by human but divine authority, and it is God, not man, who looses it. The obvious and direct corollary, that the Pope can also dissolve the less firm and holy bond of marriage, Innocent, as we have seen, overlooked, for he solemnly condemned Celestine III.'s decision on that point; and thus he unwittingly involved himself in a contradiction. Many canonists have accepted this as the legitimate consequence of his teaching.

2

Innocent betrayed his utter ignorance of theology, when he declared that the Fifth Book of Moses, being called Deuteronomy, or the Second Book of the Law, must bind the Christian Church, which is the second Church. This great Pope seems never to have read Deuteronomy, or he could hardly have fallen into the blunder of supposing, e.g., that the Old Testament prohibitions of particular kinds of food, the burnt-offerings, the harsh penal code and bloody laws of war, the prohibitions of woollen and linen garments, etc., were to be again made obligatory on Christians. And as the Jews were allowed in Deuteronomy to put away a wife who displeased them, and take another, Innocent ran the risk

1 Decretal "De Transl. Episc.," c. 2, 3, 4. This was to introduce a new article of faith. The Church had not known for centuries that resignations, depositions, and translations of bishops, belonged by divine right to the Pope.

2 Decretal "Qui filii sint legitimi," c. 13.

of falling himself into a greater error about marriage than Celestine III.

Great light is thrown on this question by the history of the alternate approbations and persecutions of the Franciscan Order by the Popes.

Nicolas III., in the decretal "Exiit qui seminat," gave an exposition of the rule of St. Francis, and affirmed the renunciation of all personal or corporate property to be holy and meritorious; that Christ Himself had taught, and by His example confirmed it, and also the first founders of the Church. The Franciscans therefore were to have the use only, not the possession, of property; the possession he adjudged to belong to the Roman Church. He expressly added that this exposition of the rule of St. Francis was to have permanent force, and, like every other constitution or decretal, to be used in the schools and literally interpreted. He forbade under pain of excommunication, all glosses against the literal sense. There can be no shadow of doubt that Nicolas meant in this decree to issue a solemn decision on a matter of faith. It is not addressed to the Franciscan Order only, but to the schools (i.e., universities) and the whole Church.

Clement V., in the decretal "Exivi de Paradiso,"

renewed the ordinance assigning the property of Franciscans to the Roman Church; and John XXII., in the Bull" Quorundam," declared this ordinance of Nicolas III. and Clement v. to be salutary, clear, and of force. But no sooner did John come into conflict with the Order, partly in his attempts to limit their ludicrous excesses in the exhibition of Evangelical poverty, partly from the strong denunciations of the corruption of the Papal Court, and loud demands for a reformation in the Church, which issued from the bosom of the Franciscan Order, than he began gradually, and as far as he could without prejudicing his authority, to undermine the constitution of Nicolas III. First, he removed the excommunication for 'all non-literal interpretations of the Franciscan rule, and then attacked certain of its details. Meanwhile the strife grew fiercer; the "Spirituals," in union with Louis of Bavaria, began to brand John as a heretic, and he, in a new Bull, declared the distinction between use and possession impossible, neither serviceable for the Church nor for Christian perfection, and finally rejected the doctrine of his predecessor, that Christ and the Apostles were in word and deed patterns of the Franciscan ideal of poverty, as heretical, and hostile to the Catholic faith.

And thus the perplexing spectacle was afforded the Church of one Pope unequivocally charging another with false doctrine. What Nicolas III. and Clement v. had solemnly commended as right and holy, their successor branded, as solemnly, as noxious and wrong. The Franciscans repeated the charge of heresy against John XXII. with the more emphasis, "since what the Popes had once defined in faith and morals, through the keys of wisdom, their successors could not call in question." John condemned the writings of D'Olive, and several more of their theologians, and handed over the whole community of the Spirituals," or Fratricelli, as the advocates of extreme poverty were called, to the Inquisition. Between 1316 and 1352, 114 of them were burnt,-martyrs to their misconception of Evangelical poverty and Papal infallibility; for they were among the first champions of that theory, then still new in the Church. After long and bitter persecutions, Sixtus IV. at last made some satisfaction to the "Spirituals," by letting the works of their prophet and theologian, D'Olive, be re-examined, and, in contradiction to the sentence of John XXII., declared orthodox. Later Popes resumed possession of the property of the Franciscans, which John had repudiated.

1 Cf. Bossuet, Defens. Declarat.-Euvres, xviii. pp. 339 seq. Liége, 1768.

One of the most comprehensive, dogmatic documents ever issued by a Pope is the decree of Eugenius IV. " to the Armenians," dated 22d November 1439, three months after the Council of Florence was brought to an end by the departure of the Greeks. It is a confession of faith of the Roman Church, intended to serve as a rule of doctrine and practice for the Armenians, on those points they had previously differed about. The dogmas of the Unity of the Divine Nature, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Seven Sacraments, are expounded, and the Pope moreover asserts that the decree thus solemnly issued has received the sanction of the Council, that is, of the Italian bishops whom he had detained in Florence.

If this decree of the Pope were really a rule of faith, the Eastern Church would have only four sacraments instead of seven; the Western Church would for at least eight centuries have been deprived of three sacraments, and of one, the want of which would make all the rest, with one exception, invalid. Eugenius IV. determines in this decree the form and matter, the substance, of the sacraments, or of those things on the presence or absence of which the existence of the sacrament itself depends, according to the universal doctrine