producing an edition of it, notwithstanding my promise to Cardinal S."[1]
The suppression of Holstein's edition created a sensation among the learned men of France. "The Liber Diurnus" wrote Launoy, "has been printed in Rome several years, and is detained by the masters of the Papal Court and the Inquisitors. These men cannot bear the light of ancient truth."[2] However, in the year 1680, the Jesuit writer, Gamier, published an edition of the work. Whatever his motive may have been and it is still disputed, he was summoned to Rome to give an explanation, and died on the way.[3] However, the mischief was out, and from that time authorised publication became easy. The great scholar, Mabillon, printed the work without let or hindrance, and the comparative indifference of the world exemplified the maxim that an institution which has survived a fact will also survive its publication.
Such, then, appear to be the historic facts, stated as objectively as we can state them.
We now proceed to give the various Roman explanations. "It is," says Hefele,[4] the learned historian of the Councils, "in the highest degree startling, even scarcely credible, that an Ecumenical Council should punish with anathemas a Pope as a heretic." Certainly from an Ultramontane standpoint it must be so. And this perplexity has led to a curious and instructive variety of conflicting solutions from the days of Cardinal Bellarmine down to the present time.
1. First explanation: It was boldly asserted in the seventeenth century that Pope Honorius was not condemned at all. The historian, Baronius, made himself
