In the course of two interesting articles in the April and May numbers of Blackfriars, Fr. Aelred Whitacre has developed a view of Bd. Robert Bellarmine which would have gladdened the heart of the ‘Advocatus Diaboli.’ Blessed Robert, we are to believe, was a man torn between two loyalties, that to truth and conviction on the one hand, and that to his own Order and its Superiors on the other. In the event, it was the latter which prevailed. Arnica veritas, sed magis arnica Societas is in substance Fr. Whitacre’s verdict. Such a view of one whom the Church has been pleased to honour with beatification is piquant, and, could it be sustained, might well cause grief to those who respect the Church’s decisions. Fortunately, however, for a great man’s reputation, Fr. Whitacre would appear, from the manner in which he has endeavoured to prove his point, not to have had access to the findings of recent research on the life of Bellarmine. His reading, it would seem, has been in the main confined to Serry’s eighteenth-century Historia Congregationum de Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae, a partisan document, long since discredited, and known to all students of the subject as utterly untrustworthy.

A Recent paragraph in a Catholic paper stated that ‘the Francisco de Vitoria chair of international law was inaugurated on 10th November last at Salamanca University. The object of the chair is to make better known the teachings of the Dominican Friar Francisco de Vitoria on the rights of men.’

The fact that Spain numbered among her illustrious sons the man, who, rather than Grotius, may be regarded as the founder of international law in Europe was evidently forgotten by a section of the press in this country when it greeted with surprised protests her request to be granted a seat on the permanent Council of the League of Nations.

To scholars and jurists Francisco de Vitoria has long been known.

The first volume of the ‘Classics of International Law,’ published at Washington in 1917 is devoted to him. It contains the Latin text, with an English translation, of his great ‘Relectiones,’ ‘De Indis’ and ‘De jure belli,’ with an introductory sketch of his life by the Belgian Professor E. Nys. The General Editor of the Series, James Brown Scott, President of the American Institute of International Law, writes: ‘The General Editor is unwilling to allow this volume to go to press without a tribute in passing to the broad-minded and generous-hearted Dominican, justly regarded as one of the founders of International Law, and whose two tractates here reproduced are, as Thucydides would say, a perpetual possession to the international lawyer ....

From time to time Educational Authorities have set up Committees whose members have individually and collectively advocated a liberal school syllabus to produce a definite and desirable result: but it is often convenient to invite and publish criticism; one can go one’s own way afterwards without disturbance. Education may have two aims : either it can endeavour to produce good citizens; or it can turn out a product malleable to the industrial tools. The first course is called ‘liberal education’ ; the second is simply called ‘education,’ and it is the mode generally employed in modern schools.

The Charlotte Mason and the P.N.E.U. schemes are still in experimental stages, and are for the most part confined to elementary and progressive preparatory schools. There are other schemes of an unorthodox nature which receive less and less attention as time goes on. It is true that ideas promulgated by these systems are adopted in many secondary schools, but in the main they are included for purposes of variety or as links between two grades of teaching.

It is to John Fisher, most illustrious of her Chancellors, that Cambridge owes the introduction of the New Learning which transformed the whole academic system and inspired it with fresh vigour. In his early years at the University Italian scholarship was beginning to arouse the interest of the learned; and the name of his friend Erasmus is forever associated with the Humanist movement and the study of Greek which was then beginning to revolutionise the academic world.

Perhaps few men have ever been more persistently misrepresented, both by contemporaries and by posterity, than the most famous scholar of the Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam. The testimony of his own works was, and is, often either ignored or totally misread; and a number of his later biographers show a distressing lack of any sense of humour—without which he must indeed remain an enigma to the most learned mind—that alone makes them incapable of understanding the witty genius who complained so bitterly when his contemporaries took him too seriously. Some even hail him as one of the leaders of the Reformation, ranging him with Luther and his companions, against whose works the great scholar fought with all the might of his pen. Even the ‘uncoguid’ among those of his own faith have distrusted Erasmus. Surely the best answer to all criticisms— granting all his faults—is the eloquent fact that the two men who knew him best in England, and who stood by him to the end, were Thomas More and John Fisher. If it be true that we may judge a man by his friends, the judgment should stand Erasmus in good stead.

Not in the Pictures from Italy, published in 1846 after the first long visit to that country, is the true perception of monasticism revealed. In the presence of ceremonial activities the comic spirit possessed Dickens. Ludicrous comparisons invaded his mind when he gazed upon ecclesiastical or civil solemnities. The constitutional irreverence of the newspaper reporter could not be subdued—not even in Rome itself. Dickens noted that the Pope had ‘a pleasant and venerable face,’ but the carrying of his Holiness in a chair round St. Peter’s on a great occasion after High Mass had ‘nothing solemn or effective in it; and certainly much that was droll and tawdry.’ The ‘whole ceremony’ indeed left no other impression ; ‘except the raising of the Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the ground; which had a fine effect.’

Dickens, of course, poked fun at the regular clergy —as good men have done in every age—and he found them everywhere in Italy in the forties. Dislike of the Jesuits is not concealed. The sons of St. Ignatius are ‘stealthy,’ they ‘creep in and out’ of St. Peter’s; in Milan they were observed in the streets ‘slinking noiselessly about in pairs.’ (But how did Dickens know they were Jesuits? Did the ‘velvet tread’ of popular repute give them away? Is the footgear of the Jesuit really unique? Father Thurston might clear up the mystery).

No one, I think, has ever ventured to compare Mr. A. J. Cook with William Cobbett. If we are to judge by the daily press, Mr. Cook is not a popular man among the ruling classes, among the middle classes, nor even among the working classes. Not the ignorance of journalists, but the policy of newspaper owners—a remarkably small class, and daily growing smaller—is responsible for the abuse heaped upon Mr. Cook. If he has not been compared with William Cobbett, it is not because Cobbett is less well-known than he ought to be, but also that his views would be as unpopular to-day as are those of Mr. Cook. Cobbett has not yet been dead long enough for his views to be regarded dispassionately by the majority, and a century hence Mr. Cook will still have his critics. But his critics will not then be malicious. He will still be branded as an ‘agitator,’ but common sense will show that British miners and not Russian Bolsheviks were his paymasters.

The Rural Rides show Cobbett to have been a keen observer, not only of nature—for he was a born farmer—but of that continually changing thing which we call the social organism. Observation of the present led him to study the past: from the effect he traced the cause, and to this we owe his History of the Protestant Reformation, which showed that upheaval to have been in this country an economic rather than a religious movement.

GK. Chesterton has said rightly that Protestantism never emphasises a truth except by means of denying some other truth—which is, I suppose, the reason that it shows to-day a reaction against all its first positions. Faith alone has changed to works alone, no temporal punishment in the next world has changed into no eternal punishment, the Bible an entirely divine document has become the Bible an entirely human document. In all these instances the reformers asserted that they wanted to emphasise a truth which the Church was neglecting; in all these cases their successors are trying to affirm another truth forgotten or denied by them.

In some ways the most interesting instance of this see-saw is the case of the Bible, and we need not go back three hundred years to study in this matter the earlier attitude of Protestantism. We can study it in the remoter parts of America or the suburbs of London and Birmingham in the persons of Fundamentalists and Four Square Gospellers. At many a C.E.G. Platform do they heckle, and in the Protestant Alliance magazines they state also their simple creed : ‘the pure word of God without note or comment.’

Yet is it really so simple? Without entering into the question of why the hecklers contradict each other, and contradict Catholic teaching as well, we may ask one question that insistently suggests itself : If the word of God requires no note or comment, why do they write or preach? When a crowd of ‘Hot Gospellers’ gathered in the Albert Hall to listen to Aimée Semple Macpherson,

A Railway Guide of long ago makes fascinating reading, and we know many people who can drink delight from the faded pages of a back number of an aged Bradshaw; and in the same way an old-time Catholic Directory is interesting, since it serves as a mirror of times which can never return. Just now, when our thoughts are directed towards the coming centenary of Catholic Emancipation, nothing will afford us a more illuminating view of the changes wrought in the past seventy years than a glance at one of these old Directories.

We will take the modest little volume published for the year 1850. It has an interest of its own from the fact that, being prepared of course in 1849, it was in use during the year that saw the re-establishment of the Hierarchy and consequently the passing of the old government by Vicars Apostolic of whom there had been since 1840 eight instead of the accustomed four. The Directory in question is of course drawn up on the basis of this division into eight Vicariates, and the resulting confusion during the year 1850 must have been considerable.

But apart from this, the first thing that strikes one is the curious fact that the Christian names of many priests were unknown; we find entries such as Rev.— Quiblier; in fact, the editor begs for information on the subject. Foreign names among the clergy at that time are only to be expected. Indeed, they are very numerous and sometimes rather startling.

There are those who protest that they look upon gardening as a hobby—not with an eye of joyous anticipation for the fruits of their labour, but simply as a pastime : they have warped minds. The aim of work is to produce something one can enjoy, to effect something desirable ; and muddy shoes, grimed hands and an aching back are neither good nor profitable. The result of such labour is a spick and span floral display that one is invited to admire but not to enjoy : and such toilers who chance to be dog-lovers as well grow almost demented when a lively terrier goes about his ‘ lawful occasions ’ of digging. And as likely as not they work on a formal plan, and produce an exhibition. of colours and shapes such as skilled window dressers effect in London shops. The only delight I can imagine in a garden like, that is to pretend one is back in the eighteenth century, being cavalier and subtly artificial.

One ought to feel immediately at home in a garden, and what Beau was ever at home ?

I have just been reading an extremely interesting book by Dr. McNair Wilson, called Napoleon the Man. The book gives a picture of Napoleon which, the author claims in his preface, has never before been given in the English language. The claim is, I fancy, a just one; although, if he had written his book in French, it would have been hardly possible for him to establish so large a title to originality. For the thesis which Dr. Wilson urges upon us as a new and hitherto concealed truth is very much the thesis which M. Coquelle, in his book, Napoleon l’ Angleterre, sets out to refute as the conventional academic interpretation of Napoleon’s character.

However, be that as it may. Dr. Wilson has many very interesting and very provocative things to say, any one of which might be made the subject of an essay. Briefly, his thesis is that Napoleon was the hero of peace and democracy who gave to the world a new gospel. This gospel was temporarily defeated at Waterloo, but it was not then killed. It was the gospel for which England and France fought together during the years 1914-1918 and which eventually triumphed at Versailles.

There seems to be a growing tendency among writers of Catholic fiction, especially of the short story, to fall back on the miraculous in the working out of the plot. There is a two-fold lure. The writers, possessed of a belief in the miraculous themselves, may aim at augmenting the faith of others, or they may use the miraculous as a deus ex machina in the evolution of a plot beyond mere human power, unaided, to solve. It may be contended that after all, as fiction, it is all in the realm of fancy and, being so understood by the reader, no harm is done. But consider how our sense of accuracy is being daily vitiated by the ordinary allurements of fiction and of film. And yet never was there an age when the possibilities of accuracy were greater, for research in every direction is piling up verified facts, which are gradually, though slowly enough, being disseminated. But there are so many who are being drugged into indifferentism, and even into unbelief, by the very embarrassment of the riches of the unveracious. Is it wise, therefore, to use a miracle like ‘a golden banner dragged in the mud’ to add to the enhancement of an ordinary tale, or even of a story grandly told?

It is an incredulous age, but it is not through the medium of fiction, no matter how reverently written, that belief in the miraculous will be inspired or increased.

In a preceding paper, we were concerned to show firstly what was the real mind of the theologian, Bellarmine, concerning the theories and teaching of his confreres, Lessius and Molina; and, secondly, how his own treatise called Controversies came to be altered and mutilated in order to be brought in line to some extent with the new theories. In the following pages, which are concerned with some of the moves in the heated debate between Molinism and the traditional Thomism, it is necessary to bring into light certain activities of Bellarmine, when the theological consensus in Rome was becoming more and more convinced of the necessity for passing condemnation upon the dangerous ideas then being promulgated. The account will largely serve to reveal the zeal of obedience which Blessed Robert Bellarmine gave to his superiors, and the extent of his efforts to shield the good name of his fellow religious from public condemnation.

After the third examination of Molina’s Concordia by the commission appointed by the Holy See, approximately sixty different passages taken from that work, were reduced to twenty, in which the whole of the doctrine condemned as heretical, erroneous, temerarious, and dangerous, was compendiously gathered together. It is said by Fr. Brodrick (vol. ii, p. 55) that as the examinations of the Concordia increased in number, so the numbers of propositions condemned decreased;