The Church at the Turning Points of History Godfrey Kurth knight of the order of pius ix director, belgian historical institute at rome introduction by patrick foley, ph.d. the church at the turning points of history To the Bishops, Priests, and Laymen who have the courage and tenacity to remain at their stations on the Barque of Peter as She faces into the most tempestuous storm of her mighty history. May they remain unflinchingly loyal to the Truth, serene at heart but vigorous in action, and committed to steering Holy Mother Church into calmer, more fruitful waters. The hurch C at the Turning Points of History Godfrey Kurth knight of the order of pius ix director, belgian historical institute at rome introduction by patrick foley, ph.d. Norfolk, VA 2007 The Church at the Turning Points of History. Copyright © 2007 IHS Press. Preface, footnotes, typesetting, layout, and cover design copyright 2007 IHS Press. All rights reserved. The present edition of The Church at the Turning Points of History is based upon the English translation made by Monsignor Victor Day, Vicar General of Helena, and published in 1918 by Naegele Printing Co., Helena, Montana. The translation was made from the fifth French edi- tion of the work, L’Eglise aux tournants de l’histoire, published in Brussels in 1913 by Librairie Albert Dewit. The substance of the work is based upon a series of lectures given by the author to a Women’s University Extension in Antwerp, 1897–1899. The original author’s preface, which has been omitted in the present edition, explained that footnote citations were not provided for the facts cited, as most were presumed to be well known to readers, and the author begged that they “take his word” for the occasional facts that might be unfamiliar. Footnotes in the present edition are those added by Msgr. Day, with some modification by the editors. The spelling, punctuation, and formatting of the original edition have been largely preserved. Minor editorial corrections have been made to the text, and the original foreword to the 1918 English edition has been slightly abriged. ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-932528-43-5 ISBN-10 (eBook): 1-932528-43-1 FRONTISPIECE: Triumph of the Church, a painting after Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), oil on wood, created sometime after 1628. In the image, the Church – symbolized by the Eucharist led by the Keys of Peter – has in bondage Blindness and Ignorance, and tramples Hatred, Discord, and Evil. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kurth, Godefroid, 1847-1916. The church at the turning points of history / Godfrey Kurth ; introduction by Patrick Foley. p. cm. Originally published: Helena, Mont. : Naegele Printing Co., 1918. ISBN-13: 978-1-932528-09-1 1. Church history. I. Title. BR145.3.K87 2007 282.09--dc22 2007038611 Printed in the United States of America. Gates of Vienna Books is an imprint of IHS Press, the only publisher dedicated exclusively to the social teachings of the Catholic Church. For more information, contact: IHS Press 222 W. 21st St., Suite F-122 Norfolk, VA 23517 [email protected] • www.ihspress.com • 877-IHS-PRESS TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................7 by Patrick Foley, Ph.D. FOREWORD ..........................17 by Bishop John P. Carroll The Church at the Turning Points of History I. The Mission of the Church .................... 21 II. The Church and the Jews ..................... 27 III. The Church and the Barbarians .................. 37 IV. The Church and Feudalism .................... 45 V. The Church and Neo-Caesarism ................. 60 VI. The Church and the Renaissance ................. 79 VII. The Church and the Revolution .................. 97 NOTES ..............................115 “In the history of mankind considered as a whole there are two grand divisions. On the one hand, there is the ancient world seated in the darkness of death; on the other hand, the modern world which advances in the light of the Gospel. This is, beyond compare, the greatest fact of history.” INTRODUCTION n January 4, 1916, noted historian Godfrey Kurth, C.S.G., died at Assche, Brabant. Professor Kurth, born at Arlon, Belgium, on May 11, 1847, with a lifelong Odedication to the study of universal history, especially Europe’s Catholic heritage, was regarded as one of the leading scholars of his day. At the time of his death he was serving in his tenth year as director of the Belgian Historical Institute at Rome. Prior to holding that position, Kurth had spent more than three and a half decades on the faculty of the State University of Liège, Belgium. Among the distin- guished Catholic honors he had received or offices he held were: Knight of the Order of Pius IX; member of The Academy of the Catholic Reli- gion (Rome); recipient of the doctorate honoris causa from the Catholic University of Louvain; and Commander of the Order of Leopold. In addition Kurth was several times honored by being named a member of societies, academies, or institutes in London, Cologne, Ley- den, Madrid, Barcelona, Rheims, and Belgium. He published numer- ous works on saints and historical personages such as Saints Clotilde and Boniface, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, the Merovingians, and King Philip II of Spain. Beyond these, he had other works published on various aspects of the histories of Belgium, Burgundy, the Frankish kingdoms, and other periods and regions of the European narrative. Most substantial as an overall work of Catholic history is his Les Orig- ines de la Civilisation Moderne (The Origins of Modern Civilization), which ran to several editions during his lifetime. Without question, his The Church at the Turning Points of History (initially published in French as L’Eglise aux Tournants de l’Histoire) exists as his most acces- sible and, in some ways, most engaging tome. The book came into being as a published compilation of several major lectures he had presented over time on the broad topic of the mission of the Church as mirroring “the modern world which advances in the light of the Gospel . ” 7 THE CHURCH AT THE TURNING POINTS OF HISTORY When Kurth’s book appeared on the scene in the early twentieth century, the Catholic world of scholarship was basking in the light of a re- vival of significant proportions that had developed earlier in the previous century, in England under the banners of John Henry Cardinal Newman and historian John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, and in the United States with the “use-primary-sources” approach to historical research and writing of John Gilmary Shea. This era of Catholic thinking, additionally, was later to see coming to the forefront, in the decades that followed, the influential writings of such giants as Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Dawson, and Jacques Maritain. Kurth’s work, including Turning Points, made its own important contri- bution, between these two “eras,” to this positive momentum. Kurth studied the Church and her maturation, and considered them foundational to the substance of society at various turning points in history. He identified seven different points in the historical narra- tive of Western civilization wherein Catholicism’s presence was of a par- ticularly significant influence, and therefore in need of a clear portrayal. These Kurth analyzed with considerable accuracy. Such were the Mis- sion of the Church; the Church and the Jews; the Church and the Bar- barians; the Church and Feudalism; the Church and Neo-Caesarism; the Church and the Renaissance; and the Church and the Revolution. Each of these areas was to be investigated with the hope of developing major themes, ones which even today will be of great use in coming to understand more deeply, and thus better appreciate, the Catholic his- torical legacy to mankind. An obvious strength of Kurth’s book is the author’s ability to seek historical truth and present it in a manner that would today be impos- sible, because of the modern atmosphere in which, quite often, verac- ity and frankness are left to suffer at the expense of various partisan agendas operative in the environment of “political correctness.” Part and parcel of Kurth’s effort to arrive at historical truth was his develop- ment of a number of subdivisions among his major areas of study. This allowed him to focus on specific personages, issues, movements, and so forth, in precise and objective terms. In his first turning point of history, “The Mission of the Church,” Professor Kurth focuses on the Church’s understanding of her own 8 INTRODUCTION purpose, and the way in which that understanding underlies her action through history. Moving from this broad subject, Kurth then addresses several considerations related to the history of “The Church and the Jews.” These subdivisions analyze the ancient heritage of Christianity and its interaction with post-Incarnation Judaism, including a discus- sion of the significance of the Council of Jerusalem in A.D. 49. At the end of this section Kurth proclaims that this turning point of history showed the early Church at a period when Christianity was maturing as separate from rabbinical Judaism. In analyzing his third turning point of history, “The Church and the Barbarians,” Kurth argues that, “After three hundred years of a war of extermination, the Roman Empire had to acknowledge itself con- quered by its victim . ” Kurth here was referring to the Edict of Milan of A.D. 313, following the Emperor Constantine’s victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge the previous year, in which Constantine attributed his success to the Christian God. By the Edict of Milan, all Christians in the Roman Empire “who choose that religion [were] to be permitted to continue therein . ” It was then that Christianity became legal throughout the Empire, and Kurth develops the historical reality that within a relatively short time Christianity in fact became the religion of the Empire and became linked with Roman civilization.