The first Dominicans came to Russia in 1222, only a year after another group of Friars had set foot for the first time on English soil.

With the exception of the Apostolic times, no other period in the history of the Church can be compared to the first half of the thirteenth century. In founding their respective Orders both Dominic and Francis gave such an impulse to the entire Catholic world that during subsequent centuries their successors had only to follow in the footsteps of their great predecessors. It was to Hyacinth, one of his first disciples, that St. Dominic entrusted the mission of evangelizing Northern Europe.

St. Hyacinth was a member of the noble Polish family of Odrowaz, and had been received into the Order of Preachers in 1220. Shortly afterwards, accompanied by three other Polish friars, St. Hyacinth returned to his native country. In Cracow he founded his first monastery, and then started on his missionary journey. In two years the Saint had visited Poland, Prussia, Denmark, Scandinavia, Finland. Everywhere his passage was marked by the establishment of Dominican monasteries. In 1222 he at last reached Red Russia, or Galicia, and, having founded a monastery in Halic, proceeded to Kiev.

At that time Russia presented an agglomeration of principalities (Oudiely), governed by princes, descendants of Saint Vladimir, the most important principality being that of Kiev, whose Great Prince was the doyen amongst the other princes.

Las Casas was a Churchman whose activities in the cause of humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the Indians by the Spanish colonial adventurers are well known and appreciated by many, and due credit has ever been rendered him by Protestant historians : but it is well to realise that he was not a brilliant and solitary exception. The Spanish Churchmen were ever famous for their uncompromising morality. Many of his own order—Pedro de Cordoba, Antonio Monterino and others whom we shall meet, as well as many of the Spanish clergy of every rank—made a no less determined stand for justice against immorality. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, unequivocally stated the doctrine of the Church.

Nor were the secular authorities remiss. The Audience of the Indies, Charles V, and Philip II issued order after order and edict after edict against the enslavement of the natives, the theft of their property, and the outrages against their persons. Yet a terrible state of things existed. The trouble arose from the impossibility of controlling at that great distance greedy and cruel adventurers who, sure of the support of their fellows in the remote lands of New Spain, were able to a great extent to ignore all orders and ordinances on the matter. The clergy had more success; for they could and did wield the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and the Spanish adventurers, if in their hearts they did not agree with the humanity of the Church, did for the most part fear her censure.

A person in search of adventure might join a Polar expedition, arrange an aerial flight round the world or found a newspaper entirely dedicated to truth-telling. These adventures are of the more spectacular and expensive kind, and only within the reach of the favoured few. A cheaper way of satisfying the thirst for adventure is to empty your pockets of all your money, dress in the oldest and shabbiest clothes you can find, and make yourself a tramp. This is what Mrs. Cecil Chesterton did—not exactly for the fun of the thing, not in search of romance and adventure, but to study destitution, and to prove to herself that a woman without status and that recommendation which is called a ‘character’ or a ‘reference’ cannot obtain employment in any recognised craft or calling.

We have heard of these amateur explorers into the underworld before. Are they not, we ask ourselves, mere spectators, in, though not of the surroundings they have themselves freely chosen? They go among the outcasts to record facts and register impressions, but they are only onlookers and not outcasts themselves. If any of these thoughts arise with regard to Mrs. Chesterton’s personal experiment, her book, In Darkest London, will dispel them. She says : ‘I left my home one evening in February. I wore my own clothes, which were shabby but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat—and not a penny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle.

It has been said, and it is Catholic doctrine, that man is a bridge connecting the material and the spiritual. Both are real, both are good. God is spirit, man is matter and spirit. Man is therefore able to see, to present in material terms things spiritual and, conversely, though he cannot represent it, he is able to comprehend, though not fully, the spiritual significance of the material. He can show the spiritual in terms of matter, but he cannot show the material in terms of spirit.

The art of man, though ultimately unimportant, for, like all material things, works of art will return to dust, has therefore two claims to attention. In the first place it is the only activity of which man is capable which is in itself worth pursuing, and in the second it is man’s sole abiding solace in this vale of tears. In this age, an age noted for every sort of material achievement but such as can be called works of art, these are very controversial statements. Let us proceed to their demonstration. The essence of Religion is the affirmation of absolute values. Religions may be good or bad, values may be true or false, but the affirmation of an absolute value is a religious affirmation. Without such affirmations there would be sciences, moralities, and—Royal Academies of Art, but there would be no religion. To affirm that such and such is true because it is true and for no other reason, or that such and such is good because it is good and for no other reason are religious affirmations.

Father Vincent McNabb prefaces his article in the October number of BLACKFRIARS with the statement that he has neither the wish nor the capability to offer a criticism of ‘the astronomies and mathematics’ of Prof. Einstein. And the present writer feels impelled to make a similar disclaimer as regards the scholastic philosophy of Father McNabb, whom he is proud to number amongst the most revered of his personal friends and spiritual advisers. But, as one whose technical education involved a good deal of ‘astronomies and mathematics’ and whose tastes have even leaned towards the study of physical science, it appears to him that the body of Father McNabb’s article does not fulfill the promise of sticking to his philosophic last which he makes at the outset. Before the close, he is dealing with questions of the purest mechanics, which cannot be divorced from astronomy, even if they can from pure mathematics.

Father McNabb opens his attack by quoting the following passage from Einstein’s book on Relativity :

The luminous hills of Umbria, the absolute sun, the grey climbing town, the rows of thick green cypresses—who has not heard of these and of the little sanctuary that is Assisi? Some, too, perhaps, have come to guess at a whole world made up of prayer and of a real Presence enshrined in no less a sanctuary than man’s soul; to guess, to wonder, even to realize so far as the wayfaring man may. But are there many who have given thought to the mind of modern Assisi, to consider how the townsfolk of St. Francis speak and think to-day of their greatest citizen? How many of the thronging pilgrims were able to read the Italian placards, the ‘affisioni,’ that were everywhere, half-covering the walls of the little sunny town?

Now, in Italy, the powers that be speak to their subjects through the placard : upon any morning you may find lavish messages on all the walls. Does a Queen go to death or a Minister escape it, a calamity befall, a festa loom in the coming week, instantly proclamations from the Mayor, the committee, the parish Church or what not are set where he who runs may read. The newspaper catches a few thousand eyes and possibly a few hundred intelligences, but the prolific, eloquent walls catch us all. Almost might history be written by means of placards alone. Let, then, the walls of Assisi speak:-

‘The Commune and people of Assisi,’ we read, ‘are custodians of a good, destined to be shared by the whole world, for their town is like a heart sending its life-blood beyond the limits of space and time.

A World without rhythm would be a world without joy and sorrow, toil and rest, life and death; a world without its land and water, hill and valley, light and shade, sunshine and storm, springtime and autumn; a world without alternation, relief, contrasting harmonies, and that ‘variety’ which ‘is the spice of life.’

Whence does the placid lake derive its beauty, or the pathless snow? Surely in very small measure indeed from mere placidity or pathlessness. Given the boundless sea with never a wave, no play of light and shadow; or an Antarctic waste of untrodden snow, and who would say ‘How lovely!’? Not so the gallant Scott, as he gazed on the white wilderness around him.

‘O God ! this is an awful place ! ‘was the poignant cry he recorded—not because of the terrible cold, or even the disappointment that met him at his goal, but because of that feature of the Antarctic solitudes that weighs most heavily on the stoutest heart—dreary, unrelieved Monotony.

Pre-renaissance art is not, as many solemnly declare, unimportant because verisimilitude (truth to appearance) was not attempted by primitive artists. The gargoyles on the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris are not without beauty because, in so far as they represent anything at all, they represent Devils. Neither the camera nor the text-book of moral theology are the test of Beauty. A work of art is not to be judged beautiful in the degree of its likness to anything, nor in the degree of its likeness to something lovable, nor, supposing we deem a woman to be more lovable than a spider, is a portrait of a woman to be judged to be more beautiful than a portrait of a spider. Conversely ugliness in a work of art is not measured by the degree in which the work departs from natural appearance, nor is a work of art necessarily ugly, because it is like nothing lovable.

These misunderstandings are variously felt by different persons and different kinds of work suffer in different ways. Thus painting suffers most, music perhaps least. Most people can appreciate a tune for its own sake, or even a symphony, and do not insist that it shall imitate any natural noise. Few people can see painting in the same way and appreciate form and colour as such, but insist upon imitation and ethical standards, forgetting that neither imitation nor the inculcation of morals is the artist’s business. The musician does not write the poem to which he may be asked to make appropriate music.

Corpus Christi Day in Rome generally finds the tide of foreign visitors on the ebb, happily so, at least from one point of view. The curious crowds who invade the churches in Holy Week are not always drawn by religion, nor is their presence always an aid to devotion. But by the time the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday comes the mere tripper has left for a cooler climate and other ‘sights,’ and the Italian, with those who know and appreciate his religion, is left more or less undisturbed. Sophistication vanishes, simplicity returns, and one has the feeling that what stage-managing there is comes from pure interest in the occasion, from an undivided attention to a great tradition. Corpus Christi Day processions are beautiful anywhere, but hardly anywhere do they show such ingenuous elaboration, such mingling of local pride, childlike pleasure, and natural beauty as at Genzano, the little town in the wine-growing country near Rome, above Lake Nemi.

For the people of Genzano and the country for miles round it is not only the festival of Corpus Domini; it is the Infiorata, the festival of the flowers. The religion of the country and the life and pleasures of the local inhabitants are intermixed in a way which only a people who have no doubts can show. It is, of course, a public holiday, and after the early Masses the cafes and the wineshops are full. A committee of townspeople is formed to organise the Infiorata.

A fountain pen, like silk stockings, is a necessity to the poor and a luxury to the rich, and should form part of the equipment of every citizen, so that he may write to his newspapers, fill up his income tax and perform all the functions of good citizenship. It is as personal as a tooth brush and as indispensable; and, with a tooth brush, forms a barrier to the onslaughts of Communism, and an eternal argument against the persuasions of Communists. A man may be willing to share his pipes and a woman her hats, but neither man nor woman will ever lend tooth brush or fountain pen without emphasizing the loan as a deviation from the standards of Christian conduct.

Nationalisation has given us post office nibs, Communism would give us post office fountain pens, and then God help us!

A fountain pen is, if not a man’s birthright, at least a mark of his manhood or that with which he can make his mark. Millionaires have platinum and diamond studded bands, Chinese lacquer and new blue blood ink, the price of which would keep a suburb in vulcanite for a generation, and with these they make trusts and newspapers and all the horrors of civilisation.

A fountain pen is a blessing to possess and a curse to acquire. We go to buy in some vast hall and are bewildered by shapes, sizes and colours. Sancta Simplicitas chooses a plain black shape, but it needs wisdom and understanding to decide between safety, self-filler, adjustable and all the other devices of maids ingenuity.

The Editor has courteously asked me to reply, and I do so with great pleasure, though in unavoidable haste, since it is almost all I can do to clear up the term’s work before a necessary holiday. Again, I welcome his request that my reply should aim rather at construction than at destruction, if only I may be permitted first to deal very plainly with the two cases which Mr. Clayton quotes as reflecting discredit upon a University which has chosen me for its Lectureship in English. I know the requirements for a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society, having more than once been asked to stand sponsor to young pupils for that distinction; and even if I had imagined beforehand that these would necessarily include a mastery of the niceties of our language, Mr. Clayton’s article would have disabused me. In my first incriminated sentence, he has been puzzled by a very ordinary construction; after mentioning ‘the serf’ (singular) and ‘the negro’ (singular) I proceed to sum them up in the plural as ‘those simple minds.’ His second point is, that I blunder by speaking of a current as running and as creeping in the same sentence. It is plain that he has forgotten the proverb ‘Still waters run deep,’ and that he is not sufficiently familiar with our standard writers to realize that run, of liquids, does not necessarily imply rapidity. But he might at least have consulted a good dictionary before jumping to the conclusion that my University has blundered in appointing a man whose limitations do not exactly coincide with his own.