Excerpt from The History and Motives of Literary Forgeries: Being the Chancellor's English Essay for 1891

The pseudo-isidorian Decretals appeared about the middle of the ninth century. A decretal is an authoritative answer given by the Pope in reply to some question on matters of doctrine, discipline or ritual. Such deliverances had been gathered together from early times, and there was a famous Spanish collection of the fourth century. The forgery also bore the name of a Spaniard, Isidore of Seville, who died in 636 a.d. It contained, besides some authentic documents, the Donation of Constantine, and a number of others either spurious or interpolated. They extended from the papacy of St. Clement in the first century to that of Gregory in the eighth, and covered the whole ground of orthodox behaviour and belief. Their genuineness was first impugned by Nicholas of Cusa, and was afterwards made the subject of an attack by Calvin. The object of the writer must have been at once to protect the clergy from the secular power and to preserve them from moral decay he favours the interests of the bishops, rather than that of the Pope. He has been supposed to be Benedictus Levita of Mayence all that it is safe to assert is that the work was probably done by some F rankish ecclesiastic or ecclesiastics, shortly before it was made public t.

The remaining forgeries of the Middle Ages resemble in character those already discussed. They are generally of monkish origin, and designed to secure dignities or posses sions to some religious community. Since the monks were the sole possessors of sufficient learning to read parchments, they were able to manipulate them as they pleased, without much fear of detection. Thus the inmates of Durham Priory, when summoned to Rome in the beginning of the thirteenth century for the decision of the disputes between them and Bishop de Marisco, were able to produce an elaborate series of documents in support of their claims. These professed to date from the foundation of the priory in 1093, but to the eye of the modern historian they are ap parent forgeries, fabricated for the purposes of the trial 1.

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