Excerpt from The Life of St. Thomas of Villanova, Archbishop of Valentia and Augustinian Friar: With an Introductory Sketch of the Men, the Manners, and the Morals of the Sixteenth Century IN giving to the public the Life Of a Saint, it will not be out of place, in order to have a just idea Of the part he played in God's creation, to also give a brief sketch of the age he lived in to show what manner of men were in his time; What they did and how they lived; to picture their ways and describe their aims, and to point out their failures and extol their triumphs. For in taking up the history Of any one country or era, and viewing carefully its several phases, we cannot fail to note that it is the men that always make the age what it is, and not the age, the men; that all great events, no matter how diverse in themselves, cluster naturally around those who were the chief actors in the scene, just as hills, in the physical world, group themselves around some giant peak, and get their name from it. On them, it first shadows its mighty form, and only after it receives the first rays Of the rising sun, do they, in proper turn, gain whatever light, prominence, or interest they may have. So, in like manner, are great men, sages, prophets, warriors, heroes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.