The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

310 HISTORY OF THE POPES.
formal error on his part, saying that there could be no error
in the love of one's neighbour and of the honour of Christ ;^
he again renewed his often expressed assurance that he was
ready to die " for Christ "^ but at the same time he subscribed
to a retraction, proposed to him by the Jesuit Ledesma, in
which he accepted the Council of Trent, and the faith of the
" holy, Catholic, and Roman Church," and retracted his views
as to the unlawfulness of punishing heretics, and the forfeiture
of the Papal power on account of grave sin.^ The sentence of
the Inquisition only took the form, of making him promise
no longer to appear in the dress of a heretic. When he refused
to accept this Paleario was treated as impenitent and was
handed over to the secular arm.^ He was strangled, and his
body was consigned to the flames on July 3rd, 1570 ; before
he died he confessed, invoked the Madonna and the saints,
and made a profession of the faith of the " holy Roman
Church."^
(FoNTANA, 174). For the reassembly of the Council of Trent
under Pins IV. Paleario had composed an " Epistola de concilio
universal! et libero " (republished by Ii.lgen, Programm der
Leipziger Universitat, 1832).
1 FoNTANA, 172.
2 Laderchi, 1568, n. ^2.
^ Published by Daunou, Essai historique sur la puissance
temporelle des Papes, II., Paris, 1818, 278. An extract in Fontana
172 : " Credo et confiteor, quidquid s. concilium Tridentinum
definivit et quidquid sancta Ecclesia catholica Romana credit et
confitetur."
* Fontana, 175.
^ Thus the register of the Confraternity of S. Giovanni Decollate
(in Orano, 38 seq.; Fontana, 158), which took charge of those
condemned to death. The notice oi Paleario, published for the
first time by Lagomarsin' (Pogiani Epist., II., 188), was called in
question or rejected by protestant writers, as for example by
Bonnet-Merschmann, 265 n., by Mendham, Life of Pius V., 117,
by MacCrie, etc. But it is incontestibly genuine (see Orano,
38 seq., and Fontana, 158), nor is it possible to see why the book
of the confraternity should have invented it. In that book
obstinate heretics are either not mentioned at all or else are entered