![](https://www.sacrima.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Hieronymus-Wierix-Godly-virtues-1563-before-1619-1000x1538.jpg)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.331474
Molanus attacks Calvinsts’ claims of the inexistence and thus untruthfulness of the use of images of Fides, Spes, and Charitas.
“We owe to a Calvinist a thesis of the same nature on Wisdom and her offspring, Faith, Hope and Charity. This kind of man is so prone to slander the Church of God that he has haphazardly concluded, from the fact that there is no account of these martyrs in any ancient author, that they are virtues made into saints who never existed. And I know that a theologian has attached so much value to this warning of the Calvinist that he has had the names of these martyrs erased from some of the litanies of our church in Leuven. It is so dangerous, even for competent men, to read the heretics.”
“Eadem est Calvinistae cuiusdam sententia de Sapientia, eiusque prolibus Fide, Spe et Charitate. Cum enim ille historiam martyrum apud nullum veterum legisset, (ut est hominum illud genus ad calumniandum Ecclesiae Dei propensissimum) mox intulit virtutes conversas esse in sanctos qui nunqua fuerunt. Quam eius monitionem celebrem quendam Theologum tanti fecisse scio, ut in Litaniis quibusdam Ecclesiae nostrae Louvaniensis, nomona harum martyrum deleverit. Tam periculosa est, etiam doctis viris, lectio haereticorum.’
![Jacob Matham (after Hendrick Goltzius), Three godly virtues in a landscape, 1590 <br>Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.150588](https://www.sacrima.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Jacob-Matham-after-Hendrick-Goltzius-Three-godly-virtues-in-a-landscape-1590-768x1030.jpg)
![Hieronymus Wierix (after Ambrosius Francken (I), after Willem van Haecht (I), after Godefried van Haecht) - Allegory on the good death of man, 1563 - before 1619 <br>Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.332421](https://www.sacrima.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Hieronymus-Wierix-after-Ambrosius-Francken-I-after-Willem-van-Haecht-I-after-Godefried-van-Haecht-Allegory-on-the-good-death-of-man-1563-before-1619-768x601.jpg)
![Frontispiece of Molanus, De historia sanctarum imaginum et picturarum (1617), Antwerp, Gasparus Bellerus <br>Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek -- Th H 1475. Digital Reproduction: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2015.](https://www.sacrima.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/0016_00_MOLANUS-768x1250.jpg)
Molanus 1996, 306.