DECRETALS

The name given to the letters of popes, being in answer to questions proposed to them by some bishop or ecclesiastical judge, or even particular person, in which they determined busine , as they thought fit. In the ninth century there appeared a collection of decretal letters ascribed to more than thirty popes, succeeding each other in the first three centuries. The author is unknown, but they are generally ascribed to a certain Isidore Mercat or, and pa usually under his name. Their uniform tendency is to exalt papal power, and exactly on those points for which no sanction can be alleged from Scripture, or from the early periods of any genuine Church history; such as supreme authority over bishops, the receiving appeals from all parts of the world, and the reservation of causes for the hearing of the Roman see. In the words of Fleury, “They inflicted an irreparable wound on the discipline of the Church, by the new maxims which they introduced in regard to the judgment of bishops and the authority of the pope.” Dr. Barrow mentions them among the chief causes by which the power of the bishop of Rome has been advanced: “The forgery of the decretal epistles (wherein the ancient popes are made expre ly to speak and act according to some of his highest pretences, devised long after their times, and which they never thought of, good men) did hugely conduce to his purpose; authorizing his encroachments by the suffrage of ancient doctrine and practice.” “Upon these spurious decretals,” (writes the historian of the middle ages,) “was built the great fabric of papal supremacy over the different national Churches: a fabric which has stood after its foundation crumbled beneath it; for no one has pretended to deny, during the last two centuries, that the imposture is too palpable for any but the most ignorant ages to credit.” Their effect was, to diminish the authority of metropolitans and provincial synods, by allowing to an accused bishop, not only the right of appeal, but the power also of removing any proce into the supreme court at Rome. And on this account it has been supposed that the decrees were forged by some bishop who desired to reduce the power of his immediate superior. But whoever may have been the author, and whatever the origin, there is no doubt that the popes became, from the first, their most strenuous defenders. The best account of these forgeries is to be found in the posthumous work of Van Espen, Com men tar i us in Jus Novum Can on i cum, part ii. di . 1, p. 451–475. See also De Marca, De Concord. iii. c. 4, 5, p. 242; Natalis Alexandri Hist. Eccles. sæc. i. di . 13, p. 213; Coci Censura quorundam Scrip to rum, ., pa im.— Sanders on. Robins, Evidence of Scripture against the Roman Church.