THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. G01 guilty, should be punished as a heretic, and declared its intention of formulating an article on the dogma.* Thus far the popes had skilfully eluded compromising them- selves on the subject. In the quarrels between the Mendicant Orders they could not afford to alienate either, and we have seen how, in the wrangle over the blood of Christ, they avoided entan- glements and managed to let the dispute die out. The present debate was far too bitter and too extended for them to escape be- ing drawn in, and they endeavored to follow the same line of policy as before. In 1474 Vincenzo Bandello, a Dominican, who was subsequently general of the Order, provoked a fierce discus- sion on the subject in Lombardy by a book on the Conception. The strife continued for two years with so many scandals that in 14:77 Sixtus IV. evoked the matter before him, when it was hotly debated by Bandello for the Dominicans, or " Maculistce" and Francesco, General of the Franciscans, in defence of the Immacu- late Conception. The only result seems to have been that Sixtus issued a bull ordering the Feast of the Conception to be celebrated in all the churches, with the grant of appropriate indulgences. This was a decided defeat for the Dominicans, who found it ex- cessively galling to celebrate the feast, and thus admit before the people that they were wrong. They endeavored to elude it in some places by qualifying it as the Feast of the Sanctification of the Virgin, but this was not permitted, and they were forced to submit. In 1481, at Mantua, Fra Bernardino da Feltre was for- mally accused of heresy before the episcopal court for preaching the Immaculate Conception, but defended himself successfully; and the next year, at Ferrara, the Franciscans and Dominicans preached so fiercely on the subject, and denounced each other as heretics so bitterly, that popular tumults were excited. To quiet matters Ercole d'Este caused a disputation to be held before him, which proved fruitless, and Sixtus IY. was again obliged to in- tervene. After listening to both sides he issued another bull, in which he excommunicated all who asserted that the feast was in honor of the Sanctification of the Virgin, and also all who on either side should denounce the other as heretics, f
- Concil. Avenionens. ann. 1457 (Harduin. IX. 1388).— D'Argentre I. II. 252.
t Wadding, ann. 1477, No. 1 ; ann. 1479, No. 17-18.— C. 1, 2, Extrav. Commun. in. xn.
