Papal Infallibility is capable of a construction not widely different from that of the School of Paris.[1] At any rate the idea of an Infallibility completely independent of any endorsement by the consent of the Church is foreign to his mind. If, however, in spite of this the Ultramontane claims him still, then appeal must be made from St Thomas to the Fathers of an earlier period.[2]
The value of St Thomas's theological inferences on the subject has been challenged within the Roman Church on the ground that he relied upon falsified authorities. Pope Urban IV., intending to assist Aquinas's studies, sent him a collection of assorted extracts from the Fathers, calculated to refute the errors of the Gentile world. Aquinas utilised this collection, confessedly, says Schwane,[3] without much critical endeavour to sift the true character of the extracts. The importance of the passages may be gathered from the fact already mentioned that the theologian Melchior Cano, contemporary of the Council of Trent, considered them to be the strongest evidence from the early Church in behalf of Infallibility. Now it is admitted that this collection of extracts is not genuine. "It appears," says Schwane, himself an Ultramontane, "that the compiler permitted himself to add here and there explanations." Other passages he "developed." Schwane contends that he has not absolutely falsified any; but admits that he ascribed to St Cyril words which cannot be found in the writings preserved to us. Schwane suggests that, possibly, for all that, they might be genuine. Turmel is much less sanguine about this possibility. That Aquinas utilised his authorities in all sincerity is indisputable. It is also indisputable that he was
