Was there ever such a year as 1921 for centenaries—centenaries, that is, of events which loom large in the history of the Christian Church? We have just celebrated in this country the seventh centenary of the Third Order of St. Francis ; we are about to celebrate that of the passing of St. Dominic ; almost simultaneously occurs the sixth centenary of the “Sommo Poeta,” Dante Alighieri, so intimately connected, spiritually and intellectually, with both the great Founders and their Orders. The Dominican Order celebrates this year the seventh centenary of its arrival in England. And attention was recently called to the fact that this same year sees the centenary of the conversion of St. Ignatius Loyola.

These coincidences lend interest to a Conference given by the eminent Italian publicist, the Marchese Crispolti, at Florence, on May 28th, in the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Novella. The distinguished orator pointed out to his hearers that Dante after having in his youth learnt grammar and the art of “composing rhymes in the vulgar tongue” and of writing Latin epistles in the schools of the Friars Minor at Santa Croce—where also he imbibed from the Franciscan surroundings and spirit his admiration for the life of the Poverello and his inclination towards mysticism—went forth at the age of eighteen to enter upon his public life. It was after the death of Beatrice, when already many other influences were partly drawing him aside from the pure influence of her memory, that the Poet, then about twenty-five years of age, felt attracted to more solid and more regular studies.

The medieval mind was always fertile in experiment. It had all the freshness of a new age that was ceaselessly driven by new circumstances to adapt the fashions of Christendom to conditions violently alien. The restless constitution-making in England, the long experiment in liberty that marks the line of Plantagenet, is part of the same effort; and it is no less visible in the disorderly histories of Florence and Venice. The Cathedrals are one expression of it, the Guilds another, and the Crusades flung valiantly abroad the same temper of adventure, the same daring that would risk defeat or even face certain failure.

As the central force of Christendom the Papacy was peculiarly subject to the same romantic influence, as the stories of Hildebrand and of Innocent III abundantly prove. John XXII with his curious career as theologian, as politician, as apostle, is another instance. The greatest foreign missioner of the line of Pontiffs since the days of Peter, he bears witness in the magnificence of his ideals and his unconquerable hopefulness to the same indomitable spirit. To his hand the Orders of Friars, particularly the Dominicans and the Franciscans, were the most fitted and best used instruments. It will be sufficient to quote the opening words of his Bull of 1318 to the Dominican Order, to show how tremendously alive the Church had become, both in head and members, to the need of Catholic propaganda. The Bull is addressed to “our beloved sons, the Friar Preachers in the lands of the Saracens, Pagans, Greeks, Bulgars, Tartars, Alani, Gazaenes, Goths, Ruthenians, Jacobites, Nubians, Nestorians, Georgians, Armenians, Indians, Macolites, and other unbelieving nations in the East and North.”

Generalization about national or racial characteristics is a dangerous—if, for one’s leisure moments, rather fascinating—game, above all if played with no sense of humour. The Germans and their followers in this and other countries have cultivated the sport to a most tiresome degree. Very systematically and very solemnly they have constructed a marvellously complete index of mental and spiritual characteristics, tabulating opposite each the particular race which, in their opinion, embodies those characteristics. The game then consists in tracing, in the mixture of races inhabiting Europe since history began to be recorded, the proportion of this or that racial element and the precise intellectual, physical, or social characteristic for which it is held to be responsible.

It is, of course, far removed from the intention of this essay to assert that there is nothing in anthropology, even in German anthropologists. The question under discussion, which concerns the growth in Europe of our day, above all in Germany, of what may be called an “end of Europe” literature—the reason why this has been introduced with this apparently irrelevant remark is that, in the first place, the methods of the German race-theorists will form a good object-lesson for use later on in this article ; second, because tht writer wished to be above all suspicion in himself making a generalization concerning national characteristics. It is this—and it will be seen that it differs from German race-theories in being based, not on an entirely questionable assumption of racial elements in this or that nation, but on the proved and generally observed practice of representative German historians, philosophers, and scientists.

The purpose of this brief article is to show cause why the traditional identification of Pope Celestine V with “him who made through cowardice the great refusal” (Inf. iii, 60) should be abandoned, and Dante’s memory cleared from an act of impiety.

The identification has no authority. It has, apparently, been repeated by commentators without any investigation, the only reason being Dante’s well-known hostility, on political grounds, to Boniface VIII, and the fact that Celestine’s abdication gave Benedetto Gaetano his opportunity.

Dante himself gives us no clue whatsoever. In its absence we can only fall back upon probability. And probability is entirely against it. There is only one certain allusion to Boniface’s predecessor in the whole of his writings. It occurs in the remarkable story told by Count Guido da Montefeltro in Malebolge (Inf. xxvii, 105). Guido had counselled the taking of Penestrino by deceit on the strength of Boniface’s promise to absolve him from it. “Heaven,” said the Pope, “can I both lock and unlock, as you know ; for twain are the keys, which my predecessor held not dear (non ebbe care).” This is Dante’s only allusion to the hermit pope, and it has not a trace of anger or contempt. It was in an uncritical age, too,—an age which preferred Petrarch to Dante—that Alban Butler wrote the extraordinary footnote to his account of St. Peter Celestine (May 19). Petrarch himself, who in his De Vita Solitaria extols the saint as “a soul very perfect and free,” and rebuts the charge of vilitas animi which he supposes Dante to have made against him, confesses that he had not taken much notice of the Commedia.

It is now eleven years since the publication of the first volume of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. The contemporary book-market hardly noticed the arrival of the stranger who modestly took his place amidst the “recent books.” Few of the buyers and sellers in the market suspected the toil and hope that had prepared this translation for its place on the already overcrowded mart of books in English. Still fewer, even of those, whose toil was thus realized, could have foreseen the success which welcomed the translation almost from the first.

Daring, so great as to be akin to foolhardiness, had inspired the makers of the translation. Although the audience who might reasonably be expected to read and buy the translation was, if fit, yet few, the translators printed an edition of two thousand. The edition proved, not too great, but too small. In some three years a new edition was needed ; and was delayed only by the stress of the Great War. Since then three other volumes have been exhausted. Upwards of 20,000 copies have been sold. When it is remembered that this great sale is of a classic of the deepest philosophy and theology, our readers will see how the success of the venture has astonished even its most daring promoters.

To free a country is one thing. To consolidate it is another. In some cases the latter task is more difficult. Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, now reunited after centuries of separation, are fusing so violently that intermittent sparks often threaten conflagration. Freedom, and the application of true Liberal principles have put an end to political murders once endemic in the Balkans (we find them nearer home nowadays), but discord and local jealousy prevail. Each branch of the race has found out that the other is far from perfect, and the disappointment is extreme. At first, quarrelling was conducted in best parliamentary style.

“You won the war,” said Croat to Serb, with hyperbolic magnanimity. “We cannot forget the tremendous sacrifices you made. You are the first factor in our new State. You have great prestige and honour abroad. You are bound to dominate. There is little regard for us who are shoved altogether in the background.”

“Flatterer!” retorted the Serb, disconcerted at having his chief arguments forestalled and finding his merits arrayed against him. “Mine was but the rough work, and now it is your turn to shine. How can an uncouth soldier compete with you in the arts of peace? You are immeasurably beyond us in the higher paths of civilization. Croat savants, artists, scientists are proficient in all we had no time to think about. Why should you dread being swamped by the handful of us extant after the war?”

But the exchange of polite, bitter remarks soon gave place to envenomed diatribes, and the order of compliments was reversed. At the present moment opinion is sharply divided on the constitutional form of the new State.

When a little band of Dominicans, led by Friar Gilbert de Fresney, arrived in Oxford on the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, August the 15th, 1221, the University was already rising to fame. Oxford, however, at that date was in no sense the rival of Paris. Her glory was yet to come—a glory to which the newly arrived friars were to contribute considerably. Oxford gave Gilbert and his brethren an enthusiastic welcome and in a short time they were able to erect a small convent and schools in the Jewry. Their fame spread, their numbers increased, and in less than three years they had outgrown their accommodation and were forced to seek a new and larger home. At the suggestion of King Henry III they chose for their new site a river-island in the south suburb of the town, outside the Water Gate in the parish of St. Ebbe. The king himself owned this property, which he generously made over to the friars. And Isabel Bolbec de Vere, the widowed Countess of Oxford, undertook to build them a new priory. It is interesting to note that, fifty years later, another widowed Countess of Oxford, Alice de Vere, rebuilt the convent of the Dominicans in the sister University of Cambridge. Walter Mauclerk, Bishop of Carlisle and Treasurer of England, also proved a signal benefactor to the community amongst whom he entered as a novice in 1246. Countess Isabel died in 1245, a few months before the friars entered their new abode.