e the matter. Anybody who is curious for
particulars may see the original account in Morton's Register, in the
Archbishop's library at Lambeth.

A quarter of a century after this there appeared in Germany a book, now
called by Catholics an infamous libel, the 'Epistolae Obscurorum
Virorum.' 'The obscure men,' supposed to be the writers of these
epistles, are monks or students of theology. The letters themselves are
written in dog-Latin--a burlesque of the language in which
ecclesiastical people then addressed each other. They are sketches,
satirical, but not malignant, of the moral and intellectual character of
these reverend personages.

On the moral, and by far the most important, side of the matter I am
still obliged to be silent; but I can give you a few specimens of the
furniture of the theological minds, and of the subjects with which they
were occupied.

A student writes to his ghostly father in an agony of distress because
he has touched his hat to a Jew. He mistook him for a doctor of
divinity; and on the whole, he fears he has committed mortal sin. Can
the father absolve him? Can the bishop absolve him? Can the Pope absolve
him? His case seems utterly desperate.

Another letter describes a great intellectual riddle, which was argued
for four days at the School of Logic at Louvaine. A certain Master of
Arts had taken out his degree at Louvaine, Leyden, Paris, Oxford,
Cambridge, Padua, and four other universities. He was thus a member of
ten universities. But how _could_ a man be a member of ten universities?
A university was a body, and one body might have many members; but how
one member could have many bodies, passed comprehension. In such a
monstrous anomaly, the member would be the body, and the universities
the member, and this would be a scandal to such grave and learned
corporations. The holy doctor St. Thomas himself could not make himself
into the body of ten universities.

The more the learned men argued, the deeper they floundered, and at
length gave up the problem in despair.

Again: a certain professor argues that Julius Caesar could not have
written the book which passes under the name of 'Caesar's Commentaries,'
because that book is written in Latin, and Latin is a difficult
language; and a man whose life is spent in marching and fighting has
notoriously no time to learn Latin.

Here is another fellow--a monk this one--describing to a friend the
wonderful things which he has seen in Rome