Note 625 — PART II.

See Claud. Espencæi Opera Omnia, p. 479. The morals of those assembled at the “sacred” Councils of the Church showed, perhaps, in these days, little or no amendment upon the morals of Rome itself. At the great Council of Constance, for example, held in the fifteenth century, there were, according to the long list of those present, as given by Lenfant, “seven hundred common women” whose habitations were known to Ducher; whilst the Vienna list of the same Council sets down the list of “meretrices vagabundæ” as fifteen hundred in number (Lenfant’s History of the Council of Constance, vol. iv. pp. 414, 416). This Council was summoned together by that misnamed “Vicegerent of God on earth,” Pope John XXIII., a man who, according to his own secretary, Thierry de Niem, was guilty of “all the mortal sins, and of a multitude of abominable acts not fit to be named” (Niem de Vita Joh. XXIII., ap. Von’der Hardt, tom. ii. p. 391.) Among other matters, the Procurators of the Council publicly accused him before it of “cum uxore fratris sui, et cum sanctis monialibus incestum, cum virginibus stuprum, et cum conjugatis adulterium, et alia incontinentiae crimina” (Concil. Constan. Sess. xi., Binius, tom. iii. p. 874). Yet this same “infallible” Council of Constance, as it termed itself, called together, as it was, professedly for the cure of the evils and doctrines of the Church and Papacy, principally distinguished itself in history by burning John Huss and Jerome of Prague for preaching from the Scriptures the pure and simple gospel of Jesus Christ.