Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/192

 a manner as to convince him that it was a late interpolation. He says, “Having read and reread it, I found that the elogium of the pretended Papess is taken from the words of Martinus Polonus, penitenciary to Innocent IV., and Archbishop of Cosenza, an author four hundred years later than Anastasius, and much more given to all these kinds of fables.” His reasons for so thinking are, that the style is not that of the Librarian, but similar to that of Martin Polonus; also that the insertion interferes with the text of the chronicle, bears evidence of clumsy piecing. “In the elogiums of Leo IV. and Benedict III., as given to us in the manuscript of the Bibliothèque Royale, swelled with the romance of the Papess, the same expressions occur as in the Mayence edition; whence it follows that (according to the intention of Anastasius, violated by the rashness of those who have mingled with it their idle dreams) it is absolutely impossible that any one could have been Pope between Leo IV. and Benedict III., for he says;—‘After the prelate Leo was withdrawn from this world, at once (mox) all the clergy, the nobles, and people of Rome hastened to elect Benedict; and at once (illico)