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had been universal, nor was it changed by the abolition, against the popular will, of the Pragmatic Sanction. So much the more devotedly did the Italian prelates proclaim their subservience about the time of the Council of Trent. Bishop Cornelio Musso of Bitonto preached in Rome on the Epistle to the Romans,--" What the Pope says we must receive as though spoken by God himself. In Divine things we hold him to be God; in matters of faith I had rather believe one Pope than a thousand Augustines, Jeromes, or Gregories."1

When Bellarmine undertook to provide a new basis for the pet doctrine of Rome, the violence of the intellectual tempest had driven theology into new-made paths, and compelled theologians to adopt a different method. The Roman Curia, encouraged by the success of the Jesuits, the powerful European position of the Spanish Court, which was thoroughly devoted to it, and the submission of Henry IV., believed at that time that it could recover its dominion, at least over the West. The interdict launched against Venice showed what it was thought safe to venture upon. The favourite institution of Rome was then again the Inquisition, in its new and enlarged form, with the Congregation of the

1 Conciones in Ep. ad Rom. p. 606.

Index affiliated to it. To be an active inquisitor was the best recommendation and surest road to attaining the cardinalate, or even the Papal throne. Paul IV. had declared the Inquisition to be the one support of the Papacy in Italy. Two remarkable and important documents show what was now aimed at, and how the Gregorian ideas were intended to be adapted to the circumstances of Europe in the sixteenth century.

Paul IV. issued, with peculiar solemnity, and directly ex cathedra, his Bull, Cum ex Apostolatûs officio. He had consulted his cardinals, and obtained their signatures to it, and then defined, "out of the plenitude of his apostolic power," the following propositions :

1

(1.) The Pope, who as "Pontifex Maximus" is God's representative on earth, has full authority and power over nations and kingdoms; he judges all, and can in in this world be judged by none.

(2.) All princes and monarchs, as well as bishops, as soon as they fall into heresy or schism, without the need of any legal formality, are irrevocably deposed, deprived for ever of all rights of government, and incur sentence of death. In case of repentance, they are to

1 "Qui Dei et Domini nostri Jesu Christi vices gerit in terris."

be imprisoned in a monastery, and to do penance on bread and water for the remainder of their life.

(3.) None may venture to give any aid to an heretical or schismatical prince, not even the mere services of common humanity; any monarch who does so forfeits his dominions and property, which lapse to princes . obedient to the Pope, on their gaining possession of them.

(4.) When it is discovered that a Pope has at any previous time been heretically or schismatically minded, all his subsequent acts are null and void.

Such, then, is this most solemn declaration, issued as late as 1558, subscribed by the cardinals, and afterwards expressly confirmed and renewed by Pius v., that the Pope, by virtue of his absolute authority, can depose every monarch, hand over every country to foreign invasion, deprive every one of his property, and that without any legal formality, and not only on account of dissent from the doctrines approved at Rome, or separation from the Church, but for merely offering an asylum to such dissidents, so that no rights of dynasty or nation are respected, but nations are to be given up to all the horrors of a war of conquest. And to all this is finally subjoined the doctrine, that all

official and sacramental acts of a Pope or Bishop, who has ever-say twenty or thirty years before-been heretically minded on any single point of doctrine, are null and void! This last definition contains so emphatic and flat a contradiction of the principles on the validity of sacraments universally received in the Church, although mistakes have sometimes been made about it at Rome, that they must have seemed to theologians utterly incomprehensible. The serious inconveniences which at former periods such doctrines had led to in the Church would have been reproduced now, had not even the most decided adherents of the infallibility theory, the Jesuit divines, shrunk from adopting the principle laid down by this Pope and his cardinals, though Paul IV. threatened all who resisted his decrees with the wrath of God. Bellarmine himself, forty years later, said in Rome itself that a bishop or Pope did not lose his power by becoming or by having been a concealed heretic, or everything would be reduced to uncertainty, and the whole Church thrown into confusion.

Far graver and more permanent consequences resulted from the other document, the Bull In Caná Domini, which the Popes had laboured at for centuries, and which was finally brought out in the pontificate of

Urban VIII. in 1627. It had appeared first in its broader outlines under Gregory XI. in 1372. Gregory XII., in 1411, renewed it, and under Pius V., in 1568, it preserved its substantial identity with certain additions. According to his decision it was to remain as an eternal law in Christendom, and above all to be imposed on bishops, penitentiaries, and confessors, as a rule they were to impress in the confessional on the consciences of the faithful. If ever any document bore the stamp of an ex cathedrá decision, it is this, which has been over and over again confirmed by so many Popes.

This Bull excommunicates and curses all heretics and schismatics, as well as all who favour or defend them all princes and magistrates, therefore, who allow the residence of heterodox persons in their country. It excommunicates and curses all who keep or print the books of heretics without Papal permission, allwhether private individuals or universities, or other corporations—who appeal from a Papal decree to a future General Council. It encroaches on the independence and sovereign rights of States in the imposition of taxes, the exercise of judicial authority, and the punishment of the crimes of clerics, by threatening with excommunication and anathema those who perform such

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