Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/39

 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL-REFORM MOVEMENT 25

which had existed before the modern languages came into being. The intellectual unity of Christendom was broken up, the unitary world-view of the Middle Ages was shattered, and the various departments of thought and knowledge lost their former coherence and ordination. The overthrow of the Ptolemaic astronomy contributed to the general disintegration of ideas, and the archaeological and linguistic preoccupations of the Renaissance period facilitated the rise of a " text-mongering and hair-splitting" type of religion. This historical retrospect, the reader must remember, represents the point of view of the Catholic school.

The rise of Protestantism cut off a large part of northern Europe from even a nominal adhesion to the patristic and medi- jeval traditions, and engaged all the best intellectual energies of Catholic Christendom in a desperate contest for the preserva- tion of what seemed to it the most essential and sacred elements of the apostolic tradition. At the same time a mighty economic revolution took place, as a result of the vast influx of treasure from America and India; the wholesale redistribution of prop- erty incident to the confiscation of the lands and revenues of the church and the ecclesiastical corporations ; the suppression of almshouses, hospices, hospitals, colleges, schools, trades- guilds, chantries, monasteries, and convents; and, finally, the incidental annihilation or crippling of a whole group of indus- tries largely dependent upon ecclesiastical patronage. The former tenants of monastic lands, transformed by their new own- ers into deer parks or pastures, or subjected to a ruinous rack- rent, such as had been almost impossible in the days when the easy-going monks set the pace to the secular landlords, mingled with the stone-masons, glass-painters, bell-ringers, wood-carvers, metal-workers, makers of church books, weavers of precious cloths, sculptors, artists, and artisans of almost every kind, who had been thrown out of employment by the change of religion ; and in the dearth of opportunity all alike sank into a lower and lower condition of penury and misery, even where they were not transformed outright into homeless vagabonds. This was the beginning of the modern proletariat ; but the situation was