bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
In Defence of John Donne
Authors: Walker Luke 
Published: July 2007

Mrs. E. M. Simpson has recently published a study of Donne’s prose works. The author of such a study could not avoid giving some account of those ideas which writers on Donne usually label his ‘Medievalism.’ For no one can read either Donne’s poetry or his prose intelligently unless he is fairly well acquainted with what Donne himself calls the philosophy of the ‘Schoole.’ Seemingly conversant with the whole range of scholastic writers, he had studied St. Thomas Aquinas with particular diligence, and he admired his genius profoundly : indeed he puts him on a level with St. Augustine, and in one place, addressing God, he speaks of St. Thomas as ‘that other instrument and engine of thine, whom Thou had st so enabled that nothing was too minerall and centrick forA Study of the Prose Works of John Donne,by Evelyn M. Simpson, D.Phil., Oxford. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press; 1924.) It may not be altogether useless to say here that Donne was born in 1573, and died in 1631. He belonged to a family of which he himself said that no family ‘which is not of farre larger extent and greater branches hath endured and suffered more in their persons and fortunes, for obeying the teachers of Romane Doctrine.’ His mother, who was connected with the family of Blessed Thomas More, was ever a zealous Catholic, serving the Church to the best of her power. His younger brother, Henry, was thrown into prison in 1593 for harbouring a Jesuit named Harrington, and died there of a fever a few weeks later
Aquileia
Authors: Eden Helen Parry 
Published: July 2007

As far beyond Venice as Venice is beyond Verona x\. lies the gentle ctiy of Udine, citat zintil as they call it there, for all the common people and all the scholars and poets speak, or can speak, a language like that of the troubadours. The city lies on the level plain of Friuli like a town held by a patron saint on the palm of his hand; but in the midst of it rises an abrupt hill, and under the hill spreads a tree-planted hollow. This hill, say the Udinese, arose at the bidding of Attila the Hun. Every soldier of the Hunnish army contributed a helmetful of earth. And when the great mound was made, the king stood alone on the top to watch the burning of Aquileia.Forty kilometres of country road lie between Aquileia and Udine to-day; and a vast, silent basilica, a vast silent museum, a scattering of poor farms among vast, silent fields of tall corn and small vines are all that is left of Aquileia when you reach it. The Guide Bleu gives the names of two inns. Personally I saw no sign of them, but then my visit was a short one. Yet when our Lord was born under Augustus in the middle of the great peace, Aquileia was the second town in Italy. It boasted two hundred thousand ‘Roman’ citizens, besides Roman legionaries and a unique con course of foreign merchants; it possessed enormous markets of wine and corn; its palaces, baths, circuses, temples, tombs and triumphal arches were like nothing outside Rome;
A Seventeenth Century Guide to the Imitation
Authors: Makepeace John Foster 
Published: July 2007

The purpose of this article is to call the attention of lovers of the Imitation to James Merlo Horstius’s edition of it, the Viator Christianus.An old copy of this rare, and exceedingly interesting, book—to which a reference is made on page 745 of the lovely English translation (Burns and Oates, 1912) of the Paradisus Animae—came into the present writer’s possession a few years ago. It was published at Cologne in 1643. Its full title is ‘Viator Christianus recta ac regia in caelum via tendens, ductu Thomae de Kempis.’ It is a Latin edition of the Imitation, with quaint marginal notes and curious allegorical prints, and a picture representing Thomas a Kempis himself offering his book to Our Lady. At the top of the picture is the legend ‘In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angello cum libello,’ and at the foot ‘Thomas a Kempis canonicus regularis Obijt A° 1471, 25 Iulij. JEtat 92.’James Merlo, called Horstius from the place of his birth, was born at Horst, a German village, in 1597, and died in 1644 at Cologne, where he was parish priest of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pasculo. He was the author, or compiler, of several devotional books besides that unrivalled collection, which every wise Catholic knows well, The Paradise of the Christian Soul. He tells us there that he has surveyed ‘the gardens and pleasure-grounds of every author,’ and culled thence ‘the most notable plants, flowers and shrubs,’ and planted with them ‘a new kind of Paradise.’
The Benson Saga
Authors: Bateman May 
Published: July 2007

Obvious pitfalls are in the way of one who writes about a member of his family. Friends and foes alike are ready to raise objections, to discount the value of praise on the score of personal bias, to resent criticism on the grounds that, as Jane Find-later says, £ so often there is something between people of the same family like a pane of glass. You mayn’t know it’s there until you try to touch one another, but it divides.’ Relations with whom we are thrown too intimately, in too frequent contact, never see us, according to this view, in perspective.None of this applies to the different authors of the Benson Saga. The Bensons must have come together as friends even if the ties of blood had not linked them. Frankly aware of each other’s foibles, not one of which escaped the sense of humour which they had in common, they responded just as impulsively to individual fineness. Passionately interested in each other, indefatigable talkers with an avid flair for argument, no subject, no dogma, however controversial, was taboo. At times, Mr. E. F. Benson explains in the latest volume of the Saga, Mother they metaphorically fell upon each other tooth and nail. As a rule, play was fair. But ‘to argue with Hugh on religious topics,’ according to his brother, ‘was like playing Rugby football under rules framed by himself ! . . .’ When things ‘got too hot,’ however, an onlooker would break up the game.
Fray Bartolome de las Casas
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice 
Published: July 2007

Las Casas was a Churchman whose activities in the cause of humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the Indians by the Spanish colonial adventurers are well known and appreciated by many, and due credit has ever been rendered him by Protestant historians : but it is well to realise that he was not a brilliant and solitary exception. The Spanish Churchmen were ever famous for their uncompromising morality. Many of his own order—Pedro de Cordoba, Antonio Monterino and others whom we shall meet, as well as many of the Spanish clergy of every rank—made a no less determined stand for justice against immorality. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, unequivocally stated the doctrine of the Church.Nor were the secular authorities remiss. The Audience of the Indies, Charles V, and Philip II issued order after order and edict after edict against the enslavement of the natives, the theft of their property, and the outrages against their persons. Yet a terrible state of things existed. The trouble arose from the impossibility of controlling at that great distance greedy and cruel adventurers who, sure of the support of their fellows in the remote lands of New Spain, were able to a great extent to ignore all orders and ordinances on the matter. The clergy had more success; for they could and did wield the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and the Spanish adventurers, if in their hearts they did not agree with the humanity of the Church, did for the most part fear her censure.
Third Class Pilgrims
Authors: Attwater Donald 
Published: July 2007

A good deal of fuss has been made one way and another about the Catholic Association’s Christmas pilgrimage to Rome; vivid pictures were drawn of the horrors of third-class continental trains, especially at night: the idea of staying in Rome at anything but an hotel was supposed to be particularly revolting : while even the Association itself thought it necessary to print in heavy type a warning extract from the Bull Indictio Universalis fubilaei urging pilgrims to accept discomforts in a spirit of penitence.Quite apart from the fact that, once a man has made up his mind to visit St. Peter, nothing will stop him, these vaticinators might have kept their breath for their prayers. There were no hardships; and of discomforts, no more than any healthy man or woman, to say nothing of a pilgrim, would regard as an amusing novelty. A pilgrimage is not necessarily and in se a penitential undertaking; contemporary English custom makes of it rather a comfortable conducted tour; the Catholic Association at Christmas hit the mean, so that their 380 representatives of Great Britain and Ireland, having the right spirit, found the right conditions and could call themselves pilgrims without an incredulous grin.There were no hardships—but there was heroism, for not all the travellers were young and strong. There were many old folk and some in bad health, to whom hard seats and full carriages and sleepless nights were far more than a mere passing irksomeness. Their patience and devotion are to be remembered with humility, rather than to be written about with fulsomeness.
The Last Bulwark of Christendom
Authors: Shove Herbert 
Published: July 2007

Time was when English judges could say, without apparent insincerity, that the Christian religion was part of the Law of the Land. That was how the judges put it; what they meant was that at least theoretical acquiescence in Christian principles was assumed in those for whom the Law was framed and administered. In fact, that England was ‘a Christian country.’The beatitudes were always, and perhaps necessarily, outside the Law’s purview. But there used to be some attempt to enforce the Ten Commandments. To-day, the blasphemy laws, though never repealed, have long been a dead letter. And the London traffic may, it seems, be held up for a triumphal procession of any idol—whether it be the symbolical figure of ‘Big Business’ or the living person of Rudolph Valentino. But not, of course, for one of the True Incarnate God in His own Corporeal Presence. The offer of such a spectacle being, one must suppose, too blatantly like wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve to accord with the ‘grand old English Public School tradition’ of ‘what’s done.’A father used to be held responsible for his child’s welfare. And a child was presumed to be under parental control. Now-a-days the Law looks daily with greater favour on the interference of the ‘health visitor’ and the school teacher (non-sectarian). And magistrates listen gravely to stories of how Tommy, aged ten, is ‘beyond control’ and unbirched youngsters file off in the full tide of impudence to the industrial school.
Rhythm in Word and Phrase
Authors: Kealey Edward J. 
Published: July 2007

A World without rhythm would be a world without joy and sorrow, toil and rest, life and death; a world without its land and water, hill and valley, light and shade, sunshine and storm, springtime and autumn; a world without alternation, relief, contrasting harmonies, and that ‘variety’ which ‘is the spice of life.’Whence does the placid lake derive its beauty, or the pathless snow? Surely in very small measure indeed from mere placidity or pathlessness. Given the boundless sea with never a wave, no play of light and shadow; or an Antarctic waste of untrodden snow, and who would say ‘How lovely!’? Not so the gallant Scott, as he gazed on the white wilderness around him.‘O God ! this is an awful place ! ‘was the poignant cry he recorded—not because of the terrible cold, or even the disappointment that met him at his goal, but because of that feature of the Antarctic solitudes that weighs most heavily on the stoutest heart—dreary, unrelieved Monotony.In every work of nature and of art the human spirit craves for relaxation after effort; in other words, for Rhythm—a ‘flow,’ not of tone, but of tones; variety of tone, not a monotone.And man’s language is no exception to the rule.Now I propose to deal here with only one or two of the simpler aspects of rhythm in language, leaving aside the wider subject of rhythm as affecting balance and harmony of ideas.
Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

In reading these reminiscences we are reminded of Goldsmith’s classical criticism of a third-rate work : ‘This book is easier to write than to read.’ But to enclose Dr. McDonald’s book in an epigram we should have to say : ‘This book is better to read than to write.’ To speak our mind quite frankly, we must be allowed to think that of all forms of literature the Apologia pro vita sua, though sometimes the most literary is seldom the most excusable. No man is at his best when he is seeking to show his moral uprightness or his intellectual consistency. The pharisee reminds us that our best apology before the ultimate tribunal of God is :‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’ And the wise man was never wiser than when reminding us that our claim to intellectual consistency should be tempered by the conviction that ‘the number of fools is infinite.’But whilst we should have counselled the Professor of Maynooth not to write his so-called Reminiscences, we cannot counsel his fellow Catholics, and especially his fellow priests, not to read what he has written. It need hardly be said that a book so hot from the heart of a Celt fighting for intellectual freedom must be read with discrimination. Dr. McDonald’s bringing-up was so provincial that he does not recognise how often his sceva indignatio is over little more than the politics of the village pump. Even the O’Hickey case, which might seem to centre round the fate of a dead or a dying language, almost dwindles down to a melodrama on an income of, say, £400 or £500 a year.
Carlo Delcroix in Italy: The Heroism of Suffering
Authors: Gordon George R. E. 
Published: July 2007

The political movement which dominates Italy has found in Carlo Delcroix a literary genius whose fame may live with that of Mussolini. Delcroix is not simply a fascista: but his books in their terrible eloquence and beauty are the evangel of that new enthusiasm which gave to Italy an impulse from victorious war that contrasts with the disillusionment that has touched France and made much of England pro-German. Through fascismo Italy found in the war an inspiration, and Delcroix is the prophet of the salvation she has won from ardours and endurances. The People’s War and The Sacrifice of the Word are the titles of his two earlier books, and such words as ‘Holy Sacrifice’ would do as a title for any of them. But the others are Dialogues with the Crowd and Seven Uncanonized Saints.The theme which Delcroix repeats with variations, and with an increase of mastery and power, is the praise of suffering. In the modern age, and most of all among the admirers of Mrs. Eddy, suffering, against which human nature revolts in any case, has been treated either as cowardice or a delusion. But, as many know, it is not a delusion. To lose one’s hand and one’s eye in one sudden ghastly explosion is, when all is said by Christian Scientists and done by medical Scientists, still a calamity. Faith cannot restore the loss. The agony is acute. That was the discovery of Carlo Delcroix, and the war which brought such a disaster to all the fervours and activities of youth cannot simply be accepted or dismissed.
Savonarola Unfrocked Again
Authors: Bugeja Henry 
Published: July 2007

A popular journal, with pretentions to literature and learning, lately held a symposium of well-known novelists. They were set to say whom they considered to be the most tragic figure in history. Says one of the convivials—a lady novelist:‘Of course, one can hardly say which is the most tragic figure in history ... If one must be named, I would choose Girolamo Savonarola; not because of his terrific downfall and miserable end, but because he was misled and bewildered by his own spiritual impulses; he was the dupe, as it were, of his own inspiration ; he came to feel that God had mocked him, perhaps that there was no God .... He was ugly, unloved, sickly, thwarted in his early passion, sensitive, awkward, self-conscious, uncertain of himself, of an unhappy bilious temperament, melancholy and nervous; never in the history of the world did a poorer vessel contain the fire of genius. Savonarola nearly accomplished a great thing—the reform of the Roman Church that would have prevented the Reformation. He had the audacity to call in the King of France to quell the Pope, the abominable Borgia—but that king was a sickly imbecile, and though the cannon pointed at St. Angelo, Savonarola’s Gallic tool broke in his hand.’‘He lived to be forsaken, reviled, despised, to find himself shrinking from torture, from death, without courage, without faith, and knowing that he had accomplished nothing. His supreme tragedy lay not in the triumphant ferocity of his enemies, but in his own limitations which had rendered his effort useless. . . . Something of this tragic life I have tried to portray in my novel, The Carnival of Florence.’
Justice and Poverty
Authors: Clayton Joseph 
Published: July 2007

Because the wages of the workman are not sufficient for his personal needs and the needs of his household, the duty is laid by Parliament on the State of meeting the deficiency, as far as it may conveniently be done. Instead of granting the labourer a larger share of the wealth which labour has created, State aid is given. It really seems that the workman is not to be trusted with a living wage lest he spend it unwisely. And no doubt a large number of our social reformers do sincerely believe that it is far better to stop all pocket money for the working class and let the State lay it out, than to trust the working class with the responsibility of spending all the money it has earned.But these good intentions of the social reformer are not the economic cause of low wages. Capital—i.e., the investor—ever driven to reduce wages to the lowest level of subsistence, seeks native labour in the dark places of the earth because it is cheap labour; and only cheap labour will procure the dividend desired by the investor. Labour—i.e., workmen—struggling tomaintain a standard of comfort, must needs be at strife with capital when the issue is so plainly set. The investor must have dividends. The workman must have what he can get in the way of wages. To bring wages down, capital, through its federations of industry, orders a lock-out. To resist a reduction of wages, or to gain an increase, the workman goes on strike. These manifestations of class struggle recur.
The Church and Art IV.
Authors: Gill Eric 
Published: July 2007

Pre-renaissance art is not, as many solemnly declare, unimportant because verisimilitude (truth to appearance) was not attempted by primitive artists. The gargoyles on the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris are not without beauty because, in so far as they represent anything at all, they represent Devils. Neither the camera nor the text-book of moral theology are the test of Beauty. A work of art is not to be judged beautiful in the degree of its likness to anything, nor in the degree of its likeness to something lovable, nor, supposing we deem a woman to be more lovable than a spider, is a portrait of a woman to be judged to be more beautiful than a portrait of a spider. Conversely ugliness in a work of art is not measured by the degree in which the work departs from natural appearance, nor is a work of art necessarily ugly, because it is like nothing lovable.These misunderstandings are variously felt by different persons and different kinds of work suffer in different ways. Thus painting suffers most, music perhaps least. Most people can appreciate a tune for its own sake, or even a symphony, and do not insist that it shall imitate any natural noise. Few people can see painting in the same way and appreciate form and colour as such, but insist upon imitation and ethical standards, forgetting that neither imitation nor the inculcation of morals is the artist’s business. The musician does not write the poem to which he may be asked to make appropriate music.
The Pen of a Scrivener
Authors: Telfer Vera 
Published: July 2007

A fountain pen, like silk stockings, is a necessity to the poor and a luxury to the rich, and should form part of the equipment of every citizen, so that he may write to his newspapers, fill up his income tax and perform all the functions of good citizenship. It is as personal as a tooth brush and as indispensable; and, with a tooth brush, forms a barrier to the onslaughts of Communism, and an eternal argument against the persuasions of Communists. A man may be willing to share his pipes and a woman her hats, but neither man nor woman will ever lend tooth brush or fountain pen without emphasizing the loan as a deviation from the standards of Christian conduct.Nationalisation has given us post office nibs, Communism would give us post office fountain pens, and then God help us!A fountain pen is, if not a man’s birthright, at least a mark of his manhood or that with which he can make his mark. Millionaires have platinum and diamond studded bands, Chinese lacquer and new blue blood ink, the price of which would keep a suburb in vulcanite for a generation, and with these they make trusts and newspapers and all the horrors of civilisation.A fountain pen is a blessing to possess and a curse to acquire. We go to buy in some vast hall and are bewildered by shapes, sizes and colours. Sancta Simplicitas chooses a plain black shape, but it needs wisdom and understanding to decide between safety, self-filler, adjustable and all the other devices of maids ingenuity.
Unemployment and the Land
Authors: Editor The 
Published: July 2007

Father Vincent McNabb’s The Church and the Land is a book to be read by all who are concerned and anxious about the pressing problem of unemployment. But it would be a pity if our reading of this stirring book produced no effect except a vague feeling that something was wrong and an equally vague conviction that something ought to be done about it. It would be futile to read it as we might read Vergil’s Pastorals—to be thrilled and charmed by the vision of the sower casting his seed, the ploughman turning over his furrow or the harvester swinging his sickle. The flail song in threshing time and the joyous music of the churn when butter is a-making are fine glowing dreams and visions that must not be allowed to evaporate into airy nothings. Every chapter of this book should stimulate into action. Fr. Vincent McNabb describes his work as a bugle-call. Wherefore sound the bugle if there be none to answer the call?The gist of the book could be given somewhat as follows : There are at the present moment more than a million workers unemployed. They are being paid for being unemployed. At the same time there are millions of acres of good arable land lying untilled; and there are many more acres unworked than there are men out of work.The practical person will at once say, Yes, but the men who are employed are neither by temperament, training nor inclination the sort of people who would or could till the untilled fields even if it were possible for them to get at them.