[Footnote 159: Edinburgh Review, 1845.]
Up to the time of the Reformation the Roman church was manifestly in the forefront of civilization. After that terrible revolution she was still really so, but not always manifestly. Her position was the same, but that of society had changed. It no longer accepted her laws; it cavilled at her authority, ort openly spurned it. People forgot their debt of gratitude to the power which had always interfered in behalf of the oppressed, and princes jibed at the restraints which the papacy imposed on their absolute rule. The printing-press was wrested from the church's hands, and made the chief engine for propagating misbelief. A new and spurious civilization was set up, and was so blended with real and amazing progress in many of the sciences and the arts of life, that when the popes opposed what was corrupt in it and of evil tendency, they often appeared adverse to what was genuine. Of this their enemies took every advantage, and constantly represented them as the mortal foes of the liberty, enlightenment, and progress of mankind. Pontiff after pontiff protested against this wilful misrepresentation, which has lasted three hundred years, and continues in full force to this day. Seldom has it been put forward more speciously than in reference to the recent Encyclical of Pius IX. We shall endeavor to show its utter falsity in the remainder of this article.
Thrown back in her efforts to evangelize Europe, the church turned with more ardor than ever toward the other hemisphere. Already Alvarez di Cordova had planted the cross in Congo. Idolatry vanished before it almost entirely in the African territory recently discovered, and upon its ruins rose the city of San Salvador. The ills inflicted on the Americans by the first Spanish settlers were repaired by the Benedictine Bernard di Buil, and other missionaries who trod in his steps. The Dominicans set their faces sternly against reducing the Indians to the rank of slaves, and Father Monterino, in the church of St. Domingo, inveighed against it in the presence of the governor, with all [{651}] the fervor of popular eloquence. [Footnote 160] The life of Bartholomew de Las Casas was one long struggle against the cupidity and cruelty of Spanish masters and in favor of Indian freedom. The labors and successes of St. Francis Xavier are too well known to require recapitulation in this place; it is more to the purpose to remark that the missionaries of Rome, from Mexico and the Philippine islands, to Goa, Cochin-China, and Japan, everywhere exposed to adverse climate, hardship, and martyrdom, carried with them the two-fold elements of civilization--religion and the arts of life. The Jesuit who started for China was provided with telescope and compass. He appeared at the court of Pekin with the urbanity of one fresh from the presence of Louis XIV., and surrounded with the insignia of science. He unrolled his maps, turned his globes, chalked out his spheres, and taught the astonished mandarins the course of the stars and the name of him who guides them in their orbits. [Footnote 161] Buffon, [Footnote 162] Robertson, and Macaulay have alike extolled the missionary zeal of the Jesuit fathers, and have ascribed to them, not merely the regeneration of the inward man, but the cultivation of barren lands, the building of cities, new high roads of commerce, new products, new riches and comforts for the whole human race.
[Footnote 160: Robertson, Hist. of America.]
[Footnote 161: Génie du Christianisme.]
[Footnote 162: Hist. Naturelle de l'Homme.]
In teaching barbarous nations the arts of life and the elements of scientific knowledge, the missionaries acted in perfect accordance with the spirit of the papacy and the example of the religious orders. Each of these had its appointed sphere, and each civilized mankind in its own way. The templars, the knights of St. John, the Teutonic knights, and half a dozen other now forgotten military orders, defended civilization with the sword; the Chartreux, the Benedictines, the Bernardines, in quiet and shady retreats, preserved from decay the precious stores of heathen antiquity, compiled the history of their several epochs, and gave themselves, under many disadvantages, to the study of natural philosophy; the Redemptorists, the Trinitarians, and the Brothers of Mercy devoted themselves to the redemption of captives and the emancipation of slaves. Voltaire cannot pass them over without a burst of admiration, when touching on their benevolent career during six centuries. [Footnote 163] Some orders made preaching and private instruction their special work, and among these were the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustines. The pulpit is the lever that raises the moral world; and it civilizes city, village, and hamlet the more effectually because its work is constant and systematic. It explains, Sunday after Sunday, and festival after festival, the sublimest and deepest of all sciences, while it guides society, with persuasive might, in the path of moral improvement. With all that social science has devised for the comfort and welfare of mankind, nothing that it has ever invented is so essentially civilizing, so dignified and lovely, so unpretending and strong, as the self-denying labors of brothers and sisters of charity, sacrificing youth, beauty, prospects, tastes, and indulgence, on the altar of religion, and passing their days among the lepers and the plague-stricken, the ignorant, the degraded, the squalid and the infirm.
[Footnote 163: Sur les Moeurs, ch. cxx.]
And of these orders, none, be it observed, has railed against knowledge. By no rule, in any one of them, has ignorance been made a virtue and science a sin. All have admired the beauty of knowledge--the fire on her brow--her forward countenance--her boundless domain. All have wished well to her cause, and have maintained only that she should know her place; that she is the second, not the first; that she is not wisdom, but [{652}] wisdom's handmaid; that she is of earth, and wisdom is of heaven; she is of the world for the church, and wisdom is of the church for the world. Severed from religion, they regarded her as some wild Pallas from the brain of demons; but science guided by a higher hand, and moving side by side with revelation, like the younger child, they believed to be the most beautiful spectacle the mind could contemplate.
To repeat these things in the ears of well read Catholics, is to iterate a thrice-told tale. But there are others who need often to be reminded of facts of history which our adversaries are apt to ignore. Besides the vast body of priests and religious orders, whose office was to disseminate thought and piety through the world, the papacy constantly sought new vehicles by which to promote science. The greater part of the universities of Europe owe their existence to this agency. Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Naples, Padua, Vienna, Upsal, Lisbon, Salamanca, Toulouse, Montpellier, Orleans, Nantes, Poictiers, and a multitude beside, were made centres of human knowledge under the patronage of the popes, and Clement V., Gregory IX., Engenius IV., Nicholas V., and Pius II., were among the most illustrious of their founders.