Christian Sense of History

Here, the father of the great work of religious restoration in the century following the French Revolution — that of the Order of St Benedict in France — turns his eye to the study of history and vindicates the Christian tradition, attacked and undermined on all sides by groundless modern theories. “Dom Guéranger,” observes Dr Peter Kwasniewski, “brings a characteristically Benedictine sensitivity to the plan of Divine Providence in the fates and fortunes of individuals and nations. ‘History,’ he says, ‘is the great theatre where the supernatural performs.’ Against the reductive naturalism and rationalism of modern times, he emphasises history’s irreducible debt to the advent of Christianity, which introduces a powerful and pervasive supernatural current — represented above all by the saints and by Christ, ‘the hero of history’ — which decisively alters the course of civilisation, and without which real historical understanding must remain elusive and fragmentary.”