easy to find for consultation purposes. It does not occur, as we have
said, in Le Sexte itself, that is, in the ordinary Sixth Book of Papal
Decretals, published by Boniface VIII., though Daunou quotes it as
from there and without a {57} hint as to where it may be really found.
It is in an appendix to this work, added after Boniface's death. It
would be rather difficult, then, and would require some special
knowledge and no little patience on the part of a subsequent collator
of historical sources to find the bull, unless he were determined on
getting at the bottom of this whole question. As a consequence
Daunou's assertion has remained practically unchallenged for the
better part of a century, though many scholars who were familiar with
Boniface's sixth book have doubtless realized its falsity, but owing
to the fact that they would not ordinarily come across the bull in
their direct reading of Boniface's famous volume, would not be in a
position to contradict its misquotation. If looked at in this way,
Daunou's passage in the Histoire Litteraire would seem to be a
deliberate and very clever and, unfortunately, successful perversion
of history.

Daunou, who was a deep student of Papal affairs and whose knowledge of
the history of the Papacy would not be likely to have missed so
important a detail, might very well have known, that about a half a
century before the time when he wrote asserting that this bull of
Boniface VIII. had prevented dissection, someone who had a doubt on
the subject asked the ecclesiastical authorities at Rome, whether this
Papal document was to be considered as referring in any way to the
practice of dissection, or the cutting up of human bodies for
anatomical purposes. In reply to this question Pope Benedict XIV. made
a very direct answer, absolutely in the negative. This is the only
hint that I know of in serious history that Pope Boniface's bull was
ever considered to have any reference to dissection for anatomical
purposes. At the time when Pope Benedict XIV.'s answer {58} was
published the Papal Medical School had been in existence for some five
centuries and a half. For about two centuries and a half it had been
distinguished in the annals of medicine, and as we shall see in the
chapter on The Papal Medical School, some of the most distinguished
anatomists of their time had been investigating and teaching by means
of dissections, and their demonstrations had been attended by many of
the hi