The Irish standard., 1897-03-27
FORGING A P)PE'S BULL.
Continued from first. page.


f'1lnesss with which the rights Of the
church and Of individual churches are
| sateguarded
Take, for example, Adrian's letter to
Louis VII. Of France, in answer TO that
monarch's request for permission to I'M
dertake a crusade against the infidels and
apostates of Spain. Note that the king of
France was a loyal son of the church
and then compare his answer to Ionis
with his bull to Henry.
''To enter a foreign country" says
| Adrian, without a consultation with it's
rulers and people appears TO be both in
| cautious and dangerous. AS we under
| stand the matter, you are preparing
to hurry thitber before you have asked
advice from the church and rulers Of the
/ country; whereas such an attempt should
on 40 account be made until, in the
! h.st place, its necessity has been brought
! under your notice by the rulers Of the
! said country, followed by an invitation
Gu their part, and SO on, the pope con-
Guiding his reply with the significant
sentence: eve, ourselves, for many req
cons might appear to be capricious.'
Thus Adrian's nationality, character
and policy are all arguments against the
i genuineness of the document. Let us
here add to these that Adrian's authentic
bulls are invariably drawn UP with
great Formally ana marked by great
precision Of language, whereas this one
! is a vague, rambling production, with
ont even the kings name Or the popes
absence of Limitation to the powers con-
ceded. which is altogether Incompetent
shle
FINALLY. the bull is based on the suppo-
! period was In a lamenjable condition
was, in fact, rlon-exisient. The p;ous
Henry was to extend the boundaries Of
| the church, TO restrain the torrent of
vice "to infuse gcod moraais'' and not
merely to- increase" but to plant" the
! Christian faith in Ireland, Of all coun-
tries under the sun.
! We know from st. Bernard and other
sources that before the time CT st. Mala-
shy" a sort OF paganisn had been intro
ducad under the name of Christianity
f! into Ireiand-a fact not at all surppris
! ing, considering the large n1.:..l Der Ct half
savage Danes " no began to settle there
latter the middle Of the ninth century.
/ But when St Malachy resigned his prim-
acy the work of reform was already COM
pleted. Seeing that peace reigned every
where he began to look for peace for him
! SELF says st. Bernard, and he went to
Rome in the pontifcate of Innocent IL.
! il13O-1143) to obtain Pal!iums for the
archbishops Of Ireland as the crown OF
his iabors. The manner OF his recep-
ton by the supreme pontiff is eviden:e
Of the affection and honor i1t~Which ST..
Malachy was held. Taking the mitre
from his own head he laced it on that
of Malachy, giving him also the stole
| and manple which he used in Offering
the Holy Scripture" says ST. Bernard.
! In 1852, three years before tbs buH was
! given as g. cure fer anarchy in the Irish
! church. Eugenius Ill sent Cardinal
papa,ro with four Pallitllns TO the irish
| archbishops, and the Irish church was
bound up naore closely than any country
in Christendom with the great order OF
Cistercians, two of whose members were
h;shous there. Adrian cannot have been
ignorant, as many suppose, OF the flour
ishing condition of the Irish church at
this period, because in the second year
of his pontificate u council was held at
Mellifont, the great Irish Cistercian mon
astery, which was attended by seventeen
bishops and presided over by his own
legate. 4y.....-..
To sum up what may be called the
negative evidence against the bull:
Adrian was wise and jealous poutif1,
the Irish church called for no reforma-
ton, Henry II. was the last man the
pope would have chosen for such a task,
and the bull itself bears on it's face the
condemnation of it's own spuriousness.
To this let us add that there is no men
ton of such a bull in Irish contemporary
records. and that ardinal Vivian, the
papal legate at the time of Henry's in
vasion, was on the Irish side, counsel
them to resist the Normans. Add,
again. to all this that Henry is supposed
to have been in possession OF document
which gave him so much power and au-
thority over the Irish church during the
twenty years that he was eudeayering to
encroach on the rights of the English
church, and that he never made the least
use of such powerful lever n support
of his pretensions. There may be persons
who can believe mll this, but, for our
part, we cannot. Where, then. did the
bull come from? It certainly appears in
the Roman Bullarium, published in 1893.
and to some writer's this seems to end
the question. But in reality, this Roman
Bullarium has no authority whatever; 1t
is merely a collection Of bulls from all
sources. and is a purely private conpila-
tien. The Adrian bull, the compiler
frankly tells us, is inserted on The aus
49, q n