From the Academy

The Test of an Author

Even writers successful in their own age do not obtain their full influence until long later. Although Thomas Aquinas’ works were well known in the thirteenth century, they were not made the official philosophy of the Catholic Church until the nineteenth century. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans have been popular in different ages, but probably had a more direct influence upon character and society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than ever before. St. Augustine’s writings took on a renewed meaning, after the elapse of eleven centuries, in the struggles of the Reformation. Cicero was a great man in his own time, and some of his books have been studied ever since; but the one most widely read nowadays, his Republic, was lost during the whole period between the fall of Rome and the nineteenth century, remaining unknown to anyone until 1820, when an ancient manuscript of it was discovered.

RK

About the Author

Russell Kirk

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The Test of an Author

Even writers successful in their own age do not obtain their full influence until long later. Although Thomas Aquinas’ works were well known in the thirteenth century, they were not made the official philosophy of the Catholic Church until the nineteenth century. Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans have been popular in different ages, but probably had a more direct influence upon character and society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than ever before. St. Augustine’s writings took on a renewed meaning, after the elapse of eleven centuries, in the struggles of the Reformation. Cicero was a great man in his own time, and some of his books have been studied ever since; but the one most widely read nowadays, his Republic, was lost during the whole period between the fall of Rome and the nineteenth century, remaining unknown to anyone until 1820, when an ancient manuscript of it was discovered.