THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 603 he would uphold it. On the next anniversary Frere Jean Aloutier argued that the Virgin had never sinned even venially, although St. John Chrysostom said that she had done so out of vain-glory on her wedding-day. This was regarded as a covert attack, and Frere Jean was disciplined, though not publicly. Soon after- wards another Dominican, Jean Morselle, in a sermon, said it was a problem whether Eve or the Virgin was the fairer ; it was apoc- ryphal whether Christ went to meet the Virgin when she was raised to paradise ; and that it was not an article of faith that she was assumed to heaven, body and soul, and that to doubt it was not mortal sin. All this sounds innocent enough as to matters incapable of positive assertion, but Frere Jean was compelled pub- licly to declare the first article to be suspect of heresy, the second to be false, and the third to be heretical. It is only this hyper- esthesia of doctrinal sensibility that will explain the rigorous measures taken with Piero da Lucca, a canon of St. Augustin, who, in 1504, at Mantua, in a sermon, said that Christ was not con- ceived in the womb of the Virgin, but in her heart, of three drops of her purest blood. At once he was seized by the Inquisition, condemned as a heretic, and came near being burned. A contro- versy arose which greatly scandalized the faithful. Baptista of Mantua wrote a book to prove the true place of Christ's concep- tion. Julius II. evoked the matter to Rome and committed it to the cardinals of Porto and San Vitale, who called together an assembly of learned theologians. After due deliberation, in 1511 these condemned the new theory as heretical, and the purity of the faith was preserved.* The position of the Dominicans was growing desperate. Chris- tendom was uniting against them. Only the steady refusal of the papacy to pronounce definitely on the question saved them from the adoption of a new article of faith which Aquinas had proved to be false. Aquinas was their tower of strength, whom the received tradition of the Order held to be inspired. It never oc- curred to them, as to his modern commentators, to prove that he did not mean what he said, and, in default of this, to yield on the point of the Immaculate Conception was to admit his fallibility.
- Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. arm. 1497.— D'Argentrfc I. ir. 336-40, 347.— Ripoll
IV. 267.-Bernardi Comens. Lucerua Inquis. s. v. Hmresis, No. 23.
