This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...which, therefore, by a sudden revulsion, a more abundant outpouring of heavenly grace, might again be made to disappear. The knowledge, which they did not possess, that this state of things was the result of Hence the the mutilation and deliberate destruction of ecclethat one good siastical rules and institutions, would have plunged Pope could regenerate the them into a labyrinth of doubts and pangs of conscience, and would have utterly unnerved them. Those well-meaning predictors of a Papa Angelicus, who now became so abundant in Italy, declared, that a simple-minded, pious man, who had passed his life in voluntary poverty and earnest asceticism, a second Coelestine V., a stranger to all political aims and efforts, if raised to the Papal Chair, would suffice for the thorough reformation of the whole contrary to the Church in the shortest space of time. In reality, experience of x" centuries. for many centuries not a single Pope had effected any serious or lasting amelioration whatever in the condition of the Church; and among the Popes who followed one another in a long series from RESPECTING THE PAPA ANGELICO. 149 1300 to 1500, there was not one in whom the faith of the people could have fancied even for'a single day, that it recognized the prophesied Papa Angelico.1 But still he was looked for with longing throughout all Italy, just as the right Emperor Frederick was looked for in Germany. In the year 1514 Giulio de' Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII., then Vicar-General of the Bishop of Florence, caused a monk of the name of Theodore to be put in prison for deluding the people with a story, that an Angel had revealed to him, that he, Theodore, would become the Papa Angelico, "for whom the "nations of Italy were...