The calumny that the Lord Calixtus P.P. III gave books to the Bishop of Vich in the manner of a Vandal arose in this way. The Lord Cosimo de Monserrato, Bishop of Vich from 1460 to 1471, was ordered by His Holiness to compile a catalogue of the books in the Vatican library, on the sixteenth of April 1455, four days before His coronation. A copy of this catalogue was brought to Vich by this same Lord Cosimo on his appointment to the bishopric five years later. It was most likely made by one of the Vatican scribes,[12] and it contains numerous marginal notes in the bishop’s handwriting. From these notes, a precise list of the number of books actually given away by the Lord Calixtus P.P. III may be obtained. They were five—not “several hundred”—of no great value, and—duplicates. Two of these, a copy of the Epistles of St. Augustine, annotated by Nicholas of Lira, and a Book on the Truth of the Catholic Faith, were presented to the Pope’s late patron, King Don Alonso de Aragona of Naples, the Two Sicilies, and Jerusalem. The note against them in the catalogue is _S.D.N. dedit hunc domino regi Arag._ (“Our Holy Lord gave this to the lord king of Aragon.”) Now, if He only gave two books to His old friend and former employer who (as may be judged from the fact that he employed the renowned Messeri Lorenzo Valla and Giangiovio Pontano as his secretaries) had a very pretty taste for letters, who was a reigning sovereign, and an extremely serviceable and powerful ally of the Holy See, is He likely to have given “several hundred” to the Cardinal of Ruthenia and Catalan nobles? Finally, the heathen Cardinal Platina, who wrote his History of the Popes in the reign of the Lord Xystus[13] P.P. IV (the third in succession from the Lord Calixtus P.P. III,) expressly mentions the magnificence of the library of the Lord Nicholas P.P. V, which, certainly, he could not have known if it had been destroyed in the manner described by the lying Bishop Vespasiano da Bisticci of Vicenza. One “philistine” act may be admitted on behalf of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III. He sold the silver from the bindings of those books. He sacrificed them for the crusade in defence of Christendom. He also sold all the Vatican plate. He insisted that the salt-cellar of His Own table should be of earthenware, not gold; and, indeed, He even offered His tiara in pledge for the same admirable object. He was blamed.