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criticism and Church history, or at least keep the mass of the clergy in ignorance of them. The Index was just then so rigorously worked that scholars were reduced to despair, and many had to abandon their theological studies. In Germany, matters had come to such a pass, under the influence of the Jesuits in 1599, that Catholics had to give up studying altogether, for they could no longer venture to use lexicons, compendiums, or indexes. Even the bishops were forbidden to read any book condemned at Rome; they too were to be kept in ignorance of the true state of things on so many points which had been now cleared up. The publication of works revealing the very different condition of the Church and the Roman See in earlier days, like the Liber Diurnus and Agnellus' History of the Bishops of Ravenna, was forbidden under the severest penalties, and impressions of them already in print were destroyed.

This explains how it was that in the new edition of the Breviary a whole series of Popes of the first three centuries was introduced, with proper offices and lections, of whom no one knew anything, and who have left no trace behind them, who are found in none of the

1 Jodocus Græs wrote to Baronius, "Præter infinitos alios libros neque Lexico aut Thesauro aut Indice aliquo tute licet uti."--See Briefe des Cardinals, i. 474 (ed. Alberic. Rom. 1759).

But

ancient martyrologies, and were taken no particular notice of in Rome for 1500 years. The only anteNicene Popes in the ancient unreformed Breviaries were Clement, Urban, Marcus, and Marcellus. Bellarmine and Baronius introduced into the new Breviary, under Clement VIII., Popes Zephyrinus, Soter, Caius, Pius, Calixtus, Anacletus, Pontianus, and Evaristus, with lections taken from the pseudo-Isidorian decretals. The older lections, taken from the legends, were even turned out to make room for the pseudoIsidorian, and the clergy were obliged to nourish their devotion on the reading of such fables as that without the Pope no Council could be held, that he is the sole judge of all bishops, that no clergyman can be cited before a civil court, and the like. And Cardinal Baronius, the author of the Annals, co-operated in this work, although he had there spoken with indignation of the fraud of the pseudo-Isidore.

The new Breviary, moreover, was mutilated as well as interpolated. The name of Pope Honorius was struck out of the lection for Leo II.'s feast, in the passage where his condemnation by the sixth Ecumenical Council had been related, for since the Popes wanted to be infallible, this inconvenient fact ought at least to

be obliterated from the memory of the clergy. Even the fable of the apostasy of Pope Marcellinus and the Synod of Sinuessa was now for the first time incorporated in full into the Breviary, in order to keep constantly before the eyes of bishops and priests that darling maxim, in support of which so many fictions had already been invented at Rome, that no Council can judge a Pope. Then the word "souls" had to be expunged from the Missal and Breviary in the collect for the feast of St. Peter's Chair. It was now held scandalous at Rome, that the ancient Roman Church should have restricted Peter's power of binding to souls only, whereas the full right was claimed for the Pope to bind bodies also, and to put them to death.2 One of these enrichments of the Breviary was the Satan's words to our Lord in the Temptation, I will give thee all the kingdoms of the world," into the mouth of Christ, who is made to address them to

putting

1 The Breviaries we have compared are a Roman edition printed at Venice in 1489, the Augsburg Breviary printed in Venice in 1519, and the new reformed edition printed at Antwerp in 1719.

2 "Deus, qui B. Petro . . . animas ligandi et solvendi pontificium tradidisti" (Jan. 18, Fest. Cath. S. Petr.) "Animas" is now struck out.

In the old Roman missal of the eleventh century, edited by Azavedo in 1754, it occurs at p. 188. Bellarmine maintained that the reformers of the Breviary had mutilated this collect under Divine inspiration. Resp. ad Ep. de Monit. contr. Venet. resp. ad 3. prop.

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Peter. These forgeries and mutilations in the interest of the Papal system were so astonishing, that the Venetian Marsiglio thought in course of time no faith would be reposed in any documents at all, and so the Church would be undermined.2

Thus Baronius and Bellarmine worked together to pour out a new stream of inventions and corruptions of history, in the interest of the Papal system, from Rome, over the countries and Churches of the West which had retained their allegiance to her, or had been forcibly reclaimed. Besides his Annals, which contain a vast repertory of spurious passages and fictions, Baronius availed himself for this purpose of his commission to re-edit the Roman martyrology. His object here was to attest the fables that Peter, as bishop of Rome, had sent out bishops to the cities of the West, and that thus Rome was strictly the Mother Church of all the rest. It was merely stated, for instance, in the older editions of the Roman martyrology, for August 5, that Memmius was the first bishop in Chalons. Baronius made him into a Roman citizen whom St. Peter had himself consecrated for that See. So again with Julian of Le Mans,

1 Brev. Rom. Fest Petr. et Pauli resp. ad lect. 5.

2 Defens. contr. Bellarm. c. 6.

on January 27. Baronius knew what the ancient Roman martyrology was ignorant of, that St. Peter had consecrated him to that See. His treatment of Bishop Dionysius of Paris is still more audacious. The oldest accounts, which were well known to him, represented Dionysius as first preaching in Gaul after the middle of the third century, but Baronius relates that he was first consecrated bishop of Athens by the Apostle Paul, and afterwards sent from Rome by Pope Clement as bishop to Gaul. And thus two points were gained for Rome : first, it was proved that the Pope could remove a bishop appointed even by the apostle Paul; and, secondly, that Paris was the immediate spiritual daughter of Rome. And as with interpolations and inventions, so it fared with criticism at Rome. Baronius and Bellarmine pronounced all documents concerning the sixth Council fabricated or falsified which mentioned the condemnation of Pope Honorius.

It is clear that within a few decades after the spread of the Jesuit Order, the Infallibility hypothesis had made immense strides. The Jesuits had from the first made it their special business to suppress the spirit of historical criticism, and the investigation of Church history. They had rivalled one another in taking under their charge