"Gratias omnipotenti Deo referimus, qui inter cætera pietatis suæ dona, quæ excellentiæ vestræ largitus est, ita vos amore Christianæ religionis implevit, ut quicquid ad animarum lucrum, quicquid ad propagationem fidei pertinere cognoscitis, devota mente et pio operari studio non cessetis.... Et quidem hæc de Christianitate vestra mirentur alii, quibus adhuc beneficia vestra minus sunt cognita; nam nobis, quibus experimentis jam nota sunt, non mirandum est, sed gaudendum."—Spelm. Concil. p. 82.
And in Epist. xi.:
"Excellentia ergo vestra, quæ prona in bonis consuevit esse operibus."—Id. p. 77.
4. The etymology of Fontainebleau (Vol. iv., p. 38.). I can only speak from memory of what was read long ago. But I think that in one of Montfaucon's works, probably Les Monumens de la Monarchie Française, he ascribed the origin of that name to the discovery of a spring amongst the sandy rocks of that forest by a hound called Bleau, to the great satisfaction of a thirsty French monarch who was then hunting there, and was thereby induced to erect a hunting-seat near the spring.
5. To A. B. C. (Vol. iv., p. 57.), your questionist about the marriage of bishops in the early ages of the Christian church, who has had a reply in p. 125., I would further say, that as we have no biographies describing the domestic life of any Christian bishop earlier than Cyprian, who belonged to the middle of the third century, it is only incidentally that anything appears of the kind which he inquires after. It would be enough for the primitive Christians to know that their scriptures said of marriage, that it was honourable in all; though such as were especially exposed to persecution, from their prominence as officers of the church, would also remember the apostle's advice as good for the present distress, 1 Cor. vii. As, however, your correspondent asks what evidence there is that Gregory Nazienzen's father had children after he was raised to the episcopate, this fact is gathered from his own poem, in which he makes his father say to him, "Thy years are not so many as I have passed in sacred duties." For though these sacred duties began with his admission into the priesthood, he was made a bishop so soon afterwards, that his younger son, Cæsarius, must at any rate be held to have been born after the elder Gregory became a bishop.
Curiously enough, however, good evidence appears in the papal law itself, that the marriages of ecclesiastics were not anciently deemed unlawful. In the Corpus Juris Canonici, or Decretum aureum, D. Gratiani, Distinctio lvi. canon 2., which professes to be a rescript of Pope Damasus (A.D. 366-84), says:
"Theodorus papa filius [fuit] Theodori episcopi de civitate Hierosolyma, Silverius papa filius Silverii episcopi Romæ—item Gelasius, natione Afer, ex patre episcopo Valerio natus est. Quam plures etiam alii inveniuntur: qui de sacerdotibus nati apostolicæ sedi præfuerunt."
To which Gratian attaches as his own conclusion:
"Hine Augustinus ait, Vicia parentum Filiis non imputentur."
Thereby throwing a slur on the said married bishops. But can. xiii., or Cænomanensem, of the same Distinctio, says: