270 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
3. The aim of Pseudo-Isidor is, by such a collection of autho ritative decisions to protect the clergy against the secular power and against moral degeneracy. The power of the metropolitans is rather lowered in order to secure to the pope the definitive sentence in the trials of bishops. But it is manifestly wrong if older writers have put the chief aim of the work in the elevation of the papacy. The papacy appears rather as a means for the protection of episcopacy in its conflict with the civil government. It is the supreme guarantee of the rights of the bishops.
4. The genuineness of Pseudo-Isidor was not doubted during the middle ages (Hincmar only denied the legal application to the French church), but is now universally given up by Roman Catholic as well as Protestant historians.
The forgery is apparent. It is inconceivable that Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in Rome, should have been ignorant of such a large number of papal letters. The collection moreover is full of anachronisms : Roman bishops of the second and third centu ries write in the Frankish Latin of the ninth century on doctri nal topics in the spirit of the post-Mcene orthodoxy and on mediaeval relations in church and state ; they quote the Bible after the version of Jerome as amended under Charlemagne ; Victor addresses Theophilus of Alexandria, who lived two hun dred years later, on the paschal controversies of the second century.1
The Donation of Constantine, which is incorporated in this collection, is an older forgery, and exists also in several Greek texts. It affirms that Constantine, when he was baptized by
1 The forgery was first suggested by Nicolaus de Cusa, in the fifteenth century, and Calvin (Inst. IV. 7, 11, 20), and then proved by the Magdeburg Centuries, and more conclusively by the Calvinistic divine David Blondel (1628) against the attempted vindication of the Jesuit Torres (Turrianus, 1572). The brothers Ballerini, Baronius, Bellarmin, Theiner, Walter, Mohler, Hefele, and other Roman Catholic scholars admit the forgery, but usually try to mitigate it and to underrate the originality and influence of Pseudo-Isidor. Some Protestant divines have erred in the opposite direction (as Richter justly observes, I. c. p. 117).
2 GO. THE PSEUDO-ISIDORIAN DECRETALS. 271
pope Sylvester, A. D. 324 (lie was not baptized till 337, by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicoraedia), presented him with the .Lateran palace and all imperial insignia, together with the Roman and Italian territory.1 The object of this forgery was to antedate by five centuries the temporal power of the papacy, which rests on the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne.2 The only foundation in fact is the donation of the Lateran palace, which was originally the palace of the Lateran family, then of the emperors, and last of the popes. The wife of Coustautine, Fatista, resided in it, and on the transfer of the seat of empire to Constantinople, he left it to Sylvester, as the chief of the Roman clergy and nobility. Hence it contains to this day the pontifical throne with the inscription : " Htcc cst papalis scdcs ct pontifi cal is" There the pope takes possession of the see of Rome. But the whole history of Constantino and his successors shows conclusively that they had no idea of transferring any part of their temporal sovereignty to the Roman pontiff.
5. The authorship must be assigned to some ecclesiastic of the Frankish church, probably of the diocese of Rheims, between 847 and 865 (or 857), but scholars differ as to the writer.3
1 " Dominis meis beatissimis Pcfro ct Panto, etpcr eos etiam bcato S>/h'cstro Patri nostro summo pontijici, et univcrsalis urbis Romce papos, et omnibus cjus succcssoribus pontificibus • . • conccdimus palatium imperil nostri Lateranensc . . . dcinde diadenia, videlicet coronam capitis nottri sininlqiic pallium, vcl mitram . . . ct omnia impcrialia indumenta . . . ct imperialia xccptra . . . et omnem possessioncm impcrialis cuhninis ct gloriam potestatis nostrce. . . Unde ut pontificalis apex non vilcsmt, sed ni'igis amplius quani terreni imperil dignitas ct glorias potentia decoretur, ecce turn palntinm nostrum, ut prcedictum cst, quamque, Romnnw vobis ct omnes Jtalio' sen occidcntcdium regionnm provincias, loca et ch'itatcs beatissimo pontijici nostro, Si/h'estro univcrsali pap<v, conccdimns atqne relinqiiimtis" In Mignc, Tom. 130, p. 249 sq.
2 That Constantino made donations to Sylvester on occasion of his pretended baptism is related first in the Acta Sylre^tri, then by Hadrian I. in a letter to Charlemagne (780). In the ninth century the spurious document appeared. The spuriousness was perceived as early as 999 by the emperor Otho III. and proven by Laurcntius Valla about 1440 in DC falso credits et cmcntita Constantini donatione. The document is universally given up as a fiction, though Baronius defended the donation itself.
8 The following persons have been suggested as authors : Benedictus Levita