T
thinkandmull
Guest
I was skimming over parts of Thomas Paine’s book* The Age of Reason* a week or two ago. Its a direct attack on Christianity, but I don’t see in it a real case against our faith. I did find the below in a footnote however, and was wondering if anyone had information on this piece of history:
"I cannot discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogium) 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. What 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 harmonized 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 death, 789, the curious title ‘Geogeter 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 besides his accuser, St. Boniface.”
"I cannot discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogium) 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. What 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 harmonized 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 death, 789, the curious title ‘Geogeter 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 besides his accuser, St. Boniface.”