this
corrupted son, by his impious conduct during his whole lifetime, would
cause his father constant grief and sorrow, so much so that he would be
for him a lifelong affliction and curse. This, the tyrant thought, was
the longest and greatest revenge he could take on Dion for having
censured his conduct.

Plato, a heathen philosopher, relates that when the sons of the Persian
kings had reached the age of fourteen, they were given to four teachers.
The first of these teachers had to instruct them in their duties towards
God; the second, to be truthful under all circumstances; the third, to
overcome their passions; and the fourth teacher taught them how to be
valiant and intrepid men.

This truth, that good children are the greatest blessing and that bad
children are the greatest affliction that can befall parents and the
State, needs no further illustration. There is no father, there is no
mother, there is no statesman, who is not thoroughly convinced of this
truth. Can we, then, wonder that the Catholic Church has always
encouraged a truly Christian education?

There is nothing in history better established than the fact that the
Catholic Church has been at all times, and under the most trying
circumstances, the generous fostering-mother of education. She has
labored especially, with untiring care, to educate the poor, who are her
favorite children. It was the Catholic Church that founded, and endowed
liberally, almost all the great universities of Europe. Protestants and
infidels are very apt to overlook the incalculable benefits which the
Church has conferred on mankind, and yet without her agency civilization
would have been simply impossible.

The Catholic Church was, moreover, the first to establish common
schools for the free education of the people. As early as A.D. 529, we
find the Council of Vaison recommending the establishment of public
schools. In 800, a synod at Mentz ordered that the parochial priests
should have schools in the towns and villages, that "the little children
of all the faithful should learn letters from them. Let them receive and
teach these with the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine as
the stars forever. Let them receive no remuneration from their scholars,
unless what the parents, through charity, may voluntarily offer." A
Council at Rome, in 836, ordained that there should be three kinds of
schools throughout Christendom: episcopal, parochial in towns and
villages, and