Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/479

Rh finding the remains of imaginary saints, to be sent forth with lying legends attached, he exposed the abuse. His treatise gave offence, and the pope required that he should rewrite it. Mabillon submitted, and produced an enlarged and amended edition, which was published with approbation. In a preface of genuine moderation and humility, he assumes the bearing of one who has undergone correction : "Eo tendit ut emolliam si quid durius, ut explicem si quid obscurius, denique ut emendem et corrigam si quid secus quam par sit a me hac in epistola scriptum non-nullis videatur." To the world, and even to his own brethren, he appeared to have confessed his error. Dom Thuillier says that he condemned himself and was only too long about it. In fact he had sacrificed his credit rather than his judgment. To a friend he writes of this book : "Je l'ai done retouchée sans l'affoiblir en rien, et l'ai augmentée de près de la moitié." The historian who says that the finest moments in Church history are the resistance of Luther and the submission of Fénelon, might find room for a third type in the example of Mabillon.

The moral that distils from these pages is that Mabillon and his companions were not only learned and able, but veracious and sincere ; that history, which intellectually makes giant strides, makes none morally ; that the rules, the limitations, the observances that guarded the compilers of so many folios are safer than the maxims of an age in which Renan, Havet, Haureau, occupy the seats of Gallican learning, when unattachment is more honoured than authority, and a man is less esteemed for equity towards opponents than for alacrity in turning against friends. "Les erudits d'autrefois valaient bien ceux de notre temps. — Tous . . . portent dans leurs études et leurs recherches une bonne foi, une liberté d'ésprit et de jugement, qui frappent singulièrement." There is a problem here of historical psychology and progressive ethics that is worth thinking about. At first sight it should seem a paradox to say that two centuries which have accomplished so much for the science of conscience, for the theory of morals, for the testing of certainty and the