Where will they close their wings and cease their cries- And fold, and fall? " She helps us in our many moods. She bends down to the little children; she loves "The child's soul and its daybreak in the dark"; she soars to the Saint, "the breast where beat the heart of Christ." Still she is kept among the best, not in perfumed lavender, long confined in chests of memory but yet out of daily sight and sound. It would be better perhaps did one keep her on the living shelf to meet the reaching hand. I am sure many of us should turn to her when we feel, what she so admirably expresses, that "loneliness in loneliness." EDITH PEARSON. LANCASHIRE GRANNY As I'm a-sitting, knitting As I'm a-sitting knitting, Eternal rest, O Lord! AGNES M. BLUNDELL. A RECENT HISTORY OF THE CHURCH* E NGLISH scholars will welcome the translation of the late F. X. Funk's textbook of Church History. The translation has been well done and the language is everywhere natural and smooth. Judging Funk's work from the point of view from which it is written it is undoubtedly a learned, masterly and succinct account of the fortunes of the Church of Christ in this world. The book is amply documented and all important discoveries of recent historical research are duly recorded. But, as might be expected, the condensation of so much learning into so small a compass makes the book more suitable for professors than for students. There is another reason too that makes one hesitate before recommending our seminaries to adopt this work as a textbook. The reason is of some weight and we wonder that no notice has been taken of it in the Preface. On the 17th of October, 1913, the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory in a circular letter addressed to the Bishops of Italy forbade the public or private use of certain books by seminary students. Among the books so proscribed was the History of the Church by F. X. Funk. The reason given by the Sacred Congregation for this prohibition is that F. X. Funk omits treating of or passes too lightly over the supernatural factor in the history of the Church, whereas the supernatural is the essential and indispensable element in the history of the Church without which the Church itself would be unintelligible. This English translation by P. Perciballi, D.D., and W. H. Kent, O.S.C., however, appears with full ecclesiastical approbation; Father David Fleming, O.F.M., the Censor, gives the Nihil Obstat and Canon Surmont, V.G., the Imprimatur. Now, whatever one may think of the purport and extension of the "History of the Church," by F. X. Funk. Translated from the German by P. Perciballi, D.D., and edited by W. H. Kent, O.S.C. 2 vols., 7/6 each, net. London, Burns & Oates, above letter of the Sacred Congregation one would at least expect to see some notice taken of it in this translation. There was time to do it, for the letter of the Sacred Congregation was written on the 17th of October, 1913, and the ecclesiastical approbation was not given to this translation until the 12th of March, 1914. Perhaps the Translators or the Censor made changes in the text to bring it into harmony with the spirit of the Church? They do not say so, and, even if they did, it seems to us that more changes would be required before the supernatural element would be represented as fully as the late Pope desired. One change the translators have made and a very appropriate one. They have added many sections throughout the work in which they deal with the history of the Church in Ireland and England much more fully than Continental scholars ever do. Ireland is well represented in these added paragraphs, and the history of the Church of Ireland is always treated in the most sympathetic spirit, but greater accuracy in some of these paragraphs would be desirable. The mistakes we have noticed are few and mostly of a trivial character, but at the same time it may be well to call attention to them here. We are surprised to see the legend of the imaginary British King Lucius' sending to Pope Eleutherius for missionaries (I., p. 36) dished up in the year 1914 as if it were undoubted history. The same may be said about the story of the supposed martyr of Readburn, St. Amphibalus (I., p. 37). We are told also that St. Patrick was most probably born in France, circa 373, and that he died in 493 (I., pp. 129, 130), though few scholars conversant with recent Patrician literature would defend any of these three statements. St. Boniface is described as an Anglo-Saxon born at Kirton' (I., p. 251) and yet no refutation is vouchsafed of Marianus Scottus, who states that his father and mother were both Irish. When treating of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, no mention is made of the early visits of Irish monks and anchorites to that island (I., p. 257). It is hardly true to say that 'Lanfranc abolished the custom till then existing [in Ireland] of giving communion to children' or that Anselm corrected certain liturgical errors' [in the Irish Church] (I., p. 285). The Archbishops of Canter bury mentioned did indeed write about those things and represented to the Irish kings and bishops the desirability or necessity of bringing Ireland into conformity with the rest. of Europe, but they did nothing more. The work when carried out was carried out by Irishmen who held the same opinions. Dümmler did not edit the commentary on Isaias by Josephus Scottus, as stated or suggested in Vol. I., p. 333. Dümmler published some nine poems by Josephus Scottus, but the commentary on Isaias still lies in manuscript. On the page just referred to (I., p. 333) there are three misspellings of proper names, which should be corrected as follows: for Cruidmelus read Cruindmelus, for Mennius read Nennius, and for Duncan read Dunchat. There is indeed some little MS. authority for Duncan, but the form is corrupt. In the second volume (p. 55) it is asserted that John Duns Scottus and William Occam were both of English birth, whereas the proofs that the former was an Irishman are practically conclusive and the arguments in favour of the Irish birth of the latter are by no means so weak as they are usually thought. Attention has been called to these inaccuracies in the hope that they may be corrected in a later edition. JOHN CAMPBELL. SOME NEW BOOKS 1. The Golden Legend. Lives of the Saints translated by William Caxton from the Latin of Jacobus de Voragine. Selected and edited by George V. O'Neill, S.J., M.A. Cambridge University Press. (Price 3s. net.) 66 For in like wise as gold is most noble above all other metals, in like wise is this Legend holden most noble above all other works," said Caxton in his Introduction to the work from which Father O'Neill has chosen twenty-two livesabout one-tenth of the whole. His selection wisely includes familiar saints such as St. Thomas the Apostle, St. Nicholas, St. Brandon, St. Winifred, St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Francis of Assisi. The word 'legend' one should bear in mind, meant formerly the reading' for a particular day, commonly the account of a saint's life; and in the 13th century the saintly Dominican Archbishop, Jacobus de Voragine, put together from many local legendae' the great collection which became famous and was hailed as the Golden Legend; and which, two centuries later, was translated and printed by Caxton. These legends' or lives are, of course, of value for purposes of linguistic or literary study, but they have a still greater interest for the insight they give us into the history of the human mind. They show us what it was that chiefly interested the mediæval man and woman. The Golden Legend, as Father O'Neill mentions, was for centuries the most popular of manuscript books in Europe; and no book profited so much by the invention of printing-between 1470 and 1500 a hundred editions of it were issued in Latin, and none of Caxton's books was more frequently reprinted during the half century after its first appearance than his English Golden Legend. It was what Americans call the best-seller' of that period; and the contrast it makes with the modern 'best-seller' affords much food for thought. Very marked, too, is its contrast with modern lives of saints. Our taste demands a vivid portrait of the saint, we want a living human |