all fpot of vice, and join us to the company of the blessed. Bring us to our country, O happy figure! there to fee the pure face of Chrift. This prayer is publickly faid to this day; and I need not tell the reader what kind of worship is thereby paid to that image. Some will have the word Veronica to be an abbrevation of the two words Vera Icon, or true image, and confequently the name of the image and not of the woman. This famous handkerchief is ftill to be feen in St. Peter's at Rome, and likewise at Turin, as is St. John Baptift's right arm to be seen at Genoa and at Malta, and we read of many other reliques that are thus to be met with in many different places.'

The merits of pope Clement IV. are thus blazoned by our author..

The preceding popes had, generally speaking, made it their ftudy to enrich and aggrandize their families at the expence of the church. But Clement from the very beginning of his pontificate took care to let his relations know that they must expect nothing from him as pope, but content themselves with the wealth as well as the rank they enjoyed before his promotion. The letter he wrote upon this fubject to his nephew, Peter le Gros deferves particular notice; and I fhall therefore give it in his own words. "Many (fays he) rejoice at our promotion; but to us, who are to bear fo heavy a burthen, it is no matter of joy, but of grief and concern. From hence therefore learn to be more humble and more complaifant to all than you were before. We will not have you, nor your brother, nor any of our relations to come to us without our particular order; if you do, you will return disappointed and confused. Think not of marrying your fifter more advantageoufly on our account. For neither fhe, nor her husband must expect any thing from us above her former condition. If fhe marries the fon of a gentleman (Militis) I propofe giving her three hundred livres of filver, but nothing at all if she aspires at a higher rank. Let none but your mother know what I now write to you. It would grieve us to find any of our relations elated with our promotion. Let Mabilla and Cecilla (the pope's two daughters) be fatisfied with the husbands they would have chofen had we no preferment at all." The pope clofes his letter with forbidding his daughters to recommend to him any perfon whatsoever, and affuring them, that their recommendation would not be attended with any the leaft advantage to those they recommended, but would prove hurtful to them, especially if their recommendation had been procured with prefents. This letter is dated from Perugia, the 27th of March, 1265, that is, little more than a month after his promotion. Hocfemius, a canon of Liege, who has written the lives of the bishops of that city from the year

1147 to the year 1348, in which he flourished, tells us, that as many perfons of great diftinction courted Cecilia, Clement told them joking, that it was not Cecilia they courted, but the pope; that she was not the pope's daughter, but the daughter of Guido Fulcodius, whofe daughter they never would have courted: and he could never be prevailed upon to consent to their marrying any of a fuperior rank to their own. They therefore both retired to a monaftery, and there paffed the remainder of their lives. The fame writer adds, that Clemènt had a brother rector of a parochial church, and that all he could be perfuaded to do for him was, to transfer him from that church to one fomewhat richer. Of all things he abhorred, fays Trithemius, plurality of benefices as a moft fcandalous abufe, and obliged even his own nephew, who had three, to resign two of them, only allowing him to chufe which of the three he pleased. As fome interpofed in his favour, telling his holiness that he should rather add a fourth benefice to the three that one fo nearly related to him already enjoyed, and had been thought to deferve; the pope anfwered, that if his nephew was not fatisfied with one benefice he deferved none, and should have none.'

This fame worthy difinterested pope, however, was the friend and patron of Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Lewis, king of France, and, by the mere nomination of Clement, afterwards king of Naples, but one of the most bloody tyrants that ever difgraced humanity. He it was who put to death on the scaffold Conradin, the young duke of Suabia, the undoubted heir to the crown of Naples, and committed, under the papal autho rity, the most execrable barbarities. Mr. Bower feems to acquit Clement IV. of the charge of advising Charles to put Conradin to death, but the fact is too well established to admit of any doubt, even fuppofing Conradin to have been beheaded after that pope's death.

Let us now attend to the manner in which our author reprefents a moft atrocious murder, which has a near connection with the English history.

During Gregory's ftay at Orvieto arrived in that city Edward, the fon and fucceffor of Henry III. of England, on his return from the Holy Land, where he had contracted an intimate acquaintance with his holiness. Being received by Gregory with all poffible marks of esteem and affection, he com plained to him of the cruel murder of his coufin Henry, the son of Richard earl of Cornwall and king of the Romans elect, begging he would exert all his apoftolic authority in revenging his death upon the affaffins. These were Simon and Guido, the fons of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, flain with his eldest fon Henry and many of the barons in the battle of EveVOL. XXI. May, 1766.

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fham, fought on the fourth of Auguft, 1265. Upon his death and the defeat of the barons, his two furviving fons Simon and Guido fled to Italy, and hearing that Henry, Richard's fon, was at Viterbo, having been fent thither by his father to engage the new pope in his intereft, they repaired to that city in 1271, while the fee was yet vacant, and one day falling upon Henry while he was affifting at Divine fervice in the church of St. Lawrence, without any regard to the facredness of the place, mortally wounded him, and then, dragging him by the hair out of the church, difpatched him with many wounds. In 1272, when king Edward arrived at Orvieto, Gregory had yet taken no notice of this barbarous and facrilegious murder. But, being informed by the king of all the aggravating circumstances attending it, he fummoned Guido, Simon being dead, and count Aldebrandino Roffo, his father-in-law, to whom he had fled for protection, to appear before him in a limited time. The count appeared and fatisfied the pope, that he was no ways acceffary to the murder. But by Guido no regard was paid to the fummons; and he was therefore, the following year, not only excommunicated with unusual folemnity by the pope, but declared, with all his defcendants to the fourth generation, infamous, incapable of bearing any honours, or making a will; all were anathematized who received, favoured, or admitted him into their houses; the governors of towns and provinces were trictly enjoined to arreft him, and all cities, towns, or villages, where he fhould be fuffered to live, were interdicted. This fentence was pronounced by Gregory on the first of April, 1273. Guido, finding himself thus driven, like a wild beaft, out of all human fociety, was in the end forced to deliver himself, left he fhould by others be delivered up to the pope, in which cafe he could expect no mercy. While Gregory therefore was on his journey from Orvieto to Florence, Guido unexpectedly appeared before him on the road, ftript of all his garments to his fhirt, with a rope about his neck, attended by all his accomplices in the fame condition, acknowledging their crime, begging for mercy, and fubmitting themfelves entirely to the will of his holinefs. Gregory granted them their lives, but delivered them all up to Charles, king of Sicily, to be kept by him closely confined to the hour of their death. As Guido, during his confinement, gave inany tokens of a fincere repentance, the pope empowered the patriarch of Aquileia to abfolve him from the excommunication, but could never be prevailed upon to remit of the other punishments he had inflicted upon him. All this Gregory notified to Edward, king of England, by a letter dated the 29th of November of the prefent year.'

any

Before we close our review of the fixth volume of this defpi-,

cab.e

cable performance, we cannot help animadverting on a new fpecies of author-craft which Mr. B. has impofed on the public. He has given quotations from a work that has not yet appeared in print, written by a noble lord; a dignity which we suppose - Mr. B. thinks muft render his lordfhip's work facred from criticifm. As we have not had an opportunity of seeing the unpublifhed Life of Henry II. the perufal of which we fuppofe is re-ferved for a chofen few, we think any quotation from it is unfair, and can look upon it in no other light than as literary Imuggling. The paffage quoted relates to the famous Thomas Becket, who was killed in his own cathedral, in the reign of Henry II. and who is feverely cenfured by the noble author, His lordship cannot entertain a greater detestation than we do of ecclefiaftical turbulence, but we dare not by the lump condemn all clerical refiftance. However unjustifiable the motives might be, we believe it would be no hard task to prove that in former times the liberties of England were faved by her clergy; nor do we know which is preferable, an ecclefiaftical or a civil tyranny. The fashion is to rail against proud prelates; but where is the difference between lawn and purple, if the arm that wears either crushes mankind? Perhaps no part of the Englifh history requires to be treated with more tenderness and circumfpection than that period which his lordship has felected to employ his pen.

The feventh volume of Mr. B's hiftory opens with the reign of pope Urban V. who, he tells us, was vifited by three kings, among whom was Waldemoris, (Mr. B. ought to have called him Waldemar) king of Denmark; but (fays our hiftorian) what business brought him thither hiftory does not inform us.' No we do not fuppofe the hiftories Mr. B. has confulted do; but other histories tell us, that almost all the princes in the North had entered into a confederacy against Waldemar, who finding himself unable to oppose them, affumed the fan&timonious character of a pilgrim to the holy fee, which gave him fome hope of affiftance. Urban was fucceeded by Gregory XI. in whofe pontificate Wickliff, the famous English reformer, appeared. Our author's account of him is as follows:

1.

In the mean time, the hot feafon approaching, Gregory left St. Peter's in the Tranftyberian city, the lowest part of Rome, where he had hitherto refided, and went to St. Mary the Greater's, on Mount Exquilin, on the 16th of May, with a defign to repair from thence, as the heat increased, to Anagni, and pafs the fummer there. He remained at St. Mary the Greater's till the 30th of May, when he fet out for Anagni, which city he entered on the fecond of June, having paffed two

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days at a Greek monaftery pleasantly fituated on the road. It was during his ftay at St. Mary the Greater's and on the 22d of May that Gregory wrote the several letters, that have reached our times, against the famous John Wickliff, whose doctrine was at this time received by many with great applause in England. By one of these letters, addreffed to the chancellor and the univerfity of Oxford, the pope feverely reprimands them for fuffering the doctrine of Wickliff, which he calls peftilential errors, to take root in England, to the difgrace of the catholic faith; and orders them to feize him and deliver him up to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bifhop of London, or to either of them. He wrote the fame day letters to these two prelates, enjoining them by one of them to inform themselves privately concerning the doctrine of Wickliff, and, if they found it to be fuch as it had been represented to the apoftolic fee, to keep him carefully and clofely confined till further orders. By the other they were required, in cafe they could not apprehend him, to fummon him by an edict, published at Oxford and other frequented places, to appear in the term of three months at the tribunal of the apoftolic fee. By a third letter Gregory charged the two prelates to inform the king, Edward III. his children, and the grandees of the kingdom, of the errors taught by Wickliff, and exhort them to concur with them in extirpating the faid errors.

In the last of these letters the pope fent inclosed fixteen propofitions, which Wickliff had been accufed to him of holding and publickly maintaining; and these were, I. That the eucharift is not the real body of Chrift, but only the figure or representation of it. II. That the fubftance of the bread and wine remain after confecration. III. That the accidents of the bread and wine cannot poffibly subsist without a fubject, or the fubftance. IV. That Chrift is not prefent really, identically, and corporally in the eucharift. V. That the Roman church is no more the head of all churches than any other. VI. That the pope has no more authority than any other priest. VII. That the temporal princes may, nay and are bound, on pain of damnation, to deprive a delinquent church of its temporalities. VIII. That the Gospel alone is fufficient to direct every Chriftian. IX. That no ecclefiaftic ought to have prisons for punishing delinquents. X. That excommunications, interdicts, and other ecclefiaftical cenfures, when employed for the temporalities of the church, are in themselves null. XI. That every priest, lawfully ordained, is fufficiently impowered to abfolve from any fin whatever. XII. That the facraments administered by bad priests are null. XIII. That tithes are mere alms, and the parishioners may retrench them, if their priest misbehaves