“…"Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)-who was born in the shadow of the French Revolution and died a few years before the American Civil War-witnessed a remarkable era in the history of the West. His aristocratic family survived the revolutionary period, though many branches were cut down during the Terror, and Alexis grew up with a keen understanding that one world was ending and a new one was being born. …”

“…A follower of the teachings of Clement and Origen, he strongly influenced the intellectual development of monastic life in the East and in the Latin-speaking West. Although some of his writings were destroyed in their original Greek following the condemnations of 543/553, many survived in Syriac and Armenian; in the medieval Armenian monastic setting, they influenced later monastic teachers including Gregory Narekats'i."…”