CRIMES OF CHRISTIANITY

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This is a wonderful thing for such an important subject and I find no comment except only one

Overall thank you

Thanks a million, my dear brother for your great efforts!!!
For sure it's a wonderful work!!!

so, Allah only who rewards you in the way you deserve, not us!!!

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[ابو الياسمين والفل]

Quote

Thanks a million, my dear brother for your great efforts!!!
For sure it's a wonderful work!!!

so, Allah only who rewards you in the way you deserve, not us!!!

Now, you have 2 comments

اسعدك الله الذى به جعلتنى اضحك وبارك الله فيك ولك واشكرك شكرا عظيما

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CHAPTER IV

التقوى او الورع المزور

[CENTER]PIOUS FORGERIES[/CENTER]

ALTHOUGH the Bible says that "God is love," Christianity
has shed more blood and perpetrated more cruelty than any other religion in the world; and despite the text that "all liars shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with brimstone and fire," it has been guilty of more deliberate frauds than any of the creeds it is accustomed to regard as the offspring of the Devil. In every age it has traded on the fear and faith of mankind; for the former it has borrowed or devised the most horrid punishments in this life and in the next; while for the latter it has practised every art of deception that could impose on ignorance and credulity.
During many centuries, indeed for more than a thousand years, the Christian Church lied for the glory of God without shame or compunction. Whatever promoted its reputation and power was deemed both necessary and honorable. Frauds were praiseworthy if they were pious; and, in the words of Mosheim, those who wished to shine forth most eminently as true Christians "deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud in support of piety."
This species of falsehood might, without difficulty, be justified or countenanced by an appeal to the New Testament. Jesus is represented in the Gospels (Mark 4:10-12) as using obscure expressions in order to mislead his hearers. Paul became "all things to all men," (1 Corinthians 9:22) and he boldly asks, "If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" (Romans 3:7). By reference to the Old Testament also, it may be seen that the Lord himself sent an angel from heaven to be a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets to lure Ahab to Ramoth-gilead (1 Kings 22:19-22). It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that veracity, which was so praised by Pagan moralists, is a virtue seldom or never enjoined, and as rarely practised, by the writers or the heroes of the Christian revelation.
A colossal fraud lies at the very basis of Christianity. Its Gospels are palmed off as the work of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, four of Christ's disciples. Yet scholars are perfectly aware "there is no evidence that either the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or the other writings, as we have them, existed within a hundred and twenty years after the Crucifixion." The canonical books of the Now Testament came into existence at the same time as the host of "apocryphal" ones, an incomplete list of which comprises over seventy documents. Our four Gospels were selected by the Church, which pronounced them the true Word of God. The Church guarantees the books, but who will guarantee the Church?
To say nothing of the hundred and fifty thousand various readings of the Greek Testament, it is an undisputed fact that passages have been knowingly interpolated in the canonical Gospels. The famous Trinitarian text in the first Epistle of St. John (5:7) has been almost universally recognised as a forgery since the days of Porson; and the public is now informed in the margin of our Revised Bible that the second half of the last chapter of Mark, from the ninth to the twentieth verses, does not exist in the oldest manuscripts, while some manuscripts give a different ending altogether. The author of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians appears to indicate that shameless forgeries were already rife, and expresses apprehension lest his own name should be attached to such frauds (2:2; 3:17). Other instances might be given, but these will suffice to elucidate the complaint of Celsus, in the second century, that the Christians were perpetually correcting and altering their Gospels.
Before proceeding to give some of the most flagrant forgeries of the early Christians, beyond the limits of the canonical Scriptures, we deem it prudent to adduce from critics and historians of the highest repute, a few direct and explicit admissions of the fraudulent character of the patristic writers.
The solid and judicious Mosheim states that
"A pernicious maxim which was current in the schools, not only of the Egyptians, the Platonists, and the Pythagoreans, but also of
the Jews, was very early recognised by the Christians, and soon found among them numerous patrons - namely, that those who made it their business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than of censure."
The "greatest and most pious teachers" of the fourth century, says Mosheim, were "nearly all of them infected with this leprosy" of fraud; and, even Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine cannot be excepted. In his account of the fifth century he alludes to the
"Base audacity of those who did not blush to palm their own spurious productions on the great men of former times, and even on Christ himself and his apostles, so that they might be able, in the councils and in their books, to oppose names against names and authorities against authorities. The whole Christian Church was, in this century, overwhelmed with these disgraceful fictions."
Jortin remarks that the policy of fraud was not only extensively practised in the fourth century, but "had found reception in the foregoing centuries in some measure." Some measure is a very mild expression, as we shall see presently. It was acutely observed by Conyers Middleton that the bold defiance of truth and honesty displayed by the Fathers of the fourth century "could not have been acquired, or become general at once, but must have been carried gradually" to that height, by custom and the example of former times, and a long experience of what the credulity and superstition of the multitude would bear." Accordingly, he finds on examination that the "earlier ages" were by no means remarkable for integrity. On the contrary, he says:
"There never was any period of time in all ecclesiastical history in which so many rank heresies were publicly professed nor in which so many spurious books were forged and published by the Christians, under the names of Christ and the Apostles, and the Apostolic writers, as in those primitive ages: several of which forged books are frequently cited and applied to the defence of
Christianity by the most eminent Fathers of the same ages as true and genuine pieces, and of equal authority with the Scriptures themselves."
This view is supported by a recent writer, the author of Supernatural Religion. In stigmatising the "singularly credulous and uncritical character of the Fathers," he says that:
"No fable could be too gross, no invention too transparent, for their unsuspicious acceptance, if it assumed a pious form or tended to edification. No period in the history of the world ever produced so many spurious works as the first two or three centuries of our era. The name of every Apostle, or Christian teacher, not excepting that of the great Master himself, was freely attached to every description of religious forgery."
Dr. Giles writes in a similar strain, and it should be borne in mind that the period to which he refers was that in which the four Gospels, as well as the apocryphal scriptures, crept into the world.
"But a graver accusation than that of inaccuracy or deficient authority lies against the writings which have come down to us from the second century. There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written with no other view than to deceive the simple-minded multitude who at that time formed the great bulk of the Christian community."
These works were not allowed to pass without question. The authority of some was disputed, and controversies were maintained even as to the age and authorship of the books of the New Testament. If the question was set at rest, it was done, as Dr. Giles remarks, "not by a deliberate sentence of the judge, but by burning all the evidence on which one side of the controversy was supported."
Dr. Gieseler, the latest ecclesiastical historian in Germany, whose splendid and valuable work we have had more than one occasion to cite, refers to the spurious literature of the Jews and Christians as of "great importance" in the "advancement of Christian interests." The Jews were grave sinners in this respect, but they were eclipsed by the Christians, who:
"quieted their consciences respecting the forgery with the idea of their good intention, for the purpose of giving greater impressiveness to their doctrines and admonitions by the reputation of respectable names, of animating their suffering brethren to steadfastness, and of gaining over their opponents to Christianity."
Orthodox witnesses are better for our purpose than heretical ones, and we have pleasure in citing the testimony of Bishop Ellicott.
"But credulity is not the only charge which those early ages have to sustain. They certainly cannot be pronounced free from the influence of pious frauds... It was an age of literary frauds. Deceit, if it had a good intention, frequently passed unchallenged... However unwilling we may be to admit it, history forces upon us the recognition of pious fraud as a principle which was by no means inoperative in the earliest ages of Christianity."
The following grave and weighty passage from Lecky must close our brief list, which might be indefinitely prolonged, of Christian testimonies against Christianity:
"The very large part that must be assigned to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the Church we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I think, investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends that, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the history of the false decretals, and the discussions that were connected with them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity most Catholic historians have displayed, of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great German historian (Herder) to declare, with much bitterness, that the phrase 'Christian veracity' deserves to rank with the phrase 'Punic faith.'"
A forgery comparatively late in point of time, though referring to an early period in the ministry of Jesus, is a pretended letter from Publius Lentulus, the supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate, to the Roman Senate. It was the custom for the provincial authorities to transmit to the imperial city an account of all important events which occurred in their respective localities; and, according to this bastard epistle, which is prefixed to some parchment manuscripts of the Gospels, written about three hundred and seventy years ago, and still preserved in the library at Jena, the Prefect of Jerusalem informed the senate that "there had appeared a man endued with great powers, whose name is Jesus Christ." The very name betrays the fraudulent origin of the document, for the epistle is couched in Latin, and Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Jeshua. Nor would the Jews give Jesus the surname of Christ, which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. The rest of the epistle is devoted to a eulogy of the personal appearance of the Savior. His hair is represented as of the color of wine, which is not very explicit, and as being parted in the middle, "after the fashion of the Nazarenes," and dropping in graceful curls over his shoulders; his beard as thick and bifurcated; his person as tall and graceful; his countenance as beautiful, and his eyes as blue -- a singular color for a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion.
Although Jesus, according to Jerome, was unable to write, the early Christians manufactured for him a letter to Abgarus, Prince of Edessa. Eusebius professes to have translated the epistle, or had it translated, from the archives of that city. Jortin says that, "there is no room to suspect him of forging it, but there is abundant reason to account it a forgery, and a foolish one too." Many have received and defended it, from Ephrem Syrus down to Cave. Addison was perhaps the last eminent writer who accepted it. Since Lardner's refutation of its claims to authenticity, it has been universally and quietly abandoned.
Whether or not Eusebius forged the correspondence between Christ and Abgarus, we know on other grounds that he was not incapable of such a feat. Dean Milman is obliged to regret that the
history of the Martyrs "rests so much on the loose, and, it must be admitted, by no means scrupulous, authority of Eusebius." Criticising his tricky attempt to confuse the taxing under Herod with that several years later, in order to reconcile Josephus and Luke, Lardner says: "I must confess I ascribe that not to ignorance, but to something a great deal worse." Gibbon says of him that "he confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion." As Eusebius, according to Gibbon, is the gravest of the ecclesiastical historians, the reader will be able to form some idea of the sobriety and veracity of the rest of the tribe.
The early Christians had the audacity to forge an account of the Resurrection by Pontius Pilate himself, which may be read in the Apocryphal New Testament. Century after century, until the advent of rational criticism, the orthodox were taught to believe that Pilate informed Tiberius of the unjust sentence of death he had pronounced on an innocent, and as it appeared, a divine person; that Tiberius endeavored to place Christ among the gods of Rome; that his servile senate ventured to thwart his design; that Tiberius then protected the Christians against the fury of the laws; and that the account of this extraordinary transaction was preserved in the public records. But the disproofs of this legend are overwhelming. No historian of Greece or Rome ever saw these documents in the imperial archives, or even heard of their existence. They were only visible to the eyes of Tertullian, who composed his Apology one hundred and sixty years after the death of Tiberius. The legend itself is first mentioned by Justin Martyr, who is described by Jortin as "of a warm and credulous temper," by Mosheim as "wholly undeserving of credit in much of what he relates," and by Middleton as the author of many "silly writings." It is to this garrulous wiseacre that we owe the story of the seventy translators of the Septuagint version, who were shut up by Ptolemy in seventy separate cells, and who were found, on the completion of their labors, not only to have given the same meaning, but to have employed the very same words. In proof of this fable, he says that he actually saw the remains of the cells -- about four hundred years after the event! Justin's story of Pontius
Pilate passed through the hands of Tertullian, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Orosius, Gregory of Tours, and the authors of the various editions of the Acts of Pilate, acquiring successive improvements as it went along. But it has melted away like a legendary snowball before the sun of rationalism. How could Tiberius protect the Christians from the fury of the laws when there were no Christians and before there were any laws against them? Why did Pilate connive at the stoning of Stephen, and the persecution of the disciples by Saul, if he knew that Jesus was a divine person, and that his followers were protected by the emperor? How came Tiberius, who "avowed his contempt for all religion," and who was "little disposed to increase the number of the gods and the burden of Atlas," to propose the apotheosis of Christ? This question becomes still more difficult to answer when we reflect that "about the time of Christ's crucifixion," Tiberius "destroyed an illustrious family, for this among other reasons, that divine honors had been paid to one Theophanes, an ancestor of theirs."
We have devoted what would otherwise be a very disproportionate space to this ridiculous story, in order to show how credulous and unscrupulous the Fathers were in regard to the "evidences" of their faith.
There is also an epistle of Tiberianus, governor of part of Palestine, to the Emperor Trajan, in which he speaks of the invincible obstinacy of the Galileans, or Christians, under his jurisdiction, and says that he is tired of punishing and destroying them. Pearson and Middleton treat this epistle as genuine, but Dodwell gives good reasons for thinking it spurious. It depends on the authority of Suidas and Malela, "two sorry vouchers" says Jortin, and it was unknown to Eusebius. Le Clerc rejects it as suppositious. It is also fairly given up by Basnage and Tillemont, the latter of whom informs us that Valesius accounted it the work of a blockhead and an impostor. We may presume that it was concocted to support the extravagant records of the sufferings and fortitude of the Christian martyrs.
There was an obvious need on the part of the early apologists of Christianity to find in the Pagan historians some corroboration of the transcendent wonders which marked the death of their Redeemer. How could a celebrated province of the Roman empire, or, as the Fathers seem to assert, the whole earth, be covered with darkness for the space of three hours, without attracting universal attention? It happened in the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, each of whom, "in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect." Yet neither of them alludes to the miraculous eclipse at the Crucifixion, although Pliny, as well as Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid and Lucan, celebrates the pallid light which followed the death of Caesar. To meet this difficulty the Christians, after an extraordinary interval, discovered a passage in Phlegon, to the following effect:
"In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there was an eclipse of the sun greater than any ever known before; and it was night at the sixth hour of the day, so that even the stars appeared, and there was a great earthquake in Bythinia, that overthrew several houses in Nice."
Dr. Samuel Clarke relied on this passage in his Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, but when Gibbon wrote, he was able to say it "is now wisely abandoned." Writing in the third century, Tertullian assures the Pagans that the mention of the preternatural darkness of the passion is found in Arcanis. It is worthy of a remark that neither Dean Milman nor Dr. Smith, who are both Christians as well as editors of Gibbon, ventures to defend the passage of Phlegon against his biting sarcasm. The former is wisely silent, and the latter judiciously confines himself to showing that Arcanis might more properly be written Archivis.
Another Christian forgery is the famous passage in Josephus.
About that time appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be right to speak of him as a man, for he was a performer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.
He drew after him many of the Jews, as well as of the Gentiles. This same was the Christ. And though Pilate, by the judgment of the chief rulers among us, delivered him to be crucified, those who from the first had loved him fell not from him, for to them at least he showed himself alive on the third day: this, and ten thousand other wonderful things being what the holy prophets had foretold concerning him; so that the Christian people who derive their name from him have not yet ceased to exist."
Gibbon says that this passage "was inserted into the text of Josephus between the time of Origen and that of Eusebius," and "may furnish an example of no vulgar forgery." Dean Milman can only suggest that "this passage is not altogether a forgery, but interpolated with many additional clauses," But Lardner's arguments effectually dispose of this suggestion, and completely support the view of Gibbon. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen, never cited this passage in their controversies, although they were well acquainted with the writings of Josephus, and could not have overlooked such a favorable testimony to Jesus. Origen, indeed, distinctly says that Josephus "did not believe Jesus to be the Christ." The inventive genius of Eusebius first lighted on the passage, in the fourth century. He quotes it with an air of triumph, and says that those who doubt the Christian story of Jesus henceforth "stand convicted of downright impudence." Tanaquil Faber maintained that Eusebius forged the passage himself. A little more care in the composition might have added to its plausibility. It is so foreign to the context, that Tillemont was obliged to resort to the supposition that Josephus inserted it after he had finished his work! As a zealous and orthodox Jew, Josephus could not speak of Jesus as the Christ, nor doubt whether it was lawful to call him a man, for the Jews did not believe the Messiah to be God; and the statement that Jesus drew after him many Jews and Gentiles is inconsistent with the Gospels. The passage is now generally abandoned. Bishop Warburton called it "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one too." Dr. Giles also condemns it as "a forgery interpolated in the text during the third century by some pious Christian, who was scandalised that so famous a writer as
Josephus should have taken no notice of the Gospels or of Christ their subject." And De Quincey, in his essay on the Essenes, emphatically says that "this passage has long been given up as a forgery by all men not lunatic."
The Sibylline verses were another forgery of the early Christians, and they were "triumphantly quoted by the Fathers, from Justin Martyr to Lactantius," although "when they had fulfilled their appointed task, they, like the system of the millennium, were quietly laid aside." They were pretended prophecies by Pagan oracles of the wonderful career of Jesus Christ. The collections varied much, says Jortin, and it is clear that "every librarian thrust in what he thought proper, and what he had picked up here and there from any dunghill." They were "from first to last, and without any one exception, mere impostures." There is a collection of them in eight books "which abound with phrases, words, facts, and passages taken from the Seventy and the New Testament, and are a remarkable specimen of astonishing impudence and miserable poetry." Gibbon observes that they foretell the darkness at the Crucifixion exactly in the words of the Gospel. "There is no man," says Cave, "who does not see that they were forged for the advancement of the Christian faith." Some impute the fraud to Hermas, some to Papias, and others to Justin. Murdock says that "the Pagans were indignant at this forgery," and Celsus openly accused the Christians of the crime. Lecky says:
"The prophecies forged by the Christians, and attributed by them to the heathen sibyls, were accepted as genuine by the entire Church, and were continually appealed to as among the most powerful evidences of the faith. Clement of Alexandria preserved the tradition that St. Paul had urged the brethren to study them. Celsus designated the Christians Sibyllists, on account of the pertinacity with which they insisted on them. Constantine the Great adduced them in a solemn speech before the Council of Nice... It was in 1649 that a French Protestant named Blondel ventured for the first time in the Christian Church to denounce these writings as deliberate and clumsy forgeries, and after much

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angry controversy his sentiment has acquired an almost undisputed ascendancy in criticism."
There can be no better comment on the history of the Sibylline verses than that of Middleton: "Thus a most gross and palpable forgery was imposed upon the Christian world from the very midst of those best and purest ages; which, though rejected and derided from the beginning by all men of sense among the Heathens, yet obtained full credit in the Church, through all ages, without any other ground to support it but the utility of the deceit, and the authority of those venerable Fathers, who contrived and attested it."
One of the most impudent and disgraceful forgeries of the early Christians was the Philosophy of Oracles, ascribed to Porphyry. The real works of this formidable opponent of Christianity are no longer extant, except in the fragments preserved by the Fathers who answered him. An order for their destruction was issued after the Council of Nice, but surreptitious copies appear to have survived this act of pious vandalism, as a new edict for their abolition was issued in A.D. 449 by Theodosius the younger. This was so efficacious that not a single copy was left for posterity. But injury did not suffice without insult. Porphyry's name was attached to a forgery by some zealous Christian, who overreached himself by perpetrating the most glaring anachronisms, and by attributing to the famous Heathen many opinions and sentiments which contradicted those expressed in the fragments of his authentic writings. The fraudulent work was designed to be serviceable to Christianity; it was accepted by Eusebius and appealed to by apologists like Theodoret; but it was discredited by St. Augustine, and although it was allowed to pass unchallenged by hosts of orthodox scholars in succeeding centuries, its character as a vulgar forgery was finally established by the laborious criticism of Lardner. Never, in the annals of fraud, was there a more disgusting imposture than this, of forcibly suppressing a man's real opinions, and attributing to him opinions which he opposed, in the interest of a creed which he despised.
Forged writings have been attributed to many of the early Fathers, such as Barnabas, Clement, Polycarp, and Origen. But the most comprehensive of such frauds are the famous Epistles of Ignatius. There are fifteen in all, of which eight are universally rejected as spurious, while the other seven are still the subject of controversy, although no one disputes that even these are full of interpolations. The Syriac version, which is the oldest, contains only three epistles, and there are two distinct Greek versions of the seven. All the Epistles profess to have been written by Ignatius, called a bishop of Antioch, while on his way to martyrdom at Rome. The story of his martyrdom is in the highest degree fantastic and improbable, and it is incredible that he could have written them in rigorous confinement on his journey as a prisoner under sentence of an ignominious death. His epistles abound with exhortations to obey the bishops. No wonder, then, that they are defended by episcopalians and disputed by presbyterians. Bishop Lightfoot argues that the seven are mainly authentic, but is opposed to many high authorities, amongst whom are Dr. Killen and the author of Supernatural Religion.
Another forgery is the "silly story of the Thundering Legion," as Jortin calls it. When Marcus Aurelius was at war with the Quadi, in A.D. 174, and in the utmost distress and danger, he was relieved by a sudden storm, which drenched his army and allayed their thirst, while it discharged fire and hail on their enemies. The Romans gained a great victory, and it was subsequently asserted by the followers of Jesus, who ordered people to turn one cheek when the other was smitten, that this seasonable tempest resulted from the prayers of the Christian contingent of the imperial army, who were thenceforth called the Thundering Legion. Eusebius quotes Tertullian's Apology to the Roman Senate in confirmation of the story that Marcus Aurelius wrote a letter to the Senate, acknowledging his indebtedness to the Christians, directing that the persecution of that body should cease, and ordering that whoever accused them should be burnt alive. This letter is in Greek, and is generally printed after Justin's first Apology; but as Long observes, it "is one of the most stupid forgeries of the many that exist." The same writer, and there is no better judge, says that
the "monstrous addition" about roasting the informer was "made by a man inconceivably ignorant." It also appears that the Thundering Legion existed in the time of Augustus, when, according to Dion, it was stationed in Cappadocia. But the final reply to this pious legend of the Roman army being victorious through the prayers of the Christian soldiers is furnished by the fact that "we are still assured by monuments of brass and marble, by the imperial medals, and by the Antonine column, that neither the prince nor the people entertained any sense of this signal obligation, since they unanimously attribute their deliverance to the providence of Jupiter and to the interposition of Mercury."
Prominent among forgeries we must place that of the Apostles' Creed. Till the middle of the seventeenth century it was the current belief of all Christendom that this Creed was the verbatim production of the inspired Apostles, composed by them at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, or before their separation, in order to secure unity of teaching. Each was said to have contributed an article. Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, commenced: "I believe in God the Father Almighty;" Andrew (according to others, John) continued: "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;" and so on till the latest apostle, Matthias, uttered the final words, "life everlasting. Amen." There are many disagreements as to the authors of the various sections, but all agree that sceptical Thomas committed himself to the declaration that "the third day he rose again from the dead." The legend is as false as the rest of the Christian mythology. The Apostles' Creed was entirely unknown during the first and second centuries. It dates from Rome about A.D. 340. Even then it did not contain the clause "he descended into hell," which, says Dr. Schaff, was transferred into the Creed after the fifth century; that is, after the doctrine of purgatory had been established. Dr. Schaff remarks, "If we regard then, the present text of the Apostle's Creed as a complete whole, we can hardly trace it beyond the sixth, certainly not beyond the close of the fifth century." The universal acceptance of this Creed is another illustration of the incredible credulity of the early Christians.
Another forgery in the name of the Apostles was the Apostolical Constitutions, to which Whiston devotes the third volume of his Primitive Christianity Revived, and which he declares "are the most sacred of the canonical books of the Now Testament," for "these sacred Christians laws, or constitutions, were delivered at Jerusalem and in Mount Sion, by our Savior to the eleven apostles there assembled after his resurrection." The work is, however, now acknowledged to be a compilation of several generations. It originated probably at Antioch about the middle of the fourth century, and in the words of the Rev. J. E. Riddle: "The advancement of episcopal dignity and power appears to have been the chief design of the forgery."
To the Council of Nice has been attributed much that never occupied its attention. It has been alleged to have settled the New Testament canon, to have endorsed sacerdotal celibacy, and to have drawn up the Nicene Creed. But that Creed was only formulated at the Council of Constantinople, in A.D. 381. The words, "and the Son," in the clause as to the procession of the Holy Ghost, cannot be traced earlier than the Council of Toledo, in A.D. 589. This dogma of the Filioque gave rise to the great schism between the Greek and Latin Churches.
One of the most glaring proofs that Christianity is gangrened with imposture, is the ascription to St. Athanasius of the Creed which falsely bears his name. Luther regarded it as "the most important and glorious composition since the days of the Apostles." It is still reverenced by the Catholic and Protestant Churches, and is appointed to be read on certain feast-days. It was composed in Latin, and rejected by the Greek Church; Gennadius, the patriarch of Constantinople, being "so much amazed by this extraordinary composition, that he pronounced it to be the work of a drunken man." There is no authorised Greek version, though Athanasius habitually composed in that language. According to Dean Stanley, "it is now known with absolute certainty, not only that Athanasius never did write it, but never could have written it." Dr. Schaff says that "it appears first in its full form towards the close of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century."
The last documentary forgeries we shall refer to are the Decretal Epistles and the Donation of Constantine, which are the foundation of the spiritual supremacy and the temporal power of the Popes.
The Decretal Epistles pretended to emanate from the pontiffs of the first century. They declared it unlawful to hold a Council without the order, or at least the permission, of the Pope; and they invested him with the sole power of judging and translating bishops, and establishing new sees. According to Mosheim, "they were produced by the ingenuity of an obscure man, who falsely assumed the name of Isidore, a Spanish bishop, in the eighth century." The same historian asserts that the forgery was procured by the pontiffs themselves; and as in that age "frauds for the benefit of the Church and of God were deemed lawful," it is not strange that the Popes should approve "the fabrication of such papers as would be a rampart and bulwark to the see of St. Peter's."
There is a good story of the forger of these Decretals. He passes under the name of Isidorus Mercator, which was derived in the following manner. He assumed the name of Isidore, a distinguished Spanish bishop of the sixth century, in order to make the world believe that the Epistles were the work of that prelate. The bishops were accustomed, as a sign of humility, to add the word Peccator (sinner) to their names; and therefore the author of these forgeries signed himself Isidore Peccator. But some of the transcribers, who were ignorant of the ancient customs, changed Peccator into Mercator (merchant). "His merchandise," says Gibbon, "was indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold for much wealth and power."
Among the mass of forgeries palmed off by the false Isidore, or some other agent of the papacy, were the decrees of a Council held at Rome in A.D. 324, under the presidency of Sylvester. They were admirably calculated to enrich and exalt the Roman pontiff; but as no one ever heard of this Council until the ninth century, the best authorities agree in pronouncing it a fiction.
Some slight opposition was offered to it even in that age, but it was quickly silenced; and "as all science and learning, in the following period, retired from the Roman world, there scarcely remained anyone capable, or even disposed, to move controversy respecting these pious frauds."
Mosheim's account of the Donation of Constantine is accurate and succinct, but his interesting elucidations are thrown into a discursive footnote. Gibbon's account is longer and more entertaining:
"This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of Hadrian I, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop; and never was physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the east; and resigned to the popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. This fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects. The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and prerogatives of the Caesars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times that the most absurd of fables was received with equal reverence in Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. The emperors and the Romans were incapable of discerning a forgery that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery which, in the beginning of the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the Donation of Constantine. In the revival of letters and liberty
this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot. His contemporaries of the fifteenth century were astonished at his sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and irresistible progress of reason, that before the end of the next age the fable was rejected by the contempt of historians and poets, and the tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the Roman church. The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined."
Such were the False Decretals and the Donation of Constantine, "the two most celebrated monuments of human imposture and credulity." They are a worthy crown to the great edifice of Christian forgery. From the first century to the ninth, or a space of nearly eight hundred years, we have seen the Church of Christ constantly disgraced by pious frauds. The forgery of documents appears to have been a recognized part of the ecclesiastical profession. It was not obscure laymen who composed these manuscripts for the amusement of their leisure, but the recognised leaders of Christianity, who held that the end sanctioned the means, and prostituted Truth in the temples of Religion

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CHAPTER V.
الاحتيال بالتقوىPIOUS FRAUDS

CHRISTIANITY is responsible, not only for the forgery of serviceable documents, but for a multitude of fraudulent miracles, lying legends, and profitable fables; and in carrying on its wretched trade in these things it has not scrupled to resort to the crudest forms of fetish worship. An African mystery-man, dispensing amulets, need not fear a comparison with the Christian priests and monks who trafficked in relics of dead saints and other items of the stock-in-trade of pious imposture.
It is possible that the earliest preachers of Christianity were more credulous than designing, and propagated marvellous stories which they had themselves swallowed in a spirit of faith. Yet it was probably not long before the principle of lying for the glory of God and the advancement of religion induced the practice of thaumaturgic arts. Protestants are now satisfied with very ancient miracles, but the more superstitious Catholics credit the continued existence of miraculous powers in the Church. We need not wonder, therefore, that the still more superstitious Christians of the early ages should expect miracles to be wrought before their own eyes. Traditional wonders did not suffice to nourish their enthusiastic credulity, which demanded a fresh supply in every generation. The leaders of Christianity were accordingly obliged to supply their wants, and this could not be done without knavery; for while no more than an easy credulity was needed for the dissemination, as well as for the acceptance, of apocryphal stories, the manufacture of fresh miracles necessitated the practice of conscious fraud.
How far the first and second centuries were infected with this dishonesty it is difficult to determine, but we may assume that the forgers of documents, whose nefarious practices we have already seen, would not hesitate at further deception; and, if we may judge from the taunts of Celsus and the satire of Lucian, the Christians of their age were far advanced in all the arts of
imposture. In the third century pious frauds abounded; they were promoted by the Church with shameless audacity; and from the conversion of Constantine until the Reformation, they were a splendid source of power and profit to the ministers of Christ.
We have already examined the story of the miraculous cross which is said to have appeared in the sky at the most critical period of the life of the first Christian emperor, presaging his victory in battle, and deciding his conversion. We have also seen that the Christians, who profited so greatly by this event, ascribed miraculous powers to the tomb of Constantine. The emperor himself was an ardent lover of monks and relics, his temperament being as credulous as the most exacting eccelesisastics could desire. Few of his immediate successors excelled him in this virtue, unless it were the younger Theodosius, whose fondness for sanctified articles was so great, that he begged the old coat of a dying Bishop, and afterwards wore it in the hope of deriving some virtue; as if, says Jortin, "piety, like the itch, could be catched by wearing another man's clothes."
Constantine's favor stimulated the worship of relics, and from that time it became a regular part of Christian devotion. An exaggerated respect had long been paid to the martyrs of the faith who had suffered death under the various persecutions, but this sentiment now assumed a grotesque form. Not only the clothes they wore, and the objects they used, were exhibited and sold, but their very bodies were dug up and made profitable. These holy corpses were usually reburied under the altar of a church, which naturally enjoyed a reputation for sanctity, and attracted the custom of numerous worshippers. Theodosius was obliged to pass a law forbidding the people to dig up the bones of martyrs or traffic in their remains. But nothing could arrest the progress of the mania. St. Ambrose even refused to consecrate a church that had no relics, and the Council of Constantinople (A D. 692) ordained that those altars should be demolished under which no relics were found.
The Pagans derided this abject superstition. Eunapius, who describes the monks as a race of filthy animals to whom he is tempted to refuse the name of men, charges them with being the authors of this new worship; and our readers may be pleased to hear a few sentences from this honest heathen. The Christians, says Eunapius, profess a system which
"In the place of those deities who are conceived by the understanding, has substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves. The heads, salted and pickled, of these infamous malefactors, who for the multitude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignominious death; their bodies, still marked by the impression of the lash and the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of the magistrate; such are the gods which the earth produces in our days: such are the martyrs, the supreme arbitrators of our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs are now consecrated as the objects of the veneration of the people."
Within the Church itself a few voices were raised against this superstition. "The presbyter Vigilantius," says Gibbon, "the Protestant of his age, firmly, though ineffectually, withstood the superstition of monks, relics, saints, fasts, etc., for which Jerome compares him to the Hydra, Cerberus, the Centaurs, etc., and considers him only as the organ of the Daemon."
The remains of martyrs were frequently discovered at a very opportune moment. A signal instance occurs in the life of St. Ambrose. He was banished from Milan by the Empress Justina, but he refused to obey the order, and his faithful flock guarded his cathedral and palace against the imperial troops.
"While he maintained this arduous contest, he was instructed, by a dream, to open the earth in a place where the remains of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, had been deposited above three hundred years. Immediately under the pavement of the church two perfect skeletons were found, with the heads separated from their bodies, and a plentiful effusion of blood. The holy relics were presented, in solemn pomp, to the veneration of the people,
and every circumstance of this fortunate discovery was admirably adapted to promote the designs of Ambrose. The bones of the martyrs, their blood, their garments, were supposed to contain a healing power, and the preternatural influence was communicated to the most distant objects, without losing any part of its original virtue. The extraordinary cure of a blind man, and the reluctant confession of several daemoniacs, appeared to justify the faith and sanctity of Ambrose; and the truth of these miracles is attested by Ambrose himself, by his secretary Paulinus, and by his proselyte, the celebrated Augustin, who, at that time, professed the art of rhetoric at Milan. The reason of the present age may possibly approve the incredulity of Justina and her Arian court, who derided the theatrical representations which were exhibited by the contrivance and at the expense of the archbishop. Their effect, however, on the minds of the people was rapid and irresistible, and the feeble sovereign of Italy found himself unable to contend with the favorite of heaven."
It may be added that these skeletons were of an extraordinary size, so as to suit the popular notion that human beings were much taller in the earlier times.
Profit, even more than power, was gained by this superstition. Jortin well says that "they who related such false miracles had much to gain, and they had nothing to fear if their pious frauds were discovered. Such men were protected and caressed, for the honor of religion, and by way of recompense for their godly intentions. Indeed, it was dangerous to attack such frauds, on account of the power and interest of those who were concerned in them." He justly adds that "the ecclesiastics wanted to attract offerings and presents, and to increase the number of their tributaries." Such an easy and fruitful source of revenue was, of course, well utilised.
"The satisfactory experience that the relics of saints were more valuable than gold or precious stones stimulated the clergy to multiply the treasures of the Church. Without much regard for truth or probability, they invented names for skeletons and actions
for names. The fame of the apostles and of the holy men who had imitated their virtues was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of genuine and primitive martyrs they added myriads of imaginary heroes, who had never existed except in the fancy of crafty or credulous legendaries."
The buried martyrs were usually detected by their perfume, and the history of "the aromatic scent of the sacred bones" would fill a moderate folio. "By the help of this odor," says Jortin, "relics were discovered, and genuine bones distinguished from counterfeits; and it was very easy to find out a saint without borrowing the lantern of Diogenes." "When the coffin of St. Stephen was opened "an odor such ad that of Paradise was smelt, which instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants." Jortin shrewdly remarks that this perfume is very suspicious, since of all miracles it is the easiest to be performed.
We shall now give a further account of these relics, and the traffic in them which was carried on by the monks and priests. The mass of materials is too great to be arranged in chronological order within the restricted space at our command. We must therefore begin with Jesus Christ himself, and proceed through the apostles, the martyrs and the saints to the end of the chapter.
Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, discovered the holy sepulchre in which Christ was buried, the three crosses on which he was crucified with the two thieves, and the nails which had pierced his hands and feet. Eusebius, the Church historian, who was then bishop of Caesarea in the neighborhood, neglects nothing that could turn to the advantage of Christianity, but he never mentions the crosses, although he minutely describes the discovery of the sepulchre. This admirably shows how such stories grow under the fostering care of the clergy. There is nothing miraculous in the finding of a tomb, but it served as a centre around which imposture gathered, and credulity welcomed, a host of lucrative fables.
The cross of Christ still bore the title affixed by Pilate, but the clergy forgot to copy it and decide whether Matthew, Mark, Luke or John gave the proper inscription. They were not even satisfied which was the true cross, and to determine this difficult problem, Saint Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, proposed that the three should be carried to a sick lady and put to the test. Two produced no effect, but the third restored the patient to health. Sozomen entirely neglects this sick lady, and states that the cross was applied to a dead body, which instantly revived; and he is supported by St. Paulinus and St. Sulpicius Severus. The whole story rests principally upon the authority of Cyril of Jerusalem, who lived at the time, but who speaks of no miracles attending the discovery. "On the whole," says Jortin, "it seems most probable that the story was invented by the Christians of Jerusalem after the emperor and his mother were dead"; and he adds that "if Helena found a cross, it is impossible to know how the fraud was conducted, and who were the actors in this godly knavery." One thing, however, is certain. Helena was then nearly eighty years old; she went to Palestine expressly in order to find the cross; and it would not be difficult for the priests to hoodwink and accommodate the doting pilgrim. Cardinal Newman argues that the supposition of imposture is "an imputation upon the Church of Jerusalem." But there can be no imputation where there is no honor. Jerusalem was a sink of iniquity and debauchery, according to Gregory of Nyssa, who went there in the vain hope of appeasing the quarrels of its Christian inhabitants; and Jerome never spent more than a single day there lest he should despise the place.
Helena is said to have taken a part of the true cross to Constantine; the rest she enclosed in a silver box, and left in care of the bishop of Jerusalem, who exhibited it periodically to the faithful; and, as Jortin observes, "it must have brought in great revenues to the Church and to the bishop, if they only gave sixpence a piece to see the box in which the cross was locked up." The bishop alone, says Tillemont, "had the power to give little bits of it, which were considered as a singular favor and blessing." These little bits were not given but sold, and in a short
space of time the sacred wood was "spread all over the earth." To account for this extraordinary distribution, Paulinus, and after him the Church, asserted that the wood of the true cross had a miraculous power of vegetation, and repaired itself whenever a piece was cut off. This miracle was grimly derided by John Calvin, who said that a mere enumeration of the fragments of the cross would fill a goodly volume.
"There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poictiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it."
Not satisfied with this profitable commerce, the clergy of Jerusalem multiplied their store of relics; and, before long they exhibited also the crown of thorns, the pillar at which Christ was scourged, and the nails and the lance that pierced his hands, his feet, and his side.
Helena herself was sainted after her death; and her body appears to have contracted some of the miraculous virtue of the true cross, for it was preserved in an abbey in France, and also in a church at Rome.
At the holy sepulchre an annual miracle was wrought. A holy fire used to descend into it on the Saturday before Easter. Gregory the ninth, in A.D. 1238, forbade the Greeks to exhibit it any longer, but the practice was continued. Of a piece with this was the supernatural fire annually visible at the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites after his death. "What tricks," says Jortin, "would not these monks have played if they had possessed the secret of electricity!" Queen Helena is also said to have built a church on the spot whence Christ ascended to heaven; a sandy place was kept on the floor, and the clergy gave out that it could not be paved, as the print of Christ's feet was visible there, and could not be covered or erased.
Calvin remarks of the crown of thorns, that "it would seem that its twigs had been planted that they might grow again," for the holy prickles were scattered all over Europe in astonishing profusion. At any rate, the imperial chapel at Constantinople boasted of the original article in the thirteenth century, and the Barons of Roumania pawned it for thirteen thousand pieces of gold. Being unredeemed, it was carried to Venice, and finally purchased by Saint Louis, king of France. The whole court advanced to meet it at Troyes, and it was borne in triumph through Paris by the king himself, barefoot, and in his shirt. A further expenditure of gold enabled his most Christian majesty to secure from Constantinople another supply of relics, including "a large and authentic portion of the true cross, the baby-linen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge, and the chain of his Passion, the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John the Baptist." As late as the seventeenth century the medicinal virtues of the crown of thorns was attested in Paris, one of its holy prickles being employed on March 14, 1656, to cure the niece of Pascal of an inveterate ulcer.
The water-pots used by Jesus in the miracle of Cana were preserved, and, according to Calvin, some of the liquor was to be found at Orleans. Centuries before, Epiphanius related that many fountains and rivers were annually turned into wine on the same day, and at the same hour, when Christ wrought his miracle at Cana in Galilee; and that he himself had drunk out of a fountain at Cibyra, in Caria, where the wonder continued.
Christ's manger was shown in the church of the elder Mary at Rome; his baby-linen was exhibited at another church in the same city, as well as in Spain, and at Aix-la-Chapelle; while at the church of St. James, at Rome, was displayed the altar on which the Savior was placed on being presented in the Temple. The blood of Christ was exhibited in more than a hundred places. Rochelle boasted that portion of the sacred fluid which was caught in a glove by Nicodemus as the Savior hung on the cross. The monks of Charroux gloried in the possession of Christ's hair and teeth, although at least one of the set was
treasured by the monks of St. Medard. The sponge presented to him with vinegar and gall is preserved at Santa Croce. At the Lateran at Rome is shown a cedar table on which Jesus took his last supper, although a marble table with the same legend is treasured in Galilee, The Genoese possess, as a present from Baldwin, the second King of Jerusalem, the dish from which Christ and the disciples ate the paschal lamb together. One of the crusaders sent home from Jerusalem a bottle of the milk on which Christ was suckled, together with a nail of the Holy Ghost. Such quantities of the Virgin Mary's lacteal fluid were exhibited in Calvin's time that "one might suppose she was a wet-nurse or a cow." Edessa claimed to possess a picture of Christ, the perfect impression of his face on linen, which he graciously sent to Abgarus. Christ's handkerchief, which St. Veronica lent him to wipe off his bloody sweat, and on which his features were miraculously printed, was shown in many places. The linen that covered his privy parts was shown at Rome, and the holy city also possessed the shoes he never wore. Another place preserved the purple robe with which Pilate invested the King of the Jews; and the seamless robe, for which the soldiers raffled, was kept in several churches, all being equally authentic. The towel with which Jesus wiped the apostles' feet was exhibited at Rome and at Aix, the latter retaining the print of Judas's foot. Some of the pieces of silver that Judas received from the priests were also shown at Rome. Relics of the bread with which Jesus fed the five thousand in the desert were carefully preserved at Rome and at St. Salvador in Spain, where also was kept the earth on which Jesus stood when he resuscitated Lazarus. The form of his feet, where he appeared after his ascension, was displayed at Rome; but the same wonder was shown at Poictiers, at Soissons, and at Arles, too far apart to be easily compared. A still more astonishing relic existed at Rheims, namely the print of his posteriors in stone. Finally, the Redeemer's tears were exhibited in so many places that no one could doubt his being a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief.
But the most astonishing relic of the Redeemer was his foreskin, which was cut off at the circumcision and miraculously preserved.
This precious article, according to Calvin, was shown by the monks of Charroux, who, as a proof of its genuineness, declared that it yielded drops of blood. But the honor of its possession was disputed by many cities; by Akin, Antwerp, Heldesheim, Besancon, Calcata, and Rome. Surely the Christians who venerated this obscene relic were far sunk in the slough of superstition, and it may be doubted whether the most ignorant Polytheists ever condescended to worship the prepuce of a god.
There is an amusing story of this curious article in an anonymous though very able book, published in 1761, on the Portuguese Inquisition.
"Sandoval, the Spanish bishop, twice before referred to, relates, as incontestable fact, in his life of the emperor Charles V., that the real Santo Prepucio was kept at Rome, and fell, among other things, into the hands of some soldiers, when the Duke of Bourbon's army plundered that city; that it would not suffer itself to be touched by such profane wretches; upon which, one, more penetrating than the rest, beginning to suspect the truth, sent for a pure virgin, in order to make trial of its virtue, when it readily expanded. This precious relic seems to have been lost, amidst the confusion, but was soon replaced, by the same kind of angels, no doubt, who brought the holy house of Loretto."
It should be added that at least one Catholic writer has devoted a treatise to the Savior's foreskin, asserting that it ascended, like Jesus himself, and expanded into one of the rings of Saturn.
Calvin, who was much better employed in exposing Catholic superstitions than in elaborating the creed which dooms babies not a span long to crawl on the floor of hell, suggested that there should be an inventory of relics. Such a document would have saved us much trouble, and we sincerely deplore its absence, for there are no doubt many interesting articles that have escaped our research, although we have still a long list to enumerate.
The Virgin Mary's girdle was carefully preserved, yet we are not informed whether it was the one unloosed by Gabriel or a later
portion of her apparel. Her stockings, her shoes, and two of her combs also existed, being heard of for the first time some five hundred years after her death. Even her wedding ring was shown to the faithful! Her handkerchief with which it was alleged that a blind boy's sight had been restored, was included in the 7,421 relics collected by Philip the Second of Spain, and preserved in 515 beautifully wrought shrines. The vouchers for the cures it operated were written in Spanish; and Aldrete, the antiquary, narrowly escaped being burnt for saying that the Spanish language did not exist in the first century.
In the Lateran at Rome are two pillars from Pilate's house, and the twenty-eight marble steps which led up to it. They were brought by Helena from Jerusalem, and no one is allowed to ascend them except on his knees. At Turin is shown the linen sheet in which Joseph of Arimathaea wrapt the body of Jesus. Sir John Maundeville, the alleged mediaeval traveller, asserts that he saw at Bethlehem the charnel-house where lie the bones of the Innocents. John the Baptist's head, a portion of which we have encountered among the relics purchased by Louis the Ninth, was discovered, according to Sozomen, in the year 391, but it was found again long afterwards in another place, and in the course of ages the skull of this cousin of Christ was exhibited at Amiens, at Lyons, at Morienne, at Angely, at Rome, in Spain, in Germany, and in many other places. The keeper of the St. Amiens relic protested that his was the genuine head, and, in proof of his assertion, he bade the pilgrims to note the hole in the skull over the right eye, which was the very hole Herodias made with a knife when the head was brought to her in a charger. The body of Baptist John, according to Theodoret, was buried in a Syrian village; but the grave was opened by the Pagans soon after, and his bones were burnt and scattered in the air. Eusebius adds that some men from Jerusalem, passing by, took and concealed some of the saintly dust, which was conveyed to Antioch and there buried by St. Athanasius in a wall! But miracles are not subject to ordinary laws, and in the course of time the Baptist's body pullulated in Europe. The finger with which he pointed to Jesus as his greater successor was shown, in a fair state of preservation, at

[ابو الياسمين والفل]

Besancon, Toulouse, Lyons, Bourges, Macon, and several other places.The tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul were distinguished, as Gibbon ironically says, early in the third century, if we may trust the history of Eusebius. After the conversion of Constantine, their bones were "deposited under the altars of Christ," and devoutly visited by "the emperors, the consuls and the generals of armies." In the seventh century "their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the Palladium of Christian Rome."
"The pilgrims of the East and West resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors, and it was not without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the saints; and those who, from the purest motives, presumed to disturb the repose of the sanctuary, were affrighted by visions or punished with sudden death."
But there were still more astonishing relics of these great apostles. A piece of the broiled fish which Peter offered his Master was preserved in the time of Calvin, who observed that "it must have been wondrous well salted, if it has kept for such a long series of ages." Paul's chain was also long preserved, filings from it being dispensed by Gregory the Great; and, as Gibbon remarks, "the pontifical smith who handled the file must have understood the miracles which it was in his power to operate or withhold." This fabulous memento of Paul's captivity appears to have resembled the true cross in its power of reproduction, for, "the particles of holy iron were inserted in keys or crosses of gold, and distributed in Britain, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Constantinople and Egypt." The bodies of Peter and Paul were both at Rome with their two heads. Yet Poictiers boasted of Peter's jawbone and beard, and Argenton a shoulder of Paul, while several bones of each were preserved elsewhere.
The remains of Timothy were brought from Ephesus, and those of St. Andrew and St. Luke from Achaia, to Constantinople in A.D.
356. After a repose of three hundred years they were transported, in solemn pomp, to the Church of the Apostles which was founded by Constantine; "and thus," says Jortin, "began the carrying of relics from place to place, and the invention of ten thousand lies concerning the wonders wrought by the dead; all which must have greatly scandalized the Pagans."
The discovery of St. Stephen's remains is called by Tillemont one of the principal events of the fifth century; and "take it altogether," says Jortin, "it is perhaps one of the most barefaced and impudent impostures that ever were obtruded upon the Christian world." The coffins of St. Stephen, Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and Abdias, were found together. The three minor corpses were left to their repose, but "the relics of the first martyr were transported, in solemn procession, to a church constructed in their honor on Mount Zion; and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood, or the scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged, in almost every province of the Roman world, to possess a divine and miraculous virtue." St. Augustine enumerates above seventy miracles wrought by them in his own diocese within the space of two years, of which three were resurrections from the dead. "Whoever," says a Gallic or Spanish proverb, "pretends to have read all the miracles of St. Stephen, he lies." His whole body was at Rome, but his head was also at Arles, and his bones in more than a hundred different places. The very stones with which he was killed were shown in a dozen churches, the Carmelite monks of Poictiers even using them to assist women in labor. A phial of St. Stephen's blood used to liquefy annually at Naples on the third of August, but when Gregory the Thirteenth corrected the calendar, it did not liquefy until the thirteenth of August, on which the festival of the saint was fixed by the new regulation. St. Stephen has since been superseded by St. Januarius, whose blood still liquefies every year like his predecessor's.
The body of St. Barnabas was found, by revelation, at Cyprus, with the gospel of St. Matthew in Greek upon his breast, transcribed with his own hand. The grave of St. John at Ephesus,
was not rifled, being miraculous enough already, since it moved up and down to show that he was alive and breathing, in fulfilment of Christ's supposed prophecy that the beloved disciple should not die before the second advent. His cassock, however, and the chain with which he was bound, when led prisoner from Ephesus, were both preserved; and the cup from which he was fabled to have drunk poison, by the order of Domitian, was shown at Boulogne and at Rome.
In the course of time Old Testament characters made their appearance. After lying in the grave about twelve hundred years, the prophet Zechariah was discovered in a fine state of preservation, with a golden crown, golden shoes, and a magnificent robe; altogether, a far more gorgeous figure than any Jewish prophet ever was in his lifetime. The still more ancient remains of Samuel were found in A.D. 406, and removed from Judea to Constantinople by Arcadius, who is highly commended for this pious action by Jerome. Samuel appears to have been less entire than Zechariah, for his ashes were deposited in a golden vase, which was covered with a silken veil, and passed from the hands of one bishop to those of another. The highways from Palestine to Constantinople were crowded as the prophet's relics passed to their destination; and the Emperor himself, with the most illustrious members of the clergy and the senate, advanced to meet his extraordinary guest. After this we need not start at Adam's skull being found at Golgotha; at Abel's tomb, on the road to Baalbec, being thirty yards long; or at the tombs of Eve, Seth and Noah being respectively two hundred paces, sixty feet, and a hundred and twenty feet long.
A host of other relics, defying classification, were spread over the face of Europe. Aaron's rod was shown in three places, at Paris, Rome, and Bordeaux. The bones of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were also at Rome. Susannah's corpse was at Rome and likewise at Toulouse. There were two corpses of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, besides two separate heads, and over a hundred limbs. St. Ursula was divided between Rome, Cologne, Mans, Tours, and Bergerat; while the bones of her eleven thousand
virgins were shown in large quantities, sometimes to the extent of a cartload, in half the churches in Christendom. St. Andrew was at Rome, but conveniently dispersed among the various churches, his head being in one, a shoulder in a second, a side in a third, and an arm in a fourth, while an extra foot was preserved at Aix. St. Anthony's arm was shown in one city; it was enshrined and the pilgrims kissed and adored it; but eventually it turned out to be an unmentionable part of a stag. The skin of St. Bartholomew was at Pisa. St. Denis who, when his head was cut off, carried it under his arm, must have had two bodies, for France and Germany boasted one each. The body of St. Lawrence was at Rome, where was exhibited, in addition, a piece of his flesh roasted in his martyrdom, as well as two phials filled, the one with his blood and the other with his fat. His arms and bones were also kept in other places, while one church showed the identical gridiron on which he was broiled. There were three bodies of Lazarus, at Marseilles, at Autun, and at Avalon. Two bodies of his sister Mary were shown at different churches, besides several fragments in various other places. Her head was exhibited at St. Maximin, bearing the noli me tangere which was declared to have been put there by Jesus when she approached him in the garden after his resurrection. Three bodies of St. Matthias existed, besides a spare arm and head. At the church of St. Julien, at Tours, which was much resorted to by pilgrims, they displayed the sword and shield with which St. Michael fought the Devil; while at Rome they displayed the instrument with which Peter cut off the ear of Malchus. Of St. Sebastian four bodies were exhibited, besides two heads and four arms. At Genoa they showed the tail of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem. The caul of the baby Jesus was at Rome, and also the navel of St. Joseph. Some of St. Joseph's breath, which an angel enclosed in a phial, was long adored in France, afterwards at Venice, and finally at Rome. St. Apollonia's teeth abounded, and were deemed efficacious against the toothache, being carried in the pocket or hung at the neck. It is said that one of the Popes, suspecting that more of these miraculous teeth existed than ever came out of a single woman's jaws, commanded all that were scattered about Italy to be collected together, and found that they filled six bushels.
Miraculous crucifixes were found in many churches. On some, such as that at St. Salvador, the effigy's beard used to grow. Many others spoke, such as that at St. Denis; or that at Naples, which said one day to St. Thomas Aquinas, "Thou hast written well of me, Thomas"; or that at the same city, in the Benedictine church, which held two long conversations with Pope Pius V. Another Naples crucifix, in the Carmelite church of St. Mary, bowed its head at the sight of a cannon-bullet which was shot at it in 1439, when Don Pedro of Arragon besieged that city. A still more wonderful crucifix was that under which the Council of Trent was sworn and instituted, and which bowed its head to testify its approbation of the learned decrees of that holy assembly. But the most extraordinary of all crosses is mentioned by Calvin as exhibited in two different places. This was the famous cross which appeared to Constantine! Originally a celestial vision, it solidified in the course of centuries into at least one, and perhaps two, concrete realities.
Every species of relic was thought to be endowed with curative powers, an idea which is countenanced by the story of the touching of the hem of Christ's garment by the woman with a bloody issue (Matthew 19:20, and by the miracles of healing that were wrought by the clothes of St. Paul (Acts 19:12). These texts, indeed, are expressly cited by St. Chrysostom to prove the virtue of relics. The Church always looked with a kind eye upon this superstition, and the Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215) regulated, without repressing it, by forbidding relics to be sold or exposed outside their cases or shrines until their authenticity had been approved by the Pope. These regulations were renewed by the Council of Trent.
A famous monument of Christian fraud is the House of Loretto. The empress Helena, whose senile credulity we have already experienced, having discovered the house of the Virgin Mary at Nazareth, built over it a magnificent church. This sacred edifice having been taken and destroyed by the Saracens, the house was transported by angels on May 10, A.D. 1291, to the coast of Dalmatia. But it was too precious a memorial of the true faith to
be left there; and after a rest of three years, during which its angelic conveyancers were perhaps recovering from the fatigue of their first journey, it suddenly and miraculously appeared in the Papal state at Loretto, a few miles south of Ancona. There was no difficulty in recognising it, for a contemporary saint was warned by the Virgin of its arrival; and in A.D. 1518, Leo the Tenth pledged the Papal infallibility to the truth of the miracle, which was further authenticated in a bull of Pope Julius the Second. Pilgrimages to the House of Loretto were long fashionable in Europe, and the Church reaped a rich harvest from its credulous visitors.
Another tremendous fraud was perpetrated at the baptism of Clovis, the first king of the Franks, who embraced the religion of his Christian wife after the battle of Tolbiac, in which he believed that her god had given him the victory. The ceremony of his baptism was pompously performed in the cathedral of Rheims; but before it was completed, the church was filled with a bright light, and a voice was heard, saying, "Peace be with you: it is I: be not afraid: abide in my love." Then the place was filled with heavenly odor, and a dove descended, bearing in her bill a phial of chrism, with which his majesty was anointed. The holy phial was preserved, and it was subsequently used until the Revolution at the coronation of the kings of France, the celestial oil being used and miraculously renewed on each occasion.
Fleury hints and Schlegel urges that the truth of the story is doubtful, resting as it does on the authority of Archbishop Himcar, who wrote three hundred years after the event. But Mosheim says, "I dare not call the fact in question," and the Church has always accepted it as an unquestionable miracle. Mosheim thinks it "a deception craftily contrived for the occasion," and every sensible reader, who admits the story, will probably share his opinion.
In the convent of Sienna there is a curious inscription, which records the marriage of St. Catherine with Jesus Christ. In consequence of her devotion, it is related that the second person
of the Trinity came to her cell and placed a marriage ring on her finger. The bridal scene forms the subject of a large number of old Italian paintings. The convent inscription records that "under this roof St. Catherine was married to Jesus Christ on the day of the Carnival, 1364, in the presence of the most blessed Virgin Mary, of King David, who played upon the harp, of St. John the Evangelist, St. Paul, and St. Dominic." Another inscription records that "in this house St. Catherine one day felt an amorous longing (amorose smanie) to see her divine husband; that two very beautiful angels appeared to her to comfort her; but that she, turning to them, said, It is not you I want, but him who created you." The reverend traveller, who relates these monstrous blasphemies, asks who can help being reminded of the interviews between Bacchus and Ariadne, and other gallantries of the Pagan mythology.
The millennial craze furnishes another illustration of Christian credulity and priestly fraud. It was one of those "frivolous and senseless notions, which the priests industriously cherished for the sake of lucre." At the end of the tenth century it was generally believed that the end of the world was approaching, the clergy having industriously prepared men's minds for the dreadful expectation.
"Hence it came to pass that an innumerable multitude, leaving their possessions, and giving them to churches and monasteries, repaired to Palestine, where they thought that Christ would descend from heaven to judge the world. Others solemnly devoted themselves and all their goods to churches, to monasteries, and to the clergy, and entered into their service as bond-slaves, performing a daily task. Their hope was that the supreme judge would be favorable to them if he found them thus occupied in the service of his servants."
"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse," quoth honest Iago. The priests set the pot boiling and skimmed it for themselves. From first to last they have traded upon the credulity of the multitude,
whose ignorance they have always fostered in order to make them an easy prey

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CHAPTER VI.

THE RISE OF THE PAPACY

AN ecclesiastic, who paid heavily for his benefice at Rome (an offence known as Simony), was once asked if he believed in the story of Peter being the first bishop of that city. He candidly replied "I do not think that Peter was ever there, but I am quite sure that Simon was."
While there is abundant proof of the constant existence of Simon or Simony in Rome, the only evidence of Peter's having ever been in that city is the alleged fact of his having written a letter from Babylon. Forgery and fraud, however, soon supported the tradition that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, a tale which was first put forward in what are called the Clementine Recognitions, a theological romance fraudulently ascribed to Clement of Rome. The story is discountenanced by Justin Martyr, who mentions Simon Magus, whom Peter is said to have followed and confuted, as having been at Rome, but no more mentions Peter as having been there than does the Acts of the Apostles.
Being at the opulent seat of the empire, the early Church of Rome assumed considerable dignity after the destruction of Jerusalem, the primitive Holy City of the faith. But for a long time it had no superior authority, and certainly no jurisdiction, over the churches of Alexandria and Antioch. In the second century, however, Victor, Bishop of Rome, took upon himself to excommunicate the Eastern churches for not conforming to the Roman practice in keeping Easter. But the fulmination was harmless, and it was not until the removal of the capital by Constantine (A.D. 330) that the Roman Church found the opportunity for asserting its predominance. No longer checked by the presence of the civil rulers, the Bishop of Rome had less difficulty in exercising authority.
The constant struggle for precedence among the rival bishops, and the fierce feuds which raged at their synods, showed the necessity for a central head; but, although many cases were referred to
Rome for arbitration, a long time lapsed before its predominance was admitted. It was first asserted at the Council of Sardica (A.D. 343) when the oriental bishops protested and left the Council. The decisions of this Council were, however, at Rome, fraudulently ascribed to the first general council of Nice. Archbishop Usher, in his answer to a challenge made by a Jesuit, says:
"Neither hath this corrupting humor stayed itself in forging of whole councils and entire treatises of ancient writers; but hath, like a canker, fretted away divers of their sound parts, and so altered their complexions that they appear not to be the same men they were."
We have seen (p. 32) how, in the time of Theodosius, the bishops of Alexandria and Rome were associated as joint authorities on orthodoxy, but Damasus, the Roman bishop, was the first who took the Pagan title of Pontiff. Already the centralisation of wealth at Rome had made the bishopric so lucrative that when Damasus attempted to convert Praetextatus, the governor of the city, the Pagan answered with a sarcasm which is full of historical instruction: "Make me Bishop of Rome and I will turn Christian directly."
Leo the First (A.D. 440-461), taking advantage of the disturbed state of the African Church, which was divided concerning the Donatian heresy, claimed jurisdiction over its bishops. He also assumed a tone of superiority in a letter to Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria. In A.D. 448 the Council of Constantinople, under Flavianus, deposed Eutyches, the friend of Dioscorus; but in the following year the bishops at the Council of Ephesus (called by the Romish Church the Robber Synod) reinstalled him, extolled Dioscorus, who had armed soldiers within and without the church, and kicked Flavianus to death. In A.D. 451 the bishops at the Council of Chalcedon vehemently shouted "Damn Dioscorus, Christ deposes Dioscorus." Yet, although this bishop was obnoxious to Rome, the Council did not give that see any primary power.
Leo excommunicated Dioscorus, who boldly retorted the excommunication; but his defeat broke the power of Alexandria, and left Rome and Constantinople face to face. Rome took to appointing legates, otherwise spies and informers, at Constantinople. The strife between the rival Churches was bitter and prolonged. Felix II of Rome (483-493) went to the length of excommunicating Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, and as this had come to imply not only expulsion from the Church, but eternal perdition, it was no light sentence. "A difficulty," says Draper, "arose as to the manner in which the process should be served; but an adventurous monk fastened it to the robe of Acacius as he entered the church. Acacius, undismayed, proceeded with his services, and, pausing deliberately, ordered the name of Felix, the Bishop of Rome, to be struck from the roll of bishops in communion with the East. Constantinople and Rome thus mutually excommunicated each other." The result was a complete schism which lasted over thirty years. Gelasius I (492-496) mockingly called the patriarch of Constantinople bishop of the parish of Heraclea. In a Council at Rome he asserted the primacy of the eternal city as founded on Christ's remark to Peter, and proclaimed that the Pope's authority was higher than that of kings and emperors. Addressing the emperor, he said, "There are two powers which rule the world, the imperial and pontifical. You are the sovereign of the human race, but you bow your neck to those who preside over things divine. The priesthood is the greater of the two powers; it has to render an account in the last day for the acts of kings."
The break-up of the Western empire (A.D. 476) contributed to Romish supremacy. The Papacy throve on the confusion of Italy. The decay of the imperial power gave freer scope to the bishops, and led the credulous people to look to them as their natural protectors. The memories of the ancient empire still hung round the walls of Rome, and even her barbarian conquerors bowed in awe before the glories of her mighty past. Hobbes has well observed that the Catholic Church is but the ghost of the dead Roman empire sitting throned and crowned on the grave thereof.
The conquest of Italy by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, (493) gave to the bishops of Rome an Arian sovereign. A heretic appointed God's vicar on earth. He clipped the secular prerogatives of the Church, but allowed the election of the Bishop of Rome to follow its ordinary course. There was a contest between two rival candidates, whose factions "filled the city with murder." Symmachus triumphed in the struggle and became Pope. In A.D. 503, being accused of adultery and other offences, he was acquitted by a Council at Rome. His partisans even went to the length of declaring that the Council could not pass judgment on the successor of St. Peter; and one Eunodius (subsequently Bishop of Padua) vindicated this decision in a work, asserting that the Roman bishop was above every human tribunal, and responsible only to God.
Professor Heinrich Geffcken, in his great work on Church and State, says:
"Parallel with these growing pretensions increased that system of denying or falsifying historical facts, which was to minister to the glorification of Rome and the power of her bishops. The decrees of the first Council of Nicaea were interpolated. The story was fabricated of the conversion and baptism of Constantine, by Sylvester, and forged writings, like the 'Constitutum Sylvestri,' the 'Gesta Liberii,' and others, were circulated in order to prove the inviolable supremacy of the See of Rome."
The ignorance and corruption of the ages we have rapidly traversed enabled the Papacy to exalt its power by contrivances that could only impose on a credulous and degraded people. One of these was auricular confession. It was introduced by Pope Leo, and its object, in which it succeeded, was to give the Church possession of domestic secrets, and to place the communicants and their relatives at the mercy of the priests. Prior to this time confession had been public as in Buddhism.
Another circumstance that contributed to the authority of Rome was its constant censure and suppression of the multitudinous "heresies" that distracted the less practical and more speculative
provinces of the empire. The influence of Rome, as well as its policy, in such matters was more ecclesiastical than doctrinal. While the Eastern Church concerned itself with dogmatic subtleties, the Western Church was concerned with priestly power. "Rome," as Heine remarks, "always desired to rule; when her legions fell she sent dogmas into the provinces. Every discussion on matters of faith had reference to Roman usurpations; it was a question of consolidating the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, who was always very tolerant regarding mere articles of faith, but fretted and fumed whenever the rights of the Church Were assailed." The Latin genius was one of government; it did not invent Christianity, but it naturally gained an ascendancy in the spiritual organisation. Yet the supremacy of Rome was not gained till the empire had been shaken, and sometimes desolated, by repeated struggles between the great Western Bishop and the sees of Constantinople and Alexandria.
"The history of the time is a record of the desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In this conflict Rome possessed many advantages; the two others were more immediately under the control of the Imperial Government, the clashing of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more bitter. The control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetual in Rome, though she was, both politically and intellectually, inferior to her competitors."
Gregory the First (A.D. 590-604) was, next to Leo the First, the greatest of the early Roman pontiffs. He stoutly repudiated the claim of the patriarch of Constantinople to be called universal bishop. This title, which in the next century was taken by his successors, he maintained to be blasphemous and diabolical, and he called himself "servant of the servants of God." None the less, he aimed at establishing the power of the Church, which he did much to promote by political intrigues as well as by the establishment of the doctrine of purgatory. Shortly before his death the Emperor Maurice and his five sons were barbarously murdered by Phocas, who, heading a rebellion, usurped the throne of Constantinople. Gregory, rejoicing at the overthrow of an
emperor who supported the pretensions of the rival primacy, no sooner heard the news than he had the statues of Phocas and his wife carried through Rome in triumph, and wrote to congratulate him on his success. This Phocas was a monster of vice - lewd, drunken, and sanguinary. Dean Milman says:
"It is astonishing that even common prudence did not temper the language of the triumphant pontiff, who launches out into a panegyric on the mercy and benignity of the usurper, calls on earth and heaven to rejoice at his accession, augurs peace and prosperity to the empire from his pious acts, and even seems to anticipate the return of the old republican freedom under the rule of the devout and gentle Phocas."
But the reward was to come. The patriarch of Constantinople having angered the devout and gentle Phocas by not delivering the murdered emperor's wife and daughters to his cruelty, he acceded to the request of Pope Boniface the Third and decreed (A.D. 606) the Romish See as head of all the Churches."
Another potent instrument in the fight for supremacy was the assumption of the power of excommunication, and afterwards of interdict. The conversion of the barbarians, who had been used to the exercise of this power in Druidism, facilitated the use of the weapon. When Christianity was predominant, there was no refuge for the person excommunicated, unless he could take shelter with Mohammedans or heathens. In time it became generally recognised in the jurisprudence of all Europe, that the civil power was bound to aid in enforcing ecclesiastical censures. Providence was always supposed to vindicate the anathemas of the Church; and if temporal visitations were insufficient, there was always the authority of the saints, to whom the secrets of futurity were revealed, for asserting that the most terrible of all the fires of hell was reserved for those who died excommunicate. The Church took care to supplement this with earthly penalties and disabilities. The excommunicate could not marry, and was outlawed from all civil rights and social intercourse.
"The liability to share the punishment of an excommunicate, for the simplest office or greeting tendered to him, was universally admitted. No one was even to salute him, and the confessor was instructed, among the regular questions addressed to his penitents, to inquire whether they had exchanged a word or a greeting with anyone under the ban of the Church. Worse than a leper, he was to die like a dog, and all the promptings of humanity on his behalf were to be sternly repressed... The excommunicate thus shed around him a contagion, which cut him off from all human society, and left him to perish in misery and starvation. This was no mere theoretical infliction, but a law enforced with all the power of the Church, and applied so liberally that it became almost impossible for the innocent to escape its effects."
The truth of this is illustrated by the fact that Popes granted, as a special privilege, the right not to be excommunicated without cause. A bull of this nature is extant, issued by Pope Celestin, in favor of a monastery, and another by Innocent III., for the protection of an archbishop.
An English historian of the Papacy tells us that:
"When a crime bad been committed against the Church, for which no satisfaction could be obtained on account of the power of some haughty offender, or for any other reason, then the bishop put the whole place in which the offender lived, or the whole district to which that place belonged under an interdict - that is to say, he caused all offices of public worship to cease or be suspended. All the churches of that place were closed, and all relics which they contained were withdrawn from public view; all crucifixes and images of saints were shrouded; no bells were rung; no sacraments were administered; no corpse was buried in consecrated ground; and notice had been given that this state of things would be continued until the demands of th Church should have been fully satisfied, and the alleged injury repaired. By this means such a ferment was raised in a whole population, that even the most powerful were at length obliged to yield."
The priestly pretensions were supported not only by the dread powers of excommunication, which was even held in terror over the dead, but by the doctrine of the immunity of priests from the jurisdiction of secular tribunals. Thus a peculiar sanctity and personal inviolability were given them, which proved an enormous advantage in all contests with the civil power. According to Rufinus, Constantine, at the first Council of Nice, declared that the priests could not be judged by men. "For you are gods, given us by God, and it is not fitting that man should pronounce judgment on gods." It is not to be supposed that Constantine really said this, or that the civil power so readily acknowledged such a monstrous claim; yet it was continually put forward, and was soon asserted in the forged Decretals (see p. 81). Justinian conceded to the bishops the right to have episcopal judges, and the overthrow of the empire facilitated the privilege. The Frank, the Roman, the Goth, and the Burgundian, however intermingled, had each a right to be tried by his own code, and it seemed natural that the ecclesiastic should have the benefit of the canon law, which could not be expounded by the secular courts. As early as A.D. 538 the third Council of Orleans enacted that episcopal assent was 'necessary before a cleric could appear in a secular court, either as plaintiff or defendant, and many following Church Councils anathematised judges who tried and condemned ecclesiastics. Pope Nicholas, in a rescript to the Bulgarians, said to them: "You who are laymen ought not to judge either priest or clerk; they must be left to the judgment of their prelates." Thus the members of the clerical body, to the lowest degree, were freed from the secular jurisdiction. Mohammedanism exercised an important influence over the Papacy. The Saracenic armies wrested from Christendom its Asiatic and African possessions. The sees of Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch disappeared from the Christian system. Constantinople and Rome only were left, and centuries of ecclesiastical dispute were terminated by the swords of Islam. As the Greek emperors were pressed by the Infidels, they were forced to leave to the Papacy the chief defence of their Italian provinces, and the independence of Rome was soon displayed in its refusal to obey the heretic emperor Bardanes.
In converting the Pagans, Christianity became completely paganised, and it was only after the rise of a rival religion that any attempts at reform were made. They were, however, most strenuously resisted by the Popes. When Leo, the Isaurian, who had associated much with the Mohammedans, published an edict prohibiting the worship of images (A.D. 726), Pope Gregory the Second absolved the people from their allegiance. This occasioned a civil war both in the East and in the West. Draper observes, however, that the issue was fictitious; the Papacy simply took the opportunity of revolting from a weak master.
The Iconoclasts went about destroying images, and were violently opposed by the monks. Milman remarks:
"Nor did this open resistance take place in Constantinople alone. A formidable insurrection broke out in Greece and in the Aegean Islands. A fleet was armed, a new emperor, one Cosmos, proclaimed, and Constantinople menaced by the rebels. The monks here, and throughout the empire, the champions of this, as of every other superstition, were the instigators to rebellion."
The opponents of image worship were termed arraigners of Christianity, and considered little better than Saracens. The dispute led to numerous battles by land and water. Constantine, nicknamed Copronymus, carried on the contest inaugurated by his father Leo, and rigorously quelled popular tumults in favor of image worship. In A.D. 751 he convened a Council at Constantinople, which the Greeks call the Seventh General Council, and which anathematised at once all persons making images and all opponents of the religious veneration of Mary and other saints. The monks were violent in opposition to the first of these decrees, and were severely treated in consequence by the emperor. But they were countenanced by Gregory the Third, who excommunicated all who dared to attack the images. The emperor Leo the Fourth (A.D. 775) also issued penal laws against image worshippers, but he was poisoned by his wife, Irene, with whom Pope Adrian the First made an alliance on condition that image worship should be restored. It would require a volume to fully
describe the bloodshed and crimes of this prolonged controversy, which distracted the Church for about a hundred and fifty years, when image worship finally prevailed.
As it emancipated itself from the Byzantine empire, the Papacy sought new alliances. Gregory III offered to Charles Martel the sovereignty of Italy if he would drive out the detested Lombards. With the most bare-faced defiance of political morality, Pope Zacharias (A.D. 741-752) sanctioned the dethronement of the weak Merovingian dynasty, by the declaration that "whoever possessed the power should have also the name of king." His successor, Stephen III (A.D. 752-757), anointed the usurper, Pepin the Short, as king of the Franks. In return for these services, Pepin came to the aid of Rome against the Lombards, and gave to the Pope, instead of the emperor, to whom they belonged, the conquered provinces. One inducement to Pepin to support Stephen was the forged letter from St. Peter, to which we have already referred, and which is well worth preserving:
"Pepin, the princes his sons, the Frankish nobility, and the Frankish nation; in the name of the Holy Virgin, the thrones, dominions and powers of heaven; in the name of the army of martyrs, of the cherubim and seraphim, of all the hosts gathered round the throne, and under threat of utter damnation, not to let his peculiar city, Rome, fall into the hands of the hell-brand Longobards."
Charlemagne confirmed and enlarged the donation his father had made, and on December 25, A.D. 800, laid the deed of the enlarged donation on the bogus tomb of St. Peter. Thus the popes became temporal princes; and though Charlemagne was not a monarch to be trifled with, they soon conceived the plan of restoring the ancient empire of the Romans by the universal rule of the Papacy. They availed themselves of the weakness and superstition of Charlemagne's successors to emancipate themselves from their authority; and, in order to efface the recollection of the gift, forged the story that Constantine the Great had given Rome and Italy to Pope Sylvester, and that this was the

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reason why the seat of empire had been removed to Constantinople. The Papal claims were also supported by the forged Decretals already referred to, the whole purport of which was to make the Church independent of the State, and to establish its universal dominion.
How little trouble it cost a mediaeval Pope to impose on the pious barbarian of his day, may be seen by glancing at a few sentences of this useful forgery:
"'We ascribe,' Constantine is represented as saying, 'to the see of St. Peter all dignity, all glory, all imperial power... Besides, we give to Sylvester and his successor our palace of the Lateran, which is beyond question the most beautiful place on earth; we give him our crown, our mitre, our diadem and all our imperial vestments; we remit to him the imperial dignity. We give as a pure gift, to the holy pontiff, the city of Rome and all the western cities of Italy, as well as the western cities of the other countries. In order to give place to him, we yield our dominion over all these provinces by removing the seat of our empire to Byzantium, considering it not right that a terrestrial emperor should preserve the least power where God hath established the head of religion.'"
Considering that this terrestrial emperor ruled the Church roundly, called Councils by his own authority, insisted that the orthodox should commune with the Arians, and set up Pagan images at pleasure, one marvels at the ignorance and impudence of the forger of his "donation." Yet "as late as 1478 Christians were burnt alive in Strasburg for doubting its authenticity." Even Dante seems to have believed the fable, writing in the bitterness of his noble heart:
"Ah, Constantine, di quanto mal fu matre Non la tua conversion, ma quelle dote Che de te prese il primo ricco patre!"
By every kind of trick the popes endeavored to evade acknowledgement of allegiance to the civil power. They were
willing enough to crown monarchs but did not want monarchs to crown them. One after another slipped into the chair without waiting for the imperial warranty; and then, in explanation of his irregularity, alleged pressure of circumstances over which he had no control. The experiment could be tried often, for the persons selected to wear the tiara were generally old men, and the pontificates were naturally brief. To secure the supremacy of the throne, Louis the Second caused Pope Nicholas the First to be chosen (A.D. 858) in his own presence. But the emperor committed the blunder of honoring him as never pope had then been honored by prince; he served him as squire, went on foot before him, and led his horse by the bridle. The stirrup was soon dashed in the King's face. How it came about deserves the telling, for it strikingly exhibits how much the establishment and propagation of Christianity had done for the world.
Lothaire, King of Lorraine, who was brother to the Emperor Louis, married in A.D. 856 Teutberga, sister of Hubert, Abbot of St. Maurice, who was accused of incest with her brother. Lothaire also took a mistress, one Walrada, niece of Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne, who called a Council of bishops at Aix-la-Chapelle, which declared that Teutberga was not Lothaire's wife on account of the alleged incest. The queen successfully went through the ordeal of water -- by proxy. Nevertheless, Lothaire insisted on her guilt and she was forced to confess. After the decision of the Council his nuptials with Walrada were immediately celebrated, and Gunther received his reward in the elevation of his niece to the throne. Charles the Bald of France, however, with whom Teutberga had taken refuge, appealed on her behalf to the supreme arbiter at Rome. Nicholas, who had first stamped with pontifical authority the forged decretals of the early popes, seized the occasion with joy. He had said nothing as to Lothaire's concubinage with Walrada, but the marriage he pronounced void. He denounced the Synod of Aix as a brothel of adulterers, deposed the archbishops of Cologne and Trèves, and brandished a sentence of excommunication over the heads of the rest. Mr. Lea remarks that:
"The comparison is instructive between his alacrity and the prudent reticence of Adrian in the previous century. A moralist would find it difficult to draw the line between the connubial irregularities of Charlemagne and those of Lothaire; but Hermengarda found no puissant pope to force her inconstant husband into the paths of dissimulation, or to justify wrong by cruelty. When Charlemagne grew tired of a wife he simply put her aside, nor would Adrian or Leo have thanked the meddling fool who counselled interference."
The Emperor Louis, however, espoused the cause of his royal brother and the German bishops, but being backed up by Charles the Bald, the Pope would not budge. To suppress his insubordination Louis marched on Rome. The fasts and prayers of Nicholas availed little against the soldiery; a massacre ensued, and the Pope, escaping in a boat across the Tiber, lay hidden for two days in the Cathedral of St. Peter. Most opportunely a sudden fever seized the emperor, which was at once attributed to the sacrilege he had committed. Louis therefore sent for Nicholas, made his peace and withdrew, commanding the archbishops to return home and consider themselves degraded. Lothaire, Waldrada, and Charles the Bald, were threatened with excommunication and yielded. Before his triumph was complete Nicholas died, but Adrian the Second received the submission of Lothaire, who was admitted to communion on the oath, which no one believed, that he had obeyed the commands of Nicholas, as though they had been those of heaven, and had abstained from all intercourse with Waldrada. Such was the termination of this trial of strength between the tiara and the crown. The victory of the pope was as complete as the abasement of the king, and the supremacy of the papacy over domestic concerns was firmly established.
The dissolution of the Frankish empire, and the invasion of the Norseman, brought confusion into Italy. The Popes were frequently under the thumb of an aristocratic faction, and sided now with this potentate and now with that, in order to gain their own ends. Legge says:
"During the first half of the tenth century the Papacy sank back into utter confusion and moral impotence. Three dissolute women, Theodora and her daughters Marozia and Theodora, contrived to bring the whole patrimony of St. Peter under their sway, and disposed of the tiara at their pleasure. Crimes too odious to narrate, and before which murder pales, were perpetrated to gratify their lusts. Laymen of infamously notorious character filled the chair of the apostles, which was bought and sold like a piece of merchandise. The Papal palace became a vast seraglio; the very churches echoed to obscene songs and bacchanal festivities."
Hallam also observes:
"This dreary interval is filled up in the annals of the Papacy by a series of revolutions and crimes. Six Popes were deposed, two murdered, one mutilated. Frequently two or even three competitors, among whom it is not always possible by any genuine criticism to distinguish the true shepherd, drove each other alternately from the city."
Throughout the year 1045 Europe witnessed the spectacle of three popes, Silvester III, Benedict IX, and Gregory VI, "disgracing the Papal chair, and rivalling each other in the most disgraceful acts of vice."
A Council was called at Sutry (1046) which affirmed the right of the emperor to nominate to the "holy see," and supported the claims of Gregory VI:
"No sooner, however, had this sentence been passed, than the emperor, to Gregory's astonishment, demanded of him an account of the means by which he had procured his appointment; and Gregory, not being able to deny that he had bought the popedom from Benedict, was deposed. It now became manifest that the emperor had left Germany with the design of his predecessor, Otho III, to have a German Pope. He had even fixed upon the man -- Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, whom he caused to be
elected by the Council, and then conducted him into Rome under the title of Clement II."
But a genius arose who was determined to establish sacredotal supremacy. This was Hildebrand (Gregory VII, A.D. 1073-85), the ablest of the popes. Under his leadership a party grew whose settled purpose was to raise the papacy above all secular control, and to make the Pope supreme arbiter of the world. When Leo IX was chosen as pope by the German emperor, Henry the Third, Hildebrand boldly declared the nomination invalid until confirmed by the superior clergy of Rome, and he induced the pontiff to seek their suffrages. During five pontificates Hildebrand served as prime minister and pope-maker. To strengthen the Church he was resolute that the clergy should have no family ties. At that time a large proportion of the clergy were married, and in Milan and elsewhere they set up an anti-pope, Cadalus, rather than resign their right of marriage. After a long and bloody controversy the policy of Hildebrand was triumphant. He also sought to abolish all simony, by which term he principally understood the bestowal of benefices by the civil power. At the same time he claimed the right of the papacy to dispose of kingdoms, and gave the crown of England to William of Normandy and that of Naples and Sicily to Robert Guiscard.
When elevated to the papal chair Hildebrand issued a decree invalidating all sacraments performed by simoniacal or married priests, and involving in their guilt and anathema whoever received communion from them. This he followed up with another (A.D. 1075), prohibiting sovereigns from granting churchly dignities, deposing every ecclesiastic who accepted a benefice from a layman, declaring such offenders idolators interdicted from communion, and placing under the same ban every potentate who should claim the right of investiture. These proceedings caused a collision with the emperor Henry IV of Germany. The Saxons being in rebellion, Gregory took occasion to admonish the king to abstain from the presentation of benefices. The German ecclesiastics revolted, and a synod at Metz renounced Gregory as pontiff. Another at Brixen pronounced his deposition and elected in his place Guibert, Archbishop of
Ravenna, under the title of Clement III. Henry wrote commanding Gregory to vacate the chair. The Pope retorted by excommunicating the emperor, his adherents, and the antipope. The pontiff's curse proved stronger than the prince's sword. The antipope died suddenly, and dread of excommunication seized Henry's followers. Political wavering and disintegration ensued, and Henry was forced to sue for mercy. For three winter days and nights the emperor was kept barefooted, and without food and shelter, in the courtyard of the castle where Gregory was staying, before the pontiff would revoke the dread sentence of excommunication.
Henry's enemies caused Rudolph of Swabia to be elected emperor in his place. The pope's legates confirmed the choice. This was a breach of faith with Henry. Again he took to arms and was a second time excommunicated. Gregory even ventured a prophecy, and declared: "If he be not deposed or dead before the festival of St. Peter, may men cease to believe in me." But Gregory's god, however, was asleep or on a journey this time. Henry overcame his enemies and marched on Rome. Gregory had to send to Robert Guiscard for relief. He raised the siege and kissed the pope's toes, while his followers took to pillaging the citizens and violating their wives and daughters. The Romans rose on the invaders, and Guiscard fired the city, sparing, at the intercession of Gregory, only the churches. Thus commenced the wars of the Investitures, which lasted over fifty years, "costing, without exaggeration, a hundred battles and the lives of two millions of human beings." The wars of the Guelphs and Ghibbelines were essentially a prolongation of the same quarrel. In the second sentence of excommunication, which Gregory passed on Henry IV, are these words:
"Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed fathers and princes, Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye are able to bind and loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away empires, kingdoms, princedoms,
marquisades, duchies, countships, and the possessions of all men."
Doctrines such as these struck equally at all civil government. Nor were the successors of Hildebrand slow to apply them. Pope Innocent III -- who excommunicated our king John, absolved England and Ireland from allegiance to him, and even gave the kingdom of England and Ireland to Philip Augustus, King of France -- declares, in his third sermon on consecration, that the vicar of Christ stands midway between God and man -- less than God, but greater than man. The doctrine perhaps found its culmination in the celebrated bull of Boniface (A.D. 1302), which declared that "for every human creature it is a condition of salvation to submit to the Roman pontiff." The use which God's vicegerents made of their wealth and power we shall see in the next chapter

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[ابو الياسمين والفل]

CHAPTER VII.

CRIMES OF THE POPES

WE now give a rapid summary of the crimes and vices with which many of the popes disgraced the chair of St. Peter; and before we conclude, the reader will see that every villainy the imagination can conceive has been practised by the vicegerents of God. Peculation, theft, cruelty, murder, fornication, adultery, and incest, not to mention still darker crimes, have all been notoriously committed by the supreme rulers of Christendom, who sat in the seat of infallibility, and claimed universal jurisdiction over the thoughts and consciences of mankind.
ST. DAMASUS (366-84). He was the first to assume the title of Pontiff. His election was opposed by Ursicinus, whose partisans accused Damasus of adultery. Riddle says:
"After some deadly conflicts between the followers of the two rivals, Ursicinus was banished from the city; and a similar sentence was about to be carried into effect against seven presbyters of his party, when the people interfered, and lodged them for safety in one of the churches. But even here they found no shelter from the fury of their opponents. Armed with fire and sword, Damasus, with some of his adherents, both of the clergy and of the laity, proceeded to the place of refuge, and left no less than a hundred and sixty of their adversaries dead within the sacred precincts."
That this was a massacre and not a faction fight is shown by the fact that on the side of Damasus not a single person was killed. Ammianus Marcellinus, the contemporary historian of the event, says of the contention between Damasus and Ursicinus:
"I do not deny, when I consider the ostentation that reigns at Rome, that those who desire such rank and power may be justified in laboring with all possible exertions and vehemence to obtain their wishes; since after they have succeeded, they will be secure for the future, being enriched by offerings from matrons,
riding in carriages, dressing splendidly, and feasting luxuriously, so that their entertainment surpassed even royal banquets.
Damasus gained the title of Auriscalpius Matronarum, ladies' ear-scratcher. He died of fever, and the Romish Church still invokes the aid of this saintly vicar of God in fever cases.
SIXTUS III (432-40). This pope, according to both Baronius and Platina, was accused of debauching a virgin, but was acquitted by a Council under the Emperor Valentina, who is said to have referred the pronouncing of the sentence to the Pope himself, "because the judge of all ought to be judged by none." It was without doubt to establish this maxim that the "acts" of the Council were forged.
ST. LEO THE GREAT (440-61). Jortin calls him "the insolent and persecuting Pope Leo, who applauded the massacre of the Priscillianists, and grossly misrepresented them."
SYMMACHUS (498-514). His election was violently opposed by the antipope Laurentius, and three Councils were held to decide the schism. Accusations of the most heinous crimes were laid against Symmachus. Bower says:
"This gave occasion to the rekindling of the war between the two parties in Rome; and several priests, many clerks, and a great number of citizens, fell daily in the battles that were fought in the different parts of the city. No regard was shown by either party to rank or dignity; and not even the sacred virgins were spared by the enraged multitude in their fury."
Eunodius declared that the Pope was "judge in the place of the most high, pure from all sin, and exempt from all punishment. All who fell fighting in his cause he declared enrolled on the register of heaven."
ST. HORMISDAS (514-23). He was a married man, and had a son, who was raised to the popedom. He was full of ambition, and
insolent in his demands to the emperor, whom he exhorted to the persecution of heretics.
BONIFACE II (530-32). His election was disputed by the antipope Dioscorus. Each accused the other of simony, but Dioscorus opportunely died. Boniface "began his pontificate with wreaking his vengeance on the memory of his deceased competitor, whom he solemnly excommunicated, as guilty of simony, when he could not clear himself from the charge, nor retort it on him, as perhaps he otherwise might." This sentence was removed by Pope Agapetus.
SILVERIUS (536-38). He was accused of betraying the city of Rome to the Goths, and was in consequence expelled from his see.
VIGILUS (537-55). He was a deacon elected by bribery. He engaged himself to obey the Empress Theodora, who gave him money to gain the suffrages of the clergy. Anastasius tells us that he killed his own secretary in a transport of passion, and caused his own sister's son to be whipped to death. He is considered to have been accessory to the banishment and death of Silverius. When banished himself by the emperor, he speedily repented, in order to save his seat.
PELAGIUS (555-60). He was accused of poisoning his predecessor. This is uncertain; but it is certain that, like most of his predecessors and successors, he incited the civil powers to the persecution of heretics.
ST. GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604). According to Gibbon, this pontiff was "a singular mixture of simplicity and cunning, of pride and humility, of sense and superstition." Jortin's picture is still less flattering:
"Pope Gregory the Great was remarkable for many things -- for exalting his own authority; for running down human learning and polite literature; for burning classic authors; for patronising ignorance and stupidity; for persecuting heretics; for flattering the
most execrable princes; and for relating a multitude of absurd, monstrous and ridiculous lies, called miracles. He was an ambitious, insolent prelate, under the mask of humility."
Draper says that Gregory not only forbade the study of the classics, mutilated statues, and destroyed temples but also "burned the Palatine library, founded by Augustus Caesar." Gibbon, however, throws doubt on this destruction, while admitting that it was generally believed.
Gregory does not appear to have been fond of women and wine, like so many other popes; but he possessed the darker vices of bigotry and ambition. His congratulations on the usurpation of the cruel, drunken and lascivious Phocas, after a wholesale massacre of the emperor's family, simply because the successful villain favored the pretensions of Rome (p. 109), are a sufficient proof that Gregory would scruple at nothing to advance the glory of his see.
SABINIAN (604-6). Bower says he rendered himself so odious to the Roman people by his avarice and cruelty to the poor, that they could not forbear abusing him whenever he appeared. In a dreadful famine he raised the price of corn to exorbitant rates. He accused St. Gregory of simony; but according to Baronius, that departed saint having vainly reproved him in three different apparitions for his covetousness, gave him in a fourth apparition so dreadful a blow on the head, that he died soon after.
BONIFACE III (607). By flattering Phocas as Gregory had done, he induced him to take the title of universal bishop from the bishop of Constantinople, and confer it upon himself and his successors.
THEODORUS (642-49). He commenced the custom of dipping his pen in consecrated wine when signing the condemnation of heretics, thus sanctifying murder with the blood of Christ. Of Adeodatus, Donus I, Agatho, and Leo II, we only know that they carried on fierce contests with the archbishop of Ravenna for refusing to acknowledge their supremacy. Leo II anathematised
his predecessor, Pope Honorius, for heresy. Neither Benedict II, John V, nor Conon, lived a whole year after assuming the tiara.
ST. SERGIUS I (687-701). He had to purchase his seat from the exarch of Ravenna by pawning the ornaments of the tomb of St. Peter. He was accused of adultery, but his innocence was strikingly proved; for, upon the child of whose parentage he was accused being baptised when but eight days old, he cried out, "The pontiff Sergius is not my father." Bruys, the French historian of the Papacy, says, "What I find most marvellous in this story is, not that so young a child should speak, but that it should affirm with so much confidence that the pope was not its father."
CONSTANTINE (708-15). He is said to have excommunicated the Emperor, Philip Bardanes, for being of the same heresy as Pope Honorius. To oblige Constantine, Justinian II cut out the tongue and blinded the eyes of the Archbishop of Ravenna, who refused to pay the obedience due to the apostolic see.
ST. GREGORY II (715-31). He was chiefly noted for his endowing monasteries with the goods of the poor, and for his opposition to the Emperor Leo's edict against image worship. Rather than obey the edict, he raised civil war both in Italy and elsewhere. He prayed that Christ might set the Devil on the emperor, and approved the barbarous murder of the imperial officer. Yet the priests place in the list of saints a pontiff who, to establish the Christian idolatry of image worship, filled Italy with carnage.
STEPHEN III (768-72). When elected he found on the pontifical throne a lay pope, one Constantine, who, after a violent struggle, was dislodged and punished with the loss of his eyes, many of his friends sharing the same fate.
ADRIAN I (772-95). He made a league with Irene, the murderess of her son, to restore image worship, and presented to Charlemagne the pretended donation of Constantine. Avarice was the vice of this able pontiff. He left large sums to his successors.
ST. PASCAL I (817-24). At the Diet of Compeigne this pope was charged with being accessory to the mutilation and murder of two Roman priests. The Pope denied the charge, but refused to deliver up the perpetrators of the crimes, alleging that they belonged "to the family of St. Peter."
EUGENIUS II (824-27). He had the honor of inventing the barbarous practice of ordeal by cold water.
NICHOLAS (858-67). He excommunicated Photius, the Greek patriarch, and the emperor Michael as his abettor, and threatened King Lothaire with the ecclesiastical sword if he suffered any bishop to be chosen without his consent.
ADRIAN II (867-72). He was a married priest. He congratulated Bazilius, the murderer of the emperor Michael, and entered into alliance with him.
JOHN VIII (872-82). The meek and holy nature of this worthy successor of St. Peter may be judged by his ordering the Bishop of Naples to bring him the chief men among the Saracens in that city, and cutting their throats in the presence of his legate. A letter of John is extant, in which he justifies Athanasius, Bishop of Naples, for having plucked out the eyes of Sergius, Duke of Naples, who favored the Saracens in despite of the papal anathemas. He even cites the Gospel text as to plucking out offending eyes. Cardinal Baronius declares that this pontiff perjured himself, and that he rather deserved the name of a woman than that of a man. The annals of the Abbey of Fulda relate that John VIII was poisoned by the relations of a lady whom he had seduced from her husband.
FORMOSUS (891-96). He had been repeatedly excommunicated by John VIII. He invited Arnulf, the German emperor, to invade Italy, which he did, committing great atrocities. Formosus, however, had a great character for piety. He is said to have been well versed in scripture, and to have died a virgin in his eightieth year.
BONIFACE VI (896). Even according to Baronius, he was a man of most infamous character. He had been deposed for his scandalous life, first from the rank of sub-deacon, and afterward from the priesthood.
STEPHEN VI. (896-7). He intruded into the see in the room of the intruder Boniface. Being of the opposite faction to Pope Formosus, he caused the body of that pontiff to be taken out of the tomb and to be placed, in the episcopal robes, on the pontifical chair. Stephen then addressed the dead body thus: "Why didst thou, being Bishop of Porto, prompted by thy ambition, usurp the universal see of Rome?" After this mock trial Stephen, with the approbation and consent of a Council of bishops, ordered the body to be stripped, three of the fingers (those used in blessing) to be cut off, and the remains to be cast into the Tiber. At the same Council all the ordinations of Formosus were declared invalid.
Then followed what Riddle calls "a rapid succession of infamous popes," of whom we may mention that Leo V (903) was deposed and cast into prison by his chaplain, Christopher, who was in turn ejected and imprisoned by Sergius III (904-11). This pontiff also had been excommunicated by John VIII. He was, says Baronius, "the slave of every vice and the most wicked of men." Riddle says:
"This Sergius III was a monster of profligacy, cruelty and vice in their most shameless and disgusting forms. But it was this very character which made him useful to his party, the duration of whose influence at Rome, could be insured only by a preponderance of physical power, and this again only by violence which should disdain all restraints of morality and religion. Sergius was the man for this purpose, who, while he lived in concubinage with Marozia, did not hesitate to yield all the treasures of the Roman Church as plunder to his party." To him succeeded other paramours of Marozia and of her mother the prostitute Theodora. John X, for instance (914-28), received his chair because he was the lover of Theodora, while Leo VI and
Stephen VIII (929-31) were creatures of Marozia. Adultery and assassination form the staple of the annals of their pontificates.
JOHN XI (931-36). He was the son of Pope Sergius III. by Marozia, and if possible he surpassed his parents in crime. Elected pope at the age of eighteen, Alberic, his half brother, expelled him from Rome and imprisoned their mother Marozia. Stephen VIII (939-942) made himself so obnoxious to the Romans that they mutilated him.
JOHN XII (956-64), the son of Alberic, was the first to change his name, which was originally Octavian. He nominated himself pope at the age of seventeen. Wilks says: "His profaneness and debaucheries exceeded all bounds. He was publicly accused of concubinage, incest, and simony." This pope was so notorious for his licentiousness that female pilgrims dared not present themselves in Rome. Bower says that he had changed the Lateran Palace, once the abode of saints, into a brothel, and there cohabited with his father's concubine; that women were afraid to come from other countries to visit the tombs of the apostles at Rome; that he spared none, and had within a few days forced married women, widows, and virgins to comply with his impure desires. He was at length deposed by Otho, at the solicitation of a council of bishops and laymen, on charges of sacrilege, simony, blasphemy, and cruel mutilation. He had deprived one deacon of his right hand and made him a eunuch. He put out the eyes of Benedict, his ghostly father, cut off the nose of the keeper of the archives, and scourged the Bishop of Spires. On the deposition of John, Leo VII was put in his place. John fulminated anathemas against his opponents, and soon after died, from a blow on the head while in bed with a married woman. Jortin remarks that "Baronius says, from Luitprandus, that it was the Devil who gave John that blow; but it seems not probable that Satan would have used his good friend in such a manner. It is more likely that it might be the husband of the adulteress."
Mosheim says "that the history of the Roman pontiffs of this century [the tenth] is a history of monsters, a history of the most
atrocious villainies and crimes, is acknowledged by all writers of distinction, and even by the advocates of popery."
BONIFACE VII (974). The old authors in derision call him Maliface. Having had his predecessor Benedict murdered, he plundered the Basilica and escaped with his spoils to Constantinople, whence he afterwards returned and murdered John XIV (984), then on the papal throne.
GREGORY V (996-99). He was turned out of his see by Crescentius, who elected the antipope John. Upon Gregory's restoration he had this unfortunate creature deprived of sight, cut off his nose, and tore out his tongue. He then ordered him to be led through the streets in a tattered sacerdotal suit, and mounted upon an ass with his face to the tail, which he held in his hand.
SERGIUS IV (1009-12). This pope was called Os Porci, or Swine's Mouth. Of his doings little is known, but he is asserted to have gravely declared "that the pope could not be damned, but that, do what he would, he must be saved."
BENEDICT VIII (1012-24). He saved the city of Rome from a great storm, which it seems was caused by some Jews. The Jews being immediately executed the storm ceased.
JOHN XIX (1024-33). He was a layman, brother of Benedict, yet he was raised to the see. Wilks says:
"It was by gold, and not by imperial power, that the Romans consented to this uncanonical election. The rapacity of this pope was so great that he offered to sell the title of 'Universal Bishop' to the see of Constantinople for a sum of money!"
By his exactions, debauchery and tyranny, he became so odious to the Romans that he had to flee for his life.
BENEDICT IX (1033-46). A nephew of the last two pontiffs. Some say he was raised to the papacy at the age of twelve -- others, at eighteen. He "stained the sacred office with murder,
adultery, and every other heinous crime." Desiderius, afterwards pope under the name of Victor III, styles Benedict the successor of Simon the sorcerer, and not of Simon the apostle, and paints him as one abandoned to all manner of vice. Being eager to possess the person and property of a female cousin, he sold the papacy to John Gratianus, "the most religious man of his time," for a sum of money, and consecrated him as Gregory VI. Benedict afterwards poisoned Pope Damasus II. The Romans, weary of his crimes, expelled him from the city, but he was reinstated by Conrad. "But," says Jortin, "as he continued his scandalous course of life, and found himself despised and detested both by clergy and laity, he agreed to retire, and to abandon himself more freely to his pleasures." Stipulating therefore to receive a sum of money, he resigned his place to Gratianus, called Gregory VI, and went to live in his own territories.
Mosheim calls Benedict IX "a most flagitious man and capable of every crime."
We have already seen how Benedict, Sylvester, and Gregory, were alike declared unworthy of the pontificate, and Clement placed in the see, and by what means Hildebrand contrived to extend the papal power. This great pontiff, Gregory VII (1073-85), has been accused of poisoning his predecessors in order to obtain the popedom, and also of committing adultery with Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, who bestowed all her possessions on the pope. But these accusations probably arose from the spite of the many enemies aroused by Hildebrand's high-handed measures.
PASCAL II (1099-1118). He was a disciple of Hildebrand, and inherited his ambition without his talents. He compelled Henry IV to abdicate, but on his son Henry V marching against him, after a sanguinary struggle, he gave up to the emperor the right of investiture. Afterwards he excommunicated all who should declare his own grant to be valid.
ADRIAN IV (1154-59). The only Englishman who ever became pope. He caused Arnold of Brescia to be burnt at the stake (1154

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