this Decree, it claimed, of course, the authority of a General Council; but posterity cannot endorse this lofty pretension, except, indeed, so far as the later sessions are concerned, when the Council and the Pope (Martin V.) acted in unison.1

The defenders of the Gallican theory, which Dr. Döllinger now adopts, were fully aware of the irregularity that characterized this portion of the proceedings of the Council, and hence they have always been anxious to sustain the authority of the Decrees by referring to the Papal ratification by which the acts of the Council were confirmed.2 But those Decrees were never approved by the Pope. The Bull of Martin V., as Hefele writes, approved only the Decrees which regarded matters of faith, and in reference to which the Council had proceeded in accordance with the forms by which the proceed ings of Councils are regulated, and not otherwise—in materiis fidei, conciliariter, et non aliter nec alio modo-but the Pope himself and the whole College of Cardinals, as we learn from D'Ailly, considered that those Decrees, which were approved merely by the majority of nations, and without the consent of the Cardinals, were not adopted conciliariter. And this was exactly the case of the Gallican Decrees."4

Moreover, in the last session of the Council, on the 10th of March, 1418, Martin V. prohibited every appeal from the Apostolic See, and thus "set aside all the principles on which the Councils of Pisa and of Constance had based their proceedings relative to the schism and the reformation of the Church, and which had been approved as fundamental principles of the Catholic system, by the Decrees of the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council of Constance." Gerson understood this thoroughly, and as these principles formed the foundation also of his view of ecclesiastical authority, he wrote as the final assertion of his theory, in the closing days of the Council, his Treatise on Appeals from the Roman See, in Questions of Faith. Elsewhere he describes the doctrine

:

Church was not represented for there was no Pope present, and the Cardinals did not give their suffrages as a College, but divided into different nations.

"In Constance, too, the contrary doctrine of the superiority of the Pope was maintained at a later period by many.

"Indeed, D'Ailly afterwards, in his writings, defended the superiority of Councils, but without considering the question as definitively decided, and without appealing to the authority of this Decree of the fifth session.

"Finally, succeeding law ful Pontiffs never gave their sanction to this Decree."DÖLLINGER. History of the Church. Translated from the German by the Rev. Edward Cox, D. D., vol. iv., pp. 164-5. London, 1842].

1 HEFELE. Concil., vol. vii., p. 104.

2 Declarat. Cler. Gallican, An. 1682, art. 2.

3 GERSON. Opera. Ed. Dupin, vol. ii., p. 940.

4 HEFELE. loc. cit. : PHILLIPS, K. R., p. 257; vol. iv.. p. 438, et seq. SCHWAB. Joh. Gerson, pp. 665-6.

affirming the unlawfulness of such appeals, as one which, previous to the Council of Constance, had been held by many who clung to the letter rather than to the spirit of the Christian religion, so that those who opposed it were in danger of being condemned as heretics; and he complains that even after the Council, the doctrine was still publicly taught, a fact which, from his party stand-point, he ascribes to the desire of flattering the Roman Pontiff. We have here a plain confession that the doctrine which was so distasteful to him, had been the prevalent doctrine before the opening of the Council; and that even after it had been formally condemned in the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council, it was still publicly defended-facts which we learn also upon the authority of other writers,' and which Eneas Sylvius,2 when writing in defence of the Gallican theory, did not undertake to contradict.

In fine, there is some room for doubt as to the true meaning of the Decrees of the Council of Constance. Their assertion of the authority of a General Council over the Pope, has been understood by many writers as referring only to the case of

1 S. ANTONIN. Summa. Part ii., tit. 33, cap. iii., sec. 3. Cf. RAYNALD, an. 1457. n. 54: PIGNATELLI, Consult. Canon. tom x., cons. 92, p. 240 et seq.: BEN. XIV., Const. Altissimo (26 Junii, 1745): ZACCARIA Antifebr. tom. iv., capp. 5. 6. p. 163. et seq.; Antifebr. Vindic, tom iv., diss. 12. cap. iv. p. 387.

Eneas Sylvius," not Pius II,whose authority the Augsburg Gazette (10th Feb, 1871), claims for the work De Gest. Concil. Basil. "When only twenty-six years of age, he took a leading part in the proceedings of the Council of Basle, as one of the spokesmen of the ultra-liberal party. He was soon appointed by the Council to several positions of trust and responsibility, among others, to one of the secretaryships of the Council; in this capacity he defended with considerable vigour the authority of the Council in opposition to the acts of Pope Eugene." Dux. Der Deutsche Cardinal Nikolaus von Cusa. Regensburg, 1847, tom. i., p, 168.

["In August, 1458, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was elected Pope. This highly intellectual man had before been attached to the Council of Basle, and, for a short time, to the anti-pope Felix. . . He now took the title of Pius II. . . "With the consent and approbation of the ambassadors who were in Mantua, he issued a Bull, prohibiting, under pain of excommunication, all appeals from the Pope to a General Council. He declared that .. such appeals would

effect the dissolution of all ecclesiastical order, and that it was in itself absurd to appeal to a judge who was not in existence, and to a tribunal which, if the Canon of the Council of Constance were to be followed even to the letter, could be erected only once in ten years

But as Pius himself, when an official of the Council of Basle, .. had laid down principles. . . . of the untenable nature of which he had long been convinced, even before he had been created Cardinal; and as many persons referred him to these his earlier writings, he considered it necessary to recall them, which he did in a Bull to the Rector and to the University of Cologne in 1463.

"He had, he said, in his youth. being deceived and in ignorance like St. Paul, persecuted the Church of God and the ApostolicSee.' Many may now say thus wrote Æneas, who afterwards became Pope,' "and may imagine that Pius II. recognises ... all that Eneas wrote. But let them give no faith to those earlier writings, but believe and teach with me that the Pope receives supreme power over the whole Church immediately from Jesus Christ, and that from him all power is imparted to the inferior members of the body of the Church.'" DÖLLINGER. History of the Church, vol. iv., p. 217.]

schism, when from the conflicting claims of rival Pontiffs, a doubt may exist as to the lawful occupant of the Apostolic See. This was the sense in which the Decrees were explained at Trent by the Augustinian Cardinal, Seripandus, in replying to the French Ambassadors.1

But no such explanation can be given of the Decrees of the Council of Basle; for that assembly, not content with repeatedly asserting the authority of a General Council over the Pope, endeavoured to give effect to this doctrine in the case of Pope Eugene IV.,the lawfulness of whose election was not questioned. But with the exception of a few Decrees which derive all their authority from subsequent ratification, the proceedings of the Council of Basle, animated as they were by the spirit of schism, and conducted under the dictation of a few ecclesiastical demagogues, have never been recognised as having any authority in the Church. If it had been an Ecumenical Council, the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, which was defined in its thirty-sixth session, would have been an article of Catholic Faith long before the year 1854.

Hence, the advocates of the Gallican theory have strained every nerve to demonstrate that the Decrees in which the Council approved their doctrine were subsequently ratified by the Pope. But Eugene IV., who had repeatedly declared that he would lay down his dignity and even his life rather than consent to sacrifice a single prerogative of the Apostolic See, expressly guarded himself from approving any of the Decrees of the Council, when recognising it in 1433.5 His recognition of the Council contains two conditions (1) that the authority of his Legates should be recognised as Presidents of the Council, and (2) that everything which had been enacted by the Council against his person, his authority, or his liberty, or against the rights and privileges of the Holy See, or of the Cardinals, should be regarded as null and void, so that all such matters should be restored to the condition in which they stood before the opening of this Council. But these conditions were not 1 PALLAVICINI. Historia Concilii Tridentini, lib. 19, cap. xiv., n. 4: RAYNALD. An. 1563. n. 3.

[Such was the presumption of an assembly in which there were no more than seven or eight Bishops, and, together with the Abbots, only thirty-nine prelates." -DÖLLINGER. History of the Church, vol iv., p. 203.]

[Dr. Döllinger speaks. in his History (vol. iv., p. 199), of “the violent and anarchical proceedings of this assembly,” and the “dangerous tendency of its principles, by which all ecclesiastical order was essentially threatened."]

4 See his letter to the Doge of Venice. Raynald, an. 1563, n. 3.

5 TURRECREMATA, De Summa Ecclesiae, lib. ii., cap. 100. "Nos quidem," are the Pope's words, "bene progressum Concilii approbavimus, volentes ut procederet ut inceperat, non tamen approbavimus ejus decreta."

6 HARDOUIN, Concil., Tom viii., p. 1587. The omission of these words from some editions does not, as Phillips (K. R. tom. ii., sec. 85, p. 267) points out, affect the substance of the question.

observed, and it is plain that from the non-observance of the conditions imposed by the Pope, his ratification of the proceedings failed to take effect.1

Almost the same remarks are applicable to the clause contained in the Papal confirmation of the two Councils of Constance and Basle :-" without prejudice to the dignity and pre-eminence of the Apostolic See, and to the authority vested in it and in its canonical occupants." Every influence was brought to bear upon Eugene IV., who not only steadfastly refused to the end of his life to approve the Decrees in question, but even disclaimed, in a special Bull, the intention of doing

so.

As to the Bull of Nicholas V., declaring that, in publishing the Rules of the Roman Chancery, he did not intend to supersede the Concordats previously entered into between the Holy See and the German Princes-a proposition which Roman canonists themselves have never questioned,-I am utterly at a loss to understand what connexion it can have with the present controversy.3

In fine, the Decrees of Constance and Basle were deprived of all weight by the Definitions of the Council of Florence and of the Fifth Council of the Lateran: nor did they receive any sanction from the proceedings at Trent. The majority of the Fathers at that Council endorsed the view of the Archbishop of Otranto, who contended strenuously for the Roman doctrine in opposition to the views of the French Cardinal Guise. The Decrees were defended by the French and the German theologians alone, who were united on this question by an identity of interest.

During the progress of the Vatican Council, efforts not altogether unsuccessful, were made to construct an opposition out of the same materials: the organisers of the movement have not yet abandoned their efforts. But it will be impossible to resuscitate those Decrees: the Church has spoken and even though the opposition were to clamour with tenfold energy, her voice will be heard and obeyed by Catholics to the end of

time.

1 See Phillips, tom. iv., sect. 195, p. 455.

2 RIGANTIUS. Comment. in Regul. Cancell. Apost.

Prom. n. 61, et seq.; in Reg. 2, sect. i, n. 56 et seq.

W. J. W.

Romae 1744, tom. i.

3 See SCHEEBEN, Period. Bl. über das Concil., vol. ii., p. 397, et seq.

4 RAYNALD. An. 1563, n. 119.

176

LOUISE LATEAU.-PART III.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF FRAUD.

"Veritatem tantum et pacem diligite."-Zach. viii. 19.

§1.-GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

THOSE who are familiar with the history and the daily life

of Louise have never entertained against her, even for a moment, the suspicion of fraud. It is inconsistent alike with her extreme simplicity of character, and with her solid, unpretending piety. But at the present day, and in this country more particularly, whatever seems to bear upon the supernatural relations of man, and upon the unseen world, is sure to be received with scepticism by unbelievers, and with keen criticism even by the friends of religion. It may be well, therefore, to examine this question of fraud a little more closely, and to demonstrate, with some degree of minuteness, that the prodigies displayed in the ecstatic girl of Bois d'Haine, are not counterfeit, but real and genuine.

The supposition of fraud means simply that Louise is an impostor; that she produces the bleeding Stigmas herself, and that the Ecstasy is only a pretence. Furthermore, if we accept this supposition, we must be prepared to believe that she has successfully carried on this imposture, week after week, for four years together, not only in the presence of an eager crowd, watching all her movements, but under the cold and sceptical scrutiny of scientific men. Not to speak of high ecclesiastical dignitaries and distinguished Theologians, she has been visited, we are told, by more than a hundred Physicians, whose special purpose it was to investigate her case, according to the strict principles of their science. Now it is hardly credible that a peasant girl, brought up in poverty and hardship, without education, without knowledge of the world, was more than a match for such critics as these; nay, that she was so skilled in the ways of deceit as completely to delude and baffle them all, while, at the same time, she submitted freely to the most. searching inquiries, the most painful tests.

Nor must it be imagined that these witnesses approached the case with a prepossession in favour of Louise. Many went doubting, many disbelieving; some even went for the express purpose of exposing what they believed to be a fraud. Of these last was a certain free-thinking doctor whose testimony is deserving of especial notice. He was chosen by a section of the infidel party in Belgium, to represent them at Bois