Page:History of Freedom.djvu/475

 DÖLLINGER'S HISTORICAL WORK 43 I

space once occupied by Julian of Eclanum and Duns Scotus, the Variata and the Five Propositions. To the last days of 1889 he was engaged in following the doctrines of intolerance back to their root, from Innocent III. to the Council of Rheims, from Nicholas I. to St. Augustine, narrowing the sphere of individual responsi- bility, defending agents, and multiplying degrees so as to make them imperceptible. Before the writings of Pri- scillian were published by the Vienna Academy the nature of their strange contents was disclosed. It then appeared that a copy of the Codex unz"cus had been sent to Döl- linger from vVürzburg years before; and that he had never adverted to the fact that the burning of heretics came, fully armed, from the brain of one man, and was the invention of a heretic \vho becalne its first victim. At Rome he discussed the council of Trent with Theiner, and tried to obtain permission for him to publish the original acts, Pius IX. objected that none of his predecessors had allo\ved it, and Theiner answered that none of them had defined the I mmacula te Conception. In a paper which Döllinger drew up, he observed that Pallavicini cannot convince; that far from proving the case against the artful Servite, the pettiness of his charges indicates that he has no graver fault to find; so that nothing but the production of the official texts can enforce or disprove the imputation that Trent was a scene of tyranny and intrigue. His private belief then was that the papers would disprove the imputation and vindicate the council. When Theiner found it possible to publish his Acta Authentica, Döllinger also printed several private diaries, chiefly from Mendham's collection at the Bodleian. But the correspondence between Rome and the legates is still, in its integrity, kept back. The two friends had examined it; both were persuaded that it was decisive; but they judged that it decided in opposite ways. Theiner, the official guardian of the records, had been forbidden to communicate them during the Vatican Council; and he deemed the concealment prudent. What passed in Rome under Pius IX. would, he averred, suffer by