Five Centuries of Religion

Extract

Here certainly is a book by one who knows the Middle Ages and who loves them. Religious life (it is in this sense that the word religion is used in the title), which is the subject of this first volume of over six hundred pages, is appreciated by Mr.

G. C. Coulton and in some measure understood. But the book just misses being a great book through two defects : (i) it seems to be written in a temper, and (2) it is incomplete, for it deliberately omits the great ideals and achievements of monasticism, since the author finds that these have already been sufficiently detailed elsewhere (p. 20). His temper is understandable. He is a man of immense learning, who has read many modern works on monasticism, chiefly written in its defence, and has met in them statements not only unsupported by evidence, but the very reverse of what his reading of first-hand authorities has led him to believe. The shadows of monastic realities he finds deliberately omitted. Consequently, he is determined that this one-sided account shall not prevail, and he sets to work to prove conclusively the many failures, the general imperfections, the mediocre achievements of normal monasticism. We think that Mr. Coulton has not perhaps realised how recent is this devotion to the romance of the monks which he attacks, and how Cardinal Gasquet and his school wrote their books precisely as Mr. Coulton has written his, angry and determined to right a distorted account which had for so long done duty for history.