t'4] 



and most probably had also been forged by Bracciolini 

 immediately after he had finished the last six books. 

 The delight of the clergy at the sudden and unexpected 

 discovery of these hitherto altogether unknown writings 

 knew no bounds ; for they now possessed the most 

 precious heathen testimony to the sufferings of the early 

 Christians on account of their religion, which would 

 form a valuable addition to the evidence in course of 

 collection by pious monks intended to show forth clearly 

 and indisputably the divine origin of Christianity. The 

 wily Pope knew well enough the enormous value of such 

 a record as this ; for it was quite evident that a vein of 

 scepticism was permeating every class of society, in spite 

 of the vigilance of the Inquisitioners. 



The reformers who succeeded Wicliffe, Jerome, and 

 Huss had been waxing bolder day by day, and had even 

 repulsed a large army sent against them by his Holiness 

 and led by Cardinal Cesarini and a host of German 

 princes, since which they had boldly and openly preached 

 against the papal supremacy, and were in many districts 

 publicly distributing copies of the writings of Aristotle 

 and Averroes. The Church and the Papacy were thus 

 in real and imminent danger, for hitherto the people 

 had believed whatever the priests had told them, whereas 

 now they appeared determined to investigate the whole 

 matter themselves and to dispense with the services of 

 the priestly mediator. At such a time the discovery of 

 the " Annals " came as a windfall to the Church ; every 

 one apparently accepting them as having been originally 

 written by Tacitus ; and every author, from this time 

 forward, quoted them repeatedly. The strangest thing 

 about the affair is that no one even thought of question- 

 ing the genuineness of the writings, especially when it 

 must have been well known that not one historian or 

 writer, from the time of Tacitus, who lived in the first 

 century, down to the end of the fifteenth century, when 

 the "Annals" (so-called for the first time by Beatus 

 Rhenanus in 1533) were discovered, had ever once 

 quoted or even referred to them ; not even Christian 

 writers had as much as once noticed them, which they 

 could not have failed to do had such valuable evidence 

 of the sufferings of their brethren really existed. Besides 



