etc. Of the Controversies of St. Francis of Sales we have only short but very beautiful sketches.
At the end of this period and the beginning of the next, may be mentioned Bossuet’s Histoire des Variations, his celebrated Exposition de la Foi, and among his smaller works the pastoral letter, Les Promesses de l’Eglise. Natalis Alexander has inserted many learned dogmatic polemical dissertations in his great History of the Church.
3. Scholastic, that is, Speculative and Systematic, Theology, like Exegesis and Controversy, and in close union with them, was so highly cultivated that the labours of this period, although (at least in the early decades) inferior to those of the thirteenth century in freshness and originality, and especially in moderation and calmness, nevertheless surpassed them in variety and in the use of the treasures of Scripture and early Tradition. When Pius V. (1567) raised St. Thomas, and Sixtus V. (1587) raised St Bonaventure to the dignity of Doctors of the Church on the ground that they were the Princes of Scholastic Theology, and, also at the same time, caused their entire works to be published, it was the Church herself who gave the impulse and direction to the new movement.
The great number of works and the variety of treatment make it difficult to give even a sketch of what was done in this department. Generally speaking, the theologians both of the old and of the newly-founded Religious Orders, and also most of the universities, kept more or less closely to St. Thomas. Scotism, on the contrary, remained confined to the Franciscans, and even among them many especially the Capuchins, turned to St. Thomas or St. Bonaventure. The independent eclectic line taken by the Jesuits, in spite of their reverence for St. Thomas, soon provoked in the traditional Thomist school a strong reaction which gave birth to protracted discussions. Although the peace was thereby disturbed, and much time, energy, and acuteness were spent with little apparent profit, nevertheless the disputes gave proof of the enormous intellectual
