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"The Church and Modern Civilization", BQR for October, 1856

THE CHURCH AND MODERN CIVILIZATION.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1856]

 

M. Ozanam was born in 1863 at Echallens in Switzerland,

of French parents originally of Lyons, but for some years

settled in Milan, whence they were driven by the misfortunes

of the of the empire and the successes of Austria.  He

appears to have been brought up with his parents at Lyons, 

and to have been devoted by them to the study of the law.

At the age of eithteen he went to Paris, where in 1836 he

received the title of docteur en droit, and very nearly at 

the same time, an equal honor in the Faculte des Lettres.  

He was for a short time professor of Droit Commercial at 

Lyons, and in 1840, at the age of twenty-seven he was 

aggregated to the Faculte des Lettres, and became a pro-

fessor in the College de France, but under what title we do

not know, and are unable to determine from Father

Lacordaire's notice, which unhappily deals much more in

rhetoric than in facts, and is a panegyric rather than a biog-

raphy.  He died on his return from Italy to Paris, Septem-

ber 8, 1853, but at what place, whether at Marseilles or 

Lyons, the provoking panegyrist does not, as far as we have 

discovered, condescend to tell us.

M. Oranam's life appears to have been one of singular 

purity and moral beauty.  He never wholly lost his faith, 

but for a time, like most educated French youth, he par-

tially forgot it, and was more or less affected by the indif-

ference of French literary society under the last days of the 

restoration.  But he soon recollected himself, and became

distinguished by his ardent piety and enlightened zeal among 

that noble band of young men who did so much for religion 

under the monoarchy of July.  He was one of the founders 

of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, -that noble charity, 

now doing so much for the protection of Catholic childhood

and youth throughout the Catholic world.  His whole active 

life seems to have been devoted without reserrve, with singu-

lar assiduity and disinterestedness, to the cause of religion

and Christian civilization; and though but just turned of 

forty when he died, few of our contemporaries have left, or

will leave, behind him nobler monuments of their labors 

and success.  His faculties were early developed, and in his

remarkable precocity might, perhaps, have been detected 

the seeds of his early decay.  His early development, his in-

tense application, and his constant labors wore out his frame,

and brought him to the tomb before reaching what with

others is the prime of life.  He was beloved by the greatest 

and best men of his time, and died lamented by the friends 

of religion, erudition, and Christian civilization throughtout 

Europe.

We cannot at present attempt an adequate appreciation of 

the works M. Ozanam has left behind him, for we have but

recently received them, and have not as yet been able to 

study them as such works should be studied.  The edition 

before us is a beautiful monument erected by his friends to 

his memory.  They have made it as complete and as accu-

rate as the state in which he left his notes and manuscripts

would permit.  They have spared no pains in preserving 

every piece from his pen of any significance, in verifying

his dates, collating his authorities, and elucidating his state-

ments.  From his aggregation to the Faculty of Letters, his

lectures appear to have been devoted to the History of 

Civilization in the barbarous ages, and he is the best and 

most trustworthy guide we are acquainted with, to the his-

tory of the efforts made for three hundred years by pagan.

Rome to subdue and civilize the Germans who finally over-

threw her power, and seated themselves on the ruins of the 

western empire; the resistances offered by these Germans to 

the old Roman civilization; and the struggles of the church 

with the Roman and the barbarian paganisms which from 

the close of the fourth century were fused into one, down 

through the barbarous ages to the eleventh century.  The 

first two volumes of the edition contain a very full history

of civilization in the fifth century, introductory to a comp-

lete history of civilization in all its departments down to 

close of the fourteenth, which the author designed, but 

which his premature death prevented him from completing.

Volumes III. and IV., entitled Etudes Germaniques, are 

complete on the Germanic branch of his general subject; 

and volumes V. and VI., two detached works, the one on 

the Franciscan poets of Italy, and the other on Dante and 

Catholic philosophy in the middle ages, supply in part the

gaps left in the author's great work, and give us some con-

solation for our loss.  Volumes VII. and VIII. consist of

Miscellanies published at different epochs on a great variety

of topics, which we have as yet only glanced at.

M. Ozanam was evidently a conscientious scholar, an honest

student, and solidly learned.  There appears to have been in 

him a rare union of genuine erudition and true eloquence.

His erudition did not damp the warmth of feeling and

imagination never dispensed him from the most patient and 

laborious research.  With a rich genius not unadapted to

the study of speculative science, in which however he had

not made great progress, he is singularly free from the rage

for theorizing, and remarkable for sobriety of judgment and

practical good sense.  Perhaps the careful reader will de-

tect in his brilliant and erudite pages traces of the philo-

sophical school founded by Cousin, and of the historical

school founded or at least rendered illustrious by Guizot,

which he will regret, but which after all are too slight and 

evanescent to be made the subject of grave complaint.  The 

author has pleased us much by identifying the Getæ or

Getes with the Goths, but in tracing the character and his-

tory of the Germanic family, we are disposed to think that

he has made too much use of the old Norse traditions.  We

are hardly prepared to believe that the focus of Germanic

life, manners, and traditions, was in the extreme north of

Europe, when the nation occupied southeastern Russia, and

all central Europe from the Euxine to the Northern Ocean,

touching on the south the Rhætian Alps and Celtic Gaul.

Their great centres were on the TanaÏs, the Danube, the

Vistula, the Elbe, and the Rhine, and not in the frozen

North.  The Norse traditions, the sagas of the Edda, were

collected by a Christian hand too long after Christianity had

conquered the civilized world, and after they might have

been modified by some faint gleams of Christian truth,

penetrating the heathen darkness, to be perfectly trust-

worthy for the history of the Germanic nation in times long

before the Christian era.  They are, it seems to us, too

local in their coloring to be applicable without important re-

serves, to the whole Germanic or Teutonic family.  We do

not think lightly of the traditions of a people with regard to

their origin and migrations, but whoever has studied them

knows that they are singularly deficient in dates, and that

they bring together distant epochs, mould into one traditions

which in themselves are diverse, and ascribe to a favorite

hero adventures which preceded or followed him not seldom 

at the distance of centuries.  The new gods borrowed from 

neighboring nations are gradually placed among the old

national gods, and the new notions of religion, law, or juris-

prudence, picked up in intercourse with surrounding nations,

are thrown back to their great national hero, prophet, or 

divinity.  It is therefore hardly possible to found any thing

like authentic history on popular or national traditions, when 

they are supported by no written documents or contempo-

rary monuments.  M. Ozanam has used the old Norse tra-

ditions with much sobriety and judgment indeed, but still

his conclusions must frequently be taken as simply conjec-

tures more or less plausible.

The general subject to which the learned author devoted

his life is one of great interest and importance; and notwith-

standing the attention bestowed on it of late years by the 

first scholars of Europe, is still enveloped in darkness, and 

Gibbon, we are sorry to say, is still our best authority in 

English.  Some light, during the last sixty years, has been

thrown on the middle ages, that is, on the period from the 

ninth century, when St. Leo III. revived the imperial dig-

nity in the person of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, to

the middle of the fifteenth century, when opens the era of 

modern history; but of the three or four centuries previous, 

the dark ages proper, when were laid, chiefly by the monas-

tic orders, the foundations of our modern civilization, in so

far as it is in advance of the ancient, we have hitherto

known little or nothing, and still less have we known of the

origins of the barbarians, their pre-Roman history, and

their long struggle with the empire till they seated one of

their chiefs on the throne of the Cæsars, put an end to

majestic Rome, and avenged on her the evils she had for so

many ages inflicted with remorseless cruelty on a hundred

nations.  Yet without some knowledge of these origins,

struggles, and ages, it is impossible to explain modern his-

tory, to comprehend modern civilization, or to appreciate the

action of the church on society since the fall of the empire.

A thorough evangelical demonstration to the modern mind,

demands the full study and appreciation of the barbarians

and the barbarous ages, as well as of the old Roman civiliza-

tion itself.  The great merit of M. Ozanam is that he under-

stood this fact, and devoted his life with singular energy and 

success to supplying the deplorable defects in our historical

literature.

Catholic writers have illustrated the dogmatic history

of the church; they have admirably defended her dogmas,

and in what relates immediately to faith and morals have

forever silenced all serious controversy; but unhappily with-

out making much progress in converting the non-Catholic

world.  The adversaries of the church, --we mean those

who do not simply repeat old objections a thousand times 

refuted,-- have shifted their ground of attack.  They no

longer attack the church under the relation of doctrine or 

ritual, they attack her now under the relation of civilization.

They see clearly enough that the mediæval civilization,

sometimes called Catholic civilization, was imperfect, and 

that in those ages when the church is supposed to have

been supreme, and the popes the dictators of Europe, society

was filled with barbarous elements and  usages, and was far 

less advanced, under various not unimportant relations, than

it is now even in some non-Catholic countries.  The pious

and excellent Digby thought in his Mores Catholici to

evade the objection by collecting all the good things which

undoubtedly existed in the middle ages, and passing lightly 

over mediæval barbarism, brutal passions, violence, and

superstition.  The learned and philosophic Balmes has writ-

ten an admirable book to prove that the civilization of the

Catholic nations of modern Europe is superior to that of the 

Protestant nations.  He has in this done much, but even

supposing him completely successful, he has not met the

precise difficulty.  The Catholic nations of Europe are those

which were the earliest civilized, and which were in the

sixteenth century in advance of those that became Protes-

tants. Have they maintained their relative superiority?

Have they continued to advance, and the Protestant nations 

to decline?  It can hardly be pretended.  Under some not

unimportant relations the Protestant nations of Europe are

in advance of the Catholic, as in the fifth century the bar-

barians, either Arians or pagans, were in many respects

superior to the Catholic population of the empire.  No

man can honestly deny that there are many signs of decay

in the populations of southern Europe, or that they seem to

be falling into a condition analogour to that into which they

had fallen at the epoch of the Germanic conquest.  How 

are we to explain this fact?  Are we to attribute it to the 

church, and thus concede the Protestant objection that the 

church is unfavorable to civilization and the growth and 

prosperity of nations?  Or are we not rather to attribute it

to causes outside of her, and operating independently of her

control?

It will not do to accept as Catholic all we find in med-

iæval society or in modern Catholic nations even at the 

present.  Our adversaries are not wholly in error in their

objections to either, for neither comes up to the Christian

ideal of civilization.  We protest, indeed, against the exag-

gerations of non-Catholics, and those of their objections

suggested by pride, worldly-mindedness, and pagan views 

of man and society; but we should find it difficult to defend

the church, if her defence involved the universal defence of

so-called Catholic states in any period of history.  We 

should be loath to maintain that under every point of view

Sicily and Naples, Spain and Portugal, Mexico and South 

America, are superior in civilization to Great Britain and 

Holland, Sweden and the United States.  It is lawful and 

even necessary to distinguish between the church and the 

civilization of states professing the Catholic religion.  The 

church is responsible only for what she teaches, does, in-

spires, expressly or tacitly approves, or for the evil she

might have prevented but has not.  We are as free to con-

demn the civilization of Catholic as we are that of Protes-

tant states; and for ourselves, we hold that the mediæval

civilization and that of all modern Catholic as well as of all 

Protestant states, is very imperfect, and needs to be sup-

planted by a new and less imperfect civilization.  We 

accept many of the criticisms of non-Catholics, even of

modern socialists and red-republicans, when urged not

against the church, but against mediæval and modern so-

ciety.  Looking at society in Christendom from the fifth to

the nineteenth century, and abstracting all religious con-

siderations, we have no serious quarrel with them as to its 

imperfect and abnormal character.  Their chief error is not

in the fault they find with modern civilization, but in not

giving the church credit for what she has really done, and

in holding her responsible for things which she condemns,

always struggles against, but has not as yet been able to en-

tirely to prevent or to overcome.  The defence of the church

is not denying the grave defects of the civilization that

has grown up in Christian states, but in showing that they 

are due not to her, but to the vices and barbarism of the 

old pagan society which she had to commence with and

transform, and in showing how much we are indebted to

her by showing what there was to be done in reaching even

our present imperfect state, and what powerful enemies of 

all sorts she from the first has had to contend with, and has

in a measure subdued.

But this is a work we cannot do without going back and

studying the history of civilization in the barbarous ages,

taking a survey of the good and the evel there were in the 

Roman and Germanic worlds at the close of the fourth cen-

tury; what the church has retained from the old societies; 

what she has labored to eliminate; and what she has added

from her own resources.  This is the work needed to com-

plete our vindication of the church, and silence her adver-

saries, under the point of view of civilizations.  The work

M. Ozanam undertook with a noble zeal, and prosecuted

with an energy, an erudition, an eloquence, a candor, and

an ability which we have rarely found surpassed.  He 

did not live to complete it; he fell a martyr to his zeal in 

defence of the religion which his life adorned.  But he

lived long enough to open the route, and to smooth away 

its chief difficulties. He has made the talk comparitively

easy to his successors; and if a friend of ours who has de-

voted years of patient study to the same subject, even on a 

larger scale, with a genius, erudition, and eloquence which

need not pale before his, would reduce to order the materials

he has collected, and publish them to the world, the evan-

gelical demonstration for this age would be substantially

completed.  The adversaries of the church would be driven

from their las covert, and be obliged to surrender at dis-

cretion.  But be this as it may, it is certain that for the ad-

vanced minds of the nineteenth century, the battle-ground

between Catholics and non-Catholics iss that of civilization, 

and not that of dogma and ritual.  To win the final victory,

and put an end to the war, we must not stop with the his-

tory of Europe in the middle ages, but must explore the 

preceding barbarous ages, study modern civilization in its

beginnings, and, to use a Gallicism, assist at the transforma-

tion of the ancient into the modern social edifice.  The

transition from one social order to another, of which we are

witnesses, and in which we are forced to take part, will give

us the key to what were mysteries to our fathers, and enable

us to do for our age what could not, and indeed were

not called upon to do for theirs.  They had their work, and

they did it; we have ours and must do it, and in doing it, 

we shall find few rendering us more important assistance 

than the lamented Ozanam.

After reading M. Ozanam we find it necessary to modify 

to some extent the opinion of the Græco-Roman civiliza-

tion which we expressed in an article on the Church in the 

Dark Ages.*  We did not deceive ourselves as to the actual 

character of those ages, or represent them in any respect as

more defective under the point of view of civilization than 

they really were.  In fact, in proportion as we plunge 

deeper into mediæval society and recover from that exces-

sive admiration of every thing mediæval which was the fash-

ion a few years ago with a large class of English, French,

and German writers, the more defective do we find that

society, and the less are we disposed to wish, even if it were 

possible, its reproduction.  Be we attributed the barbarous 

and superstitious elements, the violence and oppression we

everywhere encountered in it too exclusively to the barba-

rians who overthrew the Roman empire of the West, and

formed too high an estimate of the Roman civilization 

itself.  Doubtless, we find in that civilization many noble

elements, much that has not perished, and ought not to per-

ish, and it would be difficult to overrate the importance of

the Roman system of jurisprudence, which, with sime mod-

ifications, has become that of the modern world; but M.

Ozanam, we think, has proved that the worst elements of

mediæval society already existed, in a still more offensive

form, in pagan Rome, and that the gravest objection to the

barbarians was not that they retained too little, but too 

much, of the old Roman civilization.

The Germanic tribes that supplantedd the Roman empire

of the West, added little of their own, and they labored 

rather to continue the Roman civilization that to destroy it.

They were neither so ignorant nor so destitute even of the

Roman culture, as is sometimes imagined.  Rome had la-

bored for three hundred years not entirely without success

to subdue them by her arms and her arts, and they were at 

the epoch of the invasion more than half romanized.  They 

fought against the Romans as Romans, and in the pay, if

not in the service, of the emperors.  During the hundred

years that the agony of the conquest lasted, they mingled 

with the population of the empire, and became still more

romanized.  Their chiefs held commissions from the em-

peror, and were his auxiliaries, his allies, and had he kept 

his faith with them they would in all probability have sus-

tained his authority, and preserved imperial Rome, of 

which they seemed to stand in awe even when turning their

arms against her.  They retained, no doubt, some peculiar 

customs and usages of their own, but in most respects they

labored to conform to the Roman order, and romanized

themselves far more than they de-romanized the empire.

They retained in their jurisdiction and vigor the Roman

courts, the Roman laws and jurisprudence, the Roman

political and fiscal systems, the Roman municipalities,

the Roman internal organization of the state, Roman

schools and letters, and to a great extent the Roman mili-

tary organization and discipline.  There was no abrupt 

transition from the Roman to the barbarian or Germanic 

world, and it is impossible to say where the one ends and

the other begins.

There is scarcely an objectionable feature in mediæval so-

ciety that cannot be traced to a Roman origin, or that at

least had not its counterpart in pagan Rome.  The feudal 

system, so beautiful in romance, but so terrible in real life,

grew out of the imperial system which made the emperor 

the sole proprietor of the land, and was really an advance,

because it placed the lease or grant under the safeguard of 

law, and made it irrevocable except by legal forfeiture.

The laws, reproached to the Christians of the middle ages,

against magicians, sorcerers, astrologers, and cultivators in 

general of the occult sciences, were enacted by pagan Rome

and often enforced by the pagan emperors with great sever-

ity.  The superstitions we encounter in modern times were 

all rife in pagan Rome, and obtained in a grosser and more

revolting form among the polite and refined Romans than 

ever they did among the rude and uncultivated Germans.

Indeed, the pagan Germans, at the epoch of the invasion,

were far less superstitious, and far less cruel, inhuman, and 

immoral and obscene in their idolatry than most culti-

vated class of pagan Rome at any period from Augustus to

Augustulus.  Roman manners were softened and elevated

rather than rendered gross and barbarous by the infusion of

the Germanic races.

In the genius of organization, of construction, of govern-

ment of jurisprudence, the Romans certainly excelled every 

other people in antiquity, and are without a rival in the

modern world, though in some degree approached by the

English and Americans; but in every thing else, saving lit-

erary culture, they were equalled if not surpassed by their

German conquerors.  The Romans called the Germans

barbarians, and this fact often misleads us as to their real

character; but Ozanam shows that the Germanic nations re-

tained traces of a very high civilization.  Old Jornandes, 

the Goth, scouts the idea, that his nation was uncivilized,

and he proves that they were civilized people, only they

had borrowed their civilization from Greece and the East,

not from Rome.  The Germans, among whom we must in-

clude the White Scythians of Herodotus, the Massagetes,

the Assagetes, the Getes, the Asi, whence the name Asia,

were divided, from our earliest notices of them, into two

classes, the one living in fixed dwellings, cities and towns,

and pursuing agriculture, industry, and trade; the other

swarming around them, mingling with them in their wars

and expeditions, nomadic, wanderers, adventurers,--in the

East pasturing their flocks and herds, and living on their

produce, and on war and plunder, and in the West or rather

North, vikings, skimmers of the sea, sustaining themselves

by piracy, and by plundering the river and sea coasts of the

rich states of the South,--corresponding, allowance made

for difference of time and circumstances, to our own fili-

busters and borders ruffians, yet as it regarded themselves

having an internal organization, laws, religion, customs,

usages, which prove that they had the elements at least of a 

civilization not in all respects inferior to the Roman.  Their

religion was simpler than the Roman, and less removed

from the primitive traditions.  It was less elaborate and at

the same time less corrupt or corrupting.  Their manners

were purer than those of the Romans.  Their chastity and

respect for woman were greater.  They had less refinement

of manners, less scientific and literary culture, but nobler

feelings, and less inhumanity.  They were honest, and ob-

served the faith of treaties.  They disdained the subtle pol-

icy and treacherous arts of the Romans.  For three hundred

years and over before the conquest they had constituted the

chief strength of the Roman armies, and the legions with

which Julius Cæsar overthrew Pompey, and placed himself

at the head of the Roman world, wer Germans, recruited 

from Germanic Gaul.  If in some respects they were less

civilized, they were in all respects less corrupted and enfee-

bled than the degenerate Romans of the empire, and their

conquest was a victory rather than a defeat for civilization.

It would be difficult to find among them a false principle, a 

vice, a superstition, and immoral, cruel, or an inhuman prac-

tice that did not exist in a still greater degree in pagan 

Rome, whether republican or imperial.

No doubt, as I have conceded,there were good elements 

in the Roman civilizations, but I do not find that one of 

these was lost or even weakened by the conquest.  The 

Germans respected and retained them, and they were devel-

oped and consecrated by the church.  The real charge 

against the barbarians is not that they destroyed or cor-

rupted the Roman civilization, but that they suffered them-

selves, especially in Gaul, to be corrupted by it.  Celtic, as

distinguished from Germanic Gaul was, perhaps, the most

completely romanized province of the empire out of Italy.

It was, too, that portion of the empire which suffered the 

least from the barbarian invasion, and in which the old

Gallo-Roman ministers, anticipated the despotism, the lux-

ury, the vices, the intrigues, the crimes, and the debasement

of the Byzantine court in its worst days.  Clovis, or Louis, 

whom it was long the fashion with historians to call the first

king of the French, possessed some noble and heroic qual-

itites, but his descendants, when not absolutely imbecile,

were as corrupt and as infamous a set of crowned tyrants as 

we encounter in history.  The Frank kingdom begins to 

command our esteem only as it is transferred from the Me-

rovingian to the Carlovingian dynasty, and from Neustria to

Austrasia, where the Germanich population largely predom-

inated over the Gallo-Roman.

We do not, however, undertake the defence of the medi-

æval society.  It was, we both concede and maintain, grossly

imperfect, though superior at worst to the old Roman soci-

ety at best.  All that we as Catholics have to defend is the 

church in her action on society and civilization.  To do

this it is necessary to distinguish her from society, and

what is properly from and by her from what is due to 

causes operating outside of her, independent of her, and 

frequently in direct hostility to her.  It is a great mistake

to suppose that the middle ages were, as a whole, the crea-

tion of the church, or that they met her approbation.  It is

a great mistake, whether made by Catholics or non-Catho-

lics, to suppose that the church had the forming from the

beginning of any of the states which have succeeded to the

Roman empire.  The state in the constitution of which she 

had the greatest influence was England, and England has

always been in ter constitution the freese state in Christen-

dom.  For this the English owe their principal thanks to 

Pope Adrian I., after St. Gregory the Great.  The states 

which succeeded to the Roman empire are to be regarded 

as its continuation rather than as absolutely new states 

formed by a new people.  They inherited the Roman con-

stitution; each in its own territory continued the laws of

the empire, and adopted its forms, its traditions, its maxims,

and its policy.  They were all founded, constituted, and in

operation as pagan or heretical states, long before they had

any friendly relations with the church.  The Frank king-

dom, Neustria, and Austrasia were founded by pagans; and 

Germany proper was not converted from paganism till the 

eighth or ninth century; the Burgundians and Goths in

Italy were Arians; the Goths and Vandals in Spain and 

Africa were partly Arian and partly pagan; and the Anglo-

Saxons in England were pagans.  I am not aware of a 

single state that arose amid the ruins of the empire that

was when it arose a Catholic state.  The Neustrian Franks

were the first of the Germanic states that embraced the

Catholic faith, but thier kings followed the example of the

Roman emperors, and were more disposed to govern the

church than to be governed by her.  The first Frank mon-

arch who showed himself really willing to serve the church

and to be directed by her was Charlemagne, raised to the

imperial dignity by St. Leo III. in the last year of the 

eighth century.  It is undeniable, then, that the church had

not the founding, constituting, or exclusive moulding of the 

states of Christendom, as has too often been pretended by

both friends and enemies.

The church is a spiritual kingdom, instituted and sustained 

only for a spiritual end, and governs men and nations 

only under the relations of conscience.  She has no favorite

theory or form of government, or of social or temporal or-

ganization.  She leaves the people, as to the temporal order,

free to organize the state as they judge best.  All she does

is to insist that the government, however constituted, shall 

be administered onthe principles of natural justice and 

equity.  But Catholics, like non-Catholics, are formed by 

education, and adhere to the political and social order to

which they have been trained.  The Catholic population of 

the states into which the empire was divided and subdi-

vided, had grown up under the Roman system, and in all,

save religion, were Romans, as much so as the pagans of the 

empire themselves.  The Roman state was their model; the 

imperial system and policy were those which struck them as 

the wisest and best, and they naturally labored to perpetu-

ate them, and to continue in force the civil and ecclesiasti-

cal legislation of the emperors, and this equally, whether

we speak of churchmen or laymen.  The ideas and 

tendencies of ecclesiastics for centuries favored, where re-

ligion was not immediately at stake, Roman imperialism.

And the Catholic scholars, poets, orators, and statesmen in

the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, were thoroughly Ro-

man in all save the classical purity, elegance, and dignity of 

their language.  Most men, even of the educated classes, 

are men of routine, run on in the ruts of their forefathers, 

and identify the civil and social order they have grown up

under and are accustomed to with their religion, and sup-

pose any alteration in it would be an alteration in their

church.  They who can distinguish between their religion

and the civilization of their country, are at best only a few, 

and they, if they venture to speak, are usually condemned

in the name of both religion and patriotism.  The old 

French Legitimist exclaimed, Mon Roi et Mon Dieu!

The church, let her abstract rights be what they may, can-

not in temporal matters, when there is no direct question of 

conscience, go against the public sentiment of the age or

country; but must recognize it in her practical conduct, and

make the best of it she can.

The church not only had not the original creation or ex-

clusive moulding of the states of modern Europe, but her 

action on them and on civilization could in the nature of

the case be only a limited and indirect action.  Both the

Catholic population and the non-Catholic, but especially the 

Catholic, from the first dawnings of peace, labored to repair 

the disasters of the conquest, and to restore things, as far as

possible, to the order which existed prior to the invasion, 

and which it had interupted.  There was no new state to re-

ceive de novo its constitution and policy from her, and no

people whose civilization she could begin.  The states were

already formed when she came into relation with them,

with a constitution, laws, principles, maxims, and a policy 

of their own, which were not derived from her, which she

had not prescribed, which she could not always approve,

and which were often in direct hostility to her.  She had to

deal with them very much as she had dealt with the empire,

--undergo at times their persecutions, accept the best terms 

they offered her, and submit, where she could without infi-

delity to her trust, to the burdens and restrictions they im-

posed upon her.  She could not by external force, or by the

direct exertion of her powers, mould the temporal society 

to her liking, but was obliged to mitigate by her charity the

evils which existed, and trust to the silent but energetic

working of her principles and sacraments slowly though

surely in the process of time to remove them.  Never even un-

der the most Christian emperors had she been perfectly free 

in her relations with Cæsar, and if her prelates had great

powers, and were allowed a splendid equipage and retinue,

it was as civil rather than as ecclesiasticaal officers.  The em-

perors made them civil magistrates, or gave them jurisdic-

tion in a variety of civil causes, and sustained them as such;

but this was giving no freedom or independence to the 

church, or increased facilities for accomplishing her own

proper work.  The Emperors Constantine, Theodosius, and

Justinian gave to the chuch some advantages by providing

her considerable revenues, recognizing her ecclesiastical

courts, and giving civil effect to her canons; but they made

her pay a high price for them, and took good care to have 

it understood that she held them from the imperial liberal-

ity, and at the imperial pleasure.  The states that grew out

of the empire took no less care to make the church feel that

she depended on their liberality, that they held the sum-

mum dominium even of ecclesiastical goods, and she at best

only the usufruct during their pleasure.  Hence they 

claimed supreme legislation in regard to the temporalities of 

the church, and the right of investiture.  Such being the

facts in the case, it would be manifestly wrong to claim all 

in mediæval society as the creation of the church, or to hold 

her responsible for every thing we encounter in it.  Some

Catholics in ther zeal have unquestionably gone too far in

their laudation of the middle ages, and imposed too heavy

a burden upon the defenders of the church.  The adversa-

ries of the church are unjust and unhistorical also in holding 

her responsible for every thing they find in them incompat-

ible with true Christian civilization.  The church was in

those ages with her superhuman energy; but her action was 

always beneficent, and nothing to which even an intelligent

non-Catholic objects can with any justice be ascribed to her.

Whatever we encounter that is really objectionable, a care-

ful study of the documents in the case will prove was due to 

causes outside of the church, and independent of her,--to

the perversity of fallen nature, to the temporal powers, to 

secular society, and to pagan elements retained in spite of 

the church from Rome and her German conquerors.

It is a grave mistake, but sometimes committed, to sup-

pose that the fall of paganism before Christianity, after Con-

stantine, was sudden and complete.  Constantine, in 312,

published an edict giving liberty to the Christians, but 

without affecting the liberty of the old religion.  Constan-

tius and some of his Arian successors, always ready to en-

croach on the rights of conscience, published edicts against

certain superstitions, but paganism retained its liberty and

its privileges, its temples, revenues, and sacrifices down to

the end of the fourth century.  It was strong enough to re-

sume the diadem in Julian the Apostate, the nephew of

Constantine.  The majority of the population of the em-

pire, especially in the West, were idolaters at the beginning

of the fifth century.  Two laws of Theodosius, and four of

Honorius close the temples, by suppressing their revenues

and prohibiting the sacrifices, but idolatry continued, and 

even survived the emperors themselves.  St. Augustine 

tells us that the idolaters were strong enough in Africa to 

burn a church and massacre sixty Christians.  Rome, not-

withstanding it contained the chair of Peter, was a pagan

city down to its sack by the Goths and Vandals.  The Ro-

man senate remained pagan as to the majority of its mem-

bers down to the last.  At the opening of the fifth century,

the pagan party did not despair of regaining the empire,

and suppressing the grovelling Christian superstition as

 they called it.  In spite of the edicts of the emperors the

horrid gladiatorial shows continued and were fed by prison-

ers taken in way by Theodosius the Great, and were only 

suppressed in the city of Rome by Honorius in the year

404.  But the image of the gladiatorial combats long re-

mained, and a reminiscence of them is retained in the jousts 

and tournamentsof the mediæval knights, condemned by 

the church, yet celebrated by a multitude of ignorant histo-

rians and romancers as one of the glories of mediæval Chris-

tianity, as indeed a Christian "institution."

Roman paganism was reinforced by the German.  "At 

first," says Ozanam, "the old religion hoped to preserve

itself all entire, and to leap the invasions, as Æneas passed

through the flames of Troy, in saving its gods.  Its parti-

sans counted with joy a great number of pagans among

those Goths, Franks, and Longobards who covered the West.

Roman polytheism, faithful to its maxims, gave its hand to 

the polytheism of the barbarians.  Since Jupiter Capito-

linus had permitted the strange gods of Asia to take their

seats beside him, how should he take umbrage at Woden and 

Thor, who were likened to Mercury and Vulcan?  They 

were, it was said, the same celestial powers honored under

different names, and the two worships should combine to 

sustain each other against the jealous God of the Christians.

Thus the flood of invasion appears to have deposited a slime

in which the germ of paganism revived.  In the middle of

the sixth century, after Rome had been forty years under 

the power of the Goths, the idolaters were so bold that they 

attempted to reopen the temple of Janus and to restore the

Palladium.  In the beginning of the seventh century St.

Gregory the Great calls upon the bishops of Terracina,

Sardinia, and Corsica to direct their solicitude to the pagans

of their dioceses.  St. Romanus and St. Eligius had hardly

finished about the same time the conversion of Neustria;

and, inthe eighth century, troubled by the corruptions of 

the clergy, and the violence of the nobility, multitudes in

Austrasia abandoned the Gospel and restored the idols.  In 

fact, the two paganisms were fused into one, and the strug-

gle of three hundred years, which the church had sustained

against the false gods of Rome, was only an apprenticeship

to a still longer struggle against those of the Germans."

The great question, which religion, the pagan or the 

Christian, should triumph, and wield the political power of

Europe, was not decided till the final defeat of the Saxons

by Charlemagne, and the conversion of their duke, Witti-

kind, in the ninth century.  The war between the Franks 

and the Saxons, which lasted thirty years, was really a war 

between paganism and Christianity, and in it was debated

and solved the most momentous question for civilization

ever raised.  The Saxon duke was sustained by the whole 

pagan world north of Persia and the Roman empire of the 

East, from the western boundaries of India and China to

the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, including the Tar-

tars, the principal Slavonic nations, the Prussians, the Danes,

the Swedes, and Norwegians.  Charlemagne triumphed

and with him the cause of the church and civilization; and

well does he deserve the title of Great, which posterity

makes a part of his proper name.  But this victory, though 

it procured the church a triumph, did not procure her re-

pose.

Paganism died hard, and did not yield the empire of the

world without a long and obstinate struggle.  By the side of 

the Christian doctrines and virtues of what Digby calls the 

Ages of Faith, because he sees in them only the labors and

fruits of Catholic faith and piety, we find the old pagan re-

ligion prolonging itself, in spite of the constant vigilance

and most strenuous exertions of the church, and often more 

than rivalling her in its influence on the courts of sovereigns

and the action of secular society.  Indeed, the war with

paganism is not yet ended, and will not be so long as men

can be moved by terror and voluptuousness.  Europe in the 

sixth and seventh centuries was far from being Christian, 

and the Catholics were relatively hardly more numerous or

more powerful than they are in the United States at the 

present moment.  The church not only had to struggle 

against the pagan reminiscenes of her own children, but 

against armed paganism without.  The subjection in the 

ninth century of the Saxons by Charlemagne did not free

her from all external dangers.  In that same century the

Huns from Asia, still pagans, swept over and devastated all

central Europe from the Black Sea to Paris, and menaced

even the plains of northern Italy.  In the same and the 

following century the Norsemen with their old Scandinavian

superstition and demoniac fury ravaged England and Ireland,

the two most devotedly Catholic nations at that time of

Christendom; they sailed up the rivers of France, pillaged 

the churches and convents, and even sacked the city of Paris.

The Germans in the regions which had not been subjugated

by the Roman arms were converted only in the eighth and 

ninth centuries, the Muscovites not till the tenth contury.

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were completely subdued to 

the Gospel only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and

the Prussians not till the thirteenth.  In the seventh century

arose the Mohometan power in the East, and in less than a

hundred years had absorbed the greater part of Christian

Asia and Africa, and founded an  empire which extended

from Cathay through the finest regions of the globe to the 

western coast of Spain, menacing Byzantium, Italy, and 

France, and was checked in its advance only by Charles

Martel in the celebrated battle of Châlons.  Europe had to

defend herself against the crescent by the immense wars of

crusades, and could not count on being freed from its

danger till its power was broken at the battle of Lepanto in

the sixteenth century.  This long struggle against paganism

on the one hand, and Islamism on the other, which the 

church has had to maintain, has not been sufficiently con-

sidered either by the defenders or the adversaries of Catho-

licity.

Now if we take into account that all the states of Europe,

without a single exception, were of pagan or heretical ori-

gin, that they started with a constitution, principles, and 

maxims of their own, which the church did not prescribe, 

and which she could modify or control only through the 

faith and conscience of princes and their subjects,--when

we also take into the account the obstinacy with which both

princes and people, even after accepting Christianity, clung 

to heathen notions, usages, and superstitions, in spite of 

doctors and councils, in spite of all appeals to reason and 

conscience, to faith and charity, we can, we think, very easily

explain what we find amiss in mediæval civilization without

reproaching the church, and demand a purer and less imper-

fect political and social order without falling under her cen-

sure.  If on the other hand, we turn from what we as well

as our adversaries condemn in the middle ages, to what the 

church introduced, to a great extent through the labors and

devotion of the monastic orders, that was good, to the supe-

riority of the middle ages over pagan Rome in its palmiest

days,--to the purity of sentiments and manners the church

always insisted upon, to the new value she set upon human 

life, to the heroic contempt of the world she inspired, the 

tenderness for the poor, the lowly, and the afflicted she cher-

ished, and the provision she made for thier wants,--to those

elements in modern civilization, in short, which prove its 

advance on the most advanced pagan civilization, and which 

constitute our real progress, we shall find enough to satisfy

us that the church had right views of civilizations, the right

spirit, and was moved and assisted by the supernatural pres-

ence of God, for no institution, not so moved and assisted,

could ever have effected what it must be conceded on all

hands she has effected for the modern world, however im-

perfect that world may still remain.

  We have no time or space at present to develop this argu-

ment; we have only indicated it.  Our readers will find M.

Ozanam's works giving them nearly all the aid they will

need in developing it for themselves,--although we would 

not have them accept all his opinions without examination.

He is learned, honest, but infallible, and makes gener-

ally too light of demoniacal influences on nature in its ab-

normal state.  In order to get rid of superstition it is no

more necessary to deny the presence of Satan in false

religion than it is the presence of God in the true religion.

In applying the principles the a sound philosophy to the ex-

planation of the phenomena of history, and in attempting

to explain on natural principles the facts of civilization, it 

is necessary to be on our guard against losing sight of the

supernatural, without which the natural is practically inex-

plicable.  This caution we feel is needed by the class of 

scholoars to which M. Ozanam belonged, and we are quite 

willing to take it to ourselves.  Our province in the present 

age is to complete the labors of our predecessors, not to un-

derrate what they did, or to break the chain which binds us 

to them.  They left work for us, but that is not saying they

did nothing themselves.

In conclusion, we must say that we do not and cannot

read the histoy of the church in her relations with the

ages throught which she has passed, without finding our 

conviction confirmed that, all things considered, she has

never had so fair a field, so free a scope, and so few formid-

able obstacles as she has with us in these United States, or 

without feeling that we Catholic Americans do not suffi-

ciently appreciate the advantages secured to us, and are too 

slow in availing ourselves of them in the interest of religion 

and civilization.  Our republic, rightly considered, retains

only what was good and ought to be retained in the old

Græco-Roman civilization, and has, as to the natural order,

appropriated all the new and advanced elements introduced 

and developed by the church in modern society.  Only one

thing is wanting to the American people, namely, the Cath-

olic faith.  And that faith, we will believe, they are ready 

to accept and obey the moment they are shown that it con-

secrates all they most love in the American order, and is not

responsible for the vices and imperfections of mediæval and 

modern civilization which have hitherto been associated with

it, sometimes even in the minds of its friends.  It is of the 

last importance that we Catholics should study with more 

care than we usually do the history of civilization, and learn

to distinguish what in so-called Christian society is of

divine revelation and authority, from what pertains to the

natural order and is by no means inseparably bound up with

it, so that in transferring the Catholic religion hither from

the Old World, we may not impede its salutary operation by 

transferring that Old World itself, whose civilization in its

principles is far below ours.