th century.

The first papal decree touching the "Immaculate Conception" as an
article of faith, was promulgated in the reign of Sixtus IV., who
had been a Franciscan friar, and he took the earliest opportunity of
giving the solemn sanction of the Church to what had ever been the
favourite dogma of his Order; but the celebration of the festival,
never actually forbidden, had by this time become so usual, that
the papal ordinance merely sanctioned without however rendering it
obligatory. An office was composed for the festival, and in 1496
the Sorbonne declared in favour of it Still it remained a point of
dispute; still there were dissentient voices, principally among the
Dominican theologians; and from 1500 to 1600 we find this controversy
occupying the pens of the ecclesiastics, and exciting the interest and
the imagination of the people. In Spain the "Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin," owing perhaps to the popularity and power of the
Franciscans in that country, had long been "the darling dogma of the
Spanish Church." Villegas, in the "Flos Sanctorum," while admitting
the modern origin of the opinion, and the silence of the Church,
contended that, had this great fact been made manifest earlier and
in less enlightened times, it might possibly have led to the error of
worshipping the Virgin as an actual goddess. (Stirling's Artists of
Spain, p. 905.) To those who are conversant with Spanish theology
and art, it may seem that the distinction drawn in theory is not very
definite or perceptible in practice.

At length, in July, 1615, Paul V. formally instituted the office
commemorating the Immaculate Conception, and in 1617 issued a bull
forbidding any one to teach or preach a contrary opinion. "On the
publication of this bull, Seville flew into a frenzy of religious
joy." The archbishop performed a solemn service in the Cathedral.
Cannon roared, and bull fights, tournaments, and banquets celebrated
this triumph of the votaries of the Virgin. Spain and its dependencies
were solemnly placed under the protection of the "Immaculate
Conception," thus personifying an abstract idea; and to this day, a
Spaniard salutes his neighbour with the angelic "Ave Maria purissima!"
and he responds "Sin peccado concepida!"[1]

[Footnote 1: In our own days we have seen this curious controversy
revived. One of the latest, if not the last, writer on the subject was
Cardinal Lambruschini; and the last papal ordinance was promulgated by
P