simple declaration that he believed as Mother Church believed, though Mother Church, he added, knew nothing about it. Ultimately this restless disputant obtained a clerical sinecure in Rome, and died in peace. Several other unbelievers escaped the customary doom of mental independence. It is one of the anomalies of ecclesiastical history prior to the Reformation that, while the most trifling variations from orthodoxy were relentlessly crushed, a philosophical humanism hardly distinguishable from downright Atheism was fashionable among the intellectual classes, even those in clerical orders, and frequently went unpunished. The writings of the famous Raymond Lully--perhaps the most voluminous author on record, for he is credited with 321 volumes--brought him into conflict with the Inquisition; and long after his death in 1315 Eymeric, the Inquisitor of Aragon, sought to have his memory condemned. This was partially done in 1620, though the main object of Lully had been to suppress the heresy of Averrhoism, and many miracles wrought by his remains had evidenced his saintliness. Not many figures of the Middle Ages have had the doubtful honour of being both heretic and saint. In 1331 Pope John XXII had imprisoned an English priest who maintained that the saints after death are at once admitted to the presence of God. This doctrine, known as the “Beatific Vision,” had aroused the Pope’s anger, but he was subsequently compelled by the strength of the general opinion in its favour to accept it, after a controversy which nearly cost him his tiara. Years of bitter dispute ensued on a subject about which no human being knew anything whatever, and it even became a question of grave political consequence, for the monarchs of the time ventured to differ from the Papal opinion. The Inquisition espoused the popular view, and made questions on the subject an important part of the interrogatories addressed to the unlucky persons brought before its tribunals.