2°d S. X, Aug. 4. ^60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



85 



by terror of temporall punishments to put such p'sou out 

 of that state of damnation." 



" Seacondlie wee aunswer, That since the matter of 

 Cominge to C Church is become doubtfull in a generality, 

 the protestants and many seculare priests mayntayninge 

 the same, And the Jesuits contradictinge it. And the 

 Bishop of Roome not 3'et hauing decided the Contro- 

 versie, yt can not be but that in the knowledge and Con- 

 sciences of lay and unlearned men, The same standeth yet 

 doubtefull, Then it followeth that such p'sons beinge 

 under the king's Allegeance, and under the obedience of 

 his Lawes, and bound Deponere conscientiam talem tan- 

 quam minus Instruotara, And to submitt theire know- 

 ledge and Consciences to the wisdome of theire Magistrate, 

 and Cofnandm' of the Lawes, W* they ought to doe prop- 

 ter bonum obedientiae, untyll bj' search and prayer the 

 doubtfulness may be cleered." 



" Thirdly, to allowe that euery man should exempt 

 himselfe from the obedience of the Lawe w''" a pretence 

 of his Conscience, weare to giue waye to euery private 

 p'son to be freede from all publick Lawes, soe that be 

 the_Lawes neuer soe wise, holsome. Just, or Godly, the 

 Comon and unlearned people may discharge themselves 

 of theire duty by clayming or pretendinge the same to 

 be against theire erroneous or Ignorant Consciences, w'*' 

 ia noe other then to subiect good Lawes to the will and 

 pleasure not only of the wise but of the symple." 



I have thought it worth while to give these 

 very long extracts, because I should imagine it to 

 be impossible to find any others which so clearly 

 show the state of opinion on the question of toler- 

 ation in the first years of the seventeenth century, 

 and which so plainly distinguish it from the 

 opinion of the commencement of the sixteenth 

 century on the one hand, and from the opinion of 

 the eighteenth century on the other. 



S. K. Gardiner. 



A PRODIGY OF LITERARY LABOUR. 



Some of the readers of " N. & Q." have, pos- 

 sibly, no knowledge, even by name, of a writer 

 who has probably produced more works than any 

 author on record. His writings have, with one or 

 two exceptions, remained unpublished ; and this 

 accounts for their being unknown. The author in 

 question is John Hagen, or Joannes de Indagine, 

 a Carthusian monk, who at the age of twenty- 

 five entered the monastery at Erfurt, and died in 

 the year 1475, aged 60. Cave seems to have been 

 ignorant of his existence, for there is no mention 

 of him in the Historia Literaria. Sixtus Se- 

 nensis, in his list of commentators on Scripture, 

 mentions him with this eulogiura — " divinarum 

 et humanarum rerum cognitione prsestans" (^Bib- 

 liotheca Sancfa, p. 270.), and then enumerates 

 only three commentaries from his pen, seemingly 

 ignorant of any others ; whereas he has written 

 most copious commentaries on every book of the 

 H. Scriptures — necessarily copious, for he adopts 

 the old-fashioned, but most comprehensive method 

 of illustration, the quadruple exposition, according 

 to the four senses of Holy Writ, — the literal, and 

 the mystical ; the latter being subdivided into the 



allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical. 

 John Hagen's method is, accordingly, to give four 

 distinct treatises on each chapter. 



Possevinus the Jesuit, and Trithemius, have 

 given a more extended notice ; the latter pro- 

 ducing a long list of some sixty works, which he 

 had himself seen. Trithemius, however, himself 

 had but a comparatively slight acquaintance with 

 this writer, for we find, on consulting the Bib- 

 liotheca Cartusiana of Petreius the Carthusian, a 

 distinct enumeration of not less than 433 works, 

 in addition to those recorded by Trithemius, 

 making a total of nearly 500. Well may Petreius 

 exclaim, after detailing this amazing amount of 

 intellectual exertion, — " O ingentem librorum 

 molem! O admirandum plurimarum noctium 

 annorumque laborem ! " 



Petreius, after expressing an ardent wish that 

 the Superiors of the Order would bring to light 

 these works by their publication, speaks thus of 

 their author : — 



" Fuit etenim in hoc viro incredibilis quaedam me- 

 moria, plurimarum et maximarum rerum doctrina, necnon 

 et diligentia in elucubrando, constantia in perseverando, 

 judicium in discernendo. Qui usque adeo librorum scrip- 

 tioni intentus fuit, ut ne tum quidem h. commentandi 

 scribendique labore conquiescere potuerit, quando in pau- 

 percula quadam Cartusil, simplex cellita delitescens, can- 

 delarum usu, aliisque adminiculis ad elucubrandum ne- 

 cessariis, omnino destitutus fuit. Ita naraque juvenes k 

 Patribus nostris accepimus, eum scilicet, cum non posset 

 sufficient! potiri lumine, interdum ex offis pinguioribusque 

 esculentis luminis fomitem sibi ipsi concinuisse. Unde 

 etiamnum, pleraque ipsius scripta, propria manu exarata, 

 pinguedine^undequaque insigniter sunt delibuta, ac benfe 

 inuncta." {Bibl. Cartusiana, p. 163.) 



It is to be remarked also that during, a great 

 portion of his monastic life he had to discharge 

 the onerous duties of Prior. He presided at dif- 

 ferent times over three houses of his Order, and 

 consequently must have been much distracted by 

 the cares of government. Indeed he mentions 

 this occasionally at the end of some of his works, 

 as an apology for their imperfections. 



It has, probably, occurred to the reader to re- 

 mark that many of these works must have been 

 short treatises. Possibly a certain proportion was 

 of that description. But I have the means, my- 

 self, of forming a notion of this, for I possess not 

 less than ten bulky codices of this author. Eight 

 of these are autograph ; the remaining two are by 

 a professional scribe, with the author's autograph 

 corrections and marginal notes. If I may judge 

 from these codices, I conclude that the works are 

 generally very voluminous. For instance, I have 

 his Commentary on Genesis. It is written in a 

 close hand in a quarto volume, and occupies, I 

 should guess, 600 pages — for the book is not 

 paged — and yet the volume contains only hftlf 

 the Commentary on Genesis, for it breaks off at 

 the 26th Chapter. I can verify, too, the in- 

 teresting remark of Petreius respecting the " pin- 



