As Hill neatly puts it, "Monasticism was
healthy, active and vigorous; it became idle, listless and extravagant;
it engendered its own corruption, and out of that corruption
came death."
Richard Bagot, a Catholic, in a recent article on the question, "Will
England become Catholic?" which was published in the "Nuova Antologia,"
says: "Though it is impossible not to blame the so-called Reformers for
the acts of sacrilege and barbarism through which they obtained the
religious and political liberty so necessary to the intellectual and
social progress of the race, it cannot be denied that no sooner had the
power of the papacy come to an end in England than the English nation
entered upon that free development which has at last brought it to its
present position among the other nations of the world." Mr. Bagot also
admits that "the political intrigues and insatiable ambition of the
papacy during the succeeding centuries constituted a perpetual menace
to England."
The true view, therefore, is that two types of religious and political
life, two epochs of human history, met in Henry's reign. The king and
the pope were the exponents of conflicting ideals. The fall of the
monasteries was an incident in the struggle. "The Catholics," says
Froude, "had chosen the alternative, either to crush the free thought
which was bursting from the soil, or to be crushed by it; and the future
of the world could not be sacrificed to preserve the exotic graces of
medieval saints.
Pages:
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266