FALSE
779
FALSE
Council of Soissons in 863, he wishes to assert his right
to intervene in the trials of bishops, even when there
was no question of an appeal to Rome. This amounted
to an assertion of the absolute power of the Holy See,
a claim he might have supported by many solid argu-
ments; yet what is our surprise to find him claiming
in support thereof the canons of the Council of Sar-
dica, which say nothing of the sort. The Council of
Sardica (343) intended very particularly to safe-
guard the legal rights of bishops who were being
persecuted; that was its main object, and it by no
means intended to define the rights of Rome in mat-
ters of the kind. These canons mark one of the early
steps in the question of church discipline.
The claim of Nicholas I ought to have been sup- ported by texts from the fifth and sixth centuries; and in the case in quest ion his object was much more credit- able than the reasons he gave in support of it. On the whole, then, from the beginning of his pontificate, and before he knew of the Isidorian te.xts, Nicholas I was in full sympathy with the ideas expressed therein. Acquaintance with those texts did not .seriously affect him. Yet, in his letter to the Frankish bishops, dated 22 Januarj', 865, apropos of Rothade, he puts the the- ory on appeals much after the manner in which Isidore had put it; so much so, that one writer speaks of the parjum isidorien that letter exliales (Fournier). If the letters of the early popes (i. e. the decretals of Isi- dore) are not explicitly quoted, they are at least al- luded to. But from all that has been said we must conclude that Nicholas I took none of his essential ideas from Isidore, and that any influence he did exer- cise on that pope was too insignificant to be taken into account in a pontificate so filled with enterprises of daring and of moment. And this conclusion in Nicholas's case gives us more or less *he answer to the further question as to how far the apocrypha influence the subsequent historj' of the Church. As we have seen, even without Isidore, Nicholas I would have brought about the same mode of government. And it has been well said that the principles of Nicholas I were those of Gregory VII and of the great popes of the Middle Ages; that is to say, Isidore or no Isidore, Gregory VII and Innocent III would not have acted otherwise than they did. As a matter of history, such a conclusion is quite justifiable, and as far as apolo- getics go it is quite sufficient answer. In the domain of theology and canon law, Isidore's forgeries never had any serious consequences.
Having said this, we are free to confess frankly that in lesser spheres than those of theology and law, the false decretals have not always exercised a fortunate influence. On history, for instance, their influence was baneful. No doubt they do not bear all the blame for the distorted and legendary view the Mid- dle Ages had of ecclesiastical antiquity. During the Middle .\ges it was almost an impossibility to consult all the sources of information, and it was difficult to check and control those at hand. It was not easy to distinguish genuine documents from apocrj-phal ones. And this difficulty, which was the great stumbling- block of medieval culture, would have been always an obstacle to the progress of historical study. It must be admitted tliat Isidore's forgeries increased the diffi- culty tQl it became almost insurmountable. The for- geries blurred the whole historical perspective. Cus- toms and methods proper to the ninth century stood out in relief side by side with the discipline of the first centuries of the Church. .And, as a consequence, the Middle Ages knew verj' little concerning the historical growth of the rights of the papacy during those first centuries. Its view of antiquity was a very simple one, and perhaps it was just as well for the systematiz- ing of theology. In the main, it was no easy matter to develop a historical sen.se diiring the Mi<ldle Ages. The absence of such a sense is all the more remarkable when we consider what civilization owes the Middle
Ages in the realms of philosophy, theologj', and archi-
tecture.
Pl.\ce of Origin. — We have purposely reserved this question for the end. In the first place, it is of lesser importance than the others; and in the second, whereas critics are for the most part in agreement con- cerning the questions we have been treating, they are divided into two parties on this final question. For a time the decretals were thought to have been forged at Mainz, but that theory has been altogether aban- doned, and now the disputed honour lies between Reims and Le Mans in the province of Tours. Here are the arguments put forth on both sides. The ma- jority of German critics and a section of those in France favour Reims as the place where the decretals originated. According to them, Isidore's legislation concerning the trial of bishops was intended to sup- port the cause of Ebbon, Archbishop of Reims, and to facilitate the retrial of that dignitary. Ebbon had been deposed in 83.7 for political reasons. He was re- instated at Reims in 840 ; he had to leave his see in 845 and ended his career in 851 as Bishop of Hildes- heim. According to the critics, a comparison between his case and Isidore's procedure at trials shows such agreement that it must have been intentional; thus, for instance, the provisional restoration of the accused and dispos-sessed bishop, the arrest of the bishop, the possibility of a translation from one see to another (from Reims to Hildesheim). Besides this, it was in the province of Reims the forgeries first appeared, and from there they were carried to Rome by Rothade of Soissons; then, too, it was in this same dioce.se that, ever since Ebbon's time, the struggle against chore- piscopi was most intense. Isidore's opposition to archiepLscopal authority is also very marked; and, according to the critics, the province of Reims was the birthplace of that opposition during the years that in- tervened between Ebbon's deposition (838-841) and Hincmar's nomination (845); hence the conclusion that the forgeries were committed between 847 and 852 by partisans of Ebbon, and probably by clerics ordained by him in 841, and against whose ordination Hincmar, Ebbon's successor, raised objections soon after his election. This cumulative mass of argument is impressive ; but to be really conclusive it would be necessary to prove that Isidore's legislation was in- voked by these clerics against their archbishop, before his death in 851 or at least before 853, when the Coun- cil of Soissons was held, in which the ordinations held by Ebbon at Reims in 841 after hLs restoration were declared invalitl. No such proof is forthcoming. The documents in favour of Ebbon in which is discov- ered a similarity to the teaching of the apocrj-pha are later than 853. At that time Isidore's work had be- gun to spread. That it was known and used at Reims after 853 Ls not at all surprising and is no proof of its having been composed in the Province of Reims. Furthermore, if these apocrj'pha had been composed in favour of Ebbon and of the clerics he ordained, then the question of the validity of ordinations performed by a deposed bishop ought to have been treated of. Yet not a word is said concerning it; though, on the other hand, Isidore submits all questions concerning clerics up to and including priests to the metropolitan council and to the primates. No mention is made of an appeal by priests to Rome, an omission that is in- expUcable if the documents were written in favour of the clerics ordained by Ebbon, and who are supposed to have been the actual writers. Add to this that the period 847-852, when the forgery was committed, was for the clerics of Reims, Ebljon's partisans, a period pending appeal and a time of entente with Hincmar. For the moment, they had no reason to need such a weapon against the archbishop. La.stly, P. Fournier points out that the theory which makes Reims the .scene of the forgery in opposition to Hincmar is at variance with what we know of Hincmar's attitude.
