es were opposed to any phase of education.

It has come to be universally conceded in recent years that the Church
was the great patron of art and of letters during these centuries.
Without the inspiration of her teachings there would have been no
sublime subjects for artists; without the lives of her saints there
would have been much less opportunity for artistic expression; without
the patronage of the cathedral builders, the high ecclesiastics, and
above all the monastic orders, on whom, with so little reason, so much
contempt has been heaped, there would have been none of that great art
which developed during the centuries before what is called the
Renaissance. In literature, everyone of the great national poems that
lie at the basis of modern literature is shot through and through with
sublime thoughts that owe {22} their origin to the Church. We need
only mention the Cid in Spain, the Arthur Legends in England, such
works of the Meistersingers as Perceval and Arme Heinrich, the Golden
Legend, the Romance of the Rose, and Dante,--all written during the
thirteenth century alone, to illustrate Church influence in
literature. This is, as we have said, admitted by all. It is supposed,
however, that while the Church encouraged this side of human
development, it effectually prevented the evolution of man's
scientific interests.

As a matter of fact, however, the Church did quite as much for science
as for literature and art and charity, There has never been any
question that under her fostering care philosophy developed in a very
marvelous way. The scholastic philosophers are no longer held in the
disrepute so ignorantly accorded them in the last century. It is
recognized that scholastic philosophy represents a supremely great
development of human thinking with regard to the relations of man to
his Creator, to his fellow man, and to the universe. Even those who do
not accept its conclusions now, if themselves educated men, no longer
make little of those wonderful thinkers, but sympathize with their
magnificent work. Only those who are ignorant of scholastic philosophy
entirely, still continue to re-echo the expressions of critics whose
opinions were founded on second-hand authorities and who confessedly
had been unable to make anything out of the scholastics themselves.
This field of philosophy was the real danger point for faith and the
Church, yet its study was encouraged in every way, provided the
philosophers kept