Note 675 — Chapter IX · CONCLUSION.

Von der Hardt, I. XVI. 841.—D’Argentré I. II. 228.—Theod. a Niem de Schismate Lib. II. c. xiv.; Ejusd. Nemor. Unionis Tract. VI. c. 36, 37, 39.—Poggii Bracciol. Dialogus contra Hypocrisim.—Gobelini Personæ Cosmodrom. Æt. V. c. 85.

The question as to the possibility of a pope committing simony was long under discussion. At the Council of Lyons, in 1245, Guiard, Bishop of Cambrai, was asked by a cardinal if he believed it possible, when he rendered a most emphatic answer in the affirmative (Th. Cantimprat. Bonum Universale, Lib. II. c. 2). Thomas Aquinas not only asserts it, but adds that the higher the position of the offender the greater the sin (Summ. Sec. Sec. Q. 100, Art. 1, No. 7). Yet the venality of the Holy See was too notorious for concealment, and arguments were framed to prove that the pope had a right to sell preferments, for which see the Aureum Speculum Papœ, P. II. c. 1, written in 1404, under Boniface IX., and the laborious effort of William of Ockham to controvert the assertion. The ingenious methods of the curia to extract the last penny from applicants are described in P. I. c. v. of the Speculum. The author has no hesitation in pronouncing the curia to be in a state of damnation (Fascic. Rer. Expetend. et Fugiend. II. 63, 70, 81, 461). All who deplored the condition of the Church instinctively turned to the Holy See as the source of corruption and demoralization. Nothing can well be conceived more terrible than the account of it given about this time by Cardinal Matthew of Krokow in his tract De Squaloribus Romanœ Curiœ (Ib. II. 584-607).