Here, then, we have a long period of twelve centuries, during which Christianity
has been in contact with her mortal foe; while upon three marked occasions that
foe was the grand object of her hopes and fears. It would have been natural,
therefore, to expect that Christian Europe would have entered the lists not
merely with the sword and with the shield. We might have anticipated that, her
learned divines and apologists would have advanced to the combat clad in the
celestial armour of the Gospel; and that Rome, besides pouring forth the martial
bands of Christendom, would have strenuously and unremittingly applied its hosts
of learned monks and ecclesiastics to overcome the adversary with such spiritual
weapons as would better have suited the sacred contest. The banners of Islam
approached close to the papal See; and the Crescent, almost within sight of
Imperial Rome, shone brightly upon Spain, Turkey, and Sicily. Might we not then
have hoped that its inauspicious rays would have waned before the transcendent
glory of the Sun of Righteousness? How fallacious were such expectations! We
learn, indeed, that "in later times, when, in the vicissitudes of military
adventure, the arms of the Mohammedan were found to preponderate, some faint
attempts were made, or meditated, to convince those whom it proved impossible to
subdue"; and again, that, "in 1285, Honorius iv. in order to convert
the Saracens strove to establish at Paris schools for Arabic and other Oriental
languages. The council of Vienna, in 1312, recommended the same method; and
Oxford, Salamanca, Bologna, as well as Paris, were places selected for the
establishment of the professorships. But the decree appears to have remained
without effect until Francis I. called it into life."1 And where are the
marks and effects of this feeble and tardy resolution? As far as practical
controversy is concerned, they are buried in obscurity. Learned works upon the
Arabic tongue, translations from its authors, or at best, dissertations and
commentaries which too often fight with the air, and sometimes betray gross
ignorance of the real views and tenets of Islam, are all that remain. The
dominion of the false Prophet needed