Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/65

 OPINIONS ATTRIBUTED TO OLIVI. 49 corrupts the nations with its carnalities, and oppresses the few remaining righteous, as under Paganism it did with its idolatries. In forty generations from the harvest of the apostles there will be a new harvest of the Jews and of the whole world, to be gar- nered by the Evangelical Order, to which all power and authority will be transferred. There are to be a sixth and a seventh a^e, after which comes the Day of Judgment. The date of this latter cannot be computed, but at the end of the thirteenth century the sixth age is to open. The carnal church, or Babylon, will expire, and the triumph of the spiritual church will commence.* It has been customary for historians to assume that this resur- rection of the Everlasting Gospel was Olivi's Work, though it is evident from the closing years of his career that he could not have been guilty of uttering such inflammatory doctrines, and this is confirmed by the silence of the Council of Yienne concerning them, although it condemned his other trifling errors after a thor- ough debate on the subject by his enemies and friends. In fact, Bonagrazia, in the name of the Conventuals, bitterly attacked his memory and adduced a long list of his errors, including cursorily certain false and fantastic prophecies in the Postil on the Apoca- lypse and his stigmatizing the Church as the Great Whore. Had such passages as the above existed they would have been set forth at length and defence would have been impossible. Ubertino in reply, however, boldly characterized the assertion as most menda- cious and impious ; Olivi, he declared, had always spoken most reverently of the Church and Holy See ; the Postil itself closed with a submission to the Roman Church as the universal mistress, and in the body of the work the Holy See was repeatedly alluded to as the seat of God and of Christ ; the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant are spoken of as the seats of God which will last to the end, while the reprobate are Babylon and the Great Whore. It is impossible that Ubertino can have quoted these pas- sages falsely, for Bonagrazia would have readily overwhelmed him with confusion, and the Council of Yienne would have rendered a far different judgment. We know from undoubted sources that fol. 7 sqq.— Bern. Guidon. Vit. Johann. PP. XXII. (Muratori S. R. I. III. 11 491). — Wadding, ann. 1325, No. 4.— Alvar. Pelag. de Planctu Eccles. Lib. 11. art. 59.— Baluz. et Mansi II. 266-70. III.— 4
 * Baluz. et Mansi II. 249-50.— Bern. Guidon. Pract. P. v.— Doat, XXVII.