responsible for this view, and Bellarmine followed him. No doubt the documents as we possess them affirm the contrary; but then they must have been interpolated and falsified. The reasons given for this procedure are that the Council of the Lateran over which Pope Martin presided condemned the Monothelites, but did not mention Honorius. Also that the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople could not possibly have condemned Honorius as a heretic; for that would make them contradict Pope Agatho's letter, to the effect that the Apostolic Church had never strayed from the path of the Apostolic Tradition, nor yielded to the perversions of heretical novelties. Either, therefore, the Council's words are falsified, or the letter of Agatho is falsified, or the Council and Agatho disagree. But no one asserts this last, and no one has ever suggested the second, therefore the first alternative is the one to be maintained. Bellarmine shows grounds to mistrust those fraudulent Greeks. He gives numerous instances of forgery. Baronius conjectures that a heretical Bishop, finding his own name in the Council's list of the condemned, quietly erased it and substituted that of Pope Honorius.
Bossuet[1] thinks the mere recital of these conjectures sufficient refutation, and deplores that so learned a man should be dishonoured by these fictions. Sceptical criticism so utterly unfounded would, if universally applied, destroy the foundation of all historic certainty.
A recent Roman writer (1906) says that the theory of Bellarmine and Baronius offers valuable advantage, that is to the Ultramontane, but is attended by enormous difficulties.[2] For, if the fraudulent Greeks interpolated the Acts of the Council, who interpolated the letter of Leo II. in which he accepts its conclusion and condemns
