Note 454 — Front matter (continued 15)

Quirinus, p. 801. This astounding assertion does not rest upon the sole authority of Quirinus. Friedrich, in reporting the sayings of the Archbishop of Munich to the Faculty of Theology in that city on his return, gives the same assertion as repeated by his Grace. It had been a favourite theory with official writers that Quirinus was Friedrich, but as the latter left Rome in May, and Quirinus continued to write to the last, that theory had dropped out of sight. It is a curious coincidence in the present case that nearly all the incidents of this interview, mentioned by Quirinus writing in Rome on July 19, were repeated by Archbishop Scherr in Munich to the Faculty two days later. The substantial agreement of the two accounts is quite as great as that in several other cases which have induced men like Hergenröther to argue that Friedrich and Quirinus were one. The agreement is such as would be found between two practised writers hearing an account from the same eyewitness, or from two or three eyewitnesses, and immediately writing down what they had heard. Friedrich, p. 408 ff.