Note 345 — Chapter XXII

“Corp. iur. can.,” ed. Friedberg, 2, p. 812. Yet a champion of Luther’s “truthfulness” has attempted to prove of Alexander III, that “the objectivity of good was foreign to him,” and that he taught that the end justifies the means. As K. Hampe has pointed out in the “Hist. Zeitschr.,” 93, 1904, p. 415, the letter from the Pope to Thomas Becket (“P.L.,” 200, col. 290), here referred to, has been “quite misunderstood.” The same is the case with a letter of Gregory VII to Alphonsus of Castile, which has also been alleged to show that a Pope “had not unconditionally rejected lying, nay, had even made use of it.” Gregory on the contrary declares that even “a lie told for a pious object and for the sake of peace” was a sin (“illud peccatum esse non dubitaveris, in sacerdotibus quasi sacrilegium coniicias.” “P.L.,” 148, col. 604). Cp. Hampe, ibid., p. 385 ff.; N. Paulus, “Lit. Beilage der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1904, No. 51.