The Complete Short Works by Georg Ebers
page 28 of 216 (12%)
page 28 of 216 (12%)
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Thuringian with flashing eyes.
"The Cologne theologians hold a different opinion," replied the abbot. "Because the Grand Inquisitor and his followers--Tungern, Kollin, and whatever the rest may be called--are concerned about some thing very different from the noblest daughter of Heaven," said Lienhard Groland, and the other gentlemen assented. "You yourself, my lord abbot, admitted to me on the ride here that it angered you, too, to see the Cologne Dominicans pursue the noble scholar 'with such fierce hatred and bitter stings.'"--[Virgil, Aeneid, xi. 837.] "Because conflict between Christians always gives me pain," replied the abbot. But here Dr. Eberbach impetuously broke in upon the conversation: "For the sake of a fair woman Ilion suffered unspeakable tortures. But to us a single song of Homer is worth more than all these Hebrew writings. And yet a Trojan war of the intellect has been kindled concerning them. Here freedom of investigation, yonder with Hoogstraten and Tungern, fettering of the mind. Among us, the ardent yearning to hold aloft the new light which the revival of learning is kindling, yonder superior force is struggling to extinguish it. Here the rule of the thinking mind, in whose scales reason and counter-argument decide the matter; among the Cologne people it is the Grand Inquisitor's jailers, chains, dungeons, and the stake." "They will not go so far," replied the abbot soothingly. "True, both the front and the back stairs are open to the Dominicans in Rome." |
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