However, there are many enlightened and scholarly non-Catholics who do not share these opinions. Careful historical research revealed that the monks were not lazy drones, but that they were the civilizers of Europe and the preservers of ancient literature. Then it was admitted that they were not all hypocritical debauchees. Thus, in a recent work of an American scholar,[1] we find, after the description of the monastic principles and ideals, the following statement: "The ideal monastic character was that which corresponded to these principles. And in hundreds of instances a personality with such a character did result; a personality when directing faultless in humility and obedience to God, faultless in humility and obedience when obeying; knowing neither pride nor vanity, nor covetousness nor lust, nor slothful depression; grave and silent with bent head, yet with an inner peace, even an inner passionate joy; meditative, mystic, an otherworld personality; one that dwells in spiritual facts,
- ↑ Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, (New York, Macmillan 1900), p. 182.
writings of many humanists exhibit a licentiousness which would have made most religious throw these books aside with utter disgust. Some Protestant critics severely blamed the Berlin Professor for this defence of the outlawed monks. Professor Ziegler even accused him that, in alliance with Janssen and Denifle, he endeavored to restore the old Catholic fable convenue. Professor Paulsen answers this charge of his co-religionists by saying that he is entirely free from any such tendency. "I do not want to restore or maintain any fables, neither Catholic nor Protestant; but I wish, as far as possible, to see things as they are. It is true, this endeavor has led me to doubt whether the renaissance and its apostles deserve all the esteem, and the representatives of medieval education all the contempt which, up to this day, has been bestowed on them." L. c., vol. I, p. 89.
