762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



alienate the clergy from the cultivated classes of civil society. 

 Universities have been superseded to a considerable extent by 

 cloistral schools and special seminaries for the instruction of 

 ecclesiastics, who, in consequence of such intellectual isolation, 

 are as ignorant of the achievements of modern science and the 

 chief currents of modern thought as though they lived in the 

 ninth instead of the nineteenth century. Quite recently the Ger- 

 man Imperial Government suggested the desirability and indi- 

 cated the intention of establishing a Catholic faculty of theology 

 in connection with the University of Strasburg ; but the project 

 was disapproved by the Alsatian bishop and met with general op- 

 position on the part of the Catholic press in Germany, so great 

 was the distrust of any intimate association with the centers of 

 higher secular education. Also the convention of Catholics held 

 at Cologne during the last week in August, 1894, expressed no 

 word in favor of the afore-mentioned plan, but passed a resolution 

 urging the immediate founding of a university at Fulda, which 

 should be sanctioned by the Pope, controlled by the bishops, and 

 wholly independent of the state. The kind of instruction which 

 young men would receive in such an institution may be easily 

 imagined. The hexahemera of the fathers and the works of Al- 

 bertus Magnus would be the text-books in natural science, while 

 theology and philosophy would be nothing but a rehash of the 

 quiddities and quodlibets of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. 



Two books recently published may be cited as fair specimens 

 of the sort of researches to which the professors of the proposed 

 Fulda University would probably devote their time and talents. 

 The first of these volumes is entitled Wunder und gottliche 

 Gnadenerweise bei der Ausstellung des heiligen Rockes zu Trier 

 im Jahre 1891 ; aktenmassig dargestellt von Dr. Felix Korum, 

 Bischof von Trier, of which a fourth edition has just been issued 

 by the Paulinus printing office in Trier (Treves). When it was 

 announced in 1890 that the " holy coat " of Trier would, after a 

 lapse of forty-six years, be again exhibited for the adoration of 

 the faithful, many sincere Catholics could hardly believe that, in 

 the latter half of the nineteenth century, such an appeal to the 

 crassest religious credulity would be made, or that it would meet 

 with any general response. Nevertheless the exhibition took 

 place in the following year and was crowned with immense suc- 

 cess. Vast crowds of people flocked to the sacred shrine, and ru- 

 mors went forth throughout the land of persons who had touched 

 the garment and proved its miraculous virtue by being healed of 

 their infirmities. This immense concourse of devotees presented 

 to the eyes of the bishop a " glorious spectacle " and is character- 

 ized by him as in itself a " moral miracle " ; a mind less blinded 

 by bigotry, and therefore more capable of tracing the logical con- 



