The Historians' History of the World 08

The hierarchy, if not the whole clergy, had taken the lead in the disruption of the unity of the empire; they had abased the throne of Louis; they were for a short disastrous period now the victims of that abasement. Their wealth was their danger. They had become secular princes, they had become nobles, they had become vast landed proprietors. But during the civil wars it was not the persuasive voice, but the strong arm, which had authority; the mitre must bow before the helmet, the crosier before the sword. Not only the domains, the persons of the clergy had lost their sanctity. The persecution and oppression of the church and the clergy had reached a height unknown in former times.

An Extract from St. Augustine’s Psalter

It might occur to the most religious that for the sake of religion; it might occur to those to whom the dignity and interest of the sacerdotal order were their religion, that some effort must be made to reinvest the clergy in their imperilled sanctity. There must be some appeal against this secular, this ecclesiastical tyranny; and whither should appeal be? It could not be to the Scriptures, to the Gospel. It must be to ancient and venerable tradition, to the unrepealed, irrepealable law of the church; to remote and awful Rome. Rome must be proclaimed in an unusual, more emphatic manner, the eternal, immemorial court of appeal. The tradition must not rest on the comparatively recent names of Leo the Great, of Innocent the Great, of Siricius, or the right of appeal depend on the decree of the Council of Sardica. It must come down from the successors of St. Peter himself in unbroken succession. The whole clergy must have a perpetual, indefeasible sanctity of the same antiquity. So may the idea of this, to us it seems, monstrous fiction have dawned upon its author; himself may have implicitly believed that he asserted no prerogative for Rome which Rome herself had not claimed, which he did not think to be her right. It is even now asserted, perhaps can hardly be disproved, that the False Decretals advanced no pretensions in favour of the see of Rome which had not been heard before in some vague and indefinite, but not therefore less significant, language. The boldness of the act was in the new authority in which it arrayed these pretensions. The new code was enshrined, as it were, in a framework of deeply religious thought and language; it was introduced under the venerated name of Isidore of Seville; it was thus attached to the authentic work of Isidore, which had long enjoyed undisputed authority. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, as the most powerful, so, perhaps, the most learned transalpine ecclesiastic, who might at once have exposed the fiction, which he could hardly but know to be a fiction, co-operated more than anyone else to establish its authority. So long as he supposed it to advance or confirm his own power, he suppressed all intrusive doubts; he discovered too late that it was a trap (a mousetrap is his own undignified word) to catch unwary metropolitans. Hincmar was caught, beyond all hope of escape. In the appeal of Rothrad, bishop of Soissons, against Hincmar, metropolitan of Rheims, Pope Nicholas I at first alleges no word of the new decretals in favour of his right of appeal; he seemingly knows no older authority than that of Innocent, Leo, Siricius, and the Council of Sardica. The next year not merely is he fully master of the pseudo-Isidorian documents, but he taunts Hincmar with now calling in question, when it makes against him, authority which he was ready to acknowledge in confirmation of his own power. Hincmar is forced to the humiliation of submission. Rothrad, deposed by Hincmar, deposed by the Council of Senlis, is reinstated in his see.

This immediate, if somewhat cautious, adoption of the fiction, unquestionably not the forgery, by Pope Nicholas, appears less capable of charitable palliation than the original invention. Nor did the successors of Nicholas betray any greater scruple in strengthening themselves by this welcome, and therefore only unsuspicious aid. It is impossible to deny that, at least by citing without reserve or hesitation, the Roman pontiffs gave their deliberate sanction to this great historic fraud.