riter, but it was the very foundation of every other, -the ground for the deposition of the three antipopes, and the only title-deed of the newly-elected pope to the vacant throne. If this decree falls to the ground the legitimacy of the Church of Rome falls with it-the entire dynasty which was opened by Martin V. becomes a usurpation and an intrusion. If John XXIII. was irreformable, Martin V. ceases to be a legitimate pope.

Any one who examines closely the structure of this remarkable decree (which was confirmed by Eugenius IV. in the Bull which rehabilitated the Council of Basle), must observe how skilfully every word of it is directed against the pretensions of the court of Rome, and condemns by anticipation the definition of the Vatican Council. For here the papal authority is submitted to the judgment of a Council, absolutely and for all time. It is, therefore, assumed to be fallible, and reformable, and the pope himself removable.

Among the many reflections which must arise in the mind of the reader on this history, not the least obvious must be this. By setting aside, and

deposing the three anti-popes, the Council proved either that the church had been without a true pope during the whole period of the schism, or that if any one of them had been such, they had unjustly and uncanonically deposed him. Upon what a miserable alternative of doubtful chances did they thus suspend the irreformable and infallible prerogative! Well might the unfortunate Huss, who had a "more sure word of prophecy" to guide him, write, on the deposition of Pope John XXIII., in allusion to the epithets of Roman flattery (now, alas! revived), "Answer me, ye preachers, who hold out that the pope is an earthly Deity, that he is the head of the whole church, the heart of the church, the fountain whence flows all virtue and goodness, the sun of the church, the surest refuge to which every Christian should flee. Lo, your head is cut off with the sword, your earthly god in chains, and his sins openly declared, your fountain dried up, your sun eclipsed, your heart torn out and cast away, so that no one can take refuge in it again.' The public indictment against John XXIII. was

* Hussii Epp., Ep. 13.

sufficiently serious, which charges him with a "detestable and discreditable life and conversation," though the accusation of simony came ill from the members of the Council-above all, from the Bishop of Leutmeritz, who, to the certain knowledge of Huss himself, had twice offered to buy the bishopric of Prague.

Yet there was much that was never brought to light, to save the church from scandal rather than the pontiff from fallibility. This is preserved to us in a document given in the great Collection of Von der Hardt,* from the Ducal Library of Brunswick, and declares of the deposed pope: "Quinimmo dixit et pertinaciter credidit, animam hominis cum corpore humano mori et extingui ad-instar animalium brutorum," thus absolutely denying the resurrection and the life to come. Now all these charges, both those which were openly read in the Council and those which were withheld, "quamvis probati sunt," to avoid scandal to the church, were either true or false. If the latter, then the pope was unjustly condemned, and the subsequent succession of the Roman pontiffs is a continuous intrusion *Tom. iv. p. ii. p. 253.

and usurpation. If the former, then we have an illustration of the papal fallibility, which is perhaps unequalled in the history of the Roman see. A little of the zeal and ingenuity that is spent upon the venial error of Honorius might well be bestowed upon the case of this unhappy pontiff, whose sudden downfall from an almost divine worship to the most heartless dishonour and contempt, is described with honest indignation even by the persecuted Huss, who owed little indeed to the pope in the day of his prosperity.

THE COUNCIL OF BASLE.

THE deplorable state of the church in which (from the failure of every effort to reform it) "almost every teaching of ecclesiastical and Christian life had become extinct," rendered it absolutely necessary that the see of Rome, which, in the brief and abortive Council of Siena in 1423, had again escaped the obligations it had undertaken at Constance, should convene a Council out of Italy to

* Concil. Basil, Ep. “Cogitanti.”

apply a last remedy to the now almost incurable disease. The Council of Constance (in its celebrated decree "Frequens,") had fixed the dates at which general Councils were to be reassembled, viz., at intervals of five, seven, and, finally, ten years, after which they were to be carried on at regular decennial periods. A Council had fallen due, therefore, in 1430-1, and was summoned by Pope Martin V. to meet at Basle. The schism being now at an end, nothing remained but to take up the reformatory work which had been laid down at Constance, in the belief and with the pledge that the pope would take it up himself. The pope in his bull of convocation* gives an anticipated sanction to the labours of the Council confirming beforehand all that his legates in union with it, should determine, “quicquid super præmissis per te und cum eodem Basiliensi Concilio, ordinatum statutum, etc., fuerit." Thus his infallibility became even prophetic; and he engaged, further, to enforce the observation of decrees' which were as yet only "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of

* Bulla " Dum onus gregis Dominici.”