The Church of the Classical Age: The Great Century of Souls, Volume 1

By Henri Daniel-Rops The Church of the Classical Age: The Great Century of Souls is the sixth 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? How to work the new leaven into the mass of the baptized—that was th