Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/592

 576 INTELLECT AND FAITH. but, after stating the various arguments for and against immor- tality, with an evident bearing towards the latter, he sums up by declaring the problem to be " neutral," like that of the eternity of the earth ; there are no natural reasons proving the soul either to be immortal or mortal, but God and Scripture assert immortality, and therefore reasons proving mortality must be false. He evi- dently seeks to indicate that immortality is a matter of faith, and not of reason ; and he even goes so far as to attribute much of the popular belief in departed spirits and in visions to the frauds of corrupt priests, examples of which he says were not uncommon at the time. The thin veil thus cast over its infidelity did not save the book in Venice, where the patriarch had it publicly burned, and wrote to Cardinal Bembo to have it condemned in Rome. Bembo read it with gusto, pronounced it conformable with the faith, and gave it to the Master of the Sacred Palace, who reached the same opinion. The latter' s successor in office, however, Prie- rias, was less indulgent. In his treatise on witches (1521) he de- clares that the example of the Venetians ought to be everywhere followed, while his elaborate argumentation to prove the immor- tality of the soul, and that the souls of brutes are not the same as those of men, shows how widespread were irreligious opinions, and how freely the questions were debated at the time. This is further illustrated in the confession of Eugenio Tarralba before the Spanish Inquisition in 152S, when he testified that as a youth he had studied in Rome, where his three masters, Mariana, Avan- selo, and Maguera, all taught him that the soul was mortal, and he was unable to answer their arguments.* Pomponazio did not remain unanswered. In 1492 Agostino Xifo, professor at Padua, in his work De Intellectu et Dcemonibus, had contended for the Averrhoist theory of the unity of intelli- gence ; a single intellect pervades the universe, and modifies all things at its will. He had already had trouble with the Domin- icans, and this gave them the advantage ; it would have fared ill with him had not Pietro Barozzi, the enlightened Bishop of Padua, saved him, and induced him to modify his teachings. De- spite his philosophy, he was a skilful courtier, and became a favor- Strigimagar. Lib. i. c. iv., v. — Llorente, Hist, de llnq. d'Espagne, ch. xv. Art. ii. No. 4.
 * P. Pomponatii Tract, de Immort. Animae c. iv., viii., xiv., xiv. — Prieriat. de