Studies from Court and Cloister | Page 4

points connected with the history of
religion in Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, its decline, revival,
and the causes which led to both, have already appeared in print as
regards their general outline, although they have for the most part been
rewritten, added to, and in each case subjected to a careful revision.
Three of them were originally published in the Dublin Review, four in
the Scottish Review, two in Blackwood's Magazine, and three in the

Month. One was a contribution to the American Catholic Quarterly
Review. By the courtesy of the respective editors of these publications I
am enabled to gather them together in this volume.
It will be seen at a glance that a certain cohesion, historical and
chronological, exists in their present arrangement, especially with
reference to Part I.
The two first studies concern Henry VIII. and his sister the Queen of
Scots, the significance of their matrimonial affairs, and the relations
which their policy created between England, Scotland, France, and the
Empire. The third study has for its subject the distinguished and
much-maligned Lieutenant of the Tower of London, who contributed
so largely to the accession of the rightful sovereign, and who was
appointed to be governor of the Princess Elizabeth during her captivity
at Woodstock. His subsequent persecution for the sake of religion was
the consequence of Henry VIIIth's rupture with Rome, and Elizabeth's
repudiation of England's Catholic past. And as we can only gain an
intelligible view of any historical movement by studying its context, its
broad outlines, and its connection with foreign nations, the fourth essay
describes the condition to which the religious revolution had reduced
Germany in the sixteenth century, and the reconversion of a great part
of that country, as well as of Austria and Switzerland, to the Catholic
faith. This was the work of the Jesuit, Peter Canisius, and we are thus
led to a consideration of the newly-founded Society of Jesus and its
methods. Its members soon became noted for sanctity and learning, and
emperors, kings, and royal princes clamoured for Jesuits as confessors.
The manner in which these acquitted themselves of the difficult and
unwelcome task imposed on them, is unconsciously revealed by
themselves, in the private correspondence of members of the old
Society, which has now been given to the world by one of their Order.
Selections from this correspondence are contained in the fifth study. As
a further result of the revolution that had been effected in the casting
off of old beliefs and traditions, we note the revival of Pantheism, an
ancient, atheistic philosophy, whose modern apostle was the celebrated
Giordano Bruno. His otherwise fruitless visit to England left a deep
impression on certain minds, learned and ignorant, and we begin for the
first time to hear of examinations and prosecutions for atheism in this
country. And this forms the subject of the sixth essay. The recoil that

invariably takes place after any great political, social, or religious
upheaval was not wanting to the Reformation in England, and in the
reign of Charles I. High-Churchism, under Archbishop Laud, was
thought to indicate a desire on the part of the royalists for a return to
Catholic unity. A Papal agent was dispatched to England to negotiate
between the Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria and Cardinal Barberini,
with a view to the conversion of her husband, which would, it was
hoped, ultimately issue in the corporate reunion of the country with
Rome.
Thus, Part I. deals with some of the persons who had "their exits and
their entrances", who made history during this interesting period. Part II.
treats more especially the books and manuscripts connected with it.
The theme is therefore the same.
Even before England was England, she was the Isle of Saints, and
throughout the Middle Ages religion was her chief care, in a manner
almost incredible in this secular and materialistic age. She not only
covered the land with magnificent churches and cathedrals, to the
architecture of which we cannot in these days approach, even by
imitation, distantly, but she also built huge monasteries, and these
monasteries were the cradles, the homes of vast stores of
ever-accumulating knowledge. A system of philosophy, to which the
world is even now returning, recognising that there is no better training
for the human intellect, is so distinctly mediaeval, that all that savoured
even remotely of St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus in the University
was utterly destroyed in a great bonfire made at Oxford in 1549. At the
dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., the labour, the learning,
the genius of centuries were as nought. Exquisitely written and
illuminated Bibles, missals and other choice manuscripts, displaying a
wealth of palaeographic art to which we have lost the key, were torn
from their jewelled bindings, and were