Synopsis
Calling upon his vast knowledge of history, the author outlines in simple terms for his readers, not only the meaning and influence of heresy against the Catholic Church, but the impact on the entire world of five of the greatest heresies of all time: Arianism, Mohammedanism, Albigensianism, Protestantism and (what for a better word he calls) the "Modern Attack". He conjectures that these five differing attacks contain perhaps all the principal thrusts against the Church that are possible. In the process, he discusses in full the impact of each of these attacks upon Catholic orthodoxy--showing how the world would have been vastly different had Arianism or Albigensianism survived and not been snuffed out by the Church, and how it is vastly different because Protestantism has survived, even though it is now, as he says, "doctrinally dead."
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About Hilaire Belloc
H
Hilaire Belloc
1870–1953
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, the son of a French father, who was an attorney, and an English mother, who was an author. In 1872, his father died in 1872, leaving the family destitute, and his mother moved with Belloc to Slindon, West Sussex, where he spent most of his childhood. He was educated at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then volunteered to serve in the French Army. He was posted in an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891. After his release from the military, he studied history at Oxford University, graduating in 1895. In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American, and published his first book, a book of poetry called Verses and Sonnets. In 1906 he and his family moved to Shipley, West Sussex, where he lived until just before he died. He went into politics, and was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South from 1906-1910. In 1914, the year his wife Elodie died of influenza, he took a position as edited of the war journal Land and Water, where he stayed until 1920. In 1918, his son Louis was killed while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in France. Belloc suffered a stroke in 1941, from which he never recovered.
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