involves treason to the State, and the overthrow of your Government." Sooner than many people suspect, we may begin to feel the effects of this new dogma in a new policy on the part of Roman Catholics. This must be so if the Decree is faithfully applied. Revision of many of our laws as to education, ecclesiastical property, and the amenability of the priesthood to civil tribunals, may soon be demanded. This portends serious disturbances in our political and religious life. We may soon have to face the question, whether the canon law or the civil law is to be the law of the land.-H. B. S. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE present publication is the fruit of a course of reading and study which I undertook with a view to a more considerable work, intended to embrace the history of the Papacy. It seemed to me, however, that the results of my researches, which are here given to the public, formed to some extent as a connected whole, because all these fables and inventions -however different may have been the occasions which gave them birth, and however intentional or unintentional may have been their production-have, nevertheless, had at times a marked influence on the whole aspect of the Middle Ages, on the history and poetry of the time, on its theology, and its jurisprudence. For this reason I may, perhaps, venture to hope that not only theologians and ecclesiastical historians, but lovers and students of mediæval history and medieval literature in general, will find this book not altogether devoid of interest. MUNICH, May 24th, 1863. J. V. DÖLLINGER. The Papess not mentioned by Marianus Scotus... nor by Sigebert of Gemblours. nor by Otto of Freysingen.... Stephen de Bourbon the first chronicler who mentions Martinus Polonus the chief means of spreading the story.. In "Anastasius" also the story is a later addition.. ...... Writers who copy Martinus Polonus.. Discrepancies about the name of the Papess.... the date of her Pontificate.. 44 |