NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 589 



and Father Savi, and in France Mon seigneur d'Hulst, the Abbe* 

 Loisy, Professor at the Roman Catholic University at Paris, and, 

 most eminent of all, Prof essor Lenormant, of the French Institute, 

 whose researches into biblical and other ancient history and litera- 

 ture had won him distinction throughout the world. These men, 

 while standing up manfully for the Church, were obliged to allow 

 that some of the conclusions of modern biblical criticism were 

 well founded. The result came rapidly. The treatise of Bartolo 

 and the great work of Lenormant were placed on the Index ; Canon 

 Berta was overwhelmed with reproaches and virtually silenced ; 

 the Abbe* Loisy was first deprived of his professorship, and then 

 ignominiously expelled from the university ; Monseigneur d'Hulst 

 was summoned to Rome, and has since kept silence.* 



The matter was evidently thought serious in the higher regions 

 of the Church, for, in November, 1893, appeared an encyclical 

 letter on The Study of Sacred Scripture by the reigning Pope, 

 Leo XIII. Much was expected from it, for, since Benedict XIV 

 in the last century, there has sat on the papal throne no Pope in- 

 tellectually so competent to discuss the whole subject. While, 

 then, those devoted to the older beliefs trusted that the papal 

 thunderbolts would crush the whole brood of biblical critics, vota- 

 ries of the newer thought ventured to hope that the encyclical 

 might, in the language of one of them, prove "a stupendous 

 bridge spanning the broad abyss that now divides alleged ortho- 

 doxy from established science." f 



Both these expectations were disappointed ; and yet, on the 

 whole, it is a question whether the world at large may not con- 

 gratulate itself upon this papal utterance. The document, if not 

 apostolic, won credit as " statesmanlike." It took pains, of course, 

 to insist that there can be no error of any sort in the sacred books ; 

 it even defended those parts which Protestants count apocryphal 

 as thoroughly as the remainder of Scripture, and declared that 

 the book of Tobit was not compiled of man, but written by God. 

 His Holiness naturally condemned the higher criticism, but he 

 dwelt at the same time on the necessity of the most thorough 

 study of the sacred Scriptures, and especially on the importance 



* For the frustration of attempts to admit light into scriptural studies in Roman Catholic 

 Germany, see Bleek, Old Testament, London, 1882, vol. i, pp. 19, 20. 



For the general statement regarding recent suppression of modern biblical study in 

 France and Italy, see an article by a Roman Catholic author in the Contemporary Review, 

 September, 1894, p. 365. For the papal condemnations of Lenormant and Bartolo, see the 

 Index Librorum Prohibitorum Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Leonis XIII, P. M., etc., Rome, 

 1891 ; Appendices, July, 1890, and May, 1891. The ghastly part of the record, as stated 

 in this edition of the Index, is that both these great scholars were forced to abjure their 

 " errors " and to acquiesce in the condemnation Lenormant doing this on his deathbed. 



f For this statement, see an article in the Contemporary Review, April, 1894, p. 576. 



