in arts and arms than the first [?], succeeds; and in his absence Boniface, a very monster of iniquity,
reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter. True, he is expelled and
condemned; but only to return again, and redden his hands with the blood of the holy bishop John
[XIV.]. Are there, indeed, any bold enough to maintain that the priests of the Lord over all the
world are to take their law from monsters of guilt like these-men branded with ignominy, illiterate
men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine? If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the
balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office,
how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all
priests! Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all
these virtues, one so abject as not to be worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should
be chosen to fill the highest place of all? What would you say of such a one, when you behold him
sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the ’Antichrist, sitting in the
temple of God, and showing himself as God?’ Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity;
he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek
counsel.^285
"But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all
occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and
Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for
gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman
pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own
plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests
assembled in council in different parts of the world. If it be true, as we are informed by, common
report, that there is in Rome scarcely a man acquainted with letters,—without which, as it is written,
one may scarcely be a doorkeeper in the house of God,—with what face may he who hath himself
learnt nothing set himself up for a teacher of others? In the simple priest ignorance is bad enough;
but in the high priest of Rome,—in him to whom it is given to pass in review the faith, the lives,
the morals, the discipline, of the whole body of the priesthood, yea, of the universal church, ignorance
is in nowise to be tolerated .... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though
lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom? Yea, not even he, the prince of the
apostles, declined the rebuke of Paul, though his inferior in place, and, saith the great pope Gregory
[I.], ’if a bishop be in fault, I know not any one such who is not subject to the holy see; but if
faultless, let every one understand that he is the equal of the Roman pontiff himself, and as well
qualified as he to give judgment in any matter.’ "^286
The secretary of this council and the probable framer of this remarkable speech was Gerbert,
who became archbishop of Rheims, afterwards of Ravenna, and at last pope under the name of
Sylvester II. But pope John XV. (or his master Crescentius) declared the proceedings of this council
(^285) "Quid hunc, rev. Patres, in sublimi solio residentem veste purpurea et aurea radiantem, quid hunc, inqam, esse
censetis? Nimirum si caritate destituitur, solaque inflatur et extollitur, Antichristus est, in templo Dei sedens, et se ostendens
tamquam sit D Eus. Si autem nec caritate fundatur, nec scientia erigitur, in templo Dei tamquam statua, tanquam idolum est,
a quo responsa petere, marmora consulere est."
(^286) The acts of this Synod were first published in the Magdeburg Centuries, then by Mansi, Conc. XIX. 107, and Pertz,
Mon. V. 658. Baronius pronounced them spurious, and interspersed them with indignant notes; but Mansi (p. 107) says: "Censent
vulgo omnes, Gerbertum reipsa et sincere recitasse acta concilii vere habiti." See Gieseler, Greenwood (Book VIII. ch. 6), and
Hefele (IV. 637 sqq.). Hefele pronounces the speech schismatical.