There is a point in the preceding sentence worthy of more than passing notice—namely, Origen’s visit to Mammæa, mother of Emperor Alexander Severus. This estimable lady, who afterwards, in all probability, embraced the Christian religion, desirous of seeing so illustrious a doctor as Origen, sent her retinue to escort him to her palace. She was pleased with her learned guest, and her son, the future ruler of the empire, listened with delight to the great prodigy of learning. The virtues that characterized the reign of Severus, in contradistinction to the licentiousness, cruelty, and extortion of his predecessors, have been, not without justice, attributed to the influence exerted on him by lessons of morality given in the discourses of Origen. It is not improbable that the law he presented, soon after his ascension to the throne, to the Roman senate for its sanction, whereby the religion of Christ would be incorporated among the others of the empire, had for its source Origen’s instructions to him about the divinity of the Catholic faith, its purity and sanctity. Dom Gueranger, in his _Life of S. Cecilia_,(51) adduces monuments of antiquity going to prove the protection and favors extended to the infant church by Alexander; and Origen himself,(52) in his _Apology_, chronicles the abatement of the persecution shortly after his return from the imperial court. On this part of his work a writer very felicitously adds: “If he modestly declines telling us the part he bore in it, we owe him so much the more honor the less he seems to claim.”(53) During the comparative peace obtained under Alexander, the church made incredible efforts to fill up her shattered ranks, restore order, and produce scholars. She succeeded, for never was she more fruitful in great men than at this epoch. Origen had reconciled her, in the opinion of philosophers, to genius, adorned her with intellectual wealth, and introduced her to the occupants of the throne she was soon to fill with so much glory; and, what is still more, he had disciplined a galaxy of scholars, who were about to dazzle the world by the grandeur of their minds, and beautify the church by the holiness of their lives.