[1] Distinguish "coy," affectedly shy or modest, from O. Fr. _coi_,
Lat. _quietus_, quiet.
DECREE (from the past participle, _decretus_, of Lat. _decernere_), in
earlier form _Decreet_, an authoritative decision having the force of
law; the judgment of a court of justice. In Roman law, a decree
(_decretum_) was the decision of the emperor, as the supreme judicial
officer, settling a case which had been referred to him. In
ecclesiastical law the term was given to a decision of an ecclesiastical
council settling a doubtful point of doctrine or discipline (cf. also
DECRETALS). In English law decree was more particularly the judgment of
a court of equity, but since the Judicature Acts the expression
"judgment" (q.v.) is employed in reference to the decisions of all the
divisions of the supreme court. A "decree _nisi_" is the conditional
order for a dissolution of marriage made by the divorce court, and it is
made "absolute" after six months (which period may, however, be
shortened) in the absence of sufficient cause shown to the contrary.
(See DIVORCE.) _Decreet arbitral_ is a Scottish phrase for the award of
an arbitrator.
DECRETALS (_Epistolae decretales_), the name (see DECREE above), which
is given in Canon Law to those letters of the pope which formulate
decisions in ecclesiastical law; they are generally given in answer to
consultations, but are sometimes due to the initiative of the popes.
These furnish, with the canons of the councils, the chief source of the
legislation of the church, and form the greater part of the _Corpus
Juris_. In this connexion they are dealt with in the article on Canon
Law (q.v.).
_The False Decretals._ A special interest, however, attaches to the
celebrated collection known by this name. This collection, indeed,
comprises at least as many canons of councils as decretals, and the
decretals contained in it are not all forgeries. It is an amplification
and interpolation, by means of spurious decretals, of the canonical
collection in use in the Church of Spain in the 8th century, all the
documents in which are perfectly authentic. With these amplifications,
the collection dates from the middle of the 9th century. We shall give a
brief account of its contents, its history and its influence on canon
law.
The author assumes the name of Isidore, evidently the archbishop of
Seville, who was credited with a preponderating part in the compilation
of the _Hispana_; he takes in addition the surname of Mercator, perhaps
because he has made use of two passages of Marius Mercator. Hence the
custom of alluding to the author of the collection under the name of the
pseudo-Isidore.
The collection itself is divided into three parts. The first, which is
entirely spurious, contains, after the preface and various introductory
sections, seventy letters attributed to the popes of the first three
centuries, up to the council of Nicaea, i.e. up to but not including St
Silvester; all these letters are a fabrication of the pseudo-Isidore,
except two spurious letters of Clement, which were already known. The
second part is the collection of councils, classified according to their
regions, as it figures in the _Hispana_; the few spurious pieces which
are added, and notably the famous Donation of Constantine, were already
in existence. In the third part the author continues the series of
decretals which he had interrupted at the council of Nicaea. But as the
collection of authentic decretals does not begin till Siricius (385),
the pseudo-Isidore first forges thirty letters, which he attributes to
the popes from Silvester to Damasus; after this he includes the
authentic decretals, with the intermixture of thirty-five apocryphal
ones, generally given under the name of those popes who were not
represented in the authentic collection, but sometimes also under the
names of the others, for example, Damasus, St Leo, Vigilius and St
Gregory; with one or two exceptions he does not interpolate genuine
decretals. The series stops at St Gregory the Great (d. 604), except for
one letter of Gregory II. (715-731). The forged letters are not, for the
most part, entirely composed of fresh material; the author draws his
inspiration from the notices on each of the popes given in the _Liber
Pontificalis_; he inserts whole passages from ecclesiastical writers;
and he antedates the evidences of a discipline which actually existed;
so it is by no means all invented.
Thus the authentic elements were calculated to serve as a passport for
the forgeries, which were, moreover, quite skilfully composed. In fact,
the collection thus blended was passed from hand to hand without meeting
with any opposition. At most all that was asked was whether those
decretals which did not appear in the _Liber canonum_ (the collection of
Dionysius Exiguus, accepted in France) had the force of law, but Pope
Nicholas having answered that all the pontifical letters had the same
authority (see _Decr. Gra._ Dist. xix. c. 1), they were henceforward
accepted, and passed in turn into the later canonical collections. No
doubts found an expression until the 15th century, when Cardinal
Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) and Juan Torquemada (d. 1468) freely
expressed their suspicions. More than one scholar of the 16th century,
George Cassander, Erasmus, and the two editors of the _Decretum_ of
Gratian, Dumoulin (d. 1568) and Le Conte (d. 1577), decisively rejected
the False Decretals. This contention was again upheld, in the form of a
violent polemic against the papacy, by the Centuriators of Magdeburg
(_Ecclesiastica historia_, Basel, 1559-1574); the attempt at refutation
by the Jesuit Torres (_Adversus Centur. Magdeburg. libri quinque_,
Florence, 1572) provoked a violent rejoinder from the Protestant
minister David Blondel (_Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus rapulantes_,
Geneva, 1620). Since then, the conclusion has been accepted, and all
researches have been of an almost exclusively historical character. One
by one the details are being precisely determined, and the question may
now almost be said to be settled.
Date.
In the first place, an exact determination of the date of the collection
has been arrived at. On the one hand, it cannot go back further than
847, the date of the False Capitularies, with which the author of the
False Decretals was acquainted.[1] On the other hand, in a letter of
Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, written in 858, and in the synodical letter
of the council of Quierzy in 857 are to be found quotations which are
certainly from these false decretals; and further, an undoubted allusion
in the statutes given by Hincmar to his diocese on the 1st of November
852. The composition of the collection must then be dated approximately
at 850.
Aim of the author.
The object which the forger had in view is clearly stated in his
preface; the reform of the canon law, or rather its better application.
But, again, in what particular respects he wishes it to be reformed can
be best deduced from certain preponderant ideas which make themselves
felt in the apocryphal documents. He constantly harps upon accusations
brought against bishops and the way they were judged; his wish is to
prevent them from being unjustly accused, deposed or deprived of their
sees; to this end he multiplies the safeguards of procedure, and secures
the right of appeal to the pope and the possibility of restoring bishops
to their sees. His object, too, was to protect the property, as well as
the persons, of the clergy against the encroachments of the temporal
power. In the second place, Isidore wishes to increase the strength and
cohesion of the churches; he tries to give absolute stability to the
diocese and the ecclesiastical province; he reinforces the rights of the
bishop and his comprovincials, while he initiates a determined campaign
against the _chorepiscopi_; finally, as the keystone of the arch he
places the papacy. These aims are most laudable, and in no way
subversive; but the author must have had some particular reasons for
emphasizing these questions rather than others; and the examination of
these reasons may help us to determine the nationality of this
collection.
Nationality of the collection.
The name of Isidore usurped by the author at first led to the
supposition that the False Decretals originated in Spain; this opinion
no longer meets with any support; it is enough to point out that there
is no Spanish manuscript of the collection, at least until the 13th
century. In the 16th century the Protestants, who wished to represent
the forgeries in the light of an attempt in favour of the papacy,
ascribed the origin of the False Decretals to Rome, but neither the
manuscript tradition nor the facts confirm this view, which is nowadays
entirely abandoned. Everybody is agreed in placing the origin of the
False Decretals within the Frankish empire. Within these limits, three
different theories have successively arisen: "At first it was thought
that Isidore's domicile could be fixed in the province of Mainz, it is
now about fifty years ago that the balance of opinion was turned in
favour of the province of Reims; and now, after the lapse of about
twenty years, several authors have suggested the province of Tours" (P.
Fournier, _Etude sur les Fausses Decretales_). In favour of Mainz,
especial stress was laid on the fact that it was the country of
Benedictus Levita, the compiler of the False Capitularies, to which the
False Decretals are closely related. But Benedict, the deacon of Otgar
of Mainz, is as much of a hypothetical personage as Isidorus Mercator;
moreover, in the middle of the 9th century the condition of the province
of Mainz was not disturbed, nor were the _chorepiscopi_ menaced. In
favour of Reims, it has been pointed out that it was there that the
first judicial use of the False Decretals is recorded, in the trials of
Rothad, bishop of Soissons (d. 869), and of Hincmar the younger, bishop
of Laon (d. c. 882); and an application of the axiom has been attempted:
_Is fecit cui prodest_. But both these trials took place later than 852,
at which date the existence of the collection is an established fact;
the texts of it were used, but they were in existence before. Between
847 and 852, the province of Reims was disturbed by another affair, that
of the clergy ordained by Ebbo at the time of his short restoration to
the see of Reims, in 840-841; these clerics, Vulfadus (afterwards
archbishop of Bourges), and a few others, had been suspended by Hincmar
on his election in 845. But the affair of Ebbo's clergy did not become
critical till the council of Soissons in 853; up till then these clergy
had, so far as we know, produced no documents, and the citations from
the False Decretals made in their later writings do not prove that they
had forged them. Moreover, Hincmar would not have cited the forged
letters of the popes in 852; above all, this theory would not explain
the chief preoccupation of the forger, which is to protect bishops
against unjust judgments and depositions. We must, then, look for
conditions in which the bishops were concerned. It is precisely this
which has suggested the province of Tours. Brittany, which was dependent
on the province of Tours, had just for a time recovered its
independence, thanks to its duke Nominoe. The struggle between the two
nationalities, the Celt and the Frank, found a reflexion in the sphere
of religion. The Breton bishops were for the most part abbots of
monasteries, who had but little consideration for the territorial limits
of the civitates; and many of the religious usages of the Bretons
differed profoundly from those of the Franks. Charlemagne had divided up
the Breton dioceses and established in them Frankish bishops. Nominoe
hastened to depose the four Frankish bishops, after wringing from them
by force confessions of simony; he then established a metropolitan see
at Dol. Hence arose incessant complaints on the part of the dispossessed
bishops, of the metropolitan of Tours, and his suffragans, notably those
of Angers and Le Mans, which were more exposed than the others to the
incursions of the Bretons; and this gave rise to numerous papal letters,
and all this throughout a period of thirty years. There were requests
that the bishops should be judged according to the rules, protests
against the interlopers, demands for the restoration of the bishops to
their sees. These circumstances fall in perfectly with the questions
about which, as we have pointed out, the pseudo-Isidore was mainly
concerned: the judgment of bishops, and the stability of the
ecclesiastical organizations.
In the province of Tours, attempts have been made to define more clearly
the centre of the forgeries, and the most recent authorities fix upon Le
Mans. The sole argument, though a very weighty one, is found in the
undeniable relation, revealed in an astonishing similarity both in
expressions and composition, which exists between these forgeries and
some other documents certainly fabricated at Le Mans, under the
episcopate of Aldric (832-856), notably the _Actus Pontificum Cenomanis
in urbe degentium_, in which there is no lack of forged documents. These
certainly bear the mark of the same hand.
Canonical influence.
Though we cannot admit that the False Decretals were composed in order
to enforce the rights of the papacy, we may at least consider whether
the popes did not make use of the False Decretals to support their
rights. It is certain that in 864 Rothad of Soissons took with him to
Rome, if not the collection, at least important extracts from the
pseudo-Isidore; M. Fournier has pointed out in the letters of the pope
of that time, "a literary influence, which is shown in the choice of
expressions and metaphors," notably in those passages relating to the
_restitutio spolii_; but he concludes by affirming that the ideas and
acts of Nicholas were not modified by the new collection: even before
864 he acted in affairs concerning bishops, e.g. in the case of the
Breton bishops or the adversaries of Photius, patriarch of
Constantinople, exactly as he acted later; all that can be said is that
the False Decretals, though not expressly cited by the pope, "led him to
accentuate still further the arguments which he drew from the decrees of
his predecessors," notably with regard to the _exceptio spolii_. In the
papal letters of the end of the 9th and the whole of the 10th century,
only two or three insignificant citations of the pseudo-Isidore have
been pointed out; the use of the pseudo-Isidorian forged documents did
not become prevalent at Rome till about the middle of the 11th century,
in consequence of the circulation of the canonical collections in which
they figured; but nobody then thought of casting any doubts on the
authenticity of those documents. One thing only is established, and this
may be said to have been the real effect of the False Decretals, namely,
the powerful impulse which they gave in the Frankish territories to the
movement towards centralization round the see of Rome, and the legal
obstacles which they opposed to unjust proceedings against the bishops.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The best edition is that of P. Hinschius, _Decretales
pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni_ (Leipzig, 1863). In it the
authentic texts are printed in two columns, the forgeries across the
whole width of the page; an important preface of ccxxviii. pages
contains, besides the classification of the MSS., a profound study of
the sources and other questions bearing on the collection. After the
works cited above, the following dissertations should be noted.
Placing the origin of the False Decretals at Rome is: A. Theiner, _De
pseudo-Isidoriana canonum collectione_ (Breslau, 1827); at Mainz, the
brothers Ballerini, _De antiquis collectionibus et collectoribus
canonum_, iii. (_S. Leonis opera_, t. iii.; Migne, _Patrologia Lat._
t. 56); Blascus, _De coll. canonum Isidori Mercatoris_ (Naples, 1760);
Wasserschleben, _Beitrage zur Geschichte der falschen Dekretalen_
(Breslau, 1844); in the province of Reims: Weizsacker, "Die
pseudoisidorianische Frage," in the _Histor. Zeitschrift_ of Sybel
(1860); Hinschius, Preface, p. ccviii.; A. Tardif, _Histoire des
sources du droit canonique_ (Paris, 1887); Schneider, _Die Lehre der
Kirchenrechtsquellen_ (Regensburg, 1892). An excellent resume of the
question; seems more favourable to Le Mans in the article of the
_Kirchenlexicon_ of Wetzer and Welte (2nd ed.); F. Lot, _Etudes sur le
regne de Hugues Capet_ (Paris, 1903); Lesne, _La Hierarchie episcopale
en Gaule et Germanie_ (Paris, 1905); for the province of Tours and Le
Mans: B. Simson, _Die Entstehung der pseudoisidor. Falschungen in Le
Mans_ (Leipzig, 1886. It is he who pointed out the connexion with the
forgeries of Le Mans); especially Paul Fournier, "La Question des
fausses decretales," in the _Nouvelle Revue historique de droit
francais et etranger_ (1887, 1888); in the _Congres internat. des
savants cathol._ t. ii.; "Etude sur les fausses decretales," in _Revue
d'histoire ecclesiastique de Louvain_ (1906, 1907), to which the above
article is greatly indebted. (A. Bo.*)