Catholic Universities at the Reformation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 17

Catholic Universities at the Reformation

(By W. F. P. Stockley, M.A., in the London Catholic Times.)

PROTESTANT TESTIMONY.

( ; v The German Huber was presented in an f . English dress by the not less anti-Catholic ";: 'f Francis Newman. Some extracts may infi. '. terest your readers. First, under the head- '':;• ing "University Reform of 1549, the year of : the first Protestant Prayer Book," after stating the theory that "the Reformation had indeed a positive and excellent element," he goes on to state its practice; that "on this occasion it manifested itself chiefly in a negative form; intemperate, greedy, destroying, •■; . overturning. . . Documents of the vanquished Church"the same Church, say our dreamy dreamers—"missals, writings strictly theological, relics, pictures or images of saints, monuments, were broken or degraded to the vilest uses. In the common ruin was inevitably involved all the literature of the Middle Ages, including both the poetry and the scholastic philosophy; for the limits between the latter and theology could not be defined; and the poetry was so impregnated with Popery as to seem to carry ' the mark of the beast' on its face. . . The loss of outward monuments is to us small, compared to that which history and literature have to deplore. Not only the scholastic writers, poets, and theologians of the Middle Ages, but very many valuable manuscripts of the ancient classics, and numerous other treasures which can never be replaced, were ruthlessly destroyed at this period, both in the universi- : • ties; and elsewhere throughout England. Nay, __.- from a petition of John Dee, the mathematician, to Queen Mary, we find the spirit of i indiscriminate devastation to have gone so far that the mob did not spare his collections in mathematics, chemistry, physics and natural history perhaps, indeed, because he was a Catholic." (Page 273, vol. i.) 9 The Truth of the Matter. Huber goes on to speak of this brutal, dangerous, smothered barbarism, boiling up against the self-satisfied, and embittered by neglect. But it is strange to find men suggest that when (barbarism boiled up, all the ingredients came from the religious or the >y\_:- cultured who suffered by that barbarism. As if, too, there were no Socrates sufferer, no apostles condemned by mob and ruler, and no Master of the apostles. As if, too, the « life of the artist and his work always found right valuing thereof among mortal men. But to quote again: "For England especially nothing is more incorrect than the Protestant idea that only Catholicism was opposed to the learning of the time." (Protestant and Catholic are used by our author in their plain sense. The High Church theorist of to-day has to tell those Protestants they were Catholics, with a difference. Hard it is to ;.";.;/;; read history, when you try to read into it ■ '■ your own provincial pretendings.) "On the p^k ':;:,. Contrary, the earliest promotion of the new Ipti studies came from the policy of Catholicism, r . ' "v with the pecuniary assistance, if not exactly ; the direct patronage, of the highest powers &4 ■

of the State. The ends aimed at were: To combat heresy, to -drive out of the Church the barbarism which had provoked so many attacks, and to bring about a general inward reform." (P. 226.) The Expulsion of the Learned. About 1570, in Elizabeth's reign, the universities, not fearing any more the reformed state's earliest design of spoliation, were "purified from everything incompatible with the new creed. . . Every academician whose conscience forbade him ... to renounce Catholicism, was ejected. Great, ... to the honor of the universities, was the number of those who now sacrificed worldly advantage to conviction. . . In Oxford no less than fourteen heads of colleges and nearly ninety fellows were expelled, and among them were some of the most learned men. In Cambridge, besides several fellows, eleven heads of colleges .. . were also driven out. Many of the academic refugees afterwards distinguished themselves, partly in the English Seminary at Douay, and elsewhere, as the teachers and spokesmen of Catholic England, partly as its martyrs on the scaffold." (P. 307.) What had been the blessed effect of Queen Mary's reign is thus noted: "As memorials of the praiseworthy intentions of Cardinal Pole's party, we can appeal to the enlargement of Trinity College, Cambridge, and to Cuius College, In Oxford were founded in 1554 Trinity College, and in 1555 St. John's College. The spirit of Wolsey—founder of the great Christ Church College at Oxford predominated in the new arrangements." Trinity College's Catholic Founder. "Indeed, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford (Sir Thomas Popo),placed his establishment on so grand and liberal a scale that nothing perhaps in all Europe upon the Protestant side"—and had not all, or nearly all, on that side once been Catholic?—"could at that day compete with it. Pope was a friend and scholar of Thomas More; and in the reign of Edward VI had been ejected from various public posts because he would not conform himself to the times." (Page 287.) Compare with this information the suggestion in the Encyclopedia Britannica (vol. xviii, p. 97) "Trinity College, founded in February, 1555, by Sir Thomas Pope, was the first post-Reformation College, and the first established by a layman"—"post-Re-formation," with a difference. To go back to Huber once more (p. 285): "In modern days it is pretended that this merit of the Reformation is that it unshackled the mind and promoted the development of the human race. Such certainly was not the view of the Reformers themselves." Let in the light from honest friends and foes upon the dark conspiracy against truth in what Burke names "the things called histories." One instance apropos. How they tell of James II ejecting a few of the new

religion and attempting to restore the religion that built the colleges. But how they do not tell—as our honester German Protestant book tellsof the ejection under Elizabeth of most of the leaders of the universities for remaining firm in the Christianity of all the past. *~<m>OBITUARY MR, CHARLES BLACK, ROSS, "With regret the death is recorded of an esteemed townsman of Ross in the person of Mr. Charles Black, licensee of the City Hotel, which occurred on Monday afternoon, November 30, after an illness extending over a year during which time he had gradually been fading away. The deceased was a native of Hokitika and 59 years of age. For many years he had resided in the Reeftou district, but some fifteen years ago he came to Ross, and for the last twelve years had been licensee first of the Junction Hotel and then of the City Hotel. Mr. Black took a prominent part in civic matters, and at the time of his death was a member of the Ross Borough Council and Ross Fire Brigade. He leaves a wife, two brothers, who reside in Reefton, and a sister (Mrs. Boyle, of Wellington), to mourn their loss. Many will regret the passing of a good friend, and the sympathy of the community is extended to the bereaved wife and relatives. The interment took place in the Ross Cemetery— R.I.P