CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Lives of the Saints for August. By the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.. (Hodges.)—Mr. Baring-Gould, who does not happen to fall foul of any Protestant or other evil creatures, has given us this time a very plea- sant volume. Nay, he speaks some wise words about toleration which are very good to read. We have seldom seen a paragraph of ecclesi- astical history which contained more truth than the following. He is speaking of the persecution of the Donatists :—
"Augustine, in his calmer mood, saw the evil of using constraint. 'My opinion at first was that no one should be compelled to the unity of Christ; he must be won by the word, convinced by argument, satis- fied by reasons, lest we should have disguised Catholics instead of open heretics.' When in power, with the imperial authority at his back, the temptation was too strong for him not to retract this wise opinion, and to call in force to restrain his adversaries The stake and the sword drove the mediaival Manichees or Pasagini to take repose under the cowl of S. Francis. The Minorite order was nearly ruined thereby; the Fraticelli proved more dangerous to morals and sscerdotalism than flagrant Manicheeism. It was they who throughout Europe sowed the seeds of that revolt which rent half of Europe from the Church in the sixteenth century. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the dragonnades and galleys of Louis XIV., forced thousands of Huguenots into external profession of Catholicism. Their brooding discontent spread, infected the community, and broke out in the frenzy against religion and monarchy of the first French Revolution."
He enforces the same doctrine in speaking of St. Dominic and the Albi- genses. We are glad to see that he defends the saint against the charge of complicity in the hideous proceedings of the Albigensian crusade. "There is absolutely no evidence," he says, "that St. Dominic had any part in counselling or encouraging the massacre." We regret to find that Mr. Baring-Gould dissipates our belief that Helena, the mother of Constantine, was a British princess. She seems to have come from Dripanum, in the Gulf of Nicomedia, and to have accompanied Con- stantius, possibly as his wife, possibly as his mistress. Eusebius speaks of her as a "concubine," St. Ambrose tells us that she was a stabularia, i.e., a female hostler. With thb British delusion vanishes also the in- teresting notion, which we own ourselves to have not heard of before we found it refuted, that the father of Helena was "old King Cole." Curiosities, of course, abound in the volume. Here is one,—the only occasion on which." the blessed Schetzolo," a Luxemburg hermit of the twelfth century, gave way to temptation :—" One winter he was lying out in the snow, and the drift covered all his body, except his face, where his breath had melted a hole. A poor, half-frozen rabbit jumped
into the hole and crouched down on the hermit's breast. He was moved tries even the sincerest admirer's faith. And one of the three, the first to laughter and then to pleasure, for the little creature, numbed middle-aged lover who is so wonderfully good and kind, is shamefully with cold, suffered him to stroke its fur, and so, when Schetzelo ought treated. As for the other two, there is not much to choose between to have been praying and meditating, he was playing with the rabbit under the snow."
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