Page:The spiritual venality of Rome.djvu/93

72 probability be supported, that these infamous publications are not the genuine and authentic productions of the Papacy ? We have seen the way prepared by the Penitentiary Canons ; and to them have succeeded the regular Tax-books, of the genuineness of which no reasonable doubt can be entertained ; the first of which, to more than the number of twenty, issued from countries and places devoted to the Roman See, the very first, to the number of Fifteen, from Rome itself, most of them attested by Audif- fredi in a professed work enumerating the first Roman editions, dedicated quite devoutly to Pius Sextus, Pont, Opt. Max. (quasi Deo Opt. Max.) ; the rest from Paris, Cologne, Venice — that from the last place under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII. The printing — ^not the publication, with which perhaps Rome little deserves to be charged — was probably rendered necessary or expedient from the number of agents, or collectors of these taxes, employed by the successors of St. Peter. And beyond Rome in the countries subject to these imposi- tions it might be desirable for individuals to know what their vices would cost them, and how far they could sustain the expence. It ap- pears from Momay, in his Myst^re d'lniquit^, p. 656, (it is the same in the English trau&Ia-