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035 - 4 The Fictitious Isidore · Short History of the Christian Church

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  Speaker 1: Part two, Chapter four of Short History of the Christian
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  Speaker 1: Church by John Fletcher Hurst. This LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Chapter four. The fictitious is adore. Every
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  Speaker 1: period of religious ferment exhibits a disposition to fortify the
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  Speaker 1: opinions of the present by an appeal to the past.
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  Speaker 1: The tendency applies to the evil as well as the good.
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  Speaker 1: During the first period of the Middle Ages, there prevailed
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  Speaker 1: in the whole of Latin Christendom a calm and subdued
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  Speaker 1: desire for papal elevation, which, notwithstanding the outward fraternity between
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  Speaker 1: emperor and Pope, was preparing to assert itself whenever the
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  Speaker 1: right hour struck. The papacy had advantages over the imperial
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  Speaker 1: rule of a family. The son might be a poor
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  Speaker 1: and weak successor to his father, but no man could
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  Speaker 1: seat himself on the episcopal chair of Rome without at
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  Speaker 1: least some measure of ability. There was a division within
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  Speaker 1: the narrow rule of the ecclesiastical government. The metropolitan bishops
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  Speaker 1: were appointed by the emperor, but the bishops in general
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  Speaker 1: were supposed to be appointed by the pope. The classes
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  Speaker 1: were thus arrayed against each other by a shrewd manipulation
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  Speaker 1: of public sentiment. The episcopal and papal interests received a
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  Speaker 1: strong support in a skillful forgery. A Spanish archbishop of
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  Speaker 1: the seventh century, is Adore of his Pallas, performed for
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  Speaker 1: the German Church the distinguished service of making it acquainted
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  Speaker 1: with a number of important classical and patristic works. He
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  Speaker 1: died in six thirty six and left behind a name
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  Speaker 1: of great repute for mental and moral endowments. His services
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  Speaker 1: and fame were used as authority for a forgery in
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  Speaker 1: favor of Roman authority as against the political ruler. The
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  Speaker 1: entire church deceived, but it was a most welcome deception.
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  Speaker 1: The secret lay concealed long enough to fortify every branch
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  Speaker 1: of ecclesiastical authority, to make political rulers tremble, and to
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  Speaker 1: make Rome ready when the Carolingians ran out to extend
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  Speaker 1: her spiritual scepter over all rulers. The pseudo Isidoreian decredles
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  Speaker 1: combined all the qualities of a perfect deception. They represented
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  Speaker 1: a class, and yet were the best of their order.
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  Speaker 1: A collection of canons and epistles of Dionysius Exiguous, for example,
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  Speaker 1: had been generally used in the West. Isidore of Hispalus
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  Speaker 1: had written a collection of important canons not found in
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  Speaker 1: that of Dionysius exiguous, and by his work had contributed
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  Speaker 1: greatly to the centralization of ecclesiastical authority in Rome. How
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  Speaker 1: could this same work be carried further? Now that the
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  Speaker 1: Carolingian Empire had gained such great prestige and threatened to
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  Speaker 1: eclipse the Roman bishop, and had been implored to come
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  Speaker 1: and help him fight his battles against the Lombards. Isidore,
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  Speaker 1: now in his grave, was therefore used to build up
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  Speaker 1: this endangered cause. It was pretended that he had left
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  Speaker 1: behind a set of decredles, the doings of former councils,
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  Speaker 1: which had never seen the light. Now, thanks to good fortune,
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  Speaker 1: they had been discovered. They were soon scattered as widely
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  Speaker 1: as rapid copyists could multiply them. No compiler had dared
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  Speaker 1: to go back further than the authority of Cirrisius, whose
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  Speaker 1: pontificate extended from eighty three eighty four to three ninety eight.
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  Speaker 1: But this Forger was no timid character. He boldly rushed
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  Speaker 1: back to alleged decrees of unknown councils, and to letters
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  Speaker 1: claiming to be written by Clement and Anaclidus, bishops of Rome,
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  Speaker 1: contemporary with the Apostle, and by nearly thirty of the
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  Speaker 1: Apostolic fathers themselves. The contents of the forged work were
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  Speaker 1: enough to condemn it. It was divided into three parts.
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  Speaker 1: The first contained, in addition to the authentic fifty apostolical canons,
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  Speaker 1: fifty nine spurious decredal writings of Roman bishops, from Clement
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  Speaker 1: the First to Melchiades or from the end of the
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  Speaker 1: first century to the beginning of the fourth. Even the
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  Speaker 1: reputed donation of territory by Constantine to the papacy, a
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  Speaker 1: thing which never took place, was brought in to help
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  Speaker 1: the common interest. The second part comprised only authentic synodal canons.
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  Speaker 1: The third presented some real decreidols, But besides these there
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  Speaker 1: were thirty five spurious ones, which were held to have
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  Speaker 1: been written at various times, from Pope Sylvester the I,
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  Speaker 1: who died in three thirty five, to Gregory the Second,
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  Speaker 1: who did died in seven thirty one. The one purpose
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  Speaker 1: pervading the entire work was to prove by early authority
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  Speaker 1: the independence of the bishop. The Church must protect herself
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  Speaker 1: and her priesthood. The bishop must be made independent of
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  Speaker 1: his metropolitan. When a bishop is tried, it must not
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  Speaker 1: be before a metropolitan or a secular tribunal, but before
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  Speaker 1: the Pope alone. Even a clerk must be tried before
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  Speaker 1: an ecclesiastical court. An offense against a priest is an
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  Speaker 1: offense against God himself, for a priest is very dear
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  Speaker 1: to God, the very apple of his eye. No charge
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  Speaker 1: against a bishop can be declared sustained unless supported by
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  Speaker 1: seventy two witnesses. The court must consist of twelve other bishops.
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  Speaker 1: Only the Pope can convene provincial synods, and his approval
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  Speaker 1: is necessary for the efficiency of their decrees. The former
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  Speaker 1: opinion that the Decredls were intended to prop up the
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  Speaker 1: Primacy of Rome is now abandoned by the majority of scholars.
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  Speaker 1: The opinion is at present divided between two views. The
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  Speaker 1: first is that the purpose of the publication was to
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  Speaker 1: form a general code of Christian discipline and government, necessary
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  Speaker 1: at a time of general insecurity in society and of
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  Speaker 1: confusion in church affairs. The second, and perhaps the better view,
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  Speaker 1: is that the real meaning of the Decredls was to
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  Speaker 1: free the bishops from their dependence on the state and
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  Speaker 1: on their metropolitans and provincial synods. The authority of the
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  Speaker 1: pope was recognized and emphasized, but only for the sake
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  Speaker 1: of the bishop. The authorship of the Decredls has remained
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  Speaker 1: a secret. That Isidore never wrote the collection can be
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  Speaker 1: seen in the barbarous Latin of the ninth century, citations
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  Speaker 1: from works of late authorship, the anachronisms throughout the collection,
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  Speaker 1: the absence of all testimony to the authority of the
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  Speaker 1: more ancient portions of the Dacredles, and the attempts to
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  Speaker 1: meet contemporaneous prejudices. Never in the whole history of literature
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  Speaker 1: was a fabrication obscured by more doubt or permitted to
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  Speaker 1: pass so long without challenge. The date of publication ranged
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  Speaker 1: between eighty eight forty four and eight fifty seven. It
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  Speaker 1: was probably written in the Frankish Empire of Rome, but
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  Speaker 1: the evidence is not decisive. The most plausible theory of
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  Speaker 1: authorship is that Archbishop recoulf A d. Seven eighty six
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  Speaker 1: to eight fourteen brought the genuine Isidore from Spain, that
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  Speaker 1: this was enlarged and corrupted by the Archbishop Autare and
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  Speaker 1: published at Mainz, and that the copying was done by
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  Speaker 1: the Benedictine monk Leveda, who may have had no suspicion
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  Speaker 1: of the fraud he was perpetrating. The influence of the
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  Speaker 1: false Decreidls was such that popes, councils, synods, and minor
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  Speaker 1: ecclesiastical officers appealed to them as final authority. They were
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  Speaker 1: brought out to decide questions which shook the Christian world
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  Speaker 1: after the year eight sixty four. They were habitually used
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  Speaker 1: in papal rescripts as having binding force. Their genuineness was
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  Speaker 1: never questioned until the twelfth century. The first doubts were
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  Speaker 1: raised by Peter Comestor, but the fraud was never proven
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  Speaker 1: until the sixteenth century, when the first Protestant Church historians,
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  Speaker 1: the authors of the Magdeburg centuries, exposed the successful trick.
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  Speaker 1: Since then, the better Roman Catholic historians have abandoned the
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  Speaker 1: de Credles as authentic, but hold them to be a
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  Speaker 1: pious fraud. Moehler calls their author a Romanticist. Cardinal Newman, however,
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  Speaker 1: goes further and, with his characteristic candor, calls the Decredles
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  Speaker 1: of forgery end of chapter four