he closed their churches, took forcible possession of their sacred utensils, plundered the dwelling of Theapentus, their bishop; and then seizing on the Jewish synagogue, drove the Jews from the city and pillaged their houses. The governor interposed; but five hundred armed monks surrounded him and attempted to murder him. Hypatia, a lady celebrated for her personal charms, unblemished character, and extraordinary literary acquirements, was, on account of her Novitian proclivities, assaulted by the holy forces of St. Cyril, dragged from her carriage, and punctured to death with tiles. The enumeration of the fables of the monks, and of the atrocious acts of canonized saints, might be continued until it filled huge volumes; but well-informed Catholics will be thankful that this notice is so brief. The Missil, the Glories of Mary and other Catholic compendia, some of which consist of fifty folio volumes, will satisfy the more curious. The profound homage paid to the monks for supposed sanctity, and the inquisitorial terrors which were brought to bear in favor of their frauds, so blunted public perception to truth that the fictitious events and personages invented by one age were believed by the succeeding, until the church became the simple dupe of its own forgeries, and self-cursed by accepting, as matters of fact, the fables and impositions with which it had humbugged former ages. Meldegg, Catholic Professor of the Theological Faculty of Freiburg, affords the following testimony in favor of what has been stated: "The old breviary," says he, "crammed full of fictitious or much-colored anecdotes of saints, with passages of indecorous import, requires a thorough revision.... Some Masses are founded on stories not sufficiently proved, or palpably ficticious, as the Mass of the _Lancea Christi_, the _Inventio Orusis, &c_." The ludicrousness of the monastic vow of silent contemplation is visible in the misshapen ideas of the monks; its pernicious tendency, in the frauds, perversions, distortions and interpolation which it has led them to perpetrate; its bigotry, in the wide destruction of ancient literature to which it has incited them; its absurdness, in the puerile and contemptible productions which it has induced them to elaborate; and its immorality, in that coarseness and vulgarity in their literature, so offensive to a sense of propriety, and which sometimes makes an allusion to their works a matter of reluctance. CHAPTER VI. THE MONASTIC VOW OF POVERTY