Trials of the Dead. into France and to the Bishop of Rome, maintainer of those enormities, to procure the abrogation of the said laws (whereby arose much trouble in this realm) and that his death, which they untruly called martyrdom, happened upon a rescue made, and that (as it is written) he gave opprobrious words to the gentlemen which then counselled him to leave his stubbornness, and to avoid the com motion of the people, risen up for that rescue, and he not only called the one of them Bawd, but also took Tracy by the bosom and vio lently shook him and plucked him in such manner that he had almost overthrown him to the pavement of the church, so that upon this fray, one of their company perceiving the same, strake him, and so in the throng Becket was slain: and further that this canon ization was made only by the Bishop of Rome, because he had been both a champion to maintain his usurped authority and a bearer of the iniquity of the clergy. "For these and for other great and urgent causes, long to recite, the King's Majesty, by the advice of his council, hath thought ex pedient to declare to his loving subjects, that notwithstanding the said canonization, there appeareth nothing in his life and exterior conversation whereby he should be called a saint, but rather esteemed to have been a rebel and traitor to his prince. "Therefore His Grace straitly chargeth and commandeth, that from henceforth the said Thomas Becket shall not be esteemed, named, reputed and called a saint, but Bishop Becket; and that his images and pictures thorow the whole realm shall be plucked down and avoided out of all churches, chapels and other places, and that from henceforth the days used to be festival in his name shall not be observed, nor the service, office, antiphons, collects and prayers in his name read, but rased and put out of all their books: and that all their festival days already abro gated, shall be in no wise solemnized, but bis Grace's ordinances and injunction there
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upon observed to the inten: his Grace's lov ing subjects shall be no longer blindly led and abused to commit idolatry as the v have done in times passed, upon pain of his Majesty's indignation and imprisonment at his Grace's pleasure." In the early church it was an unsettled question as to whether excommunication— with all its tremendous consequences in time and eternity-—could be fulminated against departed souls. But as early as the days of Cyprian the practice had come into fashion; St. John of the Golden Mouth denounced the frequency of such excommunications: Popes Leo I. and Gelasius I. sided with ChrysosHom. At the fifth general council, held in Constantinople, in 553, the question was raised as to the power of the Church to anathematise certain bishops who had been dead a hundred years. Some of the fathers doubted it, but Eutychius, a man well versed in the scriptures, settled the question by ipointing out how good King Josiah, not only put to death the priests of paganism, but also dug up the bones of those who were dead. A noted case occurred at the end of the ninth century; Pope Stephen VII. dug up the body of his predecessor,Pope Formosus, who had been seven months in his tomb; dragged it by its feet through the streets: sat it—in the synod which he had assembled to judge it—clothed in the pontifical robes; tried it; condemned it; deposed it; excommunicated it; cut off two fingers from the right hand; and threw it into the Tiber. The next year another pope, John IX., annulled these high handed proceedings, and a council he held rehabilitated the name of Formosus, excom municating those bishops who had convicted him of perjury. However, some seven years afterward Pope Sergius the Third, again dug up the poor body, and haled it to the judg ment seat, again condemned it, cut off more fingers and the head and consigned it once more 'to the cold embrace of Father Tiber. The wickedness of these proceedings was
