Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/169

Rh vision of horror in which he was soon to be enveloped, and of the death which should so soon be inflicted on him in odium Christi. His heroic refusal for the sake of others to save his life has raised him to the fellowship of those who have won a martyr's crown. All this makes the task of history lighter. To this memory, again, must be added the noble fortitude of the German episcopate with the Archbishop of Cologne at its head. The bishops of Germany have won for themselves the dignity of confessors for the supreme and infallible authority of the See of Peter. They were the first to vindicate the Council of the Vatican by their courage. We might go further, and enumerate the great public services rendered by eloquence and energy to the Church in France by some who left the Council before the 18th of July. All these things weighed together will incline future historians to sum up the contest for the definition of the infallibility in some such way as this:—"Since the last Œcumenical Council a theological question of the gravest kind, relating to the doctrinal authority of the head of the Church, and therefore pervading his whole jurisdiction, had divided the minds of some in France, and partially also in Germany and in England. An Œcumenical Council was summoned to meet, in 1869, in Rome. Five hundred bishops in 1867 had affirmed in the amplest terms the doctrinal