The Saint

Senator Fogazzaro, in The Saint, has confirmed the impression of his five and twenty years' career as a novelist, and now, through the extraordinary power and pertinence of this crowning work, he has suddenly become an international celebrity. The myopic censors of the Index have assured the widest circulation of his book by condemning it as heretical. In the few months since its publication, it has been read by hundreds of thousands of Italians; it has appeared in French translation in the Revue des Deux Mondes and in German in the Hochland; and it has been the storm centre of religious and literary debate. Now it will be sought by a still wider circle, eager to see what the doctrines are, written by the leading Catholic layman in Italy, at which the Papal advisers have taken fright. Time was when it was the books of the avowed enemies of the Church—of some mocking Voltaire, some learned Renan, some impassioned Michelet—which they thrust on the Index; now they pillory the Catholic layman with the largest following in Italy, one who has never wavered in his devotion to the Church. Whatever the political result of their action may be, they have made the fortune of the book they hoped to suppress; and this is good, for The Saint is a real addition to literature.