William Edward Hartpole Lecky: Period

William Edward Hartpole Lecky was British politician. Explore interesting quotes on period.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky: 20 quotes0 likes

“There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.”

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 5 (3rd edition p. 303)

“In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it. We may look in vain for any period since Constantine, in which the clergy, as a body, exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war, with an energy at all comparable to that which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the crusaders, in producing the atrocious massacre of the Albigenses, in embittering the religious contests that followed the Reformation.”

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 5 (3rd edition p. 254)

“There can indeed be little doubt that for nearly two hundred years after its establishment in Europe, the Christian community exhibited a moral purity which, if it has been equaled, has never for any long period been surpassed. Completely separated from the Roman world that was around them, abstaining alike from political life, from appeals to the tribunals, and from military occupations; looking forward continually to the immediate advent of their Master, and the destruction of the Empire in which they dwelt, and animated by all the fervor of a young religion, the Christiana found within themselves a whole order of ideas and feelings sufficiently powerful to guard them from the contamination of their age.”

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Source: A History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869), Chapter 4 (3rd edition p. 11)