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A History of Christendom #5
The Revolution Against Christendom
This series is the only comprehensive narration of Western history written from the orthodox Catholic perspective still in print. How would a historical narrative read if the author began with these first Truth exists; the Incarnation happened? This series is essential reading for those who consider the West worth defending.
807 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2006
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313 people want to read
About the author
Warren H. Carroll
29 books103 followersDr. Warren H. Carroll was a leading conservative Catholic historian and author, and the founder of Christendom College.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 19, 2024
THE FIFTH VOLUME IN THE SERIES, COVERING THE PERIOD 1650-1823
Warren H. Carroll (1932-2011) was a leading conservative Catholic historian and author, and the founder of Christendom College; he was a convert to Catholicism in 1968. Previously, he had also served as an analyst in the CIA's anti-communism division, and he also served on the staff of Congressman John G. Schmitz.
He wrote in an introductory section of this 2005 book, “This volume will be the first in my history of Christendom to bear the names of my wife and I as joint authors… in the increasing debility of my age, her help has been absolutely essential to the production of the fifth and sixth volumes, which consequently will bear both our names as co-authors.”
He observes, “As a result of his strong Catholic faith, James II has been highly unpopular with modern historians---the one acceptable prejudice in modern historiography being anti-Catholicism. Almost uniformly, they have condemned James II for inflexibility and stubbornness… James II received much sympathy and support from Louis XIV… Both men were serious Catholics (Louis certainly at the end of his life and reign… and James always after his conversion).” (Pg. 35)
He states, “The story of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’)… and his attempt to regain the British throne of his fathers is one of the great romances of history---and it actually happened… [He] was truly the last knight of Christendom, as he was the last Catholic king of the English-speaking peoples and the last native king of British family. The history of the world would have been changed out of all present recognition if he had won, as he almost did, and might well have.” (Pg. 47)
He asserts, “There was a remarkable cultural contrast between India, steeped in its ancient evils, and Great Britain, the greatest power in the modern West. No more than in the case of Cortes’ conquest of Mexico should the Christian historian see the British ‘raj’ in India as an evil. Rather it was a liberation from vast evils, including the Satanic cult of Thug stranglers… human sacrifice … and the practice of ‘suttee’---the burning of all the wives of polygamous Indian kings on their funeral pyres. No Indian today would dare defend such practices. Indians and their champions today should face the fact that they did happen, and that their elimination was due entirely to the British.” (Pg. 74-75)
He acknowledges, “Of all the centuries since the Word became flesh, in the eighteenth the flame of Christian religious fervor burned lowest. It called itself ‘the Age of Reason,’ whose oracle was … Voltaire; men slavered for his approval and feared his condemnation---sometimes, it almost seemed, more than God’s… Never, except perhaps in our own age … has the tyranny of custom and of fashion been so pervasive. It was an age almost without saints and of an almost universal scorn for the contemplative vocation. To devote one’s life to prayer, almost everyone believed, was to waste it.” (Pg. 83)
He recounts that “Pope Benedict XIV, showing that the charism of prophecy had not deserted the Vicar of Christ even in this dark hour, predicted in February 1755… ‘the utter ruin of religion and the kingdom, with the destruction of the Faith, the Church, and realm, and with a repetition of the old persecutions of the Christians.’ Exactly that impended in the forthcoming French revolution… It is one of the most astonishingly accurate prophecies in the history of the papacy.” (Pg. 91)
He says, “America was trying to PRESERVE, not overthrown and destroy, its system of free representative government through the colonial legislatures, which it felt, with good reason, was threatened by the British Government… More than any other single man in the world, George Washington eliminated hereditary monarchy as a political institution in Western civilization.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “Unerringly [Edmund] Burke put his finger on the central weakness of the French philosophy: that in its passion for logical abstraction it did not recognize religion and morality. It boldly assumed that there were identical with the General Will: the popular vote … in some mysterious way embodied the aggregate of human reason and virtue while discarding human folly and passion. The French reformers, who had disestablished their Church, thought that under a perfect constitution men would have no need for religion because the ideal State would automatically create the ideal man. The same pathetic delusion… was to grip the twentieth century in Marist-Leninist communism…” (Pg. 141)
He points out, “Tyrannicide is an ancient Catholic doctrine, though it has always made some people uneasy… If it is clear that one man rules outside the law; or that he rules by terror and killing which will continue indefinitely if he is not removed; that there is no peaceful, political, or judicial way of removing him; and that there is good reason to believe that his removal will bring that regime of tyranny and oppression to an end…then it is moral to kill that man by any means available, so long as no innocent person dies with him.” (Pg. 214)
He reports of the French Revolution: “The Commune of Paris had decreed… that a festival of Reason should be held… If the cathedral of Notre Dame… was no longer a church, then what had it become? A ‘temple of Reason’ was the answer… one of the actresses played the goddess Reason… [she] received the plaudits of the crowd from the imitation Greek temple… The next day more ‘constitutional’ priests renounced their priesthood, many churches were officially closed, and the Paris Section … officially repudiated the Catholic Faith and ordered its practice to cease… The next day five more Paris sections renounced the Catholic Faith and ordered all churches in their territory permanently closed… one week after Notre Dame Cathedral had been transformed into the ‘Temple of Reason,’ the Commune prohibited all religious funerals in Paris. Most of the churches of the city were already closed.” (Pg. 240-241)
Later, he adds, “It was at least as great a horror as the Nazi holocaust of World War II… It was time indeed for the rally of the martyrs, for only martyrdom can triumph over a tyranny like this.” (Pg. 266) “when the horror began, the Carmelite community … had offered itself as a holocaust, that peace might be restored to France and the Church… Years of war, oppression, and persecution were still to come, but the mass official killing … was about to end. The Cross had vanquished the guillotine. Never in all the two thousand years of Christian history had there been clearer proof of its power.” (Pg. 278-279)
He observes, “thanks to the black slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, the United States of America would never have to face Napoleon Bonaparte in arms…” (Pg. 316)
He says, “By the time of her death, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton had laid the foundation for today’s vast network of American Catholic institutions---schools, orphanages, hospitals and the rest. Almost single-handedly she left a monumental legacy of charity and devotion in the most powerful and dominant country in the world today, benefiting the United States of American to this day. Few women in all of history have done so much.” (Pg. 394)
Those wanting a strongly "conservative" Catholic interpretation of Christian history will find Carroll's series compelling (and reassuring).
Warren H. Carroll (1932-2011) was a leading conservative Catholic historian and author, and the founder of Christendom College; he was a convert to Catholicism in 1968. Previously, he had also served as an analyst in the CIA's anti-communism division, and he also served on the staff of Congressman John G. Schmitz.
He wrote in an introductory section of this 2005 book, “This volume will be the first in my history of Christendom to bear the names of my wife and I as joint authors… in the increasing debility of my age, her help has been absolutely essential to the production of the fifth and sixth volumes, which consequently will bear both our names as co-authors.”
He observes, “As a result of his strong Catholic faith, James II has been highly unpopular with modern historians---the one acceptable prejudice in modern historiography being anti-Catholicism. Almost uniformly, they have condemned James II for inflexibility and stubbornness… James II received much sympathy and support from Louis XIV… Both men were serious Catholics (Louis certainly at the end of his life and reign… and James always after his conversion).” (Pg. 35)
He states, “The story of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’)… and his attempt to regain the British throne of his fathers is one of the great romances of history---and it actually happened… [He] was truly the last knight of Christendom, as he was the last Catholic king of the English-speaking peoples and the last native king of British family. The history of the world would have been changed out of all present recognition if he had won, as he almost did, and might well have.” (Pg. 47)
He asserts, “There was a remarkable cultural contrast between India, steeped in its ancient evils, and Great Britain, the greatest power in the modern West. No more than in the case of Cortes’ conquest of Mexico should the Christian historian see the British ‘raj’ in India as an evil. Rather it was a liberation from vast evils, including the Satanic cult of Thug stranglers… human sacrifice … and the practice of ‘suttee’---the burning of all the wives of polygamous Indian kings on their funeral pyres. No Indian today would dare defend such practices. Indians and their champions today should face the fact that they did happen, and that their elimination was due entirely to the British.” (Pg. 74-75)
He acknowledges, “Of all the centuries since the Word became flesh, in the eighteenth the flame of Christian religious fervor burned lowest. It called itself ‘the Age of Reason,’ whose oracle was … Voltaire; men slavered for his approval and feared his condemnation---sometimes, it almost seemed, more than God’s… Never, except perhaps in our own age … has the tyranny of custom and of fashion been so pervasive. It was an age almost without saints and of an almost universal scorn for the contemplative vocation. To devote one’s life to prayer, almost everyone believed, was to waste it.” (Pg. 83)
He recounts that “Pope Benedict XIV, showing that the charism of prophecy had not deserted the Vicar of Christ even in this dark hour, predicted in February 1755… ‘the utter ruin of religion and the kingdom, with the destruction of the Faith, the Church, and realm, and with a repetition of the old persecutions of the Christians.’ Exactly that impended in the forthcoming French revolution… It is one of the most astonishingly accurate prophecies in the history of the papacy.” (Pg. 91)
He says, “America was trying to PRESERVE, not overthrown and destroy, its system of free representative government through the colonial legislatures, which it felt, with good reason, was threatened by the British Government… More than any other single man in the world, George Washington eliminated hereditary monarchy as a political institution in Western civilization.” (Pg. 104)
He notes, “Unerringly [Edmund] Burke put his finger on the central weakness of the French philosophy: that in its passion for logical abstraction it did not recognize religion and morality. It boldly assumed that there were identical with the General Will: the popular vote … in some mysterious way embodied the aggregate of human reason and virtue while discarding human folly and passion. The French reformers, who had disestablished their Church, thought that under a perfect constitution men would have no need for religion because the ideal State would automatically create the ideal man. The same pathetic delusion… was to grip the twentieth century in Marist-Leninist communism…” (Pg. 141)
He points out, “Tyrannicide is an ancient Catholic doctrine, though it has always made some people uneasy… If it is clear that one man rules outside the law; or that he rules by terror and killing which will continue indefinitely if he is not removed; that there is no peaceful, political, or judicial way of removing him; and that there is good reason to believe that his removal will bring that regime of tyranny and oppression to an end…then it is moral to kill that man by any means available, so long as no innocent person dies with him.” (Pg. 214)
He reports of the French Revolution: “The Commune of Paris had decreed… that a festival of Reason should be held… If the cathedral of Notre Dame… was no longer a church, then what had it become? A ‘temple of Reason’ was the answer… one of the actresses played the goddess Reason… [she] received the plaudits of the crowd from the imitation Greek temple… The next day more ‘constitutional’ priests renounced their priesthood, many churches were officially closed, and the Paris Section … officially repudiated the Catholic Faith and ordered its practice to cease… The next day five more Paris sections renounced the Catholic Faith and ordered all churches in their territory permanently closed… one week after Notre Dame Cathedral had been transformed into the ‘Temple of Reason,’ the Commune prohibited all religious funerals in Paris. Most of the churches of the city were already closed.” (Pg. 240-241)
Later, he adds, “It was at least as great a horror as the Nazi holocaust of World War II… It was time indeed for the rally of the martyrs, for only martyrdom can triumph over a tyranny like this.” (Pg. 266) “when the horror began, the Carmelite community … had offered itself as a holocaust, that peace might be restored to France and the Church… Years of war, oppression, and persecution were still to come, but the mass official killing … was about to end. The Cross had vanquished the guillotine. Never in all the two thousand years of Christian history had there been clearer proof of its power.” (Pg. 278-279)
He observes, “thanks to the black slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, the United States of America would never have to face Napoleon Bonaparte in arms…” (Pg. 316)
He says, “By the time of her death, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton had laid the foundation for today’s vast network of American Catholic institutions---schools, orphanages, hospitals and the rest. Almost single-handedly she left a monumental legacy of charity and devotion in the most powerful and dominant country in the world today, benefiting the United States of American to this day. Few women in all of history have done so much.” (Pg. 394)
Those wanting a strongly "conservative" Catholic interpretation of Christian history will find Carroll's series compelling (and reassuring).
March 22, 2023
I read this about 20 years ago, but it gave me a much better understanding of the French revolution that any history class in school ever did. The evil and craziness during that period are clearly being repeated today. There are just to many parallels to say otherwise. Although told from a Catholic perspective, it is well footnoted and his references are very solid historians.
Anyone confused about our own times would be well advised to read this book. It will help put things in perspective.
Anyone confused about our own times would be well advised to read this book. It will help put things in perspective.
October 2, 2017
Definitely not Carroll's best. He had a stroke before finishing this volume and it shows. That said, the center of the book gives a detailed account of the Terror of the French Revolution and how the Catholic church and the Catholics of France resisted (or didn't) it. The book is worth it for that part alone.
May 8, 2024
A treasure cove of information.
November 11, 2025
I felt like this book had a lot of really long quotes from other books in it rather than the author's words like his previous books. Also focused so much on the French Revolution.
February 9, 2014
Volume 5 of Mr. Carroll's 6-volume history of Christendom. What this volume does, mainly, is to create in the reader a strong appetite for further reading. Because there are so many stories intertwined, so many amazing characters and events taking place, and the reading of the book is so fast and enjoyable that it cannot feed the reader's mind with all the information that he should want; which becomes a little aggravating too. Once you've become interested -and the author sure has a special knack for making the reader feel interested in the story he's about to read right from the first lines in every chapter- then you find yourself wanting more. But then the chapter is over, and you're off to another story and location.
A reason for this way of history-telling is indeed the subject matter, the role that Christendom played through the times and places where the action took place. Christendom is the real main character, always present in every page of the book, regardless of the author talking about Napoleon or Marat or whoever. Everything that happens in the book gravitates around the Church (Catholic Church in this case, since the author is a Catholic historian) and the Gospels. Failure to realize this will make the story a lot less comprehensible and enjoyable.
Therefore, it is not the history book to know all about the French Revolution or about Napoleon, but it sure does a good job introducing the reader who is a believer -regardless of his denomination, I honestly believe- to the big picture of events happening around the world, but especially around Europe, during the late part of the 18th century, and helping him to understand them in a Christian way. I recommend it without a doubt to young people in general.
A reason for this way of history-telling is indeed the subject matter, the role that Christendom played through the times and places where the action took place. Christendom is the real main character, always present in every page of the book, regardless of the author talking about Napoleon or Marat or whoever. Everything that happens in the book gravitates around the Church (Catholic Church in this case, since the author is a Catholic historian) and the Gospels. Failure to realize this will make the story a lot less comprehensible and enjoyable.
Therefore, it is not the history book to know all about the French Revolution or about Napoleon, but it sure does a good job introducing the reader who is a believer -regardless of his denomination, I honestly believe- to the big picture of events happening around the world, but especially around Europe, during the late part of the 18th century, and helping him to understand them in a Christian way. I recommend it without a doubt to young people in general.
November 28, 2012
All of the books in this series are phenomenal. Dr. Carroll takes a narrative approach to history that draws the reader in, making them feel as if they are actually there reliving the events of the past. A must read!
Want to Read
December 26, 2009Listed by Patrick Madrid in the Reading Plan of Search and Rescue in Phase 3 (Advanced). ("perhaps the best available today in English")
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews