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Peter's, beneath a very ugly tomb. The next morning this epitaph was found inscribed upon the tomb: "VENDIT ALEXANDER CLAVES, ALTARIA, CHRISTUM: EMERAT ILLE PRIUS, VENDERE JUKE POTEST."; that is, "Pope Alexander sold the Christ, the altars, and the keys: But anyone who buys a thing may sell it if he please."

Holy things, religious privileges, had become merchandise with which the Popes trafficked. The chronicler Burchardus relates: "In those days the following couplet was sung in nearly the whole Christian world: "Vendit Alexander claves, Altaria, Christum, Emerat ista prius, vendere juste potest."

But if you think otherwise, and that you think it to be an invaluable blessing, a way fully sufficient to nourish a manly, rational, solid, and at the same time humble piety, if you find it well fitted to the frame and pattern of your civil constitution, if you find it a barrier against fanaticism, infidelity, and atheism, if you find that it furnishes support to the human mind in the afflictions and distresses of the world, consolation in sickness, pain, poverty, and death, if it dignifies our nature with the hope of immortality, leaves inquiry free, whilst it preserves an authority to teach, where authority only can teach, communia altaria, æque ac patriam, diligite, colite, fovete.

And as if this were not enough, another distich struck with more directness at the vices of the Pope: "Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum: Emerat ille prius, vendere jure potest." "Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. He bought them first, and has good right to sell."

Peter's, beneath a very ugly tomb. The next morning this epitaph was found inscribed upon the tomb: "VENDIT ALEXANDER CLAVES, ALTARIA, CHRISTUM: EMERAT ILLE PRIUS, VENDERE JUKE POTEST"; that is, "Pope Alexander sold the Christ, the altars, and the keys: But anyone who buys a thing may sell it if he please."

Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit, p. 1183. Baptista Mantuanus, de Calamitatibus Temporum, lib. iii. Venalia nobis Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronæ, Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque. Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap.

Gall. Exc. Sc. 12. Ambitio. Primarily the solicitation of office by the candidate; then the parade and display that attended it; then parade in general, especially in a bad sense. Certis, i.e. rite statutis. Guen. Cumulant. Structura est poetica, cf. Virg. Aen. 11, 50: cumulatque altaria donis. Equus adjicitur.