Note 819 — Chapter XVI · MISCELLANEOUS BUSINESS.

Repertor. Inquisit. s. v. Hæreticus, § Pertinax.

Although simony was the universally corroding vice of the Church, and although it was reckoned as a heresy, it was too profitable to the hierarchy ever to be subjected to the Inquisition. In a project of instructions for the Spanish delegates to the Lateran Council in 1512, simoniacal heresy is denounced as the universal destruction of the Church, owing to the openness with which it is practised in Rome and throughout Christendom, and they are told to labor to have it prosecuted as heresy by the Inquisition—(Döllinger, Beiträge zur politischen kirchlichen und Cultur-Geschichte, III, 204).