achieved a splendid triumph over these evils, before the dawn of the reformation. The brilliant age of Leo X., which was at its meridian of glory when Luther began his revolt, has never been surpassed--not even rivaled--by Protestants at any subsequent epoch. Were this the place for such an investigation, facts might be accumulated to show that the reformation, instead of advancing, retarded the progress of learning for a whole century! Amidst the confusion, angry polemics, and bloody civil wars, to which that revolution gave rise, men had neither time nor inclination to apply to the cultivation of letters. Great minds which, during "Leo's golden days," had directed all their energies to literary pursuits, were soon destined to consume their strength in acrimonious religious controversy. Instead of drinking at the pure fountains of Helicon, they were doomed to slake their thirst at the troubled waters of controversial debate. The history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-comparatively to the two previous centuries, sterile in literary improvement and inventionaffords a striking demonstration of this position.*

In more modern times-in our own age and country- the course pursued by Protestant writers towards the Catholic Church, on the subject of education, has been singularly unjust and inconsistent. Sometimes they accuse her of fostering ignorance, and at others, of monopolizing education. These two charges are also not unfrequently made in the same breath, and in reference to the same time and place! In proof of this assertion, we confidently appeal to the course pursued by the Protestant religious press in the United States, during the last few years. Whatever line of conduct she adopts, the Catholic Church cannot please these fastidious gentry of the Protestant press and pulpit. Does she rear schools and colleges all over the land, going even beyond her means to bring education to the door of the humblest citizen; the cry is raised, that she wishes to monoplize education, and to use the influence thus obtained in order to make proselytes to her creed. Does she make no extraordinary efforts in behalf of learning; the old stereotype charge is rung in our ears, that she means to foster ignorance! Placed in a dilemma, analogous to that of her Divine Founder and Spouse, while labouring for the redemption of mankind in the land of Israel, she may apply His language to the people of this age of boasted enlightenment. "But whereunto shall I esteem this generation to be like? It is like children sitting in the market place, who cry out to their companions and say: We have piped to you, and you have not danced; we have lamented, and you have not mourned."+

The charge preferred against the Church, of encouraging ignorance, is as old as Christianity. The christians of the first three centuries were sneered at for their poverty and ignorance. This calumnious accusation is repeated over

⚫ For full illustration of these views, see an able Essay from the pen of Dr. Carew, formerly Professor of Maynooth College, now Archbishop of Edessa and Vicar Apostolic of Calcutta, in answer to an article of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.

St. Math. xI. 16 Seq.

and over again with singular gusto, by that heartless and sneering infidel, Gibbon whose grandiloquent style and well rounded periods have contributed, perhaps more than the writings of any other enemy of christianity, to poison the minds of youth, and to foster real ignorance, under the pretext of promoting philosophy. And the greediness with which this and similar works are sought for, and devoured in Protestant communities, is one out of many proofs, that all errorists sympathize with each other! Such works meet with little encouragement in Catholic countries. In fact, the best reputation of the insidious history of "the Decline and Downfall of the Roman Empire," is the production of an Italian Catholic.* In the fourth century, that arch-enemy of christianity, Julian the Apostate, by legal enactments against the education of christians in the colleges and schools of the Roman Empire, sought to perpetuate this stigma of ignorance. This persecutor had the heartlesness to sneer at the ignorance of christians, and to prohibit their education, in the same breath. It is a singular coincidence in the history of mankind, that England, after the reformation, adopted precisely the same iniquitous course towards Catholic Ireland. By her statutes, it was penal for a Catholic to teach school in Ireland: and yet, as if exulting with fiendish delight at the mischief which this iniquitous law was calculated to produce, you might hear her loud and long protracted notes of triumph over the ignorance and debasement of the Irish-a triumph not justified however by the facts, notwithstanding every English Protestant effort to "foster ignorance!"

The most usual device of Protestant writers is, to accuse the Catholic Church of promoting ignorance especially during the Middle Ages, in order that, availing herself of the general darkness of that period, she might the more easily establish her erroneous principles! This theory has been so often and so boldly stated, that it has almost passed current as truth in our enlightened age. Does the Catholic ask the Protestant to inform him, when even one of the Catholic doctrines against which he protests, had its origin, at any period after the Apostolic age? Perhaps some other answer may at first be hazarded: but when driven from every other position, the answer will probably be, that the doctrine in question originated in the "Dark" Ages! And when asked further when and where it was first broached during that period, the respondent shrouds himself triumphantly in the darkness of these ages as in a panoply of strength, and thinks himself clad in a mail of proof! We have more than once been amused at such exhibitions of polemical skill.

And yet this argument, or rather subterfuge, has not even the merit of speciousness or plausibility. To borrow an expressive figure from

Spedalieri" Rifutazione di Gibbon" 5 Vol's. 12mo. An abridgment, at least, of this work should be given to the English community.

† And yet Gibbon, Tytler, and other historians much in favour among Protestants, are in the habit of eulogizing this Apostate, as the greatest philosopher and legislator of his age: while they have little but reproach and sneers to bestow on such men as Constantine and Theodosius! Another proof this of the tender feeling of kindred amongst errors of different hues!

the schoolmen of the "Dark" Ages, it is lame of both feet-utroque claudicat pede- the premises are not true; and if they were, the conclusion would be a non sequitur. In other words, it is not true, that the period in question was so dark as it is represented; and even if it had been tenfold more dark that it is alleged to have been, it would not thence follow, that christianity could then have been more easily corrupted, than at any other period.

To begin with this last position-did Christ any where say, that Literature was intended to be a distinctive mark of His Church? or that His promises to the Church were to depend for their fulfilment on the literary qualifications of His followers? Was the promotion of human learning a principal object of His Divine Mission? Had it been so, would he not have selected, as the heralds of His Kingdom, men of talents and gifted with human learning, rather than poor illiterate fishermen? Would He not have sought out and commissioned, to found His Religion, the philosophers and rhetoricians of Greece and Rome, in preference to twelve unlearned men selected from the lowest walks of life in Judea? The truth is, that "He chose the foolish things of the world, that He might confound the wise, and the weak things of the world, that He might confound the strong: and the mean things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, and things that are not, that He might destroy the things that are; that no flesh should glory in His sight."* It was a leading maxim of His Kingdom, that "knowledge puffeth up; but charity edifieth." He promised that the "gates of hell should not prevail against His Church, built upon a rock," without even once intimating, that the fulfilment of this solemn promise was to depend on the encouragement of human learning by His Church.

The other foot of the argument is equally lame. The Church has in fact always promoted learning, even in the most calamitous periods of her history. Men of every shade of opinion are beginning to pay this homage to truth. In Germany, in France, in Italy, and in England, writers of distinguished abil ity, without distinction of creed, have applied themselves with singular industry and success to exploring the hitherto neglected treasures of mediaval Literature.§ And the man who, with the result of all these literary labours

1. Corinth. vii. 1.

Math. xvi. 18.

1. Corinth. I. 27 seq. § The principal writers on this subject are in Italy, Muratori Dissertationes de Antiquitatibus Medii Evi 6 vols. folio-Tiraboschi-Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 28 vols. 32 mo. -Bettinelli, Risorgimento della Letteratura Italiana, 2 vols. 8vo.-Andres, Storia di ogni Letteratura, 6 vols. 4 to.-Battini-Apologia dei Secoli Barbai 3 vols. 12 mo., besides many others. In Germany, Heeren-Geschichte des studiums der classischen Litteratur im Mittelalter-Voigt-Geschichte Preussens, &c., &c. In France, Guizot, and, not to mention a host of others, the Jesuit, F. Cahier, who, over the signature "Achery" has lately written a series of very learned and able articles on this subject, published in the Annales de la Philosophie Chretienne, upon the treasures contained in which, we shall draw copiously in this Essay. We shall also occasionally draw on Digby's great work, "the Ages of Faith," in which the reader will find every thing on this, and almost every other subject-"gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble," put together with at least as much learning as order. This work is, in truth, an abyss of learning-abyssus multa.

before the world, will still persist in calling the middle ages dark, only exhibits the darkness of his own mind on the subject, and resembles one who, blindfolded at mid-day, should persevere in declaring that it was as dark as midnight!

It were impossible in one paper to enumerate all that the Catholic Church did during the Middle Ages to promote learning. A volume would scarcely do justice to so ample a theme, and one so fertile in facts. All that we purpose to do at present, is, to furnish a summary sketch of the Schools and Universities founded by the Church during that period.

From the earliest ages, schools and colleges grew up under the fostering care of the Christian Religion. The most celebrated in the early Church were those of Rome, Alexandria, Milan, Carthage and Nisibis. Who has not read of the brilliant christian schools of Alexandria in the third century; when christian youths even amidst the lowering storm of persecution, were seen eagerly thronging the academic halls, to drink in the teaching which fell from the eloquent lips of the great Origen! Their ardour for learning could not be quenched, even by the blood of almost numberless victims, who fell under the sword of a Decius and a Valerian. Who has not heard of the glory shed upon the schools of Carthage and Rome by the great Augustine, in the beginning of the fifth century? Though Africa was his country, yet this great man preferred the school of Rome, and determined to reflect on this city the lustre of his talents. "The chief cause of my going to Rome," says he," was my hearing that young men studied there more quietly, and that they were kept in order by a better discipline."* In these earliest models of Christian Schools, sacred was justly preferred to profane learning: the objects of the former were higher and nobler. Yet the latter was also cultivated, and was made to shine with light borrowed from the former. Great men then thought, that human learning had attained its highest standard of excellence, when its teachings were most conformable to heavenly wisdom-when it reflected most the light of Divine Truth-of God. To meet on his own ground the votary of mere human learning, the Christian Scholar was compelled to descend from his lofty eminence into the arena of the Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophies. The result of this condescension was however, to elevate pagan philosophy, rather than to lower the loftier standard of Christian wisdom. At that period, Plato had the ascendant over the Stagirite, particularly in the school of Alexandria; the latter however almost entirely eclipsed his more brilliant rival during many subsequent centuries. The famous Medicean School of Florence, in the 15th and 16th centuries, restored Plato to his pre-eminence; and F. Schlegel,+ greatly prefers him to Aristotle. The Christian Schools borrowed from both what suited their purposes: and though exclusive partiality for Plato betrayed Origen and other professors into some errors and occasional extravagances,

yet the influence of the ancient philosophy, thus moulded to the Christian standard, was generally highly beneficial. The Church allowed a reasonable latitude to her children, interposing her authority only, when the precious deposit of faith was endangered.

For three centuries after her conversion to Christianity, Ireland took the lead of all Europe in the cultivation and promotion of Literature. From the middle of the fifth, to the middle of the eighth century, she carried on a "crusade of learning" throughout all Europe. While the tide of barbarian invasion was rushing over the continent, burying under its turbid waves the relicts of ancient literature and civilization, the "Emerald Isle of the Ocean" was devoting the repose, which Providence then granted her, to the practice of Religion, the founding of schools, and the cultivation of letters, sacred and profane. The first of the Northern nations to enter into the fold of Christ, she was destined to become a great instrument in the hands of Providence, for the conversion and civilization of the others. A bright light then shot up from Ireland, which illumined the whole Western world! To give one instance of the flourishing condition of her institutions of learning during the period in question, it is well known, that the monastery of Benchor contained no less than three thousand monks, besides scholars almost innumerable. Fired with enthusiasm, Irishmen visited almost every country in Europe, leaving behind them splendid institutions of learning and religion-for these two always went hand in hand. Irishmen established the monastery and school of Lindisfarne in England, of Bobbio in Italy, of Verdun in France, and of Wartzburg, Ratisbon, Erfurth, Cologne, and Vienna in Germany; to say nothing of their literary labours in Paris, throughout England and elsewhere.*

In England, the Episcopal Sees became nurseries of learning. The same may be said of the Episcopal Sees in general, throughout the Catholic world. Wherever a Cathedral Church was erected, there also a school with a library attached to it, grew up under its shadow. This was not a mere chance: it was the natural tendency and result of the Catholic Religion. Catholicity and Literature always flourished together. It was also a matter of canonical enactment. Ecclesiastical Councils-provincial, national and general-made this the settled law of the Church during the Middle Ages. It would be tedious to allege all the decrees of Councils bearing on this subject, which is referred to by nearly a hundred of them held at different places, and at different times. We will only adduce some of the more remarkable.

A council held at Rome, in 826, under the Pontiff Eugene II., ordained that schools should be established throughout the world at Cathedral and Parochial Churches, and in such other places as might be suitable for their erection.— Towards the close of the eighth century, a council convened at Metz, enjoined

For full particulars on this interesting subject, see Moore's "History of Ireland," vol. 1. See, also, Annales de la Philos. Chret. Art. 7, at Sup.

Heeren opp. 1. 65. who cites Henry's History of England.