[617] Holdtfeldt’s Chronik, p. 6. Astruc (p. 116) points to the same fact in regard to Paris, where two leper hospitals existed when syphilis began; but the syphilitic patients were not sent to them, but to other houses specially hired for the purpose.
[618] See Dr. Cleland’s “Extracts,” in Transactions of Glasgow Statistical Society, Part i. p. 13, etc.
[619] Parliamentary History, vol. iii. p. 44; Henry’s History of Great Britain, vol. xii. p. 219; the Life and Reign of King Henry VIII., by the Right Hon. Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1572, p. 295.
[620] See his Consilium pro reverendissimo Episcopo et Hungariæ Vicerege; in Luisinus’ Collection, vol. ii. p. 6.
[621] Astruc, p. 113 (English Edition).
[622] Tytler’s History of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 319.
[623] De Morbo fœdo et occulto, his temporibus affligente.
[624] The simple and newly elected Pontiff, Adrian VI., when writing to his Legate at the Diet of Nuremberg, a.d. 1522, in the same spirit observes, “We are well aware that for many years past the holy city has been a scene of many corruptions and abominations. The infection has spread from the head through the members, and has descended from the popes to the rest of the clergy.”—Pallav. Op., vol. i. p. 160; Sarpi, p. 25.
[625] See Claud. Espencæi Opera Omnia, p. 479. The morals of those assembled at the “sacred” Councils of the Church showed, perhaps, in these days, little or no amendment upon the morals of Rome itself. At the great Council of Constance, for example, held in the fifteenth century, there were, according to the long list of those present, as given by Lenfant, “seven hundred common women” whose habitations were known to Ducher; whilst the Vienna list of the same Council sets down the list of “meretrices vagabundæ” as fifteen hundred in number (Lenfant’s History of the Council of Constance, vol. iv. pp. 414, 416). This Council was summoned together by that misnamed “Vicegerent of God on earth,” Pope John XXIII., a man who, according to his own secretary, Thierry de Niem, was guilty of “all the mortal sins, and of a multitude of abominable acts not fit to be named” (Niem de Vita Joh. XXIII., ap. Von’der Hardt, tom. ii. p. 391.) Among other matters, the Procurators of the Council publicly accused him before it of “cum uxore fratris sui, et cum sanctis monialibus incestum, cum virginibus stuprum, et cum conjugatis adulterium, et alia incontinentiae crimina” (Concil. Constan. Sess. xi., Binius, tom. iii. p. 874). Yet this same “infallible” Council of Constance, as it termed itself, called together, as it was, professedly for the cure of the evils and doctrines of the Church and Papacy, principally distinguished itself in history by burning John Huss and Jerome of Prague for preaching from the Scriptures the pure and simple gospel of Jesus Christ.
[626] Nicol. de Clemangiis, Opera (edit. Lydii), p. 22.