Lectures on Great Men (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1857. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... GASPARD DE COLIGNY. The subject of my Lecture is one of the principal personages in the history of the Protestant Reformation in France: but so intimately in this case is individual character mixed up with general history, and so crowded and complicated are the events which we shall have to contemplate, that I must leave it in a very great measure to yourselves to detach the biographical from the historical, and hasten at once to my narrative, without doing more than first reminding you of a very few circumstances relating to the peculiarities of the kingdom and Church of France, which may enable you better to understand how the French Reformation was distinguished from those which we have already had to consider while contemplating the characters of Luther and of Cranmer. You must remember, then, that the kingdom of France originally contained within it at least two quite distinct races--the Gallic and the Frank--and that only through the collisions and commixtures of many centuries did it settle down into any kind of coherent nationality. But it early became one of the most powerful elements of new Europe. The Eighth century, indeed, is one of the very greatest im-1 portance in the history of the French nation, and also of the French Church, as in this century occurred those three great events--that defeat of the Moors by Charles Martel (one of the last kings of the Merovingian period), which prevented their further progress in Europe and preserved France from becoming as Spain; the invasion of Italy by Pepin (le Bref) the founder of the Carlovingian race of kings, and his constituting the Popedom a temporal sovereignty, by his bestowing upon Stephen III. and his successors the Exarchate of Ravenna and other territories: and the constitution of a new Emp...