that the Curia was constantly fluctuating on this question, and that it had infected the Schola with the same uncertainty since the middle of the twelfth century, as may be seen from Peter Lombard. We mean that since the eighth century, as was before said, ordinations which were valid according to immutable laws, grounded in the very nature of the Church and the Sacraments, had been declared null at Rome, and re-ordinations performed, which had thrown the Italian Church into the most vexatious confusion by the end of the ninth century. And again the increase of simony had given occasion to Popes, as, e.g., Leo IX., to annul a number of ordinations at a Roman Synod, and either to solemnize or order regular re-ordinations. This was based on the double error of supposing that simony, or procuring ordination for money, was heresy, and that heresy made the ordination invalid. The mischief done by the Popes in this way was immeasurable, for there were but few priests and bishops then throughout Italy altogether free from simony, so that millions of the laity became perplexed about the sacraments they had received from clergy said to be invalidly ordained, and

1 Petri Damiani, Opusc. v. p. 419. "Leo IX. plerosque Simoniacos et male promotos tanquam noviter ordinavit."

hatred and feuds between the people and their pastors penetrated every village, nor was it easy to find any way out of this labyrinth of universal religious doubt and interruption or destruction of the succession. Nor was this all. The same confusion was imported into Germany too, and the ordinations of those bishops were declared to be invalid whom the Popes had excommunicated for their loyalty to the Emperor Henry IV. Thus, at the Synod of Quedlinburg in 1085, the Papal legate Otho annulled the ordinations of the bishops of Mayence, Augsburg, and Coire, although Peter Damiani had long since raised his voice against this capricious annulling of ordinations and re-ordaining.1 Otho, afterwards Pope Urban II., declared that even when there was no simony in the actual ordination, it was rendered invalid if performed by a simoniacal bishop.2

At a Synod at Piacenza he annulled the ordinations of his rival, Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna,3 celebrated after his excommunication by Gregory VII., and thereby gave public evidence of another gross error,

1 Bernold. in Pertz, Monum. vii. 442; Harduin, Concil. vi. 1. 614.

2 This letter of Urban II. has puzzled theologians who dislike seeing a Pope openly teach heresy. Thus, e.g., Witasse (Tract. Theol. ed Venet. vi. 81) says it is "intricatissimus et difficillimus locus." Wecilo is the bishop referred to.

[The Antipope Clement III., elected at Brixen in 1080. -TR.]

1

that the validity of sacraments is affected by Church censures. Even Innocent II. made a great Synod, the second Council of Lateran, an accomplice in his error of declaring invalid the ordinations of " schismatics," i.e., of the episcopal adherents of Pope Anacletus, who had been elected by a majority of the cardinals, but was then dead, an act of arbitrary caprice and notorious heresy, which cannot be excused, like earlier re-ordinations, by the horror professedly felt for simony.2 Hence it was the Roman Church itself which, notwithstanding the protests raised from time to time within its bosom against the terrible disorder caused by these ordinations, was again and again falling into the same error, and dis turbing the consciences and belief of the faithful in a way that in the ancient Church would have been found intolerable, and against which a remedy would soon have been discovered.

§ XX.-Fresh Forgeries.

Soon after St. Thomas's time, towards the end of the thirteenth century, there arose a need for further inventions, this time in the domain of history, to sustain and further the system. As the contradictions between 2 lb. p. 1009.

1 Concil. (ed. Labbé), x. 504.

the older historical authorities and the recent codes of canon law, Gratian and the Decretals, were obvious to every one who looked beneath the surface, it seemed desirable to represent the history of the Popes and Emperors in such a way as to get rid of those contradictions, and give an historical sanction to the new canon law. This task was undertaken, at the command of Clement V., by Martin of Troppau, called the Pole, owing to Nicolas III. having made him Archbishop of Gnesen in 1275. He was penitentiary and chaplain to the Pope; all jurists and canonists were said to bind up his book with Gratian and the Decretals, and all theologians with the Bible history of Peter Comestor.1 And this book is, of all historical works of the middle ages, at once the most popular and the most utterly fabulous. Many of its fictions simply evidence the want of any historical sense and the miracle-mongering credulity which had been the rage since the rise of the Mendicant Orders; but many also were invented with deliberate intention. The Popes were to be exhibited, as in the Liber Pontificalis, but still more

1 [Peter Comestor, Chancellor of Paris at the end of the twelfth century, wrote a history extending from the Creation to the birth of Christ. This work, with the Sentences of Feter Lombard and Gratian's Decretum, is said to have made up the average reading of medieval divines. --TR.]

conspicuously, as the rulers and legislators of the whole Church, the pseudo-Isidorian fabrications and Gratian were to be confirmed, and history made to reflect the supremacy of Popes over Emperors. The book indicates a great falling off in historical composition; and this is to be accounted for by the general influence of the Begging Monks, especially the Dominicans, with their insatiable hankering after miracles, and their constant endeavour to trace the Papal system to the earliest ages, in materially obscuring historical knowledge, and degrading it below the level it had attained in the twelfth century. The mere fact of so miserable and thoroughly mendacious a book as Martin's gaining such universal currency and influence is an eloquent proof of this decline.

The same object, of adapting the history both of the Empire and the Church to the Gregorian system, was followed by the Dominican Tolomeo of Lucca, Papal librarian, whom John XXII. appointed in 1318 to the see of Torcello. His Church History, up to 1313, is much fuller than Martin's dry compendium, and a far more spirited and artistic composition. This is true also of his continuation of the Political Treatise commenced by Aquinas,1 and his Annals from the year 1 St. Thomas only wrote the first book of the De Regimine Principum,