Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/144

 124 teacher was placed amidst perfect freedom of enquiry, and where "the system of secrecy or accommodation was rendered impossible by the competition of knowledge in which the most thorough exposition of the truth was sure of the victory." The teacher in this environment "was obliged often to draw attention to books lacking the Catholic spirit but indispensable to the deeper student." The condition of things in Italy and in Germany was widely different.

Yet for a while Rome had tolerated many things. "Publications were suffered to pass unnoted in Germany, which would have been immediately censured if they had come forth beyond the Alps or the Rhine." German philosophers were indeed denounced at Rome, but German historians escaped censure. The reason was, according to Lord Acton, plain:—

But this toleration of independence in the realm of facts was now abruptly terminated by authority. The Pope's letter to the Archbishop of Munich affirmed