The Christian Clergy of the First Ten Centuries; Their Beneficial Influence on European Progress - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0217947425 ISBN 13: 9780217947428

Riassunto

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855. Excerpt: ... We must now turn to the last and, it must be added, the least grateful branch of our subject; which brings before our notice such political benefits as accrued to the world from the action of the clergy during the ninth and tenth centuries. We speak of it as the least grateful portion of our subject, inasmuch as during no equal period since the first propagation of the Gospel does the Church appear to have lost so much of its pristine integrity from contact with an unrighteous world. Yet it was not the first age of wide and deep moral pollution which had afflicted our race since the ministers of the faith had been elevated to temporal influences but they had passed comparatively unhurt through all the evils of the decaying society at Rome, because they had not then learned that intimate combination with the state which they subsequently acquired from the intrigues and the ambition of barbarian courts. But, little as we can find to look upon with satisfaction in the clerical power as exerted during the miseries of the tenth century, we may turn with less regret to the milder influence which, guided by the master hand of Charlemagne, they exercised over his vast dominions. So sagacious a ruler as the Frank emperor could not fail to perceive that, although nations long strangers to each other had been united in apparent unanimity under a common sceptre, and though the ample frame of his territories might under the impulse of a master mind put forth its colossal strength, yet it contained within itself no merely political principle of adhesion sufficiently powerful to counterbalance the constant tendency to a rapid dismemberment. But he beheld the daily progress of another power, working with a mystery which only increased its sphere of action, and containing...

Su questa edizione

• ISBN 10: 0217947425
• ISBN 13: 9780217947428
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile