Excerpt from The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol. 15 Sources. - Unfortunately no contemporary biography of Alexander IV. has come down to us, and equally unfortunately the greater part of his Register is not yet in print, though C. Bourel de la Ronciere published the letters of the first two years (1254-6) as far back as 1902 (Paris). This latter misfortune is, however to a considerable extent minimized by the publications of Rodenberg (Epp. e regestis Rom. Pont., vol. iii), Bliss (Calendar of Papal Registers), Theiner, etc. - publications which have been noticed in previous volumes. L. Delisle, moreover, found in the Bibliotheque nationale at Paris, a fragment of the Register of the last year of Alexander's pontificate, Dec. 12, 1260 - May 25, 1261, the day of his death. It is a fragment of the seventh book of his Register, which corresponded with the seventh year of his reign, and is an original copy of the beginning of that book. It contains some forty-six bulls or letters of which Delisle printed a brief analysis. Till this was published, most of them were inedited, only five of them having been analysed by Potthast. In connexion with the documents issued by the papal chancellary in the days of Alexander, we may note that a very large proportion of them is concerned with privileges of every kind for different religious Orders, with the Teutonic Knights and crusades against the pagan Prussians and Livonians, with the Inquisition and the treatment of heretics, and with the granting of indulgences. The indulgences granted are generally for forty or a hundred days. Once at least an indulgence of a year was granted, and this was in connexion with a home for the blind (Potthast, 17934). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.