Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/23

Rh Testament, from which the Dogma of the Trinity is usually established" (Explicationes locorum difficilium, etc.). Peter d'Osma also, the Spanish theologian, whose Treatise on Confession was condemned by the Archbishop of Toledo in the fifteenth century, might have esteemed himself happy that only his chair shared the burning of his book. Pomponacius, an Italian professor of philosophy, whose Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul (1516), was burnt by the Venetians for the heretical opinion that the soul's immortality was not believed by Aristotle, and could only be proved by Scripture and the authority of the Church, seems to have died peacefully in 1526, albeit with the reputation of an atheist, which his writings do not support. Despériers was only imprisoned when his Cymbalum Mundi, censured by the Sorbonne, was. consigned to the flames by the Parlement of Paris (March 7th, 1537). And Luther, all of whose works were condemned to be burnt by the Diet of Worms (152i)r actually survived their burning twenty-five years, though he himself had publicly burnt at Wittenberg Leo X.'s bull, anathematising his books, as well as the Decretals of previous Popes.

Less fortunate than these were the