'THE SINS OF A SAINT'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 43, 22 October 1903, Page 4

'THE SINS OF A SAINT'

AN ENVENOMED ROMANCE Thje opening of a i new church at Clyde (Central Otago) on last Sunday, dedicated to St. Dunstan, gives pi splendid timeliness to the following vigorous dissection of an envenomed romance entitled ' The Sins of a Siaint,' which has found its way to New Zealand. The exposure of this evil book is from the gifted pen of Father Lucian Johnston, and was forwarded to us by the International Catholic Truth Society, Brooklyn, UJS.A.. It runs as follows : Baltimore, Md., August 10, 1903. President of the I.C.T. Society,— Dear Sir,— At your request I have carefuhy examined the ' Sins of a Saint,' by J. R. Aitken. (D. Appleton & Co., N.Y., 1903.) The following is the conclusion I arrived at regarding it— It strikes me as amateurish as a novel or romance, and it is beyond all doubt a slander both upon a gieat man and upon the Catholic Church, of which he is an honored saint. This is strong language, but I use it deliberately and for these reasons. The book deals with the character of St. Dunstan, [Archbishop of Canterbury. According to our author he is worse than a criminal. He »is a liar, a sly diplomat, who would not scruple to employ any means, howe\er "base, which would l'uither his ends (pp. 45, 46, 57, 60, 70, 102, 288, 302) ; a tyrant when in power (55, 97), revengeful{6o, 72), ' Satanic,' demoniacal in disposition 39, 203), capable even of counselling a young monk to break his vow of chastity in order to further his own political purposes (45 to 50, 71) ; a disturber ot the realm, treacherous to his king, persecutor and muiderer of an innocent maiden— in a word, an incarnation of political ambition unchecked by any consideration of honor, virtue, or even humanity. So much for Dunstan. The Papacy is also the target for the most savage abuse of the tone to which we are accustomed in the Reading of such books as the alleged Confessions of Maria Monk et al. (pp. 44, 56, 74, 75, 97, 102, 162, 105). The monks are painted in colors which would make even • Friar Tuck ' ashamed. They aie drunken, teveng,eful, cruel, murderous, etc., and so ojn E\ery (person and everything dear to Catholuc memory is hold up to scorn and abused in language which at times is so loul, so intemperate as to excite our pity lor the wnter. Now "what justification in history is tluue for such) awful charges against English Catholicism oi the tenth century ? None Before the time of Lingard, Dunstan's character had, it is true, been a favorite theme for the attacks ot antiCathohc writers like llallam, Hume, Turner, Southey, Henry, Rapin, Carte The charges of those men were fearlessly and successfully met by Lingard, chiefly in Chapter XI II of Iji.s ' Histctry (and Antiquities ot tho Anglo-Saxon Church " (2 vols , 1845) Since that time the tide has almost completely turned * In Favor of Dunstun ; h*nyhow, the old virulence of style has entneiy gi\cn place to moderate criticism even in quarters most ant iCathoh,c Since l\k Aitken makes a great show oi historical learning I will mention some leading, writers in proof of my statement. To bjegm with the authorities cited by our author. He refers us chiefly to Greene, Kemble, and iMilner Miloier is not an authority. lie is not mentioned in the latest and best ' Bibliography of English 1 listen y, 1 by Oharlps Gross But C.ieen and Kemble arc authorities Now, if you pick up Kemble's ' Saxons in England,' at $pp. 458, 461 (edition of 1876), 0f Chap IX , \ olume II , you will find an estimate of Dunstan completely adverse to that given by our author The same \w*\ (Ureen, who pays a flattering tribute to Dunstan both; in his ' Ilistoiy of the English People ' (Chap IV , Yol I.), and in his ' Short History of the English People ' ((Chap. I , p'p 57 ct scq , edition of 18h(() Mr , 1111 1 1 en \even quotes Stubbs, a great authorfty on this n>a t It r Here the same story. Stubbs in his ' Memorials of St. Dunstan ' (R S London, 1871), gi\es a blowing picture of the saint, as glowing as the most <-er"iti\e Catholic could desiie, fully as flatter iru; os thai gi\cn by Lingard (,-ee pp. 103" to 109, and 117 to 120 Jntrojduetion). Finally our authoi has the efticntery, on page 321, to quote even Lingard for the substantiation of ' thte main facts of the conduct imputed to him, ie , Dunstan, the conduct referred to consisting hn/the bloody mutilation ot a woman On the contrary, Lingard distinctly states the opposite Mr Ait ken's re-

Iference is nothing less than an outragfc upon all historical decency. So much for the authorities cited by the author. I have gone further and examined othprs pf even a more tecent date. In them 1 can find nothing whatever to justify su^h an attack upon Dunstan. and early English Catholicity. And these Authorities are all Protestant. Foremost is one of the latest and in most respects the ablest one volume ' History of the Church of England,' by H, O. Wakeman (1897). His estimate of Dwystan and of Dunstan's works both as archbishop and as statesman is, highly fluttering (pp. 67 to 72). A similarly favoiable judgment is found in ' The English Church in the Middle Ages ' (pp. 45 to 52) by Rev. William Hunt (1895). Also the * Student's History of England ' by \np less a, competent and fair writer than Mr. Samuel Kawson Gardiner (1900) says enough in its brief way (pp. 65 to 79) to entirely discredit Mr. Aitken's romance. Also a very recent and able ' History of England 'byE. F. Powell and T. F. Tout (pp. 39 to 43) 'gives a favorable estimate o,f Dunstan and his work. Lastly even an habitually anti-Catholic historian like W. F. Hook says of Dunstan (' Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,' vol. i., p. 403, 1882), whom he freely criticises that despite his ' many and great faults, ■> he *vas nevertheless a good and virtuous man, deserving though often of censure, yef always our respect.' From the preceding you can therefore see very plainly that Mr. Aitken's book is a Romance Pure and Simple. lie is utterly ignorant or ignores all the history written in the last lifty years ox more. /The latest English historians give the lie direct to" the story, and even the big,oted and uninformed writers anterior to Lingard would blush at the foulness of Mr. Aitken's language and thought ; moieover, it must be plain I^hat he either did not read the authors cited by him or else maliciously misquoted them. In the case of Lingard he utters a plain falsehood He terms his story an ' Historical Romance.' It may be romance, though a poor thing even at that ; but it surely is not ' historical.' I am sorry to have spent so much time over such a worthless and really \enomous book. But I have done Jso for good reasons. In the first place the author has made such a show of historical knowledge .that the ifocautioius are likely to bow down before his superior wisdom. A prominent morning newspaper here in Baltimore spoke of the book in very flattering terms. The reviewer was evidently scared by the pretentious array of English authtonties qu,oted m the footnotes. Then, too, the book at bottom and m intention is not so much a romance as an attack on the Catholic JChurcJh in j the form of a novel. As such it is sure to have a large circulation, particularly among Anglicans. ■'Lastly, it is issued by a well-known firm — Appeuon and Co., whose prestige alone can win a large audience for almost any book. Why this firm should lend its name to such an infamous attack upon its Catholic patrons is rather hard to see Had the book any real literary merit one could undei stand. But it is decidedly amateurish e\enas a novel In the absence of any proof ( f intentional anti-Catliolic bias on the part of this firm I suppose the most charitable conclusion to come to is that the scholarship of its litpiary critics is of) a very low otder , while-^hat of its historical critic is simply \beneath contempt. LUCIAN JOHNSTON.