Saint Cajetan. By R. de Mania° La Claviere. Translated by
George Herbert Ely. (Duckworth and Co.)—Gaetano di Thiene —he was so called because born at Gaeta—was born in 1480, died in 1547, was beatified in 1627, and canonised in 1671. One thing may be said without hesitation of the story of his life, that there is little or nothing in it to offend the reader of another faith. Cajetan was not a persecutor, though he was for a time in Intimate association with Caraffa, afterwards Paul IV. And he was a man of practical benevolence. One of his earliest activities was to found institutions for the relief of the incurable. His asceticism was, it is true, of a pronounced type, but he tortured no one but himself. His biographer expresses himself with con- siderable freedom about persons and events, and must, we should say, have tried the long suffering of the Censor. Once, indeed, this personage intervenes. "The cloistered life," he tells us in a note, "devoted to solitude, prayer, and mortification, is no less praiseworthy than a life of activity," the occasion being the remark that "to devote ourselves to men who live near us is the 'philosophy of modern Christianity." This phrase "modern Christianity" is the offence. Yet the Censor himself seems to have been affected by it. "No less praiseworthy " ; surely that is a great declension from mediaeval glorifications of the ascetic life.
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