The sword of St. Michael, St. Pius V

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by Lillian Browne-Olf, 1943


As a humble novice in a Dominican cloister, the future Saint and Pontiff (Pius V.) had selected for his patron in Religion the great Archangel Saint Michael, leader of the hosts of heaven and defender of Christ's Church on earth. Fitting, indeed, and prophetic of events to come, that choice must appear to us now. Nor is it a mere idle figure of speech when the author presents the consecrated hero of this book under the bold image of "The Sword of Saint Michael," that fiery weapon forged in the armory of God. In Italy, Spain, the Lowlands; in Germany, France, and England; in Poland, Scotland, and elsewhere, there was seething unrest involving the Church and leaving her no peace. Across the stage of history moved challenging personalities: Mary of Scotland, Elizabeth of England, Catherine de Medici, Cardinal Borromeo, Philip II of Spain, Suleyman the Turk, and Don John of Austria! These, and hosts of others, were friends or foes to be taken into account. But to picture comprehensively the scenes presented to us here we best can describe them as a gigantic encounter on three fronts.

The first front, then, was no other than Reform from within. As we must understand from Christ's infallible promise, error could never take possession of the Church He was to build on Peter, for the gates of hell were never to prevail against her. But it is quite another thing to say that iniquity and unworthiness could never be found in her. We have definitely Christ's own parables of the cockle growing up with the wheat and the bad fish taken together with the good in one single net. The day of judgment will set all things right. Yet holiness must always remain a mark of God's Church, and always she has had her legions of saints. Not unto death but unto life was the Sword of Saint Michael raised up here by the hand of God.

That brings us to the second front, the Lutheran Revolt. If now over Europe and beyond the bruit of discord rose bitter and unintermittent, the cause, as we well know and as all have reason deeply to deplore, was no other than the baneful division caused by the apostate German monk, false to his most sacredly pledged vows, but backed in his fatal step by temporal princes eager for the loot of churches and of monasteries. The cruelties practised against Catholics, where their adversaries prevailed, made clear the seriousness of the conflict and its terrible social and civic consequences. In judging the defensive actions taken against like evils and for the preservation of the Faith, we must be careful not to project our twentieth century back into the sixteenth. It was the ardent and heroic zeal of Pius V, aided by the steady advance of Catholic Reformation, that stayed the course of destruction.

Yet there was still a third front, the menace of the Moslem. This was the most sinister of all. "Crusade" was a thought uppermost in the Pontiff's mind, and here now was the opportunity forced upon him. All Western civilization was in imminent and most deadly danger. All efforts of appeasement could only end in still more tragic results. It was not long before the infidel was battering at the defenses of Europe, while his galleys, propelled by Christian slaves under the Mohammedan lash, were proudly riding the high seas. Victory followed the crescent, as later it perched on the swastika banners at the outset of the nαzι invasion. Yet the complete defeat of the Moor, through the Pontiff's supreme effort and the benign aid of Mary, Help of Christians, to whom the people cried for succor, was to be the triumphant event that climaxed the heroic career of Pope Saint Pius V. --from the Preface.




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