the ancient author
whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British
Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext
of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against
Virgilius, Abbot--bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the
rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a
countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface had
to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope,
Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God and his
soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or
sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be
excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions.
Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis
sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on
Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable
that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of
the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of
the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He
bore until his death, 789, the curious title, "Geometer and Solitary,"
or "lone wayfarer" (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his
memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside
his accuser, St. Boniface.--Editor. (Conway)]

If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make
no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no
moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than
there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither
was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other
world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that
he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds.
But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system
of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner
almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different
ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with
the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though
otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the
criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by
contrad