There then stood in Germany, in those first years of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men--St. Boniface. His learning was of the best then known. In labours he was a worthy successor of the apostles; his genius for Christian work made him unwillingly primate of Germany; his devotion to duty led him willingly to martyrdom. There sat, too, at that time, on the papal throne a great Christian statesman--Pope Zachary. Boniface immediately declared against the revival of such a heresy as the doctrine of the antipodes; he stigmatized it as an assertion that there are men beyond the reach of the appointed means of salvation; he attacked Virgil, and called on Pope Zachary for aid. The Pope, as the infallible teacher of Christendom, made a strong response. He cited passages from the book of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon against the doctrine of the antipodes; he declared it "perverse, iniquitous, and against Virgil's own soul," and indicated a purpose of driving him from his bishopric. Whether this purpose was carried out or not, the old theological view, by virtue of the Pope's divinely ordered and protected "inerrancy," was re-established, and the doctrine that the earth has inhabitants on but one of its sides became more than ever orthodox, and precious in the mind of the Church.(34) (34) For Virgil of Salzburg, see Neander's History of the Christian Church, Torrey's translation, vol. iii, p. 63; also Herzog, Real-Encyklopadie, etc., recent edition by Prof. Hauck, s. v. Virgilius; also Kretschmer, pp. 56-58; also Whewell, vol. i, p. 197; also De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, pp. 24-26. For very full notes as to pagan and Christian advocates of the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth and of the antipodes, and for extract from Zachary's letter, see Migne, Patrologia, vol. vi, p. 426, and vol. xli, p. 487. For St. Boniface's part, see Bonifacii Epistolae, ed. Giles, i, 173. Berger de Xivrey, Traditions Teratologiques, pp. 186-188, makes a curious attempt to show that Pope Zachary denounced the wrong man; that the real offender was a Roman poet--in the sixth book of the Aeneid and the first book of the Georgics.