the Single Tax system established, but who does not admit that the present system is morally wrong. As to the second statement quoted above, it does not apply to the proposals of the Single Tax advocates; for they would concede to the individual holder the full ownership and benefit of improvements. Nor is there anything in the principles of the system to deprive the individual of full protection against confiscation in any case in which improvement values could not be exactly distinguished from land values.

It is true that Henry George wrote his "Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII,” with a view of refuting the doctrines of the Encyclical. But all his arguments are directed against the principle that private landownership is right and just. Apparently Henry George did not find that Pope Leo condemned any essential element of the Single Tax itself, considered merely as a system of land tenure. Apparently the head and front of the Holy Father's offending was his ethical defense of the present system.

To put the sum of this article in two sentences: Private landownership is a natural right because in present conditions the institution is necessary for individual and social welfare. The right is certainly valid against complete Socialism, and probably valid against any such radical modification of the present system as that contemplated by the thorough-going Single Tax advocates.

JOHN A. RYAN.

GERBERT, POPE SYLVESTER II.

What John the Scot was in the ninth century, Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II, was in the tenth-a great light shining in a world of comparative darkness and ignorance. John the Scot is a mysterious personality, because so little is known with certainty about the beginning and the close of his career; Gerbert's biography is perplexing because with much that is historically certain there is intermingled still more that is legendary, with the facts that are simple and intelligible is interwoven a mass of fables that are weird and bewildering. Gerbert as we know him from history, the student, the teacher, the mathematician, the philosopher, the prelate, the pope, and Gerbert as he was known to some of his imaginative contemporaries and to his enemies of a later time, the magician, the sorcerer, the dealer in uncanny contracts with the evil one, seem to be two entirely different personalities. It will be our task to try and unravel the mesh of fact and fancy, to extricate history from fable, and to place the true personality of the man in contrast with the false creation of minds that were misled partly by hatred of the papacy and partly by uncontrolled love of the marvellous.

The tenth century was a chaotic age. Politically, France was passing through the series of disturbances which resulted in 987 by the crowning of Hugh Capet as King, it was the end of the Carolingians and the beginning of Capetian line. In Germany, there was similar confusion, which resulted in the substitution of the Saxon line for the Carolingian, out of which came, at the end of the century the comparatively prosperous reigns of the first three Ottos. Italy, North and South, was in a condition bordering on anarchy, and in central Italy, and especially in Rome, the usurpations of the Counts of Tusculum, led to a series of aggressions which plunged the papacy itself into one of the severest trials in all the history of that institution. There was factionism everywhere, and a

spirit of pagan worldliness against which spiritually-minded prelates like Ratherius of Verona protested with indignation. Ecclesiastical and monastic discipline were disturbed by the confusion of political conditions, and synods like that of Coblenz in 922 and Erfurt in 932, made strenuous efforts to restore the ancient order and the regularity of ecclesiastical life. The reign of ignorance and superstitition was very widespread. Men like Brother Bruno of Cologne, Bishop Ulric of Augsburg, Blessed Wolfgang of Regensburg, and other noted ecclesiastics strove for the restoration of learning in the cloister and cathedral schools, but were often unsuccessful owing to fresh invasions of the restless Huns who pillaged and burned their way through Germanic provinces, and seemed especially bent on destroying art and literature as well as religious and political institutions. There was a general, though by no means a universal, belief that the end of the world was at hand, that the year one thousand was the limit set for the reign of Christianity. And where there was already little room for learned leisure and no encouragement for cultivating the arts of peace, the belief in the approaching end of all things was readily adopted as an excuse for the suspension of all literary labor. It reacted too on morals in what seems to us a curious manner. For, instead of turning men's minds to the practices of piety, the fear of a world catastrophe acted like a panic, and brought out the worst elements in human character. It would be easy, of course, to overdraw the picture. Reformers, like Ratherius of Verona, are not to be taken literally in all their invectives against the prevailing conditions. Like him who, in his attempt to purify the stream, often stirs up the mud and sediment and makes matters worse, temporarily at least, so the prelates who exerted themselves in favor of a stricter moral life among clergy and laity bring to the surface in their writings the very worst abuses of the time, and their testimony must be offset by other narratives if we are to form a just estimate of the age which they were trying to reform. Nevertheless, we are forced to admit that the age was one of unusual darkness in matters intellectual and of exceptional confusion in matters of

morals. If only we do not generalize too freely, we may with many Catholic historians, describe the tenth century as the darkest age, the leaden age, as Cardinal Baronius calls it.

In all the darkness and confusion of the age, and in spite of the sad succession of unworthy popes, it was to the papacy and to Rome that the world looked as to its only hope, as to the only possible source of reform and amelioration. Out of the gloom of the tenth century comes a collection of curious little books written for the guidance of pilgrims to the catacombs and the shrines of the apostles. These interesting treatises, often passed over by historians who see only the darker side, are full of spiritual idealism, of an idealism which we must analyze here, if we are to understand the rôle that Gerbert played in the work of reform. The idealism is partly religious and partly political. It is aroused not only by the sight of the scenes of early Christian heroism, the catacombs and the Colosseum, the shrines of the Apostles and the tombs of the martyrs, but also by the sight of the stately monuments of pagan antiquity, the relics of the political past, which now loomed up as a golden age of worldly grandeur and civil supremacy. Calmness and dignity was what the age needed most, the calmness of religious piety and the dignity of Roman legal institutions. Rome symbolized both, and when, through the patronage of the Emperor Otto III, Gerbert the monk and scholar found the road open to the highest dignity of the Church, the Empire and the papacy seemed to be restored to ancient peace and to pristine splendor. The prestige of Otto as Emperor put an end to local factionism for the time, and the fame of Gerbert as a man of learning promised better times for the See of Peter and the condition of the Church in every land. The interference of the first three Ottos in the affairs of the Church was not in itself a desirable thing, nor is it in agreement with the spirit of ecclesiastical law. Nevertheless the actual event to which we refer put an end to a condition that was intolerable, and may be judged to have been a benefit. Under Gerbert as Pope Sylvester II, the See of Peter resumed its authority in the affairs of the Church all over Europe, and, according to

some historians, took the first step towards dealing with the great problem of the Orient, the check of Saracen aggression and the Mahometan advance on Christendom.

These general conditions in the tenth century needed to be described before taking up the study of Gerbert as a philosopher. Once more, however, the caution should be repeated that the age was not entirely dark nor was there complete and absolute dearth of letters and education. In some of the monasteries, especially in Germany and Switzerland, there was considerable activity. The Annals of Hildesheim and St. Gall, the History of Saxony written by Widukind, a monk of Corvey, the Latin poems of the learned nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim, and the German poems in praise of the Ottos, all date from the tenth century. In order to appreciate the preeminence of Gerbert as a scholar it is sufficient to draw the picture of his times as they really were; it is not necessary to exaggerate nor to deny to others the credit that is due them.

Gerbert was a Burgundian by birth. He was born at Aurillac, or near Aurillac, between the years 940 and 945. Whatever success he had in life he owed to his ability and his talents; he certainly did not owe it to birth or family influence. His parents were poor and probably peasants. He was educated at the Benedictine monastery of Aurillac, and there he joined that great historic order which had already distinguished itself as a factor in European civilization. At Aurillac he studied grammar and rhetoric under a teacher named Raymond, for whom, all during his later career, he retained the warmest and most cordial affection. Had Gerbert remained at the monastery of Aurillac he might in turn have become the master of a school there, but his talents would have been hidden, and it would have been impossible for him to play the important part he actually did play in the history of the Church and of the world. Fortunately, while he was still a student, there came to the monastery Count Borel of Barcelona, who ruled a considerable part of the Spanish Marches. With him Gerbert journeyed to Barcelona, which had been recovered from the Moors about a century earlier, and where, even in the ninth