might wish a defence of their spiritual power against their kings.

Things were tending in this direction when the forged Decretals made their appearance. They purport to be decretal, letters, written by the early Popes, from Clement downwards to Gregory the Great. They were published in a collection with other canons. This collection of canons and decretals, in the name of St. Isidore, consisted of three parts:

1. Fifty-nine Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, besides two from Clement to James, already in existence, going down to Melchiades.

2. Canons of Councils, chiefly genuine Isidorian.

3. Thirty-five Pseudo-Isidorian, mixed with genuine epistles from Sylvester to Gregory the Great.

The bishops universally received them. They were like the horse who was so intent on conquering the stag, that he took the bridle into his mouth from the man, and the saddle upon his back, and allowed him to mount, and was from that time a slave. The Pope conquered the metropolitans, through the bishops; and as soon as he had done this, the bishops were, ipso facto, enslaved. These Decretals seemed to favor the patriarchs; and yet subjected them to the Pope's authority to act in his name.

All that was taken from the metropolitans fell finally to the Papal See.

But the Decretals had been preceded by other forgeries no less gross. The donation of Constantine was promulgated in the time of Adrian the First; and was based on, and connected with, a fabulous narrative of the baptism and cure of Constantine of the leprosy, at Rome by Pope Sylvester. In token of gratitude, Constantine withdrew from Rome and founded Constantinople, and gave to the Pope, Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West.

The history and decrees of a Council that never met, were also forged. It was said to have been held at Rome in the days of Sylvester; the aim and result of it was to exalt the power of the Pope.

Whoever will, may find all of these precious documents in the history of councils by Binius, published even after Calvin and others had exposed the forgeries of the Decretals, under the sanction of the Pope, and defended by Binius. Indeed the Papacy held on to them till they were irresistibly wrung from its un

The influence and effects of these Decretals are thus set forth by the learned civilian Daunou, a Roman Catholic: “So early as the end of the eighth century, the Decretals of Isidore had planted the germs of pontifical omnipotence. Gratian gathered the fruit of these germs, and made them still more fruitful; the court of Rome being represented as the source of all irrefragable decision, as the universal tribunal, which decided all differences, dissipated all doubts, cleared up all difficulties. She was consulted from all

willing grasp.

quarters by metropolitans, by bishops, by chapters, by abbeys, by monks, by lords, by princes even, and by the untitled faithful.There was no limit to the pontifical correspondence, but such as was imposed by the tardiness of the means of communication. The affluence of questions multiplied bulls, briefs, epistles; and from those fictitious decretals ascribed to the Popes of the first ages, there sprang up and multiplied, from the time of Eugene III., thousands of responses and decrees, which were but too authentic. All affairs, religious, civil, judiciary, dumestic, then were more or less embarrassed by pretended connexions with the spiritual power. General interests, local controversies, individual quarrels, all went in the last resort, and sometimes in the first instance, to the Pope; and the court of Rome acquired this influence over the details of human life (if we may so speak), which is of all others the most formidable, precisely because each of its effects, isolated from the others, appeared to be of no great consequence. Isidore and Gratian transformed the Pope into a universal administrator."

The agency of Gratian in this matter, to which Daunou here refers, was in brief this: In 1152, he compiled a collection of canons, commonly designated as the Decree of Gratian.” It was called by him, the concord of discordant canons (concordantia discordantium canonum). The study of the civil law had just been revived in Italy, by the discovery of the Pandects of Justinian. But, as the ecclesiastical power was fast gaining the ascendency over the civil power, a similar thesaurus of the principles of ecclesiastical law was needed. Such the Decree of Graiian became. It is divided into three parts-one devoted to principles and ecclesiastical persons; the second to judgments; the third to things.

Of its character as a code, Daunou thus speaks: “Repetitions, impertinences, disorder, errors in proper names, mistakes in quotations are the least faults of the compiler. Mutilated passages, chimerical canons, false decretals, all sorts of lies, abound in this monstrous production. Its success was only the more rapid on that account. It was explained in the schools, cited in the tribunals, and invoked in treaties. It had almost become the public law of Europe, when the return of light dissipated by slow degrees the gross imposture. By it the clergy were held not to be amenable to answer in the secular tribunals; the civil powers were subjected to ecclesiastical supremacy; the state of persons, or the acts which determine it, were regulated, validated, or annulled absolutely, by the canons and the clergy; the papal power was enfranchised from all restrictions; the sanction of all laws of the Church was ascribed to the Holy See, that See itself being independent of the laws published and confirmed by itself.”

By whom Gratian was employed to perform this work, the facts just stated sufficiently show. He was but a tool of the papacy.

. Through him the Man of Sin erected his throne, by reducing the

forged Decretals to a legal system. A translation of a few passages from Gratian will give a clear idea of the prevailing spirit of the work. He is teaching the doctrine that the Pope is not of necessity subject.even to his own laws, and that if he submits to them, it is only by a voluntary humiliation, by way of example to others.

"As Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, and of the law, submitted himself to the law of the Sabbath, so the pontiffs in the seat of supremacy, manifest reverence for the canons established either by themselves, or by others authorized by them, and by humbling themselves to obey them, they augment their authority, so that they may present them to others as their supreme law." Again : “ Sometimes, either by new enactments, or definitions, or by contravening the canons, they proclaim themselves Lords, and creators of the laws.” Again : ' “ Upon others is imposed the necessity of obedience to the canons ; but it has been made manifest that in the chief pontiffs there is an authority to obey at their pleasure ; so that by observing their own decrees, they may show to others that they are not to be contemned: this they do after the example of Christ, who himself observed as an example, and that he might thus sanctify them, those sacraments, the observance of which he enjoined upon his church.”

Here we see the roots of those highest claims of papal omnipotence, and of dispensing above right, and contrary to right, which subsequent canonists carried to a still more blasphemous extremeexalting the Pope not only to an equality with God, but above all that is called God, or is worshipped.

All these principles, first drawn from the fountain of the forged Decretals, still slumber in the canon law, like a sword returned for a time to its sheath, or like the retracted and hidden claws of a tiger. But let the state of the nation be so changed, and circumstances so favor that it can be done, and the sword will be again unsheathed, and the pontifical tiger will again rend the subjugated nations with his claws.

To translate long passages from these forged Decretals would be tiresome alike to the translator and to the reader. To form a conception of their matter and style, we need only to suppose an ecclesiastic capable of writing in the Latin style of the middle ages, , first raising the inquiry what is needed to exalt the ecclesiastical power entirely above the civil, and finally to concentrate all power in the Pope, and then writing all that he could conceive of, to his heart's content, in the name of the ancient popes. A few specimens must suffice. Hear how, in the first epistle of Pius, A. D. 147, the bishops are defended against lay influence :-“Let not the sheep censure their shepherd, nor the laity accuse a bishop, nor the populace reprehend him ; since the disciple is not above his lord, nor the servant above his master. But the bishops are to THIRD SERIES, VOL. III.

8

a

a

NO. 3.

be judged by God, who has chosen them as his eyes. Of this the master has given an example when he drove from the temple the buying and selling priests, by himself and not by another.” The judgment of God on bishops is, of course, to be exercised through the Pope. Hence the forger tells us, through Zephyrinus, A. D. 208, Ep. 1, “Let not the Patriarch's or Primates who try an accused bishop, pass a definite sentence till it has been sanctioned by apostolic, i. e. papal authority.” He then proceeds to give rules as to accusers, witnesses, and the trial, and then concludes, “Let the ultimate determination of his case be brought to the apostolic seat that there it may be issued. Nor let it be finally determined before it is sanctioned by the authority

, of the pontiff, as was ordained by the Apostles or their successors. We notice here, as through all of these forgeries, a constant repeti. tion, and superabundant fulness, as if the writer were determined to make assurance doubly sure, in all things relating to the papal authority.

To concentrate all power at Rome, we find passages like this :“ The Roman Church through the merits of Peter, consecrated by the word of the Lord, and sustained by the authority of the holy fathers, holds the primacy among all the other churches. To her the highest concerns, trials, and complaints of bishops, and also the important interests of all churches are to be referred, as to the head."

Again, Zephyrinus, Ep. 1, says :—"All, and especially the oppressed, must have recourse to the Roman Church, and appeal to her as to a mother, that they may be nourished by her breasts, and defended by her authority, and delivered from their oppressions. For the mother neither can nor ought to forget her child.”

One great object of these forgeries is to give authority to papal decrees, as such, investing them with the power of laws, thus making the Pope an independent legislator and an absolute despot. Hence the forger in the name of Damasus, Ep. 4, says : * All the Deeretals, and the statutes of all our predecessors, which have been promulgated concerning the ecclesiastical orders, and the discipline of the canons, it is our pleasure and decree that you and all bishops and priests shall observe, so that if any one shall infringe them, let him know that it is an unpardonable offence.”

The direct result of all this was to exalt the canons of the Pope to an equality with the canons of general councils. Hence in the canon law both kinds are mixed up indiscriminately, and, as Daunou well remarks, the forged Decretals became the source and model of innumerable and genuine papal Decretals in subsequent ages. Indeed these lying forgeries have been so thoroughly digested and absorbed into the system of the canon law, that to this day they constitute its vital principles, its very life's blood.

At the hazard of being tedious, we will give a few more extracts from these forgeries, showing in what manner, by impudent and reiterated assertions, the power of the papacy was established. The forger in the name of Damasus, Ep. 6, says :-“It is lawful for the metropolitans, with their provincial bishops, to investigate the causes of the bishops and other weighty ecclesiastical matters, provided the bishops are all present and agree; but to define and decide definitely on such points, or to condemn bishops without the authority of this seat, is not lawful ; for all, if it be necessary, ought to appeal to it, and be sustained by its authority. For, as you know, it is not Catholic to convene a synod without its sanction."

The conduct of Hincmar in deposing Rothade, to which we have before adverted, shows plainly that he, though a learned canonist, had admitted no such principles as these. But when Nicholas encountered him, nullified his proceedings, and restored Rothade, he fell back upon these and similar passages of the forged Decretals for his defence, and certainly nothing could be better fitted to accomplish his purposes. It seems as if this passage had been forged with Satanic foresight for the very case in hand. Nor is it to be wondered at, that Nicholas exerted himself to the uttermost to give authority to a system by which he was invested with such absolute power. In the Decretum of Gratian, the forged ma!erials were mixed

up with the old and genuine canon law, for the sake of hiding the cheat. In his endeavors to reconcile the discordancies thus produced, Gratian, of course, decided in favor of the new Papal law. And as during the subsequent study of the canon law, new contradictions came to light, the Popes gave new decisions, deciding, of course, in accordance with the principles of the forged Decretals. As these new decretals multiplied, it became necessary to reduce them to system. Hence in 1234, Gregory IX. employed the Dominican Raimund da Pennafort, to compile a new collection of decretals in five books, almost entirely composed of later decretals, and in accordance with the spirit of the forged Decretals. To this Boniface VIII. added a sixth book, in five parts. To these, five books of Clementine Constitutions, by Clement V., were added, and also certain Extravagantes of John XXII. and five books of Extravagantes Communes. Such was the spirit, such the origin, and such the progress and completion of the canon law. The leaven of the old canon law, retained in the Decretum of Gratian, so far as it was inconsistent with the new law, was purged out, and the papacy was placed on the basis on which it has since stood even to this day.

It is indeed a specimen of lying and forgery on a sublime scale ; and when we see all Christendom trembling before the frown of the Pope, and the intellect of all Europe engaged in studying and