I have read through, not once or twice, but time after time, with the greatest care, Miss Norgate’s article defending the authenticity of the “Bull,” and I cannot find that this distinction has even dawned upon her mind. Yet, to adapt her closing words, “one who fully accepts the first” of these propositions “may yet dare to say” of the other, non sequitur.
To the first of the above questions I give no negative answer: I merely quote the two passages on which the assertion rests:
| Ad preces meas illustri regi Anglorum Henrico secundo (Adrianus) concessit et dedit Hiberniam jure hereditario possidendam; sicut literæ ipsius testantur in hodiernum diem. Nam omnes insuæ, de jure antiquo, ex donatione Constantini ... dicuntur ad Romanam ecclesiam pertinere. Annulum quoque per me transmisit aureum, smaragdo optimo decoratum, quo fieret investitura juris in gerenda Hibernia; idemque adhuc annulus in curiali archivo publico custodiri jussus est.—John of Salisbury. | (privilegium) quod idem rex ab Adriano papa Alexandri decessore antea perquisierat, per Johannem Salesberiensem, postmodum episcopum Karnotensem, Romam ad hoc destinatum. Per quem etiam idem papa Anglorum regi annulum aureum in investituræ signum præsentavit; qui statim, simul cum privilegio, in archivis Wintoniæ repositus fuerat.[375]—Giraldus Cambrensis. |
As I only described, at the outset, the documents, I have not hitherto touched on the passage in the ‘Metalogicus.’ But it should be observed that just as Miss Norgate confuses two distinct questions, so Father Gasquet attacks “Laudabiliter” for a statement found, not in that document, but in this passage from the pen of John of Salisbury.[376]
It is with the second of the above two questions that I am immediately concerned. Assuming for the present that a document was actually granted by Adrian, what ground have we for believing that the text in the ‘Expugnatio’ is authentic? Between the appearance of her ‘England under the Angevin Kings’ and that of her article in the ‘Review,’ Miss Norgate seems to have discovered from Pflugk-Harttung, that there was no copy of it, as she had imagined, “in the Vatican archives.”[377] She admitted, therefore, that “the letter actually rests upon the testimony of Gerald of Wales and the writer of the last chapter of Metalogicus.” But here we see that confusion of thought of which I have spoken above. The authenticity of the letter given in the ‘Expugnatio’ rests on the authority of Gerald, and on his alone.
Let us then enquire what credence we should give to those documents he professes to quote verbatim. The two which naturally occur to one for comparison with “Laudabiliter,” are the letter of Dermot to “Strongbow” summoning him to Ireland,[378] and the “privilegium” of Alexander III. confirming that of Adrian.[379] The former begins with a normal address, and then—breaks at once into a quotation from Ovid![380] This gives us a clear issue. Does Miss Norgate believe, or does she not, that a warrior (and a savage) summoning a warrior, in the days of Henry II., would parade his classical erudition by dragging in tags from Ovid? And if she does not, how can she ask us to accept as genuine a document because it is given by Giraldus. As to the other test document, the “privilegium” of Alexander III., Miss Norgate is curiously shy of touching it; I can only find an incidental allusion to “the letter whereby Alexander III. is said to have confirmed the favour granted by his predecessor to Henry,” and even this mention of it is merely introduced to protest against arguments “which are only appropriate to” that letter being used as fatal to the authenticity of “Laudabiliter” also.[381] Indeed, by writing as she does of “the silence of Alexander III.” as to Adrian’s letter,[382] she implies that the document given by Giraldus as his is an absolute imposture; and she uses, we shall find, in another place, an argument directly fatal to the authenticity of its contents.[383] And yet Giraldus sets forth these two “privilegia” together as jointly constituting the title to Ireland derived by Henry from Rome. The two must stand or fall together; if Gerald was capable of composing the one, he was certainly capable of composing the other.
Having now shown that the fact of a document being found in the pages of Giraldus Cambrensis is no proof of its authenticity, I turn to the first of the two points that I hope to establish.
The publication, in Ireland, of “the Bull Laudabiliter” is thus dealt with by Miss Norgate:
It is acknowledged on all hands that there is no sign of any attempt on Henry’s part to publish the letter in Ireland ... before 1175. In that year Gerald states that the letter was read before a synod of bishops at Waterford (Opp. v. 315–6). This statement, however, rests upon Gerald’s authority alone; beyond this there is no direct evidence that the letter was ever formally published in Ireland at all.[384]