Note 656 — Chapter VIII · INTELLECT AND FAITH. (continued 2)

Alph. de Castro de justa Hæret. Punitione Lib. I. c. viii. Dub. 4.—Carenæ Tract. de Modo procedendi Tit. XVII. § 9.

Yet in Spain the intense popular devotion to the Virgin rendered the Inquisition very sensitive in its reverence for her. In 1642 an inquisitor, Diego de Narbona, in his Annales Tractatus Juris alluded to an assertion of Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, Lib. VII.) that some persons believed that after the Nativity the Virgin was inspected by the midwife to prove her virginity. Although he condemned the statement as most indecent and dishonoring to the Virgin, his work was denounced to the Inquisition of Granada, which referred it to the Inquisitor-general. Narbona in vain endeavored to defend himself. It was shown that in the Index Expurgatorius of 1640 the passage of Clement, as well as those in all other authors alluding to it, had been ordered to be borrado, or expunged, so that the very memory of so scandalous a tale might be lost. Narbona alleged in his defence a passage in Padre Basilio Ponce de Leon, but the Inquisition showed that this had likewise been borrado, and, as every one who possessed a copy of a book containing a prohibited passage was bound to blot it out and render it illegible, he was culpable in not having done so.—MSS. Bibl. Bodleian. Arch S. 130.