the Thirty Years' War began. It was a far-fetched and not very happy
piece of revenge, when they of the other side took pleasure in spelling
his name 'CLesel,' as much as to say, He of the 150 ass-power. Berengar
of Tours calls a Pope who had taken sides against him not pontifex, but
'pompifex.' Metrophanes, Patriarch of Constantinople, being counted to
have betrayed the interests of the Greek Church, his spiritual mother,
at the Council of Florence, saw his name changed by popular hate into
'Metrophonos,' or the 'Matricide.' In the same way of more than one
Pope Urbanus it was declared that he would have been better named
'Turbanus' (quasi _turbans_ Ecclesiam). Mahomet appears as 'Bafomet,'
influenced perhaps by 'bafa,' a lie, in Provencal. Shechem, a chief
city of the heretical Samaritans, becomes 'Sychar,' or city of lies
(see John iv. 5), so at least some will have it, on the lips of the
hostile Jews; while Toulouse, a very seedplot of heresies, Albigensian
and other, in the Middle Ages, is declared by writers of those times to
have prophesied no less by its name (Tolosa = tota dolosa). In the same
way adversaries of Wiclif traced in his name an abridgement of 'wicked-
belief.' Metternich was 'Mitternacht,' or Midnight, for the political
reformers of Germany in the last generation. It would be curious to
know how often the Sorbonne has been likened to a 'Serbonian' bog; some
'privilegium' declared to be not such indeed, but a 'pravilegium'
rather. Baxter complains that the Independents called presbyters
'priestbiters,' Presbyterian ministers not 'divines' but 'dry vines,'
and their Assembly men 'Dissembly men.']

Where, on the other hand, it is desired to do a man honour, how gladly,
in like manner, is his name seized on, if it in any way bears an
honourable significance, or is capable of an honourable interpretation
--men finding in that name a presage and prophecy of that which was
actually in its bearer. A multitude of examples, many of them very