" But the strongest case occurred at the end of the 9th century, after the death of pope Formosus, when the repeated rejections of his ordinations threw the whole Italian Church into the greatest confusion, and produced a general uncertainty as to whether there were any valid sacraments in Italy. Auxilius, who was a con- tem]i()rary, said that through this universal rejection and repctiticiu of orders (-ordinatio, exordinatio, et su- jierordinatio'), matters had come to such a pass in Rome that for twenty years the Christian religion had been interrupted and extinguished in Italy. Popes and syn- ods decided in glaring contradiction to one another, now for, now against the validity of the ordinations, and it was self-evident that in Rome all sure knowledge on the doctrine of ordination was lost. At the end of his second work, Auxilius, speaking in the name of those numerous priests and bishops whose ecclesiastical status was called in question by the decisions of Stephen VII and Sergius III, demanded the strict investigation of a General Council, as the only authority capable of solv- ing the complication introduced by the popes (Mabillon, Analeda [Paris, 1723], p. 39).
" But the council never met, and the dogmatic uncer- tainty and confusion in Rome continued. In the mid- dle of the nth century the great contest against si- mony, which was then thought equivalent to heresy, broke out, and the ordinations of a simoniacal bishop were pronounced invalid. Leo IX reordained a num- ber of persons on this ground, as Peter Damiani relates (Petri Damaini Oinisc. p. 419). Gregory VII, at his fifth Roman synod, made the invalidity of all simoniacal or- dinations a rule, and the principle, confirmed by Urban II, that a simoniacal bishop can give nothing in ordina- tion, because he has nothing, passed into the Becreium of Gratian (Cans, i, qu. 7, c. '24).
"In these cases it is obvious that doctrine and prac- tice were most intimately connected. It was only from their holding a false, and, in its consequences, most in- jurious notion of the force and nature of this sacrament, that the popes acted as they did, and if they had then been generally considered infallible, a hopeless confusion must have been introduced, not only into Italy, but the vdiole Church.
" In contrast to pope Pelagius, who had declared, with the whole Eastern and Western Church, the indispensa- ble necessity of the invocation of the Trinity in baptism, Nicolas I assured the Bulgarians that baptism in the name of Christ alone was quite sufficient, and thus ex- posed the Christians there to the danger of an invalid baptism. The same pope declared confirmation admin- istered by priests, according to the (.ireeiv usage from remote antiquity, invalid, and ordered those so confirm- ed to be confirmed anew by a bishop, thereby denying
INFALLIBILITY
572
INFALLIBILITY
to the whole Eastern Church the possession of a sacra- ment, and laying the foundation of the bitter estrange- ment which led to a permanent division (Concil. Coll. [ed. Labbe], vi, 548).
" Stephen II (III) allowed marriage with a slave girl to bo dissolved, and a new one contracted, whereas all previous jiopes had pronounced such marriages indis- soluble ( ih. vi, 1650). He also declared baptism, in cases of necessity, valid when administered with wine (ib. vi, 1652).
" Celestine III tried to loosen the marriage tie by de- claring it dissolved if either partj^ became heretical. Innocent III annulled this decision, and Hadrian VI called Celestine a heretic for giving it. This decision was afterwards expunged from the MS. collections of papal decrees, but the Spanish theologian Alphonsus de Castro had seen it there {Adv. H or. [ed. Paris], 1566; corap. Melch. Canus, p. 240).
" The Capernaite doctrine, that Christ's body is sen- sibly (smsualiter) touched by the hands and broken by the teeth in the Eucharist — an error rejected by the whole Church, and contradicting the impassibihty of his body — was affirmed by Nicolas II at the Synod of Eome in lOoft, and Bcrengar was compelled to acknowl- edge it. Laiitranc rcjirDachcs Berengar with afterwards wishing to niaki.' cardinal Humbert, instead of the pope, responsible for this doctrine (Lanfranc, De Euch. c. 3 [ed. Migne], p. 412).
"Innocent III, in order to exhibit the papal power in the fullest splendor of its divine omnipotence, invent- ed the new doctrine that tlie spiritual bond which unites a bishop to liis dincese is tinner and more indissoluble than the 'carnal' bond, as he called it, between man and wife, and that God alone can loose it, viz. translate a bishop from one see to another. But as the pope is the representative of the true God on earth, he, and he alone, can dissolve this holy and indissoluble bond, not by human, but divine authority, and it is God, not man, •w-ho looses it. (Decretal ' De Trcmsl. Episc' c. 2, 3, 4. This was to introduce a new article of faith. The Church had not known for centuries that resignations, depositions, and translations of bishops belonged by di- vine right to the pope.) The obvious and direct corol- lary, that the pope can also dissolve the less firm and holy bond of marriage. Innocent, as we have seen, over- looked, for he solemnly condemned Celestine Ill's decis- ion on that point, and thus lie unwittingly involved him- self in a contradiction. Many canonists have accepted this as the legitimate consequence of his teaching.