
 through the African deserts. Thus the Mohammedans 
 destroy the freedom and happiness of millions of human 
 beings for the gratification of a few brutal masters. 
 
 Fourthly, Islam ruined the fairest countries. After its 
 warriors had conquered most of the civilized world they 
 sat down to enjoy the spoils, and left all the work to the 
 slaves and the women. But unhappy beings like these do 
 not work more than they can help, and everything must 
 decline under such a system. Agriculture perished. The 
 immense works of irrigation which made of the East a 
 veritable garden were neither kept up nor repaired, and 
 sooner or later fell to ruin. Fertile plains became barren 
 wastes, filled with weeds and scrubs, thistles and thorns. 
 Trade and industry ceased, and piracy and plunder took 
 their place. Finally the religion of the False Prophet 
 choked learning. In the beginning the fierce Khalif Omar 
 burned the 400,000 volumes of the Alexandrian library, 
 saying: " If they only contain the doctrines of the Koran 
 they are superfluous. If they contain anything else they 
 deserve to be burnt!" It is true that in the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries, under the still-surviving influence of the 
 civilizations that the Arabian hordes had overwhelmed 
 and absorbed in northern Africa and western Asia, the 
 Khalifs of Bagdad and Cordova favored letters in their 
 brilliant capitals. In those cities there arose flourishing 
 schools, equal to those of the Greek empire, and superior 
 to those of western Europe, then in process of formation. 
 However, the Mohammedan Doctors could not extricate 
 their system from the flagrant and degrading curses of 
 fatalism, polygamy and slavery. Such intellectual activi- 
 ties as manifested themselves among the followers of the 
 False Prophet were but the last flickerings of the expiring 
 torch of civilization, and soon died away. By the twelfth 
 century the Catholic schools far eclipsed those of the 
 
A NEW BARBARISM THREATENED. 193 
 
 Mohammedans and the seat of learning was transfered to 
 the Latin nations. The Arabs made some progress in 
 mathematical and physical sciences, but they made little 
 use of their inventions and allowed their countries to 
 become barren and desert. As for the introduction of the 
 " Arabian" figures, the Mohammedans did not invent them, 
 but merely borrowed them from the Hindus. 
 
 Mohammedanism left everything to perish around it 
 as soon as the warrior spirit sunk inert amid the ^enjoy- 
 ments of peace and the pride of conquest. Not more 
 utterly does the burning simoon of the desert wither 
 every trace of vegetation than does Islamism parch every 
 germ of life and prosperity. Western Asia and Eastern 
 Africa were changed under its touch first into a vast 
 battlefield, and then into an immense necropolis. 
 
 V. AMERICA'S DEBT TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 Two monster evils have threatened the United States, 
 vix., slavery and Mormonism. The negroes were driven 
 to the shores of Africa by the Mohammedan slavehunters, 
 and shipped to this country as slaves ; and it cost us 
 millions of lives, billions of dollars, torrents of blood and 
 piles of ruins to abolish negro slavery. 
 
 As for Mormonism, it is the Asiatic plague of 
 polygamy spreading its contagion across the Rocky 
 Mountains. That great scandal defies law and public 
 opinion, and thrives in this country and in this century. 
 
 For a thousand years has Islamism warred to forever 
 establish those evils in Europe and throughout the world. 
 For a thousand years has the Catholic Church shed the 
 best blood of her sons to repel these .twin degradations, 
 and she alone has saved Europe and America from their 
 blight. What would America be today if the Spaniards 
 had not expelled the Moors from Western Europe, and if 
 these fanatics had been left to discover the New World? 
 The Catholic Church has protected the honor of our 
 mothers, the chastity of our fathers, and the liberty of 
 our whole race. Had she never done anything else but 
 relieve and preserve women from degradation, she would 
 still deserve the eternal gratitude of mankind. 
 
 13 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYSEVENTH. 
 ASSAULT OF THE ARABS. 
 
 The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be 
 given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. MATTHEW xxi, 43. 
 
 I. INSTRUMENTS IN GOD'S HANDS. 
 
 Arabs strove (6221000) to subject the whole 
 world to their yoke. They succeeded against the 
 infidels and the heretics but they failed against the Catho- 
 lics. Like the Philistines of old, they were the instruments 
 of God to punish or to test the nations. They were the 
 scourge of the misbelievers and the separatists, and the 
 trial of the faithful citizens of the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 II. PUNISHMENT OF THE SECTARIES. 
 
 The Lord had manifested his greatest wonders and 
 shed His brightest light in the East. Yet tribes and 
 nations had closed their eyes before the Sun of Justice. 
 They had either refused or perverted Christianity, aban- 
 doning themselves to Paganism, heresy, or schism. There 
 is only a difference of degree between the heathens and 
 the heretics: the former are total unbelievers, the latter 
 are partial unbelievers. But often the second are the more 
 guilty, as they apostatize from Christ already known. 
 Similarly, the Pagans simply neglect to recognize the 
 authority of the Yicar of Christ, which the schismatics 
 have deliberately rejected. 
 
 All those who had turned their back on the God-Incar- 
 nate were crushed to the earth and reduced to dire 
 extremity by the fanatical Mussulmans. Within twenty 
 years the fierce soldiers of the Koran subjugated the Pagans 
 and Jews of Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Persia and Berberia. 
 In 638 they captured Jerusalem. In 661 they established 
 
 
ASSAULT OF THE ARABS. 195 
 
 their headquarters or Khalifate at Damascus, which is 
 centrally located near the meeting point of the three con- 
 tinents of the Old World. Within a hundred years they 
 had conquered all the rebel Christians, or heretics, of Asia 
 and Africa; to wit, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans and 
 the Arians. The most obstinate among them were the 
 Egyptian Monophysites and the Arian Vandals, who, in 
 their spite against all authority, and especially against 
 the Byzantine Emperor and the legitimate Patriarchs of 
 Constantinople and Alexandria, helped to forge their own 
 chains. They aided the Moslems to expel the Catholic 
 Greeks from their territories; but they soon received their 
 just reward ; for they were completely overpowered by the 
 armies of the " Prophet," and reduced to a cruel servitude, 
 which has never since been broken. 
 
 The Mohammedan Empire stretched from the Himalaya 
 Mountains to the Atlantic ocean. Before long it was 
 divided : In 750 there were separate Khalifates at Cordova 
 in Europe and at Bagdad in Asia; and in 907 another 
 arose at Cairo in Africa. This division concentrated the 
 Moslem forces at certain points, and infused new life and 
 energy into the three capitals ; which were like so many fresh 
 and permanent armies of occupation, camped in the three 
 continents to subdue them to the religion of Mohammed. 
 
 The Byzantine Greeks were often in revolt against the 
 Catholic Church, but they were as often molested by the 
 common enemy of Christendom. When the Heraclean 
 Emperors attacked the very Person of Christ, they lost 
 their Eastern provinces and were besieged in Constantinople 
 for seven years. The Isaurian and Armenian Emperors 
 were more intent on fighting the images of the saints than 
 the armies of the Mussulmans; so that they were often 
 beaten, and lost large territories. The Macedonian dynasty 
 had good generals, such as Basil I and II and the two 
 Phocases, and reconquered some of the lost provinces. 
 But the ruin of the Empire was prepared ; its doom was 
 sealed when Photius, in 857, and Cerularius, in 1053, 
 isolated it by schism from the rest of Christendom. God 
 seemed to have saved that young empire from the invasion 
 of the barbarians of the north, to make it the bulwark of 
 
196 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Christendom against the fanatics of the south. The Greeks 
 possessed all the vigor of a new nation and all the experience 
 of an old one ; and they could have crushed the Mussulman 
 monster in its infancy. Had the been fervent Christians 
 they \vould either have conquered the Mohammedans or 
 converted them, as the Latins did in the case of the western 
 barbarians. But they neglected their task, and became the 
 victims of their own apathy, as they were enslaved by 
 those whom they might have converted or assimilated to 
 themselves. 
 
 The Goths of Spain and Italy had been bitter Arians, 
 and although they had been converted they had as nations 
 to expiate their crime of heresy. Their peninsulas were laid 
 waste and conquered by the terrible Mussulmans, but their 
 doom was not lasting, and they were able in the end to 
 expel their irreconcilable foes. 
 
 III. TRIAL OF THE CATHOLICS. 
 1. Resistance of France. 
 
 From Spain the Mohammedans, under Abderrhaman,. 
 rushed into France, marking their course by fire and blood. 
 The Duke of Aquitaine was defeated, and fled to the Franks. 
 Charles Martel, the Frankish leader, prepared for the most 
 vigorous resistance. During the summer of 732 the Roman 
 clarions and the German horns kept alive the echoes of 
 Gaul, and called the warriors to the banks of the Loire. 
 A huge mass of Franks, Teutons, and Gallo-Romans 
 gathered around Poitiers, where Abderrhaman had camped. 
 The history of the human race hardly records a more 
 solemn moment. Islamism stood "before the last bulwark 
 of Christianity, the last European army," as a con- 
 temporary chronicler calls the Frankish hosts. If this 
 army falls the world is Mohammed's. 
 
 Derrea gives a thrilling description of the battle. The 
 two armies watched each other closely. On the one hand 
 were the swarthy Orientals with many -colored turbans, 
 white cloaks, round bucklers, crooked sabres and light 
 lances. On the other the northern giants with their bright 
 flowing locks, their long swords and their heavy battle- 
 
ASSAULT OF THE ARABS. 197 
 
 horses. At length, on the seventh day, near the end of 
 October, at early dawn, the Mohammedans were called to 
 prayer, and the signal was given for the onset. The Berber 
 archers sent a hail of darts, and the Arab cavalry bore 
 down like a hurricane upon the Christian front. The 
 Prankish lines never quailed. Twenty times the maddened 
 Arabs returned to the charge, with the speed of a thunder- 
 bolt. The northern warriors received them at the points 
 of their swords, and clove in two the diminutive sons of 
 the desert. At four o'clock the Christians turned the flank 
 of the Saracens, and fell upon their camp. 
 
 The wall of iron breaks. Charles and his Franks charge 
 in turn, and bear down all before them. Abderrhaman and 
 the flower of his host disappear. Charles has earned his 
 name of Martel, the Hammer; for like a hammer he has 
 crushed the power of the Arabs. 
 
 2. Expulsion of Moslems from Italy. 
 
 The Mohammedans were the masters of the Mediter- 
 anean, and committed horrible depradations on its waters 
 and along its coasts. These awful pirates burned what 
 they could not carry off, and took to distant shores all 
 the persons and property they could capture. 
 
 In the ninth and tenth centuries the Popes were about 
 the only defenders of Italy. Leo IV in 874 fortified Rome ; 
 John X (914) and Benedict VIII (1012) leagued the Italian 
 princes against the ever-threatening enemy. In the middle 
 of the eleventh century the Norman knight Robert Guiscard 
 wrested from the Moslem yoke the beautiful lands of the 
 two Sicilies. Soon Italy, led by the Popes, stood in the 
 very van of liberty and progress. 
 
 3. Liberation of Spain. 
 
 If the Visigoths of Spain had succumbed to Arianism, 
 they atoned for it by their heroic struggle against the 
 Mohammedans. When, in 710, their country was sub- 
 jugated by the Mussulmans, many Spaniards sought shelter 
 in the mountains of Asturia, under the leadership of Pela- 
 gius. In 731 Pelagius was made king, and established his 
 capital at Oviedo. The Arabs sent him one of their 
 
198 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 generals, with the sword in one hand and gold in the 
 other. The interpreter was the apostate bishop of Toledo. 
 "You know," said the renegade, "that all Spain has sub- 
 mitted to the Arabs. What can you hope from a few 
 fugitives lurking in the rocks of the mountains?" "We 
 hope," answered Pelagius, "that from these mountain dens 
 will go forth the salvation of our land which you have 
 betrayed, and the restoration of the Gothic empire. Traitor 
 bishop, go back to the unbelieving people in whom you 
 trust, and tell them that we fear not their numbers. After 
 punishing his faithless servants, the Almighty will show 
 His mercy towards His dutiful children. 
 
 The gauntlet was thrown down. Protected by their 
 mountainous country, bands of Goths harrassed the Moslems 
 constantly. They resisted an attack of 100,000 soldiers, 
 and from their mountaintops hurled 60,000 men into the 
 stream of Deva. The successors of Pelagius were the 
 warrior-kings of Castile, Aragon and Portugal, and the 
 undaunted knights of St. lago, Alcantara, Calatrava, 
 Avis, St. John and the Temple, who won back foot by 
 foot the land of their fathers. Their whole lives were con- 
 secrated to the work of liberation, and their deeds equal 
 those of the greatest heroes the world ever saw. 
 
 In 750 Abderrhaman I founded the Khalifate of Cor- 
 dova, which became the most brilliant of tne Mohammedan 
 states. Cordova itself grew into a city of 1,000,000 
 inhabitants, and drew, to itself the learned men of the 
 world. General Almanzor won sixty six battles, and being 
 finally beaten, he starved himself to death rather than 
 survive his disgrace. On the Christian side the Alphonsos 
 and the Qid were still greater heroes, and they made such 
 advances that they seemed to be on the point of driving 
 the Mussulmans altogether from their Christian land. 
 But three times the Moors of Africa were called against 
 them: The Moravides, the Mohaves and the Merinites. 
 
 The invasion of the Moravides was checked at the 
 battle of Tolosa (1212) by the Crusade of Innocent III, 
 where Islam received a blow from which it never recovered. 
 The cruelty of some of the Christian kings during the 
 fourteenth century retarded the hour of liberation ; but in 
 
ASSAULT OF THE ARABS. 199 
 
 1492 Ferdinand the Catholic besieged Granada, the last 
 Moslem stronghold, and reduced it by famine. He then 
 instituted the Royal Inquisition, to protect Christian 
 Spain against the treachery of the Mohammedans still 
 remaining on its soil. 
 
 4. Spain a. Queen , Greece a. Slave. 
 
 In the seventh century the whole of Spain had been 
 conquered by the Arabs, who established their strongest 
 Khalifate on her soil. But her children arose like lions 
 and gradually reconquered their land. They carried on an 
 implacable warfare of 800 years for their God and their 
 country, and formed a nation of saints and heroes. At 
 the end of the fifteenth century they drove the enemy from 
 Granada, his last fortress. That same year Providence 
 gave them the mastery of the New World. Assisted by 
 queen Isabella, Columbus discovered America, and Spain 
 became the first nation of the world, and remained so till 
 the middle of the last century, when she fell into the hands 
 of the Freemasons, who plundered and betrayed her, and 
 reduced her to a minor rank. 
 
 The empire of Constantinople was the natural bulwark 
 of Christianity against Mohammedanism, and could have 
 crushed it in its infancy; or at least have held its armies 
 at bay until the assistance of the Western crusaders would 
 have enabled it to drive the new superstition from the face 
 of the earth. But it preferred to fight against Catholic 
 unity, and to attack the very Vicar of Christ. Yea, it 
 even made league with the Crescent to thwart the soldiers 
 of the Cross ; and thus it opened the gates of Europe to 
 the fanatical Turks. In 1453 Constantinople was taken, 
 and within two hours 57,000 Greeks were made slaves. 
 Far then from being the mistress of the world and the 
 home of civilization, it became the slave of Mohammed 
 and the headquarters of barbarism. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHTH. 
 THE CRUSADES. 
 
 God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. GALATIANS vi, 14. 
 
 I. UNITED WEST TAKES THE OFFENSIVE. 
 
 powerful Turkish peoples in turn gave new life 
 and blood to Mohammedanism, and resumed the pro- 
 ject of subduing Europe to its power : The Seljukian Turks 
 in the eleventh century and the Ottoman Turks in the 
 fourteenth. The former were attacked in their headquarters 
 in Asia and stopped there; the latter obtained a partial 
 success in Europe. When the Seljukian Turks arose, the 
 Christian nations of Western Europe were just attaining 
 their youth; they were united under the authority of the 
 Vicar of Christ, and they felt strong and enthusiastic 
 enough to take the offensive and to go and attack the 
 threatening enemy in his own country. At the call of the 
 Roman Pontiffs, the Christian warriors undertook eight 
 expeditions into the Mohammedan lands and broke the 
 Moslem power at home. They even established there two 
 Catholic powers, which, however, were not supported but 
 rather opposed by the separated Oriental Christians, and 
 therefore soon declined and fell. The crusaders succeeded 
 in checking for centuries the invasions of Europe by the 
 Turks. They might have crushed them forever, but for 
 the jealousy of the Greek Emperors, who often joined with 
 the infidels out of hatred for the Catholic name. 
 
 II. ORIGIN AND RESULTS OF CRUSADES. 
 
 The primary object of the Crusades was the protection 
 of Christian pilgrims, and to this end the rescue of the 
 Holy Places from the Mohammedans. The result, how- 
 
THE CRUSADES. 201 
 
 ever, was the defence and the salvation of Christendom, 
 and the great advancement of civilization. Providence 
 made the persecutions of which the Turks were guilty in 
 Palestine serve to arouse the Christians to the Holy Wars 
 against their relentless foes. 
 
 From the earliest ages the land sanctified by the 
 presence of Our Lord was held in pious veneration, and 
 was the object of many pilgrimages. In 630 the Arabs, 
 in 907 the Khalifs of Cairo, and in 1075 the Seljukian 
 Turks, conquered Palestine, and all molested and tormented 
 the Christians, the last-named especially being exceedingly 
 cruel. After subduing the East, they established five young 
 kingdoms eager to expand, the most famous being Iconium 
 in Asia Minor, Aleppo in Syria, and Damascus in Palestine. 
 Constantinople was alarmed, and sent a cry of distress to 
 Rome. The Italians were deaf to the appeal, and remained 
 insensible to the troubles of the Greeks. But Pope Urban II 
 (10881099) sent Peter the Hetmit to France, the land 
 of Charles Martel, to describe the woes of the Christians 
 of the East. He also convoked the Council of Clermont, 
 which was attended by throngs of Bishops and nobles. 
 Peter the Hermit, a poor emaciated priest, told, with a 
 sad countenance and a voice choked with sobs, the awful 
 tale of Mussulman violence and sacrilege. 
 
 "I have seen," he exclaimed, "Christians ironed and put to the yoke 
 like beasts of burden. I have seen the ministers of the Most High 
 dragged from the sanctuary, beaten with rods, and doomed to an 
 ignominious death." 
 
 When the hermit had filled every heart with emotion, 
 the Pope arose and thrilled the warriors by a most 
 stirring speech. He told them to stop their fratricidal 
 combats, and to atone for them by turning their swords 
 against the enemies of Christ. 
 
 "Soldiers of hell!" cried he, "be now the champions of God. You 
 are not to avenge the wrongs of men, but those of the Lord of hosts. 
 If you triumph, the blessings of Heaven and the kingdoms of Asia will 
 be yours. If you fall, you will have the consolation of dying upon the 
 soil crimsoned by our Savior's Blood. Break all earthly ties. Remember 
 the words of our Lord: 'Every one that has left house, brethren and 
 sisters, or father and mother, or wife and children for My sake shall 
 receive a hundredfold and possess live everlasting'!" 
 
202 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 At these words the vast multitude arose and exclaimed, 
 as with one voice: "God wills it! God wills it! God 
 wills it!" 
 
 Three times the enthusiastic cry broke forth from 
 thousands of breasts, and was borne away upon the 
 breeze and resounded with lengthened echoes from the hills 
 around. The Pope promised to protect their properties 
 and their families during their absence, and thousands 
 pledged themselves on the spot to go to war in the Holy 
 Land. As a sign of their vow they put a red cross on 
 their right shoulder, whence they were called crusaders. 
 Peter the Hermit passed on into Germany and Italy, and 
 there also he created a general enthusiasm for the Holy 
 War. 
 
 There were eight general crusades to the East; and 
 they were among the greatest and most useful movements 
 of the Middle Ages. In the first place, they procured the 
 crown of martyrdom for millions of heroes. Then they 
 prolonged the life of the Eastern Empire for four centuries, 
 and saved Europe from a Seljukian conquest and its 
 consequent degradation. Finally, they exerted a great in- 
 fluence for the betterment of the politicial state, commercial 
 relations, and the sciences and arts of Western Europe. The 
 Crusades gave the communes and the serfs a chance to 
 buy their freedom from their lords and masters, who 
 needed money for the distant expeditions. They put a 
 stop to the incessant wars between petty princes. They 
 united Euroye in one commonwealth, under the leadership 
 of the Pope, blotting out a narrow and exclusive national- 
 ism. They led to the establishment of trade relations 
 with the Eastern peoples, and brought to the West their 
 treasures of science and invention. Says De Maistre : 
 
 "We entered Asia sword in hand, in the attempt to cast down upon 
 its own soil that formidable Crescent which threatened the liberty of 
 Europe. A simple monk aroused all Europe, struck terror into Asia, 
 broke down the barriers of feudal institutions, ennobled the serf, brought 
 back the torch of learning and changed the face of Europe!" 
 
 III. FIRST CRUSADE. 
 
 In the first enthusiasm numerous bands set out with- 
 out leaders and perished on the road. The real crusade 
 
THE CRUSADES. 203 
 
 (10991199) was led by the most noble and the most 
 renowned knights of Christendom. Six hundred thousand 
 men were marshalled under the walls of Constantinople, 
 and so frightened the Emperor Alexis that his daughter 
 Ann wrote: "It seemed to us as if Europe, torn from its 
 foundations, was hurled in its entirety upon Asia." Alexis 
 commenced to annoy the Crusaders, and refused them 
 ships with which to cross the Bosphorus until the promised 
 to turn over to him all the conquests they might make in 
 Asia Minor. The crusaders defeated the Sultan oflconium, 
 and the Greeks followed to take possession of the con- 
 quered country, and often betrayed their allies the cru- 
 saders. In Syria Baldwin of Bouillon and Bohemond of 
 Tarento conquered Edessa and Antioch, and became the 
 princes of these cities. Combats, famine and hardships 
 thinned the ranks of the army before they reached Jeru- 
 salem, and the plague set in and carried off a great many. 
 There remained only 50,000 men, but they were the flower 
 of the Christian chivalry. When they arrived on the hills 
 of Emmaus, and beheld Jerusalem afar off, glowing in the 
 rays of the rising sun, they threw themselves upon their 
 faces in the dust, and kissed with respect the ground 
 sanctified by the footsteps of our Lord; shouting the 
 watchword "God wills it! God wills it! God wills it!" 
 
 The infidels were prepared for a desperate resistance, 
 and had 40,000 soldiers from Egypt besides 20,000 belong- 
 ing to Jerusalem. They had filled the wells around the 
 city, and turned the surrounding country into a desert. 
 The crusaders suffered terribly from hunger and thirst, 
 and from the burning sun; but they were relieved by the 
 arrival of the Genoese fleet at Joppa, which brought plenty 
 of supplies and a number of engineers. These cut down 
 the trees of a distant forest, and constructed moving 
 towers which were higher than the ramparts of the enemy 
 and furnished with drawbridges which could be lowered 
 upon the walls. After five weeks of toil and fighting the 
 crusaders prepared by a fast and a procession for the final 
 assault. At early dawn the Christians moved forward 
 their battle engines; the Mohammedans threw upon them 
 flashing torches and Greek fire. The storming lasted until 
 
204 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 dark, and was recommend the following morning. From 
 their ramparts the Musstilmans did not cease throwing 
 that unquenchable Greek fire, which devoured even the 
 shields and corselets of the steelclad warriors. Conspicuous 
 upon the top of his moving tower stood Godfrey of Bouillon, 
 dealing death and havoc among the Moslems. Surrounded 
 by a heap of dead and dying, the hero calmly gave his 
 orders and encouraged his men by example, voice and 
 gesture. It was the solemn hour of three o'clock, at which 
 our Lord died. Suddenly the report spread that several of 
 the crusaders who had fallen in preceding battles had 
 appeared, and planted the standard of the Cross upon the 
 ramparts of Jerusalem. The Christians charged with 
 renewed vigor. Godfre3 r 's tower rolled on amid a storm 
 of darts, stones and fiery missiles ; it lowered its bridge 
 upon the walls, whilst the Christians shot their burning 
 darts upon the bales of cotton and straw which protected 
 the inner wall of the city. The wind fanned the flames, 
 and drove them upon the infidels, who were stifled by the 
 fire and smoke. Godfrey, pressing closely behind Lethaldo 
 and Englebert of Tournay, and followed by the other 
 leaders, leaped into the city and broke the Moslem ranks. 
 The gate of St. Stephen was forced, and the crusaders, 
 rushing through the streets, pursued the Mussulmans and 
 the whole garrison to the sword. 
 
 As soon as victory was gained, the crusaders, laying 
 aside their arms and bloodstained garments went, bare- 
 footed and bareheaded, weeping and striking their breasts, 
 to the Sepulchre of Our Lord, The true cross was borne in 
 procession through the streets. At its sight the Christians 
 were as much moved as if they had seen the Body of Christ 
 as it once hung upon the same cross. The chiefs met to 
 elect a king able to defend the precious conquest of the holy 
 places, and they unanimously chose Godfrey of Bouillon, 
 who soon afterward gained the great battle of Ascalon 
 against the combined forces of Egypt and Syria. The 
 crusaders returned to Europe, and left to the king only 
 2,000 infantry and 300 horsemen. It was the Knights 
 Hospitallers who formed his principal support. Unhappily 
 he died in the year 1100. 
 
THE CRUSADES. 205 
 
 IV. LATER CRUSADES. 
 
 The kingdom of Jerusalem (1099 1270) was organized 
 tinder the feudal system, but its vassals were too in- 
 dependent. It was surrounded by enemies on all sides. 
 Even the Greeks of Constantinople warred on it for thirty 
 years, to obtain possession of the principality of Antioch, 
 which they finally wrenched from the Latins. The kings 
 of Jerusalem were powerful for forty years. Baldwin II 
 (1100) and Baldwin III (1118) captured the old city of 
 Haran in Mesopotamia, and the important seaports of 
 Acre, Tripoli Sidon and Tyre. During the minority of 
 Baldwin IV, Noureddin of Aleppo took from the kingdom 
 the Eastern banks of the Jordan. The Second Crusade 
 (1147 '49) brought 400,000 men to its assistance. But 
 it was hampered, on the other hand, by the Greek Emperor 
 Manuel who conspired against it with the Sultans of 
 Iconium. Unhappily, dissension broke out in Jerusalem, be- 
 tween Guy of Lusign an, recognized as King by the Templars, 
 and Conrad of Montferrat, whom the Hospitallers ack- 
 nowledged. Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, attacked and slew 
 the Christians at Tiberias, and took Jerusalem in 1187. 
 
 This sad intelligence aroused the Christian princes to the 
 Third Crusade (11891192). The Emperor of Germany, 
 Frederic Barbarossa, and the Kings of France and England, 
 Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion, led powerful 
 armies to the rescue of the Holy Land, but these great 
 princes were deceived and rendered powerless by the 
 duplicity of the Greeks. 
 
 Several circumstances diverted the Fourth Crusade 
 (11951204) to Constantinople, and led to the well- 
 deserved suppression of the treacherous empire of the 
 Greeks, and to the establishment of a Latin Empire at 
 Constantinople, under Baldwin of Flanders, which was to 
 serve as a bulwark against Mohammedanism. The Pope 
 protested against that turn of affairs which took a great 
 part of the Christian forces away from the direct war 
 against the infidels. 
 
 The Greeks raised the insignificant * 'empires" of Nice 
 and Trebizond against this Catholic state, and in 1261 
 
206 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Michael Paleologus took Constantinople, and put an end 
 to its Latin Empire. He returned to the Catholic Union, 
 but his son Andronicus fell away again, and hastened the 
 ruin of Constantinople by isolating it anew from the rest 
 of Christendom. 
 
 The Popes did not cease to promote expeditions 
 towards Jerusalem, and succeeded in starting the Fifth 
 Crusade (12171221) under Andrew II of Hungary, and 
 the Sixth, under Frederic II (1229), neither of which, how- 
 ever, had any result. 
 
 The Seventh and Eighth Crusades were undertaken by 
 the holy king of France Louis IX, the first landing in 
 Egypt (1250) and the second in Tunis (1270). Both failed 
 on account of the plague. 
 
 V. ST. LOUIS A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. 
 
 Louis IX (1226 1270) was a great saint, an eminent 
 statesman and an undaunted hero. Ascending the throne 
 at nineteen, he made peace with all his neighbors. He 
 alleviated the abuses of the feudal system by establishing 
 courts of appeal, and often dispensing justice in person. 
 He undertook two Crusades against the threatening 
 Mussulmans. In Egypt he immediately took Damietta, 
 but he was stopped short in his conquest through the 
 imprudence of his brother and the ravages of the plague, 
 and was made a prisoner with his whole army. His 
 calmness, patience and fortitude much impressed his 
 enemies, and Sultan Malek offered him his own daughter 
 in marriage if he would become a Mussulman. Soon after, 
 the unfortunate Sultan was murdered, and one of his 
 assassins tore out his heart and held it up to Louis' face, 
 saying : " What wilt thou give me for slaying thine enemy ?'' 
 The king turned away his head in silent horror. His 
 majestic silence struck the fierce Moslems with such 
 admiration that they wished to elect him Sultan, and 
 were only prevented by the fear of seeing their mosques 
 destroyed by so great a Christian prince. 
 
 The Mongols at this time were convulsing the whole 
 East, and driving great nations out of their possessions. 
 
THE CRUSADES. 
 
 207 
 
 The Khorasmian Turks, flying before them, had destroyed 
 Jerusalem. St. Louis spent four years among the Christians 
 of those parts, to console and assist them, and the Eastern 
 princes, struck by his virtue and his heroism, chose him as 
 arbiter in their disputes. 
 
 The principles and the wars of the False Prophet had 
 turned the whole East into a battlefield, a volcano in 
 eruption, trembling with the turmoils of the nations. 
 The Christian West was meanwhile a field of agriculture 
 and industry, and a school of arts and sciences ; and it 
 remained undisturbed even during the absence of its rulers 
 in the wars against the infidels. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTYNINTH. 
 INVASION OF OTTOMAN TURKS. 
 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest 
 them that are sent to thee, how often would I hare gathered 
 thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and 
 thou wouldst not? Behold thy house shall be left to thee 
 desolate. LUKB xin, 34, 35. 
 
 I. NECESSITY OF UNION. 
 
 TTHE third period of the war of 1000 years was a hand to 
 hand fight with the Ottoman Turks for the independence 
 of Europe. Never did the necessity of a united Christendom 
 appear more clearly than in this momentous struggle. If 
 the Turks could have attacked the Christian nations one 
 by one, they could easily have conquered them. In fact, 
 in the fifteenth century they overwhelmed the Greeks, who 
 had isolated themselves from the rest of Christendom ; but 
 they could not subdue the united Catholics who defended 
 the Danube. In the sixteenth century, when Protestantism 
 had introduced division among the Christians of the West, 
 the formidable Solyman advanced into the heart of Europe, 
 but he was driven away by the great Emperor Charles V. 
 For a century and a half longer they continued to threaten 
 and to attack the Christians by sea and by land, but they 
 were crushed by the southern nations of Europe, whom 
 the Popes had united against them. 
 
 II. RUIN OF SCHISMATIC GREEKS. 
 
 It was to protect Europe which the Greeks left exposed, 
 that the Crusaders established the Latin Empire of Con- 
 stantinople (12041261). Michael Paleologus overthrew 
 it, and his successors relapsed into the schism from which 
 he had emerged. 
 
INVASION OF OTTOMAN TURKS. 209 
 
 The Ottoman Turks (1300) were growing strong in 
 Asia Minor, and preparing for the conquest of Constan- 
 tinople. Urkhan (1327) formed the splendid army of the 
 janissaries out of Christian youths captured or kidnapped 
 and frenzied by the fear of discipline or the bait of sensual 
 pleasures. In the course of time 500,000 Christian children 
 were thus turned into the most valiant soldiers of the false 
 prophet. They constituted the earliest standing army organ- 
 ized in those times. In 1356 Urkhan captured Gallipoli, and 
 thus the Turks obtained their first foothold in Europe. His 
 successor took Adrianople, and made it his European 
 capital; notwithstanding the resistance of the Christians 
 along the Danube. The Sultan Bajacet made a vow to 
 feed his horses with oaths on the high altar of St. Peter's 
 in Rome, and he completely defeated a second Christian 
 army at Nicopolis in 1359. But his progress was stopped 
 by the invasion of the fierce Mongol conqueror Timour 
 Lenk, who defeated and captured him at Ancyra. A civil 
 war ensued between his three sons, and further weakened 
 the Turks. It was the last opportunity for the Greeks to 
 crush their mortal enemies, and they did not avail them- 
 selves of it. Bajacet's grandson Murat II (1421) besieged 
 Constantinople, and took the harbors of the Black Sea. 
 He ascended the Danube, were the valient John Huniades 
 and Cardinal Cesarini repelled him from Belgrade. His 
 son Mohammed the Conqueror (1441 1480) avenged this 
 repulse by the victory of Warna, where Cardinal Cesa- 
 rini and King Wladislaw VI were slain. However, the 
 Christians, having gathered a fourth army on the Danube 
 under St. John Capistran, twice defeated the formidable 
 victor and repelled him from Belgrade (1456). In vain 
 did Alohammed attack at Croya the undaunted prince 
 Scanderbeg, who defeated him with the aid of a fifth body 
 of crusaders. In vain did he besiege the intrepid Knights 
 of Rhodes, who, under d'Aubuisson, opposed the most 
 heroic resistance. But he succeeded in capturing the Greek 
 capitals of Constantinople (1453), and Trebizond (1462), 
 which achievements won him his title of Conqueror. 
 
 In 1452 Mohammed had built a large fortress on the 
 European side of the Bosphorus. The Greeks complained, 
 
 14 
 
210 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 and he answered by a declaration of war. Constantine XII 
 (1448 '53) was a true Christian Emperor. In this hour 
 of supreme danger he wrote to the Pope to implore his 
 help. Nicholas V appealed to all the Christian states, but 
 Genoa and Venice alone responded, and they sent only 
 2500 men. So prejudiced were the Greeks that the populace 
 insulted their friends from Italy who had come to their 
 rescue. High Admiral Notaris was heard to say that he 
 would rather have the Turban of Mohammed at Con- 
 stantinople than the Tiara of the Pope. The city hardly 
 contained 10,000 soldiers, while it was besieged by 300,000, 
 by sea as well as by land. A formidable artillery under 
 Mohammed's personal direction thundered incessantly 
 against the walls. The garrison answered by a shower 
 of darts, javelins and Greek fire. Constantine XII was 
 always found where the danger was most threatening. 
 He knew no rest. His days were spent in fighting, and 
 his nights in directing the workmen who repaired the 
 breaches made on the ramparts. The resistance lasted 
 nine weeks, and did not seem to slacken. The harbor was 
 closed with a massive chain. Mohammed hit upon a plan 
 of transporting his warships into the port by sliding them 
 over the obstruction on greased planks. During a single 
 night he succeeded in getting eighty ships into the very 
 center of the harbor. The besieged were equally dismayed 
 and astonished, and saw that their end had come. Like 
 a pious cavalier Constantine spent his last night in the 
 church, assisted at Mass and received Holy Communion. 
 He exhorted his soldiers to perish gloriously rather than 
 lay down their arms. He said : "The spirits of our departed 
 heroes look down upon us at this moment. If Constan- 
 tinople must fall, I shall find my grave beneath its walls." 
 Mounting his horse, he hurried to the fortifications. It 
 was the 29th of May, 1453. The immense Moslem army, 
 uttering furious yells, stormed the ramparts, -and crushed 
 the handful of defenders. 
 
 Constantinople, falling for the first time into the hands 
 of the barbarians, underwent all the horrors of a furious 
 sack by savage enemies. Its inhabitants, to the number 
 of 100,000, were reduced to slavery, massacred, or reserved 
 
INVASION OF OTTOMAN TURKS. 211 
 
 to exquisite torments. Constantine had disappeared in 
 the thick of a melee on a breach. His corpse was recogn- 
 ized and his head cut off and taken to Mohammed, who 
 sent it as a bloody trophy to his people in Asia. 
 
 The Sultan claimed in the Church the same rights as 
 those enjoyed by the emperor : He confiscated all the stone 
 churches and turned them into mosques; and he installed 
 a schismatic patriarch of Constantinople, willing to be his 
 servile tool in place of the lawful incumbent of the See, 
 who had returned to Catholic unity at the Council of 
 Florence, and who now took refuge in the West. 
 
 Some distinguished Greeks escaped in the Venetian 
 galleys, carrying with them precious manuscripts of the 
 classics and of the Fathers, and fine masterpieces of Greek 
 art, with which they enriched the Vatican library and 
 various Italian museums. They were welcomed and well- 
 treated by Pope Nicholas V; and their knowledge and 
 labors gave a new impulse to art and letters. About the 
 same time Guttenberg invented the art of printing, which 
 spread and perpetuated the monuments of literature 
 through all lands and ages. 
 
 III. TRIUMPH OF CATHOLIC EUROPE. 
 
 When Mahomet II took Constantinople, he trans- 
 planted the relentless battlefield into the heart of Christen- 
 dom. Europe trembled, and the Popes ordered, that every 
 noon there should everywhere be rung "the Turkish bell", 
 to arouse all Catholics to prayer or war against the 
 advancing barbarians. Not only did the Catholics resist 
 those most formidable of conquerors, but in the course of 
 a century they broke the Turkish power. 
 
 From 1522 to 1566 Solyman the Magnificent fought 
 against all his neighbors to establish a universal empire, 
 and he personally conducted thirteen expeditions. What 
 increased the danger a hundredfold was the division of 
 Europe, and the refusal of the Protestants to march 
 against the Turks. The Popes with the southern powers 
 alone had to face the danger, but Christ watched over 
 His barque threatened by the storm, and, notwithstanding 
 
212 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 his military genius and his fiery heroism, Solyman made 
 little progress in his wars, whether in Europe or in Asia. 
 
 In Europe his attacks were first directed against the 
 Mediteranean powers. The Knights Hospitallers of St. John 
 were the bulwark of the Christians and the terror of the 
 Mussulmans in the Mediterranean waters. Mohammed II 
 had attacked them in vain on their fortified island of 
 Rhodes ; but in 1522 Solyman besieged them, with 300,000 
 men, and converted their fortress into a heap of ruins. 
 There were only 800 knights and 4,000 men at arms but 
 they repelled all the Mohammedan forces for six months 
 and finally obtaining an honorable capitulation, retired to 
 Malta, where they constructed a new and impregnable 
 fortress, and in 1565 they again repelled the great warrior. 
 
 Venice was still predominant in the Mediterranean, and 
 Solyman engaged the famous pirate Barbarossa of Tunis 
 to break her power. But Charles V sent a fleet which 
 captured Tunis, the nest of pirates, and delivered 20,000 
 prisoners. Solyman directed his most strenuous efforts 
 against Hungary, where he excited civil wars, and against 
 Austria, where Protestant bitterness welcomed and assisted 
 him. He undertook six expeditions into Hungary. In the 
 first he killed king Louis II and raised to the throne 
 Zapolya, a prince of Transylvania. But the nobles elected 
 a brother of Charles V, Ferdinand, who had married 
 Louis' sister, and who expelled the Turkish pretender. 
 Solyman again invaded Hungary. Profiting by the fury 
 of the Protestants, whose motto was ''Rather Turks than 
 Papists!" and the jealousy of the kings of France, who 
 were desirous of humiliating the house of Hapsburg, he 
 was able to penetrate into the heart of Europe and besiege 
 Vienna. When the valiant Emperor Charles V was free 
 from his other enemies, he marched against the Turks. 
 But Solyman did not care to meet the foremost hero of 
 Christendom. He retreated to Constantinople, and recog- 
 nized Ferdinand as king of the half of Hungary still 
 remaining in Christian hands. Ten years later a new con- 
 test for the throne ensued, and furnished him another pre- 
 text for invading Hungary, which he almost turned into a 
 desert. He died while besieging the little town of Sigeth. 
 
INVASION OF OTTOMAN TURKS. 213 
 
 The Turks were very powerful in the Mediterranean 
 and wrested from Venice the island of Cyprus, which they 
 cruelly devastated. The holy Pope Pius Y preached a 
 Crusade against the infidels, and ordered the recitation of 
 the beads all through Christendom to pray for its success. 
 He enlisted the mighty republic of Venice, and Philip II, 
 the powerful king of Spain, and committed to Philip's 
 half brother, Don Juan of Austria, the combined forces of 
 the southern states. The two fleets met in the Gulf of 
 Lepanto, and gave battle on the seventh of October, 1571. 
 The Turkish commander fell, his head was cut off and 
 displayed on a Christian mast, and that fired the courage 
 of the crusaders, who annihilated the infidel fleet. St. Pius 
 knew of the victory by a vision, and, interrupting a 
 conference with the Cardinals, he told them there was 
 occasion to render thanks to God for a signal victory. 
 He instituted the feast of the Holy Rosary, to com- 
 memorate the happy event, and added to the Litany of 
 Loretto the invocation: "Marv, Help of Christians, pray 
 for us." 
 
 After the thirty Years' War had exhausted Germany, 
 Kara Mustapha gathered an army of 300,000 Mussul- 
 mans and besieged Vienna (1682). The Emperor Leopold 
 and his court fled. There where left in the city 50,000 
 soldiers who, assisted by the inhabitants, made a vigorous 
 resistance. Fortyfive days of siege exhausted them, and 
 Vienna, the rich capital of Eastern Europe, seemed doomed 
 to plunder and destruction. Pope Innocent XI summoned 
 Sobieski, the valiant king of Poland, to the help of the 
 distressed city. The hero appeared on the mountains with 
 20,000 Poles. His troops were ill-clad and poorly equipped. 
 "Do you see those men?" said the king; "They have 
 sworn to clothe themselves with the spoils of the enemy." 
 "If these words," said a chronicler, "did not clothe his 
 soldiers, they armored them !" In the morning Sobieski 
 and his officers assisted at the Holy Mass celebrated by 
 the Papal Nuncio, and the king served it himself, kneeling 
 down and extending his arms in the form of a cross. At 
 ten o'clock he gave the signal for battle. After a fight of 
 three hours, he saw the enemy wavering, and ordered a 
 
214 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 charge. A fearful hand-to-hand fight followed. At five 
 the Turks broke their ranks and fled in utter rout. At 
 nightfall, of all the besieging army only 20,000 corpses 
 were left to guard the walls of the city. The Turks fled 
 so precipitately that they left behind them 100,000 tents r 
 300 pieces of artillery, and 5,000 barrels of gunpowder. 
 The following day Sobieski was received in triumph, and 
 the mothers held up their children that they might behold 
 their saviour. He himself intoned the Te Deum, which was 
 chanted by the whole people. Then he sent to the Pope 
 the standard taken from the enemy, with the famous 
 words of Caesar, altered, from humility, into Veni, vidi, 
 Deus vicitl "I came, I saw, God conquered." By this act 
 of homage, he expressed the gratitude of Christendom to 
 the Roman Pontiffs for saving it from the galling yoke of 
 the Moslems. Then the Popes leagued Poland, Austria 
 and Venice against the Turks, who were thus thwarted 
 forever in their plans against Christian Europe. 
 
 IV. THE CHURCH ALONE SAVED CIVILIZATION. 
 
 The Catholics alone fought and defeated the enemies of 
 Christian civilization. In the fearful onslaught of the 
 Ottoman Turks, not only did the Protestants not stand 
 up for the name of Christ, but they revolted against his 
 standardbearer, the noble Charles V, and leagued with the 
 Moslems. It had been the same story in the struggle 
 against the Seljukian Turks and the Arabs; The Greek 
 schismatics did not cooperate, and the Catholics had to 
 do all the hard fighting. They alone, the firm and faithful 
 believers, appreciated Christianity as the greatest boon of 
 mankind, and therefore they were ready to sacrifice their 
 fortunes and their lives for its defence. They alone preserved 
 their freedom, their manhood and their virtue; to them 
 alone is due our superior civilization. 
 
THE MODERN AGE 
 
 A. D. J5J7-J899 
 
 FROM LIBERALISM TO LIBERTY. 
 
THE MODERN AGE 
 
 A. D. J5J7 J899 
 FROM LIBERALISM TO LIBERTY. 
 
 CHAPTER THIRTIETH. 
 THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 Simon son of John, lovcth thou Me? Yea, Lord, thou 
 knowest that I love Thee. . . . Feed My lambs. . . . Feed My 
 lambs. . . . Feed My sheep. JOHN xxi, 15 17. 
 
 I. THE ENEMIES OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Liberals concede that the Catholic Church has been 
 useful in converting the pagans and civilizing the 
 barbarians; but they pretend that in our enlightened age 
 she is an obstacle to liberty and progress. 
 
 They claim that human reason left to itself would 
 invent new and superior forms of religion and society; 
 and bring a hitherto inexperienced felicity to our planet. 
 Therefore they wish to free mankind from the yoke of 
 Christ and His Church, and to make a religion of their 
 own, replacing the commandments of God by the traditions 
 of men. In the name of liberty they force their schemes 
 upon others, whom they trouble and disturb; and they 
 simply return, in short, to the despotism and impiety of 
 Pagan times. 
 
 Liberalism aims at emancipation from the authority 
 of God. It is an abuse of liberty. It means tyranny and 
 license for the masters, and slavery and corruption for the 
 masses. The Liberals contravene the freedom of others, 
 and compel them to adopt their subversive and corrupting 
 
220 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 systems. The Liberals in religion are the Protestants ; the 
 Liberals in politics are the Freemasons. The former forced 
 the people into a new and man-made form of Christianity 
 and drove them into doubt and apostasy. The latter 
 overthrew the Christian institutions dear to the people, 
 whom they trust into impiety and anarchy. The most im- 
 portant factors in modern history are the plots and wars 
 of the Liberals against the liberty of conscience of the 
 Catholics, and the hopeless decline of those peoples which 
 they succeeded in seducing or subduing. Armed resistance 
 was the only means of adequately safeguarding liberty, 
 religion and virtue. But the peaceful Catholics were not 
 soon enough aware of this fact. It was only after Protes- 
 tantism had been forced upon the north of Europe that 
 the Catholics realized the tyrannical designs of the apostates 
 and took up arms in defence of their religious liberty ; and 
 thenceforth not a single additional nation lost the true 
 faith. 
 
 It is now more than a century that the Freemasons 
 have been committing the greatest outrages against the 
 Christian society, and they are still tramplicg the Catho- 
 lics under their feet; because the faithful could not believe 
 that there existed a Satanic conspiracy against the Church 
 of God, and did not organize against its daring machi- 
 nations. The facts show that the full truth of Christianity, 
 which made us free, can alone keep us free in the future. 
 
 II. LIBERALISM IN RELIGION. 
 
 Nothwithstanding the fact that the Bishops of Rome 
 had converted the old world to Christ, and were sending 
 armies of missionaries to the new, Luther, Calvin and 
 Henry VIII called them the very Antichrists, who had 
 usurped all the authority they exercised and filled Christi- 
 anity with superstition and corruption. While thundering 
 against Papal authority, they made themselves, so far as 
 in their power, the autocrats of their respective countries, 
 and forced the people into their sects. They succeeded as 
 long as the Catholics tamely submitted to their despotism, 
 and failed as soon as these stood up to defend their liberty 
 
THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 221 
 
 of conscience. The rise of Protestantism was the signal 
 for terrible religious wars, as well as for a return to the 
 arbitrary government of the Pagan Emperors. 
 
 The Protestants professed a desire to reform the Church, 
 but they deformed it. They attempted to remodel the work 
 of Christ, but the destroyed it wherever the3 r had the power. 
 They advanced the new theory that Christ saves us by 
 Himself directly without any cooperation on our part and 
 without secondary instrumentalities ; and that he instituted 
 no Church to teach and sanctify his followers. According 
 to them our nature is utterly corrupted by original sin 
 and so remains, and we are saved by an exterior im- 
 putation of the merits of Christ without any real trans- 
 formation. Their principles of private interpretation of 
 the Bible, and of salvation by faith without good works, 
 led in practice not only to false belief on other points 
 but also to vicious life. In fact the "Reformers" them- 
 selves bitterly complained of the disputes and the vices of 
 their followers. Faith was replaced by doubts, and duty 
 by pleasure. 
 
 Having fallen away from our only Savior Jesus Christ, 
 the 'new heresiarchs brougt back into Christianity three 
 wicked systems, which had existed in Paganism : Luther a 
 lax Epicureanism, Calvin a harsh stoicism, and Henry VIII 
 a despotic Caesarism. But there was nothing to sustain 
 the human substitutes for the Church of God. The separ- 
 ated peoples were soon rent into innumerable sects, which 
 passed through the most amazing doctrinal transform- 
 ations and yieled an immense crop of indifferentism and 
 infidelity. 
 
 At the present day there are among the Protestants 
 many pious and learned men, who are the innocent victims 
 of the crimes of their forefathers, and who make every 
 fort possible for the propagation and defence of those 
 igments of the Gospel which they have chanced to retain. 
 But neither the earnestness of the members of these bodies, 
 tor the zeal of their officers, nor doctrinal concessions, 
 tor perfection of organization, nor novelty in services, nor 
 msationalism in preaching, nor lavishness in expenditure 
 keep them together. They have lost their hold upon 
 
222 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the masses of the people and their doctrinal systems are 
 being dissolved under the influence of a shallow and un- 
 reasoning sentimentalism, so that such fundamental 
 Christian truths as they at first retained have in too 
 much cases already disappeared in all but in name. 
 
 The self-appointed Reformers had questioned every- 
 thing without settling anything. But the Bishops, the 
 Divinely-appointed judges of faith, studied and deliberated 
 on the reformation of the Church for half a century. The 
 Council of Trent (1545 '63) examined the questions of 
 doctrine and discipline raised by the new sectaries, and 
 decided them as seemed fit to the Holy-Spirit of God, Who 
 never iails to preside over the Councils of His Church. It 
 declared the prerogatives and functions of the ecclesiastical 
 Hierarchy to be grounded on the Word of God and defined 
 them as articles of faith. It also decreed many sa!utary 
 reforms, such as the erection of more seminaries for the 
 training of priests, and closer attention to the personal 
 care of the Christian flock by the pastors. 
 
 There at once ensued an extraordinary revival of piety 
 and learning, and a burning apostolic zeal for the con- 
 version of the heathen. If Luther had sworn death to the 
 Roman Pontiffs, St. Ignatius instituted the Society of Jesus- 
 to defend them. Twenty other orders arose. At least 
 twentyseven great saints who have the honor of a public 
 cultus flourished at that time. St. Francis Xavier con- 
 verted a million people in the East, and armies of 
 missionaries penetrated into the wilds of the New Worlds. 
 The losses in Europe were repaired by the gains in Asia 
 and America. 
 
 III. LIBERALISM IN POLITICS. 
 
 The apostasy of the Protestants from the Church of 
 Christ led logically to the complete rejection of the very 
 name of Christ. Protestantism was the first step towards 
 our Neo-Paganism. 
 
 In the beginning of the eighteenth century infidelity 
 commenced to show itself in England. It was introduced 
 on the continent and spread all over Europe by the 
 sophists, Voltaire, Rousseau and their associates. The 
 
THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY. 223 
 
 infidels overthrew all the restraints of authority, family 
 and property, for the benefit of outlaws, lechers and 
 thieves who proceeded to make themselves masters of the 
 power, the youth and the riches of a great part of Christen- 
 dom. They combined in the secret society of the Free- 
 masons to force their schemes upon an unsuspecting and 
 unwilling people. By their dark machinations they had 
 by the middle of the eighteenth century gained control of 
 the governments of most of the Catholic countries. 
 Immediately they contrived the suppression of the Jesuits, 
 who were at that time the foremost educators of youth; 
 and, occupying their colleges, they raised up a generation 
 ready for every crime. 
 
 In 1789 the Freemasons commenced the frightful 
 French Revolution, which slaughtered every one suspected 
 of not being an infidel and a republican. The sword was 
 far too slow for these bloodthirsty monsters ; the guillotine, 
 that quick instrument of execution, was invented, and in 
 many places was almost constantly in use; and all that 
 in the name of liberty ! 
 
 During the nineteenth century the Freemasons con- 
 centrated their action on the Catholic lands, where religion 
 is strong. Aided by the gold of the Protestants and the 
 Jews, they undermined the prosperity of these countries 
 and ruined them morally and physically. They flooded 
 them with obscene and irreligious writings, and fomented 
 or occasioned in most of them a series of disastrous 
 revolutions. With the words ''liberty," "equality" and 
 "fraternity" always on their lips, the Freemasons were 
 nevertheless the worst of masters. They confiscated for 
 their own benefit the property consecrated to religion 
 and charity which was the patrimony of the poor, and 
 never thought of the poor except to grind them down. 
 The people revolted against these selfish tyrants, and 
 claimed their due share of the goods of this earth. The 
 "International Society of the workingmen of the world" 
 was founded in London for the defense of the starving 
 people against their Godless masters. The Russian nihilists 
 demanded the destruction of the actual order of society. 
 The French communists tried to level Paris and to destroy 
 
224 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 her monuments. These and their fellow-revolutionists the 
 world over threaten more destruction than the Huns and 
 the Vandals accomplished in the fifth century. 
 
 The Freemasons struck their heaviest blows against 
 the Papacy. The Revolution killed Pius VI; Napoleon 
 chained Pius VII, and Victor Emmanuel robbed Pius IX. 
 They hoped to forever silence the Vicar of Christ. The 
 Vatican Council proclaimed the Roman Pontiffs infallible 
 in all definitions of faith and morals. The Freemasons 
 grew still more fierce; but the Catholic population clung 
 closer than ever to the Vicar of Christ. 
 
 Why did Providence allow the oppression of the 
 Christians to such a degree? First, because many had 
 turned their backs upon Christ. Let them taste the bitter 
 fruits of their apostasy, and they will grow disgusted with 
 their folly and crime. Secondly, because many Catholics 
 do not have a thorough-going loyalty to the Vicars of 
 Christ or the courage to stand up for their own con- 
 victions. As soon as they arise to defend their faith, like 
 the Maccabees of old, they will reconquer their liberty 
 and their prosperity. The Catholics of Germany compelled 
 the ultra-Protestant Empire of Bismarck to grant them 
 liberty of worship. Leo XIII bade the Catholic laymen to 
 stand up for their religious rights, to unite in national 
 societies and to meet in international congresses in order 
 to revindicate their liberty against the handful of Free- 
 masons who are trampling them under their feet. 
 
 The confusion and failure of Liberalism, and the justice, 
 harmony and solidity of the Church of God are symbolized 
 by the tower of Babel and the Church of St. Peter. After 
 the flood, men took upon themselves to rear an immense 
 tower as a protection against anothen similar punishment. 
 
 "They said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top of which 
 may reach to heaven; and let us make our name famous. . . . And the 
 Lord said : Let us confound their tongue, that they may not understand 
 one another's speech. . . . Therefore the name thereof was called Babel, 
 because there the language of the whole earth was confounded." 
 Genesis xi, 4, 7, 9. 
 
 Thus God punished their pride, brought to naught 
 their foolish undertaking, and scattered them over the face 
 of the earth. When the Catholic Church had made the 
 
THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY. 225 
 
 Western world like one grand temple of God and one 
 peaceful home of man, her Pontiffs erected at Rome the 
 incomparable church of St. Peter's of the Vatican, as a 
 monument of her piety and a center of her unity. But lo! 
 a cry of revolt was heard in the north, and the Popes 
 were denounced as the perverters of Christianity and the 
 most criminal of usurpers. The Protestants stood up 
 against the Church of Christ and the Freemasons openly 
 warred against Christ Himself. Without any authority 
 from above or any justification in history or right reason, 
 one attempted to form a new Christian religion and the 
 other to establish a Godless society. Foolish revolt ! Vain 
 efforts ! Impossible undertakings ! Jesus Christ has founded 
 His Kingdom on the rock of St. Peter, and promised that 
 the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it; and He 
 laughs at their rage, frustrates their efforts, and disconcerts 
 their plans. He throws the utmost of confusion into their 
 ranks; so that what they advance today they contradict 
 tomorrow. However united they are against the Divine 
 Church, they are hopelessly divided in their principles and 
 their projects, while each of the sects strives to build 
 itself up at the expense of its rivals. As unshaken as the 
 basilica of St. Peter stands on the Vatican hill in defiance 
 of the fiercest storms, so unshaken remains the Church of 
 God in the midst of the warring sects and of the con- 
 vulsions of society produced by the Freemasonic lodges. 
 
 IV. LEO XIII ON TRUE AND FALSE LIBERTY. 
 
 As the Freemasons pose as the champions of liberty 
 and call the Church of Christ the tyrant of consciences, 
 Leo XIII has issued several Encyclicals to show that the 
 Church favors the liberty of every one, while the Lodge 
 seeks to monopolize all the liberty for its oathbound 
 members. He expounds the notion of true liberty (1888) 
 and reviews the efforts of the Church for the abolition of 
 slavery (Briefs to the Bishops of Brazil and Cardinal 
 de Lavigerie). He proves that Freemasonry (1884), divorce 
 and communism (1878 and 1881) involve an unjust dis- 
 regard of the rights of God and man, and he shows how 
 the plotting lodges impose by the fire and sword their 
 
 15 
 
226 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ruinous and impious systems, which necessarily lead to 
 impiety, impurity and anarchy. These luminous and 
 irrefutable documents are mines of reliable information on 
 the great questions of today, and ought to be in the hands 
 of every Christian. 
 
 In his Encyclical on Liberty, Leo XIII distinguishes 
 between physical, moral and legal liberty, and he describes 
 the benefits of a duly -regulated freedom, in contrast with 
 the evils of an absolute lawlessness. Here are a few of 
 his thoughts and words. 
 
 "Liberty is the highest gift of nature. It was always cherished by 
 the Church, who defended it against the Manicheans, the Protestants, 
 the Jansenists, the Freemasons and the Fatalists." 
 
 "Physical liberty is the faculty of choosing means for the end proposed ; 
 for he only is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of 
 many." 
 
 "Moral liberty here is exemption from the law of God : it is freedom 
 
 to act wrongly, and it is nothing but an abuse of liberty Just as 
 
 the possibility of error and actual error are defects of the mind and 
 attest its imperfection ; so the pursuit of a merely apparant good implies 
 a defect in human liberty. The possibility of sinning is not freedom but 
 slavery. 'Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.' John vm, 4." 
 
 Legal liberty is the allowance by law of some questionable actions, 
 for the sake of the general good. The Church allows all possible toleration 
 of the modern liberties of conscience and worship, speech and education. 
 "There is no form of government nor any effort for true liberty that is 
 forbidden by the Churh. As for tolerance, it is surprising how far 
 removed from the justice and the prudence of the Church are those who 
 profess what is called Liberalism/' However, the Church cannot recognize 
 the moral right to deny God and to teach evil, which is an insult to the 
 Almighty and a scandal to His people. 
 
 "The laws of the Gospel not only far surpass the wisdom of the 
 heathen, but are an invitation and an introduction to a state of holiness 
 unknown to the ancients; and, by bringing man nearer to God, they 
 make him at once the possessor of a more perfect liberty. Thus the 
 powerful influence of the Church has ever been manifested in the custody 
 and protection of the civil and political liberty of the people. Slavery, 
 that old reproach of the heathen, was mainly abolished by the efforts 
 of the Church. The impartiality of law and the brotherhood of man 
 were first asserted by Jesus Christ, and the Apostles reechoed His voice 
 when they declared that there was neither Jew nor Gentile, nor barbarian 
 nor Scythian, but all where brothers in Jesus Christ. Savage customs 
 are no longer possible in any land where the Church has once set her 
 foot ; gentleness speedily takes the place of cruelty and the light of truth 
 quickly dispels the darkness, of barbarism." 
 
THE KEY TO MODERN HISTORY. 227 
 
 "In civilized nations the Church resisted the tyranny of the wicked, 
 protected the innocent and the helpless from injury, and supported the 
 government." 
 
 "But there are many who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and 
 adopt as their own his rebellious cry: I will not serve! and consequently 
 substitute for true liberty what is sheer license. Such are the men who, 
 iisurping the name of liberty, call themselves 'Liberals'. They deny the 
 existence of any Divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim 
 that every man makes his own law ; whence arises that ethical system 
 which they style 'independent morality' and which, under the guise of 
 liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God and 
 
 substitutes a boundless license If the determination of right and 
 
 wrong is at the merey of the majority, it is simply a downward path 
 to license and anarchy." 
 
 IP 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYFIRST. 
 LAX PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming 
 themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for 
 Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light; there- 
 fore it is no great thing if his ministers be transformed as the 
 ministers of justice. II CORINTHIANS xi, 13 15. 
 
 I. LUTHER A SECOND MOHAMMED. 
 
 TUTHER has been represented as the savior of liberty 
 and religion. "Did he not deliver Europe from the 
 yoke of the Popes and the superstitions of an idolatrous 
 worship? Did he not restore the pure religion of the 
 Gospel?" The great historians of our day proclaim that 
 he inaugurated an unbearable despotism and a fearful 
 decline of faith and morals. Luther himself claimed more 
 authority than any Pope ever did, and caused more harm 
 to Christendom than it ever suffered before; as can be 
 sufficiently proven by his own statements in his published 
 works (partially collected in pamphlet form by Rev. J. F. 
 X. O'Connor, S. J.). His principles have weakened or 
 annihilated faith in Christ, and destroyed the fear of the 
 Lord ; they have torn Christendom to pieces and let loose 
 the passions of men. There are several points of resemblance 
 between Mohammed and Luther, as founders of new 
 religions. Both acted under the stimulus of their own 
 ambition, without any Divine call. Both were sensual 
 men, as their lives and works and their influence in the 
 world plainly show. Both were the scourge of the 
 degenerate Christians of their times. 
 
 II. DESPOTISM IN FACT. 
 
 1. A False Prophet. 
 
 Luther was born at Eisleben in Saxony. He became 
 an Augustinian friar. In 1517 he started the Protestant 
 Revolt, which threw all northern Europe into an uproar, 
 and he died in 1546. 
 
LAX PROTESTANTISM. 229 
 
 A self-appointed prophet, Luther changed the Scriptures 
 at will to prove his new doctrines. He is sometimes re- 
 presented as the discoverer, and the first translator and 
 correct interpreter, of the Bible. It is false that the Bible 
 was not in common use before his time. In the Caxton 
 exhibition of London in 1878 there were exhibited sixty 
 copies of as many different editions of Latin and vernacular 
 Bibles printed before 1503. It is false that Luther made 
 the first and best version of the Scriptures, for he used as 
 a basis several Catholic translations already in existence. 
 It is also false that he was the best interpreter of Holy 
 Writ ; for he sacrificed everthing to his own personal ideas 
 and to mere rhetorical considerations. Dr. Amser, who 
 afterwards made an original translation of the Bible, 
 proved that Luther's translation contained more than 
 1400 errors and forgeries. The addition of the word 
 "alone" to Romans iii, 28, is an example of his high- 
 handed treatment of the sacred text. "Man is justified by 
 faith alone, without the works of the law", he made the 
 verse read. Luther rejected certain of the canonical books 
 without any other reason than his personal dislike for 
 them. He had but little respect for the three synoptic 
 Gospels, he despised the Epistle of St. James and the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, and he threw out all the Greek 
 books of the Old Testament. That he had no Divine inspir- 
 ation clearly appears from his own variations, and from the 
 decline of faith and morals which set in among his followers. 
 
 2. A Presumptuous Doctor. 
 
 Luther put himself above all the lights of the Church, 
 and pretended to know more than all the Schoolmen, 
 Doctors and Fathers of the past centuries, whom he 
 abused as "knaves, dolts, asses and infernal blasphemers." 
 Confuted in a public discussion at Leipzig, in the presence 
 of the professors of the universities of Paris, Lou vain and 
 Cologne, he characterized these learned men as "mules, 
 asses and Epicurean swine. " He asserted that St. Augustine 
 often erred, and that the works of St. Thomas were "a 
 mere theological abortion, a sink of error, a compound of 
 all sorts of heresies which destroy the Gospel." 
 
230 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 3. An Intolerant Anti-pope. 
 
 The pseudo-reformer of Wittenberg was possessed of a 
 Satanical hatred against the Popes, but, while declaiming 
 against their authority, he arrogated to himself more 
 power than they had ever pretended to. He suffered no 
 contradiction from any one, and he forced his new religion 
 upon an unwilling people. He contended in a pamphlet 
 that the Papacy is an institution of the Devil, and he 
 abused all Popes, Bishops, priests, monks, and Catholics 
 in general, in the coarsest manner. 
 
 The people were loath to recognize his authority, but 
 Luther forced them to it by the sword of the secular 
 princes. To these he offered as a bait the ecclesiastical 
 property. They seized it eagerly and became the chief 
 champions of Lutheranism. Among them were Philip of 
 Hesse, Albert of Brandenburg and Frederic of Saxony, and 
 the Scandinavian king Christian II (15131523). The 
 last-named was driven from the throne by his indignant 
 subjects and the Scandinavian lands were divided as he had 
 tried to divide the Church. But his successors Christian III 
 (15331588) and Gustams Vasa (15221560) succeeded 
 in introducing Protestantism against the will of their 
 people. The Protestant rulers pretended to the right of 
 enslaving the consciences of their subjects, and those of 
 Germany waged three civil wars to uphold that claim. 
 In the Thirty Years' War they called all the rulers of 
 northern Europe into Germany to help them maintain 
 that despotic principle. 
 
 Far then from being a popular movement, Protestantism 
 was received with repulsion by all true and fervent Christians. 
 It was welcome to the lukewarm or evil-minded ones, as a 
 relaxation of the Christian faith and morals. Says Bossuet: 
 
 "What wonder that heresies which favor the inclination of corrupt 
 nature should have spread with great rapidity, and that those which 
 assailed incomprehensible mysteries should have dragged along with 
 them in the ways of impiety the curious, the proud, the presumptuous 
 minds which always abound ? Is it a matter of astonishment that in 
 the excitement of an ill-regulated zeal against disorders which the Church 
 was first to mourn many Christians were carried even into schism and 
 revolt? Their success is no more surprising than that of Mohammed, 
 for it displays the same characteristics." 
 
LAX PROTESTANTISM. 231 
 
 III. LICENSE IN PRINCIPLE. 
 
 The main principles of Protestantism are the private 
 interpretation of the Bible and salvation by "faith" with- 
 out good works. 
 
 Granting to every one the right to interpret the 
 Scriptures without being able to confer the power of doing 
 so, it threw its followers into endless and useless disputes. 
 Allowing them to twist every text and every incident of 
 Scripture according to their own caprices, its only logical 
 conclusion was utter unbelief. It is folly to interpret the 
 Divine oracles by the human mind alone, which is neither 
 sure nor powerful enough for such a work. Many 
 phenomena of color seem m3 r steries and contradictions to 
 a blind man ; and, in a similar way, there are truths above 
 the capacity of our feeble intellect, which is dazzled by the 
 slightest ray of the Divine light. 
 
 Hence it came to pass that the private interpretation 
 of the Bible led to hopelessly contradictory conclusions 
 and bred a swarm of warring and ever-changing sects. 
 
 Luther himself wrote to the Christians of Antwerp : 
 "There are as many sects as there are heads. Every booby 
 imagines himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and wants to 
 be a Prophet." He alternately affirmed and denied the 
 seven sacraments and the authority of the Councils of the 
 Church. He often preached \vhat he did not believe him- 
 self, as he frankly avowed to Anthony Mussa, who had 
 complained that he could not believe what he was preach- 
 ing. He wrore to the friars of Wittenberg : 
 
 "How often did my heart faint, punish and reproach me with the 
 following pungent argument: "Art thou alone wise? Could all the others 
 err and have continued to err for so long a time ? How if thou errest 
 and leadest into error so many people who will all be damned forever?" 
 
 But the unfortunate man silenced these warnings of 
 his troubled conscience by persuading himself that they 
 were diabolical illusions which he was bound to resist! 
 
 Protestantism became a battlefield of religious dis- 
 putes. Its followers questioned everything. The Ana- 
 baptists refused to acknowledge the lawfulness of validity 
 of infant baptism, arid the Sacrameritarians rejected the 
 Real Presence. The very fundamental doctrine of Pro- 
 
232 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 testantism, "justification by faith alone," was questioned 
 everywhere. There was a profound contempt for the 
 ministers of the false gospel and a total lack of practical 
 charity. Luther says: 
 
 "A poor village parson is now the most despised of all. There is no 
 peasant that does not trample him under his feet. They let them herd 
 cows and hogs like other peasants. I would prevent them from having any 
 pastors and preachers, and let them live like swine as they do anyway." 
 
 According to Luther, when the plague broke out in 
 Wittenberg in 1527 and 1539 the people were filled with 
 such horrible fear "that the brother forsook his brother 
 and the son his parents." 
 
 Proclaiming justification by faith alone without good 
 works, Luther let loose all the passions of man. He wrote 
 to Melanchthon: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, and more 
 boldly still believe and rejoice in Christ, who is a con- 
 queror of sin and of the world. Sin is our lot here below. 
 Sin cannot deprive us of Christ, even if in one day we 
 were to commit a thousand adulteries and a thousand 
 murders." Goethe thus expresses Luther's sentiments: 
 
 "Who loves not women, wine and song 
 Remain^ a fool his whole life long." 
 
 Luther had studied the most licentious Pagan authors, 
 and he harped continually on the impossibility of con- 
 tinence. He pretended that "no man or woman could be 
 chaste in primitive, much less in fallen nature. To vow 
 to abstain from this natural propensity is the same as to 
 vow that one will have wings and fly and be an angel." 
 Luther, himself a priest, "married" the nun Catherine Bora. 
 He allowed divorce, and sanctioned the bigamy of Philip 
 of Hesse. 
 
 He often described the corruption of his followers in 
 terms similar to the following: 
 
 "The people are like pigs, dead and buried in constant drunkenness. 
 I often wish that these filthy swinebellies were back under the tyranny 
 of the Popes." 
 
 Why did he induce them to revolt against the Popes, 
 who had made of the Germans one of the most refined 
 peoples of the world? 
 
LAX PROTESTANTISM. 233 
 
 Five month before his death he wished to leave his 
 capital of Wittenberg on account of its corruption. He 
 wrote to his "wife": 
 
 "Away from this Sodom! I would rather wander about and beg 
 my bread than to allow my poor old last days to be martyred and 
 upset by the disorders of Wittemberg." 
 
 What a desperate state for the first cit} r of Pro- 
 testantism to be in? What a difference between Peter's 
 Catacombs and Luther's Sodom! 
 
 Luther continually speaks of the Devil. He describes 
 himself as having seen him and disputed with him on 
 various occasions, and it was after a long discussion of 
 the kind that he took the step of abolishing private Mass. 
 What a reformer, who chooses his measures according to 
 the dictates of Satan! His fellow "reformer" Zwingli 
 compliments him in this \vise: 
 
 "Luther is not possessed of one but of a legion of devils. He wrote 
 all his works by the impulse and at the dictation of the Devil, with 
 whom he had dealings, and who in the struggle seems to have thrown 
 him by victorious arguments." 
 
 Thread well, his American apologist, says: 
 
 "If we believe himself a legion of devils was at his heels continually, 
 and neither rhetoric nor invective succeeded in expelling them." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYSECOND. 
 RIGORISTIC PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ; because you 
 tithe mint and annis and cummin, and have left the weightier 
 things of the law, judgement and mercy and fath. 
 
 MATTHEW xxiii, 23. 
 
 I. MOHAMMEDAN FEATURES OF CALVINISM. 
 
 gloomy Calvin gave a cheerless form to Protes- 
 tantism, and brought into Christendom the Moham- 
 medan features of fatalism and intolerance. He taught 
 that God has predestined a part of mankind to eternal 
 happiness, and another part to eternal damnation, to 
 which destinies be will bring them irresistibly. Only a 
 genius could build up such a repulsive system; but no 
 genius could preserve it from its fatal consequences. By 
 his literary talents Calvin veiled the horror of his doctrine 
 of predam nation , by his commanding authority he imposed 
 an iron rule upon his followers; and by his organizing 
 power be united the forces of Protestantism, and made of 
 Geneva a second Rome. He founded an academy of 
 philosophy and theology, which became the great nursery 
 of Protestant ministers, and he divided the preachers into 
 pastors, elders and deacons. But his ingenious measures 
 cauld not prevent the inexorable consequences of his crude 
 fatalism and his unbearable rigorism. It generated cruelty 
 and despair; and caused a reaction to utter unbelief and 
 hideous immorality. 
 
 II. A GLOOMY SYSTEM. 
 1. Fatalism. 
 
 Calvin's characteristic doctrine is the tenet of absolute 
 and unconditional predestination. In his "Institutes" he- 
 says: 
 
RIGORISTIC PROTESTANTISM. 235 
 
 "One portion of men God has foreordained to everlasting happiness, 
 n order to manifest his mercy on them. These are perfectly sure of their 
 happiness and cannot be damned. All other men God has from all 
 eternity foreordained to damnation in order to manifest his justice in 
 them. These notwithstanding the greatest efforts cannot attain to 
 salvation." 
 
 Moreover, Calvin sa} r s that none are chosen but his 
 own followers, who observe all and every one of the 
 minutest commandments of God, which he exaggerated 
 into unbearable burdens. 
 
 At the outset Calvinism was a system of fear and 
 trembling, in which God and His representatives on earth 
 were nothing but bloodthirsthy tyrants. Now this absurd 
 doctrine has been discarded by the greater number of those 
 who profess to be Calvin's followers. If Calvin had been 
 sent by God as His messenger, could he have taught such 
 an impossible doctrine as the cornerstone of his system, 
 and could that very fundamental principle be subject to 
 change ? 
 
 2. Intolerance. 
 
 Exiled from France for unnatural crimes, Calvin arrived 
 in Switzerland, which had already been disturbed by the 
 agitations of Swingli for fifteen years. Called to Geneva 
 in 1536, he ruled that city with an iron hand till his 
 death in 1564. For only four years did the liberty -loving 
 citizens succeed in driving away their foreign master. Calvin 
 was as absolute and as tyrannical as a Mohammedan 
 Khaliph. He held under his control the council of twenty- 
 five burgomasters, and instituted a consistory of eighteen 
 members to prevent any attack against his person or his 
 cause. It was a tribunal of inquisition far more severe 
 and far more searching than the Spanish Inquisition. 
 Calvin suppressed all liberty, personal as well as civil and 
 religious. He arbitrarily regulated matters of dress, diet 
 and trade, and the daily routine of life. He condemned to 
 prison the merchant who played at cards, the peasant 
 who spoke harshly to his beast, and the citizen who did 
 not extinguish his lamp at a certain hour. Every year the 
 Inquisitorial Consistory instituted hundreds of prosecutions 
 for blasphemy, calumny, obscene language, lechery, insults 
 
236 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 to Calvin, attempts against the French exiles, and offences 
 against the ministers. Calvin never forgave a .personal 
 injury. He was as watchful as a tiger to pounce upon his 
 prey. He sent several distinguished citizens to prison or 
 to exile for a difference of opinion with him. He executed 
 for heresy Berthellier and Servatus. The latter was a 
 Protestant physician, of independent opinions, who had 
 been banished from Yienne, in France, through the intrigues 
 of Calvin. Passing through Geneva he was cast into jail 
 and left a prey to disease and vermin. After six weeks of 
 torments he begged in vain for fresh linen, and he also 
 wrote four times to supplicate the right of defence. Calvin 
 refused everything, and even laughed at the agony of his 
 dying victim, who was burned at the stump of a tree out- 
 side of the city. 
 
 Calvin was struck by ten diseases, which he describes 
 to the physicians of Montpellier. He cursed the day he 
 ever studied or wrote. The Protestant Schlussemberg says : 
 
 "God struck this heretic with a heavy hand, so that, despairing of 
 his salvation and invoking the devils, swearing, execrating in an awful 
 way, he gave up the ghost. Worms were growing in a horrible aposteme 
 in his most intimate parts, in such wise that none of the attendants 
 could endure the smell." 
 
 Calvin died on May 27th, 1564, at eight in the morn- 
 ing, and was buried at two in the afternoon of the same 
 day, although many people had come from afar to see him 
 a last time. Theodore Beza, his worthy successor and 
 biographer, tried to conceal these facts; but they are ad- 
 mitted to-day by the most serious historians. Calvin's 
 memory, long held in veneration, has gradually fallen into 
 disrepute. At his third centennial celebration, the city of 
 Geneva refused to acknowledge him as a national hero or 
 a national saint, and by way of protest against the cele- 
 bration the capital sentences of Berthellier and Servetus 
 were posted on the walls." 
 
 III. EVIL FRUITS OF CALVINISM. 
 
 The great mistake of Calvin was that he made Divine 
 commandments out of Evangelical counsels, and even out 
 of notions of his own utterly without Scriptural founda- 
 
RIGORISTIC PROTESTANTISM. 237 
 
 tion. He thus discouraged his followers, and made them 
 despair of being able to comply with his regulations. In 
 the Church of God there exist religious orders prescribing 
 more severity than the strictest Calvinism. But they are 
 voluntarily joined by persons aspiring to a special state 
 ot spiritual perfection, while Calvinism was imposed upon 
 all as necessary to salvation and under pain of the law. 
 Excessive rigorism is as fatal as excessive laxity, for it 
 soon destroys all joy and all hope. The natural conse- 
 quences of such a stern doctrine and intolerable discipline 
 were discouragement and despair, doubt and unbelief and 
 a multitude of other sins. How could people long believe 
 in the tyrannical God described by Calvin? Unable to 
 understand such a cruel God and to observe such stringent 
 laws, they gave them up altogether, and ceased to make 
 any pretense of serving Christ. 
 
 That rod of iron, far from uplifting the people, threw 
 them into real crimes. Dr. Paul Henry says: 
 
 "To those who imagine that Calvin did nothing but good, I would 
 produce our registers covered with records of ilegitimate children, who 
 were exposed in all parts of the town and country, hideous trials for 
 obscenity, men and women burnt for witchcraft, sentences of death in 
 frighful numbers, and all that in the very generation nourished by the 
 mystic manna of Calvin!" 
 
 What a contrast between the records of the criminal 
 courts of Calvin's Geneva, and the acts of the matyrs of 
 Peter's Rome! 
 
 The plague broke out in 1543, and the officials asked 
 for at least one minister to attend the dying who were 
 crowded in the hospital. The preachers met for the pur- 
 pose of drawing lots to decide who was to go. Only one 
 was willing to expose himself if the lot should fall upon 
 him. The others said that God had not given them the 
 grace to have courage and strength to go to the hospital ! 
 None of them went. There was only a French poet, with 
 one companion, who were brave enough to attend the 
 sick. 
 
 The Calvinists, and especially the Puritans, have often 
 been represented as the champions of liberty and indepen- 
 dence. If liberty means a right to destroy the liberty of 
 others, if independence means a right to overthrow all 
 
238 T HE THREE AGES. 
 
 other power but their own, they have illustrated them to 
 perfection. For the intolerant spirit of Calvin descended 
 to his disciples in all lands, who oppressed the people 
 wherever and whenever they had a chance, and conspired 
 against the governments they could not control. Although 
 an insignificant minority in France and Belgium, the 
 Calvinists, under the names of Huguenots and Gueux, 
 attempted by bloody wars to reduce those countries under 
 their control. In Germany they greatly embittered the 
 Thirty Years' War. In Scotland and England they over- 
 threw the governments and persecuted all their fellow- 
 citizens who where not Calvinists. They carried their 
 fanatical principles into America, and acted on them until 
 the Declaration of Independence, when they were compelled 
 to desist for the sake of the common safety and the per- 
 petuation of the confederation of colonies. 
 
 They fastened on the people an unbearable yoke of 
 Pharisaic observances. They made no crime of civil war, 
 or the enslavement and extermination of savages, but they 
 made it a crime for a man to absent himself from their 
 heartless services, or for a mother to kiss her baby on a 
 ''Sabbath day!" 
 
 The most fatal indictment against the work of Calvin 
 is that from the ranks of his followers have come the 
 greater number of complete apostates and unbelievers. Is 
 it the work of God to drive the Christians away from the 
 Savior ? Has Calvin occomplished the work of the Master 
 who came to look for the forlorn Sheep? 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYTHIRD. 
 AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 There was a slaughter of young and old, a destruction of 
 women and children, and killing of virgins and infants . . . 
 And there were slain . . . fourscore thousand, forty thousand 
 were made prisoners and as many sold. But this was not 
 enough. He presumed also to enter into the temple the most 
 holy in all the world .... And taking in his wicked hands the 
 holy vessels, which were given by the cities and kings for the 
 ornament and the glory of the place, he unworthily handled 
 and profaned them. II MACHABEES v, 13 16. 
 
 I. SPIRIT OF ENGLISH REVOLT. 
 
 English historian Cobbett, himself an Episcopalian, 
 proves by irrecusable official documents that the so- 
 called " Reformation" in England was an imposition on, 
 and a degradation of, the English people. Lust, ambition 
 and rapacity were its motives; bloodshed, starvation and 
 legal prosecution were the means used to impose it upon 
 the people; and corruption and pauperism were the results. 
 It is with the fullest justice that Henry VIII and Elizabeth 
 are called the Neros of the North. No Christian prince 
 ver equalled their cruelty and their other crimes; or did 
 more injury to the religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 II. SCHISM OF HENRY VIII. 
 
 The first step of the English Revolt was taken by 
 Henry VIII in 1533, and consisted of schism, accompanied 
 by robbery and slaughter. Henry VIII was a powerful 
 .and brilliant king, and a defender of the Faith against 
 Luther, until he delivered himself up to his passions. 
 Cobbett says that then he became "the most unjust, 
 hardest-hearted, meanest and most sanguinary tyrant that 
 the world ever beheld, whether Christian or heathen." 
 After seventeen years of happy married life \vith the great 
 
240 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of 
 Isabella, he was fascinated by the charms of Anne Boleyn 
 and consequently sought a divorce from his queen, under 
 the pretext that she had been the wife of his deceased 
 brother. In hope of quieting down his passions, Pope 
 Clement VII protracted negotiations. But Henry brooked 
 no delay : He dismissed his prime minister Cardinal Wolsey ; 
 he consulted the universities of Europe, which decided 
 against him; and he attempted coercion by refusing to 
 allow any further exercice within his realm of the Papal 
 rights of receiving the first fruits of vacant benefices, and 
 confirming Episcopal elections. 
 
 All these things failing to obtain the coveted divorce, 
 two arch-rascals counselled him to separate from Rome 
 and to recur to his own courts. The}'- were the hypo- 
 critical Thomas Cromwell and Thorn as Cranmer. Appointed 
 respectively Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 they granted a decree of divorce from Catherine and 
 approved of the marriage with Anne. Banished from the 
 court, and deprived of her only child Mary, the noble 
 Catherine died in 1536. Three months later her supplanter 
 was accused of adultery, proved guilty with four different 
 partners, and beheaded. Henry is said to have \vept at 
 the death of Catherine, but he dressed in white at the 
 execution of Anne, and the following day he married Jane 
 Seymour, who died unregretted in childbirth. He took 
 three more wives : Catherine of Cleves, a German who suc- 
 ceeded in escaping from the clutches of the royal Bluebeard, 
 Catherine Howard, who was beheaded, and Catherine 
 Parr, who was able to survive the royal liberty only by 
 the exercise of great skill. 
 
 At first the Apostolic See merely annulled Cranmer's 
 decision; but in 1535 a bull of excummunication against 
 Henry VIII was signed, which was published in 1538. 
 The King and the Parliament had achieved a thorough 
 secession or schism from Rome. In 1534 they abolished 
 the Papal jurisdiction in the realm, and pretended to make 
 the king "the supreme head of the English Church". By 
 the "Act of Supremacy" authority in all matters ecclesias- 
 tical was vested in the crown, and an oath acknowledging 
 
AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM. 241 
 
 the royal supremacy was required from all officials, under 
 pain of felony. With one exception the Bishops of England 
 let themselves be browbeaten into subscribing to the 
 declaration that "the Bishop of Rome had no more 
 authority conferred on him by God in this kingdom of 
 England than any other foreign Bishop." The English 
 people were profoundly Catholic, and, especially in the 
 north, they took a vigorous stand against the usurpations 
 of the new lay Pope, notwithstanding the treason of their 
 Bishops. But they were overwhelmed by the royal armies, 
 and all armed opposition was soon crushed out. 
 
 With a Parliament that trembled at his feet, Henry 
 carried out his plans by a series of laws and penalties so 
 horrible as to terrify every class of society; and he 
 plundered his subjects on a scale never before known in 
 any civilized country. Holinshed puts down 72,000 as the 
 number of victims murdered by this tyrant. It is said of 
 Henry VIII that "he spared no man in his anger, and no 
 woman in his lust." During his reign of thirtyseven 
 years, he ordered the execution of two queens, two cardi- 
 nals, two archbishops, eighteen Bishops, thirteen abbots, 
 five hundred priors and other monks, thirty eight doctors 
 of divinity and law, twelve dukes, one hundred and sixty- 
 nine noblemen of lesser rank, one hundred and twenty four 
 gentlemen -commoners, and 110 ladies. Among his victims 
 were the noble and saintly Chancellor Sir Thomas More, 
 Bishop Fisher, and the Countess of Salisbury, the king's 
 cousin. The great means of cementing the new order of 
 things was the spoils resulting from the plunder of the 
 parishes, guilds, religious orders, hospitals and all other 
 religious and charitable institutions, by Henry and his 
 satellites. 
 
 About 1000 monasteries and 100 hospitals were 
 destroyed and their property seized by the king's minions. 
 This was a social crime which fastened upon England the 
 curse of pauperism. Monastic property was held for the 
 maintenance of the poor ; it gave employment to thousands 
 of families, and was the main source of food production. 
 Now the vast farms of the monks were turned into sheep- 
 ranches by the nobles or speculators to whom the king 
 
 16 
 
242 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 gave or sold them, and the price of provisions enormously 
 increased. Many towns, villages and hamlets were in a 
 short time converted into wastes and their inhabitants 
 reduced to beggary and starvation. Although no work 
 was to be had, beggary was made a crime unless licensed 
 by the authorities. If any one begged without license he 
 was first whipped, and then his right ear was cut off and 
 finally his head. Later, Somerset branded the beggars as 
 vagrants and slaves, and gave them to inhuman masters 
 whom they were compelled to serve for a time or for life. 
 Cromwell, the instigator and executor of these barbarous 
 measures, took for himself no less than thirty of the 
 monastic estates. But Henry finally coveted his property 
 and sent him also to the block. 
 
 The tyrant lived seven years after his evil minister's 
 death, but it was in disappointment and disease. He 
 raged and foamed against his faithless wives like a wild 
 beast; he passed laws against them, and made himself 
 the laughing stock of all Europe. Gluttony and debauchery 
 made him an unwieldy mass of flesh. 
 
 III. HERESY INTRODUCED BY SOMERSET. 
 
 Henry VIII had asked that his son Edward VI, born 
 of Jane Seymour, should be educated in the old faith, but 
 his uncle Somerset got possession of him and raised him a 
 Protestant. It was this man who turned Henry's schis- 
 matic ecclesiastical establishment into an out-an-out 
 Protestant sect (1547). Cranmer, that prince of hypocrites, 
 was his right arm, and called from the continent the 
 fanatics Bucer, Knox and "Peter Martyr" to Protestantize 
 England. The Holy Mass was declared "a damnable 
 idolatry" and the churches were systematically despoiled. 
 An English service-book known as "The Book of Common 
 Prayer" was hastily compiled from the Catholic Missal 
 and Ritual, a symbol of fortytwo articles of faith was 
 drawn up and both were imposed upon the people by force 
 of penal laws. Formidable insurrections broke out in 
 various parts of the kingdom ; but foreign mercenaries 
 were called in to shoot down the brave Englishmen who 
 had the courage to make a stand for religious liberty; 
 
AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM. 243 
 
 and by the weapons of German Lutheran hirelings the 
 people were finally forced to submit to the iniquitous 
 innovators. Somerset had already killed one of his brothers, 
 and he attempted to destroy another, called Northumber- 
 land, who however succeeded in putting him to death and 
 assumed the Regency himself. Soon Edward VI died, and 
 Northumberland crowned his own daughter-in-law, Lady 
 Jane Grey, a niece of Henry VIII. 
 
 IV. CATHOLIC REVIVAL UNDER MARY. 
 
 The immense majority of the people were still Catholic, 
 and notwithstanding the conspiracy of Northumberland, 
 Queen Mary entered London in triumph at the head of 
 30,000 men. Northumberland was put to death and, 
 after a new conspiracy had been unearthed, the pretender 
 also was beheaded. Cranmer, conspiring with France, 
 was likewise executed. Mary wished to restore the Catholic 
 religion, and the always complaisant Parliament passed a 
 bill destructive of the work of Somerset and Henry VIII. 
 In a full public session Cardinal Pole absolved England 
 from heresy and schism. Mary had to defend herself 
 against Protestant conspiracies ; and she executed none 
 but traitors and criminals. Hume, a rabit reviler of Mary, 
 puts at 277 the number of executions during the five 
 years of her reign. Cobbett says : 
 
 "All the people executed by Mary were "without exception apostates, 
 perjurers and plunderers, and the greatest number of them had also been 
 guilty of high treason against Mary herself." 
 
 V. FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM BY 
 ELIZABETH. 
 
 Elizabeth (15581603) showed herself a true daughter 
 of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn by her scandalous lust, 
 her religious tyranny and her heartless cruelty. She was 
 often called by her courtiers "the Virgin Queen", but her 
 scandalous relations with Leicester, second son of North- 
 umberland, to say nothing of others, were known to all. 
 
 She has also received from certain fanatical perverters 
 of history the soubriquet of "The Good Queen Bess", her 
 predecessor being styled by the same wretched deceivers 
 
244 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 "Bloody Mary". But these misnomers have become obso- 
 lete, and now only endure as historical mementoes of the 
 blindness of sectarian partisanship. "For every drop of 
 blood that Mary shed/' says Cobbett, "Elizabeth shed a 
 pint. She put more people to death in one year than 
 Mary in all her reign." 
 
 Upon the advice of Cecil she brought before Parliament 
 the motion to reestablish the schism of Henry and the 
 heresy of Somerset. By creating new peers and imprison- 
 ing most of the Bishops she had it passed by a majority 
 of three votes. The Bishops, who refused with the ex- 
 ception of one, to take the oath of supremacy, were 
 deposed and new ones nominated. By the authority of 
 the Popess-queen a man named Barlow consecrated 
 Matthew Parker, who had been chaplain to Anne Boleyn, 
 as Archbishop of Canterbury. Barlow was not a Bishop 
 in the English Church of that time. He had once been 
 appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells in Henry the Eighth's 
 State religion, but there is no record of his ever having 
 been consecrated, and on Mary's occassion he had been 
 expelled from the see into which he had been intruded. 
 There was an essential defect in the very intention and 
 very form of Parker's consecration. The ritual used was 
 that which had been invented in Edward's time for the 
 very purpose of expressing the intention of not making a 
 Bishop, in the Catholic sense of the word. It retained of 
 the old Catholic rite only the words: "Receive the Holy 
 Ghost and remember to stir up the grace of God which is 
 in thee by the imposition of hands." This would apply as 
 well to baptism or confirmation as to the consecration of 
 a Bishop. In 1662 the Establishment amended it by 
 adding the words "for the office and work of a Bishop"; 
 but this was just one hundred years too late to save 
 Anglican orders. 
 
 The "Book of Common Prayer" was re-introduced in 
 a revised and simplified form, and Somerset's fortytwo 
 articles of faith were reduced to thirtynine. Elizabeth 
 acted like a tigress against her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen 
 of the Scots and legitimate heir to the throne of England. 
 She intrigued with Mary's revolted subjects (the ferocious 
 
AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM. 245 
 
 sectary Ktiox and his followers and abettors) and entrapped 
 her in England, where she cast her into prison in 1568 
 and brought her to the scaffold in 1587. In order to 
 escape the odium of that barbarous crime, she tried to 
 implicate her victim in conpiracies and to throw the 
 responsibility for the execution upon others. But the 
 Protestant historian Whithekar says: 
 
 "I blush as an Englishman to think that this was done by an Eng- 
 lish queen, and one whose name I was taught in my infancy to lisp as 
 the honor of her sex and the glory of our isle." 
 
 Already in 1570 had the Pope excomunicated the faith- 
 less queen, but now he deposed her and called on the 
 Christian kings to dethrone her. They themselves had 
 many just complaints against her. For many years she 
 had intrigued with the rebellious subjects of the kings of 
 France and Spain ; and she had pirates, like Drake, preying 
 upon Spanish vessels on all the seas and even in the very 
 harbors of Spain. Philip II equipped an immense fleet, 
 extending seven miles from one end to the other, and 
 called it the Invincible Armada. But it was partly destroyed 
 by storms, and entirely disabled by the vigorous resistance 
 of all the Englishmen, both Catholics and Protestants. 
 However the queen showed no gratitude for the loyalty 
 of her Catholic subjects, and went on butchering them as 
 mercilessly as ever. So reluctant were the people to 
 embrace the new religion that at the end of her reign, in 
 spite of the compulsory attendance of all the people upon 
 the Protestant services, one half of England still remained 
 Catholic, as well as nearly all of Ireland. 
 
 During the last thirty years of Elizabeth's reign count- 
 less penal laws were passed against the Catholics, to make 
 them outlaws and pariahs. To deny the spiritual suprem- 
 acy of the queen or to communicate with the Pope was 
 declared high treason. Recusansy, that is, refusal to attend 
 Protestant worship, was punished with ruinous fines, 
 imprisonment and bodily chastisement. Any one absenting 
 himself from the services of the new sect for a month was 
 required to pay sixty pounds ($300) into the royal treas- 
 sury. To say Mass, to hear Mass, or to shelter a priest 
 was to incur heavy fines, and, on repetition of the offense, 
 
246 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 to expose oneself to death on the scaffold or at the stake. 
 In 1594 all priests were ordered to quit the kingdom 
 within forty days. In 1593 Catholics were excluded from 
 commerce, courts and politics. A formidable inquisition, 
 under the name of the Court of High Commission, was 
 created to enforce such penal laws. There were fourtyfour 
 commissioners, who penetrated into the houses, seized 
 private papers, and took cognizance even of an unguarded 
 word. The prisons were filled with sufferers for conscience's 
 sake. The rack was seldom idle in the Tower. Priests 
 were hunted down like wolves ; many died in prison and 
 others perished on the scaffold. It became necessary to 
 establish English seminaries abroad in order to educate 
 priests full of heroism to keep the faith alive in these 
 persecuted regions. Such institutions were established at 
 Douay, Lou vain and Rome and in other cities of France, 
 Belgium and Spain. 
 
 Elizabeth, who had been the cause of so much grief to 
 others, was destined to close her life in sorrow and despair. 
 Before she died she became inconsolable and fell into a 
 moping melancholy. She would sit silent in her chair for 
 whole days and nights at a time, refusing to go to bed. 
 To those who sought to console her, she replied, "I am 
 tied with an iron collar"; and she drove away Parker and 
 other ecclesiastical dignitaries of her own creation who 
 came to console her, calling them "hedge-priests". 
 
 VI. EVIL MEANS AND RESULTS. 
 
 The effect of the official Protestantization of Egland 
 was a moral and material decline on all sides. The schools 
 were neglected and the universities deserted. The land was 
 inundated with vice and crime. Gambling was almost 
 universal among the nobility and drunkeness spread rapidly 
 among the lower classes. The ale house had more attrac- 
 tion than the meeting house. The preachers of the new 
 gospel were regarded as dicers, petty thieves and open 
 robbers. The parliaments were venal, and .the counselors 
 of the court were base and unprincipled men. Bribes were 
 freely given and openly accepted. Macaulay says: 
 
AUTOCRATIC PROTESTANTISM. 247 
 
 "A king whose character may be described by saying that he was 
 despotism itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristo- 
 cracy, a servile Parliament: Such were the instruments which divorced 
 England from Rome." 
 
 Froude himself testifies : 
 
 "To the universities, the Reformation brought desolation, to the 
 people of England, misery and want. The change of faith has brought 
 with it no increase of freedom and less of charity. The prisons were 
 crowded with sufferers for opinion, and the creed of one thousand years 
 was made a crime by a doctrine of yesterday." 
 
 Littledale, a prominent clergyman in the English 
 Establishment and one of the most bitter enemies of the 
 Catholic Church, says: 
 
 "The Reformers were such utterly unredeemed villains, for the most 
 part, that the only parallel I know of for the way half-educated people 
 speak of them among us is the appearance of Pontius Pilate among the 
 saints in the Abyssinian [separatist] calendar." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYFOURTH. 
 PERSECUTIONS IN IRELAND. 
 
 They will deliver you up in councils and they will scourge 
 you in their synagogues ; and you shall be brought before 
 governors and therefore kings for My sake, for a testimony to 
 them and to the Gentiles. 
 
 Fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill 
 the soul ; but rather fear Him that can destroy both body and 
 soul in Hell. 
 
 He that loveth his father or mother more than Me is not 
 worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than 
 Me is not worthy of Me. MATTHEW x, 17, 18, 28, 37. 
 
 I. A NATION OF MARTYRS. 
 
 most noble and the most Christian nation of 
 Northern Europe is the Irish nation. In the invasion 
 of the barbarians Ireland defended her institutions, and 
 became the refuge of civilization and the school of apostles. 
 In the apostasy of northern Europe Ireland alone (with 
 the noble exception of Flanders and the Rhineland) re- 
 mained faithful to Christ and His Church, and she suffered 
 a martyrdom of three centuries for the sake of true 
 Christianity. The most powerful kings of three dynasties 
 attempted to drown her faith in the blood of her children. 
 Nine generations arose and suffered or died for Christ. 
 The English succeeded in conquering the sea, but with all 
 their power and glory they never could conquer the faith 
 of the Irish people. 
 
 II. FUTILE EFFORTS OF HENRY AND SOMERSET. 
 
 Since 1169 the English kings had been striving to con- 
 quer Ireland, but they never got beyond the twenty miles 
 of the Pale along the Channel, which was settled by the 
 Englishmen. Henry VIII resorted to the method of the 
 Roman conqueror : Divide et impera "Divide your enemies 
 and conquer them." He endeavored to embroil the Irish 
 in religious disputes, and to gain some of the chiefs by 
 offering them the confiscated estates of monks and faithful 
 
PERSECUTIONS IN IRELAND. 249 
 
 Catholic nobles. He appointed G. Browne, a Lutheran, 
 Archbishop of Dublin, and sent T. Cromwell as his agent 
 to the country. In 1536 the Parliament of the Pale pro- 
 claimed him Pope, and in 1541 King, of all Ireland. How- 
 ever, the people regarded him with abhorrence. 
 
 Somerset resorted to every means to force Protestantism 
 upon Ireland, such as threats, bribes and violence; but all 
 in vain. Only four Bishops (besides his own creature 
 Browne) and three priests in all Ireland were found ready 
 to betray their faith for filthy lucre. 
 
 Under Mary the Catholic religion flourished again as 
 before ; and only four separatist preachers remained in the 
 land. 
 
 III. SYSTEMATIC ATTEMPTS AT EXTERMINATION. 
 1. Elizabethan Persecution. 
 
 Elizabeth carried on a persecution as cruel as those of 
 Nero and Domitian. The Acts of Supremacy and Con- 
 formity were imposed under the most formidable penalties. 
 The priests were hunted down like wild beasts, and sub- 
 jected to horrible tortures. Some were beaten with stones 
 on their tonsured heads till their brains were exposed. 
 Others had their flesh torn from their bodies so that their 
 entrails protruded. Others had pins stuck beneath the 
 nails of their fingers, or the nails themselves torn out by 
 the roots. Bishops O 'Hurley, O'Healy and Creach suffered 
 horrible tortures. Elizabeth followed a plan of extermina- 
 tion which brands her as the most coldblooded, heartless 
 and execrable tyrant that ever desecrated the throne of a 
 land pretending to be Christian. Wherever the English 
 soldier passed he was ordered to burn the houses, destroy 
 the crops and kill the cattle of the natives. The poet Spenser 
 says of the Irish : 
 
 "Ere one year and a half had [passed they were brought to such 
 wretchedness as would move even a beart of stone. Out of every corner 
 of the woods and glynns they came creeping forth on their hands, for 
 their legs could not bear them ; they looked like skeletons , they spoke 
 like ghosts crying out of their graves; they ate the dead carrion yea 
 and one another soon after. In a short space there was none almost 
 left, and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly void of 
 man and beast.'' 
 
250 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 To replace the martyred population, Elizabeth con- 
 fiscated fully three-fourths of the landed property of Ireland, 
 and granted it to English and Scotch colonists. The natives 
 succeeded in repelling the invaders two times, but finally 
 a settlement was made. These foreign colonists were legally 
 the absolute masters of the Irish, while they were their 
 most deadly enemies. 
 
 2. Treachery of the Stuarts. 
 
 The Irish hailed the accession of the Stuarts with joy, 
 but they were always betrayed or ill-treated by them. 
 James I proclaimed an amnesty for all except * 'Papists 
 and assassins". It was he who carried into effect the 
 colonization scheme of Elizabeth and planted Ulster with 
 Scotch and British adventurers. Charles I allowed his 
 heartless minister Straiford to treat Ireland as a conquered 
 country, whose inhabitants had no other title to their land 
 than the good will of the king. He started a system of 
 legalized robbery under the name of "an inquiry into the 
 titles under which property was held", and he appointed 
 a commission on defective titles in Conn aught for the 
 purpose of dispossessing the Irish landlords and colonizing 
 the province with Protestants. The whole island rose in 
 insurrection, and in 1642 formed the confederation of Kil- 
 kenny, which soon became master of the land. The Scotch 
 Presbj^terians and the English Puritans revolted against 
 King Charles, gained control of the English Parliament, 
 and made war on their sovereign and put him to death. 
 But the Irishmen remained faithful to him, notwithstanding 
 that he had deceived them repeatedly. Their motto was: 
 "For God, king and country, the Irish unanimously." 
 While the natives were the masters of Ireland, revenge was 
 natural, but it was forbidden by the chieftains; while the 
 officers of the Parliament had for motto : "Extirpate the 
 Irish root and branch." 
 
 3. Persecutions by Cromwell and William. 
 
 After Oliver Cromwell had executed Charles I (1649), 
 the Irish continued to stand firm for the royal cause, but 
 they were overcome by the Dictator himself. Cromwell 
 
PERSECUTIONS IN IRELAND. 251 
 
 came with the best of his troops, gained a number of 
 battles, and, to frighten the people into submission, 
 massacred whole cities, like Drogheda and Wexford. 
 Nearly half the population perished ; 40,000 soldiers emi- 
 grated, and 50,000 young people were sold into slavery. 
 A new and horrible persecution was commenced against 
 the clergy. Five hundred priests were killed and 1,000 
 were exiled during the ten years of the Puritan tyranny. 
 The second confiscation and colonization of Ireland took 
 place at this time. All the property of the Irish people 
 was declared confiscated, and Connaught was assigned as 
 their residence. That part of the country was bare and 
 desert, and contained no habitation fit for a human being, 
 and, as no one coveted it, the nobles and the poor alike 
 were driven thither to make room for Protestants and 
 foreigners. Cardinal Moran says: 
 
 '"With famine and pestilence despair seized upon the afflicted natives. 
 Thousands died of starvation and disease. Others cast themselves 
 from precipices, whilst the walking spectres that remained seemed to 
 indicate that the whole plantation was nothing else than a mighty 
 sepulchre." 
 
 The population was reduced to 500,000, among whom 
 150,000 were English and Scotch colonists. 
 
 When James II granted liberty of conscience to all, the 
 Protestants called in against him his sister Mary and her 
 husband William of Orange, who defeated the royal army 
 at the battle of the Boyne in 1690. James himself fled to 
 France, never to return, but the Catholics defended Limerick 
 until they were promised liberty of conscience by a solemn 
 treaty. The terms of this compact were shamefully broken, 
 and the Irish people were persecuted more than ever. 
 Their priests were driven out of the country or tracked by 
 the informers who swarmed all over the land. A third 
 wholesale confiscation and colonization was perpetrated. 
 The old scheme of "inquiring into defective titles" was 
 again revived, and under its operation 1,060,792 acres 
 were forfeited to the crown, besides the 10,636,837 already 
 seized. A new class of adventurers were introduced into 
 the country, consisting chiefly of Dutch and German 
 Protestants. 
 
252 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 4. Persecution by the Georges. 
 
 The penal laws continued with unabated vigor under 
 the House of Brunswick. Notwithstanding their sufferings, 
 the Irish did not side with u the pretender" Charles Stuart, 
 when he attempted to recover by force the crown of his 
 ancestors ; but they were as violently persecuted as if they 
 had. Nobles were hurried to prison, priests were torn 
 from the altars. Then appeared those Jewish miscreants 
 known as pries tcatchers, who pretended to be priests 
 themselves, for the sake of ferreting out the real priests 
 and betraying them to the persecutors. One hundred and 
 fifty pounds were offered for the conviction of a Bishop, 
 and fifty for that of a priest or a schoolmaster. 
 
 IV. INFAMOUS PENAL LAWS. 
 
 Cobbett remarks that more than a hundred enactments 
 of the British Parliament are directed against the Catholic 
 religion. Edmund Burke says that 
 
 "the penal code was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and 
 as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a 
 people and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever pro- 
 ceeded from the perverted ingenuity of men." 
 
 The Irish Parliament, composed of creatures of the 
 English Court, was still more cruel and unjust than the 
 English Parliament, and respected no laws, whether Divine 
 or human. The Catholics were deprived of all rights, 
 political, educational, religious, civil and industrial. A 
 Catholic could not sit in Parliament, nor exercise the right 
 of suffrage. He was disqualified from resorting to the 
 courts of law, and even from holding the lowest office of 
 trust and profit. To instruct a Catholic was a penal 
 offence. A Catholic teacher was subject to imprisonment, 
 exile or death. Although deprived of schools at home, 
 Catholics might not go abroad for an education under 
 penalty of perpetual outlawry. All priests were banished 
 from Ireland, under pain of transportation, and, should 
 they return a second time, of being hanged, drawn and 
 quartered. Those who concealed or harbored them forfeited 
 all their property ; and those who informed against them 
 
PERSECUTIONS IN IRELAND. 253 
 
 received a high reward. Six-sevenths of the land of the 
 Irish Catholics was confiscated, and the pitiable remainder 
 hardly belonged to them. They could neither buy land 
 nor lease it for more then thirty one years. It is a wonder 
 how any Catholic Irishmen survived such a persistent and 
 unsparing persecution. Divine Providence must have mira- 
 culously fed and sustained Christ's faithful witnesses in the 
 hour of their dire trials. 
 
 It was only at the outbreak of the American and the 
 French revolutions that the mountain of iniquitous oppres- 
 sion piled up apon the Catholics commenced to be 
 demolished. Every concession was grudgingly given, and 
 only when it seemed unavoidable. Backed by the Irish 
 Volunteers, Gratton created an Irish Parliament in Dublin 
 (17801798). But it was suppressed when the "United 
 Irishmen," fired by the French Infidels, arose against the 
 English government. O'Connell kept on a peaceful agita- 
 tion, and in 1829 he carried through Parliament the Eman- 
 cipation Bill, by which Catholic disabilities were in great 
 measure removed. From 1845 to 1847 and from 1879 to 
 1880 terrible famines afflicted Ireland, and 4,000,000 
 people emigrated in half a century. The Fenian Brother- 
 hood arose to violently remedy the evils arising from the 
 past confiscations. Less wise and less moderate than 
 O'Connell, it failed in its revolt. However, it succeeded in 
 compelling the attention of the English government to the 
 crying needs of the country. Parnell introduced the 
 method of obstructing all but Irish business in the Parlia- 
 ment, and he organized a land-league to force the reduc- 
 tion of rents. Gladstone staked all his popularity and 
 power to give home rule to the Irishmen, but even this 
 great statesman could not sufficiently overcome the long- 
 standing prejudice to accomplish this result. At the begin- 
 ning of the year 1899 a system of complete and perfect 
 local self-government went into operation in Ireland, and 
 with the endowment of a Catholic university and the 
 repeal of the law prohibiting a Catholic from occupying 
 the post of Lord-Lieutenant, measures which are con- 
 fidently expected in the near future, the last official remains 
 of the era of persecution will have disappeared. 
 
254 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 V. HONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE. 
 
 We admire the heroic band of Greek warriors at Ther- 
 mopylae, and the devoted Christian knights at Rhodes, 
 who defended European liberty, civilization and religion 
 against the masters of Asia. The sons of Erin are heroes 
 as great and undaunted as they, for they alone in the 
 North maintained the true faith against the masters of the 
 seas. We admire the martyrs of Rome who for three 
 hundred years were hunted down, and found no other 
 refuge than the bowels of the earth, and from their obscure 
 Catacombs ascended the throne of the Caesars. For three 
 hundred years, in like manner, the Irish were ground to 
 dust, starved to death, or driven to distant shores. 
 
 But the storm of persecution served only to scatter the 
 precious seed of faith over all the world. Today more 
 than 15,000,000 of Catholic Irishmen fresh from the fire 
 of persecution stand up in America, Australia, Africa and 
 India as well as in Ireland to proclaim their Catholic faith 
 before the doubting Protestants and the scoffing infidels. 
 Endowed with superior qualities of mind and body, they 
 are destined to wield an immense influence in the civilized 
 world, and to build up and adorn the Church of God in 
 every cline. 
 
 By their martyrdom for Jesus Christ the Romans 
 deserved to have the seat of Papacy in their midst; by 
 their devotedness to the Church the Franks became for 
 centuries the instruments of God's work upon earth; for 
 their heroism in driving the Mussulmans from the West, 
 the Spaniards received the control of the New World. So 
 upon the Irishmen, who have maintained in the north the 
 full faith of Christ, the religious leadership in the English- 
 speaking world has devolved ; through them will come the 
 reconversion of the ruling peoples of our times, provided 
 they continue to make themselves worthy of the heroic 
 deeds of their fathers. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYFIFTH. 
 PROTESTANT DESPOTISM. 
 
 The hour cometh that -whosoever killeth you will think that 
 he doth a service to God. JOHN XYI, 2. 
 
 I. SEPERATISTS ENSLAVE BOTH BODY AND SOUL. 
 
 PROTESTANTISM is represented by its friends as an 
 emancipation from the Popes ; but it was an enslave- 
 ment of body and soul to the temporal rulers. Even great 
 Protestant writers, such as Guizot, Macaulay, Lecky, 
 Hallam and Gibbon, deplore the violence with which the 
 Reformation was forced upon the people. Hallam says: 
 
 ''Persecution is the deadly original sin of the Reformed churches; 
 that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion 
 as his reading becomes more extensive." 
 
 In fact the Episcopalian and Lutheran sovereigns 
 undertook to rule the consciences of their people, and 
 imposed Protestantism on all their subjects. The Calvin- 
 is ts overthrew the governments of their countries, and 
 suffered no one to live among them who did not profess 
 assent to their creed and participate in their Pharisaic 
 practices. Once the masters of the souls of the people, the 
 Protestant rulers made themselves also the masters of 
 their bodies, and brought back to Europe the absolute 
 governments and the standing armies of the Pagan Caesars 
 and the Mohammedan Khalifs. The Catholic princes were 
 tempted by their example to arrogate to themselves the 
 same absolute authority though it never ceased to be held 
 in check by the power of the true religion in proportion 
 to the thoroughgoingness of their Catholicity. The history 
 of Europe for two hundred years was chiefly the story of 
 the violence and warfare by which the Protestants sought 
 to compel their subjects or fellow-citizens to change their 
 
256 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 religion; and, on the other hand, the unceasing struggles 
 of the Catholics to preserve their religious liberty and 
 maintain their old faith. 
 
 II. TYRANNY OF EPISCOPALIAN KINGS. 
 
 In modern history three Protestant dynasties have 
 been intruded into the throne of England, to the exclusion 
 of its Catholic heirs, and they all made it their policy to 
 impose and maintain the Episcopalian Establishment. 
 Notwithstanding their cruelty, the Tudors (1534) had not 
 succeeded in perverting the faith ot even half of England. 
 The Stuarts (1603) completed their work and forced most 
 of the people to conform to the State religion. But one of 
 them, Charles I, paid the penalty for all, and was beheaded 
 by Oliver Cromwell. The Episcopalians were so determined 
 to maintain their ascendency that when the Stuarts, 
 having re-ascended the throne of their fathers, had become 
 Catholic, they called in two foreign princes to rule in the 
 place of their legitimate kings James II and James III. 
 At the extinction of the Protestant branch of the Stuarts 
 they again set aside English princes who had a right to 
 the crown, and the Hanoverian George I was called to the 
 throne of England, where he founded a German dynasty 
 (1714). Naturally the Georges enforced the penal laws 
 against the Catholics, as they had been called for that 
 very purpose. 
 
 III. VIOLENCE OF LUTHERAN PRINCES. 
 
 Luther gained the princes of the north by offering them 
 the ecclesiastical properties, and with this mercenary end 
 in view they forced Protestantism upon their subjects. 
 They also reestablished the absolute governments of Pagan 
 times, and kept standing armies to maintain them. Moles- 
 worth wrote in 1692 : 
 
 "In the Roman Catholic religion there is a resisting principle to 
 absolute civil power ; but the whole of the northern people of Protestant 
 countries have lost their liberties ever since they changed their religion 
 for a better." 
 
 In Germany the princes arrogated to themselves the 
 power to change the religion of their subjects, according 
 
PROTESTANT DESPOTISM. 257 
 
 to the maxim: Co/us regio illius et religio "He who rules 
 the land also prescribes the religion." It was to establish 
 that tyrannical principle that they made the League of 
 Smalcald in 1530, and conspired with the French and the 
 Turks, the enemies of their country and of their religion. 
 They carried on two civil wars against their Emperor 
 Charles V; and although defeated they obtained by the 
 peace of Augsburg the power to Protestantize all secular 
 states but not ecclesiastical territories. In the Palatinate 
 the religion was changed four times in sixty years. 
 Against the express provision of this compromise sixteen 
 Prince-Bishoprics were secularized. Germany divided be- 
 tween the * 'Evangelical Union", composed of Lutherans 
 and Calvinists, and the "Catholic League" made for the 
 defence of liberty of conscience. The great Emperors 
 Ferdinand II (1618) and Ferdinand III (1637) protested 
 against such outrages, the Protestants started a fratricidal 
 struggle which lasted from 1618 to 1648, and is called 
 the Thirty Years' War. They elected as Emperors Frederic V 
 of the Palatinate, Christian II of Denmark and Gustavus 
 Adolphus of Sweden, successively, and they sought the 
 help of France in their rebellion, knowing that that country 
 was always ready and eager to weaken her rival the 
 German Empire. Foreign armies, invited by the insurgents, 
 invaded and devastated the country; and, although de- 
 feated and overpowered by the Ferdinands and their 
 generals Tilly and Wallenstein, the Protestants continued 
 to lay Germany waste and refused during eight years to 
 listen to the negotiations of peace proposed by the Emperor. 
 Finally, in 1648, Ferdinand III obtained the peace of 
 Westphalia, but under the most onerous conditions. 
 He had to sacrifice the integrity and the unity of the 
 Empire. Sweden acquired several provinces on the Baltic, 
 and France several on the Rhine. Three hundred and 
 sixty five independent states were recognized, and the 
 Lutherans and Calvinists were put on the same foot- 
 ing as the Catholics. This was the parcelling out of 
 the land that had first divided the unity of the Church 
 of Christ. One half the population had disappeared, 
 and the remnant had to defend themselves against the 
 
 17 
 
258 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 wild animals. Germany descended to a second rank 
 among the powers of Europe and remained there for 
 two centuries. 
 
 IV. INTOLERANCE OF CALVINISTIC PEOPLES. 
 1. Liberty's Worst Foes. 
 
 With the word ' 'liberty" on their lips the Calvinists 
 were its worst enemies. They destroyed the liberties of 
 others and reserved all rights to themselves. If they were 
 not the masters of the government they resorted to rebellion 
 and war to overthrow it, and immediately they dictated 
 their creed and their worship to every one. The}^ went 
 under different names. In Switzerland, Germany and Hol- 
 land they were called "Reformed", in Belgium Gueux, in 
 Scotland Presbyterians, in England Puritans and in France 
 Huguenots. 
 
 
 Germany- and Switzerland. 
 
 During the Thirty Years' War the Reformed of Germany 
 were as fanatical and disregarded of the most primary 
 rights of their fellow-citizens as were the Lutherans them- 
 selves. 
 
 Even in ftjie Switzerland the heretics continually 
 threatened the; liberty of those who remained faithful to 
 true Christianity. The original cantons of Schwyz, Uri 
 and Unterwalden the heart of Switzerland, the cradle of 
 Swiss liberty, he land of Tell and Winkelried, remained 
 Catholic to a-'hian; but they had to take arms, together 
 with Luzerne&nd Zug, to defend their liberty of conscience 
 against Zwingli, who fell at the battle of Cappel, 1530. 
 But they still had to remain on guard against the en- 
 croachments of Calvin, the tyrant of Geneva. The in- 
 tolerance of the Protestants drove multitudes of the liberty- 
 loving Swiss back to the true faith. The Catholics had a 
 majority in the diet, and granted equal rights to Catholics 
 and Protestants. But the sectaries continued to persecute 
 the Church, and in 1586 the Catholic cantons, by that 
 time seven in number, were obliged to form themselves 
 into the Golden League, for the defence of liberty of con- 
 
PROTESTANT DESPOTISM. 259 
 
 science. The reorganization and centralization of the Swiss 
 republic tinder Napoleon's auspices gave the Protestants 
 the control of the government and deprived the cantons 
 of many of their local liberties. In 1834 the Liberals 
 aroused the old Calvinistic intolerance to such an extent 
 that the Catholic cantons were obliged by their encroach- 
 ments to unite once again in self-defence. This Sonderbund 
 was defeated, but the rapid decline of Protestantism and 
 the indomitable spirit of liberty among the ever-faithful 
 mountaineers have enabled the Catholic Swiss to regain 
 little by little the religious freedom for which they have 
 so long and so heroically contended. 
 
 3. Scotland. 
 
 In Scotland king James V, and, after his death, his 
 widow Mary of Guise, aided by Cardinal Beaton, who 
 was assassinated on this very account, opposed the intro- 
 duction of heresy. They left as heir their daughter Mary, 
 yet a child, who was afterwards married to the Dauphin 
 of France. John Knox, who had been exiled for his treason- 
 able violence, had passed three years with Calvin. Recalled 
 in 1559, he excited the mob, and persuaded the covetous 
 nobles, to put down the " Congregation of Satan" as he 
 called the Catholic Church, and to exterminate the 
 "Canaanites", as he called the Catholics. In 1560 the 
 Parliament decreed the abolition of the old religion, and 
 the establishment of the Calvinistic heresy in its place. 
 The following year Queen Mary lost her husband Francis II 
 of France, and returned to Scotland. She did not attempt 
 to restore the old worship, but simply insisted on having 
 the Holy Mass celebrated for herself in her own private 
 chapel. But the fanatical Knox dreaded the winning 
 graces of the young queen. He thundered against the 
 Mass as an " abominable idolatry' 7 and denounced the 
 beautiful queen as "an impure Jesabel". It is here especially 
 that this dismal pseudo-reformer appears as "the Ruffian 
 of the Reformation", reproaching a defenceless woman 
 with his own crimes. His Protestant contemporary Laing 
 says of him : 
 
260 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 "Knox himself was known as very libidinous. He insulted the very 
 wife of his father, and could hardly pass a single day without one or 
 more women; and he often had three along in his journeys through 
 Scotland." 
 
 When a very old man, he again married a young lady 
 of noble birth. It was this lewd man who drove to 
 perdition the gentle queen whose misfortunes and virtues 
 have won the sympathies of the world. Mary Queen of 
 Scots married her cusin Darnley, who proved a traitor to 
 her, and soon was murdered by Both well. This man 
 violently abducted her, and, after keeping her in captivity 
 three months, compelled her to accept his hand, whilst 
 her enemies were heaping up calumnies against her. In 
 1567 her half-brother Murray, at the head of a rebel 
 army, forced her to resign her throne in favor of her 
 thirteen-months' old son, James VI, and he himself assumed 
 the regency. Mary Stuart fled to England, where Eliza- 
 beth kept her in prison for eighteen years and finally 
 beheaded her. 
 
 4. England. 
 
 The rigid sect of the Puritans rejected all set forms of 
 worship and held that each congregation was by Divine 
 right independent and a law unto itself. In England they 
 were leagued with the Presbyterians under the leadership 
 of the fanatical Oliver Cromwell, who pretended to act 
 only by the inspiration of God. In 1649 this cruel dictator 
 beheaded Charles I and established a nominally republican 
 form of government which enabled him to become as much 
 of a despot as Henry VIII himself. The tyrant was so 
 afraid of his victims, that he never slept more than two 
 nights in the same bed. The " Pilgrim Fathers" who had 
 fled from religious persecution in England, established it 
 themselves in America as soon as they became the masters 
 of a foot of ground. They admitted no adherents of other 
 sects or religions into their territory, and they treated 
 the Indians as Philistines to be exterminated. In 1692 at 
 Salem they cast into jail one after another about a 
 hundred honest women, and executed them as sorcerers. 
 The Catholic colony of Maryland and the Quaker colony 
 of Pennsylvania were the only ones that established 
 
PROTESTANT DESPOTISM. 
 
 261 
 
 religious freedom, and their territories became the refuge 
 of the dissenters driven away from the other colonies by 
 the sects that dominated them. However, so incorrigible 
 were the violent instincts of heresy that the Protestants, 
 when they acquired the majority in Maryland, disfranchised 
 the very Catholics who had sheltered them. Our glorious 
 Revolution, thanks be to God, gave freedom at last to all. 
 
 5. France. 
 
 The Hugenots in France provoked five civil wars and 
 created disturbances during seven reigns. After the death 
 of Henry II, his queen, Catherine de Medici, became regent 
 for his sons Francis I and Charles IX (1559) and also 
 controlled Henry III (1574) who had been king of Poland. 
 To maintain herself she sometimes intrigued with the 
 Hugenots. These were only a hundredth part of the 
 population, but the_r were allowed freedom of worship, 
 while they denied that same right to the immense majority 
 of the nation. Subsidized by Protestant powers, they 
 carried on ferocious civil wars. They killed 3000 people 
 at Orthez and burned 900 towns in Dauphiny; and they 
 murdered 4000 priests and destroyed 20,000 churches. 
 The Duke of Guise organized the Catholics to resist such 
 outrages, and naturally the most ardent Leaguers would 
 sometimes retaliate on their oppressors, although they 
 never were as cruel as the Protestants had been. 
 
 The "Massacre of St. Bartholomew" is often represented 
 as a retaliation of the Catholics, or as the deed of the 
 Church. But the Church neither caused it nor approved 
 of it. It was a political measure of Catherine's, to get 
 rid of rising rivals. She alleged that the Huguenots had 
 made a plot against the life of the king, and he ordered 
 that on St. Bartholomew's night the leaders of that rebel- 
 lious faction should be put to death. The most disting- 
 uished Huguenots had just come to Paris to be present at 
 the marriage of the Protestant Henry of Navarre with the 
 sister of the king, and most of them perished in the 
 massacre. There were about 2,000 victims in all. The 
 last of the five great Huguenot wars was for the succes- 
 sion to the throne of Henry III, who had no children. 
 
262 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Henry of Guise and Henry of Navarre were the contest- 
 ants, and therefore it was called the War of the Three 
 Henrys. The Catholic Guises were treacherously killed* 
 and the king was also murdered. 
 
 Henry of Navarre, who now ascended the throne, 
 sincerely wished the peace of France, and summoned theo- 
 logical conferences of the two parties. He asked of both: 
 "In what religion can I save my soul?" The Calvinists 
 answered, "In either"; but the Catholics said: "In the 
 only true Church instituted by Christ." He knew now 
 from both that the Catholic religion was a sure way to 
 to Heaven; he embraced it sincerely, and he founded the 
 great Bourbon dynasty, which occupied the throne of 
 France for two centuries and a half (15931848): By 
 the Edict of Nantes he granted the Huguenots equal privi- 
 leges with the Catholics, but they abused their liberty and 
 continually disturbed the land. The Edict was, therefore, 
 repealed after a hundred years by Louis XIV, and many 
 Huguenots emigrated to Protestant lands. 
 
 6. Netherlands. 
 
 Protestantism soon penetrated into the commercial 
 cities of the Netherlands, and a mild inquisitorial court 
 court was established there to prevent the usual disturb- 
 ances by the fanatical sectarians. But all in vain. Under 
 the name of Gueux the Protestants plundered the mag- 
 nificent Cathedral of Antwerp and 400 churches in Flanders 
 and Brabant alone. King Philip II of Spain (15551589) 
 sent the stern Duke of Alva to put a stop to the troubles. 
 The rebels were repeatedly defeated. A corps of Sea-Gueux 
 was organized by them under the fierce Yandermarck, who 
 killed more innocent people in 1572 alone than there were 
 rioters executed by Alva during the six years of his admini- 
 stration. Profiting by these troubles the skilful William 
 of Orange invaded the country with an army of German 
 mercenaries, and in the end succeeded in forming the seven 
 northern provinces into the Union of Utrecht, of which he 
 was the Stadtholder (1579). He had always pretented to 
 act for the liberty of the Protestants and the Catholics 
 alike; but he now proscribed the Catholic religion. Brabant 
 
PROTESTANT DESPOTISM. 263 
 
 and Flanders, because of the persecutions to which Catho- 
 lics had been persistently subjected by the brutal Protes- 
 tants who dominated the rest of f'c Flemish countries, 
 refused to take part in the new Union and formed with 
 the Walloons the Confederation of Arras for the defense of 
 their religious liberty. They clung no less tenaciously to 
 their civil liberty and they were freer under the subsequent 
 governors and sovereigns of their own than the Hollanders 
 were under the House of Orange. 
 
 V. THE SPANISH INQUISITION OUTDONE. 
 
 Protestants and infidels continually speak of the 
 Spanish Inquisition, to offset the persecutions and wars 
 which they and their ancestors have carried on. Without 
 caring to discuss the methods of that body, we cannot 
 help preferring them to the Protestant persecutions. In 
 the first place, it was a regular court of justice for the 
 protection of the Spanish nation against the attempts of 
 the Jews and the Moors, who had crushed them under 
 their heel for eight centuries, to again betray their country 
 into the hands of the Mohammedans of Africa ; and also 
 against the turbulent Protestants who for two hundred 
 years crimsoned all northern Europe by their atrocities. 
 Secondly, the torments of the Inquisition and the number 
 of its victims have been exaggerated by Llorentel beyond 
 all measure. He burned the official documents after quoting 
 them fearing that his lies would be detected. He alleges 
 that there were 1136 victims annually, while all great 
 historical writers, including Balmes, Ranke and Prescott, 
 are agreed that the real number was not one tenth so 
 large. In his letters on "the Reformation in England" 
 Cobbett says: 
 
 "Good Elizabeth killed more people in one year than the Inquisition 
 in all the years of its existence. One religious war cost more lives than 
 all the convictions of that court, and for more than a century the 
 Protestants did not put down their arms." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYSIXTH. 
 PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION. 
 
 Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made deso- 
 late. MATTHEW xn, 25. 
 
 I. NO MEANS OF UNITY. 
 
 TN the absence of any supernatural principle of unity, 
 human ambitions, rivalries and discords, powerfully 
 assisted by the impractical principle of the private interpre- 
 tation of the Bible, divided the Protestants into numerous 
 sects. Each of the original heresiarchs invented a special 
 brand of sectarianism; the princes organized separate 
 national churches ; and in the end multitudes of individuals 
 concocted private religions of their own. Neither the open 
 persecutions carried on by the early Protestants, nor the 
 conciliatory efforts of the modern "Evangelical Alliance" 
 could keep the Protestants in unity. And none of the new 
 expedients neither the union conferences of the Protestant 
 preachers, their dogmatic concessions, the interdenomi- 
 national societies, the joint versions of the Bible, or the 
 international school lessons or all of them put together, 
 aided by all the zeal of the officers of the sects, and all 
 the generous sacrifices of their members in endowing 
 institutions of learning and contributing to "missionary" 
 enterprises, can ever avail to unite them again. 
 
 II. WORKING OF LEAVEN OF REVOLT. 
 
 Bossuet's "History of the Protestant Reformation" 
 convinced the great philosopher Leibnitz of the impos- 
 sibility of maintaining the Protestant system of private 
 interpretation of the Bible. Indeed, the Protestants have 
 always disputed among themselves on the main points of 
 Christian doctrine and practice, and during the early years 
 
PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION. 265 
 
 of their history pronounced against each other the most 
 savage curses. 
 
 One of the first disputes was about baptism. The 
 Anabaptists, condemning infant baptism, rebaptized every 
 one who joined their ranks; and, rising in revolt, they 
 laid waste central Germany until 100,000 were slain on 
 the battlefield. In Ley den and other cities some of them 
 ran about the streets naked, sword in hand, crying that 
 the Lord had given all the kingdoms of the earth into the 
 hands of His saints, that is to themselves, and that all 
 who resisted them must perish. 
 
 The dispute about the " Lord's Supper" was very 
 bitter. Carlstadt denied the Real Presence in the Holy 
 Eucharist, for which reason he was driven from Witten- 
 berg by Luther, with whom he had a violent dispute at 
 Jena. Zwingli too rejected the literal sense and pretended 
 that the words "This is my body, this is my blood" 
 meant: "This is the figure of my body, this is the figure 
 of my blood." Luther confounded him, but at the same 
 time he himself attacked the Catholic doctrine of trans- 
 substantiation, substituting for it the theory of con- 
 substantiation or impanation. The Body of Christ, he 
 taught, being united to the Divinity, is present every- 
 where, but in a special manner in the Eucharist, the sub- 
 stance of the bread and the wine remaining but being 
 united to the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. 
 Zwingli answered that if the literal sense be once admitted, 
 no other interpretation can be put upon the text than 
 that given by the Catholic Church. Calvin held to an 
 interpretation intermediate between the consubstantation 
 of Luther and the simple memorial theory of Zwingli. He 
 strenuously insisted upon the Real Presence, but he asserted 
 it, in an indefinite way, to be "purely spiritual". His view 
 seemed to be that the Body and Blood of Christ were 
 really communicated by the sacrament, but did not exist 
 objectively under the sacramental species. 
 
 The third great dispute was concerning the existence 
 of seven sacraments, which was denied by Luther, and 
 proved in the pamphlet on the "Seven Sacraments" which 
 was published as the work of Henry VIII. 
 
266 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 A fourth dispute took place in the British Isles con- 
 cerning the power of the ministers of the new doctrines. 
 The Presbyterians and Puritans rejected the Episcopalian 
 bishops and their royal popelet, and brought Charles I to 
 the scaffold. At the same time they disputed among them- 
 selves as to the respective rights and duties and privileges 
 of "presbyters," "elders," "deacons," and "congregation s." 
 
 Protestantism almost crazed the people with idle 
 disputes about words. By reaction from the cold form- 
 alism and shallow logomachy and lax morality of the 
 dominant sects in the 16th century, there arose in the 
 latter part of the 17th an extreme and one-sided pietism, 
 which despised all theology, and tended to reduce religion 
 to a mere sentimentalism. Among the sects that owe 
 their origin to this movement are the Herrnhuters in 
 Germany and the Methodists in England. 
 
 The Protestants have run the gaunt of all the heresies, 
 changing even their fundamental principles. They com- 
 menced by asserting the total corruption of human nature 
 by the fall, and they have ended by denying that any 
 corruption whatever took place, thus lapsing from Manich- 
 eism into Pelagianism . 
 
 In the eighteenth century, many Protestants, following 
 out Luther's principles to their logical conclusion, became 
 "Freethinkers". The "Reformers" had restricted reason to 
 the interpretation of Biblical texts, and the Pietists had 
 rejected it altogether; and in its revolt against this error 
 the new school went to the opposite extreme. Individual 
 reason being the only judge and interpreter of the Bible, 
 every mystery and every miracle which cannot be explained 
 naturally may be rejected, and regarded only as a myth 
 or a fable, used to teach some truth. Thus the Bible is 
 considered as a system of bold and lofty mythology. Or, 
 again, this abuse of reason may go so far as the utter 
 rejection of the Biblical authority. The leakage from 
 Protestantism has been appalling. Rev. T. Jenkins puts 
 the number of Protestant communicants at thirtyfour 
 millions, to wit: Ten in America, ten in the British empire, 
 eight in Germany, three in Austria, two in Scandinavia, 
 one in Switzerland and Holland combined, and one in 
 

 PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION. 267 
 
 different Catholic countries. There are only a few thou- 
 sands in heathen lands. In 1875 the Almanach de Gotha 
 gave 70,500,000, and Hitchcock's Analysis 50,000,000, 
 and in 1880 the Deutsche Reichzeitung 45,000,000. 
 Chambers Encyclopedia gives the total number of Pro- 
 testants, including all Christians who are neither Catho- 
 lics, nor members of the ancient Oriental sects, nor Jews, 
 at 95,000,000, and the Encyclopedia Britannica does not 
 venture to claim but 114,000,000. There may be that 
 number of nominal Protestants but not more than one 
 third are members of any sect or profess any definite, 
 religious belief. 
 
 The separatist spirit of Protestantism penetrated into 
 Orthodox Russia and Catholic France. The Russian peasants 
 divided into fifty sects. A mitigated form of Calvinism 
 arose in France under the name of Jansenism, and when 
 the book which first propounded it was condemned by 
 the Pope, its partisans denied that it contained the doc- 
 trines attributed to it, thus bringing into question the 
 authority of the Holy See in a new and subtle way. It 
 was one of the main causes of the French infidelity which 
 culminated in the Revolution of 1789, but it was itself 
 overwhelmed in that tremendous cataclysm. In Holland 
 it gave rise to a little sect known locally as the ''Old- 
 Roman", which adheres to the Latin Rite and still has 
 about 6000 members, with three Bishops and a real clergy. 
 
 III. DISINTEGRATION OF SECTS. 
 1. Endless subdivisions. 
 
 Protestantism is a gradual fading away and complete 
 parcelling out of Christianity. Lutheranism, Calvinism 
 and Episcopalianism were strongly attached to at least 
 certain tenets of the Christian faith; besides them arose 
 two other great sects with less religious faith and some 
 special practices, to wit : the Anabaptists and the Metho- 
 dists. Out of these five main Protestant bodies there 
 have sprung fiftytwo sects of importance, \vhich rejected 
 still more of the Christian doctrines, and out of these in 
 turn came three hundred new denominations, most of 
 
268 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 which hardly retained the tenth part of the Christian 
 Revelation. Thus the Protestants have fallen into as many 
 unhappy divisions as there are days in the year. Which 
 shall I follow in the all-important question of salvation? 
 asks the perplexed separatist; Which is the true faith, if 
 any is true? 
 
 Not only did the Protestant sects oppose each other, 
 but even every one of the five predominant sects passed 
 through fierce discussions about its fundamental principles, 
 to wit: the Lutherans about * 'faith only", the Calvinists 
 about absolute predestination, the Episcopalians about 
 the royal popedom, the Baptists about the necessity and 
 mode of baptism, and the Methodists about religious 
 sentimentalism . 
 
 2. Lutheran Sects. 
 
 In 1530 at Augsburg Melanchthon was directed to 
 formulate the Lutheran creed, and gave definite expression 
 to Luther's doctrine of faith without good works. But 
 after the death of his master he expressed his own opinion 
 that some good works were required, which view Arms- 
 dorf rejected. In 1580 a new symbol or form of concord 
 was drawn up by Andrea at Dresden, rejecting the necessity 
 of good works. 
 
 In 1690 Spener established the Pietist university of 
 Halle, to oppose the cold and unfeeling method of the 
 university of Wittemberg. He neglected forms and symbols 
 of faith; but he inculcated interior piety and laid special 
 stress on the spiritual unction experienced by true believers. 
 In 1726 Count Zinzendorf established a colony of pious 
 Protestants, called Herrnhuters, who have the merit of 
 professing a tender devotion to the Passion of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Rationalism, though silent and hidden, was already 
 rife. With the reign of the infidel Frederic II (17401786) 
 it became outspoken. The kings of Prussia in the nine- 
 teenth century organized the so-called "Evangelical church" 
 and ' 'Evangelical Alliance" to resist the progress of the 
 infidels on the one hand and the Catholic Church on the 
 
PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION. 269 
 
 other. Notwithstanding this official protection Luther- 
 anism has lost the majority of its followers, who have 
 drifted into infidelity. 
 
 3. Calvinistic Sects. 
 
 Calvin's doctrine of unconditional predestination con- 
 tinually disturbed his followers. In Holland Arminius of 
 the university of Leyden moderated that idea of an iron 
 fate, but he was opposed by Gomar and condemned at 
 the conventicle of Dordrecht, in 1718. His followers Barne- 
 velt and Grotius were persecuted by Maurice of Orange, 
 the former even to death. 
 
 In Scotland Chalmers (in 1843) led a secession from 
 the established Presbyterian sect, and organized the so- 
 called "Free-Church of Scotland", from which several minor 
 sects have since split off. 
 
 From the Calvinistic stock came also the Universalists, 
 who suppose that all will finally be saved, however they 
 may have lived; the Congregationalists, who maintain 
 the independence of each individual congregation; and 
 many of the half-Christians who deny the Divinity of Jesus 
 Christ, like the Unitarians; as well as of the utter un- 
 believers, who make no pretense of adhering to Christianity 
 in any shape. 
 
 4. Episcopalian Sects. 
 
 The sect established by law in England, and imposed 
 upon the people by stringent legislation, maintained a 
 certain semblance of external unity for a while. The people 
 soon revolted, however, against the royal lay pope and 
 his "bishops", and even temporarily overthrew them, under 
 the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The English govern- 
 ment had confiscated the Catholic institutions without 
 replacing them by anything capable of nourishing piety or 
 enkindling charity, and the people became more and more 
 indifferent, and were drifting away from all semblance of 
 Christianity. Against this indifferentism arose the Metho- 
 dists in 1729 and the Ritualists in 1832. John Henry 
 Newman started the Tractarian movement to prove the 
 Apostolicity of the Catholic doctrine and worship ; and 
 
270 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Pusey the Ritualistic movement to introduce it. Now the 
 Episcopalians are divided into the high-church party, 
 which aspires towards Catholicity of doctrine, and imitates 
 Catholic ritual and liturgy; the low-church party, which 
 is Calvinistic; and the broad-church party, which lays 
 stress on the State supremacy, and tolerates every possible 
 shade of opinion. 
 
 5. Methodist Sects. 
 
 In 1725, at the University of Oxford, John Wesley, 
 with a few friends, adopted a pious method of life, and 
 opposed it to the dry formalism of the Protestant 
 Establishment. He recognized bishops, as a kind of 
 head-preachers, whence his sect was called " Methodist 
 Episcopal"; Whitefield, who had been for a while his 
 colaborer, rejected bishops altogether and refused to 
 abandon Calvinism, and to him the so-called " Calvinistic 
 Methodists" of England and Wales principally owe their 
 origin. 
 
 Some of the Wesleyan sectaries thought that Christ 
 had abolished all moral law, and they led dissolute lives; 
 but the "conference" of 1771 established a minute system 
 of supervision in the sect. For a century the laymen had 
 nothing to say in the government of the body, but now 
 they are allowed some influence. Wesley sided with 
 England in our " War of Independence". After it he made 
 Coke a u bishop", ordaining him himself, and sent him to 
 organize the Methodist sect in the United States. On the 
 question of slavery this organization split into two distinct 
 sects Northern and Southern. Another important sect, 
 called " Methodist Protestant" arose by the secession of a 
 large number of persons who did not approve of the cen- 
 tralized form of government of the Episcopalian Methodists. 
 There are now in existence over a score of distinct sects 
 belonging to the Methodist stock. 
 
 The Quakers, who have a distinctive garb and a formal 
 mode of speech, reject all sacraments, are of kindred origin, 
 as are the Shakers, who forbid matrimony altogether to 
 their followers. 
 
PROTESTANT DISSOLUTION. 271 
 
 6. Baptist Sects. 
 
 The Baptists restrict the sacrament of baptism to 
 adults, and acknowledge only the one method of immersion. 
 It is a curious circumstance that it is the sect that 
 takes its very name from baptism which is chiefly re- 
 sponsible for the fact that so many children die without 
 that sacrament and are lost. In Luther's time Munzer 
 rejected infant baptism and rebaptized his adherents, hence 
 he and his followers were called Anabaptists, that is, 
 ^Rebaptisers". He preached communism to the peasants, 
 who devastated Germany until 1525, when they were 
 finally overpowered. Eleven years later Menno Simonis 
 brought the Anabaptists to moderation, and spread their 
 practice of adult baptism all along the southern shores 
 of the Baltic and the North Sea. In 1633 his followers 
 organized in England under the name of Baptists. Now 
 the sects of this group form a very numerous element 
 among the Protestants of the United States. 
 
 Among the most remarkable of the Baptists are the 
 Dunkards, who dress plainly and discourage marriage; 
 and the Seventh Day Adventists, who celebrate the Sabbath 
 instead of Sunday, abstain from Pork, and look for the 
 instant reign of Christ on earth for a thousand years. 
 
 7. Strange Superstitions. 
 
 There are many very eccentric sects at the present day, 
 most of which are of recent origin. The Spiritists com- 
 municate with the evil spirits, whom they claim to be the 
 souls of their departed friends. The Salvationists have a 
 military organization and vocabulary, parade in the streets 
 with musical instruments and banners, to attract the 
 attention of the indifferent, and go into the slums of the 
 cities to save the forlorn ones. The Mormons pretend to 
 have received a Divine Revelation through their prophet 
 Joseph Smith in 1827, and other revelations at intervals 
 ever since; and the most powerful branch of them believe 
 in polygamy, and practiced it publicly so long as the law- 
 allowed. The Eddyites, who call themselves " Christian 
 Scientists", believe that matter has no existence and that 
 
272 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 all diseases can be cured by mental processes. The Blavats- 
 kyites, who call themselves "Theosophists", hold a com- 
 plicated system of Asiatic Paganism on the supposed 
 authority of certain imaginary hermits in Tibet called 
 Mahatmas. 
 
 IV. A WORM CUT TO PIECES. 
 
 W. L. DeWette, a Lutheran who edited a critical 
 edition of the works of Luther, described the decay of his 
 sect in powerful language. As it is the most cohesive and 
 the most earnest of all the Protestant sects, his words are 
 applicable to Protestantism as a whole. He says: 
 
 "We freely admit that, as in outward appearance our church is split 
 into numberless divisions, so also in her religious principles and opinions 
 she is internally divided and disunited. The Lutheran society resembles, 
 in its separated churches and spiritual power, a worm cut into the most 
 minute portions, each of which continues to move along as it retains 
 power, but by degrees loses and at last at once drops the life, the power 
 of motion, which it retained. The dissolution of the Protestant church 
 is inevitable ; her frame is so thoroughly rotten that no further patching 
 will prevail. The whole structure of Evangelical union is shattered, and 
 few look with sympathy on its tottering or its fall." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYSEVENTH. 
 THE REAL REFORMATION. 
 
 By their fruits you shall know them. MATTHEW vn, 16. 
 
 I. REFORM VERSUS REVOLT. 
 
 TTHE Protestants were not reformers, but revolutionists. 
 Pretending that the whole of existing Christianity 
 was abuse, idolatry and corruption, they attempted to 
 overthrow it, and planned a new religion, devoid of intel- 
 lectual or moral authority, thus causing a hopeless decline 
 of faith and morals. The Catholics respected the edifice 
 built by Christ, eradicated the evils introduced by the 
 world, and produced a wonderful revival of religion. For 
 a quarter of a century the Bishops studied at home all 
 the novelties proposed by the Protestants, and they dis- 
 cussed them for another quarter of a century at the Coun- 
 cil of Trent. Salutary reforms were decreed, which all the 
 ministers of the Church vied with each other in applying. 
 The Catholic countries shone by their virtue and learning, 
 and three vacillating peoples of southern Europe returned 
 into fellowship with the See of Peter. 
 
 II. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 The Protestant leaders decided everything in a moment, 
 and formulated their novel theories in the heat of combat. 
 The Catholic theologians studied the new questions for 
 half a century. When Luther started on his revolutionary 
 career, they were deliberating reforms in the Council of 
 Lateran (15121517), and the learned Leo X (1515 
 1525) gave an immense impulse to sacred as well as to 
 profane science. A band of masters was ready to meet 
 the innovators of the north. 
 
 18 
 
274 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The self-appointed "reformers" acted on their own 
 individual authority, and denounced all the Doctors of 
 past and present Christianity. But the Catholic Bishops, 
 who are the judges of faith appointed by Christ, left their 
 homes and their flocks, and for eighteen years deliberated 
 together at the Council of Trent on the questions raised 
 by the Protestants. Not only did they represent the learn- 
 ing and the traditions of the true Christians, but they 
 also had the assistance of Jesus, who said (Matthew 
 XVIII, 20): "Where there are two or three gathered 
 together in my name, there I am in the midst of them." 
 Thus the Fathers of Trent, like other Councils of the 
 Church, combined the human and the Divine sources of 
 light. Although Luther had at first appealed to a General 
 Council, he bitterly attacked its convocation in his Satanical 
 book: "The Papacy an Institution of the Devil." 
 
 Originally convoked in 1545, the Council was adjourned 
 on account of the plague in 1547. Having convened again 
 in 1551, it was threatened by the Lutheran Maurice of 
 Saxony in 1552, and suspended for ten years; finally, it 
 reassembled in 1562 and closed its labors in 1563. The 
 Protestant Ranke says of it : 
 
 ''Thus the Council that had been so vehemently demanded and so 
 long evaded, that had been twice dissolved and shaken by so many 
 political storms, and whose third convocation had even been beset with 
 danger, closed amid the general harmony of the Christian world. It 
 may be readily understood how the prelates, as they met together for 
 the last time on the fourth of December, 1563, were all emotion and 
 joy. Henceforth Catholicism confronted the Peotestant world in reno- 
 vated and collected vigor." 
 
 Luther was crying that the Papacy was a devilish 
 institution, and that the Mass, the sacraments, indulgences, 
 -and prayers to the saints were all superstitions. The 
 Fathers of Trent examined the records of Revelation and 
 the annals of history and did not find the slightest usur- 
 pation in the power exercised by the Popes, nor any 
 superstition in the Christian worship. They found no 
 ground for the novel doctrines of Luther, and condemned 
 the absurd notions of faith without works and the private 
 interpretation of the Bible. They defined that God selected 
 a body of men to teach His doctrines with authority and 
 
THE REAL REFORMATION. 275 
 
 to apply His merits through the Sacrifice of the Mass, the 
 Seven Sacraments, indulgences, invocation of the Saints 
 and prayers for the dead. As unworthy clergymen had 
 been the cause of the ruin of Christianity in the north; 
 the Council prescribed many regulations for the forming 
 and maintaining of a pious clergy fit to be the instruments 
 of Christ in the salvation of souls. It ordered the erection 
 of diocesan seminaries, the gathering of the Bishops and 
 the priests, according to the ancient custom, in synods, 
 for the discussion of the matters under their charge, and 
 salutary legislation in the interests of religion; the resi- 
 dence of Bishops in their dioceses, and the weekly instruc- 
 tion of the people by the pastors. Finally, it enjoined the 
 preparation of a solid treatise explaining the principal 
 dogmas, duties and sacraments, a decree which resulted in 
 the famous ^Catechism of the Council of Trent". 
 
 This Ecumenical Council is one of the most important 
 ever held in the Church, for the number of questions to be 
 decided and the difficulty of the situation to be dealt 
 with. It confirmed the faithful, put a stop to the advance 
 of heresy, and inaugurated a genuine reformation in all 
 classes. 
 
 III. REVIVAL IN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 
 
 At his death Luther had said: " Alive, O Pope! I was 
 thy pest! dead I will be thy death!" He had called the 
 Pope and the Bishops Antichrists, and the priests and 
 monks impostors or fools. But never had the Church 
 holier ministers, and never had she saints and doctors who 
 were greater in themselves, or exerted a better influence 
 among the people. On the throne of Peter sat the holy 
 Pius V (1566), the learned Gregory XIII (1572), and the 
 energetic Sixtus Y (1585), and they employed all their 
 power to carry out the salutary decrees of Trent. 
 St. Charles Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, was the 
 model of Bishops, and the most ardent promoter of the 
 reforms prescribed by the great Council. Six times he 
 assembled the Bishops of his province in council, and he 
 presided over eleven synods of his priests. Everywhere he 
 spread the love of learning and the practice of virtue, and 
 
276 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 he exercised a charity without limit. He formed a holy 
 clergy and he changed the face of northern Italy. Monasti- 
 cism throve in the old orders, and in twenty three new 
 institutions of vast learning and wide influence. Eminent 
 men created the Capuchin and Alcantarine branches of the 
 great Franciscan family; the Barefooted Carmelites, the 
 Reformed Augustinians and the Benedictines of St. Maur. 
 Others made new orders, like the Thea tines (1524), the 
 Barnabites (1529), the Somaschans (1530), the Jesuits 
 (1535), the Brothers of Mercy (1540), and the Servants 
 of the Sick (1604). Many secular clergymen formed 
 associations to better sanctify themselves by living in 
 community; such were the Oratorians of St. Philip Neri 
 (1574), the Oblates of St. Charles (1578), the Lazarists, 
 or Priests of the Mission, of St. Vincent de Paul (1624), 
 the Fathers of Christian Doctrine (1592), the Fathers of 
 the Pious Schools (1648), and the Brothers and Sisters of 
 the Christian Schools in France (1651 and 1681). 
 
 Among women also the religious life underwent a most 
 extraordinary awakening. There arose among others the 
 orders of the Ursulines (1537), the Yisitandines (1618), 
 the Lorettines (1603), the Sisters of Charity (1634), and 
 the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (1646). 
 
 At the moment when Luther was crying that the 
 Catholic Church was a rotten corpse, there existed an 
 extraordinary degree of holiness among her members. We 
 know of twentyeight great saints at that time, such as 
 Pius V, Charles Borromeo, Thomas of Villanova, Ignatius 
 of Loyola, Francis de Sales, Vincent de Paul, Philip Neri, 
 Alphonsus Turibius (Peru), Francis Xavier, Francis Borgia, 
 Aloysius, Stanislas Kostka, John Berchmans, Lewis Ber- 
 trand, Andrea Avellino, John of God, John of the Cross, 
 Peter Alcantara, Jerome ^Bmilian, Paschal Baylon, Felix 
 of Cantalicio, Cajetan, Catherine of Ricci, Camillus Lellis, 
 Joseph of Leonissa, Francis Solano (Peru), Joseph Cala- 
 sanctius, Teresa, Frances de Chant al, Mary Magdalen 
 de Pazzi, and Rose of Lima (Peru). 
 
 Who can count the number of martyrs who died on 
 Protestant scaffolds? Who will number the heroes who 
 fell on the Protestant battlefields or the phalanxes of 
 
THE REAL REFORMATION. 277 
 
 martyr apostles who penetrated into the wilderness and 
 perished of exposure or by the sword ? 
 
 There were scores of Catholic theologians who im- 
 measurably surpassed the brightest lights of Protestantism. 
 Such were Baronius, Bellarmine, Toletus and Peronius. 
 Great saints and illustrious doctors have always a wide 
 influence in the world, and spread the love and knowledge 
 of the lord among the people. Missions by the monks, 
 and works of zeal by the pastors, spread fervor among 
 the masses, and colleges and universities diffused superior 
 learning and solid piety among the upper classes. 
 
 IV. RECONVERSION OF THREE LANDS. 
 
 Ignatius of Loyola was a distinguished knight. Wounded 
 at the siege of Pampeluna, he was much impressed by 
 reading the life of Jesus and of the saints. What especially 
 delighted him was the heroic courage with which the saints 
 despised the things of the earth and made God alone the 
 goal of their efforts. Looking at their example, he asked 
 of himself, as St. Augustine had done before: " What these 
 have done, can I not do also?" He was converted into a 
 soldier of Jesus Christ. Hanging up his arms at the shrine 
 of Our Lady of Montserrat, he retired into the cave of 
 Manresa, were he performed his famous spiritual exercises, 
 which were meditations on the ends of man and the follow- 
 ing of Christ. He was afterwards inspired by the Holy 
 Ghost to the recording of these exercises in a precious volume 
 which has been a guide to all subsequent generations. 
 
 A Divine impulse urged him to found a spiritual army 
 to promote tke greater glory of God. To reach that end, 
 he commenced his classical studies when he was thirty 
 years of age ; after which he went to different universities 
 to study philosophy and theology. At Paris he formed a 
 company of distinguished scholars, and with them created 
 the spiritual militia which was to be always at the com- 
 mand of the Father of the Faithful. Besides the three 
 vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, common to all 
 religious orders, he required a fourth vow of submission 
 to the Holy See. To raise the standard high, only men of 
 trained virtue and solid learning were admitted into their 
 
278 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ranks, and seventeen , years of probation were required before 
 the attainment of full membership. When Paul III had 
 examined the plan he exclaimed: "Truly this is the finger 
 of God," and he confirmed the Society of Jesus in 1540. 
 Ignatius remained the General of the order until his death 
 in 1556, and he saw his sons spread into all the lands of 
 Europe and even to the most distant continents. 
 
 The Jesuits where the Providential order raised up by 
 God against the Protestants. If Luther had sworn death 
 to the Popes, Ignatius swore a special allegiance to the 
 Successor of Peter ; if the Protestants were fanatical and 
 reckless in their undertakings the Jesuits were full of 
 enthusiasm tempered by prudence. Calvin, who feared 
 their strength, gave the following watchword, which is 
 still followed by heretics and infidels generally: "The 
 Jesuits, who most oppose us, should either be killed, or, if 
 this cannot well be done, driven away, and at any rate 
 put down by lies and slanders." 
 
 Poland, Southern Austria and Southern France were 
 under the control of the Protestants ; but by the labors of 
 the Jesuits they were rescued from their tyrannical yoke. 
 In 1550 the Jesuits were called to Germany by Ferdinand I 
 of Austria. In Bavaria they taught theology at the uni- 
 versity of Ingolstadt, assumed the direction of the diocesan 
 seminaries, and established many colleges. At Vienna 
 Blessed Peter Canisius reformed the university, which had 
 not produced a single priest in twenty years ; moreover, 
 he restored life and piety to the Catholic body. In Poland 
 and in France like results were produced. Within a gener- 
 ation all was changed. Austria was made unalterably 
 Catholic ; Poland ranged itself definitely on the side of the 
 Church, and by the year 1580 the Huguenots of France 
 had lost two-thirds of their number. Catholicity, which 
 in 1560 seemed doomed to destruction, was in 1600 tri- 
 umphant in all Southern and Western Europe. 
 
 Not satisfied with waging their apostolic Avar where 
 the Catholics had still a foothold, the Jesuits penetrated 
 into England and Sweden, nothwithstanding the fright- 
 ful penal laws of those countries, as inhospitable as the 
 frozen Pole. 
 
THE REAL REFORMATION. 279 
 
 V. THE CHURCH ALONE RENEWS HER YOUTH. 
 
 There is a striking proof of Divine life in the perpetual 
 self-reformation of the Church. Whenever a human society 
 decays, or changes its fundamental constitution, it must 
 fall and disintegrate like a dead tree. The Catholic Church 
 is an institution exempt from that fate. A simple return 
 to the old plan and practices renews her youth and her 
 strength, and she always does return to them. She elimi- 
 nates the abuses that must arise wherever there are men, 
 and which always increase in proportion to the degree of 
 subjection of the Church to the civil power; she dismisses 
 the worldly ministers who disgraced her; and she resumes 
 her primitive splendor and ever appears as the spouse of 
 Christ. That is one of the historic evidences of the solemn 
 truth that the Son of God built her on a rock, and that 
 the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her (Matthew 
 xvi, 18). 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYEIGHTH. 
 DIVINE APOSTLESHIP. 
 
 All power is given to me in heaven and on earth; going 
 therefore teach all nations. MATTH. xxvm, 19. 
 
 I. CONVERTED BY STUDY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 
 
 T. W. M. Marshall, a distinguished minister of the 
 English Establishment, made a special study of the history 
 of Christian missions, and he was so impressed by the 
 superiority of those carried on by the Catholic Church 
 that he gave up a prominent position in his sect to become 
 a humble disciple of the true religion. He compiled a 
 thousand pages of Protestant testimonies in a book called 
 "The Christians Missions", coming down as far as 1862; 
 on every page of which preachers and members of Protestant 
 sects acknowledge the miserable failure of the sectarian 
 enterprises, and the wonderful success of Catholic mis- 
 sionaries. It is in the true Church of God that the spirit, 
 the method and the success of the Apostles must be 
 looked for. 
 
 II. THE APOSTOLIC SPIRIT. 
 
 The Catholic Church has always been animated by a 
 fervent zeal for the diffusion of the Gospel. It converted 
 the civilized pagans and the wild heathens; it addressed 
 even the fanatical sons of the False Prophet, and it hastened 
 to give its message to the savages of the New World. The 
 principal aim of Columbus was to "bear Christ" to the 
 heathens of unknown lands. In his second voyage (1493) 
 he had twelve missionaries on board. All the religious 
 orders vied with each other in the propagation of the faith. 
 The Popes established the greatest missionary agency that 
 the world ever saw in the Congregation of Cardinals for 
 
DIVINE APOSTLESHIP. 281 
 
 "the Propagation of the Faith", and the College of 
 Propaganda, to train missionaries of every nation and 
 tongue. Before Luther started his war upon the Church, 
 apostolic men sent out by the See of Rome were at work 
 in Africa, Asia, America and Oceanica. Today they are 
 settled on the most forlorn island of the boundless ocean 
 and the most remote corner of the Dark Continent. 
 
 Besides the Roman Propaganda there are many great 
 Catholic missionary societies, like in France the Lyonese 
 Society for the Propagation of the Faith, in Austria the 
 Leopold Society, etc., and there are a great number of 
 missionary colleges in various parts of the world, like 
 Mill Hill in England, Schent in Brussels, to say nothing 
 of the immense missionary enterprises carried on directly 
 by special religious orders. 
 
 No sect ever showed such zeal or ever achieved such 
 success. The early heretics built up no lasting churches in 
 farther Asia. The Schismatic Greeks never converted a 
 single nation, and the Russian Schismatics have done very 
 little for the evangelization of the heathen of their Siberian 
 domain. The Protestants were three hundred years with- 
 out making any move for the civilization of the heathens ; 
 and they started only when the French Revolution had 
 stopped the supply of Catholic missionaries, when they 
 tried to reap the fruits of the labors of the monks, but 
 failed. And yet, Episcopalianism, in particular, has had 
 the greatest opportunity that any religion ever had. 
 England rules over 280,000,000 people by her laws, and 
 over as many more by her influence. But in the first 
 century of her power she forbade the evangelization of the 
 natives, and now she sends out missionaries who can 
 never succeed. 
 
 III. THE APOSTOLIC METHOD. 
 
 The method of the Apostels is self-sacrifice to spread 
 an unquestionable faith; they throw themselves among 
 the people and imbue them with a doctrine for which they 
 are ready to offer their lives. A large proportion of the 
 Catholic missionaries are monks and nuns who have com- 
 pletely renounced this world ; they seek neither pleasures, 
 
282 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 nor comfort, neither treasures nor glory ; their only aim 
 is to spread the faith of Christ. Penetrating among the 
 savages, they share their unwholesome food, and brave 
 the greatest dangers and the most frightful torments. 
 They preach by their very lives to the Pagans, who are 
 often much impressed by their self-abnegation and are thus 
 gained to their master. They proclaim the unchangeable 
 doctrine of Christ, and they are ready to die for every 
 word they teach. Thus they cannot fail to make a lasting 
 impression. 
 
 Protestant missionaries, on the other hand, are gener- 
 ally worldly men, entangled in all the cares of a family. 
 The budget of these missions surpasses that of ordinary 
 kingdoms. It costs yearly $10,000,000 to support 5,000 
 missions in 1580 different places. Those costly missionaries 
 stay in the cities with their wives and children, usually 
 under the protection of foreign guns. Many of them are 
 not apostles with the spirit of Jesus Christ, but they are 
 tourists and travellers, merchants and speculators, full of 
 the spirit of the world. Their principal work is to distribute 
 Protestant Bibles and Pamphlets, which are not read. 
 Enough have been circulated already to provide every 
 heathen family in the world with a Bible and ten tracts, 
 but they heartily despise this proselytizing literature, and 
 use it for profane purposes. Rev. J. D. Krapf of Abyssinia 
 says: "The use is the wrapping of snuff, and such like 
 undignified purposes." An insurmountable obstacle is the 
 multiplicity of sects, warning against Rome and at the 
 same time quarrelling among themselves. Lord Elgin 
 relates the following words of a Hindu: 
 
 "Why should we become Chsistians when you tell us that three- 
 fourths of the Christian world adopted a creed in no way superior to 
 our own ?" 
 
 Swanson, Attorney-General in 1856, gives the following 
 reply of a New Zealander : 
 
 "You Europeans are not agreed among yourselves what is the true 
 religion. When you have settled among 3'ourselves which is the right 
 road, I may perhaps be induced to take.it." 
 
 Marshall calls these Protestant contradictions the 
 greatest and last scourge of heathenism. It is the con- 
 
DIVINE APOSTLESHIP. 283 
 
 viction of many great thinkers that if Christianity had 
 not been split asunder in the sixteenth century, the world 
 would have been converted by this time. 
 
 IV. A TYPICAL MISSIONARY. 
 
 If Luther had been animated with the love of pure 
 Christianity, he might have gone to the New World and 
 formed there an ideal Christendom. But far from adding 
 new lands to the Kingdom of Christ, he tore away from 
 it the northern nations, which are now fast relapsing into 
 paganism. While Luther was proclaiming that the Catholic 
 Church was a putrefying corpse, God unmasked his im- 
 posture by raising up a new Paul who conquered a million 
 of men to her sway. This was no other than St. Francis 
 Xavier, one of the co-founders of the Society of Jesus. The 
 work which he accomplished during ten years almost 
 surpasses belief. He edified and even electrified every one 
 by his holiness. Landing at Goa, the Portuguese capital 
 of India, which was Christian only in name, he passed 
 through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children 
 to catechism, and through them he gained the parents and 
 the whole city; and he established a college for the 
 education of native catechists. He did the same thing on 
 the Fishery Coast. He went to Travancore, a kingdom 
 entirely Pagan, and in a few months he made it entirely 
 Christian. This mission was so successful that he was 
 able to announce to Europe that within a month he had 
 baptized 10,000 Hindus with his own hands. By day he 
 did an incredible amount of work, and by night he slept 
 never more than three hours, and that upon the bare 
 ground. The rest of the night he passed in communication 
 with the Almighty, and he was so overwhelmed with 
 celestial consolations that he often cried to the Lord: "It 
 is enough, Lord, it is enough !" God testified to his servant 
 by many and wonderful signs. 
 
 The miracle of Pentecost was often renewed for 
 him. He sometimes spoke fluently languages which he 
 had not learned, and at times when he was speaking 
 in one language to a crowd of hearers of diiferent 
 
284 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 nations, all thought they had heard their own tongue 
 spoken. He also had the gift of healing the sick, in an 
 eminent degree, and often he communicated it to his 
 catechists and neophytes, who operated miraculous cures 
 by the application of his beads or his crucifix. In a great 
 pestilence all who suffered themselves to be baptized and 
 called on the name of Jesus were healed. His process of 
 canonization records four resurrections from the dead. In 
 a stubborn village of Travancore he ordered the grave of 
 a man who had been buried the day before to be opened. 
 The body was beginning to decay and gave a putrifying 
 scent. Falling on his knees and making a short prayer, 
 he commanded the dead to arise, in the name of Almighty 
 God. At these words the dead man stood up, and appeared 
 not only living but vigorous. From Travancore Xavier 
 hastened to farther India, the peninsula of Molakka, the 
 territory of Macassar and the Moluccas, and the Cannibals 
 of St. Mauritius and Ternate. There were terrible reports 
 of the cruelty and corruption of the man-eaters, but these 
 could not shake the courage or chill the zeal of the Apostle 
 of the Indies. "If aromatic groves and mines of gold were 
 the prize," said he, "there would not be wanting those 
 who would face any danger. And should missionaries 
 yield to merchants in courage ? If I save but a single soul 
 I shall be amply repaid for my toil and labor". 
 
 Accompanied by a converted Japanese of high rank, 
 Francis set sail for Japan in 1549, and landed at Cagoxima. 
 He preached notwithstanding the greatest difficulties. In- 
 vited by the king of Bongo, he was received with honor, 
 and for a whole day answered the objections of the bonzes 
 or Buddhist friars and the acute questions of other natives. 
 Xavier travelled barefooted, even during the winter, and 
 suffered much from heavy rains, great drifts of snow, 
 piercing cold, furious torrents, forebidding mountains and 
 trackless forests. He preached in Japan only two years 
 and three months, but he made so many and such strong 
 Christians that nearly 2,000,000 shed their blood for 
 Christ in the persecutions which followed, and that after 
 two centuries of abandonment (all foreigners, and specially 
 priests, being rigidly excluded from the empire) whole 
 
DIVINE APOSTLESHIP. 285 
 
 communities in southern Japan were found, when the 
 missionaries returned a few years ago, to have still pre- 
 served the Catholic faith and such of the practices of 
 religion as were possible, where lay catechists constituted 
 the only ministry. 
 
 When Xavier had preached over an extent of three 
 thousand leagues, gained fiftytwo kingdoms or tribes, and 
 converted a million heathens, the indefatigable missionary 
 sailed for China, an empire then closed to every stranger. 
 But he died in the island of Sancian, in the fortysixth year 
 of his age. Miracles abounded around his body, and he 
 was already canonized ten years after his death, as "the 
 Apostle of India and Japan". Francis lived again in his 
 brothers the Jesuit and other missionaries, who propagated 
 the faith which he had implanted in the Far East. For 
 three hundred years that country has been the battle- 
 field of the Gospel, as Rome was during the first three 
 centuries. May the blood of the Christians be the seed 
 of Christians ! May a new Xavier arise to reap the 
 harvest planted by the first one! 
 
 V. ACTUAL RESULTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 
 1. Asia. 
 
 While Protestantism spent all its energy in fighting the 
 existing Christianity, St. Francis Xavier arose and moved 
 the whole East, and converted a million of pagans. Subse- 
 quently his fellow-Jesuits Ricci, Shall and Verbiest aided 
 by the prestige of their science, not only entered the heart 
 of China but penetrated into the imperial palace of Pekin ; 
 and they made so many and such firm Catholics that at 
 least 300,000 died for the faith when the Emperors were 
 turned against them and proceeded to exterminate the 
 followers of Christ. In India Nobili adopted the mode of 
 life of the native ascetics, and thus gained to Christ many 
 Hindus of the highest castes, baptizing no less than 100,000. 
 De Rhodes converted 82,000 and Laynez 50,000. The 
 Church of Japan was for two centuries and a half under 
 the fire of persecution. The Dutch Calvinists, in order to 
 get a monopoly of the trade, persuaded the Japanese to 
 
286 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 let no one land who would not consent to abjure Christ- 
 ianity by trampling on the Cross; they also contributed 
 much in other ways to aggravate the Japanese perse- 
 cutions. 
 
 The Protestants made but few true conversions. Ward 
 says: "The whole number of Protestant converts in any 
 sense whatsoever is not one-tenth of that claimed in 
 missionary reports." 
 
 Scarth wrote in 1860 : 
 
 "The whole number of Protestant missionaries in China probably 
 exceeds the number of their converts who are not actually in their pay. 
 As for their colleges they turn out infidels who have no more respect for 
 Jesus Christ than for Krishna." 
 
 In Ceylon the Protestants spent great sums of money ; 
 they forced 300,000 natives to be the first Calvinists and 
 then "Anglicans". Captain Knox says of these converts: 
 "Not one in a thousand went to church; as soon as they 
 were free, they stopped going to church, and the only 
 Christians remaining were Catholics." 
 
 2. Oceanic a. 
 
 The Philippine Islands have been Christianized for cen- 
 turies; far from dying out, the converted natives have 
 prospered, as far as circumstances would allow, and now 
 there are over 6,000,000 of Catholics. 
 
 It was the contrary in many of the Pacific Islands. 
 There the Protestant missionaries were often the first on 
 the ground ; and in that case they oppressed and tyrannized 
 over the natives and have been gradually rooting them 
 out. Depopulation is a law in pagan lands dominated by 
 Protestant missionaries. In the Sandwich Islands the 
 natives were driven to church and dispossessed of most of 
 their lands by the missionaries. Although the Catholic 
 religion was at first cruelly persecuted, it now has the 
 adhesion of a large majority of the natives. 
 
 Before a Catholic missionary set foot in Australia, 
 England had shipped there thousands of convicts, many of 
 whom were guilty of no other crime than that of their 
 faith. These were the seed of the young and energetic 
 Church of Australia. 
 
DIVINE APOSTLESHIP 287 
 
 3. Africa. 
 
 Four hundred years ago Catholic missionaries had not 
 only evangelized the coasts of Africa, but even penetrated 
 into its interior. Its deadly climate, and the fanaticism of 
 the Mussulmans, barred their progress ; and yet they 
 established such solid churches that Livingstone still found 
 Christians after several hundred years of complete isolation. 
 That great Protestant explorer and missionary did not 
 succeed any better than his co-religionists generalh r . He 
 says: "We were promised converts to the Gospel, and 
 none have been made. The thousands subscribed by the 
 universities have been productive of only the most futile 
 results." 
 
 The main obstacle to the Evangelization of Africa has 
 remained the slave-trade of the Mohammedans, who every 
 year sacrifice 2,000,000 negroes to their inhuman traffic. 
 Cardinal La Vigerie a few years ago aroused an European 
 crusade, to stop it by organized methods and by the 
 strength of public sentiment. He also established the 
 White Fathers, for the spiritual apostolate, the Knights 
 of the Sahara, to protect liberty, life and religion, and 
 to develop civilization, and the Sisters of St. Clara, to 
 raise up the enslaved women of "Islam". 
 
 4. The Levant. 
 
 In the midst of Mohammedans, Schismatics, and 
 the remnants of the early heresies, 300,000 Catholic 
 Maronites have maintained themselves on Mt. Lebanon. 
 Fruitful missionary work is constantly being done by 
 Latin missionaries, as well as by the representatives 
 of the Catholic Patriarchs of the Greek, Syrian, Syro- 
 Maronite, Syro-Chaldaic and Armenian Rites. Cases of 
 the return of large bodies of schismatics and heretics 
 to Catholic faith and unity are not infrequent. In the 
 single year 1840 60,000 Armenians returned to the old 
 Church. 
 
 The "Anglicans" spent great sums of money to estab- 
 lish themselves in Jerusalem. Still "Bishop" Gobat made 
 only one convert, who afterwards turned Mohammedan! 
 
288 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The American Protestants spend yearly $50,000 to 
 carry on missions in Armenia. Perkins used to pay the 
 sectarian bishops and priests for permission to preach to 
 their people, and meanwhile wrote boasting letters to the 
 United States. His friend Wagner, who visited him, heard 
 him say, however: "Almost all hope most be given up, 
 in the case of the present generation." He himself testified : 
 "If we except a few Jews won over from motives of gain, 
 these expensive establishments have made no converts." 
 
 5. Human Means Not Sufficient. 
 
 T. Marshall says: 
 
 "Wealth, talent and perseverance, combined with unquestionable 
 humanity and benevolence, have utterly failed to obtain results which 
 Divine grace alone without these human aids has power to accomplish. 
 In Ceylon, as in every other land, Protestant missionaries have employed 
 a leverage powerful enough to move a world, and after the convulsive 
 efforts of half a century they have not succeeded in lifting a straw." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTYNINTH. 
 MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall|lie 
 down with the kid : the calf and the lion and the sheep shall 
 abide together and a little child shall lead them . . . they shall 
 not hurt nor shall they kill in my holy mountain, for the earth 
 is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the covering -waters 
 of the sea. ISAIAS xi, 6 9. 
 
 I. CHARACTER OF AMERICAN NATIVES. 
 
 'T'HE natives of America were heathen and cruel savages. 
 All were sunk in barbarism, except the Peruvians and 
 the Mexicans, who were half-civilized. Although they 
 generally recognized a Great Spirit and Lifegiver, they 
 were addicted to devil-worship, and tried to appease the 
 evil spirits by human sacrifices. The poor women were 
 like slaves, having all the work to do, while the "noble 
 Red men" had nothing to do but hunt and fight. Perpetual 
 warfare raged among the Indians: In the south many 
 practised cannibalism, while in the north they carried on 
 destructive wars between tribe and tribe. Catholicity and 
 Protestantism exerted their influence upon these degraded 
 children of nature, the former for their civilization, the 
 latter for their extermination. 
 
 II. UPLIFTING OF NATIVES BY THE CHURCH. 
 1. Protection from Cruel Adventurers. 
 
 Zeal led great Spaniards to America ; and when cupidity 
 brought also the scum of Spain, Church and State alike 
 protected the poor natives. Inhuman speculators, enslaving 
 the Indians, divided them among themselves, and worked 
 them to death in mines and plantations. When the red 
 slaves failed, then they imported black ones from Africa. 
 To have free scope in their oppression, they denied that 
 
 19 
 
290 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the Indians were men and had a rational soul. In 1537 
 Paul III issued a Bull declaring the Indians "to be true 
 men, who were to remain unmolested in their liberty and 
 their property, and of whom it was unlawful to make 
 slaves". In 1516 the kind-hearted Dominican friar Las 
 Casas was made the ''Protector-General of the Indians". 
 This great man devoted forty years of his life to vindicat ng 
 the cause and alleviating the sufferings of the poor natives. 
 He wrote volumes in their behalf, and he crossed the ocean 
 no less than twelve times to plead their cause before courts 
 and monarchs. St. Peter Claver, of Carthagena (f 1654) 
 was the Protector of the Negroes. He baptized m re than 
 300,000 of them, whom he treated as his children. 
 Hundreds of missionaries renewed the miracles of love and 
 heroism of the apostles of the first centuries, and gained 
 the savages to Christ in vast numbers. 
 
 2. Half-Civilized Indians of the Pacific. 
 
 The Pacific coast possessed not only the necessary 
 trades, but also some of the refined arts of civilized com- 
 munities. Mexico and Peru had cities, roads and water- 
 works, and some writings. The former was conquered by 
 Cortez, 1519, the latter by Pizarro, 1532; and both were 
 soon evangelized. Peru became a thriving Church and has 
 produced three great saints : St. Turibius, Archbishop of 
 Lima, St. Rose of Lima, and St. Francis Solano, the Apostle 
 of the Andes. 
 
 The Mexicans offered every year 20,000 human victims 
 to their 200 cruel gods or demons, but especially to their 
 terrible wargod. Prescott says of him : 
 
 "His temples were the most stately and august of the public edifices, 
 and his altars reeked with the blood of human sacrifices in every city of 
 the empire. The unhappy persons destined for sacrifice were dragged to 
 the temple, the heart and head were offered to the god, while his votaries 
 devoured the body of the victim." 
 
 No wonder that the gallant Cortez trembled at such a 
 frightful sight, and, like a new Josue, overturned the 
 diabolical shrines. Three religious orders soon arrived to 
 evangelize the Mexicans. The Dominicans and the Fathers 
 of Mercy came in 1526, and the Franciscans in 1542. In 
 
MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. 291 
 
 1551 the Jesuits opened a university at Mexico, which 
 became, as it \vere, the "Rome of America". Motilinis 
 converted 400,000 natives. 
 
 3. Cannibals of the Atlantic. 
 
 The thirst for human blood among the tribes living 
 on the islands and shores of the Caribbean Sea was so 
 well known, that their name of Carib or Canib has been 
 given to all man-eaters. However, this awful custom did 
 not frighten the missionaries, who were truly apostolic 
 men. They converted this terrible people not into mere 
 nominal Christians, but into such strong believers that the 
 persecution carried on by the Calvinists from 1633 to 1653 
 could not drive them into apostasy. The Huguenots cap- 
 tured and killed no less than seventy Jesuit missionaries. 
 
 For a distance of 2000 miles along the coast of both 
 Americas, Indian villages had been established, but they 
 were exposed to the violence and scandals of the white 
 men. Therefore the Jesuits commenced to form new settle- 
 ments for the Christian natives in the interior of Paraguay, 
 which were known in history as the "Reductions". They 
 obtained from king Philip III of Spain a decree prohibiting 
 Europeans to settle in or even to enter that country with- 
 out permission. There they showed what true mission- 
 aries could do if not hindered by speculators. There was 
 accomplished, amid races so barbarous and so cruel that 
 even the fearless warriors of Spain considered them 
 irreclaimable, one of those triumphs of grace which 
 Voltaire himself considered the glory of humanity. 
 Muratori says: 
 
 "Those nations who formerly were like wild beasts in the woods, 
 caves and thickets, thinking only of murder and revenge, continually 
 craving after human flesh and wallowing in drunkenness and lust, those 
 fierce wolves are now transformed into gentle lambs and harmless doves, 
 exhibiting for the most part such modesty, charity and devotion and 
 blamelessness of live, that in them we see reproduced the first ages of 
 the Church." 
 
 The Guarani Indians living on the Paraguay and 
 Parani rivers were voracious man-eaters, who waged 
 many a war to secure human flesh for their banquets. 
 The missions commenced in 1586 and were suppressed in 
 
292 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 1767. During that time 5000 Indian villages were 
 established, each containing about 600 people, and thus 
 there were about 3,000,000 of Indians formed into a 
 happy republic under the merely nominal suzerainty of 
 Spain. Each community formed a family under the 
 direction of two Jesuit Fathers: one of whom presided 
 over its spiritual interests and the other over its temporal 
 interests. The authority of the native chiefs was not done 
 away with, but simply guided with loving care into good 
 and useful channels. In the midst of each village arose 
 the church, the mission house, the hotel and the arsenal. 
 The one-storied stone houses of the Christians were grouped 
 around them in the form of a square. The men worked 
 the fields, the women spun and wove. Not only did the 
 men excel in farm work, but they were carvers, painters and 
 gilders ; they cast bells and cannons ; they were able to 
 play all the European instruments, and to make com- 
 plicated pieces of machinery. The day began and closed 
 with prayer and singing in the church, and the bell 
 announced the different exercises of the day. They were 
 as happy as in a paradise, and their savage brethren when 
 visiting them were so struck by their happiness that they 
 frequently asked permission to stay and soon embraced 
 Christianity. The Protestant Ranke says : 
 
 ''In the beginning of the seventeenth century, we find the edifice of 
 the Catholic Church fully reared in South America. There were five 
 archbishoprics, twentyseven bishoprics, and innumerable parishes. Mag- 
 nificent cathedrals had arisen. All branches of theological studies were 
 taught in the universities of Mexico (1551), Lima (1557), Quito (1609) 
 and St. Thomas (1651)." 
 
 In 1648 there were 10,000,000 Catholics; now there 
 are 45,000,000 and eighty five episcopal sees. The work 
 of conversion was so solid that the Catholicity of South 
 America has been able to weather three great storms 
 which have assailed it, to wit: The suppression of the 
 Jesuits, the Revolution, and the difficulties of the transition 
 period. In 1767 the Jesuits were suppressed, to the great 
 loss of the Spanish and Portuguese possessions and 
 specially of the converted tribes. Soon after the French 
 Revolution, and the occupation of Spain by Napoleon, a 
 series of agitations and revolts began which ended in the 
 
MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. 293 
 
 formation of a large number of independent republics, 
 which unfortunately, owing to Freemasonic intrigues, were 
 in most cases hostile to the Church. Gradually, however, 
 Catholicity has been regaining its sway during the present 
 century, as the people have been growing more and more 
 disgusted with the brutal greed and tyranny of the infidel 
 bureaucrats. The people, who are chiefly of Indian and 
 negro descent, are still in process of transition from bar- 
 barism to civilization, like Europe in the beginning of the 
 early part of the Middle Ages; but the South Americans 
 have a strong faith and abundant resources, and in due 
 time they -will constitute nations as great at those of 
 Europe. 
 
 III. RUIN OF NATIVES BY THE SECTS. 
 1. A Contrast. 
 
 The Spanish and French missionaries showed the same 
 apostolic spirit in the North as they had shown in the 
 South. The Spaniards had formed many dioceses, and the 
 French had made the tour of the continent, before the 
 Protestants had thought of the savages at all. Before 
 their departure Robinson had preached to the Pilgrim 
 Fathers to exterminate the Indians as the enemies of God. 
 In Rhode Island the poor savages were sold like cattle 
 and in Massachusetts they were shot like wolves. It is 
 calculated that over 180,000 of the original inhabitants 
 were slaughtered in Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut 
 alone. Were not the Narragansets wiped out? Was not 
 Philip's son sold as a slave? Halifax offered ten guineas 
 for a savage or his scalp. 
 
 When the negro slave trade was started in America, 
 the Protestants did not protest against it, but, on the 
 contrary, English troops, fitted out in English cities, under 
 the special favor of the royal family, the ministry and the 
 parliament, carried off from Africa during the years from 
 1700 to 1750 probably a million and a half of slaves, 
 one-eigth of whom perished in the passage. 
 
 2. Destruction of Spanish Missions. 
 
 The Spanish missionaries went to Florida in 1526, 
 New Mexico in 1539, Texas in 1544, and California during 
 
294 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the eighteenth century. Many fell martyrs of their zeal; 
 among these were thirty in Florida alone. St. Augustine 
 was built in 1565, and is the oldest city in the United 
 States. The Indians settled around it under the Catholic 
 Spaniards; but when Florida passed into the possession 
 of Great Britain, they moved away from the Protestant 
 Englishmen and returned to barbarism. In the present 
 century a revolt of the Seminoles cost the United States 
 20,000 men and $40,000,000. 
 
 The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico became like white 
 men in their customs. The city of Santa Fe was built, on 
 the site of an ancient Indian one, in 1582. In the eighteenth 
 century California was covered with flourishing reductions 
 or missions similar to those of Paraguay, but under Fran- 
 ciscan auspices. In 1824, however, the Mexican governor 
 Echienda confiscated them and delivered them over to the 
 vilest and the greediest officials. In 1847 the Americans 
 settled there. Those of the natives who had not already 
 fled from the exactions and brutalities of the Mexican 
 ' 'Liberals" found that competition with the aggressive 
 English-speaking colonists was impossible and soon with- 
 drew into the mountains and disappeared. 
 
 3. Hampering of French Missions. 
 
 Catholic Englishmen began missions in Maryland, but 
 they were expelled by the English governor. 
 
 The French missionaries were preaching to almost all 
 the tribes of Canada and the United States before Eliot, 
 the first of the Protestant workers among the Indians, 
 had started his Indian villages at the gates of Boston. 
 
 Bancroft enthusiastically describes the apostolic labors 
 of the Society of Jesus and their undaunted heroism in 
 these terms: 
 
 "Not a cape was turned, not a river entered, not a lake discovered, 
 but a Jesuit led the way. Few of them died the common death." 
 
 Fifty martyrs are known among them, and the other 
 clergy did not lag behind. They and other missionaries 
 preached to the Algonquin (St. Lawrence), Huron-Iroquois 
 (Lake) Dakota (Plains), Rocky Mountain and Pacific tribes 
 of Indians. 
 
MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. 295 
 
 The French started a mission to the Abnakis in 1608, 
 but they were hindered by the English, who killed the 
 venerable Father Rales at the foot of the village cross. 
 
 About the year 1635 the whole nation of the Hurons 
 was converted, and a college, a convent and a hospital were 
 erected at Quebec. But the Dutch and English Protestants 
 of New York excited the warlike Iroquois to destroy the 
 missions. The Hurons were dispersed or exterminated, and 
 some of the most famous of the martyrs of North America 
 received their crowns. Father Jogues was killed at Caugh- 
 nawaga in 1646, together with Brother Rene Goupil. At 
 this early date flourished the holy maiden Tegakwita, 
 the Lily of the Mohawk. 
 
 On the 16th of March, 1649, the Iroquois captured 
 St. Ignace. Fathers Brebeuf and Lallemeut, notwith- 
 standing the entreaties of their devoted flock that they 
 should fly and save their lives, insisted upon staying to 
 soothe the wounded and assist the dying. They were soon 
 in the hands of their enemies, who commenced their torture 
 by tearing out their nails, and covering them with every 
 ignominy. Dragged to St. Ignace, they entered the town 
 only after "running the gauntlet", cruel blows raining on 
 them from the double row of furious savages who came 
 out to meet them. Each was bound to a stake. The 
 hands of Brebeuf were cut off, while Lallem ant's flesh 
 quivered with the awls and pointed irons thrust into every 
 part of the body. This did not suffice. A fire kindled near 
 soon reddened the tomahawks of the persecutors, and 
 these they forced under the armpits and between the thighs 
 of the sufferers, while to Brebeuf they gave a collar of 
 these burning weapons ; and there the missionaries stood, 
 with those glowing irons, seething and consuming their 
 very vitals. Amid the din rose the voice of the old Huron 
 missionary, consoling his converts, and denouncing God's 
 judgement on the unbelievers, till his executioners crushed 
 his mouth with a stone, cut off his nose and lips, and thrust 
 a firebrand into his mouth, so that his throat and tongue, 
 burnt and swollen, refused their office. The Indians danced 
 like fiends around him, slicing of his flesh and devouring 
 it before his eyes, or cauterizing the wounds with stones 
 
296 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 or hatchets. Some apostate Hurons boiled water, tore off 
 his scalp and thrice, in derision of baptism, poured the 
 water over his head amid the loud shouts of the un- 
 believers. The eye of the martyr was now dim, and the 
 torturers, unable from the first to last to wring from his 
 lips one sigh of pain, were eager to close the scene. They 
 put burning coals in the sockets of his eyes, hacked off his 
 feet; and cleaving open his chest, they tore out his noble 
 heart and devoured it. Thus, says John Gilmary Shea, 
 from whom we have taken most of this account, at four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, after three hours of frightful 
 agony, expired the greatest of American missionaries and 
 martyrs. All night long they tortured Lallemand in a 
 similar way. 
 
 From the blood of such martyrs sprang an abundant 
 harvest of Christians. In 1667 missionaries were again 
 among the five nations, and at Caughnawaga, on one 
 occasion, they baptized 2,200 Iroquois. But the Protes- 
 tant Englishmen of New York recommenced their usual 
 intrigues, and the missionaries were expelled in 1687. The 
 Catholic Iroquois afterwards left New York and settled 
 near Montreal. 
 
 Allouez advanced west of the Lakes and for thirty 
 years he labored in Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, and 
 preached to more than twenty tribes. It was he who 
 secured the celebrated Father Marquette, who had already 
 founded Sault St. Mary in 1668 and St. Ignace in 1671. 
 
 Accompanied by Joliet, this great pioneer explored the 
 Fox and the Wisconsin rivers, and on the 17th of June, 
 1673, his canoe shot into the calm transparent waters of 
 the Mississippi, of which he is reputed the discoverer. He 
 descended the stream until, at the mouth of the Arkansas, 
 he became convinced that it emptied into the Gulf of 
 Mexico ; and he then returned by the Illinois river, meet- 
 ing the Peoria Indians on its banks. He had to recuperate 
 for a year, and in the fall he set out to visit the Kaskaskia 
 Indians, but the Chicago river froze up and he had to pass 
 the winter in a wretched hovel exposed to every wind. 
 He arrived among the Illinois the 8th of April. By the 
 aid of pictures he explained the mysteries of Jesus and the 
 
MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. 297 
 
 glories of Mary to 2,000 men and countless women and 
 children. He celebrated the Holy Sacrifice on a rustic 
 altar in the midst of a beautiful prairie. But his health 
 was \vrecked and he had to return. The sorrowing Illinois 
 accompanied him to Lake Michigan, and he began to coast 
 the unknown eastern shore, towards Mackinaw, with only 
 two companions. He sank rapidly. There was no couch 
 for the dying missionary but the canoe rocked by the 
 waves and the earth where they laid him at night. Ex- 
 piring on the shore he thanked God for permitting him to 
 die in the Society of Jesus, alone in the midst of the 
 forests. 
 
 There were successfull missions among the Natchez 
 Indians of Mississippi about the year 1700, but they were 
 subsequently exterminated by the Protestants. 
 
 A college and academy were started at Crescent, and 
 missionaries went to Kansas. Father De Smedt alone 
 could pacify the Sioux Indians, and rendered more service 
 than a general of the United States army. In 1831 and 
 subsequent years the Flatheads of the Rocky mountains 
 sent four delegations to obtain ' 'black-go wn" missionaries. 
 Ten years later De Smedt went to them, and he performed 
 wonders in the way of conversions. He immediately went 
 to Europe for supplies, and returned with four Fathers 
 and five Sisters. The Indians of the Rocky mountains 
 were almost all converted. 
 
 At the same time the coast of Oregon was being 
 evangelized by Canadian missionaries. In 1843 the Church 
 there was organized under Archbishop Blanchet and two 
 Bishops. Recently Archbishop Seghers resigned his archi- 
 episcopal see, to plunge into frozen Alaska as a pioneer 
 missionary, but he fell a victim to an assassin. At the 
 present time there are Jesuits conducting missions and 
 Sisters teaching school, in Alaska, who have communi- 
 cation with the civilized world only once or twice a year. 
 
 4. Results of Protestant Interference. 
 
 Today there are in the United States about 250,000 
 Indians, two fifths Catholic, and the rest, for the most 
 part, still heathen. In vain have Catholic Indians been 
 
298 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 divided among the sects, and bribed with goods and 
 money; most of them have remained faithful to Mother 
 Church. Marshall says : 
 
 "The missionaries would have done in the northern what they did in 
 the southern continent, if they had not been hindered in the former by a 
 fatal impediment from which they were delivered in the latter. If Canada 
 and the United States had belonged to France and Spain, instead of to 
 England and Holland, no one can doubt, with the history of Brazil and 
 Paraguay in his hands, that the inhabitants of both would have remained 
 until today." 
 
 But God did not leave the land sanctified by his ardent 
 apostles, and watered by their blood, without true dis- 
 ciples. Providence has directed multitudes of Catholics 
 from Ireland, Germany and many other lands to the 
 United States, myriads of conversions have taken place 
 among the descendants of Protestant settlers, and today 
 that part of the Catholic Church within the limits of the 
 United States numbers at least twelve million souls, 
 besides at least ten million unattached adherents persons 
 who would have to be counted as Catholics rather than 
 Protestants and are pretty sure to send for a priest when 
 they think themselves about to die. There at present are 
 fourteen metropolitan sees and provinces and eighty suffra- 
 gan and assistant Bishops, with 2756 regular clergy, 8383 
 secular priests, over ten thousand churches, a great uni- 
 versity, more than twenty one theological seminaries, 846 
 colleges and boarding schools, 3581 parish schools, attended 
 by 815,063 pupils, and over 755 charitable institutions of 
 various kinds. No less than forty five distinct religious 
 orders of men, and 122 of \vomen are represented. Of 
 these at least three orders of men and twenty of women 
 are of native origin. 
 
CHAPTER FORTIETH. 
 SPREAD OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 As they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God 
 delivered them up into a reprobate sense. ROMANS i, 28. 
 
 I. THE OUTCOME OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 "TTHE spirit of Protestantism penetrated into the Catholic 
 countries, weakened their faith and made them a 
 ready field for the operations of the infidels. Jansenism 
 and Caesarism estranged the people from Christ and His 
 Vicar on earth, and the court scandals corrupted their 
 morals. The brilliant writers Voltaire and Rousseau, 
 under the influence of the English and German infidels, 
 attacked and mocked Christianity, and made infidelity 
 fashionable in France and all over Europe. The enemies 
 of the Church contrived the suppression of the Jesuits, the 
 most strenuous defenders of the true religion, seized their 
 colleges, and brought up a generation ripe for crime and 
 revolution. 
 
 In the nineteenth century the unbelievers returned to 
 the worst errors of Paganism. Some adopted the Panthe- 
 istic dreams of the Orient, making of this world a mere 
 network of vain and empty illusions; while others main- 
 tained that matter alone exists, and that even the intellect 
 itself is only one of its transitory conditions. The Agnostics 
 decline to acknowledge a God they cannot understand, 
 and they assert that all that exists beyond the phenomena 
 of nature is the Unknowable. 
 
 II. WEAKENING OF THE CATHOLIC FORCES. 
 
 The spiritual life of France was paralyzed, as it were, 
 by the Jansenistic heresy, the schismatic spirit of the so- 
 called Gallicanism, and the public corruption of the higher 
 classes. Following the gloomy ideas of Calvin, the Jansen- 
 
300 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ists imposed an excessive rigorism which the people could 
 not bear, and thus disgusted many of them with religion 
 altogether. Under the pretext of un worthiness for the 
 reception of the sacraments, they restrained all whom 
 they could from the frequent reception of the means of 
 grace and thus removed them from the Savior, the source 
 of our spiritual life. Repeatedly condemned by the Popes, 
 they resorted to a variety of subterfuges and false miracles 
 to maintain a Catholic appearance before the people, and 
 they combined with the Gallicans to hamper and embarrass 
 the Vicars af Christ and the true Catholics of France. 
 
 Louis XIV, and a century later Joseph II, sought to 
 unite in their own persons both the spiritual and temporal 
 powers. Although the supremacy of the Popes over the 
 Universal Church had been solemnly denned at the Council 
 of Florence, these sovereigns encouraged their clergy to 
 minimize it to the advantage of the royal prerogatives, 
 and thus they weakened the religious sentiments through- 
 out their domains. Gallicanism and Josesphism were simply 
 attempts of the sovereigns to make of the Church a state 
 institution, something as it was in .Protestant countries. 
 The Protestant Pressense truly says that the so-called 
 "liberties of the Gallican Church" were "slaveries to the 
 king." 
 
 Most of the secular clergy were handicapped by those 
 two evils. The lower clergy were benumbed by Jansenism, 
 which dried up the very sources of the spiritual life. The 
 upper clergy were often worldly and politicial prelates 
 who did nothing for Christianity. They were mostly re- 
 cruited among the younger sons of noblemen, and were as 
 much courtiers as they were Bishops or Abbots. It was 
 the religious that had best preserved the warm spirit of 
 Christianity, and, as their example shamed the general 
 apathy, they were not regarded in a friendly way by the 
 seculars. The Christian forces were frittered away and 
 used up in petty disputes among the Catholics themselves ; 
 and there was no superior writer to stir them up against 
 the infidels who arose in the eighteenth century. 
 
 The scandals of the court under the regency and during 
 the reign of Louis XV (1715 '74) had perverted the higher 
 
SPREAD OF INFIDELITY. 301 
 
 classes of society, and they welcomed the infidels who 
 mocked at the fear of the Lord. The greatest obstacle to 
 the progress of infidelity was the Society of Jesus ; there- 
 fore their suppression was to be brought about. By the 
 middle of the eighteenth century the Freemasons had seized 
 all the governments of southern Europe and controlled their 
 policy, and soon succeeded in compassing the suppression 
 of the Jesuits. The prime ministers Pombal of Portugal, 
 in 1759, and Aranda of Spain, in 1765, forged letters in 
 the name of members of the doomed order, and on the 
 strength of these sought to persuade their sovereigns that 
 the Society of Jesus was their sworn enemy. Choiseul of 
 France had the county flooded with pamplets against the 
 Jesuits, representing them as dangerous teachers of im- 
 morality. Notwithstanding the protection of the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris and of the Pope, the Parliament of Paris 
 in 1769 voted in favor of the suppression of the order. 
 The Bourbon courts obsessed the feeble Pope Clement XIV 
 to this end, and threatened schism and war if the whole 
 order was not abolished. It was a repetition of the treaty 
 between the lambs and the wolves, of which the first con- 
 dition was to dismiss the dogs. 
 
 At last, in 1773, the Pope suppressed the order, "moved 
 by reasons of prudence and state". Afterwards he was 
 
 often heard to say: Compulsus veci "I was forced to 
 
 do it". He rapidly declined in health and died the follow- 
 ing year. The 22,000 Jesuits obeyed without resistance; 
 and in many places were treated most barbarously by 
 their enemies. When they were driven out a great cry of 
 victory resounded through the infidel camp. The vanguard 
 of the Christian army was disbanded ; the rest could easily 
 be defeated and annihilated. Hitherto the infidels had only 
 infected the higher classes; now they could destroy the 
 prestige of religion among the masses. The educators of 
 the youth were gone, and the cold Jansenists could do no 
 more than form an indifferent youth, useless in a hand-to- 
 hand fight for Christ. The infidels had things all their 
 own way, and they reared up an impure and infidel gener- 
 ation. Within twenty years the most polite nation of the 
 earth was turned into a barbarous mob ready for un- 
 
302 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 heard-of crimes. The earnest preachers of religion and 
 morality were silent, the dams of the popular passions 
 were burst, and there broke loose a deluge of vice and 
 iniquity. 
 
 III. "FREETHINKERS" OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The English Freethinkers began to openly attack Christi- 
 anity at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the 
 German rationalists in the reign of the infidel Frederic II. 
 They \vere only formulating the public opinion of the advanced 
 element of the Protestants, who were drifting away from their 
 purely human substitute for the true religion. The French 
 philosophers adopted their impious principles, and set to 
 work to undermine the strong faith and pure morality of 
 a Catholic nation. However the public mind had been 
 embittered by the disputes of the Jansenists, and the hearts 
 of the people had been seduced by the licentious example 
 given by the nobles and courtiers of Louis XV. A band 
 of superior writers attacked faith and morals in a hundred 
 volumes. Sophism and sarcasm, calumny and lies were 
 scattered all over France, and agitated the whole country. 
 D'Alembert and Condorcet openly attacked both faith and 
 morals. Voltaire and Rousseau were the leaders in the 
 onslaught: The first aimed to destroy Christianity and 
 the latter to establish Socialism. Under the direction of 
 Voltaire the French infidels formulated their doctrine in a 
 great Encyclopedia, in which they attacked religion under 
 every form. Although swayed by the same devilish aim, 
 these two ringleaders of infidelity loaded one another with 
 the bitterest reproaches. Each depicted the other's character 
 in very dark colors, and they certainly knew each other 
 thoroughly. 
 
 In his youth Voltaire was imprisoned for his writings 
 against the government and against public morals. He 
 stayed two years in England, where he became acquainted 
 with the Freethinkers and affiliated himself to the Free- 
 mas'ons. He also passed many years with Frederic II, the 
 infidel king of Prussia. He was immoral and impious in 
 the extreme. Luther had cherished a personal hatred 
 against the Vicar of Christ; Voltaire bore just such a 
 
SPREAD OF INFIDELITY. 303 
 
 hatred against Christ himself. His motto was: Ecrasons 
 TInfame "Let us crush the Infamous Thing"; and this 
 referred to Jesus and his religion. He wrote: "Within 
 twenty years the Galilean will be done for. Can we not 
 succeed when twelve rascals succeeded?" He lived for 
 fort} r 3 r ears in public scandal. Voltaire wilfully lied without 
 a blush, and inculcated this practice upon his followers. 
 He wrote in 1736, in outlining a plan of campaign against 
 religion : 
 
 "Lying is a vice only when it harms. You must lie like a devil, 
 
 not timidly, nor once only, but boldly and all the time Lie! Lie! 
 
 my friends, and something will be sure to stick!" 
 
 Although he was posing as the champion of liberty 
 and enlightenment he took part in the slave trade, and 
 opposed the education of the masses. He wrote on 
 January 17, 1771 : 
 
 "I know only of J. J. Rousseau to whom I could reproach those 
 ideas of equality and independence, and all like chimeras, which are 
 ridiculous." 
 
 Another time he says : 
 
 "It seems to me essential that there should be ignorant poor; they 
 are oxen, needing only a yoke, a goad and hay." 
 
 Doctor Tronchin says that Voltaire's death was one 
 befitting a reprobate. That enemy of Christ died in the 
 most awful despair, crying: "The Devil is there! He is 
 trying to seize me! Oh, drive him away!" 
 
 J. J. Rousseau from a Protestant became a Catholic, 
 from a Catholic a Protestant, and finally from a Protestant 
 a rabid infidel. According to Chamber's Encyclopedia his 
 life is a tissue of immoral intrigues and restless wanderings 
 from one place to another. He boldly portrays his per- 
 sonal vices in the melancholy book of his Confessions. 
 Wonderful it is that such a man, who could not govern 
 himself, attempted to reform the world and to establish 
 nothing less than a new order of society. His ideal was 
 communism, i. e., a society without any superior either in 
 Heaven or on earth. He presents this singular contrast, 
 that he can always be refuted by himself. He attacks the 
 Gospel and the Christian worship with the bitterest sar- 
 casm, while elsewhere he writes sublime pages on the 
 
304 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 subject of that Book, and exalts the majesty and the pomp 
 of Catholic worship. 
 
 Deharbe thus describes the work and influence of these 
 protagonists of infidelity : 
 
 "Those repulsive men popularized infidelity not only in France but 
 in all Europe. They made it fashionable in Paris, and from Paris it 
 spread all over the Continent. At that time Paris gave the world its 
 dress, its manners, and its social culture. When therefore infidelity 
 became fashionable in Paris, its triumph throughout Europe was assured. 
 People did not stop to think and to argue, to assert or to prove that 
 Christianity is false or unreasonable. Infidelity was accepted because in 
 Paris and in France cultivated society accepted it. It spread into 
 Germany, penetrated into its universities, and tainted with its absurdities 
 the great literature of that country. Vienna, Prague, Heidelberg and 
 Bonn were its centers, Weishaupt, Nicholai and other professors its 
 apostles, Frederic II and Charles of Erthel, ecclesiastical elector of 
 Mentz, its great protectors. It spread also into Spain, Portugal and 
 Italy, and came into power with Aranda, Pombal and Tanucci. More 
 rapid in its progress than the revolt of Luther, in a few short years 
 infidelity made the circuit of Europe, and in twenty years presided over 
 the destiny of every throne, save perhaps that of England." 
 
 IV. NEO-PAGANISM OF NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The infidels of the eighteenth century aimed at the 
 destruction of Christianity and the establishment of pure 
 Deism. Voltaire erected a temple to the Almighty and 
 Robespierre celebrated a feast in honor of the Supreme 
 Being. The infidels of the ninetenth century deny the 
 existence of a personal God, or at least refuse to render 
 Him homage. They have turned back many thousands of 
 years and relapsed into pantheistic idealism, materialism, 
 and pagan indifferentism. 
 
 The German Pantheists adopted the fantastic dreams 
 of old India. According to them all the existences and 
 events of this world are part of the being and activity of 
 God. In us the Absolute becomes conscious of itself; we 
 are gods, therefore, and as such all our passions are 
 legitimate, and we may freely indulge them. 
 
 The * 'naturalist" of France and the materialists of 
 England deny the very existence of spirits of any kind, 
 and admit nothing but matter and its fatal and necessary 
 development. They have returned to the false and shallow 
 
SPREAD OF INFIDELITY. 305 
 
 philosophasty which ancient Greece tried and found want- 
 ing more than two thousand years ago, and like Leucip- 
 pus and Democritus suppose the whole universe to be 
 constituted by a fortuitous aggregation of atoms. Accord- 
 ing to the modern materialists the whole world is an 
 evolution of matter, and our mind and thought are nothing 
 else but the exclusive product and operation of our material 
 brains. Our only real happiness consists in the gratification 
 of the cravings of our nature, and nothing is wrong but 
 what diminishes the sum-total of the pleasure experienced 
 by the human race in this world. 
 
 Thus the infidels hold the most opposite views on the 
 nature of the universe, going to contrary extremes, like 
 the ancient heretics. The idealists make everything 
 spiritual, while the materialists make everything cor- 
 poreal. Which is to be believed, since both speak in the 
 name of science ? 
 
 The system which makes the whole universe either 
 exclusively ideal or exclusively material is full of contra- 
 dictions to our most intimate and trustworthy experience. 
 Therefore many unbelievers have given up all speculation 
 about the ultimate origin of the universe, admitting that 
 it must have some cause outside of itself, but alleging that 
 we cannot know anything about it. They therefore call 
 themselves Agnostics, i. e., the Unknowing, They say that 
 we are not obliged to honor the Unknowable, or to con- 
 cern ourselves about it. But, on the contrary, we do know 
 that a Supreme Being made us and provides for us with 
 a fatherly care, and that the generality of mankind be- 
 lieves that He has made known His will to His creatures. 
 We also know, and can prove to right reason in manifold 
 ways, that the Catholic Church is His Kingdom on earth, 
 the Guardian of His Truth and the Promulgator of His 
 Law. Consequently, we cannot remain indifferent towards 
 our Maker, under the plea of ignorance of His nature, but 
 must worship and serve Him in the way He has com- 
 manded. 
 
 So we see that the last refuge of unbelief is a plea 
 of ignorance, which bears on its face its own condem- 
 nation. 
 
 20 
 
306 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 V. INFIDELITY REACTIONARY AND UNREAvSONABLE. 
 
 Thus the non-Christians of our day have relapsed into 
 the worst errors and vices of Paganism and Pantheism, 
 which are as old as human corruption; a fact which is a 
 striking proof of the instance of the degradation that 
 ensues upon the rejection of true Christianity. 
 
 There is one point which stands out prominently in 
 the history of modern infidelity: It is a conspiracy of a 
 little clique of men organized in secret societies, to impose 
 their theories by force and fraud upon the unwilling people. 
 
 The history of the last two centuries is nothing but 
 the history of the criminal efforts of the unbelievers to 
 demolish Christianity and bring in a reign of license and 
 irreligion. This fact is in itself a crushing indictment. If 
 "rationalism" is so reasonable why now allow the people 
 to draw their own conclusions, and in their own way and 
 time to bury Christianity and range ' themselves under the 
 banner of u modern enlightenment?" If infidelity or in- 
 difference is so natural to mankind, why must it be 
 imposed by intrigue and force? 
 
CHAPTER FORTYFIRST. 
 THE ANTICHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY. 
 
 Why have the Gentiles raged and the peoples devised vain 
 things ? The kings of the earth stood up and the princes met 
 together against the Lord and against His Christ. PSALMS n, 1, 2. 
 
 I. LIBERALISTIC MACHINATIONS. 
 
 TTHE self-styled "philosophers" continually demanded 
 "the liberty of the people", but as soon as they got 
 into power they appropriated all the liberties for them- 
 selves, and rode rough-shod over all the rights of others. 
 They did not leave to the people the choice of accepting 
 or rejecting their plans; but they imposed them by 
 open violence or secret plot. They banded together in an 
 infernal conspiracy to overthrow the Christian order of 
 things, under the name of Freemasons. Although there 
 are at least ten important branches or "Rites" in the 
 Freemasonic sect, they all work together to overthrow 
 Christianity and to supplant it. 
 
 II. FREEMASONRY UNMASKED. 
 
 The infidels soon began to band together under the 
 names of Freemasons and Illuminati. In 1 717 the Great 
 Lodge of London was organized. It adopted substantially 
 the same rules which exist today. Lodges were opened 
 at Mons, Belgium, in 1721, at Paris in 1725, and in North 
 America in 1728. In 1743 the French Freemasons became 
 a distinct body. In 1776 Weishaupt organized the German 
 Freemasons with the strictest rules, and gave the last 
 touch to that infernal organization. To advance the cause 
 of infidelity the Freemasons of the Latin countries have 
 ruined their own nations as far as lay in their power: 
 they have corrupted, revolutionized and plundered them, 
 
308 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 and reduced them under the power of Noncatholic govern- 
 ments as the XL, XLII and XLIII chapters plainly show. 
 In the course of the eighteenth century the Freemasons 
 prepared the fearful events of the French Revolution. First 
 they worked themselves up into the highest positions of 
 the government; then they engineered the suppression of 
 the Jesuits, and finally they conspired against their own 
 countries for the sake of their sect. Mirabeau plotted 
 against his king at Williamsbad, 1785. Freemasons killed 
 the Emperor Leopold II in 1792. In every land the Free- 
 masons opened the door to the arms of the fanatical 
 French Revolutionists. During the nineteenth century 
 Freemasonic generals and officials have habitually handi- 
 capped their respective governments either by leaving their 
 armies without the necessary armaments, the price of 
 which they have pocketed, or by delivering them up to 
 the enemy, and thus incurring or deserving the stigma of 
 treason through all future generations. 
 
 All this may seem strange to readers in Protestant 
 lands, where the Freemasons appear to respect all religions, 
 and their lodges appear as mere social and mutual benefit 
 societies. But they are active and aggressive in Catholic 
 countries, and there publicly proclaim themselves the 
 enemies of Christianity. If the Freemasons of the English- 
 speaking lands knew the diabolic aims and the intolerable 
 tyrannies of their brethren in Southern Europe and the 
 Latin-American countries, many of them would hasten to 
 shake off the very name. 
 
 The essential nature of Freemasonry is everywhere the 
 same, inasmuch as it is sectarian in its character, requires 
 of its initiates a blind and therefore immoral oath of 
 obedience and secret, and is more or less manipulated from 
 a common international center. Its workings, however, 
 are very different in Catholic and Protestant lands. In the 
 former the lodges are aggressive against the Church, while 
 in the latter they seem indifferent, although even there 
 they rarely fail to benumb the religious instincts in their 
 members, and weaken any ties that may bind them to any 
 definite form of religion, especially if it be in any sense 
 Christian, whether Catholic or separatist. 
 
THE ANTICHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY. 309 
 
 The Catholic Church opposed Freemasonry from the 
 beginning. In 1738 Clement XII condemned the institution, 
 and no less than eight Sovereign Pontiffs have since repeated 
 the condemnation. Even the courts of Vienna, Naples and 
 Madrid have at times prohibited that revolutionary society. 
 The Popes, who detected the evil at the outset and fear- 
 lessly denounced it, have earned the gratitude of all men 
 who are sincerely and intelligently devoted to order and 
 religion. Unless their ever-watchful eye had pierced the 
 darkness that enshrouds these gloomy conspirators, their 
 machinations might still be unknown, and they might still 
 be able, in Catholic lands as is yet the case in Protestant 
 ones, to delude men of good will by their pretenses of 
 brotherhood and enlightenment. Leo XIII, in his famous 
 encyclical on the subject, graphically describes Freemasonry 
 as "the Sect of Satan", and many converted Masons have 
 given precise details about that devilish conspiracy against 
 the Kingdom of Christ. 
 
 III. THE LEAGUE OF DARKNESS AND OF DEATH. 
 
 Secrecy usually supposes evil designs. Lodges are held 
 with locked doors, which are opened only at a password 
 and with handgrips known only to the initiated. There 
 are innumerable "degrees", and the ulterior aims of the 
 organization are known, at least in Protestant lands, only 
 to a certain inner circle, which is comparatively small in 
 number. When princes, Protestant ministers, etc., become 
 members they are as a rule admitted readily to the highest 
 degrees of honor, but not of knowledge. They imagine that 
 they are perfectly familiar with the plans and membership 
 of the society ; but the only thing they accomplish is to 
 lend their influence to the most noxious of conspiracies 
 against mankind and its Creator. 
 
 Whatever secrets he obtains a Freemason is obliged to 
 guard under the most terrible penalties. Thus runs the 
 oath of the lodges of the Amis Philantrophes et Discrets 
 Reunis of Versailles : 
 
 "May my lips be burned with a red-hot iron, my hands be hacked 
 off, my throat cut, my corpse be hanged in a lodge during t he admission 
 o f a new member for my shame and their terror, and my ashes be 
 
310 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 scattered to the winds so as to leave no trace of my treason, if I ever 
 reveal the secrets, the signs, the words, the doctrines and the customs 
 of the brother-masons." 
 
 The Freemasons place their order above anything else, 
 above their family, their county and even their own 
 soul ; they hold in fact the principle that their dupes 
 mendaciously attribute to the Jesuits, that the end justifies 
 the means ; and they do not shrink even from murder to 
 attain their object. At every degree the initiated take an 
 oath of blind obedience, to execute whatever may be com- 
 mitted to them, without reservations for conscience, even 
 to murder their lodge-brethren, their fellow-citizens, or 
 their legitimate rulers should they stand in the way of 
 the designs of their ringleaders. Many of the assassin- 
 ations which cannot be traced are the work of the oath- 
 bound societies. Was not the killing of Morgan in 1820 
 the acknowledged deed of the Freemasons? And what 
 officer could ever find the proofs against the guilty 
 assassins who were well-known in Batavia? Were there ever 
 better-concerted, bolder or more public murders than those 
 of Rossi at Rome in 1848 and of Garcia Moreno at Quito 
 in 1 870 ? These are only a few instances of the vindictive 
 spirit and the unscrupulous methods of most of these 
 sects. Terror reigns among the enemies of light, who 
 dread eac,h other. Many persons entrapped in the dark 
 society dare not reassert their liberty ; poor wretches, who 
 have lost all peace in this world and all hope in the future. 
 If they speak or leave, or resist any order, they see before 
 them the revolver, the poniard or the poisoned cup. If 
 they remain in the Sect of Satan they know that eternal 
 fire awaits them. 
 
 IV. MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 According to the Masonic Token there were in 1898 
 about one million of initiated members enrolled on the 
 books; but the Freemasons boast of 16,000,000 adepts, in 
 order to appear more powerful and to attract guileless and 
 ambitious people into their lodges. This large number may 
 represent the Liberal fools and dupes who follow them be- 
 cause they do not know their diabolic plans ; but it certainly 
 exaggerates enormously the direct strength of the lodges. 
 
THE ANTICHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY. 311 
 
 Fourfifths of the Freemasons are in Protestant lands 
 were faith in Christ is dying out; and there they 
 constitute mild benevolent societies, with a sprinkling of 
 religion sufficient to dull the religious sense of their in- 
 different members. 
 
 In Catholic countries the leaders are open enemies of 
 Christianity; either cunning Jews or rabid infidels. The 
 highest grades are nearly all in the hands of Jews. The 
 members are, or invariable become, infidels. On entering 
 the lodges many protest that they will never renounce 
 their faith; but after a few years the} 7 find that "the lodge 
 is a good enough church" for them ; and so they complete 
 their abandonment of Jesus Christ. The class of Liberals 
 who stick to their religion and yet follow the Freemasons 
 are simply their catspaws in the -warfare against the 
 Church of God. Deluded fools, who try to serve two 
 irreconcileable masters, Christ and Satan! 
 
 V. ANTICHRISTIAN AIMS. 
 
 Adopting the deceptive name and emblems of the ancient 
 guilds of stonemasons, those noble associations of Christian 
 workmen, to which, with the co-operation of kindred bodies 
 of other crafts, we owe so many of the glories of the 
 mediaeval architecture, the Freemasonic sectaries conspired 
 together to overthrow the cathedrals that the Catholic 
 masons, truly free, had built, and with these the whole 
 fabric of Christian society. 
 
 Leo XIII declares that the ultimate aim of the Sect of 
 Satan is to destroy Christianity altogether, and to rear up 
 in its place a "naturalistic" society, entirely independent 
 of Christ and His Holy Church. 
 
 That Freemasonry aims at the destruction of the religion 
 of Jesus Christ appears from the fact that it claims to be 
 the religion of the future. It has concocted a ritual, to 
 cater to the religious instincts of its members, composed 
 of a pompous parody of Christian. Jewish, Pagan and 
 Mohammedan ceremonies. But its God is Satan instead 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Christian education is the great obstacle to the progress 
 of the dark sect, and hence it is that it has always per- 
 
 L 
 
312 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 secuted the Jesuits, the great Christian educators, with 
 such a Satanical hatred. In spite of the millions of ad- 
 herents they claim, they took no rest until they had the 
 22,000 Jesuits dispersed and exiled! At the present day 
 they pursue the 10,000 Jesuits with relentless fury and 
 absurd slanders. Sixteen hundred Liberals, rich and 
 powerful, fear one simple Jesuit, vowed to poverty and 
 shut up in his convent or exiled from his native land! 
 What cowardice! What self-distrust! What a mockery of 
 liberty and fair play! 
 
CHAPTER FORTYSECOND. 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 O God, the heathens have come into Thy inheritance, they 
 have denied Thy holy temple. They have given the dead bodies 
 of Thy servants to be meat for the fowls of the air ; the flesh of 
 Thy saints for the beasts of the earth. They have poured out 
 their blood as water round about Jerusalem, and there was 
 none to bury them. PSALMS LXXVIII, 1-3. 
 
 I. A FREEMASONIC EXPERIMENT. 
 
 French revolutionists committed as many horrible 
 crimes as the Huns and the Vandals. One cannot read 
 the annals of their butcheries without retaining a long and 
 painful memory of murder and blood. In the course often 
 years four parliaments succeeded each other, and every 
 time gathered together fresh and still more frenzied mur- 
 derers from that impious generation. The Constitutional 
 assembly of 1789 made a "free constitution" for which 
 the legislative assembly of '91 was to elaborate laws in 
 detail; but it overthrew the Church and the nobility of 
 France. The National Convention of '93 made an Anti- 
 christian constitution, under which the Directory of '95 
 made new laws without being able to enforce them. 
 
 Among all who ever terrorized and tyrannized over 
 any country, the Conventional of France were the most 
 unscrupulous and tigerish. 
 
 Far from deploring such barbarous deeds, the Free- 
 masons applauded them, and to this day, through their 
 organs in France and Belgium, do not blush to claim them 
 as their own. 
 
 II, FIRST PHASE, 1789, CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. 
 
 The French Revolution commenced with a generous 
 movement of the upper classes in favor of the people at 
 large. To remedy financial troubles, Louis XVI convoked 
 
314 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the three Estates: the clergy, the nobility and the people. 
 The Third Estate demanded above all the abolition of the 
 tithes and the feudal rights; and 148 clergymen seconded 
 their proposition. In the solemn assembly of the fourth 
 of August, the noblemen and the clergymen renounced all 
 their special privileges, and the equal rights of all the 
 citizens were proclaimed. The fulness of "liberty" in the 
 modern sense was thus secured. But the Freemasons were 
 not actuated by the love of liberty, but by a satanical 
 hatred against Christianity, and a thirst for the blood of 
 their fellowmen. The Revolutionists did not desire liberty 
 but absolute power. They wanted to overthrow the rights 
 and religion of others, and to establish their own personal 
 despotism and impiety. 
 
 III. SECOND PHASE, 1790, ANTICHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. 
 
 Out of the Freemasonic lodges came the odious Jacobins, 
 who conspired against every one who had a name, a 
 fortune, talent or virtue. By fiery discourses they drove 
 the Parisian populace into a more than Vandal destructive- 
 ness and a more than cannibal cruelty. At their instiga- 
 tion, the mob captured the prison of the Bastille and the 
 palace of Versailles, and dragged the authorities to prison. 
 Their emblem was the red cap of the convicts, and their 
 leaders the cruel Robespierre and the unscrupulous Marat. 
 The Jacobins were bent on destroying Christianity. They 
 confiscated all Church property, abolished the monastic 
 orders, and declared the French Church a national insti- 
 tution entirely independent of the Pope. A "civil con- 
 stitution of the clergy" was voted, -which made all the 
 ministers of religion subject to popular election. This 
 schismatical reorganization all the priests had to accept 
 by oath under pain of losing their positions. Of the 138 
 Bishops of France only 4, of the 250 clerical members of 
 the Assembly only 70, and of the 60,000 priests of France 
 only 10,000, could be induced to take the schismatic oath. 
 More than 12,000 monasteries and convents and 40,000 
 churches fell under the hammer of the sacrilegious 
 robbers. There was a public debt of two billion francs 
 to be paid. About eleven billion francs were devoured 
 
FRENCH REVOLUTION. 315 
 
 by the Revolution; that is to say, five times the debt 
 officially incurred ; and there was still left an immense 
 deficit, which prepared the way for bankruptcy. 
 
 Many clergymen and nobles were thrown into prison, 
 ostensibly to be deported in bulk, but in realty to be kept 
 for the day of vengeance. The king was twice attacked 
 in his palace of the Tuileries, and then confined in the 
 prison of the Temple. All the princes, nobles and gentle- 
 folk who could escape fled from the land of anarchy. The 
 governments of Europe made a coalition to restore order, 
 and Champagne was invaded by the allies. Posters put 
 up during the night in the streets of Paris excited the 
 people to frenzy, and they broke into the prisons and 
 murdered 8,000 innocent citizens, dancing like fiends around 
 their palpitating victims and devouring their very entrails. 
 
 IV. THIRD PHASE, 1793-'94, REIGN OF TERROR. 
 1. Destruction of the State. 
 
 The National Convention was composed of sanguinary 
 monsters who terrorized the people in a frightful way. 
 Its first act was to depose the king, bring accusations 
 against him, and condemn him to death. Louis XVI was 
 executed in January, 1793, and his queen and his sister 
 after months of painful detention. His son was starved to 
 death in prison, and his daughter escaped, as if by a 
 miracle. The very ashes of the former kings buried at 
 St. Denis were exhumed and scattered to the winds. 
 
 2. Destruction of the Church. 
 
 The Conventional attacked the Catholic Church, which 
 they dreaded ; while they tolerated the few and insignificant 
 sects which they knew to be powerless. Every sign ot 
 Christianity was suppressed. The calendar was changed. 
 Decades of ten days were substituted for weeks of seven 
 days, and the celebration of Sundays and other holy days 
 was strictly forbidden. Corpses were taken from the graves 
 and used as manure. Churches without number were 
 burned, pulled down, or turned into theatres, factories, 
 dwellings, stores, clubhouses and stables. The church of 
 
316 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 St. Genevieve was converted into a " Pantheon", or resting- 
 place of great men, and thither were borne with great 
 solemnity the ashes of Voltaire and Marat. The Free- 
 masons frightened Gobal, the schismatical archbishop of 
 Paris, to such a point that he made a solemn apostasy 
 in full convention. On the tenth day of November, 1793, 
 he, with thirteen vicars, made the impious declaration 
 that they had duped the people, and taught a religion in 
 which they did not themselves believe. He trampled upon 
 his episcopal insignia, and donned a Phrygian bonnet 
 instead of his mitre. The soldiery and rabble, wearing 
 ecclesiastical vestments, and wheeling hand-barrows of 
 sacred vessels, entered the legislative hall, and thence went 
 in procession around the city burning church furniture in 
 the streets. Around these flaming piles the frenzed populace 
 danced riotously and blasphemed the God of their fathers. 
 
 That same day a notorious woman of the town was 
 carried in triumph to the cathedral of Notre Dame, 
 enthroned almost naked upon the high altar, and publicly 
 adored in the midst of lewd songs and impure dances. 
 That frightful impiety was repeated in many places. In 
 one city five hundred prostitutes appeared elothed in sacred 
 vestments. Many people trampled the cross under their 
 feet; some slole the consecrated hosts to carry them in 
 mock processions, or to fling them to unclean beasts. 
 
 Nuns were starved to death, or beheaded while women 
 of ill-fame were an object of public liberality. Priest were 
 dragged from city to city amid the insults of the mob, 
 piled together in infected prisons, or sent to Cayenne, 
 where two-thirds of them perished within eleven months. 
 
 3. Destruction of Civilization. 
 
 The convention seized 750 hospitals, besides all the 
 rest of the patrimony of the poor. They destroyed the 
 monuments of art and science which covered the land and 
 filled the libraries. They even pulled down steeples, as if 
 their elevation were contrary to Republican equality! The 
 Council of Paris, considering that u books have done to 
 men very little good and much evil", decreed the burning 
 of the public library. 
 
FRENCH REVOLUTION. 317 
 
 4. Destruction of Life and Property. 
 
 A " committee of public safety" was set up, which 
 imprisoned and beheaded all ' 'suspected" persons. In Paris 
 the guillotine was scarcely ever idle. By extraordinary 
 diligence one machine could behead from 60 to 80 persons 
 in a day. The procession of the headsman's cart was seen 
 daily. About 44,000 revolutionary tribunals were establ- 
 ished, and guillotines were set up all over the face of France. 
 A flying column of 6000 soldiers went up and down the 
 country to purge it from "suspects". Half a million people 
 were cast into jail. At Toulon crowds of 200 persons 
 were shot at a time, and the town was nearly depopulated. 
 Similar massacres were perpetrated in the villages of 
 Lyonnais. Lyons resisted; but she was captured, her 
 buildings blown up and the citizens shot and beheaded by 
 the thousands. The blood of the victims so tainted the 
 Rhone that the laundresses had to go above the town to 
 find clear water for their washing. To save the trouble 
 of carting away the corpses, the guillotine was placed 
 upon a bridge, so that after the execution the bodies fell 
 into the stream, where they served as food for the fishes. 
 
 Not only did the monsters of the Convention slaughter 
 the people ; they finished by devouring one another. Danton 
 was beheaded with thirteen of his followers. Robespierre 
 was arrested and, though he shot himself in the jaw- in 
 order to escape public judgement, he was brought to the 
 Convention hall and fell with twentyfour other human 
 tigers amid the execration of the crowds. 
 
 5. Devastation of Whole Provinces. 
 
 La Vendee, followed by the rest of Poitou, Anjou and 
 Brittany, arose in defence of God and the king. The 
 Vendeans and Bretons were a noble and gallant race and 
 they resisted all of the armies of the pseudo-republic until 
 their land had been utterly devastated. Three Republican 
 armies were defeated. There were 200 captures and 
 recaptures of cities, 700 local engagements and seventeen 
 great battles. The Convention trembled lest the people 
 should also stand up elsewhere to assert the dignity of 
 
318 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 human nature and demand a reckoning for the barbarous 
 crimes committed by its orders. Besides the maddened 
 soldiery the worst criminals were let loose and sent to La 
 Vendee to commit every crime under the name of Vendeans, 
 and thus give at least a pretext for the Freemasonic brutal- 
 ities. Dogs were trained to track the fugitives into the 
 inmost recesses of the forests and the caverns; children 
 were crushed under the horses' feet, or thrown with their 
 mothers into glowing ovens. At Rennes many thousands 
 were thrust into boats with openings in the bottom, and 
 thus sunk and drowned in the Loire. A tanner of Pont- 
 de-Ce actually received orders from most of the members 
 of the Military Committee for trousers made of human 
 skin. The soldiers were sent to burn the grain in the 
 granaries and the animals in the stables. Twelve infernal 
 columns went up and down the country to destroy every 
 sign of life and agriculture, and they made a desert of all 
 Northwestern France. 
 
 V. ATTEMPTS AT WORLD-WIDE DESTRUCTION. 
 
 The Revolutionists made war upon the neighboring 
 countries, where the Freemasons welcomed and assisted 
 them, and they intended to repeat everywhere their im- 
 pious Vandalism. They were very imperious and exacting 
 towards the Pope. But the Lord mocked at all their mad 
 ambitions. They were unable to preserve peace in France 
 itself, notwithstanding their policy of butchery. All order 
 disappeared in fortyfive counties, constituting about a half 
 of France. Napoleon overthrew the incapable Directory, 
 subdued the licentious demagogues, and made them a 
 pedestal for his imperial throne. The people welcomed 
 him as a deliverer, and he drove them all over Europe to 
 establish a universal empire for himself. He restored the 
 Catholic religion, as a political measure, and his efforts to 
 subject it to himself and make the Supreme Pontificate one 
 of the bulwarks of his tyranny were utterly frustrated. 
 
 VI. NATIONAL APOSTACY DROWNED IN BLOOD. 
 
 France was the first nation which as a nation formally 
 abjured the very name of Christ. The Voltairian populace 
 and the Freemasonic government overturned the altars, 
 
FRENCH REVOLUTION. 319 
 
 murdered the priests and bent the knee before an obscene 
 u Goddess of Reason". They gathered in a focus all the 
 impiety and blasphemy of the past centuries, and solemnly 
 apostatized from Christ and His Church, which they mocked 
 and blasphemed with incredible malignity. But God aban- 
 doned them to their own brutal instincts. They devoured 
 each other and turned the country into a wilderness and 
 the cities into dens of wild beasts in human form. Thirty 
 bloodthirsty tyrants were able to find 300,000 executioners 
 to murder all who were holy and noble in the whole of 
 France and who were not so fortunate as to succeed in 
 taking refuge in some happier land. In ten years they 
 inflicted as many and as horrible calamities as had befallen 
 the whole of mankind ever since the Flood. In their hands 
 France became a heap of ruins and an immense cemetery. 
 This is a horrible example of the punishment that threatens 
 any people publicly apostatizing from Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
CHAPTER FORTYTHIRD. 
 THE CANCER OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 
 
 It was given to him [the Second Beast, i. e., Freemasonry] 
 to give life to the image of the beast [the infidel State, which is 
 the image of the Pagan State represented by the First Beast], 
 and that the image of the beast should speak ; and should cause 
 that whosoever will not adore the image of the beast should be 
 slain. And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and 
 poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character on their right 
 hand or on their foreheads ; and that no man might buy nor 
 sell but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast or 
 the number of his name. APOCALYPSE xm, 15-17. 
 
 I. TACTICS OF THE ENEMY. 
 
 Catholic nations have for nearly two centuries been 
 exposed to the fire of three deadly enemies, and until 
 recently without taking any systematic measures of self- 
 defence. Those enemies are Protestantism, Judaism and 
 Freemasonry. It is the actual policy of Protestant England 
 and Germany to lower the Catholic nations, in order to 
 seize for themselves the control of the seas and of Western 
 Europe. It is the traditional policy of the leading Jews 
 to attack the Catholic Church, because she is the universal 
 Christian society. It is the implacable object of the leading 
 Freemasons to undermine all Catholic institutions, in order 
 to root out Christianity altogether. Now these three 
 enemies have combined to weaken the Catolic nations by 
 secret plots and open wars : Protestant diplomacy, Jewish 
 gold and Freemasonic treachery have worked together to 
 demoralize, revolutionize and plunder the Catholic nations. 
 But the greatest danger comes from the band, or rather 
 the army, of organized traitors which they have succeeded 
 in forming in the bosom of the Catholic nations, and whom 
 they furnish with every possible weapon. Protestant 
 diplomacy and Jewish gold are at the disposition of the 
 Latin Freemasons to enable them to corrupt and weaken 
 
THE CANCER OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 321 
 
 their own countries. Hence those strange attacks of the 
 press against faith and institutions in lands that are 
 entirely Catholic; hence those ruinous revolutions and 
 wholesale plunderings in nations which for centuries were 
 the most peaceable and even now are the most easy to 
 govern on earth, as their endurance of the Freemasonic 
 tyranny reveals only too well. To crown their tactics 
 they attribute the apparent decline of the Latin nations 
 to the influence of the Catholic Church. Every form of 
 Protestant, Jewish and Freemasonic literature proclaims 
 to the world : 
 
 "The Catholic lands are worn out, ruined, corrupted, 
 and repudiate the old Church that caused their downfall. 
 See the fearful corruption cropping out in the leading news- 
 papers, the frequent revolutions shaking every institution 
 of the Latin nations, and the scandalous robbery perpe- 
 trated by their officials." 
 
 Their own works they thus attribute to the Catholics, 
 and those very Catholics tamely submit, and bow before 
 the alleged superiority of enemies that have prevailed 
 against them only by violence, corruption, mendacity and 
 treachery ; and they will remain at their mercy as long as 
 they do not organize against the contemptible Judases in 
 the 'pay of their hereditary enemies. 
 
 II. ATTACKS ON FAITH AND MORALS. 
 
 In Catholic countries there are anomalies which could 
 not be explained were it not for the presence of a strong 
 secret organization bent on dechristianizing them. Chief 
 among these anomalies are the infidel papers, schools and 
 governments. Every day the leading journals are filled 
 with the bitterest attacks upon the faith of the people, 
 and the strongest allurements to immorality, all of which 
 cannot fail to produce some effect and to make some 
 victims. These become rabid infidels and shameless liber- 
 tines, and are held up as the enlightened portion of the 
 land, and the representatives of public opinion; which of 
 course gives plausibility to the vociferous libels about the 
 apostasy and corruption of the Catholic nations. 
 
 21 
 
322 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 The Freemasons in the Latin countries are a small 
 number of blatant infidels and shameless scoundrels ; they 
 are not one in a thousand; but they make up for their 
 lack of numbers by the intensity of their hatred against 
 Christianity, the audacity of their slanders, and the fierce- 
 ness of the storms which the try to excite. As for the good 
 citizens opposed to them, they are quiet, men who attend 
 to their own affairs and neither clamor nor agitate. Thus 
 the infidel element, however insignificant in number has 
 the false appearance of representing the public opinion, 
 and lays claim to the control of education and the govern- 
 ment. It is under the pretext of zeal for progress and 
 improvement that the Freemasons demand the education 
 of the youth in their own way, but it is really for the 
 purpose of infidel propagandism at the expense of the 
 public. There was a striking example of this in Belgium. 
 Although that country is the most progressive and the 
 most Catholic in Europe, the Freemasons demanded the 
 management of the schools, in order to improve the 
 methods of teaching and to lead to higher progress. In 
 1879 they had control of the government by a majority 
 of one vote. A rabid Freemason by the name of Vanhum- 
 beeck became minister of public instruction, with the 
 avowed object of making the public schools infidel. He 
 had a law passed by -which the Church was deprived of 
 all authority in the schools, which were entrusted to 
 Antichristian masters. Many years before he had made 
 at Antwerp a famous speech in which he had vented his 
 diabolical aims. He had said in a Freemasonic council: 
 
 "The Church is a corpse which obstructs the road of progress. In 
 the last century the revolution pushed that corpse halfway into the 
 grave; the nineteenth century must bury it forever." 
 
 As soon as the people found out what he wanted by 
 his secularistic school-law, they built new Catholic schools 
 in every village of the land ; and in the following election 
 they inflicted upon the Freemasons and their tools the 
 Liberals such an overwhelming defeat that they are never 
 likely to recover from it. 
 
 It is a strange fact that the Freemasons can control 
 the governments of many Catholic nations, insult their 
 
THE CANCER OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 323 
 
 religion, overthrow their institutions, and tyrannize over 
 them generally, just as much as the Czar of Russia tyrann- 
 izes over his half-civilized subjects. The Catholics must be 
 a patient and tolerant kind of people, to allow a few 
 of enemies not only to govern them but also to oppress 
 them and to attack all that is dear to them ! Would such 
 things be possible unless some secret funds and other 
 assistance were supplied from outside for the purpose of 
 electing those tyrannts and sustaining them in power? 
 
 III. PERIODICAL REVOLUTION. 
 
 Periodical revolutions afflict most of the Latin nations 
 of America; they are the work of contemptible plotters, 
 who want to rule or ruin their country. If the Freemasons 
 do not constitute the government, they overthrow it by 
 intrigue and violence, and they persecute their rivals and 
 the Catholic religion until they provoke a counter- 
 revolution which drives them out of power. 
 
 In Europe about every tenth year since the overthrow 
 of Napoleon there has been a fearful explosion of the 
 pent-up fires. So 1820, '30, '48, '59 '60, and '68 '70 
 are. fatal dates in the annals of Catholic Europe. 
 
 In 1820, only five years after the monster of the French 
 Revolution had been tamed, revolts broke out in a number 
 of the capitals of southern Europe. The Prussian minister 
 Yon Haugwitz, who had himself been a Freemason of high 
 degree, made the following declaration at the Congress of 
 Vienna, convened to re-establish security: 
 
 "I have acquired the firmest conviction that not only the French 
 Revolution, but the king's murder, with all their attendent horrors, were 
 resolved on in the lodges; and that the way was prepared for them by 
 secret oaths and confederations." 
 
 In 1830 the Freemasons threw Poland into revolt 
 against Russia, which served only to aggravate her yoke. 
 Wars of succession raged in Spain and Portugal, and the 
 secret societies gave their support to the parties which 
 allowed them to rob and persecute the religious orders. 
 In France they banished the Catholic king Charles X and 
 raised up the Liberal Louis Philippe, who abandoned the 
 
324 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Church to their mercy. In Italy they attempted to 
 revolutionize the Papal States, but were thwarted by the 
 energy of Gregory XVI. 
 
 The universal action of Freemasonry was visible again 
 in 1848. In 1847 a great Freemasonic convention met at 
 Strasbourg, to make the final arrangement for a general 
 revolution in 1848. As a result, within the space of one 
 month all the capitals of Europe were in arms. Paris 
 started before March, Vienna arose on the tenth of that 
 month, Berlin on the eighteenth, Parma on the twentieth ; 
 and before the end of the month these cities were followed 
 by Rome, Florence and Naples. 
 
 IV. PLUNDERING GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 When the Freemasons long remain in power the country 
 is sure to some day awake to the fact that it has been 
 robbed on a gigantic scale. The recent scandals in con- 
 nection with the Panama Canal Co. at Paris and the 
 Italian Bank at Rome startled all Europe, because the 
 highest officials of France and of Italy were implicated; 
 and these very men were also the highest dignitaries of 
 the Lodge. The war between Spain and America furnishes 
 another striking revelation of the misgovernment and the 
 misappropriations of Freemasonic officials. For a century 
 the Freemasons of Spain have despoiled the convents, 
 besides taxing the people to death. They were supposed 
 to have a fleet and a military establishment fully equipped 
 and capable of meeting the army and navy of the United 
 States. But the Spanish ships, when the test came, were 
 found to have no proper stores or armaments, and the 
 soldiers and marines lacked the proper -weapons and 
 training, and so the prompt and overwhelming defeat which 
 ensued was inevitable. It is the dark -lantern brethren who 
 have been the cause of Spain's loss of her colonial empire, 
 and of the political decline of that war-like nation. 
 
 V. BETRAYAL TO FOREIGN POWERS. 
 
 From 1859 to 1870 the Freemasons not only disturbed 
 their countries by ruinous revolutions, but also outdid 
 
 
 
THE CANCER OP CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 325 
 
 themselves in selling them to foreign powers. It was only 
 with Freemasonic aid that Bismarck and Cavour were 
 able to subject the rest of Germany and Italy to their 
 respective dynasties of Prussia and Piedmont. Those 
 robberies were represented as the " national union" of the 
 Germans and the Italians ; but that union, in each case, 
 could have been far more satisfactorily and justly accom- 
 plished by a free confederation of states than by a violent 
 subjugation of more advanced peoples to the new king- 
 doms of Prussia and Italy. 
 
 The old Carbonaro Napoleon III helped to humiliate 
 Catholic Austria, and prepared the defeat of Catholic 
 France. In 1859 he drove the Austrians from Lombardy, 
 and aided Cavour to revolutionize the middle states of 
 Italy. The following year Garibaldi invaded Naples, and 
 others the Roman States. There was left to the Pope only 
 half a million of people, and these also were taken away 
 in 1870. Thus the Supreme Pontiff was placed under the 
 power of an aggressive Freemasonic government. The 
 officials of Italy have robbed the churches and monasteries, 
 and sold the spoils to the Jews. They have also taxed 
 the people to the amount of the half of the crops, and 
 there has consequently been such misery in that country, 
 the finest in the world, that hundreds of thousands have 
 had to emigrate to escape the pangs of hunger. 
 
 In 1863 Bismarck involved Austria in Prussia's war 
 against Denmark, and in '68 he combined with Italy to 
 force his ancient ally to give up the North German Con- 
 federation to Prussia, and Venice, her last Italian 
 possession, to Sardinia, In 1870 he conquered the French 
 at Sedan and annexed the Rhine provinces. The Prussians 
 entered Paris and Versailles, where they elected and 
 crowned William II Emperor of Germany. 
 
 VI. APATHY OF CATHOLIC LAITY. 
 
 The main cause, the sine qua non, of the political 
 decline of Catholic countries is the phenomenal in- 
 difference of Catholic laymen in face of the most active 
 and most cunning foe who has been enslaving and ruining 
 them. Firstly, there are not a few who lead unchristian 
 
326 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 lives, and persecutions are not only needed to punish them 
 for their lukewarmness but may even stir them up to piety 
 and virtue. Secondly, notwithstanding the constant warn- 
 ing of the Popes and the Bishops, few have done anything 
 against the ever-threatening enemy. A handful of Free- 
 masons have been allowed to rob and to imprison the 
 Holy Father, to subjugate and despoil France, Italy, 
 Spain, Portugal, and all the Latin- American nations, and 
 to everywhere impose an antichristian education upon 
 Catholic youth. 
 
 The Catholics hardly protest against such persecutions, 
 although they number thousands to one. If the Free- 
 masons are cunning, the Catholics are right. If the Masons 
 work with the power of Satan the Catholics have that 
 of the Almighty behind them. The more the faithful suffer 
 their religion to be insulted and persecuted, the longer 
 they will be at the mery of their eternal enemies. As soon 
 as, attentive to the voice of the Vicars of Christ, they 
 shall organize everywhere, not in secret but in open socie- 
 ties ; as soon as they shall begin to work and agitate and 
 vote perseveringly and consistently for their religious and 
 civil rights, as soon as they shall gather in their vast 
 numbers and their prodigious strength and demand respect 
 for their institutions and a share in the administration of 
 the governments to which they are subjected: then, and 
 only then, will they be free again; and then the world 
 will wonder how it was possible to keep them so long 
 under the heel of the powers of darkness. The Freemasons 
 of Catholic lands are nothing but oppressors and traitors 
 and the sect of Satan. The Catholics are in the right, 
 they have the advantage in point of numbers, and they 
 constitute the Church of Christ, which cannot perish: "The 
 gates of hell shall not prevail." 
 
 The victories of the Catholics of Germany and of 
 Belgium show this strikingly. Bismarck, who had triumphed 
 over the continent of Europe, had proposed to found an 
 arch-Protestant empire. In 1 873 he passed the May Laws 
 to destroy the Catholic Church in Germany, but the Catho- 
 lics, led by Mallinckrodt and Windhorst, made such an 
 unflinching opposition that, after ten years of vain per- 
 
THE CANCER OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES. 327 
 
 seditions, he had to give up his plan and grant liberty of 
 worship to the Church and a share in the government to 
 the Catholics, who now hold the balance of power in the 
 empire. He himself has been succeeded by two Catholic 
 chancellors ! 
 
 The Catholics, when left to themselves always were 
 in the van of progress and contentment. The bulk 
 of those nations today are the equal, if not the 
 superiors, to any other mass of people in point of intellect 
 and morals, and domestic happiness. As glorious as their 
 past has been, so glorious their future will be. Should 
 they remain Under the yoke of Freemasonic government, 
 God can call other nations and make of the stores of 
 heathendom or Protestantism the sons of Abraham. Will 
 not the sun of justice some day shine upon the yellow and 
 dark races as it shone upon the Caucasians? Where will 
 the brethren of darkness then be. Christ reigneth forever 
 and ever, from the rising to the setting of the sun. 
 
CHAPTER FORTYFOURTH. 
 COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY. 
 
 A new commandment I give unto you ; that you love one 
 another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 
 By this shall all men know that you are My disciples if you 
 have love one for another. JOHN xm, 34 35. 
 
 I. PLUTOCRACY THE OUTCOME OF LIBERALISM. 
 
 Freemasons promoted revolution, under the guise 
 of champions of liberty, equality and fraternity, but 
 in reality for the purpose of seizing upon all the powers 
 and treasures of society. When once they acquired them, 
 they became the most haughty tyrants and the most 
 heartless masters, oppressing and starving the masses 
 which had been their tools in overthrowing the old order 
 of things. By 1830 the people, who had lost the hope of 
 Heaven, commenced to lay claim to at least their share 
 of the earth; and they now threaten to overthrow 
 society itself. 
 
 In his Encyclical 011 Communism, 1878, Leo XIII 
 points out the great cause of the social trouble, as follows : 
 
 "By a new kind of impiety, unknown to the Pagans, States con- 
 stitute themselves independently of God and of the order which he 
 established. The rewards and punishments of a future life are forgotten. 
 It is not surprising that men of the lowest order, weary of the poverty 
 of their home or their little workshop, should yearn to seize upon the 
 dwellings and possessions of the rich; that there remains neither peace 
 n or tranquillity in private or public life, and that society is brought to 
 the brink of destruction." 
 
 II. THEORY OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 Socialism is sometimes defined as a theory of society 
 which advocates a more precise, orderly and harmonious 
 arrangement of the social relations of mankind on some 
 
COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY. 329 
 
 basis of communism, such as the cooperation of labor, 
 redistribution of propert3 r , or collective ownership of land 
 and instruments of production. 
 
 But the term is usually employed in a more special 
 sense, to designate the system of those ultra-revolutionists 
 who propose to abolish religion, the family and private 
 ownership, putting all property, all authority and all 
 industries of every kind iu the hands of the general govern- 
 ment, which will assign to each individual his work and 
 distribute to him whatever he needs. One wing of these 
 revolutionists goes to a still greater extreme, and proposes 
 the annihilation of all government, all laws, and all 
 institutions, so that all human relations and association 
 shall be purely voluntary. But these anarchists cannot 
 consistently organize for the furtherance of their aims, and 
 as a matter of fact they are always found fighting in the 
 ranks of the socialists, and so are usually counted under- 
 that head. Every form of Socialism, including Anarchism, 
 ignores the natural and Divinely. ordained constitution of 
 society, and the several rights, privileges and duties of its 
 different elements, and asserts universal equality. 
 
 This fiction of the equality of men is chiefly derived 
 from the theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He supposes 
 that all men are equal in everything, that they have the 
 right to maintain that equality against all superiority of 
 every kind, and that a majority of votes creates and 
 extinguishes all rights. This sophist proposed to establish 
 "liberty, equality and fraternity"; but the French Revolution 
 w^hich he had helped to provoke destroyed all liberty, so 
 far as possible reduced all men to the level of the ragged 
 rabble (sans-culottes), and slaughtered its victims by the 
 million. 
 
 The founders of the American republic asserted the 
 political equality of all men, but at the same time they 
 maintained the inequality of powers and rights acquired. 
 John Adams says : 
 
 "That all men are born to equal rights is true. Every being has a 
 right to its own. But to teach that all men are born to equal powers 
 and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and 
 advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition 
 on the credulity of the people, as was ever practiced." 
 
330 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 In his Encyclical on the labor question Leo XIII 
 shows that compulsory communism is unnatural, unjust, 
 ruinous and tyrannical. 
 
 It is not natural for people to sacrifice what they have 
 produced or improved by the sweat of their brow. They 
 hold it as dear as life, and would defend their possessions 
 at the cost of their blood. It is not just to deprive a man 
 of the fruit of his labor. The cultivation of the soil alone 
 makes it valuable, consequently the increase of value 
 belongs to the man who first created this value or to his 
 heirs ; he owns the land that he made productive. 
 
 To have all the business of the whole country controlled 
 and managed by the government would either cause un- 
 exampled disorder or necessitate unprecedented tyranny. 
 Either there would never be an end of the quarrels about 
 the distribution of work and its proceeds ; or there would 
 be an unbearable tyranny, in which the commune would 
 prescribe hours of -work and rest, the kind of food and 
 recreation, and so on. All men would become the veriest 
 slaves ; they would simply be parts of a vast machine, 
 with the motions of which they would have to move, just 
 as a convict must keep step in a treadmill. 
 
 III. SOME SOCIALISTIC EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 In the twelfth century of our era, a communistic experi- 
 ment was made in China by Wang Cang Tse. The reformer 
 thus expressed his plan: 
 
 "In order to prevent the oppression of man by man the State should 
 take possession of all the resources of the Empire and become sole master 
 or employer. The State should take the entire management of commerce, 
 industry and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring 
 the working classes and preventing their being ground to the dust. The 
 only people who can suffer are usurers and monopolists. What great 
 harm wonld there be in putting an end at last to the exaction of those 
 enemies of the people?" 
 
 In accordance with these views, tribunals were es- 
 tablished throughout the empire which fixed the price of 
 provisions, imposed taxes on the rich for the benefit of the 
 poor or unemployed laborers, assigned to each farmer the 
 land to be worked and the kind of seed to be sown, and 
 gave seed to be returned after harvest. Soon the people 
 
COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY. 331 
 
 of China were plunged into an abyss of misery ; and after 
 a few years the system became unbearable and the com- 
 munists were driven out of the country. 
 
 The Manicheans (third century), the Albigenses (thir- 
 teenth) and the Anabaptists (sixteenth) advocated a general 
 communism, and wherever they prevailed they overthrew 
 society, property and the family. They were fanatical 
 revolutionists, respecting no powers and 110 rights and no 
 morals, who laid the country waste and could not be made 
 to respect others except by force of arms. 
 
 In France the Saint-Simonians, in 1830, and Fourrier, 
 in 1832, made communistic communities, which failed 
 financially. In 1883 there were in the United States eight 
 communistic societies, divided into seventy-two separate 
 communities, with about five thousand members, including 
 children. These are little societies, even as compared with 
 the Catholic religious orders, containing many thousands 
 of persons living in a happy common life. 
 
 The modern Communists do not recommend community 
 of goods to those who are willing to adopt it, but demand 
 its enforcement by legal means, or, if that is impossible, 
 by revolutions ; and they threaten the world with un- 
 heard of calamities. 
 
 Lasalle, a Jew of high intellect and education, was 
 ' 'revolutionary in principle", that is, he aimed at the over- 
 throw of he present order of things at any and all costs. 
 He was twice imprisoned for his treasonable agitations. 
 He said to the people: 
 
 "The first French Revolution was a revolt of the third estate against 
 the crown aud the privileged classes. The third estate, the bourgeoisie, 
 converted itself into a privileged class: plutocracy took the place of 
 aristocracy. The Revolution of 1848 was the beginning of the revolt of 
 the fourth estate, the working classes, against the privileges of the third. 
 What is the State? You, the working men, are the State! You are 
 nintysix per cent of the population. All political power ought to be of 
 you, and through you and for you." 
 
 Karl Marx, a still more famous socialist, boldly 
 acknowledged that it was the aim of the German socialists 
 to "excite hatred and contempt for all existing institutions. 
 We wage war against all prevailing ideas about religion, 
 
332 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 State, country, and patriotism. The idea of God is the 
 keystone of a perverted civilization, and it is needful to 
 sweep it from the face of the earth." 
 
 In 1864 Lasalle founded in London the " International 
 Workingmen's Association", which soon became powerful 
 and threatening. But the Franco-Prussian war divided the 
 French and German laborers, and the breaking out of the 
 Commune at Paris frightened the English members, who 
 were more conservative. It was in 1870, when Paris was 
 still at the mercy of the Prussians, that the Communards . 
 seized the power and delivered themselves up to outrage, 
 pillage and carnage. 
 
 The Terror of 1793 raged again in the French capital. 
 Churches were pillaged and hostages taken. When the army 
 conquered the city, the revolutionists burned the principal 
 monuments and shot the hostages. 
 
 The Nihilists are the Russian Communists. Nihilism 
 or Annihilationism is wild, terrible and desperate in its 
 methods. It has women as well as men among its ex- 
 ponents and agents. Bakunine was one of its foremost 
 prophets and leaders. In 1857 he was condemned to per- 
 petual banishment in Siberia. After twelve years of suffer- 
 ing he escaped with no other plan than that of destruction. 
 He says : 
 
 "We declare that the forms in which our activity ought to express 
 itself may be extremely varied : poison, poniard, knout, the Revolution 
 sanctifies all without distinction. Pan-destruction is a series of assas- 
 sination, bold or even mad enterprises, horrifying the powerful and 
 dazzling the people, till they believe in the triumph of revolution." 
 
 Although the Communists have never as yet been able 
 to carry out their plans, except for a few weeks at a time, 
 they have alread}^ startled the world by the horror of 
 their deeds. One need not be a prophet to say that some 
 day they will pile up more ruins than the Hun and the 
 Norman, the Mohammedan and the Revolutionist ever did. 
 In a few weeks they destroyed the finest monuments of 
 Paris, and reduced that most civilized city into a state 
 barbarism and that w^as only a band of Parisian fanatics. 
 The people as yet have never been atheistic not even in the 
 worst phases of Pagan times ; but if they ever be robbed 
 
COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY. 333; 
 
 of all faith, woe to society! With the terrible engines of 
 destrution, they will outdo the monsters of the French, 
 revolution, and level cities in a day. 
 
 IV. THE ONLY SAFEGUARD. 
 
 In his Encyclical on the labor question, 1891, Leo XIII 
 points out these threatening evils, saying: "The momentous- 
 seriousness of the present state of things just now fills- 
 every mind with painful apprehension. All agree that some 
 remedy must be found, and quickly found. ' ? Then the Pope 
 points to the means offered by the old Church, who settled 
 the labor question in the Roman and the barbarian worlds, 
 and she can settle it in ours. For she alone abolished slavery 
 that crying shame of Paganism ; there being more tha.n four 
 hundred synodical and Papal decrees in behalf of the 
 slaves. If she suppressed slavery, serfdom and barbarian 
 anarchy, she can suppress industrial slavery, pauperism 
 and the consequent revolt of the masses. 
 
 In fact, the social and economic evils of the present 
 day have arisen precisely from the disruption of that 
 natural and Christian order of society, evolved under the 
 fostering care of Holy Church during the Middle Ages. 
 Protestantism and Liberalism have impoverished the 
 masses, and created the plutocracy on the one hand and 
 the proletariat on the other. Indifferent though they are 
 to the miseries and degradation they have produced, they 
 have generated in their own bosom the twin monsters of 
 Socialism and Anarchism, which now threaten to avenge 
 the outraged laws of social order by a fearful retribution. 
 From the principles of civil affairs, equality, necessity 
 and universal rule of the Pope the Socialistic notion of 
 an omnipotent, politico-economical State, with absolute 
 authority and universal ownership, is a logical conclusion 
 that cannot be escaped, and if it could be established it 
 would still more inevitably lead on to universal anarchy. 
 
 To meet these dangers the great Catholic Social Reform 
 movement has arisen in Belgium, France, Italy, Switzer- 
 land and Germany, and is rapidly spreading to other 
 lands. The Catholic Social reformers agree with the 
 Socialists and Anarchists that the existing system is unjust 
 
334 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 and unnatural, and that there is pressing need for the 
 freeing of the people from the clutches of the money- 
 power. But they steadfastly maintain that this end is to 
 be attained not by creating an all-absorbing State des- 
 potism, as the Socialists propose, or by the complete 
 obliteration of all authority of every kind, as the Anarchists 
 dream, but by the restoration of the true and normal 
 order of society under the aegis of religion: The full 
 recognition of every form of authority spiritual, intellectual, 
 esthetic, social and economic, the restoration of the family 
 and the economic group to their original dignity and 
 autonomy, and the perfect enforcement and protection of 
 the several rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities 
 peculiar to each state, condition, function, degree and 
 organic element in the body-politic. The Catholic Church 
 demands the solution of all social and economic problems 
 by the intelligent application of the the principles of 
 distributive and commutative justice and of the laws of 
 Christian charity to the special conditions of the time and 
 place. The aim of this great movement is in the words of 
 the apostle of the gentiles: "in the fulness of time to 
 reestablish all things in Christ". (Ephes., 10). Its watch- 
 words are: "Back to Christ!" "The reconstitution of 
 society in the light of the Eternal Gospel!" "Jesus Christ 
 must conquer, reign and rule, throughout all the world 
 and in every department of life thought and life!" 
 
CHAPTER FORTYFIFTH. 
 RALLY AROUND THE PAPACY. 
 
 The Stone -which the builders rejected the same is become the 
 head of the corner. Whosoever shall fall upon that Stone shall 
 be bruised, and upon whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him 
 to powder. LUKE xx, 17, 18. 
 
 I. EFFECT OF INFIDEL PERSECUTIONS. 
 
 "TTEE Protestant spirit of revolt penetrated even into 
 Catholic lands. The governments endeavored to 
 estrange the people from their spiritual father, and dis- 
 couraged the frequent communication of the Bishops with 
 the Sovereign Pontiff. Catholic countries had become 
 indifferent towards the Vicars of Christ; but the fearful 
 persecutions carried on by the infidels renewed their interest 
 and their attachment. When the Freemasons not only 
 created a radical schism in the Church of France, but also 
 attempted the overthrow of the Papacy, killing, chaining, 
 robbing and imprisoning the Roman Pontiffs, the people 
 returned with enthusiasm to the side of the Vicars of 
 Christ, and the Bishops, convened in the Vatican Council, 
 proclaimed them infallible in matters of faith and morals. 
 
 II. PIUS VI KILLED BUT REPLACED. 
 
 In France the Revolution took all the Church property, 
 made a schism from Rome, and persecuted the Catholics 
 with a Satanical hatred. Pius VI (1775 '99) protested 
 in vain. When Napoleon's victories opened Italy to the 
 French armies, the Pope was twice attacked and subjected 
 to a heavy ransom. A third time his capital was taken 
 and a republic proclaimed, on February 15, 1798. Five 
 days later the octogenarian Pontiff was cast into an old 
 carriage and taken out of Rome on a dark and stormy 
 night without notification of the place of his exile. For 
 
336 TH E THREE AGES. 
 
 more than a year he was watched by guards day and 
 night, and driven from one city to another. On March 
 the 29th, during severe weather, he was ordered across 
 the Alps, and for four months taken from one French 
 province to another, staying in hamlets and villages and 
 stopping at the most wretched inns. Finally, as the Free- 
 masons intended, he died from fatigue and exhaustion at 
 Valence, in 1799. It was by permission of Providence 
 that the Holy Pontiff was brought to the land of anarchy 
 and persecution, to pray for the frenzied but misguided 
 people. 
 
 The Freemasons cried with one voice: "The Pope is 
 dead! No other Pope can be elected. The Church without 
 a head cannot live! Our reign is establisbed forever !" 
 Indeed, their armies occupied Italy and the Cardinals were 
 all in exile or in prison. But Divine Providence watched 
 over the bark of Peter, and gave a temporary victory to 
 the coalition of the powers of Europe, which drove the 
 French out of Italy. All of the governments of Europe, 
 whether Catholic, Protestant or Schismatic, wished for 
 another Pope, to oppose the ravages of infidelity. Thirty- 
 five Cardinals, hastening from their places of exile, assembled 
 at Venice and chose as Pope the broadminded and charit- 
 able Cardinal Chiarimonti, who took the name of Pius VII. 
 
 III. PIUS VII ENSLAVED BUT LIBERATED. 
 
 In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte made himself the master 
 of France, with the title of First Consul. He restored the 
 public offices of religion as a means of facilitating the task 
 of government, but he exacted many sacrifices from the 
 Church and revived the old "Gallican claims". He became 
 Emperor in 1804, and summoned the Pope to Paris, to 
 solemnly crown him. Pius VII (18001823) went thither, 
 notwithstanding the displeasure of all the other govern- 
 ments of Europe. Napoleon retained him for a whole 
 winter in Paris, in the hope and for the purpose of inducing 
 him to fix the Papal residence at the French capital, so 
 that he could use the Popes as instruments for the control 
 of the Catholic world. But Pius returned to his post of 
 
RALLY AROUND THE PAPACY. 337 
 
 duty at Rome. Several demands were made upon him by 
 Napoleon which he was obliged to refuse. In 1808 there- 
 fore, the Papal States were invaded by the imperial forces, 
 and the following year Rome was declared a part of the 
 French Empire. Napoleon was then at the zenith of his 
 power. He had defied all the coalitions of Europe. He 
 had destroyed thrones and built up kingdoms. Of worldly 
 weapons the Pope had none, but he had the Divine power 
 to bind and to loose. He issued a Bull of Excom- 
 munication against the authors, abettors and advisers of 
 the robbery. All Europe applauded the courage of the old 
 man; while Napoleon sneeringly asked: "Does the Pope 
 think that his sentence will cause the arms to fall from 
 my soldiers' hands?" During the night of the fourth of 
 Jnly a French general penetrated into the apartments of 
 the Pope, demanding his abdication of the sovereignty 
 of Rome under threats of imprisonment. The heroic 
 Pontiff answered: "Non possumus : We cannot, we will 
 not, we must not cede what is not ours. The Emperor 
 may cut us to pieces, but he will never get our ab- 
 dication." 
 
 Pius VII was taken from city to city and kept in 
 prison at Savona for three years, without pen and ink, 
 without book or friend. Finally he was brought in an 
 almost dying condition to Fontainebleau, where he was 
 obsessed by courtier-Cardinals and by the Emperor him- 
 self with solicitations to give up part of his power. Pope 
 Pius made as many concessions to the imperial govern- 
 ment as his conscience would allow, but threats and 
 promises and hardships were alike unavailing to induce 
 him to go one step further. 
 
 Meanwhile the arms had literally fallen from the hands 
 of Napoleon's soldiers, benumbed and frozen in the wilds 
 of Russia. The armies of Europe were invading France, 
 and Napoleon, having retired to Fontainebleau, was forced 
 to sign his resignation in the same room where two months 
 previous he had wrung the extremest concessions from 
 the Pope. The fallen Caesar went to die on the rock of 
 St. Helena, while the triumphant Pontiff returned to the 
 Eternal City amid the applause of the whole world. 
 
 22 
 
338 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 IV. PIUS IX DESPOILED BUT EXALTED. 
 
 The Freemasons proposed the unification of Italy, in 
 order to arrive at the suppression of the temporal power 
 of the Popes, which they vainly imagined would soon 
 enable them to annihilate their spiritual power. They 
 multiplied under the name of Carbonari and played upon 
 the patriotic feelings of the Italians to excite them against 
 their local rulers and against the princes of Austria. But 
 they were kept in check by the energy of Gregory XVI (1831) 
 and the power of the Austrian Empire. His successor 
 Pius IX (1846 '78), young and generous, favored an 
 Italian federation, reorganized the government of the Papal 
 States on a popular basis, and granted an amnesty to all 
 political prisoners. But the Freemasons demanded a war 
 against Austria, and upon the refusal of Pius IX they 
 declared him a traitor to his country. Mazzini stirred 
 up a revolution in Rome, with the aid of the released 
 criminals and imported malcontents, and established an 
 infidel republic, 1848. The Pope fled to Gaeta, and was 
 soon restored by France and Austria, which left a garrison 
 to defend him. 
 
 The wily Cavour became prime minister of the Pied- 
 montese prince Victor Emanuel, King of Sardinia, he pro- 
 posed to overthrow the other Italian governments for the 
 benefit of the House of Savoy. In 1859 and 1860 Free- 
 masonic plots and a favorable combination of political 
 events allowed him to seize the north and south of Italy 
 and to threaten the Papal States. A band of Catholic 
 young men from all countries hastened to the defence of 
 the Holy Father, but these "Papal Zouaves" were crushed 
 at Castelfidardo by an army ten times larger than their 
 own. Four-fifths of the Papal States were incorporated 
 at that time in what has since called itself the Kingdom 
 of Italy. The Catholic peoples of the whole world offered 
 Peter's Pence for the support of the general government 
 of the Church, thus despoiled of its revenues, and 12,000 
 fresh zouaves came from every corner of the world to 
 guard the remnant of the sacred territory. In 1870, how- 
 ever, that was also taken, and Pius IX found himself 
 
RALLY AROUND THE AAPACY. 339 
 
 under the power of the treacherous usurper and his Free- 
 masonic cabinet. The monasteries and convents were 
 robbed on a tremendous scale, and the works of art, sold 
 for the benefit of the Freemasons, were bought up by 
 Jewish speculators. 
 
 The captive Pope was one of the greatest who ever 
 reigned. No Roman Pontiff has ever ruled longer, or con- 
 vened more Bishops around his person, or reestablished 
 more Hierarchies, or canonized more saints, or condemned 
 more false doctrines. In 1864 he fearlessly denounced the 
 great heresies and errors of our times, enumerating as 
 many as eighty in his famous Encyclical and Syllabus. 
 In 1867, on the occasion of the centenary of St. Peter, 
 five hundred Bishops surrounded the throne of his successor, 
 and the holding of an Ecumenical Council was decided on. 
 
 On the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1869, 
 Pius IX solemnly opened the nineteenth Ecumenical Council 
 at the Vatican, with 719 Bishops, Abbots and Generals 
 of religious orders present, which number later arose to 
 769. Two dogmatic constitutions were passed: The first 
 affirms the existence of a supernatural order, and the 
 second the infallibility of the Pope in official definitions on 
 questions of faith and morals. 
 
 The first was a condemnation of the modern infidels 
 who wish to reestablish Naturalism or Paganism. The 
 second was the answer to the modern Liberals, who wish 
 to curtail the power of the Church in order to extend their 
 own. That prerogative of infallibility caused alarm to the 
 governments, but it had been recognized by the Bishops 
 and by the faithful in general in all ages. Only one-tenth 
 of the Fathers of the Council wanted to postpone the 
 definition of this article of faith to a time more opportune, 
 for fear, they said, that it might be an occasion of scandal 
 and schism. Cardinal Manning says: "Setting aside that 
 one question of opportuneness, there was not a difference 
 of any gravity. Never was there a greater unanimity than 
 in the Council." 
 
 All the Bishops accepted the decision with ready loyalty. 
 There were forty German priests, with here and there one 
 in other lands, who fell away on this occasion, and organ- 
 
340 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 ized the sect of the so-called "Old-Catholics", but even the 
 learning of Doellinger and the eloquence of Hyacinthe 
 could not avail to keep it up. 
 
 The greatest tribute paid to the proclamation of the 
 dogma of the infallible teaching office of the Roman Pon- 
 tiffs was the rage of the Freemasons and the unavailing 
 persecution they inaugurated through the instrumentality 
 of the powers of the world. It was the spiteful gnashing 
 of Satan's teeth against the glorification of the Vicar of 
 Christ. The Freemasonic governments protested against 
 what they ignorantly or maliciously called a "new 
 privilege" of the Popes. The infidels of France expelled 
 the religious, the Protestants of Germany, inaugurated 
 the Kulturkampf, and the Freemasons of Italy seized the 
 capital of Christendom, and plundered its treasures. 
 
 When Pius IX died the Freemasons were still raging 
 and foaming against the Pope, that "idol in the Vatican", 
 that eternal enemy of all improvements", as they said; 
 and once more they determined to silence his voice, to 
 annihilate his influence, and exterminate the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 But God had prepared another Leo to confound the 
 modern Huns, who do not advance with material weapons 
 in broad daylight, but who hide under the cover of a 
 science falsely so called, and a whole series of kindred 
 impostures. This great champion of God and civilization 
 was no other than Leo the Thirteenth, which future 
 generations will surname the Wise. 
 
 V. LEO XIII, A PRISONER, BUT HEARD THROUGHOUT 
 
 THE WORLD. 
 
 Endowed with a lofty genius, trained by assiduous 
 study, and matured by extensive observation, Leo XIII 
 (1878) entered the field of science and diplomacy against 
 the enemies of Christ, and gained their respect while 
 frustrating their aims. By numerous Encyclicals he cleared 
 away the prejudices against the Church, and pointed out 
 the way to true progress and the dangers that threatened 
 it; and by skilful negotiations he gained the confidence of 
 even the most hostile governments. 
 
RALLY AROUND THE PAPACY. 341 
 
 It was repeated on all sides that the Church is the 
 enemy of science, civilization and liberty. Pope Leo issued 
 luminous documents to throw light on the most important 
 questions of the times, and to expose the brazen lies, the 
 false theories and the deceptive aims of Freemason^. He 
 proved to honest minds that the Church is the greatest 
 benefactor of the race, and ever marches in the van of 
 progress. He showed her as the queen of science, the 
 mother of civilization and the nurse of liberty. No Pope 
 has ever shed so much light on the burning questions of 
 the day; none has ever put within the reach of all the 
 people so great an amount of sure and precious information 
 on such a variety of subjects on which the rest of the 
 world is at variance. 
 
 The governments mistrusted the power of infallible 
 teaching vested in the Bishops of Rome. Leo convinced 
 them that they had nothing to fear on that score, the 
 Pope having no right or power outside the sphere of faith 
 and morals, and only resorting to formal doctrinal defi- 
 nitions, to which alone the prerogative of infallibility is 
 attached, when all other means of teaching have been 
 exhausted. His broad policy distributed the honors and 
 the influence of the Church to men of all nations, and thus 
 excited a new and worldwide interest in her welfare. By 
 nominating Cardinals from the most distant and the most 
 hostile peoples, and canonizing their saints and martyrs, 
 he showed that they too had a claim in the Universal 
 Church, and thus drew them nearer to the See of Peter. 
 
 By his affectionate appeals to the Christians separated 
 by schism and heresy, he effectually promoted the yearning 
 for the reunion of Christendom. 
 
 His skilful diplomacy carried on negotiations with the 
 most unfriendly governments and established cordial 
 relations with them. Bismarck himself in the end granted 
 partial liberty of conscience, and chose the Pope as arbiter 
 in the quarrels between Spain and Germany concerning the 
 Caroline Islands. Although a dethroned prince, Leo XIII 
 is the accepted leader, of princes and nations, and exerts 
 an immense influence over all Christendom. 
 
342 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 If Leo XIII has the science of a philosopher and the 
 skill of a diplomat, he has also the piety of a monk. He 
 takes time to write encyclical sermons on the Rosary 
 every year and to say his beads every day. It is from 
 Heaven that he asks counsel and strength, and that he 
 has received that extraordinary wisdom which has recon- 
 quered to the Papacy the reverence of the whole world. 
 
 VI. SOLEMN ANSWER OF CHRISTIANITY TO LIBERALISM. 
 
 The Protestants had declared an irreconcilable war 
 against the Papacy, without avail. The Freemasons are 
 animated with the same spirit, but they have only bruised 
 their own heads against the Rock on which Christ built 
 His Church. They hastened that most sublime moment 
 in modern history when the representatives of the Universal 
 Church, the Bishops gathered from all over the world in 
 the Council of the Vatican, set their solemn seal upon the 
 Apostolic doctrine, which no one until modern times had 
 ever been rash enough to impugn, that the Roman Pontiffs 
 are infallibly protected by the Holy Ghost in their formal 
 decisions on matters of faith and morals for the benefit of 
 the whole Church. To this solemn decision of the official 
 judges appointed by Christ to speak in His name, there 
 was a unanimous response from the 259,000,000 Catholics 
 spread over the face of the earth, recognizing the infallible 
 teacher given by Heaven, and thanking Christ for the gift 
 of such precious light in a world questioning everything 
 and fast returning to the errors and vices of Paganism. 
 
 What does it matter that the enemies rage, provided 
 that they are outside of our camp ? When the Catholics 
 are united and faithful they can never be overcome. 
 
 All the rage and frantic efforts of the Freemasons 
 entrenched in the high places of the world have only the 
 one most desirable effect of separating the camps of truth 
 and error more completely : Of withdrawing the Catholics 
 from the corrupting influence of Liberalism, grouping them 
 around the Chair of Peter, and saving all well-meaning 
 Christians from the ravages of infidelity. If the Free- 
 masons have succeeded in politically ruining the Catholic 
 
RALLY AROUND THE PAPACY. 343 
 
 nations, they will never succeed in ruining the Catholic 
 Church, for our Lord has sworn that "the gates of Hell 
 shall never prevail against it". The Lord of Hosts laughs 
 at the threats and the efforts of the children of darkness, 
 and in the course of centuries he will use them to exalt 
 His Church, just as He used the Protestant Revolt to 
 show that all the rage of the world cannot uncrown his 
 Vicar on earth, or despoil him of his God-given powers 
 and of his prestige among the people of every clime. 
 
CHAPTER FORTYSIXTH. 
 THE VICARS OF CHRIST. 
 
 I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 MATTHEW XVI, 19. 
 
 I. ONLY CLAIMANTS OF PETER'S KEYS. 
 
 TTHERE is only one line of Bishops who claim to hold 
 the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. These are the 
 Bishops of Rome. Their life-sized portraits are engraven 
 in imperishable mosaics in the great basilica of St. Paul's 
 Without the Walls, with the exact dates of their accession 
 and their demise. There have been two hundred and fifty- 
 nine legitimate Popes, and four others of doubtful claims 
 have also been allowed a place in the series. On an average 
 each Pontiff has reigned seven years and three months. 
 Twentyfive reached twenty years, and only two twentfive. 
 Were they the Vicars of Christ, holy and beneficent, like 
 their Master? They have been, beyond all question, the 
 best princes, the wisest rulers and the greatest civilizers 
 that the world has ever seen. 
 
 II. THE BEST OF PRINCES. 
 
 The mode of Papal election is calculated, humanly 
 speaking, to secure the best man in Christendom. In the 
 beginning, when the Roman Christians were few and all 
 were fervent, they were all entitled to a voice and they 
 elected none but saints. Now seventy Cardinals, the most 
 distinguished and virtuous prelates of the Church, con- 
 stitute the electoral college. At the death of a Pope they 
 gather in solemn conclave, and remain in a locked hall, to 
 be free from worldly influences, until they have chosen a 
 new successor to the Blessed Apostle Peter. They have 
 separate cells and hold no unnecessary private com- 
 munications, but commune with God alone, who inspires 
 them to elect the man destined by Providence. Several of 
 the Popes were elected by enthusiastic acclamation. 
 
THE VICARS OF CHRIST. 345 
 
 History testifies that the Popes have usually been holy 
 men. More than one-third practiced virtue in a heroic 
 degree. Eightyfour have been canonized, and at least four 
 others might \vell be so. Thirty five were put to death 
 for the faith thirty by the Pagans, four by the Arians 
 and one by the Eutycheans. During the three first cent- 
 uries the Chair of Peter was, as it were, a scaffold for its 
 incumbents, and at all times the tiara has been a crown 
 of thorns for its wearers. 
 
 Where else is there such a long line of princes who 
 were models for their subjects? Power and glory seem to 
 turn the heads of rulers; seduction and flattery ensnare 
 their hearts. Even most of the kings of the people of God 
 under the Old Covenant turned bad after their accession 
 to the throne. Here the humblest man is made the greatest 
 ruler on earth. A swineherd, a son of a carpenter, a 
 begging monk, ascends the most glorious of thrones, and 
 still he remains humble and styles himself the servant 
 of servants. 
 
 Luther claimed that the Popes are Antichrists, and 
 the Centuriators of Magdeburg maintained that there had 
 been thirty bad Popes and hence drew the conclusion that 
 the Roman Pontiffs could not be the Vicars of Christ. 
 But if that number were true it would not prove that the 
 Popes as a class were bad men, and still less that they 
 were not the visible heads of the Church. Where is the 
 Protestant to say that the Apostles could not be the 
 representatives of God because there was a Judas among* 
 the twelve? Where is the Christian to say that the pro- 
 genitors of Christ as given in the Gospel could not have 
 really been his ancestors because at least four notorious 
 sinners are mentioned among them? Thirty was the 
 number claimed at first by the bitterest enemies of the 
 Popes. But historical investigations have cleared al- 
 most all of them from the charges laid against them. 
 Today no true historian would condemn the lives of 
 more than six Popes, and some great Protestant 
 authorities accuse no more than three, while others 
 equally great altogether exonerate even two of these. 
 These men of doubtful character were not permitted by 
 
346 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Providence to reign long, or to promulgate any error. 
 They were recognized by Catholics as the Vicars of Christ, 
 an evident sign that the Church does not depend on the 
 virtues of men, but on the Providence of God. Moreover, 
 their worst enemies must admit that these Pontiffs, 
 questionable as to their own personal conduct, were still 
 the best statesmen, or the most generous and enlightened 
 patrons of art and letters, of their times. 
 
 III. THE WISEST OF STATESMEN. 
 
 The Popes have formed the most heterogeneous and 
 yet the most coherent empire that ever existed. They 
 have united and kept together 259,000,000 men of the 
 most diverse origin and the most opposite interests. 
 The} 7 have no army with which to conquer the nations, 
 or garrisons to keep them in subjection. But they 
 have the Divine mission to convert all the world to 
 Christ, and they are endowed with the prerogatives of 
 infallibility and of primacy, in order that they may main- 
 tain the people of God in one faith and one obedience. 
 Their spiritual conquests stretch farther than all the 
 armies of Alexander, Mohammed and Napoleon were able 
 to go ; their empire extends far beyond the confines of 
 those of Augustus, Charles V and Victoria. 
 
 The Popes have built up the most cosmopolitan of 
 empires. Under their direction the unarmed messengers of 
 Christ went to every tribe and every nation, and they 
 won them for their master wherever they were not shut 
 out or driven away by brute force. There never was a 
 worldly prince, philosopher or prophet whose sway passed 
 beyond the boundaries of his own nation, unless powerful 
 armies led the way. The Popes were the first and only 
 rulers who bridged over nationalities and through per- 
 suasion alone united peoples of different origin and different 
 character. They themselves have belonged to fourteen 
 different nations, and all alike worked with zeal and 
 success to extend the reign of Christ to the ends of the 
 world. There are in the series one hundred and four 
 Romans, one hundred and four Italians, fourteen French- 
 
THE VICARS OF CHRIST. 347 
 
 men, nine Greeks, seven Germans, five Dalmatians, five 
 Asiatics, three Africans, three Spaniards, one Hebrew, one 
 Thracian, one Fleming, one Portuguese, one Candiote and 
 one Englishman. The Romans and Italians have naturally 
 been the most numerous, because they belonged to the 
 nationality which they were to govern as temporal princes, 
 or over which they were to hold direct spiritual sway 
 the Popes being not only Bishops of Rome, but Metro- 
 politans of the Roman Province (with the incumbents of 
 the six Suburban Sees as suffragans) and Primates of 
 Italy. They are also better trained in the methods of the 
 Holy See, and endowed with that practical talent for 
 administration which enabled the Romans of old to rule 
 the world so successfully. 
 
 The Popes maintained the Christians in unity, notwith- 
 standing the terrific strifes introduced by schismatics and 
 heretics. Ambitious prelates and princes attempted to 
 divide the Church of Christ, by detaching parts of it from 
 the Center of Unity and subjecting them to their own 
 power. But they signally failed, or if they seemed to 
 succeed they clipped off only rotten and decaying branches, 
 which could bear no fruit. 
 
 There have been in round numbers about fifty schisms ; 
 a very few of them are still in existence, to the great 
 detriment of their adherents, even on this earth. 
 
 There have arisen about thirtythree antipopes, who- 
 taken collectively, covered a period of one hundred and 
 seventy years. 
 
 During the ninth and tenth centuries, the princes of 
 Tusculum and Tuscany controlled Rome, and they placed 
 their friends upon the See of Peter, either as Popes or 
 antipopes. 
 
 Several emperors of Germany and kings of France 
 endeavored to bring the Popes under their control. The 
 Henrys raised up no fewer than seven antipopes ; and 
 Philip the Fair, by inducing the Popes to fix their residence 
 at Avignon, prepared the way for a series of deplorable 
 succession-troubles (1378 1417), which led to the develop- 
 ment of theories derogatory to the prerogatives of the 
 
348 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Holy See. But a great Ecumenical Council was held at 
 Florence (1438 '42), where all the nations, not only of 
 the West but also of the East, recognized the supremacy 
 of the Bishops of Rome over the Universal Church. 
 
 The Roman Pontiffs kept the bulk of the Christians in 
 one mind on the great questions which divide and disturb 
 the rest of mankind. They formed committees of the most 
 learned men to study the new and difficult questions of 
 the times. During the Middle Ages alone they founded in 
 Christian Europe sixty six universities, which spread such 
 a light on religion that for a thousand years no heresy of 
 any consequence arose. Against the Greco-Syrian sophists 
 and German rationalists they gathered the Bishops, the 
 Divinely-appointed judges of faith, in Ecumenical Councils, 
 which crushed these heretics by the weight of their 
 authority and influence of their numbers. In our day so 
 many errors are advanced that it is impossible to convene 
 councils against all of them. The Vatican Council pro- 
 claimed what had alwas been believed: that the Popes 
 are infallible in their decisions on matters of faith and 
 morals. The Catholics have a judge competent to condemn 
 any error liable to injure their souls, and they submit to 
 his decisions with implicit confidence, knowing that they 
 are infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost. The Protestants, 
 on the contrary, give rise to every error, and cannot con- 
 demn or root out any one of them. 
 
 IV. THE GREATEST OF CIVILIZERS. 
 
 The most glaring historical lie which the Liberals have 
 incessantly repeated is that the Popes are a hindrance to 
 civilization and their temporal power a drawback to Italy. 
 For the Roman Pontiffs were always the leaders in civil- 
 lization, and precisely for this reason Italy was the most 
 advanced land in the world. This fact Leo XIII showed 
 in the first of his Encyclicals, and he has not ceased to 
 inculcate it during all the years of his reign. The Popes 
 are the fathers of civilization, as we have seen illustrated 
 in innumerable ways. When the fierce Attila advanced 
 with his wild warriors to destroy Rome, Leo the Great, 
 vested in his pontifical garments, met him and his warriors 
 
THE VICARS OF CHRIST. 349 
 
 and bade them turn back; and thus he saved Rome from 
 utter ruin. When hordes of barbarians poured over western 
 Europe, the Popes ordered the monks to snatch from the 
 flames, treasure up and reproduce the monuments of 
 ancient learning and taste, in order to preserve them for 
 future generations. Thus the Holy Scriptures and the 
 masterpieces of letters and the arts were preserved. Hardly 
 had the barbarians settled down, when the Roman Bishops 
 sent missionaries to convert, to educate and to civilize 
 them. The Order of St. Benedict was the special instru- 
 ment prepared by Providence for that great work, and it 
 enrolled in its ranks all the life-forces of civilization. Every 
 monastery and every church had to have a school ; univer- 
 sities arose and great philosophers flourished in times 
 hardly free from barbarian invasions. 
 
 The Popes were the protectors of the people against 
 half-civilized princes. They were the arbiters of Europe, 
 and settled many national and international troubles, and 
 thus prevented many wars among savage and aggres- 
 sive tribes. 
 
 The city of Rome reaped the most glorious fruit from 
 their civilizing influence ; she became the home of arts and 
 letters, and to this day she is truly the museum of the 
 world. When Constantinople fell into the hands of the 
 savage Turks, many treasures of art and science were 
 saved and deposited in the museums of Rome and Florence, 
 and the Greek doctors found a hearty welcome in the city 
 of the Popes. Thus for a second time did the Roman 
 Pontiffs save the remnants of a dying civilization. The 
 outcome of the Middle Ages was for Italy a renewal of 
 letters and the arts, equal to that of the Age of Augustus, 
 and it was called the Age of Leo X, that Pontiff being 
 the great patron of the liberal arts. The Popes have 
 advanced Italy more than a century ahead of the other 
 countries. It is a singulary perverted public opinion which 
 will dare to say that the Popes are a drawback to their 
 country. 
 
 If the Popes made Europe, Mohammed unmade the 
 rest of the civilized world. He carried on a perpetual 
 warfare for the propagation of his sect, and he allowed 
 
 
350 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 the degrading slavery and polygamy which are a death- 
 blow to the energies of man. Starting in 632, Moham- 
 medanism sent its mighty armies, like the waves of the 
 ocean, to the ends of the world. The Christian nations 
 were young and divided, but the Popes united them against 
 their common enemy. Urban II spoke so forcibly to the 
 Christian warriors, that they became true soldiers of the 
 Cross and formed a dyke against the Mohammedan deluge. 
 For a thousand years did the Mohammedans threaten all 
 Christendom, and for a thousand years the Popes stirred 
 up Crusaders in defense of the Church of God. 
 
 The Popes alone produced and preserved Christian 
 civilization. No schismatical patriarch or Protestant 
 minister ever fully converted and civilized a single nation. 
 No Greek emperor or Protestant prince crushed the 
 Mohammedan monster. That was a struggle between 
 the City of God and the City of Satan, and it was won 
 fay the Catholic princes under the guidance of the Popes. 
 
 V. THE CHRISTIAN WORLD'S DEMAND. 
 
 The world knows so well that the Bishops of Rome 
 are the Vicars of Christ that all His enemies have turned 
 their rage against them and all His friends have given 
 them their love. The Roman emperors drove them to the 
 lowest dungeons of the Mamertine prison, and the damp 
 galleries of the catacombs. Greek, German and French 
 emperors and Italian kings and demagogues have often 
 cast them into prison or driven them into exile. Today 
 the Freemasons have robbed them of their kingdom, and, 
 so far as possible, of their independence in the government 
 of the Christian world. But the Catholics have a throne 
 for the Yicars of Christ. Const antine left them the city 
 of the Caesars, Pepin gave them a kingdom, the Italian 
 republics called them their leaders and the Christian states 
 their arbiters. Today 259,000,000 of Catholics venerate 
 them as their spiritual fathers, and they want to see them 
 again independent upon the throne of Gregory VII and 
 Innocent III. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 List of works freely made use of by the Author in the Preparation of this 
 volume. Those used or valued the most being in capitals. 
 
 GENERAL POPULAR WORKS. 
 
 DEHARBE. History of the Church. 
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 EARLE, JOHN CHARLES. Lives of the Popes. 
 FREDET, PETER. Ancient History. 
 
 Modern History. 
 
 OILMOUR, RICHARD. Bible and Church History. 
 GAZEAU, P. F. Ancient and Roman History. 
 
 History of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Modern History. 
 LHOMOND. Histoire de 1'Eglise. 
 
 MOELLER, J. Cours complet d'histoire universelle. Louvain. 
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 POSTEL, Y. Histoire de 1'Eglise. 
 
 SCHMITZ. (Noncatholic.) Manual of Ancient History. 
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 THALHEIMER, M. E. (Noncatholic.) Outlines of General History. 
 STIEFELHAGEN, F. Kirchengeschichte in Lebensbildern. 
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 LEARNED AND CRITICAL GENERAL HISTORIES. 
 
 ALZOG, JOHN. Universal Church History. Three volumes. 
 BIRKHAEUSER. History of the Church. Two volumes. 
 BRUECK, HEINRICH. History of the Catholic Church. For the 
 
 use of seminaries. Two volumes. 
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 SPECIAL HISTORICAL STUDIES, LEARNED OR POPULAR. 
 
 COBBETT, WILLIAM. (Noncatholic.) Protestant Reformation 
 
 in England. 
 GIBBON, EDWARD. (Noncatholic.) History of the Decline and Fall 
 
 of the Roman Empire, 
 
352 THE THREE AGES. 
 
 IRVING, WASHINGTON. Life of Columbus. 
 
 Conquest of Spain. 
 
 Conquest of Granada. 
 
 Spanish Voyages. 
 
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 Conquest of Peru. 
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 Ancient Religions. 
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 PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 
 
 AUGUSTINE, ST. City of God. 
 
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 BROECKART. Le Fait divin. 
 
 SPALDING, J. L. Essays, Discourses, Education. 
 
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 GENERAL BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 
 
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INDKX. 
 
 Absolutism opposed by Popes, 127, 136, 143; prevented by Feudalism, 
 
 127; revived by Sectaries, 139, 255, 256. 
 Abuses in Church, 9, 15, 135; their causes, 117, 130, 131, 158; their 
 
 removal shows divine protection, 12, 279. 
 Act of Conformity, 249; of Supremacy, 240, 241, 249. 
 Adultery of kings rebuked, 145, 146. 
 
 Ages, Ancient, Middle, Modern, 10; Happy, Unhappy, 1. 
 Agnostics, 279, 305. 
 Agriculture promoted by Monks, 99, 119,207; ruined by Barbarians, 117; 
 
 by Mohammedans, 99, 192; by Revolutionists, 318. 
 Alaric, 104. 
 
 Albigenses, 120, 144, 146, 168, 169; their Communism, 331. 
 Alexander, III, 98, 102, 137; VI, 162; St., 68, 69; of Hales, 166. 
 Alexandrian Library, 192; Philosophers, 46; School, 60. 
 Allemanni, 110, 112. 
 Alva, Duke of, 262. 
 America, Evangelization of, 163, 184; helped by the Church, 193, 222; 
 
 American Missionaries, 296; Martyrs, 296; Protestants, 266, 
 
 288, 294. 
 
 Anabaptists, 120, 231, 265, 267, 271, 331. 
 Anarchy, 329, 332, 334; the result of Freemasonry, 220, 226; of 
 
 Liberalism, 8, 328, 332, 333 ; of Protestantism, 333 ; remedied 
 
 by the Church, 333. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, tttfeir Conversion, 110112. 
 Ansgar, St, 113. 
 
 Antichrists, not the Popes but the Reformers, 220, 275, 345. 
 Anti-Christian Conspiracy, 307, 311, 313325. 
 Anti-Councils: Arian, 70 71; Iconoclastic, 85; Nestorian, 77; German, 
 
 132, 133; Basle, 155. 
 
 Antiochian School, 60; Patriarchate, 46, 77, 79. 
 Antipatriarch, of Alexandria, 91; of Antioch 91; of Constantinople, 
 
 8992, 211. 
 Antipopes: Clement III, 133134; Felix V., 155, 159, 161; of Avignon, 
 
 152, 153; Thirtythree, 347. 
 
 Apathy of Modern Catholics, 321, 323, 325327. 
 Apostasy, of France, 315 319 ; the greatest crime, 8 ; the outcome of 
 
 Freemasonry, 314316; of Heresy, 64, 78, 220, 238, 287: of 
 
 Schism, 91, 92. 
 
II THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Apostates, Pardon refused to, and Sacramental Power denied, 74, 75. 
 Apostle of England, 111, 112; Hungary, 115; Japan, 285; the Albigenses, 
 
 176; the Germans, 112; the Gentiles, 47, 334; the Indies, 283 
 
 285 ; the Negroes, 290. 
 Apostles, contrast with Sectaries, 32; Divine Commission, 21, 28, 41; 
 
 their Preaching in Traditions, their Writings in Scriptures, 41; 
 
 their Zeal, 47. 
 Apostolic Labors of Benedictines, 118; of Friars Preachers, 169; of Jesuits, 
 
 278, 294; Liturgies, 45; Methods, 281283; Success over 
 
 Nations, 280; Spirit, 175, 222; Traditions, 69; Types, 46. 
 Apostolicity, of the Church, 45, 76, 269 ; Sects too late to possess, 220. 
 Arabs, 194199; Arabian Figures are Indian, 193. 
 Arbitration, Papal, 97, 143147; in 1899, 147. 
 Arianism, its Condemnation, 67, 68; Divisions, 72; Disappearance, 73; 
 
 Persecutions by, 110; Punishment, 64, 196, 197. 
 Aristotle, Philosophy of, 22, 23, 60, 162. 
 
 Art, Fostered by the Church, 101, 125, 163, 207, 292, 311, 349. 
 Asia, Heretics of, 78, 195, 281; Mohammedanism in, 99, 191195; Wars 
 
 between Europe and, 200203, 254. 
 Asylum, Right of, 121, 122. 
 Athanasius, St., 62, 6773, 76, 117. 
 Atheism, 304, 332. 
 
 Augsburg Confession, 268; Peace, 257. 
 Augustine, St., of Hippo, 14, 23, 24, 28, 63, 75, 76, 229, 277 
 
 of England, 111. 
 
 Augustinian Friars, 176, 228, 276. 
 Austria defends Europe, 212, 214 ; Jesuits in, 278 ; Jews in, 38 ; Joseph 
 
 II. of, 300 ; Protestantism in, 266, 278. 
 
 Authority, Divine, 152, 227, 274, 334; lacking in Sectaries, 273, 274. 
 Avignon Exile, 148; Schism, 151161. 
 Babel, Tower of, 224. 
 Bagdad, Caliphate of, 99, 192, 195. 
 Balance of power maintained by the Popes, 136. 
 Baldwin of Flanders, Latin Emperor, 205. 
 Baptist Sectaries, 268, 271. 
 Barbarians, Arianism among, 72; Civilized by Church, 14, 101, 117, 
 
 127, 219, 349; Conversion of ? 72, 109, 166, 226, 291; Diverted 
 
 on Western Europe by Byzantine Emperors, 103, 195; European, 
 
 described, 119, 120; Europe protected against by Church, 102, 
 
 103, 107, 124, 165, 181 ; the Scourge of God, 53. 
 Barbarism, abuses resulting from, 95, 107, 121, 136, 179, 180; caused 
 
 by Communism, 332; by Infidelity, 301; by Mohammedanism, 99, 
 
 187, 189, 210211. 
 
 Barlow, alleged Bishop of Bath and Wells, 244. 
 Barneveldt, put to death by Fellow-Calvinists, 269. 
 Bartholomew, St., 42, 43, 261. 
 Basil I, II, 195 ; St., 62 ; the Macedonian, 86, 87. 
 
CONTENTS. Ill 
 
 Basle, Council of, 158, 159; Anticouncil of, 155, 160. 
 
 Belgium, Catholic Victories in, 322, 326 ; Calvinists of, 238, 258 ; Christian 
 and Unchristian Education in, 322; Churches of, 184; Vandalism 
 of Calvinists in, 263; Tyranny of Freemasons in, 307, 313; Social 
 Reform in, 333. 
 
 Benedict VIII, 106, 197; XI, 152; XIII, Claimant to Papacy, 156, 157; 
 St., 117, 121. 
 
 Benedictine Order, a powerful civilizing Agency, 97, 122, 349 ; Eng- 
 land's debt to, 111 ; Nuns, 118 ; Offshoots of, 173, 174 ; of St. 
 Maur, 276. 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 173. 
 
 Berthellier put to death by Calvin, 236. 
 
 Bessarion, Cardinal, 91, 161. 
 
 Betrayed of Catholic Nations by Freemasons, 324. 
 
 BIBLE, Canon of, 40 ; partly rejected by Luther, 229 ; confirmed by Gentile 
 Tradition, 1 ; by Jews, 40; its Circulation in the Middle Ages, 120, 
 184, 229 ; its Abuse by Protestants, 221, 264, 266, 282 ; itsExcellence, 
 29, 30 ; Gentile Scriptures and Koran indebted to it, 26, 188 ; 
 Preserved by Monks, 120; Private Interpretation of, 231, 264, 
 274; Versions of, 45, 113, 120, 184, 229. 
 
 Bigamy allowed to Philip of Hesse by Luther, 232. 
 
 Bishops at Councils of Clermont, 201 ; Nicea, 68, 69 ; Trent, 222 ; Vati- 
 can, 335; their Laws, 63, 131, 151; Sectarian: Arian, 64; Epis- 
 copalian, 244, 246, 269, 287; Jansenist, 267; Methodist, 270; 
 Nestorian, 77; Schismatic Latin, 132; Separatist Oriental, 288. 
 
 Bismarck, 325, 341. 
 
 Blessings of Christianity, 9 12. 
 
 Blessings promised to God's Servants, 179. 
 
 Blood of Martyrs, 50, 55, 57, 58, 285, 296. 
 
 Bloody Mary, a Misnomer, 244. 
 
 Bohemia, Church of, 114; Heresy in, 171. 
 
 Boleyn, Ann, 240, 243, 244. 
 
 Bollandists, 57. 
 
 Bonaventure, St., 166, 167, 183. 
 
 Boniface, St., 112; VIII, Pope, 148. 
 
 Book of Common Prayer, 244. 
 
 Books burnt by Omar, 192, by Infidels, 316, by Llorente, 263 ; Collected 
 and made by Monks in Middle Ages, 119, 120, 183. 
 
 Bora, Catherine, 232. 
 
 Bossuet cited, 1, 230, 261. 
 
 Bouillon, Godfrey, 204. 
 
 Bourbon Dynasty, 262, 301. 
 
 Brahminism, 3, 4 ; Conversions of Brahmins, 285. 
 
 Brazil, Church of, 225, 298. 
 
 Brebeuf, Martyr, 295, 296. 
 
 British Church refuses to Evangelize its Enemies, 111. 
 
 Broad-church Episcopalianism, 270. 
 
IV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Brotherhood of Man, first realized by the Popes, 96, 226. 
 
 Brothers of the Common Life, 176. 
 
 Bruges, powerful, 181, 249. 
 
 Bruno, St., 114. 
 
 Brussels City Hall, 185; Missionary College, 281. 
 
 Buddha, 3, 26; Buddhism, 4, 284. 
 
 Bulgarian Church, 115, 143; Rite, 45, 117; Schism, 87, 91. 
 
 Bulwarks of Christendom, 196, 199, 205, 202. 
 
 Burning of Men, Churches and Property by Infidels, 316, 318; of Knights 
 
 Templars, 151 ; of Records of Inquisition, 263 ; of Servetus by 
 
 Calvin, 236. 
 
 Butcheries by Liberals, 313, 318. 
 Byzantine Empire, its crimes, 62, 87, 195, 199, 203205 ; its incomplete 
 
 Repentance, 160, 201 ; its Last Testament, 161 ; its punishments, 
 
 89, 205, 208211. 
 
 Caesars, 21, 37, 47, 49, 62, 71, 254. 
 
 Csesarism, Revival of, 137, 139,152,221 255 256,269; Results, 299 301. 
 
 Cairo, Caliphate of, 195, 201. 
 
 California, the Evangelization of, 293294. 
 
 Caliphs, Mohammedan, 92, 99, 195, 201. 
 
 Calixtus II, 134, 135. 
 
 Calumnies against Catholic Lands, 321; Jesuits, 301, 310; Mary Stuart, 
 181, 245, 260; Middle Ages, 181; Monks, 120; Popes, 132, 140, 
 150, 151; of Freemasons, 225, 301, 321, 322; of Heretics, 70, 
 95, 147, 220, 225, 228232, 243244, 259, 273276, 278, 283 ; 
 of Infidels, 170, 202, 203, 278; of Liberals, 95, 101, 147, 219, 
 315, 321322; of Pagans, 51, 54; of Schismatics, 86,87; of 
 Tyrants, 149. 
 
 Calvin, John, 220, 221, 258, 269; Cited, 278; his Inquisition, 235; his 
 Intolerance, 234235. 
 
 Calvinists, Persecutors, 257263, 285, 291 ; Foes of Liberty, 258263 ; 
 their Disloyalty, 255 ; Prone to Infidelity, 237238. 
 
 Cannibalism, 284, 289, 290, 291, 314. 
 
 Canonization of Saints, 155, 284, 285, 341, 345. 
 
 Canossa, Fortress of, 132. 
 
 Canterbury, Anti-archbishop of, 244; See of, 111, 143144, 166, 240. 
 
 Cappel, Battle of, 258. 
 
 Capuchin Friars, 276. 
 
 Carbonari, 325, 328. 
 
 Cardinals, the College of, 137, 142, 150, 156158, 213, 280, 336, 341, 
 344; unworthy, 132, 137, 149, 155, 156. 
 
 Carmelites, The, 176, 276. 
 
 Carpenter's Son, Jesus a, 31; Gregory VII. a, 181, 345. 
 
 Carthage, Councils of, 41, 75, 76. 
 
 Carthusian Monks, 174. 
 
 Castelfidardo, Battle of, 337. 
 
 Castes of India, 3, 7, 285. 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 Castile, Kings of, 195. 
 
 Catacombs, The, 53.. 57, 58, 233254. 
 
 Cathedrals, 183 185 ; built by Catholic Masons, destroyed by Free- 
 masons, 311; of South America, 242. 
 
 Catherine, de Medici, 261; of Alexandria, St., 57; of Aragon, 240; of 
 Cleves, 240; of Ricci, St., 276. 
 
 Catholic Europe triumphs over Mohammedanism, 211 214; Forces and 
 Institutions undermined by Freemasons, 320; Jews, 35; Kings 
 dethroned by Freemasons, 323 ; Nations mostly Republics, 141 ; 
 Wronged by Protestants, 255, 256 ; ruined by Masons, Jews and 
 Protestants, 223, 307314, 320326; Leagues, 257261, 326; 
 Patriarchs, 89, 211, 287; Revival in Austria, 278, Belgium, 326, 
 England, 13, 243, 270, Germany, 13, 326, France, 261, 278, 318, 
 Greece, 206, Italy, 276, Poland, 278, Russia, 303, Switzerland, 
 259, United States, 13; Schools, 192, 322; Scholars, 13; Social 
 Reform, 333; Universities, 167, 253, Women in, 184; Why Church 
 so called, 37; Why Spanish Kings so called, 170. 
 
 Catholics act only in self-defense, 170; excluded from public office, 246; 
 Heretics and Pagans united against, 23, 195; once outnumbered 
 by Arians, 71, and Nestorians, 78; persecuted by Freemasons, 
 323, Liberals, 220, Protestants, 230, 295 ; and Schismatics, 200 ; 
 Superior virtue of, 327 ; their Apathy, 325327 ; their Struggles 
 for Liberty, 224, 256, 326. 
 
 Celibacy of priesthood, an ideal, upheld by the West, dropped by the 
 East, 84; defended by Gregory VII, 130132. 
 
 Celsus, Pagan reviler of the Faith, 51. 
 
 Centuriators of Magdeburg, 12, 345. 
 
 Cerularius, Michael, his Schism, 86, 87, 195. 
 
 Cesarini, Cardinal, 209. 
 
 Chalcedon, Ecumenical Council of, 79. 
 
 Chaldeans, Conversion of, 161. 
 
 Charity, cause of Christian Civilization, 92, as contrasted with Moham- 
 medan Barbarism, 95 ; of St. Charles, 275 ; of Sisters, 178, 276 ; 
 Lacking in Freemasons, 315, and Protestants, 232, 241 ; Solution 
 of Social Problems, 334. 
 
 Charlemagne, 105, 125. 
 
 Charles I of England, 250, 256, 260, 266. 
 
 Charles V, Emperor, 100, 208, 212, 214, 257, 346; Calumniated by 
 Robertson, 13. 
 
 Charles Borromeo, St., 275, 276; Oblates of, 276. 
 
 Charles Martel, 125, 196, 201. 
 
 Chastity, Evangelical Counsel, 117, 176, 232, 277. 
 
 Children allowed by Protestants to die unbaptized, 271. 
 
 Children's Crusade, 146, 147. 
 
 China, Evangelization of, 175, 285; Gentile Prophets of, 26; Buddhism 
 in, 9; Socialism in, 330, 331. 
 
 Chivalry, 179 ; Flower of, 203 ; Type of, 206. 
 
VI THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Christ, Abjuring of, required by Dutch Calvinists, 286 ; see Jesus. 
 
 Christian II of Denmark, 230, 257 ; III, 230. 
 
 Christian Civilization, 2, 10; Commonwealth, 97, 126, 142, 160 Con- 
 spired against by mediaeval Emperors, 139 Defended by Popes, 
 150 Undermined by Heresy, 168; Doctrine, Fathers of, 276; 
 Schools, Brothers and Sisters of, 276; Social Order, 333, 334; 
 Society, 172, 179, 180; State rejected by Liberals, 219. 
 
 Christians, Oriental, 45, 78, 80, 81, 8392, 114, 161, 194196, 207, 
 281, 287; degenerate punished, 228; enslaved by Mohammedans, 
 191, 209211; persecuted by Jews, 38, Mohammedans, 106, 
 190, 201, Infidels, 301, 311, 315, 318, 324, 325, and Pagans, 
 23, 4958, 285, 295; true, reject Protestantism, 230. 
 
 Christianity, Consequences of its rejection, 124, 306 ; aided by Philoso- 
 phy, 24, 59; its conflicts with error, 4958, 6192, 154161, 
 228278, 335343; its services to Civilization, 77, 207. 
 
 Christendom, its Constitution, 123, 135, 154; its Defenders, 125, 146, 
 177; its Struggle against the Arabs and Turks, 171, 177; its Pre- 
 ponderance, 11; unified and saved- by Popes, 99, 126, 147, 200, 208. 
 
 Chrysostom, St., 62. 
 
 Church alone can save Society, 182, 333, 334 ; alone survived Barbarian 
 Irruptions, 103; always triumphant, 64, 82; Art, fostered by, 
 311; Europe civilized by, 100, 211214, 224, 293, 333; Contains 
 Majority of Jewish race, 44; Freed by Gregory VII, 107, 135; is 
 God's Kingdom on Earth, 305 ; its Democratic Character, 10 ; its 
 Divine Constitution, 46, 154 160 ; its early glories revived in Pa- 
 raguay, 291 ; its Indefectibility, 107, 153, 164, 326 ; Oppressed by 
 Tyrants, 86, 130 135, 148, 149, and Liberals, 219; Princes re- 
 strained by, 135, 146, 153, 255 ; Satan's Warfare on, 8, 59, 132, 
 171, 219221, 225; Self-reforming, 64, 279; Debt of United States 
 to, 193. 
 
 Cid, the Christian Hero in Spain, 198. 
 
 Cistercian Monks, 173. 
 
 Cities, Italian, Struggle for Liberty, 136140; Mediaeval, their Freedom, 
 128, 181. 
 
 City of God, 9, 350; of Satan, 9, 350. 
 
 Civil War, the Result of Protestantism, 171, 230, 257, 261. 
 
 Civilization, its Basis, 95 96; a Difficult Process, 109, 123, 127; Christian, 
 its Blessings, 2, its Trials, 10; its Enemies: Communism, 332 
 Heresy, 146 Liberalism, 316; its Champions: Charlemagne, 105 
 Crusades, 98, 105, 201 Knights, 254 Religious Orders, 117, 254, 
 292, 349 ; Saved by Church, 211214. 
 
 Clement V, 148 152 ; VI, 152; VII, Pope, 240; VII, Antipope, 156; XII, 
 309; XIV, 301. 
 
 Clerk, Derivation of Word, 201. 
 
 Cleves, Catherine of, 240. 
 
 Clothes of Workingmen in Middle Ages, 182. 
 
 Clovis and Clothildis, 110. 
 
CONTENTS. VII 
 
 Cluny, Abbey of, 121, 173. 
 
 Cobbett, the Historian, 13, 170; Cited, 239, 243, 244, 252, 263. 
 
 Coliseum, Arena of Martyrs, 56, 57. 
 
 Colonization of Ireland with Protestants three times, 250251. 
 
 Colonni, the, 149, 150. 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 98, 184, 199, 280. 
 
 Comfort, Popular, in Middle Ages, 181183 ; Protestantism inimical to, 186. 
 
 Commandments of God, 219, 227, 235. 
 
 Commonwealth, Christian, 168, 202. 
 
 Communes, Mediaeval, 98, 128, 153, 181, 182, 202. 
 
 Communism, 146, 168, 223, 225, 271, 303,328333; in China, 331 ; in 
 
 Russia, 332; Compulsory, Leo XIII on, 328, 329. 
 Comnenus, Michael, 88. 
 "Compulsus feci", 301. 
 Concessions, Doctrinal, of Protestants, 221 ; Papal Administrative, 158 ; 
 
 to Civil Power, 151, 337; to Heretics, 79, 81. 
 Conciliar theory exploded, 158. 
 Conclave, Papal, 155, 341. 
 
 Confederation of Arras, 263 ; of Kilkenny, 250. 
 Confiscation of Church Property by Liberals, 223, 294, 314, 325, 335, 
 
 and Protestants, 241, 248253, 269; of Property of Knights 
 
 Templars, 177, of Irish Catholics, 250. 
 Conformity to Established Sect forced, 249, 256. 
 Congregationalists, 260, 266, 269. 
 Congresses, Catholic, 38, 229. 
 Conrad IV, 139 ; Conradin of Sicily, 140. 
 Conscience, Liberty of, Championed by Catholics, 221, 226, 251, 257 
 
 259; denied by Liberals, 220, and Protestants, 230, 246, 255. 
 Consecration of Emperors, 123, 125, 126; of Kings, 112; of Knight's 
 
 Sword, 180. 
 Conspiracy against Church, 39, 47, 220, 307; against Pope, 132, 150 
 
 151; against popular Liberty, 306; against Truth, 12; of Free- 
 masons, 306314, 320325; of Protestants against Catholic 
 
 Governments, 238, 243. 
 Constance, Council of, 155, 157, 161, 171. 
 Constant II, 81. 
 
 Constantine the Great, 54, 6769, 124, 350; IV, 81; V, 85; XII, 87, 210. 
 Constantius, 71, 72. 
 Constantinople, Ecumenical Councils of, (II) 76, (VI) 78; Fall of, 89, 100, 
 
 209211, 349; Greek Empire of, 199, 201, 205, 206; Latin Empire 
 
 of, 146, 208; Patriarchs of, 71, 76, 79, 81, 84, 8688, 113, 161, 
 
 195; Antipatriarchs of, 68, 90, 91. 
 Constitution of Christendom, 11, 123, 129, 139; of the Church, 153, 
 
 155, 159, 160. 
 
 Constitutional Assembly, 313. 
 Consubstantial, 69. 
 Convention, Masonic, 324. 
 
VIII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Continence, its possibility denied by Luther, 232. 
 
 Conversion, Divine Grace necessary for, 288 ; of Nations by Catholics 
 alone, 280; of World prevented by Protestantism, 283. 
 
 Coptic Rite, 45, 60, 80, 83. 
 
 Copying of Books, 119, 120. 
 
 Cordova, Khalifate of, 99, 129, 192, 195198. 
 
 Cosmopolitanism of the Church, 346. 
 
 Cost of the French Revolution, 314315; of Protestant Missions, 282. 
 
 Council, Egyptian, 68, of Ancyra, 84, Aries, 71, 81, Basle, 158, Carthage, 
 41, 75, 76, Clermont, 201, Dijon, 145, Elvira, 84, Limoges, 121, 
 London, 171, Milan, 71, Mileve, 76, Pisa, 156, Sardica, 71, Toledo, 
 111, Toulouse, 169, Verona, 169, Thrullan, 84; Apostolic, 46, 86, 
 133; Ecumenical, 63, see Ecumenical; guided by Jesus Christ, 279; 
 condemn heretics, 63, 64. 
 
 Counter-revolutions in Latin Countries, 323. 
 
 Cranmer, Thomas, 240243. 
 
 Creed, Chalcedonian, 79, Ephesian, 77; Nicene, 69; Episcopalian, 244, 
 Augsburg and Dresden, 268. 
 
 Crime, Catholicity made a, 20. 
 
 Crimes, Economic, 182; of Heretics, 168, 235, 243, 245, 246, 261; of 
 Infidels, 309310, 317 ; of Pagans, 50 ; of Schismatics, 241 ; the 
 greatest of, 8, 168, 224. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 250251, 256, 260, 269; Thomas, 240, 242, 249. 
 
 Cross, The, 28, 36, 54, 56, 167, 199, 204, 213, 286, 316. 
 
 Cruelty of Albigcnses, 168, American Indians, 291, Calvinists, 234, Hugue- 
 nots, 261, Jacobins, 314, Protestant Sovereigns, 239, 243, 256, 
 Worldly Kings, 140, 198; Opposed by the Church, 226. 
 
 Crusade, Antislavery, 287; I, 202204; II, 173, 205; III, 205; IV, 146, 
 205; V, 146, 206; VI, 206; VII, 206; VIII, 206. 
 
 Crusades, against Heretics, 146, 165, 168169 ; against Mohammedans, 
 115, 146, 165, 198, 200, 202, 206, 209 ; impeded by Schismatics, 
 89, 91, 199, 203, 205; Palestinian, 350; Hungarian, 115, 209; 
 Promoted by Popes, 97, 138, 146, 201; Utility, of 11, 96, 99, 100, 
 202, 208, 350. 
 
 Crusaders, 139, 180, 185, 206. 
 
 Cyprian, St., 53, 59. 
 
 Cyril Lucaris, 91; of Alexandria, St., 77; of Moravia, St., 113115. 
 
 Czars of Russia, 64, 83, 89, 90, 92, 323. 
 
 Dark Ages, The, 13, 95, 107. 
 
 Decius, his Crime and Punishment, 52, 53. 
 
 Declaration of Independence contradicts Calvinism, 238. 
 
 Defence, free in Inquisition, 169. 
 
 Defenders of Christendom, 125, 146 ; of the People, 180. 
 
 Deformation of religion by Protestants, 221. 
 
 Degradation of Nations, its causes, 320326 ; of Church attempted by 
 Princes, 135; of Europe prevented by Crusades, 202; Woman 
 saved from, 193. 
 
 Deification of Heroes, 5. 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 Delete Nomine Christiano, 54. 
 
 Democracy, Christian, 38, 123. 
 
 Democratic Spirit of the Church, 101, 136141 , 144 ; of the Papacy 345, 349. 
 
 Demon-worship, 49, 290. 
 
 Deponibility of Popes, 132, 133, 150, 156, 157, 160. 
 
 Deposition of Antipope, 158; of Kings and Queens, 144, 245, 260, 315; 
 
 of Emperors, 132134, 140; of unworthy Clergymen, 131. 
 DeSmedt, Father, 297. 
 
 Despair, the Effect of Calvinism, 234237. 
 Despotism, Church the Enemy of, 334; false Charges of, 147; Heresy 
 
 established by, 64; of Czars, 89; of Freemasons, 314; of Liberals, 
 
 219; of Protestants, 220, 221, 228, 230, 255, 260; promoted by 
 
 Schism, 88, by Socialism, 334; Schism established by, 64. 
 Devils, Relations of Sectaries with, 75, 168, 233, 271, 302, 303, 308. 
 Diaspora, 37, 44. 
 Dictator, Cromwell, 260. 
 Diocletian, Persecution by, 54. 
 Directory, French, 313, 318. 
 Disintegration of Sects, 267. 
 Dismemberment of Germany, 257. 
 
 Dissensions the Effect of Sectarianism, 64, 221, 231, 264272 ; in Russia, 90. 
 Dissolution of Protestantism inevitable, 272. 
 Divine Constitution of the Church, 154, 158, 346; Grace necessary for 
 
 conversion, 288 ; Inspiration not possessed by Luther, 229; Mission 
 
 falsely claimed by Mohammed, 187189. 
 Divinity of Church, 12, 162, 279, 337; of Jesus Christ, attested by 
 
 Nicene Council, 69 ; denied by Heretics, 59, 62, 6782, by Pagans, 
 
 10, 49, 51; Evidences of, 11, 19, 22, 2531, 55; of Holy Ghost, 76. 
 Divisions the Effect of Separatism, 83, 163, 208, 211, 225, 272; their 
 
 evil, 179. 
 
 Divorce favored by Protestantism, 232, 240, 242. 
 Doctors, Heretics refuted by, 22, 6263, 275 ; of the Church, 83, 229, 
 
 273; Scholastic, 23, 165. 
 
 Doctrinal Transformations of Protestantism, 221222, 264. 
 Doctrine Confirmed by Miracles, 209 ; Corrupted by Sectaries, 74, 229, 
 
 231, 267; its Judges, 63; its Scientific Formulation, 59, 63. 
 Dogmas, Fundamental, 70, 8283; Links in one Chain, 29. 
 Dogmatic Letter of Leo the Great, 79. 
 Dominic, St., 168, 169, 176. 
 Donatists, their Heresies, 74, 75. 
 Draining of Marshes by Monks, 119. 
 Drake, 245. 
 
 Dresden, Confession of, 268. 
 Drogheda, Massacre of, 251. 
 Dualism, 4, 168. 
 Dunkards, 271. 
 Duns Scotus, 166. 
 
X THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Dutch Protestants colonized in Ireland, 251 ; Persecutions stirred up by, 
 
 285, 295. 
 
 Earnestness of Protestants, 221 ; Spiritual, of Middle Ages, 165. 
 East, Heresies of the, 75, 194; Destroyed by Schism, 83; its Sufferings 
 
 from Mohammedanism, 64, 99, 192, 194, 201, 206, 207 ; Spread 
 
 of Catholicity, 89, 60, 222, 285. 
 Eccelino, the Fierce, 139. 
 Echienda, Senor, 294. 
 Economic Questions, 171, 228334. 
 "Ecrasons PInfame", 303. 
 Ecumenical Councils, 63, 68, 77, 83, 87, 135, 145, 150, 157, 158, 160, 
 
 161, 169, 222, 273275, 348. 
 Ecumenical Councils: I, First of Nicea, 325, Divinity of Christ Arius, 
 
 Celibacy of Clergy, 6870, 84 ; II, First of Constantinople, 381 ; 
 
 Divinity of the Holy Ghost Macedonius, 76 ; III, Ephesus, 431, 
 
 One Person in Christ, Mary, the Mother of God Nestorius, 77 ; 
 
 IV, Chalcedon, 351, Two Natures in Christ Eutyches, 79; 
 
 Y, Second of Constantinople, 553, One Person 3 Chapters, 78 ; 
 
 VI, Third of Constantinople, Two Wills in Christ Sergius, 81 ; 
 
 VII, Second of Nicea, 787, Worship of Images Iconoclasts, 85 ; 
 
 VIII, Fourth of Constantinople, 869, Spiritual Supremacy of 
 Rome Photius and Greek Schism, 87; IX, First Lateran, 1123, 
 Celibacy of Clergy Lay Investitures, 135; X, Second Lateran, 
 1139, Confirmation and Application of Ninth Arnold of Brescia, 
 135; XI, Third Lateran, 1179, Two-Thirds of Vote of Cardinals 
 required for the Election of a Pope Imperial Antipopes, 169; 
 XII, Fourth Lateran of Innocent III, 1215, Sacraments, Crusades 
 Albigenses, 145; XIII, First of Lyons, 1245 Frederic II, 140; 
 XIV, Second of Lyons, 1274 Papal Conclave, Greek Reunion, 
 150; XV, Vienne, 1311 Templars, Fraticelli, 150; XVI, Florence, 
 1439, Spiritual Supremacy of Popes, Reunion of Greeks, 89; 
 XVII, Trent, 15451563, Sanctification through the Church, 
 Reforms Protestants, 222, 273275 ; XVIII, Vatican, 18691870, 
 Infallibility of the Popes, 339. 
 
 Eddyites, 271. 
 
 Edict of Nantes, 262. 
 
 Editions of the Bible before Luther, 184, 229. 
 
 Education, Antichristian, 322, 326; Christian, its importance, 301, 311; 
 
 Fostered by Church, 11 ; of Barbarians, 117122, 183, 297 ; 
 
 Freemasons its Enemies, 223, 303 ; Liberty of, 226, 252 ; of the 
 
 Clergy, 246, 275; Promoted by Jesuits, 233, 278, 291, 301, 312. 
 Egypt, Heresies in, 78, 80; Monks of, 117; Church of, 80. 
 Eldest Daughter of the Church, 110. 
 Election of Officers in the Middle Ages 123, 181, ; of Emperors, 126, 133, 
 
 138, 143 ; of Kings, 204, 212 ; of Popes, 107, 124, 137, 142, 155, 
 
 157, 158, 163, 336, 344. 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 243246; her Intrigues with Rebels, 245; Terrible 
 Persecutions by, 239, 249250, 260263. 
 
 Embezzlements of Freemasons, 308. 
 
 Empiricism at Antioch, 60. 
 
 Encyclicals of Gregory VII, 134 ; of Innocent I, 76 ; of Leo XIII, 9, 14, 
 101, 167, 225, 309 (Freemasonry), 328 (Communism), 330, 333 
 (Labor), 340, 341, 348. 
 
 Enemies of Church, 64, 148 ; of Christian Nations, 170, 320326 ; of 
 Liberty, 219; of Light, 310; of Mankind, 191, 170. 
 
 England, 13, 105, 112, 144, 153, 243, 253, 260, 304; Church of, 184, 
 278; Heresy in, 171, 239247; its Crimes, 250, 294296, 298, 
 320; its Debt to Popes, 143; Kings of, 126, 149. 205; Origin of 
 Infidelity in, 222, 299, 302 ; Persecutions in, 238, 245, 248, 256, 
 260, 263, 268, 294; Pauperism in, through Protestant Confisca- 
 tions, 246, 247; Sects of, 240, 258, 261, 266, 269271. 
 
 English Church, its Contest for Liberty, 144, 242, its Destruction by 
 Elizabeth, 244, its Devotion to Mary, and to the Pope, 112, its 
 Missionary Activities, 109, 281, 294; Seminaries on Continent, 
 246; Rights and Liberties, 134, 181; Workingmen, 332. 
 
 Enlightenment, Church the Instrument of, 106 ; Infidels Enemies of, 303, 306. 
 
 Enslavement of American Indians, 289 ; of Catholics by Freemasons, 224, 
 325; of Christians by Turks, 209211; of Popes by Kings, alleged, 
 152; of Schismatics by Mohammedans, 161, 195, 196, 199, and 
 of Women, 287 ; of Soul and Body by Separatists, 258 ; of the 
 Church by the State, 149, 300, 301, 336. 
 
 Ephesus, Ecumenical Council of, 77; Robber-Council of, 79. 
 
 Epicureanism, 22, 60, 221, 229. 
 
 Ephraem, St., 63. 
 
 Episcopalianism, 120, 239, 244, 246, 250, 266270, 281, 285, 287; 
 Converts from, 280. 
 
 Equal rights favored by Church, 15, 258, 262, 314. 
 
 Equality, Infidel Notions of, 303, 316, 328, 329. 
 
 Errors, Condemned by Church, 6265, 339, 348; Exposed by Doctors, 
 24; in Luther's Translation of the Bible, 225; Pagan, revived by 
 Infidels, 304306. 
 
 Established Religions, 75, 88, 259, 264, 270, 280. 
 
 Estates, the Four, 149, 313, 331. 
 
 Ethiopia, Church of, 43, 45, 80. 
 
 Eucharist, the Holy, 172, 265. 
 
 Eugenius III, Pope, 174; IV, Pope, 155, 158, 159. 
 
 Europe, its Debt to Church, 98, 171, 176, 193; its Debt to Holy Roman 
 Empire, 123, 196, 208; its Debt to Crusaders, 115, 177, 193, 
 202204, 211214, 254; its Debt to Popes, 146, 163, 214; its 
 Debt to Ireland, 110, 248; its Debt to Jesuits, 278; its Debt to 
 Schoolmen, 166; its Danger from Anticatholics, 320; Northern, 
 Protestantism forced on, 220; Southern, its Governments controlled 
 by Freemasons, 301, 308; United by Popes, 208. 
 
XII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Eusebius of Caesarea, 68 ; of Nicomedia, 69. 
 
 Eutyches, 79, see Monophysites. 
 
 Evangelical Counsels, 117, 172, 174176, made Commandments, 236; 
 Sects falsely so called, 15, 257, 264, 268, 272. 
 
 Evil, Good brought out of, 59, 64, 72, 194, 224226, 336; Material 
 World so considered by Manicheans, 75. 
 
 Evolution, 3, 305, 333. 
 
 Excommunication, 76,81,87,121, 132135, 139, 149, 150, 240, 245, 337. 
 
 Execution of Charles I, 260, 266 ; of Louis XVI, 315 ; of Mary Stuart, 
 245, 260; by Tudors, 241,243246. 
 
 Exile of Bishops, 70, 73, 145; of Cardinals, 336; of Popes, 151, 155, 335. 
 
 Expectation, General, of Messias, 27. 
 
 Extermination of Indians by Protestants, 293, 297. 
 
 Extremes, Doctrinal, of Heretics, 74. 
 
 Factory Hands no better off than Serfs, 183. 
 
 Faith, Ages of, 198; Blessings of, 24, 142, 165, 333; Certitude of, 24, 
 281; Defenders of, 24, 69, 154, 168, 171; Enemies of, 163, 171, 
 228231, 273, 299, 302, 311, 321; Heresies regarding, 221, 
 229232, 268, 274; Judges of, 63, 222, 274; Loyalty to, 
 52, 248, 254; Perversions of, 267, 268; Reasonableness of, 19, 20, 
 23, 24; the True, 64, 79, 220; Unity of, 165171, 179; Propa- 
 gation of, 14, 113, 171, 254, 298. 
 
 Fall of Man, 1, 32; Heresies regarding, 74, 266; the second, 8. 
 
 False Prophet, see Mohammed. 
 
 Family, 84, 88; its Enemies Heretics, 331, Infidels, 223, 329; Protected 
 by the Church, 183, 334. 
 
 Fanatism of Communists, 332; Mohammedans, 185, 287; Protestants, 
 238, 262, 278, 288. 
 
 Fatalism, 226; Calvinistic, 234, 235; Mohammedan, 8, 99, 189192; 
 Pagan, 8. 
 
 Fate of Heresy, 7274, 80, 194; of Schism, 83, 88, 91, 92, 94, 99. 
 
 Fathers of the Church, 2324, 64, 7779, Despised by Luther, 229; 
 Tridentine, 274. 
 
 Felix V. Antipope, 155, 159, 160. 
 
 Ferdinand I, Emperor, 212; II, 257; III, 257; the Catholic, 170, 199. 
 
 Feudal System, 127, 205; its Abuses, 128, 180, 206; its Advantages, 
 126129; its Relations to the Empire, 126; Fall of, 202, 314. 
 
 Fiefs, 127; Ecclesiastical, 135; Imperial, 126, 129, 152; Papal, 144, 149. 
 
 Filioque Addition Legitimate, 86, 87. 
 
 Fishermen, the Twelve, 21, 33, 35, 41, 47, 
 
 Flanders, Baldwin of, 205: Faithful, 248; Persecution in, 262, 263. 
 
 Flemings, their Conversion, 112; their Love of Liberty, 150. 
 
 Flodoard, the Historian, 107. 
 
 Florence, City, 181, 185, 324; Council of, 89, 160, 211, 300, 348. 
 
 Food of Workingmen in Middle Ages, 182. 
 
CONTENTS. XIII 
 
 Force, used to impose Infidelity, 225, 306, and Protestantism, 163, 230, 
 241, 255-263. 
 
 Forgeries of Sectaries, 149, 229, 301. 
 
 Fourrier, 331. 
 
 France, Chivalry in, 180; Communism in, 331; Exile of Popes in, 151 
 153; Glories of, 33, 251, 259, 338; Freemasonry in, 307, 313, 
 319, 323326, 335; Heresy in, 168, 238, 258262; Infidelity 
 in, 299, 304, 319; Schism in, 152, 160, 335: Southern, Converted 
 from Protestantism, 278. 
 
 Francis I, 261; II, 259; St., of Assisi, 145, 174176; Borgia, 276; de 
 Paul, 176; de Sales, 276; Solano, 276; Xavier, 222, 276, 283 
 285. 
 
 Franciscan Friars, 162, 175, 178, 276, 290, 294. 
 
 Franks, 123125; Glories of, 100, 104, 110, 196, 254. 
 
 Fraternity made a Mockery by Freemasons, 328, 329. 
 
 Fratricidal Reformers, 243. 
 
 Fraud on the People, A, 306, 329. 
 
 Frederic I (Barbarossa), 97, 127, 136, 148, 169, 205; II, Emperor, 97, 
 127, 138, 143, 148, 206; II, King of Prussia, 268, 302; of Pala- 
 . tinate, 257 ; of Saxony, 230. 
 
 Free Cities, Mediaeval, 129. 152, 153, 180183. 
 
 Freemasonry, 11, 225, 302, 320, 342, 343; Encyclical on, 309. 
 
 Freemasons, Catholic Nations betrayed to Foreign Powers by, 324; Ruined 
 by, 199, 323, 342343; Catholics in Servitude to, 224; Conven- 
 ticles of, 322, 324; French Revolution caused by, 313, 318, 328; 
 Greed of, 328; Jesus Christ rejected by, 10, 225; Jewish and Pro- 
 testant Sectaries form with them Antichristian Alliance, 39, 223 ; 
 Persecutors in Catholic Countries, 223, 310, 313, 315319, 
 323, 328, 350; their Warfare on the Church, 124, 223, 224, 314, 
 316, 336, 340, 350; Benevolent Mutual Societies in Protestant 
 Countries, 308; Enemies of Learning, 120, Light, 309, Liberty, 
 225227, 313314, 328, Society, 311 ; their Overthrow in Bel- 
 gium, 322 ; their Plots, 338, 339 ; their Plunders, 323 ; their Poli- 
 tical Power, 12, 223, 293, 301, 307311, 324, 328; their ruinous 
 Revolutions, 323, Secret Power, 320; a Scourge for Catholic Apa- 
 thy, 224. 
 
 Freethinkers of XVIII Century, 266, 302. 
 
 French Attempts on Papal Liberty, 347; Missionaries, 293297; Party 
 in Curia, 150; Popes, 148, 347. 
 
 French Revolution, 170, 253, 323; Caused by Freemasons, 223, 308, 
 313, 317, 318, 323; Led by Jacobins, 314315; Made Hell of 
 France, 315318; Scourge for first Public Apostasy, 316; to be 
 Outdone by Future Socialists, 333. 
 
 Galerius, his Crime and Punishment, 54. 
 Gallicanism, 112, 149, 299, 300, 336. 
 Garibaldi, 325. 
 
XIV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Genius, Creations of, 120, 125, 189, 185; of Calvin, 234; of Mediaeval 
 Schoolmen, 183; of Mohammed, 187; of St. Gregory VII, 131; 
 of St. Thomas Aquinas, 166; of Solyman, 211. 
 
 Genseric, 104. 
 
 Gentiles, their Hatred of Christ, 7, 20 ; their Conversion, 32, 37. 
 
 Georges Persecute the Irish, 252. 
 
 German Emperors, their Services to Liberty, 127, 132, 139; Princes im- 
 pose Protestantism, 243, 262; Popes, 347; Protestants allied to 
 Enemies of the Country, 256. 
 
 Germany, 132; Emperors, 84, 97, 126, 130, 132, 136142, 148, 151 
 152, 205, 206 ; Freemasonry in, 307, 325 ; Heresy in, 228233, 
 258, 259, 266; Infidelity in, 299, 302, 304, 348; its Debt to the 
 Popes, 126, 133, 136, 143, 232; its Attempts on Papal Liberty, 
 142, 148, 347, 350; its Sufferings from Protestantism, 213, 238, 
 256, 258, 265, 271; Schism in, 132, 148, 160; Socialism in, 331, 
 332. 
 
 Ghibellines, 136140. 
 
 Glasspainting, Mediaeval, 184, 185. 
 
 Glorious Future of Catholic Peoples, 327. 
 
 Gobal, Schismatic Archbishop of Paris, 316. 
 
 God, His Care or Providence for the Church, 11, 12, 53, 57, 63, 64, 69, 
 107, 108, 110, 116, 153, 214, 326; His Enemies, 89, 168, 187, 
 219, 225, 227, 235, 299, 304, 311, 328, 332; His Servants, see 
 Saints ; His Instruments, 48, 145, 199. 
 
 Goddess of Reason, 319. 
 
 Godfrey of Bouillon, 204. 
 
 Gods, False, 6, 21, 5169, 112, 290, 304. 
 
 Good Shepherd, Sisters of the, 276. 
 
 Good Works rejected by Protestants, 221. 
 
 Goslar, Simoniacal Canons of, 131. 
 
 Gospel, Battlefields of the, 85; in the Rosary, 169; Prelude of, 24, 60; 
 Rejected by Sectaries, 99, 171, 221, 229; the only Solution of 
 Social Problems, 334 ; its Sublimity, Napoleon on, 29. 
 
 Goths, 53, 72; Punished for their heresy, 64, 196. 
 
 Gothic Architecture, 185. 
 
 Granada, Capture of, 199. 
 
 Greed of Freemasons and Infidels, 293, 294, 328. 
 
 Greek Catholics, 9092, 161, 195; Church, 11, 45, 62, 8388, 
 Fire, 203, 21.0; Philosophers, 22, 23, 59; Rite, 88, 91, 
 Schism, 61, 64, 89, 90, 92, 195, 199, 208211, 214, 281. 
 
 Greeks, Bulgarian, 92, 114; Melchite, 88, 92; Roumanian, 92, 114; 
 Ruthenian, 92, 114. 
 
 Gregorian Armenian Sect, 80, 161. 
 
 Gregory I, the Great, 63, 72, 110, 111; II, 85, 112'; III, 85,113; 
 VII, St. (Hildebrand), 84, 98, 106, 107, 121, 130135, 173, 183; 
 IX, 139; XII, 156; XIII, 275; XVI, 324, 338; of Nazianza, 
 St., 62. 
 
. CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Guelphs, 136, 138, 160. 
 
 Gueux, 238, 258, 260. 
 
 Guilds, 98, 179, 182, 183, 241, 311. 
 
 Guillotine, the, 223, 317. 
 
 Guiscard, Robert, 106, 197. 
 
 Gulf of Lepanto, 213. 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus, 257; Vasa, 230. 
 
 Halfway Christanity, 67, 221. 
 
 Halls, Public, of the Middle Ages, 98, 185. 
 
 Hanoverian Dynasty, 256. 
 
 Happiness Promoted by True Religion, 1, 7, 8, 11, 102, 172, 179, 183, 
 292, 327. 
 
 Hapsburg, House of, 212. 
 
 Hegira of Mohammed, 189. 
 
 Hell's Warfare against the Church, 11, 59, 64, 73, 107, 132, 225, 279. 
 
 Henry of France II, 261; III, 261; IV, 261262; of Germany, II, St., 
 173; IV, 97, 127, 130134; V, 97, 127, 130, 134, 135; VI, 97, 
 127, 138, 143; of England, VIII, 146, 220, 221, 239, 243, 244, 
 247249, 260, 265. 
 
 Heraclius, 81 ; his Dynasty, 95. 
 
 Heresiarchs, 60, 68, 70, 76, 220, 221, 264. 
 
 Heresies, Ancient, 20, 22, 6182, 116, 194; Mediaeval, 146, 167171; 
 Modern, 228272. 
 
 Heresy, a Danger to the Commonwealth, 165 ; Causes of, 22, 61, 63, 
 83, 230; Compared to Fall, 8; Compared to Paganism, 20, 59, 
 194 ; Condemned by Councils, 63, 146, 171, 275 ; the greatest Crime, 
 8, 59, 74, 172, 194; Definition of, 61; Effects of, 64, 72, 116, 169; 
 Fate of,. 15, 72, 78, 82; Propagation of, 64, 68, 72, 115, 170, 242, 
 281 ; Punishment of, 64, 72, 99, 168, 169, 171, 194196. 
 
 Heretics, Faithless to Christ, 62, 74 ; Mendacity of, 278 ; Mutual Con- 
 tradictions of, 62; Persecutions by, 48, 77, 79, 81, 200, 259. 
 
 Hermenegild, St., Martyr, 110. 
 
 Hermits, 117, 176, 272. 
 
 Herrnhutters, the, 266, 268. 
 
 Herod, 27; Agrippa I, 43. 
 
 Hindus, 1, 7, 26, 193; Conversion of, 282285. 
 
 History, Attests Truth of Catholic Religion, 9, 101, 116, 274, 279; 
 Laws of, 59; Landmarks of, 117, 131, 142, 174, 206, 283, 340; 
 Middle Ages Vindicated by, 98 ; of Philosophy, 63 ; Papacy Vin- 
 dicated by, 102, 162; Sectaries Condemned by, 225, 236; the 
 Central Figure and Key of, 25, 30, 29, 219. 
 
 Hohenstauffen Dynasty, 136, 139, 140, 143, 181. 
 
 Holiness of the Church, 98, 107, 131, 135,172,176,226,275,276,283,291. 
 
 Holland, Jansenists of, 267 ; Protestants, 258, 260263, 266, 269. 
 
 Holy Land, 100, 139, 146, 147, 173, 200202; Sepulchre, 176, 204. 
 
 Holy Spirit, Church Guided by, 28, 4142, 6364, 166, 222, 348 ; False 
 Claims of Inspiration by, 188, 231. 
 
XVI THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Holy Synod of Russian Schism, 90. 
 
 Homage, Feudal, 128. 
 
 Honor, Mediaeval sense of, 128, 180. 
 
 Honorius I, 81 ; III, 139. 
 
 Horrors of Freemasonry, 323. 
 
 Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights, 177, 180, 205, 254. 
 
 Howard, Catherine, 240. 
 
 Huguenots, 278 ; Disloyalty of, 258, 261, 262 ; Persecutions by, 238, 258, 291. 
 
 Human Sacrifices, 2, 289, 290 ; Skin, Clothes made of, for Revolutionists, 
 318 ; Substitutes for True Religion, 279, 302. 
 
 Hungarians, 100, 105, 106, 115. 
 
 Hungary, 38, 166, 143, 272; Andrew II, 147, 206. 
 
 Huns, 103105; the Modern, 8, 224, 313, 332, 340. 
 
 Hunting of Slaves, 191. 
 
 Huron-Iroquois Indians, 294, 295. 
 
 Hussites, Enemies of Learning, 120. 
 
 lago, St., Knights of, 170. 
 
 Iconoclasts, Heresy of, 74, 83, 85. 
 
 Idealism, 3, 299, 304, 305. 
 
 Ideals, Deified by Pagans, 20. 
 
 Idle Disputes of Protestants, 266. 
 
 Idolatry, 26, 7, 20, 59, 112 ; False Charges of, 74, 85, 228, 242, 259, 273. 
 
 Ignatius Loyola, St., 222, 276278; of Antioch, St., 51, 54, 55; of Con- 
 stantinople, 86. 
 
 Ignorance, False Charge of, 124; of Church's Enemies, 140, 147, 166, 
 303, 305. 
 
 Illuminati, Falsely so-called, 307. 
 
 Images, 74, 84, 175. 
 
 Imperialism, 136138, 318; Imperialist or Melchite Christian, 80. 
 
 Impostors, 25, 26, 99, 191. 
 
 Incarnation of the Word, 21, 83; Heresies Concerning, 7482; World's 
 Condition before, 110. 
 
 Indefectibility of the Church, 279. 
 
 Independence of the Church, 84, 137; of Holy See, 123, 124, 136, 151, 350; 
 of United States, 141, 271; Promoted by Church, 141, 181, 208 
 262, 263. 
 
 India, Church of, 43, 78, 254, 283286; Paganism of, 3, 5, 304. 
 
 Inequality of Human Powers and Rights, 329. 
 
 Infallibility, not Possessed by Sectaries, 163 ; of the Church, 24, 63, 64, 
 76, 81, 162, 163, 335, 339, 342, 346. 
 
 Infidelity, 12, 19, 23, 171, 222, 301, 336; a great Crime, 8, 305; Con- 
 trary to Reason, 23, 165, 305; Imposed by Force, 170, 223; 
 Inimical to Progress, 120, 185, 186; Propagated by Freemasons, 
 321, 322; the Outcome of Protestantism, 221, 266, 267, 286, 
 299305. 
 
CONTENTS. XVII 
 
 Infidels, 194, 213, 253; Control Freemasonry, 311; Mendacity of, 51, 
 170, 263, 278; Persecution by, 177, 184, 223, 310319, 335; 
 Testimony of, 185, 303. 
 
 Ingelberga, 145, 146. 
 
 "In hoc Signo vinces", 54. 
 
 Innocent I, 41, 76; III, 98, 102, 138, 142, 144147, 175; IV, 139; 
 XI, 213. 
 
 Inquisition, Ecclesiastical, 165170; Spanish, 170, 199, 262, 263; Cal- 
 vinistic, 235; Elizabethan, 246, 263. 
 
 Interdenominational Societies, 264. 
 
 Interdict, 131, 143, 145. 
 
 International Arbitration, 97, 143147, 151, 349; Authority, 125; Cha- 
 racter of Freemasonry, 308 ; Workmen's Association, 223, 332. 
 
 Interpretation of Holy Scriptures, 230, 231, 265, 274. 
 
 Intolerance of Sectaries, 72, 230, 234238, 258, 259. 
 
 Intrigues of Sectaries, 64, 70, 77, 306, 323. 
 
 Inventions, 223; Mediaeval, 98, 184, 186, 193, 202, 223. 
 
 Investitures, Ecclesiastical, 130135; Feudal, 128. 
 
 Ireland, Colonized by Germans, 251 ; Plundered by English, 234235 ; 
 Glories of, 109, 110, 248254; Parliament of, 252, 253. 
 
 Irena, Empress, 85. 
 
 Iron Age, 1, 106, 121. 
 
 Iroquois Indians, 295, 296. 
 
 Isabella, Queen, 199, 240. 
 
 Isaurian Emperors, 84, 195. 
 
 Islam, 48, 78, 191. 
 
 Israel, 7, 20, 26, 33; the true, 21, 35, 44, 139. 
 
 Italian Bank, 324; Federation, 138, 143, 338; Popes, 346. 
 
 Italy, Church of, 47, 159, 187, 202, 325; Freemasonry in, 309, 310, 324 
 326, 336, 338; Heresy in, 78, 196; Glories of, 33, 34, 136138, 
 140141, 173174, 202211 ; its Debt to Popes, 102, 124, 126, 
 129, 136, 138, 143, 152, 163, 197, 338, 348350; Republics of, 
 136138, 140141, 181, 350; Persecutions in, 107, 325, 338, 
 350; Religious Orders in, 118, 176; Schism in, 78, 135, 138. 
 
 Jacobins, of France, 314. 
 Jacobites, 80, 161. 
 James I, 250; II, 251, 256; III, 256. 
 Janissaries, 209. 
 Jansenism, 226, 267, 299302. 
 Japan, Church of, 284286. 
 Jerome of Prague, 171; St., 63, 71. 
 Jeremias II, Schismatic Patriarch, 9.0. 
 Jerusalem, Latin Kingdom of, 177, 204, 205. 
 
 Jesuits, 222, 276278; Persecutions of, 223, 291297, 301312; their 
 Missionary Work, 283285, 291297; their Aniversities, 291. 
 
XVIII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Jesus Christ, Church Instituted by, 14, 28, 112, 132, 153160, 279 ; 
 Expected by all Nations, 26, 33, 34; Freemasons His Enemies, 
 225, 309, 311; Heretics His Enemies, 8, 10, 59, 62, 6782. 168, 
 194, 214, 221, 228, 237, 239, 269, 285; His Divinity, 10, 19, 21, 
 
 22, 2531, 49, 59, 62, 6782 ; His Doctrines, 10, 167, 226 ; His 
 Kingship, 10, 22, 125, 134, 172, 194, 282, 327, 334; His Life, 
 67, 167, 277, 296; His Promises, 166; His Representatives, 163, 
 274; His Sacramental Presence, 122, 172; His Triumphs, 11, 20; 
 His Enemies: Infidels, 302, 303, 316 319, Jansenists, 299, Libe- 
 rals, 219, Mohammedans, 177, 189, Secularists, 299; Soldiers of, 
 57, 220, 277, 282, 301 ; the Center of History, 30, 48 ; the only 
 Savior, 74, 75, 110, 165, 221, 300; Love for, 47, 48; Loyalty 
 to, 248; Passion of, 55, 268. 
 
 Jewish Sect, its Origin, 36, 37. 
 
 Jews, their Election, 32, Fall, 35 ; the true, 26, 37 ; Hostility of their 
 Leaders, 38; their Acquisitivenes, 38; their Crimes, 12, 20, 22, 
 
 23, 32, 34, 38, 39, 47, 51, 62, 170, 223, 325; their Power, 12, 
 38, 39, 311; their Punishment, 21, 3234, 39, 64, 194. 
 
 John VII, Byzantine Emperor, 160; VIII, Pope, 84; X, 106, 197; XII, 
 107; XXIII, 157; Berchmans, St., 276; of Damascus, St., 63, 
 85 ; of God, St., 276 ; of the Cross, 176 ; the Baptist, 26 ; the 
 Evangelist, 26, 41. 
 
 Joseph, St., Foster-Father of Our Lord, 27; Patriarch of Constantinople, 
 161 ; II of Austria, 300. 
 
 Josephism, 300. 
 
 Journalism Controlled by Sectarian Jews, 38. 
 
 Juan, Don, of Austria, 213. 
 
 Judas Iscariot, 34, 42; his Successors, 321, 345. 
 
 Julian, the Apostate, 22, 37, 60, 72. 
 
 Jupiter, 6, 10, 20, 23. 
 
 Justinian, the Great, 8; II, 84. 
 
 Key to History, 219. 
 
 Keys, Power of, 46, 154. 
 
 Khalifate, Mohammedan, 192, 245, 255; of Bagdad, 195; of Cairo, 201; 
 
 of Cordova, 195, 198, 199; of Damascus, 195. 
 Kilkenny, Confederation of, 250. 
 Kingdom of Christ, 11, 35, 46, 57, 62, 134, 160, 162, 194, 225, 283, 309; 
 
 of God, 162, 305; of Jerusalem, 177, 204, 205. 
 Kings, Appointment and Deposition of, 132, 143; Church Oppressed by, 
 
 126, 135, 154, 256, 300; Exemplary, 118, 173; Protestantism a 
 
 Tool of, 254; Rivalled by Mediaeval Republics, 181. 
 Knights, 179, 186, 203, 277; Functions of, 98, 128, 179; Hospitallers 
 
 of St. John of Jerusalem (of Rhodes and Malta), 177, 204, 209, 
 
 212, 254; of the Sahara, 287; Religious Orders of, 176178, 198; 
 
 Templar, 151, 177, 178; Spanish, 180, 198; Teutonic, 114, 180; 
 
 Virtues of, 128, 172, 178179, 185. 
 Knox, John, 242, 245, 259, 260. 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 Koran, 188, 192; Imposed by Sword, 99, 189, 191, 194. 
 Kulturkampf, 340. 
 
 Labor, 174, J82, 190, 329, 330, 333. 
 
 Laity, 147, 271, 325. 
 
 Land, Collective Ownership of, 174, 329, 330; Villeins attached to, 182; 
 
 Pagans dispossessed of, by Protestants, 286. 
 Langton, Stephen, 143, 144. 
 
 Languages, shaped by Monks; of Christian Worship, 45. 
 Las Casas, 290. 
 Lateran, Ecumenical Councils of, First, 130,135; Second, 144; Third, 169; 
 
 Fourth, 163, 273. 
 Latin Church, 45, 62, 92, 287; Empire, Ancient, 103; of Constantinople, 
 
 146,205208; Kingdom ofjerusalem, 117, 204, 208; Freemasons, 
 
 320, 322; Language in Liturgy, 45; Nations, 193, 307; Rite, 
 
 90, 92, 267. 
 
 Latin-American Nations, Ruined by Freemasonry, 45, 114, 308, 326. 
 Latin-Slavonic Rite, 45, 114. 
 Latitudinarianism, 8, 270, 308. 
 Laws, of History, 59; Pagan, Revived by Emperors, 137, 139; Iniquitous, 
 
 191, 252, 253; Sociological, 333. 
 Lawlesness, 8, 152, 162, 193, 226. 
 Lax Morality of Sectaries, 228, 266. 
 Leagues, Mediaeval, 138, 181, 261. 
 Leakage from Protestant Sects, 266. 
 Learning, 155; among Separatists, 198, 221, 264; Enemies of, 85, 117, 
 
 188, 192; Faith Promoted by, 64, 85, 161, 168; of Fathers of 
 
 the Church, 62; of Schoolmen, 166, 167, 183; Promoted by Church, 
 
 64, 125, 202, 273, 275, 277, 348. 
 Legislative Assembly of French Revolution, 313. 
 Legitimacy of Papal International Political Power, 147. 
 Leo (Pope) I, The Great, 79, 104; III, 125; IV, 106, 197; IX, St., 87, 
 
 173; X, 102, 163, 273; XII [, The Wise, 9, 23, 24, 101, 167, 224, 
 
 309, 333, 340, Cited, 125, 225227, 311, 328, 330; (Emperor) V, 
 
 85; the Isaurian, 84; the Philosopher, 87. 
 Leopold, Emperor, I, 213; II, 308. 
 Lepanto, Battle of, 100, 213. 
 Leperhouses, 176. 
 
 Letters, Fostered by the Church, 79, 119, 163, 349. 
 Liberalism, 220225, 323; Failure of, 9, 10, 224, 322; its Results, 
 
 328, 333 ; Rescue of Catholics from, 342 ; see Freemasonry, Infi- 
 delity, Protestantism. 
 Liberals, the Enemies of Civilization, 8, of Progress, 98, of Liberty, 8, 219; 
 
 their Persecutions, 223, 310319; their Calumnies, 15, 98, 101; 
 
 their Machinations, 38, 307; Rebels against God, 227. 
 Liberation of Slaves, 333 ; of Serfs, 129 ; of Spain, 197199. 
 Jyiberius, Pope, 71, 72, 
 
XX THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Libertinism, the Result of Freemasonry, 321. 
 
 Liberty, False Notions of, 15, 149, 177, 219, 223, 225227, 300; True, 
 10, 225227; Encyclical on, 225227; Enemies of: the Freema- 
 sons, 219, 300, 310314, the Infidels, 186, 303, 313, 314, 329, 
 the Liberals, 220, 307, the Protestants, 219, 228, 230, 235, 238, 
 247, 251, 256259, 262; Political, 127, 129, 137, 161, 179, 
 181183, 258, 259, 313; Promoted by Popes, 97, 98, 127, 
 136141, 149, 197 ; Struggle of Catholics for, 220, 224, 242, 256, 
 262, 327, 341. 
 
 Libraries destroyed by Sectaries, 85, 98, 120, 192, 316. 
 
 License, the Outcome of Separatism, 219, 227, 231. 
 
 Literature tainted, 12, 78, 304. 
 
 Llorente, his Mendacity, 263. 
 
 Lodges, Freemasonic, 225, 309, 310, 323, 329. 
 
 Lombards, Conversion of, 110; League of, 138143, 180. 
 
 London, City of, 144, 181, 229, 307, 332; Council of, 171. 
 
 Loretto, 173, 213. 
 
 Lost Arts, 185 ; Records, 63. 
 
 Louis (of France), IX, St., 173, 181, 206; XIV, 30, 262, 300; XV, 300, 
 302; XVI, 313, 315; Philippe, 323; (of Hungary) II, 212; Empe- 
 ror (the Bavarian), 151. 
 
 Louvain, City Hall at, 185; University of, 229. 
 
 Love, the Essence of the Gospel, 30, 96, 174, 176, 277, 292. 
 
 Luitprand, his Mendacity, 107. 
 
 Luna, Peter de, 156, 158. 
 
 Lust, 3, 5, 6, 20, 243. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 120, 220222, 228233, 265266, 271275, 278, 281, 
 283, 302, 345; Cited, 231233. 
 
 Lutheranism, 228232, 256258, 267269, 272, 304. 
 
 Lutherans, 120, 243, 249, 255258, 274. 
 
 Lutheran Testimony to Failure of Protestantism, 272. 
 
 Lyons, Catholic Congress at, 38 ; Ecumenical Councils of, 139, 140 ; Mis- 
 sionary Society of, 281; Persecutions at, 5153, 317. 
 
 Macedonian Dynasty, 86, 195; Heresy, 74, 76. 
 
 Machiavelian Politics, 149. 
 
 Machinations of God's Enemies, 64, 88, 223, 297, 307314, 320325, 
 
 337340, 342. 
 Magna Charta, 144, 181. 
 Malignity of Liberals, 319. 
 Malta, Knights of, 177 ; see Hospitallers. 
 Man, Dignity and Rights of, 189, 225. 
 Manicheism, 74, 75, 164, 168, 226, 266, 331. 
 Man-made Religions, 226. 
 Manuel, Byzantine Emperor, 205. 
 Manuscripts, 63, 119, 120, 174, 211. 
 Man-worship, 5. 
 Marcus Aurelius, 52, 57. 
 
CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 Maronite Syrian Rite, 45, 80, 81, 287. 
 
 Marquette, Father, 296. 
 
 Marriage, Enemies of, 168, 187, 188, 232; Sacrament of, 130, 145, 146, 
 
 183. 
 
 Marshall, T. W., 280, 288. 
 Martin II, Pope, 81; V, 158. 
 Martyrs, English, 241, 247; Irish, 248254; Jesnit, 294; of China, 285; 
 
 of Japan, 284; of United States, 294298; Roman, 47, 5058, 
 
 254; Spanish, 110, 294. 
 
 Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 27, 77, 112, 168, 169, 172, 173, 177, 297. 
 Mary, of England, I, 240, 243, 249, II, 251 ; Queen of Scots, 244, 245, 
 
 259, 260. 
 Massacres, 261; by Anarchists, 146, 332; by Liberals, 170, 313, 317; 
 
 by Mohammedans, 205, 210; by Protestants, 146, 170, 251, 261, 
 
 262, 266. 
 
 Masterpieces, Ancient, 49, 211, 349; Mediaeval, 120, 184, 185. 
 Material Progress, 11, 179, 186; Retrogression, 88, 107. 
 Materialism, 3, 299, 304, 305. 
 Mathilda of Canossa, Countess, 132. 
 Maurice, of Orange, 269 ; of Saxony, 274. 
 Maxentius, 54. 
 Maximian, 54. 
 Maximin, 53. 
 Mazzini, 338. 
 
 Melchite Greek Rite, 45, 80, 88. 
 Mendicant Orders, 145, 174176. 
 Menno Simonis, 271. 
 
 Mercy, Brothers of, 276; Fathers of, 177, 290. 
 Metempsychosis, 3, 7, 59. 
 Methodism, 266271. 
 
 Mexico, Church of, 290, 291 ; University of, 291. 292. 
 Michael Cerularius, Schismatic Patriarch, 87, 88; Comnenus, 88; Paleo- 
 
 logus, 206, 208. 
 Middle Ages, 10, 11, 93, 95217, 293; Symbols of, 96, 185; Condition of 
 
 Society in, 103, 149, 150, 165, 172, 180183; Greatest Men of, 
 
 131; Heresies of, 171; Progress during, 179185; Science in, 166, 
 
 our Debt to, 184186. 
 Migrations of the Nations, 3, 107. 
 Milan, Republic of, 181; See of, 275. 
 Militarism, 8, 180, 187, 189. 
 Military Orders, 147, 176, 177. 
 Minim Friars, 176. 
 Mirabeau, 308. 
 Miracles, False, 300; Proofs of Church's Divinity, 12, 14, 29, 48, 57, 
 
 109, 188, 189 ; of Christ's Divinity, 19, 27, 29, 30, 3334, 266. 
 Misery, Produced by Sects: Freemasonry, 325, Mohammedanism, 79, 
 
 Protestantism, 247, Socialism, 331; Relieved by the Church, 101. 
 
XXII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Missionaries, 60, 113, 281, 292, 297; Apostolic, 109, 112, 115, 163, 
 220, 280, 349; Benedictine, 118; Irish, 110; in Europe, 84, 165 
 169; in Asia, 175, 289298; in the New World, 175, 222, 280, 
 289298; Sectarian, 115, 116, 264, 281, 282, 286288. 
 
 Modern Age, 10, 11, 217350; History, Key of, 219, 220; Progress, 
 Cause of, 186. 
 
 Mohammed, 48, 96, 99, 187189; Errors of, 189 193; II, Sultan, the 
 Conqueror, 89, 209, 211, 212. 
 
 Mohammedan Ceremonies Imitated by Freemasons, 311; Features of 
 of Lutheranism, 228; of Calvinism, 234235; Tendencies of 
 Frederic II, 139, John Lackland, 144; in United States, 193. 
 
 Mohammedanism, Apostasy of Separatists to, 78, 90, 92, 116, 287; 
 Errors of, 8, 48, 146, 177, 187, 190, 287; Inimical to Civilization, 
 95, 99, 349, 350; its Evil Effects, 95, 193; Propagated by the 
 Sword, 5, 88, 99, 187, 346. 
 
 Mohammedans, Attempts of, to Subjugate Christendom, 10, 14, 81, 89, 
 106, 125, 132, 139, 146, 163, 177, 180, 200, 254. 
 
 Monarchical .Constitution of the Church, 160 ; Government Favored by 
 Sectaries, 141. 
 
 Monarchy, Absolute, Opposed by the Church, 128, 136, 149. 
 
 Monasteries, their Services to Education, 117, 120, 183, 369. 
 
 Mongols, 4, 10, 78, 88, 104, 206, 209; Evangelization of, 109, 113 
 115, 175. 
 
 Monks, 4, 117, 120, 131, 188, 275, 277, 281; their Services to Science 
 and Civilization, 11, 98, 117, 120122, 202. 
 
 Monophysitism, 7881, 115, 116, 195. 
 
 Monothelitism, 81. 
 
 Monopolies, Commercial, 39, 70, 182, 285, 330. 
 
 Monuments, Classic, 120; Destroyed by Albigenses, 168, Freemasons, 
 224, Liberals, 316, Protestants, 98, and Socialists, 332 ; Mediaeval, 
 184, 185. 
 
 Moors in Spain, 146, 170, 177, 191, 193, 198, 263. 
 
 Morality Undermined by Csesarism, 130, Freemasonry, 223, 321, Heres}% 
 229, 230233, 270, 273, 299, 331, Infidelity, 302, and Paga- 
 nism, 4, 7, 107. 
 
 Moreno, Garcia, 310. 
 
 Morgan, Assassination of, 310. 
 
 Mormonism, 193, 271. 
 
 Mosaic Dispensation, 7, 8, 26, 36, 37. 
 
 Mother of God, Mary the, 77, 115, 168, 172, 179. 
 
 Munzer, Heresiarch, 271. 
 
 Museums, 120, 211, 349. 
 
 Mussulmans, 98 ; see Mohammedans. 
 
 Mythology, Pagan, 67. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, I, 28, 48, 181, 189, 224, 259, 318, 336, 337, 3465 
 Cited, 2831; III, 325. 
 
 Narrowness of Pseudo-reformers, 266. 
 
 Nationalities all equally at Home in the Church, 158, 281, 346, 
 
CONTENTS. XXIII 
 
 Natives, American, Protected and Civilized by the Church, 289296; 
 
 Ruined by Sects, 293298. 
 Naturalism, Heresy of, 299, 304, 311, 339. 
 Negro Slavery among Mohammedans, 191 192, 287; in America, 193, 
 
 289, 293. 
 
 Negro Evangelization, 290, 293, 327. 
 Neo-Paganism, Modern, 10, 222, 271272, 304. 
 Nepotism, 162. 
 
 Nero, Persecution by, 47, 50; Rivals of, 54, 239, 249. 
 Nestorianism, 64, 74, 115, 116, 195. 
 Netherlands, Calvinists of, 258, 262263. 
 Newspapers Controlled by Jews, 38. 
 
 Nicea, Ecumenical Councils of, 67, 68, 8485; Empire of, 205. 
 Nihilists, 223, 332. 
 Nirvana, 3. 
 
 Novatians refuse Absolution, 74. 
 Number of Catholics, 326 ; of Protestants, 264. 
 Numerals, Indian not Arabic, 193. 
 Nuns, see Sisters. 
 
 Oath, Blind Freemasonic, 308310; of Allegiance, 128, 132, 137, 144. 
 
 O'Connell, 253. 
 
 Old Catholic Sect, 339340. 
 
 Olympus, Mount, 6, 2023. 
 
 Oppression, by Sectaries, 170, 238, 261, 286, 289, 323; Prevented by 
 
 Knights, 180; Socialistic Remedy for, 330. 
 Opportuneness of Infallibility Definition, 339. 
 Optimism, Pagan, 3. 
 
 Orange, House of, 263; Maurice of, 269; William of, 251, 262. 
 Order, of Christ, 177; of Templars, 151; Social, 97, 126129, 169170, 
 
 318, 333, 334. 
 
 Orders, Religious, 145, 147, 173177, 222, 237, 241, 277, 331. 
 Organization, 112, 221, 234; among Catholics necessary, 321, 326. 
 Origen the Apologist, 50. 
 
 Original Sin, Heresies regarding, 74, 75, 221. 
 Orthez, Massacre of, 261. 
 Orthodox Schismatics, 78, 89, 91, 160. 
 Orthodoxy, 60, 69, 83. 
 Ostrogoths, 72, 104. 
 
 Otto the Great (I), 106, 114, 126 ; IV, 143. 
 Ottoman Turks, 89, 100, 181, 190, 191, 200, 208214. 
 Outlawry, 144, 223. 
 Ownership, 329, 333. 
 Oxford University, 13, 171, 183, 270. 
 
 Pacific, Evangelization of the, 286, 290, 294. 
 
 Paganism, 110, 23, 25, 47, 4958, 88, 109, 188, 194, 333; Compro- 
 mises with, 22, 61, 67, 69; Revivals of, 8, 22, 59, 64, 78, 137, 
 
XXIV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 139, 162, 171, 189, 219, 221, 255, 256, 271, 272, 283, 299, 304 
 
 306, 311. 
 Pagans, 1, 25, 51, 90, 91, 122, 187, 190, 194, 332; Conversion of, 23, 
 
 55, 110, 115, 118, 177, 219, 280, 282298; Heretics Compared 
 
 to, 20; Liberals Compared to, 328; Schismatics Compared to, 194. 
 Panama Canal Co., 324. 
 Pan-destruction, 332. 
 
 Pantheism, 2, 7, 8, 5960, 299, 304, 305. 
 Papacy, Enemies of, 153, 224, 230, 254, 274, 335 ; Prevents Absolutism, 
 
 149, 154; Protected by Divine Providence, 151, 154164, 
 Papal Authority, 86, 125, 132, 149, 155, 160, 225, 240; Curia, 147; 
 
 Elections, 107, 344; Rights, 137; Schism a misnomer, 155; States, 
 
 137, 151, 152, 324, 325, 335. 
 Paper, its Scarcity in the Middle Ages, 183. 
 
 Paradise, Mohammedan, 190; Terrestrial, 1, 9, 12, 101, 292. 
 
 Paraguay, Missions in, 291, 294, 298. 
 
 Pariahs, 3, 245. 
 
 Parker, Matthew, 244, 246. 
 
 Parliamentarianism, Ecclesiastical, 162. 
 
 Parnell, 253. 
 
 Parochial Schools, 183. 
 
 Parr, Catherine, 240. 
 
 Parseeism, 1, 5, 188. 
 
 Passions, Human, 20, 60; let loose by Sectaries, 20, 187, 228, 232. 
 
 Patience of Catholics Excessive, 323. 
 
 Patriarchate, of Alexandria, 67, 68, 80, 195 ; of Constantinople, 76, 79, 
 
 81, 113, 161, 195, 211; of Rome, 88, see Papacy ; Schismatic, of 
 
 Moscow, 90. 
 Patriarchates, Usurped by Heretics, 70, 71, 76, 78, and Schismatics, 83, 
 
 8790, 211. 
 Patrick, St., 109, 117. 
 
 Patrimony, of St. Peter, 101, 124; of the Poor, 223, 316. 
 Paul, St., the Apostle, 42, 44, 47, 50, 56, Cited, 26, 32 ; St., a Second, 
 
 283; III, Pope, 278, 290; St., of Constantinople, 76. 
 Pauperism, the Result of Protestantism, 239, 241, 242, 247, 251, 333. 
 Peace, Disturbed by Separatists, 168, 318, 328; of Augsburg, 257; of 
 
 Westphalia, 257; Promoted by Catholic Religion, 121, 182, 206, 
 
 220, 225, 257, by Christian Rulers, 125, 165, by Holy Empire, 
 
 129, by Inquisition, 262, by Military Orders, 177, by Popes, 134, 
 
 138, 143, 147, 149. 
 Peaceableness of Catholic Peoples, 321. 
 Pelagianism, 7476, 266. 
 Pelagius, King of Spain, 197. 
 
 Penal Laws against Catholics, 245256, 278; Settlements in Australia, 
 
 286. 
 Pentecost, the Great, 3745; its Wonders renewed, 283. 
 
CONTENTvS. XXV 
 
 People, Devoted to the Popes, 132, 150, 162; Oppressed by Freemasons, 
 328, Liberals, 307, 317, Protestants, 230, 238, 247, 256; Ruined 
 by Socialism, 330, 331 ; their Enemies the Church's Enemies, 143 ; 
 Protected by Knights, 180, by the Church, 15, 133, 136, 147, 
 165, 168, 349. 
 
 Pepin the Short, 112, 124, 125, 350. 
 
 Periodicity of Freemasonic Revolutions, 323, 324. 
 
 Persecutions: by Albigenses, 146, 169; by Arians, 71, 72. 110; by Free- 
 masons, 223, 310319, 326, 336, 340 ; by Huguenots, 291 ; by 
 Hussites, 171; by Iconoclasts, 85 87 ; by Infidels, 223, 310319, 
 335, 336; by Jews, 26, 39, 47; by Liberals, 223, 292, 295, 310 
 326; by Macedonians, 76; by Mohammedans, 106, 201; by 
 Monophysites, Monothelites, 79; by Nestorians, 77, 79; by Pa- 
 gans, 11, 20, 23, 47, 4958, 72, 75, 110, 114, 189, 284286, 
 295; by Protestants, 238, 241245, 246, 248255, 258264, 
 286, 294298, 326; by Schismatics, 88, 90, 92; by Worldly 
 Princes, 84, 117, 132135, 140, 144, 145, 150; the Church Bene- 
 fitted by, 43, 254, 335. 
 
 Persia, 5, 23, 38, 53, 194; Church of, 26, 43, 78; Heresies of, 75, 78. 
 
 Personality, of Jesus Christ, 7680. 
 
 Pessimism, 3. 
 
 Peter, the Apostle, St., 28, 29, 4250, 154, 233; Bark of, 336; See of, 
 39, 71, 101, 107, 130, 142, 143, 237, 273, 275; the Church built 
 on, 107, 225; the Popes his Successors, 21, 64, 79, 132, 154, 
 160163, 278. 
 
 Philip, of France: Augustus, 143146, 205; the Fair, 148153; of 
 Spain: II, 213, 245; III, 291; King of the Narragansets, 293; of 
 Hesse, 230232. 
 
 Philippine Islands, Evangelization of, 286. 
 
 Philosophers, False, 22, 24, 51, 57, 61, 302307; True, 19, 2224, 60, 
 63, 167, 349. 
 
 Philosophy, its Debt to Revelation, 7, 12, 19, 59 ; its Services to Religion, 
 19, 22, 24, 5963, 162, 165; its History, 63; its Importance, 
 23, 24, 165 ; the greatest Masterpiece of, 24, 167. 
 
 Photius, Schism of, 86, 87, 195. 
 
 Pietism, 266, 268. 
 
 Pious Schools, Fathers of the, 176. 
 
 Pirates, Mohammedan, 106, 147, 177, 191192, 197, 212; Pagan, 105; 
 Protestant, 245, 262. 
 
 Pisa, Council of, 154156. 
 
 Pius, Popes: II, 163; V, St., 102, 275, 276; VI, 224, 335; VII, 224, 336, 
 337; IX, 224, 338, 339. 
 
 Plato, 7, 22, 60. 
 
 Plundering, by Sectaries, 150, 199, 307, 320, 321. 
 
 Plutocracy, 328333. 
 
 Poitiers, Battle of, 196. 
 
 Poland, 143, 213, 214, 261, 323 ; Church of, 90, 114, 174, 278. 
 
XXVI THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Pole, Cardinal, 243, 248, 249. 
 
 Political Equality, John Adams on, 329 ; Liberty, Fostered by the Church, 
 98, 140141, 226; Machinations of the Sectaries, 61, 220, 222 
 225; Situation, the, 64. 
 
 Polycarp, St., 51, 57. 
 
 Polygamy, Mohammedan, 8, 90, 96, 99, 146, 187, 189, 190133, 350; 
 Mormon, 193, 271. 
 
 Polytheism, 1, 8. 
 
 Pombal, 301, 304. 
 
 Poor, Church's Kindness to, 70; Enslaved by Mohammedans and Pagans, 
 6, 191 ; Robbed by Freemasons, Liberals and Reformers, 223, 241, 
 316; their Condition in the Middle Ages, 182. 
 
 Popes, Benedictine, 118; Character of, 173, 344346; Extraction of, 
 142, 345, 347; Friends of Liberty, 39, 138, 181; Hated by God's 
 Enemies, 107, 210, 225232, 245, 318, 350; Martyrdom of, 29, 
 57, 345; Number of, 163, 164, 344; Protected by Divine Provi- 
 dence, 161164 ; the Bonds of International Unity, 140, 200, 202, 
 208, 210, 214, 241 ; the Patrons of Learning, 183, 348, 349 ; 
 their Functions, 64, 6869, 77, 79, 124126, 142147, 206; 
 their Relations with Empire, 133, 138, with French Church, 
 314; their Resistance to Tyrants, 240, 336; their Services to 
 Civilization, 101, 102, 155, 197, 211, 232, 348350; their Wis- 
 dom, 131, 174, 346348 ; Deserve Gratitude of Mankind for Ex- 
 posing the Freemasons, 309; see Roman Pontiffs. 
 
 Portraits of Popes, 344. 
 
 Portugal, 198, 301 ; Oppressed by Freemasons, 304, 323, 326. 
 
 Portuguese, in India, 283; in Brazil, 292. 
 
 Prague, Jerome of, 171; University of, 171, 183, 304. 
 
 Preachers of Error, 169, 221, 232, 246; of the Gospel, 41, 63, 101, 113, 
 163, 168, 283285; Order of, 145, 167, 170. 
 
 Predestination, Errors regarding, 189, 234, 268, 269. 
 
 Prejudice, Unreasonable, 23, 147, 181, 253. 
 
 Presbyterianism, 120, 234238, 250, 258263, 266, 286. 
 
 Press, Infidel, in Catholic Countries, 321. 
 
 Presumption of Heresiarchs, 229, 230. 
 
 Priests, 67, 131, 182; Aaronic, 32; Celibacy or Marriage of, 83, 131, 
 232; Pagan, 4751; Persecutions of, 146, 171, 245252, 261, 
 275, 314, 319; Survival of Churches without, 284, 285; Training 
 and Qualifications of, 70, 84, 222, 246. 
 
 Princes, Sects the Tools of, 64, 256; Church Restrains them, 15, 129, 
 153, 180; their Attempts on Church's Liberty, 107, 121, 130 
 135. 
 
 Printing Presses owned by Jews and Freemasons, 12. 
 
 Private Interpretation of the Bible, 221, 231, 264266, 274. 
 
 Private Ownership, 329. 
 
 Profit-sharing in Middle Ages, 182. 
 
 Progress, Interrupted by Sectarianism, 98101, 185; the Result of True 
 Religion, 9, 25, 97, 98, 120, 163,179-185,219,322, 327, 340, 341. 
 
CONTENTS. XXVII 
 
 Proletariat, 393. 
 
 Propagation of the Faith, 43, 44, 109116. 254, 280298. 
 
 Property, Franciscan Order not allowed any, 175 ; not respected by 
 Infidels, 146, 168, 223, 314318, by Mohammedans, 199, by 
 Pagans, 2, by Protestants, 230, 241, 242, 256, 331, or by So- 
 cialists, 329; Protected by the Church, 290. 
 
 Prophecies, 42, 61, 62, 103, 118; Messianic, 14, 21, 25, 26, 3335, 40. 
 
 Prophets, False, 48, 99, 100, 187190, 228, 231. 
 
 Proselyiism, 63; Albigensian, 169, 170; Arian, 68; Infidel, 322; Moham- 
 medan, 187, 189; Protestant, 78, 221, 281283, 287, 288, 294, 
 310, 350. 
 
 Protestant Lands, mostly Monarchical, 141. 
 
 Protestantism, 90, 140, 163, 221, 226, 228, 231, 233, 262, 278, 303; 
 a Rebellion against God, 10, 222, 225; Conversions from, 13, 
 278; Crimes of, 12, 39, 64, 91, 122, 184, 211, 212, 214, 220, 
 223, 236, 255, 256, 263, 276, 289, 297298, 309,335; Imposed 
 by Force, 146, 163, 170, 220, 230, 239, 241247, 249263; 
 its Failure, 64, 165, 171, 221, 222, 224, 259, 264272, 342; 
 Results of, 98, 100, 120, 147, 167, 170, 185, 186, 208, 211, 221, 
 228, 230238, 241, 242, 245247, 249, 251, 252, 255, 263, 266 
 272, 293305, 311, 320, 333. 
 
 Protestants, how treated by Catholic Majorities, 258; Number of, 
 266, 269. 
 
 Providence, brings good out of Evil, 59, 224, 336 ; Church protected by, 
 12. 29, 64, 72, 73, 107, 108, 116, 151, 153, 161164, 201, 251, 
 278, 298, 336; Instruments of, 70, 97, 110, 117, 148, 152, 194, 
 278; Warnings of, 22, 64, 163. 
 
 Prussia, 177, 268, 302, 323, 325. 
 
 Pseudo-Philosophers, 61, 307; Pseudo-Republics, 293, 314318; Pseudo- 
 Reformation, see Protestantism. 
 
 Punishment of Heresy, 72, Schism, 161, Worldliness, 228; see Ven- 
 geance. 
 
 Puritans, the, 237, 238, 250, 260, 261, 266. 
 
 Pusey, Dr., 13, 270. 
 
 Questions of the day solved by the past, 15, 341. 
 
 Raising of the dead, 27, 284. 
 
 Raskolniks, the, 90, 91. 
 
 Rationalism, 8, 60, 67, 266, 268, 302306, 348. 
 
 Reactionary Character of Infidelity, 304, 306. 
 
 Reason, Abuse of, 219, 266; Exalted by Faith, 23, 24; Goddess of, 20, 
 
 319; True Religion Vindicated by, 61, 63, 101, 167, 225, 305. 
 Rebaptizers, 271. 
 Rebellion against Christ, 159, 195; Protestants addicted to, 245, 258 
 
 260, 265. 
 
 Reccared the Catholic, 111. 
 Reconversion of Protestant Lands, 277. 
 Recusancy, 245. 
 
XXVIII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Redemption, 7, 22, 28, 32, 101, 110, 165; Errors relating to, 74, 75; 
 Heresy a Sin against, 8. 
 
 Redemptive Orders, 147, 176, 177. 
 
 Reformation, a Function of Ecumenical Councils, 64, 163, 222, 273, 275 
 277; False, 140, 221, 222, 234238, 247, 255 263 ; Benedictine, 
 117, 121; Bernardine, Franciscan, 173, 174; Gregorian, 84, 130; 
 Tridentine or Borromean, 222, 273, 275276. 
 
 Reformers, Pagan, 7, 26, 330; True, 22, (Gregory VII) 24, (Innocent 
 III) 144, (Martin V) 158, (St. Charles Borromeo) 275. 
 
 Reincarnation, 3, 4. 
 
 Religion, Enemies of, 22, 117, 146, 169, 171, 228, 257, 302, 323, 329, 
 331; Defended by Knights, 180, 254, 287; the true, 10, 14, 33, 
 98, 178, 225, 262, 280; see Church. 
 
 Religions, False, 15, 6182, 8692, 97, 187, 188, 219, 220, 234247, 
 264-273. 
 
 Religious Liberty, opposed by Sectaries, 252, 256, 259, 314, 323, but 
 promoted by Catholics, 107, 130135, 220, 242, 256, 258, 260, 
 262; Rights, Catholics should contend for their, 326. 
 
 Renovation of World by the Church, 11. 
 
 Republics, False, 143, 152, 159, 223, 260, 316, 335; Medieval, 98, 136 
 141, 181, 182, 185; nearly all Catholic, 141; South American, 
 293. 
 
 Repulsiveness of Infidelity, 304. 
 
 Resurrection of Christ, 26, 28, 33, 34. 
 
 Reunion of Christendom, 160, 341. 
 
 Revolution, Heresy established by, 64, 184, 244, 331; the American, 253; 
 the French, 81, 253, 267, 292, 313319; the Social, 331-333. 
 
 Revolutions caused by Freemasonry, 223, 224, 299, 307310, 313325, 
 328, 332. 
 
 Right of Asylum, 121, 129. 
 
 Rights, Catholics deprived of, 224, 252, 326 ; of God and Man trampled 
 on by Church's Enemies, 149, 191, 225, 258, 307, 314, 331. 
 
 Rigorism, 75, 234, 237, 300. 
 
 Rites, Ecclesiastical, 45, 78, 80, 81, 88, 91, 161; Freemasonic, 307; Mo- 
 hammedan, 189. 
 
 Ritualism, 269, 270. 
 
 Robber-Council of Ephesus, 79. 
 
 Robbery by Freemasons, 323, 324, 326; by Mohammedans, 191; by 
 Protestants, 234, 250, 251. 
 
 Robespierre, 304, 314, 317. 
 
 Roman Absolutism revived, 139; Empire, 21, 29, 38, 49, 53, 97, 103, 
 116, 117, 167, 248, 350; Martyrs, 57, 254, 285. 
 
 Roman Pontiffs, Average Life of, 163; Election of, 137; Heresies Con- 
 demned by, 76, 79, 81, 85, 267, 300, 309; Loyalty to, 90, 92, 112 
 114, 125, 132, 138,161 ; Propagation of Faith by, 109, 115, 280, 
 281; Protected by Divine Providence, 92, 161164; their Inter- 
 national Temporal Authority, 123, 125, 126, 129, 139, 142153. 
 
CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 Roman Pontifical States, 123125, 151, 324, 325, 337, 338, 350. 
 
 Rome, City of, 50, 86, 104, 113, 118, 125, 132, 152, 234, 237, 310, 324; 
 its Debt to the Popes, 102, 124, 149, 152, 185, 209, 349; See of, 
 126, 147, 151. 156, 220; Sieges of, 133, 139, 335. 
 
 Rosary, 169, 342. 
 
 Ruin, Averted from Church by Divine Providence, 107, 120; Caused by 
 Sectarians, 120, 187, 191, 195, 206, 223, 232, 249, 261, 272, 
 293298, 320327. 
 
 Russian Antisemitism, 39; Church, 8890, 115; Dissenting Sects, 267; 
 Empire, 88, 323; Nihilists, 223, 332; Official Schism, 78, 89, 91, 
 281. 
 
 Ruthenian Greek Rite, 45. 
 
 Sacramental Power of Apostates, 75. 
 
 Sacrifice, among Gentiles, 2 ; Lost by Jewish Sectaries, 37 ; of Calvary, 
 26 ; of the Mass, 34, 58, 275 ; of Self, 178, 264. 
 
 Saints, 91, 155, 163, 168, 227; Canonization of, 339; Images of, 74,85, 
 195; Example of, 277; Mediaeval, 173176; Nations of, 110, 
 122, 199; of Tridentine Period, 222, 275, 276; Peruvian, 290; 
 Royal, 11.5, 173, 206. 
 
 Saint-Simonians, 331. 
 
 Saladin, 205. 
 
 Salvation, Chief Object of Life, 98, 142, 167, 172; Errors regarding, 221, 
 231, 235, 269, 274. 
 
 Sanctuary, Pollution of the, 130; Right of, 121, 122. 
 
 Saracens, 106, 139, 191, 197. 
 
 Sardinia, Kingdom of, 139, 149, 325. 
 
 Sardica, Apostolic Council of, 71. 
 
 Satan, his Warfare against Church, 9, 11, 59, 83, 103, 220, 228, 230, 
 274, 335; Sect of, 309312. 
 
 Savior, 26, 201; Jesus Christ the only, 57, 221, 300; Luther represented 
 as, 228. 
 
 Saviors of Europe from Turks, 214. 
 
 Scandals, 131, 144, 145, 155, 156, 162, 172, 174, 193, 226, 291, 300, 
 301; their Causes, 106, 107, 130, 166, 321. 
 
 Scanderbeg, Prince, 209. 
 
 Scandinavia, 105, 230, 266; Conversion of, 109, 113. 
 
 Scepticism, 10. 
 
 Schism, Causes of, 64, 8386, 230; African or Meletian, 67, 74; 
 English, 239241, 244; French, 314316; Greek, 8392, 194, 
 208, 210, 281; Iconoclastic, 83; Jewish, 44; Latin, 78, 131, 133, 
 159, 314; Papal, improperly so-called, 155, 156; Punishment of, 
 64, 91, 99, 100, 195, 206, 208211; Results of, 62, 63, 83, 88, 
 91, 115, 162, 172, 211, 316, 350; Russian, 78, 88; the Worst of 
 Crimes, 8, 59, 61, 62, 194; Retractions of, 89. 
 
 Schismatics, Calumnies of, 150; Conversion of, 160, 287; Europe betrayed 
 by, 199, 214; Persecutions by, 92, 134; Parasitic on Govern- 
 ments, 90, 295. 
 
 Schismatic Lands all Monarchical, 141; Patriarchs, 8690; Tendencies 
 of Governments, 301, 355, of Jansenists, 299. 
 
XXX THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Scholastic Philosophy, 24. 
 
 Schoolmen, the, 23, 24, 165167, 185, 229. 
 
 Schoolmasters, Price set on their Heads by Protestants, 252. 
 
 Schools, Belgian, 322; Controlled by Jews and Freemasons, 12; Catholic, 
 183, 252, 297, 298; Infidel, 321; Mediaeval, 183, 184, 192; Mo- 
 hammedan, 192, 193; Ruined by Protestantism, 246. 
 
 Science, Ancient, 20, 49, 59; Arabian, 193; Benefited by Crusades, 202; 
 Faith promoted by, 64, 75, 165, 285; False, 305, 340; Fostered 
 by Popes, 102, 135, 273, 349; Liberalism inimical to, 316; Mediae- 
 val, 98, 136, 162, 183, 184; Promoted by Church, 11, 120, 121, 
 202; Sacred, 24, 29, 59, 63. 
 
 Scotland, 156, 238, 250, 258260, 269. 
 
 Sect, Jewish, 23, 35, 44; Mohammedan, 99; of Satan, 307327. 
 
 Sectarianism, Punishment of, 15, 64, 194, 260, 261, 267, 268, 280; Re- 
 sults of, 8, 11, 91, 115, 116, 178, 179, 262, 263, 281283, 298. 
 
 Sectaries, the Enemies of God and Society, 116, 120, 255, 311. 
 
 Sects, Confederation of, 15 ; Decline and Disappearance of, 15 ; Established 
 by Law, 163 ; Luther's Views of, 231 ; Mediaeval, 146 ; Neo-Pagan, 
 271, 272 ; Number of, 267 ; Oriental, 80, 287, 288 ; Origin of, 8 ; Pa- 
 gan, 4, 7; Persecutions by, 220, 245, 258, 298, 315; Protestant, 
 64, 163, 171, 221, 222, 231, 242, 264272; Russian, 90, 267. 
 
 Self-defence, 171; -government, 181, 253; -indulgence, 96; -reformation of 
 the Church, 279; of Benedictines, 128; -sacrifice, 96, 178, 281; 
 -torture, 2, 3. 
 
 Seljukian Turks, 89, 100, 190, 191, 200, 201; their Conquest of Europe 
 of Europe prevented by Crusades, 202, 214. 
 
 Selling of Catholic Nations by Freemasons, 325. 
 
 Semi-Pelagianism, 76. 
 
 Sensualism, Mohammedan, 8, 99, 187190; Pagan, 3, 5. 
 
 Sentimentalism, 222, 266, 268. 
 
 Separatism, 8, 15, 25, 116, 194; see Sectarianism. 
 
 Septimius Severus, his Crime and Punishment, 53. 
 
 Serfdom in Mediaeval Europe, 129, 180182, 202. 
 
 Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 81; St., Pope, 84. 
 
 Servetus, Burnt by Calvin, 236. 
 
 Servility of Heretics, 64. 
 
 Servite Friars, 176. 
 
 Seventh Day Adventists, 271. 
 
 Severity of Inquisition Mitigated by the Popes, 170. 
 
 Seymour, Jane, 240, 242. 
 
 Shakers, 270. 
 
 Sick, Religions Orders for Ministering to the, 176, 177, 276. 
 
 Simony, Sin of, 88, 107, 130, 131133. 
 
 Sirmium, Anti-Councils of, 71, 72. 
 
 Sixtus V, 275. 
 
 Slave-hunters, 191, 193; -markets, 192; -trade, 287, 303. 
 
CONTENTS. XXXI 
 
 Slavery, Abolished by the Church, 110, 129, 225, 226, 290, 333; Evils 
 of, 6, 187; Industrial, 333; Promoted by Infidelity, 303, Moham- 
 medanism, 8, 96, 99, 177, 187, 189193, 197, 350, Paganism, 2, 
 6, 8, 36, 37, 111, 119, and Protestantism, 238, 242, 293; Revived 
 in America, 193, 270, 289; the Result of Heresy, 99, Liberalism, 
 219, Schism, 89, 99, 100, Socialism, 330. 
 
 Slavonic Liturgy, 113, 114; Rites, 9092. 
 
 Slavs, the, 103; their Conversion, 109, 113. 
 
 Smith, Joseph, the False Prophet, 271. 
 
 Sobieski, 213. 
 
 Socialism, 144, 302, 328, 330, 333, 334. 
 
 Society, Constitution of, 173, 179, 182, 333, 334; Defended by Knights, 
 180; Faith its Foundation, 165, 333, 334: False Theories of, 60, 
 329; Enemies of Freemasons, 220, 223, 225, 311, 328, Heretics, 
 146, 168171, 331, Liberals, 170, 219, Mohammedans, 191, 
 Socialists, 223; Defended by Knights, 180; Catholics, 170. 
 
 Socrates, 7, 22, 60. 
 
 Sodom, Luther's, 233. 
 
 Soldiers of Christ, 53, 55, 57, 116, 201, 277, 301. 
 
 Solyman the Magnificent, 100, 115, 208, 211. 
 
 Somerset, 242244, 249. 
 
 Sophists, 22, 6165; Modern, 23, 222, 302, 329, 348. 
 
 Sorcery, 5, 260. 
 
 Soul, 60, 289, 290. 
 
 South America, 122, 292, 293. 
 
 Spain, Church of, 43, 47, 69, 100, 184, 301; Cause of its Decline, 199, 
 324, 326; Freemasonry in, 309, 323; Glories of, 111, 199, 291, 
 292; Heresy in, 196; Infidelity in, 301, 304; its National Existence 
 Preserved by the Inquisition, 263 ; its Treatment of the Indians, 
 298; its Wars with the Moors, 146, 197; Mohammedanism in, 
 38, 106; Military Orders of, 171, 180, 198; Persecution in, 301; 
 Philip II of, 213; III of, 291; Universities in, 184; Visigoths of, 
 100, 110; War of United States with, 324; Missionaries of, 
 289294; Possession of America, Reward of its Devotion, 193, 
 289294. 
 
 Spiritists, 271. 
 
 Spouse of Christ, the, 62, 135, 279. 
 
 Standing Armies, the Result of Mohammedanism and Protestantism, 
 209, 255, 256. 
 
 State, Heresy, Infidelity and Socialism Dangerous to, 168171, 300, 315, 
 332; its Attempts on Church's Liberty, 61, 88, 279, 300; its 
 Cooperation with Church, 156, 289, 281; its Interests Promoted 
 by Church, 117, 174; Despotism of the, Opposed by Church, 
 333, 384, Promoted by Sectaries, 270 ; Ownership of Property by, 
 330. 
 
 States, Neo-Pagan worse than Pagan, 328. 
 
XXXII THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Statesmen, Christian, 148, 165 168171, 206. 
 
 Stephen III, Pope, 124; St., of Hungary, 106, 115, 178. 
 
 Sterility of Schism, 83. 
 
 Stoicism, Revivals of, 99, 190, 221. 
 
 Strikes, not Necessary in Middle Ages, 182. 
 
 Stuart Dynasty, 250, 256260. 
 
 Stubbornness of Heretics, 63, 169. 
 
 Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica, 167. 
 
 Sun, the Symbol of Christ, 96, 194, 327. 
 
 Supernatural Character of the Church, 11, 12, 15; Order defined by 
 
 Vatican Council, 339; Rejected by Sectaries, 75, 189. 
 Superstition, Dispelled by the Church, 14, 101; Revived by Sectaries, 
 
 271, 272; False Charges of, 220, 228, 274, 
 Suppression of Catholic Missions, 291, 292 ; of Jesuits, 223, 292, 299, 
 
 301, 307; of Knights Templars, 177; of Temporal Power of 
 
 Popes, 153. 
 Supremacy, Conciliar, 158; Papal, 70, 8689, 300; Spiritual, 148, 
 
 154, 158, 159, 162; Temporal, 148154; Royal, 245. 
 Suspects killed by French Revolutionists, 317. 
 Suzerain, 127, 128, 140. 
 Swatopluk, Prince, 113. 
 Sweden, 113, 143, 257, 278. 
 Switzerland, 121, 333; Heresy in, 235, 236, 258, 259, 266; Original 
 
 Cantons freest and most Catholic, 258. 
 Sword, False Religions imposed by, 190, 225. 
 Syllabus of Condemned Errors, 339. 
 Syria, Mohammedan Rule in, 188, 194, 201204. 
 Syrian Church, 45, 46, 63, 78, 80, 83, 161; Heretics, 68, 7781; Rite, 
 
 80, 88, 161, 287. 
 
 Syro-Chaldaic Rite, 78, 287; -Malabar, 78; -Maronite, 287. 
 Systems of Philosophy, 59, 60. 
 
 Taoism, 4. 
 
 Taxation, Excessive, by Freemasons, Schismatics and Turks, 80, 138, 325. 
 
 Temple, Knights of the, 151, 180, 198, 205; of Jerusalem, 27, 36, 37. 
 
 Temples, Pagan, 44, 118, 290. 
 
 Temporal Authority of the Popes, 123125, 129, 141, 148, 153; Power 
 
 United with Spiritual by Sectaries and Tyrants, 255, 300. 
 Terror, Reign of, 332. 
 
 Tertullion, the Apologist, 51 ; Cited, 27, 44, 50. 
 Teutonic Knights, 114, 147, 177, 180. 
 Teutons, 1, 97, 109, 112, 113, 196. 
 Theodora, St., Empress, 85, 86. 
 Theologians, 24, 156, 160, 273, 277. 
 Theology, 67, 166, 167, 292. 
 Theosophists, 272. 
 Third Order, 175, 176. 
 
CONTENTS. XXXIII 
 
 Thirty Years' War, 213, 230, 238, 258. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, St., 23, 166, 183, 224. 
 
 Thousand Years' War, 99. 
 
 Thrullan Council, 89. 
 
 Tibet, 4, 272. 
 
 Tithes, 143, 151, 314. 
 
 Titus, Destruction of Jerusalem by, 36. 
 
 Tolerance of Catholics, 226, 323. 
 
 Tongues, Gift of, 45, 283, 284; Multiplicity of, in Church, 281. 
 
 Tortures, Inflicted by Mohammedans, 211, Pagans, 50, 52, 54, 69, 282, 
 295, 296, and Protestants, 249 ; of Spanish Inquisition, 263. 
 
 Tracts, Protestant, 282. 
 
 Trades Taught by the Monks; Trades-Unions, Mediaeval, 182. 
 
 Tradition, Apostolic, 22, 63, 69, 166, 274; Primaeval, 1, 7, 59, 64. 
 
 Traffic in Church Offices, 130. 
 
 Trajan, his Crime and Punishment, 5154. 
 
 Transition Age for Indians of South America, 293. 
 
 Treason, 198 ; False Charge of, 301 ; of Darnley, 260, Freemasons, 199, 
 307, 320325, Liberals, 314315, 320325, Monophysites, 
 195, Moors and Jews, 263, 320, Protestants, 243245, 256 
 265, 320, Schismatics, 203, and Socialists, 331. 
 
 Treaties, 138; Broken by Mohammedans, 190, and Protestants, 251, 
 257. 
 
 Trent, Ecumenical Council of, 167, 222, 273275. 
 
 Trinitarians, 147, 177. 
 
 Trinity, the Holy, 109; Heresies against, 74, 75. 
 
 Triple Anti-Catholic Alliance, 320. 
 
 Triumph of Christ, 33, 92, 342, 343; of the Papacy, 337. 
 
 Truce of God, 121. 
 
 Truth, Divine, 64, 165, 169, 220, 222, 226, 231 ; the Church its Guar- 
 dian, 14, 101, 305; the Middle Path, 74. 
 
 Tudor Dynasty, 239247, 256. 
 
 Turks, Christians Enslaved by the, 161, 191, 209; Europe Delivered 
 from by the Popes, 146, 163, 171, 211214; Khorasmian, 
 207; Opposed by Knights, 146, 177; Ottoman, 89, 100, 190, 191, 
 200, 208214, 349; Protestants and Schismatics Leagued with, 
 89, 139, 144, 199, 210, 212, 257; Seljukian, 89, 100, 173, 190, 
 191, 200, 201; Secret of their Success, 189. 
 
 Tyrants, Church Oppressed by, 84, 86, 106; Mediaeval, 134, 136140, 
 143146, 148152; Opposed and Punished by Church, 135, 136, 
 153, 154, 227; Resisted by Knights, 180; Preferred to God by 
 Schismatics, 89, 241 ; of Geneva, 258. 
 
 Tyrannical Principles of Protestantism, 257. 
 
XXXIV THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Tyranny, ascribed to God by Calvin, 237; of Calvin and Calvinists, 
 220, 235, 258263; of Elizabeth, 243, 249, Episcopalian Kings, 
 255, 256, Frederic I, II, 136139, Freemasons, 223, 294, 307, 
 308, 313319, 321, 323, 328, French Revolutionists, 319, 
 Henry VIII, 220, 239, 242, Infidels, 293, Knox and Presbyte- 
 rians, 259, Napoleon, 318, Pilgrim Fathers, 293, Pagans, 5, 48, 
 53, Protestants, 261, 278, and their Missionaries, 286; Prevented 
 by Church, 256. 
 
 Ultra-Revolutionists, Schemes of, 329. 
 
 Unbelief, Degradation caused by, 8 ; Last Refuge of, 305 ; the Final Result 
 of Protestantism, 231, 234, 237, 238, 269. 
 
 Unitarianism, 269. 
 
 United States, Catholicity in, 141 ; Heresy in, 270, 271 ; Immigration to, 
 298; Indians of, 122, 291, 293298; Independence of, 191; its 
 Debt to the Church, 193; Martyrs of, 295; Persecutions by, 
 297, 298. 
 
 Unity, Center of, 101, 153, 225; Divine Principle of, 158, 264; Lapses 
 from, 78, 199, 264; of the Church, 45, 62, 154, 155, 162; of 
 Christendom, 123, 147, 348; of Faith, 165171; of Christian 
 Science, 166, 167; Promoted by Crusades, 202; Returns to, 13, 
 7881, 8792, 160, 161, 206, 211, 287, see Conversions; of Faith 
 and Obedience, 347, 348. 
 
 Universal Church, see Church and Catholicity. 
 
 Universalism, 269. 
 
 Universities, Controlled by Jews, 38 ; Destroyed by Infidels, Freemasons 
 and Protestants, 38, 98, 186, 246, 247, 304; Established by the 
 Church, 183, 277, 348, 349; Jesuit, 291; Mediaeval, 98, 167, 179, 
 185, 349 ; Protestant, 287 ; Thomism in, 167. 
 
 Unknowable, the, 299. 
 
 Unmasking of Freemasonry, 307. 
 
 Unnaturalness of Infidelity, 306 ; of Present Social System, 334 ; of So- 
 cialism, 330. 
 
 Unreasonabless of Infidelity, 305, 306. 
 
 Urban II, Pope, 98, 134, 150, 201, 350; VI, 152, 155, 156. 
 
 Usury, 38, 39, 330. 
 
 Utrecht, Union of, 262. 
 
 Yalens, his Crime and Punishment, 72, 73. 
 
 Valerian, his Crime and Punishment, 53. 
 
 Valois, House of, 159. 
 
 Vandalism of Freemasons, 318; of Infidels, 8, 184, 186, 224, 313,314; 
 
 of Protestants, 98, 184, 186. 
 Vandals, 64, 72, 104, 195, 224. 
 Variations of Protestantism, 229, 264272. 
 Vassals, 127, 128, 144, 205. 
 Vatican Archives, 14; Basilica, 125, 185, 209, 224, 225; Council, 224, 
 
 335, 339, 340, 348. 
 
CONTENTS. XXXV 
 
 Yedas, 1. 
 
 Vendeans, 317, 318. 
 
 Vengeance, Divine, 50, 52, 53, 57, 64, 70, 72, 78, 85, 89, 91, 92, 132, 
 
 134, 135, 138, 140, 143, 144, 152, 153, 194. 196, 198, 199, 224, 
 
 230, 256, 257, 301, 318, 319; Human, 122, 125, 137, 250. 
 Venice, City of, 104, 325, 336; Republic of, a Bulwark of Europe, 89, 
 
 141, 181, 210, 211214. 
 Vicars of Christ, 61, 62, 8192, 98, 112, 113, 123126, 152156, 161 
 
 -163, 194, 199, 200, 224, 299, 300, 302, 326, 335, 344; see 
 
 Popes. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, 224, 338. 
 Vienne, Council of, 150. 
 
 Villages, Christian, among Pagans, 291 294. 
 Violence of Sectaries, 67, 170, 256, 291, 307, 323. 
 Vishnu, 26. 
 
 Visigoths, 100, 104, 197; their Conversion, 110, 111. 
 Vitality of the Church. 45, 279. 
 
 Voltaire, 222, 299, 302304, 316318 ; Cited, 12, 185, 291. 
 Vows, of Knights, 180; of Religions, 176, 277. 
 
 War, a Punishment of National Crimes, 153; God of, 20, 290; Prevented 
 by Crusades, 202, and Feudal System, 127, 128, by Popes, 134, 
 147, 349; Produced by Freemasonry, 321, 323, Liberalism, 220, 
 301, Mohammedanism, 79, 106, 176, 187195, 207214, 350; 
 Paganism, 2, 118, 289, 291; and Protestantism, 98, 170, 213, 
 221, 238, 247, 256, 258, 261, 263, 276. 
 
 Welf of Altdorff, 136. 
 
 Wesley, John, 270 
 
 West, Blessed by Christianity, 225; takes Offensive against Turks, 200. 
 
 Wexford, Massacre of, 251. 
 
 Whitefield, 270. 
 
 Wickliffe, John, his Heresies, 171. 
 
 William of Holland, 140; of Orange, 251, 262. 
 
 Windthorst, 326. 
 
 Wittenberg, 230233, 265 ; University of, 268. 
 
 Wives, Multiplicity of in Mohammedanism, 188, 190, 191 ; of Henry 
 VIII, 146. 
 
 Women Degraded by Mohammedanism, 191, 287, Paganism, 289; 
 Exalted by Church, 146, 180, 193; in Mediaeval Universities, 
 183, 184. 
 
 Work Despised by Mohammedans, 191. 
 
 Working Classes, 179, 182, 223, 311, 331, 332, 336. 
 
 Works, Good, 229, 231, 268274. 
 
 World Ruled by Christian Nations, 129. 
 
 Wordliness among the Clergy, 84, 130, 162, 300; of Protestants and 
 Schismatics, 88, 282; (Opposed by the Church, 155, 279. 
 
XXXVI THE THREE AGES. 
 
 Worm Cut to Pieces, Protestantism Compared to, 272. 
 
 Writings, Christian, 14, 41, 51, 62, 63, 115, 120, 166, 167, 174, 184,. 
 
 225, 277, 342; Infidel, 223, 302; Pagan, 290. 
 Zapolya, Hungarian Usurper, 212. 
 Zeno, Emperor, 179 ; Philosophy of, 22, 60. 
 Zinzendorf, Count, 268. 
 Zoroaster, 5, 26. 
 Zwingli, 235, 258, 265; Cited, 233. 
 


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