The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868

In the galaxy of illustrious men whom God has given to France in this century, there is one whom history will place in the first rank. We mean the author of the Monks of the West , the Count de Montalembert. There has not been since the seventeenth century till now such an assemblage of men of genius and lofty character gathered round the standard of the church, combating for her and leaving behind them works that will never die. Attacked on all sides at once, the church has found magnanimous soldiers to bear the brunt of the battle, and meet her enemies in every quarter. Even though the victory has not yet been completely won, with such defenders she cannot doubt of final success and future triumph. How great are the names of Montalembert, Lacordaire, Ravignan, Dupanloup, Ozanam, Augustin Co-chin, the Prince de Broglie, de Falloux, Cauchy, and of so many others! The natural sciences, history, political economy, controversy, parliamentary debates, pulpit eloquence, have been studied and honored by these men; superior in all those sciences on account of the truth which they defend, and equal in talent to their most renowned rivals.
The figure of the Count de Montalembert stands conspicuous in that group of giant intellects by the universality of his eminent gifts. A historian full of erudition, an incomparable orator, and a writer combining the classic purity of the seventeenth century with the energy and fire of the nineteenth, an indefatigable polemic, a man of the world, yet an orthodox churchman, but above all a practical and fervent Christian; this great defender of Catholic truth has merited immortal praise from his contemporaries and from posterity.
Among all the works of this energetic champion of the faith. The Monks of the West holds indisputably the first place. It is the work of Montalembert's entire life. He has put into it his Benedictine erudition, his passionate love for truth, the charming and dramatic power of his style in the narration of events, his inimitable talent for painting in words the portraits of those famous characters whom he wishes to present to the eye of the reader; and their traits remain ineffaceably stamped on the mind. Especially does the soul of the true Christian breathe on every page of the volumes. For more than forty years their author bent piously over those austere forms of the Benedictine monks of the early ages to ask them the secret of their lives, of their virtues, of their influence on their country and their age. He has studied them with that infallible instinct of faith which had disclosed to him a hidden treasure in those old monastic ruins, and in those dusty and unexplored monuments of their contemporary literature; the treasure, namely, of the influence of the church acting on the barbarians through the monks. This is the leading idea of the whole work. It would be a mistake to expect, under the title of Monks of the West , a history of mere asceticism, or a species of continuation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert . Writers no longer treat, as that work does, the lives of the saints. Readers are not satisfied with the simple account of the virtues practised or the number of miracles performed by the canonized children of the church. Modern men want to look into the depths of a saint's soul; to know what kind of a human heart throbbed in his bosom, and how far he participated in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary human nature. The circumstances in which he lived and studied, the opinions formed of him by his contemporaries, are weighed, and the traces left by his sanctity or genius on the manners and institutions of his country are closely considered.