Note 32 — Chapter II · Education before the Foundation of the Society of Jesus.

Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, p. 11.—Professor Harnack of the University of Berlin, speaking of the achievements of the Roman Church, says: “In the first place it educated the Romano-Germanic nations, and educated them in a sense other than that in which the Eastern Church educated the Greeks, Slavs, and Orientals.... It brought Christian civilization to young nations, and brought it, not once only, so as to keep them at its first stage—no! it gave them something which was capable of exercising a progressive educational influence, and for a period of almost a thousand years it itself led the advance. Up to the fourteenth century it was a leader and a mother; it supplied the ideas, set the aims, and disengaged the forces.” The same author admits that even at present the Catholic Church has an important share in the movement of thought. What is Christianity? (Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1901.) Lecture XIV, p. 247.—Well has Cardinal Newman said: “Not a man in Europe now, who talks bravely against the Church, but owes it to the Church, that he can talk at all.” Historical Sketches, vol. III, p. 109.