his life, flying into the wilderness to escape the corruption of the semi-pagan schools of Rome. S. Angustine has told us something of the condition of the schools of Carthage in his time, which may probably be taken as a fair specimen of the state gymnasia in other parts of Europe. . Their professors, S. Augustine remarks, would have treated it as a greater fault to pronounce homo without the aspirate than to hate a man. Many were pagans, like Libanius, the master of S. Chrysostom; others were content with the smallest possible seasoning of Christianity. . . . Honourable exceptions of course were to be found .. but as a general rule the professors troubled themselves very little about questions of faith or ethics. . . . New comers were laid violent hands on by the scholastic jackals .. thus it was they prepared to seize S. Basil on his first coming to Athens, when S. Gregory of Nazianzen interfered to protect him. . S. Gregory does not forget to inform us that it was as difficult for a youth to preserve his innocence in the midst of such an atmosphere as it would be for an animal to live in the midst of fire, or for a river to preserve its sweetness when flowing through the briny ocean" (p. 20, vol. i.)

...

Human nature remains the same, and history repeats itself.

The Life of S. Aloysius Gonzaga, of the Company of Jesus. Library of Religious Biography. Edited by EDWARD HEALY THOMPSON. Burns & Oates.

WE

E gladly hail the first instalment of Mr. Healy Thompson's Library of Religious Biography.

There are few more hopeful signs of our time than the growing interest in the lives of saints and saintly persons. The commencement of the Oratorian series by Father Faber was, it will be remembered, accounted by many a doubtful and even dangerous experiment. Few will now deny that its publication was one of the most valuable services rendered by him to the Church in this country; but excellently as that series has fulfilled the intentions of its lamented editor, a want is still felt of biographies of a more popular kind, which may attract and fix the attention of readers, who are often repelled by the monotonous repetition of panegyric pervading many of the originals of the Oratorian translations, and still more by the indifferent execution of some of them. Several shorter lives of a more popular kind have already appeared; among the best of which we should place a translation of the life of S. Anthony of Padua, by F. Gervais Dirks, a Belgian Recollect Father.

The present life of S. Aloysius is to be followed by a series, the chief object of which is to present examples of high Christian perfection amidst the perils and distractions of secular life, whether the subject of the biography has been detained in the world by the absence of the vocation to religion, or by inability to carry out his desire to enter the religious state. The examples of this series are to be selected, the editor tells us, chiefly, though not exclusively, from the uncanonized servants of God. He protests strongly

Christendom's Divisions, Part II. Greeks and Latins. Being a full and connected history of their dissensions and overtures for peace down to the Reformation. By EDMUND S. FFOULKES, formerly Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College, Oxford. London: Longman, 1867.

HE second part of an elaborate attack on the Catholic Church, more

guage, but our readers shall judge once more between Mr. Ffoulkes and ourselves. The book is advertised under the heading, "Justice to Greece; not altogether inappropriately, as certain men understand justice, but the "justice" here meant is injustice to the Church, and specially to the Sovereign Pontiffs.

Having said that the "elevation" of Photius to the See of Constantinople was irregular but unpremeditated," Mr. Ffoulkes writes as follows, p. 5:--"Ignatius, the Constantinopolitan patriarch, had offended the Emperor Michael, had been turned out by him, and supplanted by Photius. As he protested against the unjust treatment to which he had been subjected, Michael and Photius appealed to Rome, and Nicholas, in perfect conformity with the course prescribed in the Sardican canons, despatched the bishops of Porto and Anagni as his legates to Constantinople, to try the cause

there."

Now if Mr. Ffoulkes admits that Ignatius was "supplanted" by Photius, he must have been careless when he said that the elevation of that hypocrite was "unpremeditated." Again, the "turning out" of Ignatius is not fairly described as being the result of an offence to the boy Michael, who was emperor at the time. The real "offence" of Ignatius was his public refusal of communion, on the feast of the Epiphany, to the prime minister Bardas, the emperor's uncle. That unprincipled man was living openly in adultery and incest, had disregarded the monitions of the patriarch, and presented himself in a state of notorious impenitence among the communicants. Bardas, to avenge himself on the patriarch, told lies of him, by fraud and violence expelled him from the city, and put Photius in his place.

Mr. Ffoulkes says Ignatius "protested" and "Michael and Photius appealed to Rome." Now no doubt the deposed patriarch did "protest," but to no purpose, for he was in prison and carefully guarded, unable to complain to any one but his jailers, and they were not the men either to sympathize with him or to help him. As for the "appeal" to Rome, we never heard of it before. Why should Photius appeal? he had nothing to appeal against. It is true he wrote to the Pope, but it was to announce his election; and in his letter he told him a falsehood, for he said that Ignatius had abandoned his see (VTEOóvтos), which he knew was not the case, only he hoped the Pope might never know it.

We pass over the reference to the Sardican canons, and ask Mr. Ffoulkes to tell us on what authority he says that the legates of the Pope were to "try the cause." Most certainly they never were empowered to "try" anything; they were to make inquiry only, and report to the Pope, without

judging anything themselves. They were, moreover, commanded to treat Photius not as an ecclesiastic but as a layman, and the Pope, besides, had written himself to Photius in the same sense. The Pope refused from the first to recognize him in his ecclesiastical character.

Of Photius we read thus (the italics are ours) :

:

"He can never cease to command respect in the world of letters; and some day, possibly, his reputation as a theologian will be much more generally allowed.

"As a man, as bishop of the second see in the world, his character was by no means free from blemish, if half the stories told of him are true” (p. 60). "Photius, who appears before us in the character of a peacemaker, a character evidently more congenial to him than that of belligerent, and in which he came out originally till he was forced to assume the other, though it would be difficult to say in which he excelled most. Polite, refined, full of learning and orthodox sentiments, thoroughly familiar with the history of those to whom he was writing the antipodes of Benedict XII. in this respect-he had (p. 498).

"Photius always represents his doctrinal differences as having been with a party, not with Rome, which is strictly true" (p. 15). [Here the italics are those of Mr. Ffoulkes.]

Now Photius denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, and Mr. Ffoulkes says in effect that Rome did not hold that doctrine; and there are passages in the book which make it very doubtful whether he himself is a very hearty believer in it. These are his words; and the italics too are his in the first part, but the last are ours:

"As it is, who can deny that the doctrine of the original procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father has been imperilled by including it in the same proposition with His derivative procession, however eternal, [!] from the Son. Who proceedeth from the Father, Who, by gift of the Father, proceedeth equally from the Son, and is sent by the Son," would not the doctrine of the double procession have been expressed with greater accuracy, without disturbing any of the old landmarks, without the apparent irreverence of adding to words spoken by our Lord Himself?" (pp. 551, 552.)

On the other hand, suppose the change had run,

We know of no words wherewith to describe this. The marvel is how Mr. Ffoulkes contrives to be numbered among Catholics. He quarrels with the definitions of the faith, and charges the Holy See with 66 apparent irreverence."

In another place he gives us an argument of Photius against the Catholic doctrine on the procession, which he considers unanswered or unanswerable; namely; that

"Neither in the creeds of the Ecumenical Councils, nor in any text of Scripture, is there any direct statement of procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, while there is of procession from the Father in each case” (p. 416).

Mr. Ffoulkes is not satisfied with the reply of S. Thomas, that the procession from the Son is held implicitly by those who really believe the procession from the Father, nor is he frightened by the Protestant principle laid down by Photius. If that argument is worth anything, it will overthrow many

doctrines of the Faith; and if anybody had invented it before the Council of Nice, it would have been of good use to the Arians.

The doctrine of the procession from Father and Son is naturally distasteful to a Photian, but we are surprised to hear that "the earliest explicit declaration on record of that doctrine" (p. 67) is to be found in the history of the Council of Toledo, A.D. 589. We were not prepared for this, because S. Leo the Great is commonly quoted as having expressed the doctrine in the usual terms in his letter to the Bishop of Astorga. Qui de Utroque processit. The Spanish converts from Arianism were no doubt "called upon to anathematize" their heresy, but it was reserved for Mr. Ffoulkes to say that they invented a new doctrine in their new fervour. The Spanish converts and Charlemagne are represented by him as the authors of a doctrine which the Holy See always held, and which Pope Leo III. sent to the monks of Mount Olivet, "Ut tam vos quam omnis mundus secundum Romanam sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam rectam et inviolatam teneatis fidem," and this faith included the procession," a Patre et Filio procedens." But Mr. Ffoulkes, carefully forgetting the equally explicit teaching of S. Leo the Great, says that "this was the strongest and most explicit declaration that had emanated from any Pope hitherto in favour of the views prevalent in the West on the Procession" (p. 72).

He is much troubled by "the pseudo-decretals," but he treats as genuine the Caroline books, and gives us, so far as we can see, no hint that learned men have not always regarded them as authentic. They are at least suspicious, and their authority is not so high as to defy resistance. But they are useful to our author, who thus speaks :

"Charlemagne decreed both the interpolation and the doctrine upon false premises. His assertion, which has beguiled so many since then [among others S. Thomas], was that all those who affirmed the single were believers in the double procession in the same sense" (p. 551).

This is surely to say, against all evidence, that the doctrine of the "Filioque" was forced on the Church by Charlemagne about the beginning of the ninth century.

"For a thousand years in round numbers the Latin Church has been committed to the theological ipse dixit of a secular aristocrat" (p. 548).

Who "never acknowledged his error. And so completely did he manage

to indoctrinate the Latin Church with his thesis that "

(p. 589).

Mr. Ffoulkes attributes to the Latin doctors either ignorance or bad faith. They have mis-translated a word in S. Cyril; that is, turned profluit into procedit. This iniquity Alcuin ". was the first to originate" (note to p. 394). "The work on the procession attributed to Alcuin is, perhaps, the earliest instance of a similar assertion" (p. 406), namely, that the double procession was defined at Ephesus and Constantinople. Now, as to profluit: that is the wrong word which Alcuin uses (De Process. Sp. S. Cpp. i., p. 748); and, as to the other charge, that he may have been the first to quote the Councils of Ephesus and Constantinople for his purpose, we have to say that more than a hundred years before the Council of Frankfort, and long before Alcuin and