Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/388

 3/8 Reviews of Books In defiance of their title the two volumes now published set forth the history of the papacy from about 1640 to 1878. The treatment is episodic and not altogether complete, as, for instance, in its omission to deal with Americanism and with secularization in Germany after the treaty of Luneville. Beginning with Jansenism the author leads us through the abolition of the Jesuits, Liguori, Febronianism, and Joseph- ism to the great struggle of the papacy against Napoleon, and closes his first volume with the reaction of 1815. The second volume brings us rapidly to the pontificate of Pius IX., and then deals at considerable length with the Revolution of 1848-1849, with the proclamation of the dogma of the immaculate conception, with the bull Quanta Cura, and with the Vatican Council. On the whole the value of the book is not difficult to sum up. It is not a work of great erudition, and it is not the work of a mind strong either in the critical or in the philosophical qualities. But, as against this, the Bishop of Aalborg has a very temperate, sympathetic outlook which is an inestimable advantage when dealing with theological ques- tions, and he has apparently been in close personal touch with German thought of the Kulturkampf period, which lends weight to his state- ments, apart from the question of authorities, for the last part of his second volume. The first of these qualities is conspicuous in his state- ment of the question of the immaculate conception, which it would be hard to find fault with; the importance he attributes to Perrone's little- known tract on latent tradition may be specially commended, as this was unquestionably one of the most important theological essays of the century. The weakness of the book is to be found, as just stated, in its narrowness of treatment and in its lack of precision of detail. To take the latter point first. In the account given of the struggle about Jansenism at the French court, much is made of the attitude of Mme. de Pompadour and, in support, extracts are given from her letters (I. 32). The Bishop of Aalborg should, however, have known that these letters are forgeries. Their author was probably Barbe-Marbois, and, in any event, the internal evidence should have shown him their worthlessness at a glance. The whole of the account, running through several chapters, of Napoleon's relations with the papacy is very weak on the political side. Thus there is not one word to indicate that, in all his dealings with Pius VI. before the treaty of Tolentino, Bonaparte was frequently acting in flagrant opposition to the policy of the Directoire. Again, the resignation of the imperial crown by Francis II. is made to antedate the pope's decision to crown Napoleon (I. 269) ; and a distortion of history which is nearly as bad occurs in volume I., p. 120, where we are told that " the reduction of the Convents by Joseph . . . saved Austria from a revolution like the French Revolution ", a statement all the more amazing when one recalls the course of the revolt of the Austrian Xcthcrlands under that I'Uipcror. Even worse is