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.
"While in Rome it was still held that the truths of Science need not be told if, in the judgment of Roman theologians, they were of a nature to offend faith, in Germany Catholics vied with Protestants in publishing matter without being diverted by the consideration whether it might serve or injure their cause in controversy, or whether it was adverse or favourable to the views which it was the object of the Index to protect."
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:—
"The philosopher cannot claim the same exemption as the historian. God's handwriting exists in history independently of the Church, and no ecclesiastical exigence can alter a fact. The divine lesson has been read, and it is the historian's duty to copy it faithfully and without ulterior views."
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
