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Zbe jfalse Bccrctale*
BY THE REV. RICHARD F. CLARKE, S.J.
The False Decretals supply to Protestant controversialists
one of their most serviceable weapons. The fact that there
exists a collected body of documents, many of them strongly
asserting the claims of Rome and the Roman Pontiff, of
which a large proportion are undoubted forgeries, gives a
handle to the enemies of the Catholic faith of which they
are not slow to avail themselves. If it were true that the
modern system of Church government is built up in great
measure of these untrustworthy and misleading documents,
our opponents would have a strong argument in their favour.
If the Popes had invented these forgeries in order to
advance their claims to universal dominion (as Protestants
assert that they have), then we should at least have to
admit that unscrupulous audacity had at one time pre
vailed at Rome. If the Popes had adopted them, knowing
or suspecting them to be forgeries, we should be obliged
to allow that the Vicars of Christ had descended to the
use of shameful means to strengthen their own power.
Even if the Holy See had taken them under its protection,
in ignorance of their true character, and had in all good
faith availed itself of them in the development of doctrine
or of practice, we should look with just suspicion on any
dogma, law, custom, or usage that rested only on such a
foundation, and its erasure from the statute-book, with all
the consequent regulations or doctrines that had followed
from it, would be a matter of immediate necessity.
Happily, the False Decretals have had no such influence
on the legislation of the Catholic Church. They have intro
duced no dogma, no law, no custom, that did not exist
previously. They were never formally recognized by any of
the Popes, and it can be proved with certainty that the Holy
See knew nothing of them until many years after they were,
compiled, much less had any sort of part in their, compila
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The False Decretals.
tion. If extracts from them occur in some Papal documents,
we must remember that they were inserted in perfect
good faith, for the authenticity of the False Decretals
was widely credited, and at last was taken for granted
at Rome itself. The False Decretals were drawn up, as
we shall see presently, not in Rome, but in Western
France. Their compiler was no member of the Papal
Court, but a provincial Bishop, or some one acting under
his orders and seeking to advance his cause. Though they
go by the name of “The False Decretals,” yet a great
portion of them are genuine documents, and those which
are forgeries embody the traditional teaching of the Popes
whose names are attached to them. They did not introduce
even into the discipline of the Church anything that was
unknown before, but simply sought to attach the weight of
Papal or Conciliar authority to customs which generally
prevailed, but which many questioned as lacking any suffi
cient sanction from the Holy See.
In order to understand the position of the False
Decretals, we must ask our readers to cast a rapid glance
over the ecclesiastical history of the time, and especially
of the Church in Western Europe. The latter portion
■of the reign of Louis le D^bonnaire was a time full of
all sorts of miseries to the Empire of the Franks. The
pious, well-meaning, but feeble Emperor lent too ready
an ear to the foolish counsels of favourites. In 817
he portioned out his kingdom among his three sons,
and associated the eldest, Lothaire, in the Government.
But the birth of a fourth son in 823 (afterwards Charles the
Bald) led to a fresh partition of the Empire, and this caused
•great dissatisfaction among the elder brothers. Ten years
later (a.d. 833) Lothaire took advantage of the disturbed
state of the kingdom and the weakness of the Emperor’s
policy to accuse his father, before an assembly of bishops,
abbots, and nobles, of various crimes against Church and
State. The poor old King, broken down by the ingratitude
of his children and the responsibilities of empire, and full
of self-reproach because he had not succeeded in carrying
cut measures which his feeble will was insufficient to
enforce, nor prevented crimes which were in fact beyond
�The False Decretals.
3
his control, humbly confessed with many tears the crimes
laid against him; and was condemned to a lifelong penance
.and perpetual seclusion from the affairs of State in the
Abbey of St. Medard. The official president of the assembly
where this iniquitous proceeding took place was Ebbo,
Archbishop of Rheims, who as metropolitan of the province,
acted as the spokesman of the assembled prelates and
.seigneurs, and pronounced the sentence against the King.
The conduct of Ebbo was the more disloyal, as he had
been Louis’ foster-brother, and had by the royal influence
been raised from being a peasant’s son to a high position
in the Empire, having been appointed soon after his ordina
tion to be keeper of the royal archives of the province of
Aquitaine, and subsequently (in 816) elected, with the
universal acclamation of the clergy and people, to the arch
bishopric of Rheims. In this see he had shown himself a
zealous reformer of abuses, and a devoted and exemplary
Bishop. Six years later, he was sent by the King to
Denmark as royal ambassador and apostolic missionary,
and there had great success in the conversion of the pagans.
But the temptation to take the lead in a great political
struggle proved too strong for him : doubtless he persuaded
himself that he was acting in the best interests of the
Church in getting rid even by such questionable means
of a Prince whose weakness was unable to meet the various
abuses which prevailed.
This cruel treatment of their monarch soon caused a
Teaction in favour of Louis, whose younger sons, disgusted
with the arrogance of their eldest brother Lothaire, rose
.against him, restored the King to liberty, and drove
Lothaire into exile, whither he was followed by most of
the Bishops who had sided with him. But the leader among
them, Ebbo, was seized on the way, and, after a short
imprisonment, was compelled to read from the pulpit of
the Church of St. Stephen, Metz, a retractation of his
•conduct and a public declaration that the proceeding
ag"inst the unhappy King was unjust from beginning to
end. But this was not sufficient to atone for what he had
done. He was summoned before a synod at Thionville in
835, to be tried for his treason. .Here he begged, for the
honour of the episcopate, that he might be tried before
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The False Decretals.
bishops and not before laymen. This request was granted r
he was allowed to choose three bishops as his judges beforewhom he secretly confessed his ill-deeds, and he afterwards
read before the assembly a humble acknowledgment of his
guilt, in which he renounced his episcopate and declared
his see vacant. He was accordingly deposed and condemned
to perpetual imprisonment in a monastery.
This act of deposition was by canon law null and void,
for it was not only involuntary on the part of Ebbo, who
adopted this as his best means of evading worse misfortunes,
but it had no legal validity, as having been concluded
without the Pope's consent. The omission was the more
serious because Ebbo was not only metropolitan, but also
Legate of the Holy See in Western France. He could
therefore only be judged by a special delegacy appointed
by the Pope : and he remained after his abdication and in
spite of his own resignation de jure Archbishop of Rheims.
From 835 to 840 Ebbo spent in a sort of honourable
imprisonment in various monasteries, at Fulda and else
where ; but in 840 Louis died, and Ebbo, repairing at onceto Lothaire at Worms, obtained from him his reinstallation
in the see of Rheims. But some judicial form was con
sidered necessary, and Lothaire summoned a council of
twenty bishops, had him absolved, and restored him
solemnly to his episcopate. He was received with triumphat Rheims; but two years later, his episcopal city having
been apportioned to Charles the Bald, he was again com
pelled to flee, and after a visit to Rome, where he is said
to have been coldly received by Pope Sergius, he wasnominated by Louis of Germany to the see of Hildesheim,
with the consent of the Pope and of the Bishops of the
province of Mayence, and there he remained from 842until his death in 851.
From this outline of Ebbo’s history the reader may gather
what must have been the condition of the diocese which he
governed. Rheims, like all the dioceses of Western France,,
was indeed in a miserable plight during the first half of the ■
ninth century. The civil wars of France had been pro
ductive of many evils, of which not the least was the decay
of ecclesiastical discipline. The Bishops, in spite of them
selves, had been often almost compelled to take part in the-
�The False Decretals.
5
■struggle, and had done their best to allay the violence ol
party feeling and the rancour of political hatred* But
though they were generally peacemakers, they were some
times themselves swept away by the stream, and appear in
the character of fierce partisans of one or other of the
contending princes.
But this was not the end of the miseries of the Church
of France. The continual civil wars left the country
exposed to the ravages of the Northmen, who sailed up
the Seine and the Loire, pillaging at their pleasure, and
finding in the monasteries a comparatively easy prey. . We
find them penetrating as far as Paris in 851, and to Aix-la•Chapelle, Rouen, Nantes, and Blois. The armies which
marched to meet those barbarians were as fatal to the
countries through which they passed as the Northmen
themselves, and abbots and bishops must perforce fortify
and fight if they were to have any hope of security.
In such a disturbed state of things, one can easily
imagine that ecclesiastical discipline became almost an
impossibility. Life, property, everything was insecure, and
the universal tendency of mankind to cultivate under such
circumstances that charity which not only begins but ends
at home, man tested itself throughout France, and especially
in those western provinces which were, more than the rest
of the country, exposed to the ravages of war. The clergy
ceased to obey bishops who could not or would not help
them. Bishops fought for Lothaire or Louis, and forgot
their sacred character in their political partisanship. The
laity, too, often saw in their bishops and clergy political
•opponents, not spiritual guides.
Such was the state of things when the volume of False
Decretals appears upon the scene. They profess to be a
collection of canons of councils, Papal decrees, and letters
from the earliest times up to the time of St. Gregory. The
writer declares his work to have been undertaken at the
suggestion of numbers of bishops and other servants of
God, its object being the reformation of ecclesiastical
discipline and the enforcing of obedience on clergy and
people. The collection consists of three parts:
1. Letters of the Roman Pontiffs from Clement to Mel■chiades, sixty in number, and a letter of Aurelius, Bishop of
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The False Decretals.
Carthage, to Pope Damasus, with the answer of Damasus,
All of these were forged by the author of the Decretals,
with the exception of two letters of Pope Clement, to which
he has, however, made considerable additions.
2. The Councils from Nicaea to the second Council of
Seville (819), nearly all of which are genuine.
3. The Decretals of the Popes from Silvester to Gregory
I. (one or two of Gregory II. being added), of which
about forty were forged by the compiler, some six or seven
are apocryphal documents belonging to former ages, while
all the rest are genuine.
The False Decretals were composed between the years
845 and 857. They contain numerous quotations from the
Council of Paris in 829, of Aix in 836, and of Meaux in845. . They are first quoted in the Council of Quiercy-surOise in 857, where the synodal letter of the Council cites
the spurious letters attributed in the False Decretals to
Popes Anacletus, Urban, and Lucius. Hincmar, Bishop of
Rheims, quotes them in his work on the divorce of Lothaire
(written about 862), and seven or eight years afterwardsthey again appear in the letters of his nephew, Hincmar of
Laon; in each case the forged letters of the Popes being
quoted apparently in all good faith as genuine.
All this fixes their date with absolute certainty. They
cannot have been earlier than 845; they cannot have been
later than 857.
We need not linger long on the question of country which
gave them birth. From end to end they proclaim their birth
place to have been Western France. Nay, more, it is as
certain as anything can be from internal evidence that the
diocese of Rheims was the particular district to which they
owe their origin. Their language betrays their connection
with France. The nobles are seniores (seigneurs) and comites
(comtes); ambassadors are missi (envoyes). In the genuine
part of the compilation, the previously existing Hispana (or
Spanish collection, attributed to St. Isidore of Seville), is
supplemented by the Hadriana, which had been sent somefifty years before to the Frankish Bishops by Hadrian I.,
and was regarded as of great authority in France, and by
another collection now generally known as Qiiesnellicinci*
�The False Decretals.
7
and which was probably compiled in France. The author s
own forgeries are mainly from sources exclusively Fiankish,
e.g., he draws from the Council of Aix in 816 and 836, of
Paris in 829, of Meaux in 845, from the letters of St. Boniface
of Mayence and of the Abbess Cargith, which could scarcely
be known outside France.
That Rheims was their special province appears from
the fact that the earliest recognition of them was in that
diocese. They are cited (probably) by clerics of Rheims
in 853, by the Synod of Quiercy in 857, by Hincmar of
Rheims in 859. They are compiled by one who had con
tinually before his mind the condition and circumstances
of the Church of Rheims, by one who knew the details of
its contemporary history, and who, above all, has ever in
view the struggle between its Archbishop Ebbo and his
various enemies, and who is determined to vindicate, so far
as such a work can vindicate, the action of Ebbo from the
beginning to the end of his career.
So far we have been treading on sure ground. Our next
step lands us in the region of hypothesis, although we believe
that the hypothesis we shall put forward has an amount of
probability which approaches to moral certainty. Who was
the author of the False Decretals ? The question is a very
interesting one, and deserves a careful and scientific treat
ment, and it is with reluctance that we shall have to dismiss
it with a mere cursory glance. We have already prepared
the way for the expression of our opinion in the history we
have given of the events of the time.
Every book bears stamped upon it at least the leading
features of its author’s character and some indication of his
history. The False Decretals show plainly enough that he
who compiled them was a bold, clever, industrious, enter
prising, unscrupulous man. They show, moreover, that he
was a cleric well acquainted with th$ affairs of the Frankish
kingdom generally, and knowing intimately all the details
of the Church at Rheims. They also point to his having
been a bishop, and a bishop who had suffered from the
violence of the secular arm, and had a wholesome dread
of the interference of secular princes; a bishop, too, who
was keenly conscious of the evils caused by the non
residence of bishops and the usurpation of their functions
�8
The False Decretals.
in their absence by the suffragans {chorepiscopi}; a bishop
who had had troublesome clerics to deal with; a bishop
whose interests lay with the secular clergy and not with the
monastic orders, since, in spite of the sufferings of the
monks, not a word do his Decretals say about penalties
incurred by the violation of monasteries; and last of all, a
bishop who had not always resided peacefully at his see,
but had wandered at least for a time to other parts of the
Empire, and spent some time in the province of Mayence,
under Otgar its Archbishop. Who is there in the whole
world who fulfils all these conditions, save only the able,
unscrupulous,_ energetic Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, the
reformer of his diocese in early times, the political partisan
in later years, the exile from his diocese at Fulda and else
where, who returned only to be again banished, and to die
in 851 Bishop of Hildesheim, whither he had been trans
ferred with the Pope’s consent by the favour of Louis of
Germany.
That the compiler of the Decretals has Ebbo in view
throughout his work is not denied even by those who refuse
to recognize him as their author. The coincidence of the
peculiar circumstances of Ebbo with the peculiar case con
templated by the author of the Decretals cannot have been
a chance one. Thus Pope Felix reserves to a bishop who
is separated from his diocese and confined elsewhere (z'zz
eietentione aliqua a suis embus sequestrated) the revenues
accruing during his absence.1 This was exactly Ebbo’s
case. If reference were not made to him, why did the
Decretals put into the mouth of the Pope a special and
not a general case of imprisonment or banishment from a
diocese ? Pope Alexander declares a confession, even in
writing,. if made under pressure, to be null and void, in
■which it is impossible not to see a reference to Ebbo’s
confession and abdicatien in 836. The Synod of Antioch,
among its genuine decrees, has one which forbids a bishop
deposed by a synod to be restored except by a larger synod.
This, however, would have been fatal to Ebbo’s restitution
m 840, to which we alluded above, for he was deposed by
forty-three bishops, restored only by twenty.
In the
Decretals Pope Julius writes to the Bishops of Antioch
1 Felix I. Ep. 10.
�The False Decretals.
9
in reference to this synodal decree: “ You have said
that Athanasius cannot be restored by a number of bishops
smaller than the number of those who deposed him. It
is not so. 'Phis is no rule of the orthodox Bishops of
Holy Church, but of the Arians, and has been framed for
the destruction of the orthodox Bishops.”1 And finally, the
translation to Hildesheim at a time when he claimed to be
and r-eally was de jure Archbishop of Rheims, which accord
ing to the canons was lawful only if the necessities of the
Church required it (which was not true in Ebbo’s case),
is justified in the Decretals by a string of Papal letters
allowing of translation whenever a bishop should be removed
from his see by motives of necessity or utility, and, above
all, if he should be driven thence by violence, where the
allusion to Ebbo’s appointment to Hildesheim is undeniable.
It was therefore, without any doubt, either Ebbo himself
or some one who had his interests very near at heart who
was the forger of the Decretals. We can scarcely imagine
that any one would be so deeply and intently wrapped up
in all that concerned the Archbishop as to frame letter after
letter simply to justify the individual action of his friend ot
patron. Besides, who was there who could have compiled
them ? Who had resided like Ebbo at Fulda, and after
wards at Hildesheim, both of them at no great distance
from Mayence, the records of which were so valuable to the
forger? Who else had the same thorough acquaintance
with the evils and troubles of the diocese of Rheims as the
energetic Archbishop ? And, we may add, who had so
smarted under the interference of laymen in ecclesiastical
affairs? Who else would have ventured on so bold, so
original, so thoroughgoing an imposture? We can fancy
him in the comparative retirement of his see of Hildesheim,
with all the records he had collected before him, putting
together, with a mixture of genuine desire to prevent here
after the evils he had himself known by long and bitter
experience, and of a hah unconscious desire to justify
himself in the eyes of the world, this volume of mingled
truth and falsehood. And dishonest as it was, it is certainly
a masterpiece; the mere fact that it so long was received
unquestioned is the best proof of its author’s genius. In2*
1 174 Julius, c. 113.
�IO
The False Decretals.
accuracies there certainly are, and anachronisms; but in
general how consistent are its statements, how correct the
expositions of canon law put into the mouth of the early
Popes. What a knowledge it shows of history, of Councils,
of the Church’s laws, for one who lived in days when the
slow process of transcription limited knowledge and made
forgeries difficult of detention !
We say, then, that the authorship of these Decretals
is in all probability to be ascribed to Ebbo. We half suspect
that he had no intention of their ever being published. They
were not completed till after 847, when he had been for
some years Bishop of Hildesheim and was an old man
drawing near to the grave, and if he ever meant them to see
the light, they did not do so till after his death in 851. It is
impossible to look into his secret heart—it may be that they
were but a jeu d'esprit, the occupation of that restless soul
during hours of leisure at Hildesheim : meant to amuse his
chaplains or his successor, and never intended to deceive
the Christian world. It may, on the other hand, have been
his desire that they should be published and accepted
as genuine. The love of his old diocese and the desire to
see a happier and better state of discipline among the
clergy, made him forget the sacredness of truth and the
folly of attempting to promote the cause of truth by means
of falsehood and forgery—the remembrance of his wrongs
stirred him to vindicate his actions by giving them the high
sanction which he considered that they deserved—and if
he attributed to Popes letters they never wrote, and to
Councils decrees they never passed, at least he did but
make them the mouthpieces of the Church’s irrefragable
laws and unalterable doctrine. Perhaps he remembered
che speeches which Thucydides and Livy put into the
mouths of the heroes of Greece and Rome: why should
not he too put into the mouths of the heroes of Catholicity
words which they ought to have used, and might have
used, and perhaps did use, although no record of them
may remain ?
We are not justifying the unscrupulous forger, we are
simply putting forward the thoughts that may have passed
through his mind. His long career of ambition had
perhaps blinded him to that veneration for the majesty of
�The False Decretals.
ii
truth which a political career too often tends to dim. All
through his life he had been pushing, energetic, restless,
anxious to take the lead, looking to the end in view rather
than to the means. And as we often find, the retired
politician became an author, and the characteristics of his
political life are reflected in the writings of his old age.
We must leave this interesting topic and omit various
details of all kinds which confirm our view of the author
ship. Our readers will, if they care to pursue the subject,
find in the Decretals themselves, allusions without number,
to the evils which had long prevailed in the diocese of
Rheims and to the history of Ebbo’s episcopate. They
will find Ebbo’s friends first putting them forward a year or
two after his death, but in so cautious a way that it seems
to indicate a lurking suspicion of their contents. They will
find in the treatment of them by Hincmar, Ebbo’s successor
in the see of Rheims, an unwillingness to accept what came
from so doubtful a source, though he does not seem to
have suspected so bold a forgery. All this we must for the
present pass by, because the point we have to deal with
in particular is the acceptance of these Decretals by the
Popes, and their influence in promoting the Papal power.
In our description of them, we have purposely omitted to
speak of their assertion of Papal claims, because their
advocacy of the Supremacy of the Holy See is to their
author merely one of the means by which he saw that the
prevalent evils were to be cured and a wholesome state
of ecclesiastical discipline to be established. It was the
means, not the end, and any one who asserts that it was
the end, or even one of the ends the author had in view,
has, if he has studied the False Decretals at all, studied
them with a very imperfect appreciation of their contents.
But we must treat a little more at length this important
question of the purpose of the compiler of these Decretals.
Some have considered that their object is mainly political,
and that they were the work of a partisan of Lothaire,
intended to support the cause of that Prince against his
father and to justify the Bishops who had ranged themselves
on his side. Such a view, though it has an element of
truth, can scarcely be seriously maintained. No one would
have undertaken so elaborate a work for such an object as
�12
The False Decretals.
this, or put together a volume in which the greater part
would be altogether irrevelant to his purpose. He would
not have copied out formerly existing compilations which
would not have in any way furthered his design, or filled
his pages with ecclesiastical regulations and questions of
doctrine and discipline which would have been entirely
beside the mark. And apart from this, their date wars
against this theory, for they appeared at a time when the
struggle between Louis and his ungrateful children was
a matter of the past.
Another view regards them as simply a pious fraud, an
honest—or rather we should say a dishonest—attempt to
restore ecclesiastical discipline in the Church of France,
to heal the wounds which political disturbances had inflicted
vpon her, to give a higher sanction to the canons of local
synods which the troubles of the times had rendered almost
inoperative, and which had been openly set aside by the
secular authorities. Hence we find the False Decretals
putting these canons in the mouths of early Popes:
adducing Councils and Papal letters without end in support
of the liberties and independence of the clergy; enforcing
obedience of the clergy to bishops ; restricting the functions
of suffragans, who had usurped to themselves rights they
did not possess; upholding the jurisdiction of metropolitans
in the bishops of their district and of primates over metro
politans ; and last but not least asserting for all the right
of an appeal to the Holy See against secular princes,
bishops, archbishops, and synods, provincial or general.
Other points on which stress is laid are the intimate union
of a bishop with his flock, so that he ought not to be
transferred elsewhere, except for some weighty reason, and
the right of bishops to be judged by a synod of their own
province, and not by a general synod of bishops collected
here and there at the will of the King, from which justice
could never be looked for, as the King could pack it at
his pleasure with those whom he knew would be subservient
to his will. How futile all the other measures would have
been unless the right of appeal to Rome had been insisted
on, is evident from the fact that without it there was
practically no hope of redress for an unfortu late bishop
who had offended the King or his ecclesiastical superior.
�The False Decretals.
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If he could not turn to Rome for aid, how was he to obtain
justice? When all else failed and he was driven into exile
by an unjust sentence, or by a packed tribunal, or by an
interfering prince, one tribunal there was where he knew
he would have a fair hearing—one prince who was superior
to ambition or political animosity. Slow the process would
be : there was no fear of hasty interference on the part of
the Pope—it would be months, perhaps years, before
sentence would be given ; his opponents would be heard ;
a long correspondence would intervene; his patience
would be sorely tried as he remained, still under a cloud,
at the Roman Court waiting for the verdict. But he knew
it would come at last; justice would be done; and Rome
would not shrink from hurling her anathemas, if need be,
ngainst offending prince or prelate who refused obedience
to her gentler voice. What a security this in those days
of violence and wrong ! how necessary in those times when
there was war to the knife even between bishop and bishop,
archbishop and archbishop, not to mention the continual
encroachment of kings and seigneurs on the Church’s rights !
This view of the purpose of the author of the False
Decretals is in the main correct, but we must not leave out
•of sight the personal element that they contain. . The
advocate of the Church’s privilege has his eye continually
on Ebbo’s wrongs; each disciplinary measure is guarded
by some saving clause against any disparagement of Ebbo’s
■conduct. If bishops are not to be lightly transferred,
there is to be an exception if a bishop is driven from his
see; if the canons of Antioch forbid the restoration of a
bishop deposed by a synod, except by the action of a synod
more numerous, the Holy See steps in and cancels the
enactment as uncanonical. Hence our general conclusion,
•combining these two commonly accepted views, is that the
False Decretals are intended to bring about a reform of
■ecclesiastical discipline in Western France, but that they
have at the same time pointed allusions, conscious or
unconscious, to him whom we cannot but regard as their
author, Ebbo ot Rheims, to his history, his sufferings, and
his wrongs.
It is plain enough, then, that those Decretals were not
the work of Rome or Rome’s Bishop. It has been said,
�14
The False Decretals.
however, that even though it may be true that the Popes
had nothing to do with the fabrication of them, yet that
they were glad enough to use them as soon as they dis
covered the good service that had been done to their cause.
Some time after this (861), Rothade, Bishop of Soissons,
had been excommunicated for alleged disobedience to his
metropolitan, Hincmar of Rheims. He thereupon appealed
to Rome. The Bishops of the metropolitan province of
Rheims held a second synod, deposed Rothade, and
appointed another bishop in his place, and handed him
over to be imprisoned in a monastery. Rothade appealed
to Rome again, and the Pope thereupon sent for Rothade,.
called a Council (Concilium Romanum V.), and annulled
the whole proceeding, threatening Hincmar with excom
munication unless Rothade were at once restored. A
correspondence took place between the Frankish Bishops
and the Pope, in which the former urged that the decrees
quoted by Rothade to support his appeal, and which were
taken from the False Decretals, were not contained in the
Hadriana, or collection of decrees sent by Pope Hadrian
to Charlemagne, and therefore were not binding. They
did not attempt to deny the authenticity of the decrees;
but accepting them as authentic, they denied their supreme
authority, and they laid down the false principle that
whatever was not contained in their Codex Hadrianus was
not binding on them, and had not the force of law in the
Empire of the Franks. To this St. Nicolas answers that
they were wrong in despising decrees of the Pontiffs
because they were not found in the Codex Canonum.
u God forbid,” he says, “ that any Catholic should refuse
to embrace with honour due and the highest approval
either decretals or any exposition of ecclesiastical discipline,
provided always that the Holy Roman Church, keeping
them from ancient times, has handed them down to us
to be guarded, and lays them up in her archives and
ancient memorials. Some of you have maintained that
these decretals of former Pontiffs are not contained in the
whole body of the canons, while those very men, when they
see that they favour their designs, use them without dis
tinction, and now only attack them as less generally
received (minus accepted} in order to diminish the power of
�The False Decretals.
15
the Apostolic See and increase their own privileges. For
we have some of their writings which are known to adduce
not only the decrees of certain Roman Pontiffs, but even
of those of early times. Besides, if they say that the
decretals of early Popes are not to be received because
they are not to be found in the Codex Canomtm (or
Hadriana), this would be a reason for not receiving any
ordinance or writing of St. Gregory or of any other Pope
before or after him.” And St. Nicolas then goes on to
quote from the genuine letters of St. Leo and Gelasiusto prove the respect due to all decretals of the Holy See.1
Whether in all this the Pope alludes directly or in
directly to the False Decretals is a question very difficult
to decide. It seems that Rothade had quoted them in his
favour. The other Bishops had not rejected them as
spurious. St. Nicolas abstains from saying a word in their
favour, but perhaps alludes to them so far as this, that he
twits the Bishops with playing fast and loose—using a
document when it suited them, rejecting it as not of supreme
authority when it ran counter to their wishes; but he
expresses no sort of personal acceptance of the forged
collection, and never makes any quotation from it, but only
from those genuine letters which were, he says, actually
stored up in the Roman archives.
This is clear enough from the difficulty made by theBishops. Hincmar does not say, Yes, but those documents
quoted by Rothade are a forgery, as he would have said
if the question turned on their authenticity. Instead of
this he says, “ We allow that these Decretals are to be
received with veneration (penerabiliter suscipienda'), but we
do not allow that they are necessarily to be received and
observed {i'^tpienda et custodiendd), thus showing that in his
mind the question turned simply on their weight of authority
as Papal decrees.” In fact, he himself uses these False
Decretals over and over again in his quarrel with his
nephew, Hincmar of Laon, and to exact submission from
the Bishops under him.
St. Nicolas, then, not only acted wisely and prudently
in the answer he sent to the Bishops, but he pursued the
only course open to him under the circumstances. Rothade
1 Mansi, xv. 694, 695.
�16
The False Decretals.
was in the right—right in his interpretation of canon law,
right in the justice of his appeal, right in protesting against
the way in which he had been treated. In his defence of
himself he had adduced decretals heretofore unknown, but
which he evidently regarded as undoubtedly genuine. They
were unknown to the Pope; their doctrine was correct; they
were not in the Roman archives; but the Bishop of Soissons
-quotes them with no hesitation, and his opponents do not
deny their authenticity. What would any Protestant have
had the Pope do? Open an endless critical discussion
about the value of the documents quoted ? Refuse to listen
to Rothade, because he illustrated true doctrine from ques
tionable authorities? Instead of this, his reply to the
Bishop amounts to this: You object to the authority of
what you allow’ to be Papal Decretals, that they do not
occur in your national summary of canon law. There you
are wrong. There are plenty of Papal letters outside your
•codex. You ought to refuse no decretals, supposing always
that they are to be found in our archives. But he purposely
and pointedly says nothing about these particular decretals,
does not quote them, does not approve them, does not
recognize them, indirectly sets them aside, inasmuch as he
never mentions them, and never from one end of his
pontificate to the other makes the slightest use of them,
■or acknowledges their existence, though they had been
quoted in letters addressed to him and copies of them had
already been brought to Rome.
But at least we should have imagined that he would
afterwards have made some use of these documents about
which there seemed to be no doubt in the Catholic world.
On the contrary, he writes again to Hincmar in 863, and
mentions the Popes who are authorities on the method to
be pursued in the trial of bishops, but says not one word
of the countless passages in the False Decretals which deal
at length with this subject. He mentions the letters of no
Pope before St. Siricius, whose letters are genuine, although
five years before he had learned from Loup of Ferrieres the
existence of a decretal attributed to St. Melchiades, most
favourable to the rights of the Holy See. But, more
remarkable still, he quotes in various letters passages which
are attributed by the False Decretals to early Popes, but in
�The False Decretals.
i?
every case he attributes them, not to the Pope whose name
they bear in the False Decretals, but to their real authors.
So far for St. Nicolas I. The next Pope was Adrian II.
He, it is true, in one passage borrows a passage from a
decretal assigned by the forger to Pope Anterus, and gives
it under the name of that Pope. The letter in which it
occurs is a confirmation of the transfer of a Bishop from
the see of Tours to that of Nantes. It is no question of
Papal authority being advanced or Papal claims established
by those forgeries. It is, perhaps, to be accounted for by
the fact of the French Bishops who asked for the authoriza
tion of the translation having cited this passage from
Anterus in confirmation of their request, the Pope took it
for granted that their citation was correct and inserted it in
his reply. Or, more probably, he entrusted the drawing up
of the letter to some Cardinal or Secretary, who had read
and accepted the Decretals, and who introduced the passage
as exactly suited to the case in point. No one who hasany notion of the mass of business which continually
surrounds the Pope can be so unreasonable as to expect
him to write each letter with his own hand, or to verify
every quotation. When it was read to him for his approval,
he would naturally take the extract as correct on the
authority of the compiler of the document; nor can any
one brand him even with negligence for doing so. But
with the exception of this one isolated passage, not a single
extract from the False Decretals occurs in the letters or
other documents issued by Adrian II. When he quotes
from the decretals of former Popes, he invariably assigns
the quotations to their true authors, never to those to whom
they are attributed in the supposititious volume, although
they occur word for word in it, with the authority of greater
antiquity put forward in their behalf.
Adrian II. was succeeded by John VIII., of whose
voluminous correspondence we have more than three
hundred and fifty letters still extant. In all these, not a
trace of the False Decretals. Stephen VI., who came next,
observes the same silence, save in one passage, where he
alludes to a letter falsely attributed to St. Athanasius; but
he builds no argument on it, and shows by the context that,
even if he were aware of the contents of the Decretals, he
�i8
The False Decretals.
did not regard them as worthy of credit. We need not
carry on the matter through the next one hundred and fifty
years. It is enough to say, that during all that period there
is but one allusion to one of the unauthentic documents
-quoted in the Decretals. And even here it is probable that
the document in question existed before the Decretals were
compiled.
All this is the more remarkable, because all this time
the Decretals were known at Rome. They are quoted over
and over again by authors who wrote at Rome during
those two hundred years. John the Deacon, about 880, in
a Life of St. Gregory which he dedicates to the then reigning
Pontiff; Auxilius, in his defence of the ordinations of Pope
Formosus; Luitprand, or the author who bears his name,
writing about 950, all use them freely: and we cannot but
wonder at the wisdom and prudence of the Holy See in
rejecting documents in which there was so much tending
to establish Papal authority. In fact, it was not until a
Trench Bishop (St. Leo IX.) occupied the Chair of Peter
that the False Decretals began to be regarded as genuine
by the Papal Court, and to be quoted as authentic in the
documents of the Holy See.
Another important point still remains to be noticed.
-Gallicans and Protestants have maintained that these De
cretals had a very marked influence on the discipline of the
Church, that whether Popes used them or not, they were
used by Papal partisans to promote Ultramontane encroach
ments. Not content with this general charge, Gallicans
have, happily for truth, alleged certain definite questions
on which they say that they have undeniably promoted
Papal authority and set aside the traditions of the primitive
■Church.
Here we may remark, for the benefit of all those who
find in these False Decretals a stumbling-block to their
acceptance of Rome’s supremacy, that nothing can be more
at variance with all human experience than to suppose that
a document which introduced a new system of government
into the Church would have been accepted without a very
careful examination of its authority by the faithful at large.
Above all, in the Church of France, where there was a
�The False Decretals.
ig
strong national and political spirit, there would have been
great reluctance in admitting anything which enabled Rome
to diminish the power of the King or the independence of
the Gallican Church. And what is the fact with respect
to these Decretals? Not only did France receive them
unhesitatingly, but she actually gave them birth. . Their
author was an ecclesiastic intimately acquainted with the
affairs of the French Church, eager in her interests, most
probably a French Bishop, the friend and favourite of the
French King, in his youth the keeper of the Archives of
Aquitaine, the reformer of his diocese, in later times the
political partisan, whose tendency would have been to
oppose Papal “ aggression,” and to push forward local
•claims. What more ridiculous than to suppose him in
venting a system of government unknown before, and a
centralization of authority in Rome to which Christendom
was hitherto a stranger? And even supposing that his
private interests had made him recklessly Ultramontane,
what more ludicrous than to suppose that his inventions
would have been received as they were without dispute,
and would have been accepted as the law of the Church
.as soon as promulgated? Nay, more, what more fatal to
the Gallican hypothesis respecting them than the fact that
those who were slowest to acknowledge them, who dis
played an unaccountable reluctance in admitting their
authenticity, were those very Popes whose grasping ambi
tion they are supposed to further and promote?
When we come to the definite points in which Gallicans
assert power to have accrued from Rome from these
Decretals, we find that historical facts do not in any way
bear out their assertions. Not one of the three points
which they allege is new in the history of the Church;
each of them was recognized as the universal law binding
on all the faithful before the Decretals were thought of.
Thus they say that before the Decretals the necessity of
Papal sanction to the validity of provincial synods was
never recognized: a statement which is directly contra
dicted by the history of the Council of Chalcedon, where
the charge against Dioscorus was that he had dared to
hold a synod. without the authority of the Apostolic See.
They say again that the right of appeal on the part of
�20
The False Decretals.
Bishops to the Holy See was introduced, by the Decretals.
Here too they are equally mistaken. The Council of
Sardica, 347, distinctly sanctions such appeal, and when
an appeal has been made forbids the appointment of a
successor to the see till Rome has heard the case.
And lastly, they say that the author of the Decretals first
invented the doctrine that the Holy See is subject to no
human tribunal. This doctrine, which, by the way, is only
implicitly contained in the Decretals, appears in documents
anterior to the ninth century, e.g. in the so-called Acts of
the Second Roman Council, and in the instructions of
Pope Gelasius to his Legate Faustus. In fact, there is
not a single prerogative or privilege of Rome asserted in
the False Decretals which was not generally recognized as
the common law of the Christian Church. They changed
nothing, altered nothing, added nothing : at most they only
put into convenient shape what was before less easy of
access, and so helped to popularize a doctrine which was
sometimes forgotten by local prelates, and to keep before
their minds that dependence on the Holy See which is the
central doctrine of Catholic ecclesiastical discipline.
If the ready acceptance of the False Decretals as
genuine proves anything at all, it proves that the attitude
of dependence on the Roman See which characterizes them
throughout, was accepted throughout Western France as the
remedy for all the evils that had invaded the Church of
France; and that those who lamented the corruptions that
had crept in, and the general laxity of discipline that pre
vailed, knew that their remedy was to be sought in the due
maintenance of the authority of the Roman Pontiff. At this
distance of time it is impossible to attain to certainty as to
the exact motive with which they were written. But of this
we may at least be absolutely sure, that they were not
written from any desire to increase the power of the Holy
See; that they were never employed for this object by the
Popes themselves; and they place before our eyes, if not
what those to whom they are assigned actually said, yet at
least what Christendom in the ninth century believed to
’ have been their opinion respecting the affairs of the Church
and the power of her supreme ruler, which had been handed
down from the beginning.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Title
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The false decretals
Creator
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Clarke, Richard Frederick
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC, WorldCat). Decretals (epistolae decretales) are letters of a pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church.
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Catholic Truth Society
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[1892]
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RA1543
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Catholic Church
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The false decretals), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Catholic Church
Pope
Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals