Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/318

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4
THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

about which they had to write, were at the mercy of such informants as English travellers meet at a table-d'hôte in Rome. Then appeared paragraphs without date or place, duly translated, as we discovered by comparing them, from Italian and German newspapers. They were less amusing, but they were even more misleading. By way of preface, I will give the estimate of two distinguished Bishops, who are beyond suspicion, as to the truthfulness of one notorious journal.

Of all the foreign sources from which the English newspapers drew their inspiration, the chief, perhaps, was the 'Augsburg Gazette.' This paper has many titles to special consideration. The infamous matter of Janus first appeared in it under the form of articles. During the Council, it had in Rome at least one English contributor. Its letters on the Council have been translated into English and published by a Protestant bookseller, in a volume by Quirinus.

I refrain from giving my own estimate of the book, until I have first given the judgment of a distinguished Bishop of Germany, one of the minority opposed to the definition, whose cause the 'Augsburg Gazette' professed to serve.

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mayence, publicly protested against 'the systematic dishonesty of the correspondent of the "Augsburg Gazette."' 'It is a pure invention,' he adds, 'that the Bishops named in that journal declared that Döllinger represented, as to the substance of the question (of infallibility), the opinions of a majority of the German Bishops.' And this, he said, 'is not an isolated error, but part of a system