The Church of the Classical Age: The Great Century of Souls
is the seventh installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' grand
History of the Church of Christ
. This volume includes the first three chapters of that work, studying the heroic St. Vincent de Paul, whose charitable institutions and foundations for priests and religious opened wide the century's doors to Christ; the "age of spiritual grandeur" (1600-1660), with its extensive litany of saints and immense outpouring of spirituality, the flourishing of the missions and of religious orders for women dedicated to charitable and educational work, and the sustained creativity of Christian art and music; and then the profound crises that beset Christian Europe-the Thirty Years War; the scandal of Christian disunity; the Treaties of Westphalia; the papacy versus rising absolutism-and the question they posed: Would this great century end in glory or ignominy?
The strange phrase, "Great Century of Souls," captures perfectly the spirit of that epoch of saints and sinners. Vividly detailed and unfailingly interesting,
is the account
par excellence
of an age in which the Faith was the celebrated norm and the human soul the universally accepted seat of all ambition, passion, and achievement.