ESSAYS  AND  ADDRESSES
it seems that within the very unity of Catholicism
the Gallic Church has earned for itself a place pre-
eminent and apart, thanks to the grace and judg-
ment of a St. Francis of Sales, as well as to the ex-
traordinary genius of a Bossuet, whom some have
denominated the last of the Fathers.
France, moreover, in the 17th century, was the
birthplace and cradle of Jansenism, the most aus-
tere and, without a doubt, the most excessive mani-
festation of religious thought. The stern abbé of
St. Cyran was the founder of that Port Royal which
figures so prominently in the history of religious
ideas, and which became the rendez-vous to which
gathered, for a nearer approach to the Sovereign
Judge, all the notable personalities of France in
that great century, from Pascal to Racine and to
the Arnaulds themselves.
Even in more recent times France has proved by
far the most active and the most energetic field for
that religious revival which, in the first third of
the last century, reacted everywhere so powerfully
against the materialism of the 18th century. In
France again, reappeared those religious congrega-
tions which time had tainted with corruption, but
which now resuscitated the mystic spirit of the
Middle Ages. I shall not speak to you of the
tortures inflicted on himself by a Lacordaire, offer-
ing up to God in his lonely cell the punishment of
his body and the humiliation of his genius.
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