Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/309

Rh of Eichhorn's work, was met generally with, contempt and frequently with insult.

Throughout Catholic Germany it was even worse. In 1774 Isenbiehl, a priest at Mayence who had distinguished himself as a Greek and Hebrew scholar, happened to question the usual interpretation of the passage in Isaiah which refers to the virgin-born Immanuel, and showed then what every competent critic knows now—that it had reference to events looked for in older Jewish history. The censorship and faculty of theology attacked him at once and brought him before the elector. Luckily, this potentate was one of the old, easy-going prince-bishops, and contented himself with telling the priest that, though his contention was perhaps true, he "must avoid everything likely to make trouble, and remain in the old paths."

But at the elector's death, soon afterward, the theologians renewed the attack, threw Isenbiehl out of his professorship and degraded him. One insult deserves mention for its ingenuity. It was declared that he, the successful and brilliant professor, showed by the obnoxious interpretation that he had not yet rightly learned the Scriptures; he was, therefore, sent back to the benches of the theological school, and made to take his seat among the ingenuous youth who were receiving the rudiments of theology.

At this he made a new statement so carefully guarded that it disarmed many of his enemies, and his high scholarship soon won for him a new professorship of Greek; the condition being attached to it that he should cease writing upon Scripture. But a crafty bookseller having republished his former book, and having protected himself by keeping the place and date of publication secret, a new storm fell upon the author; he was again removed from his professorship and thrown into prison; his book was forbidden, and all copies of it in that part of Germany were confiscated.

In 1778, having escaped from prison, he sought refuge with another of the minor rulers, who, in blissful unconsciousness, were doing their worst, while awaiting the French Revolution, but was at once delivered up to the Mayence authorities and again thrown into prison.

The Pope, Pius VI, now intervened with a brief on Isenbiehl's book, declaring it "horrible, false, perverse, destructive, tainted with heresy," and excommunicating all who should read it. At this, Isenbiehl, declaring that he had written it in the hope of doing a service to the Church, recanted, and vegetated in obscurity until his death in 1818.

But despite theological faculties, prince-bishops, and even popes, the new current of thought increased in strength and