Truth Triumphant - Benjamin G. Wilkinson

America; and 1491, when Ignatius Loyola was
born. A consideration of the new era ushered in by
each one of these events throws light upon the
steps of the church as she comes forth from the
wilderness.
Forty years before Columbus discovered the
New World, Europe discovered the Ancient World.
The locating of the Western Hemisphere was such
a revolutionary event that it is easy to overlook the
great discovery in 1453. The treasures disclosed to
wondering humanity by the finding of America
meet their counterpart in the literary wealth thrown
upon Europe by the fall of Constantinople, capital
of the Eastern Roman Empire. Until that time, the
Greek manuscripts containing the knowledge
possessed by a brilliant antiquity were confined to
the Eastern Roman Empire, often called the Greek
Empire. The fall of Constantinople before the
armies of the Moslem Turks opened to Western
Europe the empire’s libraries with their thousands
of manuscripts. The nations west of Constantinople
awoke from the sleep of centuries. For nearly a
thousand years the ecclesiastical power of Rome
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