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366 As they possessed almost an educational monopoly in Catholic countries for about two centuries, it is certain that they would have succeeded, had they attempted such a change. But they never attempted this change; on the contrary, they strongly opposed such attempts. It suffices to allude to the famous controversy carried on with so much vigor by Abbé Gaume in France, about fifty years ago. This zealous scholar maintained that the pagan classics infected the schools with pagan ideas; indeed, he saw in their use in the schools the "fatal cancer which preys upon the vitals of Christianity." Christian Latin and Greek authors should, therefore, be substituted for the pagan classics. Many distinguished Catholic scholars and writers, such as Montalembert, Louis Veuillot, Donoso Cortes and others sided with Abbé Gaume. Among those who most strenuously defended the classics were the Jesuits, foremost among them Father Daniel. In a most elegant and learned book this Jesuit proved overwhelmingly that, from the earliest centuries, the majority of the great Doctors of the Christian Church were not opposed to the classics, on the contrary that most of them favored their study, and that the severe language of a few Fathers is directed not against the classics as such, but against the idolatry and obscenity contained in many of them.