improvement, was invited as he passed through Fleury, to deliver some lectures. This conventual school was justly proud of having educated the most distinguished members of the secular clergy of France and Germany. It owed, at this time, part of its celebrity to its abbot, the illustrious Abbo. According to the testimony of St. Cadroc's biographer, this saint was profoundly versed in all imaginable learning! Adalbert, bishop of Metz, invited him to his residence, and confided to him the direction of the convent of St. Felix, and of the seminary; but Cadroc soon quitted Metz, and returned to his own country. No one contributed more to the restoration of learning, or rendered greater services to the church of England, than the illustrious Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. Dunstan is, without contradiction, one of the finest and most noble politico-religious characters of the ancient history of England, and it is precisely on that account that he has been so ill understood, and so cruelly misrepresented. He ought to be regarded, as in some respects the saviour of the church of England. Glastonbury, his favourite residence, whither he was accustomed to retire in solitary retreat from the world, became the nursery of the most learned, the most pious, and the holiest men of England and Ireland.'

Leaving, for the honour of old England, all these commendations unchallenged, the next subject we come to is the schools of France in the eleventh century, when the theological academies of Lyons, Langres, and Chartres, were in a very flourishing condition. The pupils of these academies, which were still established in the bishop's palaces, lived in common, quite after the manner of the primitive seminaries. Some of the most distinguished elèves of this period were St. Majol, abbot at Cluni, who studied at Lyons; and St. Halimard, archbishop of Lyons; and Adelman, bishop of Brescia, who studied at Langres and Chartres. The famous Berengarius also studied at Chartres. The seminary at Rheims was renowned for its president Gerbert, archbishop of that city, and afterwards pope, under the name of Sylvester II; and the episcopal seminary at Tulle was immortalized by St. Adalbert and St. Bruno, the latter of whom was cousin to the emperor Conrad III., and pope, under the name of Leo IX.

The principal seminaries of Germany, and their respective worthies, are then just touched upon, but there is nothing in the enumeration which requires notice, except the seminary at Hildesheim and the Palatine school. Respecting the former, we read ::

'St. Bernard, an offshoot of the illustrious family of the counts of Sonnenberg, which produced a succession of electors of Saxony, was educated there, and became afterwards bishop of Hildesheim. Bernard united to all the virtues which his high position required, the greatest ability in the mechanical arts He was a good architect, and a skilful locksmith, and he employed his talents in adorning his

cathedral. He copied and illuminated ancient manuscripts, in an admirable manner, and did not disdain, personally, to instruct the pupils of his seminary. Owing to his great scientific renown, he was named preceptor to the young emperor, Otho III. Gothard, Bernard's successor, justly placed in the number of the saints, on account of the great services which he rendered the church, threw as much zeal as his predecessor had done into the instruction of the clergy. He also taught the pupils of the seminary theological learning and the mechanical arts.'

We have not room for an extract respecting the Palatine school: a short abstract must suffice. Bruno, invited by his elder brother, Otho, at the time when the latter was invested with the imperial dignity, to restore this school, organized immediately a complete course of the seven liberal arts. agreed with the professors that they should explain all the 'chef-d'œuvres' of the historians, orators, poets, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, in order that the students might be perfectly well informed on all branches of learning; being well convinced that extensive knowledge, even in a religious point of view, is the finest ornament of the church.' Whithersoever Bruno went, whether on an episcopal visitation, or attending the imperial court, he carried his library with him, partly for study, and partly for business-'ferens secum et causam studii sui, et instrumentum: causam in divinis, instrumentum in gentilibus libris.' Among the other seminaries of Germany, those of Münster, and especially Paderborn, became distinguished for their range of studies. Not content with the trivium, which comprised grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the professors of the latter seminary extended their plan over the quadrivium, which included, besides those, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. They also read courses on Horace, Virgil, Sallust, and Statius. The students took pleasure in employing their leisure hours in cultivating the liberal arts-poetry, music, and eloquence, and engaged zealously in copying ancient manuscripts, which they adorned with beautiful miniatures. This school was open to those young people only who were intended for the ecclesiastical profession. Discipline was maintained in it with inexorable severity. When a youth was once admitted into the seminary, his relatives were no longer permitted to visit, or even to speak to him, 'since,' said the bishop, 'their caresses might easily make him vain, or high-minded, and so incapable of devoting himself to the pursuit of learning.'

The remainder of this part is devoted to a consideration of the causes which hastened the decline of these theological seminaries. After the commencement of the twelfth century, almost all traces of them disappeared, so that in the sixteenth, when Ignatius Loyola formed the bold resolution of restoring

to the church its ancient influence and lustre, not a remnant of them was to be found. So generally had they been forgotten, that when the council of Trent gave the weight of its authority to their re-establishment, they were everywhere regarded as a new institute.

We cannot enter into Dr. Theiner's disquisitions on the causes of this decline. He ascribes it, partly to the decay of the pure feudal spirit which existed at the time of their institution, and partly to the establishment of the university system. The depravation of the pure feudal spirit, he thinks, was immediately followed by the dissolution of the 'canonical life' of the clergy. He does not state whether he means in monasteries, as well as in those laxer institutions, where persons lived in commons under a rule, but it would necessarily affect both, though not in equal degrees. The cause to which he ascribes the greatest influence, however, is the foundation of the universities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at the head of which for a time, stood those of Bologna and Paris. The terms in which we have censured the work as a whole, must not prevent our expressing the interest with which we have read this portion of it; it is, in our judgment, both sound in theory, and well written. Indeed, had the first and third parts possessed either the interest of the narrative from which we have so largely extracted, or the truth and force of the argument with which this second part closes, we should have spoken very differently of it, and have done so cheerfully. We must permit ourselves, before we pass on, one brief extract more, in which the author pours out his complaints on the decline of the seminaries which have been described :

'Not to leave the narrow circle we have prescribed to ourselves, and to speak only of the seminaries, we must ask of this sublime academical epoch, [i. e. that of the universities] What had become of the holy zeal of the bishops for the instruction of the clergy? Where were the prelates, who composed with so much ease and unction, pious hymns in Greek and Latin, to the praise of God, and the honour of the saints of his church? Where were the young clerical students, able to preach and write in the languages of Latium and Athens as fluently as in their mother tongues? Where were those holy professors of literature and science, who looked up to heaven alone for the recompense of their labours and their efforts? Where those profound studies in astronomy and mathematics? What, in fine, had become of that holy manner of life, which equally distinguished the superior and inferior clergy, and which, in both classes, had produced men, whom their erudition, their virtues, and their piety, will render ever memorable as objects of admiration to the world, and who will ever be saluted with the title of benefactors of the human race? We may say, with reason, this pious and holy

epoch was that of the poetic infancy of christian art and science in Europe it passed away modestly, and without noise, under the eye of the world, in holy aspirations towards God, and wished to leave no traces of itself but its own merits, of which it had too much humility itself to speak.'

Admitting that the importance of the era in question was long overlooked, and that the age was even misrepresented, because it was little known, there is one material point on which we are at issue with Dr. Theiner. The monastic severity and seclusion which, as our extracts have shown, ruled in most of these institutions, prevented the good they might contain from being diffused over society; the world at large, therefore, had but little interest in preserving them; and we have no reason to doubt that it was with the seminaries as with the monasteries, that the want of a healthy action upon them from society at large caused them to become, in far too many instances, nurseries of indolence and secret vice-vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.

The third and last part, (which, with the supplementary documents, comprises three-fourths of the whole work, and is in the proportion of twelve to one to either of the other parts,) is headed History and Condition of the Institutions for Clerical Education, from the Council of Trent to the present Times.' Reckoning from 1563, when this council closed its sittings, till 1833, when Dr. Theiner's work was published, we have a period of 270 years; a period shorter in duration than either of the preceding periods, but richer both in facts and authorities than both of them put together.

The author has not contented himself in this part with the history of theological seminaries, but, towards the close espccially, has admitted many irrelevant, or at least unnecessary, details; having devoted nearly 150 pages to a narrative of the causes which led to the suppression of the Jesuits, and the spread of infidel principles in France and Germany, by the encyclopædists, the illuminati, and the various orders of freethinkers, who followed in their train. We shall briefly describe that portion of it which is occupied with the professed subject of the work.

'Great phenomena,' says Dr. Theiner, are always followed by great reactions.' On this principle, he, in common with all genuine Romanists, regards Ignatius Loyola as an instrument of Providence raised up to counteract the tremendous mischiefs of the schism of the sixteenth century. After the alliance of the reformers,' says he, 'came the Society of Jesus. They matched themselves against each other immediately in the eyes of the world, and continued to be foes: for from their first

entrance into history and life they have appeared as two opposite principles: the one as the principle of revolution and destruction, the other as the principle of reconciliation and the conservation of a renewed christian society.

The third part of the work, therefore, opens with an account of the efforts of Loyola on behalf of clerical education; and as the seminaries which were set up under the direction of the Council of Trent were for the most part placed under the direction of the Jesuits, and those which were not so, were usually erected on the model of Loyola's own seminary at Rome, we shall devote particular attention to the system of the Jesuits as here illustrated.

'Ignatius had obtained a deep insight into human nature and the state of society at the time in which he lived, when he declared that the amelioration of the establishments for the education of youth, and especially of the clergy, was the fundamental condition for the restoration of order in the church and in the world: for ignorance is the mother of all evil. . . . . The education of youth therefore became the chief object of the labours of St. Ignatius. .... The reestablishment of the ancient ecclesiastical seminaries, which we have seen flourishing from the time of St. Augustine's immortal efforts in the first ages of the church, down to the twelfth century, when they gave way to the foundation of academies, which, unhappily, caused them first to decline from their ancient importance, and afterwards wholly disappear this re-establishment appeared to him to be the only sure means of attaining the great end at which he aimed. He began, therefore, with forming a vast scheme of seminaries and colleges, which he wished to carry out first in Germany, because he judged that that was the country where it was most important to prevent the setting in of doctrines contrary to the church. While he was occupied in secret with the great plan which he had formed for Germany, in founding a theological school at Rome for young Germans of talent, his disciples were already working incessantly in that country, under the protection of enlightened and pious princes of the church, to procure a moral and scientific education for the clergy, and thus to sustain the ancient faith of the church in the midst of its thousand dangers.

'The seminary of St. Ignatius became the model of all the theological schools founded under the immediate protection of the Holy See, and even served, as we shall see, as a guide to the fathers of the Council of Trent in their celebrated decree respecting seminaries. Were it only for this reason, we should be sufficiently justified in relating the principal circumstances which attended the establishment of this seminary.'

These circumstances, then detailed at length, we must treat briefly, though they possess considerable interest, reserving what room we can spare for the character of the system. Suffice it to say, that, after a meeting of the papal consistory, con