Is it possible that he felt himself estopped by the verdict of his predecessor, Cardinal Moran, whose “judicial spirit” he commends,[367] and who, while rejecting “Laudabiliter,” accepts as “certainly authentic” these awkward letters. It seems to me equally uncandid in Miss Norgate to avoid discussing the “Privilegium” of Alexander III., and in Father Morris to ignore his letters in the ‘Liber Niger’ which affect so gravely his case, and indeed impugn his arguments.
In their blind animosity to the “Bull,” its Roman Catholic opponents have been led into most astounding, and indeed contradictory, assertions. Father Gasquet, for instance, prints side by side with “Laudabiliter” the letter of Adrian to Louis VII., in order to prove that their opening passages are “almost word for word the same.”[368] Yet Father Morris, who appeals to this letter, and assures us that “there is no question as to the authenticity of this document,”[369] insists that the style of “Laudabiliter” is “in glaring contradiction to all the authentic ‘Bulls’ of Adrian IV.”[370] It may be retorted that the letter to Louis was not a “Bull.” But, then, no more was ‘Laudabiliter’: the two documents belong to precisely the same class. Stranger still, in assailing what he terms “the spurious letter,” he points out, as a flaw, that
in the supposed commission to Henry the judge comes, as it were, with lance in rest, as if he were charging the Moslem, without any reference to those “undiminished rights (jura illibata) of each and every church,” in the defence of which, as we have seen, Pope Adrian was ever inexorable.[371]
It will scarcely be believed that the “spurious letter” contains the very words for the omission of which it is condemned (“jure nimirum ecclesiarum illibato et integro permanente”), and that the test of Father Morris thus recoils against himself. It is difficult to treat seriously so careless, or so reckless, a controversialist.
Having now briefly explained on what documents the controversy turns, I may mention that my own reason for joining in so fierce a dispute is that I hope to be able to contribute towards its decision two facts which, so far as I know, have as yet escaped notice.
Wishful to approach the subject from an independent standpoint, I have not studied the German papers dealing with the subject, but have contented myself with those of Cardinal Moran (1872), the Analecta Juris Pontificii (1882), Father Gasquet (1883), Father Malone and Father Morris (1892), with Miss Norgate’s résumé of the case and unhesitating defence of ‘Laudabiliter’ in the ‘English Historical Review’ (1893).[372]
Miss Norgate, in her lengthy article,[373] defended the “Bull” with some warmth, recapitulating and answering the arguments of its various assailants. There are, however, involved two distinct questions, which, to quote a phrase of her own, “have been somewhat mixed up”[374] by her. For clearness’ sake, I give them thus:
(1) Did John of Salisbury obtain from Pope Adrian in 1155 a document which “gave Ireland,” as he expressed it, “to king Henry”?
(2) If so, was it the document set forth verbatim by Giraldus in his ‘Expugnatio Hibernica’?