Note 1163 — Chapter III · PROTESTANTISM.

Although called forth rather by the accession of Queen Elizabeth and her assertion of supremacy over the Anglican Church than by the Spanish Protestants, the bull Cum ex apostolatus, of February 15, 1559, is worth alluding to as illustrating the spirit of the age. Issued after mature deliberation with the Sacred College, it confirms and renews all the laws, decrees and statutes against heresy, at any time issued, and orders their strict enforcement. As the vicar of God on earth and clothed with supreme power, Paul IV decrees in perpetuity that all guilty of heresy or schism or fautorship—clerics from the lowest up to cardinals and laymen up to kings and emperors—shall be subject to these laws against heresy, shall be deprived of their dignities and possessions, which may be seized by any one obedient to the Holy See; shall be held as relapsed, as though they had previously abjured, and shall be handed over to the secular arm for the legal punishment, unless they manifest true repentance with its fruits, in which case, through the benignity and clemency of the Holy See, they may, if it thinks fit, be thrust into some monastery to perform perpetual penance on the bread of sorrow and water of affliction.—Bullar. Roman., I, 840.—Septimi Decretal., Lib. V, Tit. iii, cap. 9.

The Spanish Inquisition kept this bull in its archives (Bulario de la Orden de Santiago, Lib. III, fol. 55) but never seems to have had occasion to use it. As the most solemn utterance of the Holy See it is presumably still in force.