Canon Law and Decretals

Canon Law and Decretals

In the beginning, Canon Law consisted of the decrees or canons of the various Church Councils or synods of bishops. Anglican and Orthodox churches still hold to this original pattern. The first of these councils was the council held at Jerusalem in Acts 15. Canons from one regional council were often received and accepted by other regional councils. This resulted in a homogeneity of canon law among all the churches.Various collections of these conciliar canons existed in the early centuries of the Church.

The collection of the 17th Council of Carthage (419), was soon accepted in all of the East and West.
© Britannica CD 2000, Canon Law, Development of Canon Law in the West.

Because conciliar activity was particularly intense in Spain, the collection known as the Hispana (later called the Isidoriana after St. Isidore of Seville) proved to be outstanding.
© Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Canon Law

In Spain the canons of Nicaea I (325) and Chalcedon (451), African and south Gallican canons, and Roman decretals were taken over, as well as their own canons, but the later Hispana (Spanish collection) crowded out all earlier collections.
© Britannica CD 2000, Canon Law, Development of Canon Law in the West

Britannica does not indicate at what period the "later Hispana" began to incorporate Roman Decretals alongside conciliar canons, nor at what time the Hispana began to be the preferred collection. But Encyclopedia Encarta indicates that it was Dionysius Exiguus, in the 6th century that translated into Latin the canons of the Eastern councils, and added to them 39 papal decretals.

In the West, the most important canonical collection of the early centuries was made in the 6th century by Dionysius Exiguus. He translated into Latin the canons of the Eastern councils and added 39 papal decretals. The rulings of the popes were thus put on a level with conciliar law.
© Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Canon Law

After the forged Donation of Constantine appeared in the middle of the eighth century and gave a semblance of legitimacy to the presumptions of the bishop of Rome, another forgery, the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals (or, False Decretals), appeared later in the eighth or in the ninth century to strengthen that semblance.

A decretal, as the term is used here, is a papal decree or edict, or, according to Mirriam-Webster: a papal letter giving an authoritative decision on a point of canon law.

During the chaotic confusion under the Carolingians, in the middle of the ninth century, a mysterious book made its appearance, which gave legal expression to the popular opinion of the papacy, raised and strengthened its power more than any other agency, and forms to a large extent the basis of the canon law of the church of Rome. This is a collection of ecclesiastical laws under the false name of bishop Isidor of Seville (died 636), hence called the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals....
¶ Fictitious documents, canons, and decretals were nothing new; but the Pseudo-Isidorian collection is the most colossal and effective fraud known in the history of ecclesiastical literature.
History of the Christian Church, by Phillip Schaff, Volume IV, Chapter IV, § 60

This desire to unite Christendom under the Pope gave meaning and significance to the Forged Decretals bearing the name of Isidore, which formed the legal basis of the Papal monarchy. This forgery did not come from Rome, but from the land of the Western Franks. It set forth a collection of pretended decrees of early councils and letters of early Popes, which exalted the power of the bishops, and at the same time subjected them to the supervision of the Pope. The Pope was set forth as universal bishop of the Church whose confirmation was needed for the decrees of any council. The importance of the forgery lay in the fact that it represented the ideal of the future as a fact of the past, and displayed the Papal primacy as an original institution of the Church of Christ.
A History of the Papacy, From the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, by M. Creighton, Vol. I, pp. 13-14

Henry Hart Milman places the origin of these False Decretals in the bishopric of Nicholas I (858-867):

But this … was not all which the Roman See owes to Nicolas I; she owes the questionable boon of the recognition of the False Decretals as the law of the Church. Nicolas I not only saw during his pontificate the famous False Decretals take their place in the jurisprudence of Latin Christendom; if he did not promulgate, he assumed them as authentic documents; he gave them the weight of the papal sanction…
¶ Up to this period the Decretals … according to the authorised or common collection of Dionysius, commenced with Pope Siricius, towards the close of the fourth century. To the collection of Dionysius was added that of the authentic councils, which bore the name of Isidore of Seville. On a sudden was promulgated … a new Code, which to the former authentic documents added fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades, and the donation of Constantine; and in the third part, among the decrees of the Popes and of the councils from Sylvester to Gregory II, thirty-nine false decrees, and the acts of several unauthentic councils. (pp. 190-91)
¶ … Here was a long, continuous, unbroken series of letters, an accumulated mass of decrees of councils, of which the archives of Rome could show no vestige, of which the traditions of Rome were altogether silent: yet is there no holy indignation at fraud, no lofty reproof of those who dared to seat themselves in the pontifical chair and speak in the names of Pope after Pope. There is a deliberate, artful vindication of their authority. Reasons are alleged from which it is impossible to suppose that Nicolas himself believed their validity, on account of their acknowledged absence from the Roman archives. Nor did the successors of Nicolas 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. (p. 198, Millman, citing Nicolai Epist. ad Episcopos Galliæ. Mansi, xv. 693.)
History of Latin Christianity fourth edition (1883), Vol 3 (Book V), pp. 190-91, 198 by Henry Hart Milman

Most reference works place the origin of the False Decretals in the ninth century. However, Abbe Guette, in The Papacy, chapter V, places their origin toward the end of the eighth century:

Here is language quite new on the part of Roman bishops, but henceforth destined to become habitual with them. It dates from 785; that is, from the same year when Adrian delivered to Ingelramn, Bishop of Metz, the collection of the False Decretals. footnote V-56 There is something highly significant in this coincidence. Was it Adrian himself who authorized this work of forgery?

We do not know; but it is an incontestable fact that it was in Rome itself under the pontificate of Adrian, and in the year in which he wrote so haughtily to the Emperor of the East, that this new code of the Papacy is first mentioned in history. Adrian is the true creator of the modern Papacy. Not finding in the traditions of the Church the documents necessary to support his ambitious views, he rested them upon apocryphal documents written to suit the occasion, and to legalize all future usurpations of the Roman see. Adrian knew that the Decretals contained in the code of Ingelramn were false. For he had already given, ten years before, to Charles, King of the Franks, a code of the ancient canons, identical with the generally received collection of Dionysius Exiguus. It was, therefore, between the years 775 and 785 that the False Decretals were composed.

And Abbe Guette indicates in footnote V-56 of The Papacy, ¶¶ 3-4, that it was at the beginning of the seventh century that Isidore of Seville undertook to complete the collection of Dionysius Exiguus—and that Isidore's collection was but little known—only first appearing in 785, having already been corrupted with interpolated forged decretals by the hand of an unknown forger. This corrupted collection also included the forged Donation of Constantine.

The collection contains (1) the letters of the popes preceding the Council of Nicaea (325) from Clement I to Miltiades, all of which are forgeries; (2) a collection of the decrees of councils, most of which are genuine, though the forged Donation of Constantine is included; (3) a large collection of letters of the popes from Sylvester I (died 335) to Gregory II (died 731), among which there are more than 40 falsifications.
© Britannica CD 2000, False Decretals

Not only did the collection contain a large number of outright forgeries, but many of those parts of the collection that were genuine were altered.

The False Decretals have gained their chief fame because they were one of the great forgeries of history. Included in the collection are 60 letters or decrees of popes from Clement I to Melchiades (d. 314), of which 58 are forged; an original essay on the early church and the Council of Nicaea, with canons of 54 councils, of which all canons but one are authentic or were accepted as authentic long before the author's time; and a collection of papal letters from the 4th to 8th cent., of which the majority are authentic. Even in these sections, however, there has been tampering with the text. The forgeries are supported by liberal interlarding with quotations from authentic letters and by attribution to popes whose letters were known to be lost. Even many of the genuine letters in the collection show evidence of tampering. The False Decretals were completely exposed in the 16th century.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, © 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press.

Because these forged documents were accepted as genuine, they greatly impacted the views of the Church, and lent substance to the pretentions and usurpations of the papacy:

The effect of the False Decretals was great in the Middle Ages. They were accepted to some extent by the papacy in support of its age-old claims. By incorporation and quotation in the Decretum of Gratian, the False Decretals received a definite authority in textbooks of canon law in the Middle Ages.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, © 1994, 2000, Columbia University Press.

The False Decretals were so extensively circulated in the West, that they were everwhere received, and particularly at Rome, as authentic.
The Papacy, by Abbe Guette, Chapter V, footnote 56

If we want to know what share these letters had in the building of the Roman fabric we have only to look at the Canon Law. The ‘Decretum’ of Gratian quotes three hundred and twenty-four times epistles of the popes of the first four centuries; and of these three hundred and twenty-four quotations, three hundred and thirteen are from the letters which are now universally known to be spurious.
The Infallibility of the church, by George Salmon, Part I, Infallibility, The False Decretals, © January 1997 second printing

Charles the Bald ... was crowned King of Lorraine with the consent of the people, and by the bishops of the kingdom. Pope Adrian was greatly incensed. He declared that all who should assist Charles in his diabolical usurpation "would fall under anathema, and be given up to the companions of the devil."... While he did not accomplish anything by this impertinent intermeddling with the affairs of a government over which he had no legal control, yet he exhibited the purpose to interpose his pontifical power between Charles and his subjects, and thus to make himself master of their temporal affairs. That he did it under the claim of authority assumed by previous popes, and affirmed by the False Decretals, there is no reason to doubt. Milman says, "He quoted against the king the irrefragable authority of passages from the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals" (Milman, vol iii., p.76)—that is, from the pretended letters of Popes Lucius and Stephen. And thus these miserable forgeries began early to bear their natural fruit. So strongly did Adrian rely upon them to sustain his presumptuous demands, that he ventured to censure Charles for having dared to insult his pontifical authority, and for not having prostrated himself at the feet of his legates.
¶ It took many years of severe struggle on the part of the popes to consummate it, by the abolition of the old and the introduction of the new ecclesiastical system founded upon the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. It required the combined intellect, courage, and unbending will of the three great popes, Gregory VII, Alexander III, and Innocent III, to do what all the other popes were unable to acomplish; that is, to elevate the papacy above all the nations, and place emperors and kings at their feet.
The Papacy and the Civil Power (1876), by R. W. Thompson, published by Harper, pp. 394-395, 398

The False Decretals do not merely assert the supremacy of the Popes—the dignity and privileges of the Bishop of Rome—they comprehend the whole dogmatic system and discipline of the Church, the whole hierarchy from the highest to the lowest degree, their sanctity and immunities, their persecutions, their disputes, their right of appeal to Rome. They are full and minute on Church property, on its usurpation and spoliation; on ordinations; on the sacraments, on baptism, confirmation, marriage, the Eucharist; on fasts and festivals; the discovery of the cross, the discovery of the reliques of the Apostles; on the chrism, holy water, consecration of churches, blessing of the fruits of the field; on the sacred vessels and habiliments. Personal incidents are not wanting to give life and reality to the fiction. The whole is composed with an air of profound piety and reverence; a specious purity, and occasionally beauty, in the moral and religious tone. There are many axioms of seemingly sincere and vital religion. But for the too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the See of Rome and the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the See of Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrays itself in glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events and the lives of distinguished men—the former awakening keen and jealous suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the whole easy, clear, irrefragable;—the False Decretals might still have maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up by all; not a voice is raised in their favour; the utmost that is done by those who cannot suppress all regret at their explosion, is to palliate the guilt of the forger, to call in question or to weaken the influence which they had in their own day, and throughout the later history of Christianity.
¶ The author or authors of this most audacious and elaborate of pious frauds are unknown; the date and place of its compilation are driven into such narrow limits that they may be determined within a few years, and within a very circumscribed region. The False Decretals came not from Rome;(1) the time of their arrival at Rome, after they were known beyond the Alps, appears almost certain. In one year Nicolas I is apparently ignorant of their existence, the next he speaks of them with full knowledge. They contain words manifestly used at the Council of Paris, A.D. 829, consequently are of later date ; they were known to the Levite Benedict of Mentz,(2) who composed a supplement to the collection of capitularies by Ansegise, between A.D. 840-847. The city of Mentz is designated with nearly equal certainty as the place in which, if not actually composed, they were first promulgated as the canon law of Christendom.
[Notes: (1) Eichhorn almost alone, maintains their Roman origin.—Compare also Luden. Geschichte, v. p. 468, et seqq. (2) Walter appears to think Benedict the author of the work.]
History of Latin Christianity, fourth edition (1883), Vol 3 (Book V), pp. 192-93, by Henry Hart Milman

In the Catholic Church the same idea [of Papal absolutism and Infallibility], but transferred to the Bishop of Rome, is first clearly expressed in the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, that huge forgery of Papal letters, which appeared in the middle of the ninth century, and had for its object the completion of the independence of the Episcopal hierarchy from the State, and the absolute power of the Popes, as the legislators and judges of all Christendom. Here the most extravagant claims are put into the mouths of the early Popes, from Clement (91) to Damasus (384), in the barbarous French Latin of the Middle Ages, and with such numerous and glaring anachronisms as to force the conviction of fraud even upon Roman Catholic scholars. One of these sayings is: ‘The Roman Church remains to the end free from stain of heresy.’ Soon afterwards arose, in the same hierarchical interest, the legend of the donation of Constantine and his baptism by Pope Silvester, interpolations of the writings of the Fathers, especially Cyprian and Augustine, and a variety of fictions embodied in the Gesta Liberii and the Liber Pontificalis, and sanctioned by Gratianus (about 1150) in his Decretum, or collection of canons, which (as the first part of the Corpus juris canonici) became the code of laws for the whole Western Church, and exerted an extraordinary influence. By this series of pious frauds the medieval Papacy, which was the growth of ages, was represented to the faith of the Church as a primitive institution of Christ, clothed with absolute and perpetual authority.
¶ The Popes since Nicholas I (858-867), who exceeded all his predecessors in the boldness of his designs, freely used what the spirit of a hierarchical, superstitious, and uncritical age furnished them. They quoted the fictitious letters of their predecessors as genuine, the Sardican canon on appeals as a canon of Nicæa, and the interpolated sixth canon of Nicæa, 'the Roman Church always had the primacy,' of which there is not a syllable in the original; and nobody doubted them. Papal absolutism was in full vigor from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII. Scholastic divines, even Thomas Aquinas, deceived by these literary forgeries, began to defend Papal absolutism over the whole Church, and the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Florence (1439) sanctioned it, although the Greeks soon afterwards rejected the false union based upon such assumption.
The Vatican Decrees with A History of the Vatican Council, Etc. (1875), by W. E. Gladstone, M.P., and Philip Schaff, D.D., pp. 99-100

When, about 1150, these works of fraud were incorporated into Gratian's Decretum, or Concordance of Discordant Canons, they were received as authoritative by the Western (Roman) Church.

Gregory [VII] had gathered around him a school of canonists whose labours put into legal form the pretensions which he had advanced. The University of Bologna, which became the great centre of legal teaching throughout Western Europe, imbibed and extended the ideas of the Isidorian Decretals, and of the Hildebrandine Canonists. From Bologna issued in the middle of the twelfth century the Decretum of Gratian, which was accepted throughout the Middle Ages as the recognised code of canon law. It embodied all the forgeries which had been made in the interests of the Papacy, and carried to its logical consequences the Hildebrandine system. Moreover, the University of Paris, the centre of medieval theology, developed a system of theology and philosophy which gave full recognition to the Papal claims. In law and philosophy alike men’s minds were led up to the acknowledgment of the Papal supremacy as the necessary foundation both of Christian society and thought.
A History of the Papacy, From the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, by M. Creighton, Vol. I, pp. 19-20

The first great collection of canons and decretals which the world was privileged to see was made by Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who about 1150 published his work entitled Decretum Gratiani. Pope Eugenius III approved his work, which immediately became the highest authority in the western Church. The rapid growth of the papal tyranny soon superseded the Decretum Gratiani. Succeeding popes flung their decretals upon the world with a prodigality with which the diligence of compilers who gathered them up, and formed them into new codes, toiled to keep pace.
The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects, by J. A. Wylie, Book I, Chapter VI, The Canon Law

The Decretum Gratiani, or Concordia discordantium canonum, became the fundamental textbook of canon law in the Middle Ages.
Medieval Canon Law, by James A. Brundage, p. 190

The Decretum was used by the later popes and became the kernel of the Corpus juris canonici.
Electric Library, Encyclopedia.com, Gratian

So we see that these fraudulent decretals and Donation of Constantine continued to exercise their influence through Gratian's Decretum and thus through the Corpus juris canonici, which have been the law of the papal Roman church from the early middle ages until 1917, and which enshrine the pope and his hierarchy.

In 1503 the legist Jean Chappuis printed and published in Paris, under the title Corpus Juris Canonici, the Decretum of Gratian and the three official and two private collections of decretals. The Corpus, along with the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-63), remained the fundamental law of the Roman Catholic church until the Codex Iuris Canonici appeared in 1917.
© Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Canon Law

The Codex Iuris Canonici ensrines, above all, the divinely ordained pyramid of the hierarchy, with the pope as supreme head not only of the Church but, implicitly now, of creation.
Constantine's Sword, by James Carroll, p. 279, © 2001 by James Carroll

Examples of some of the decretals can be found here by scrolling to the 'decretals' section. Read the introductory notice of the editors for their insights.

Following are some examples of the content of the decretals taken from The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects, by J. A. Wylie, Book I, Chapter 6:

The constitutions of princes are not superior to ecclesiastical constitutions, but subordinate to them.
Corpus Juris Canonici, Decreti, pars i. distinct. x.

The law of the emperors cannot dissolve the ecclesiastical law.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. x. can. i.

Constitutions (civil, we presume) cannot contravene good manners and the decrees of the Roman prelates.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. x. can iv.

Whatever belongs to priests cannot be usurped by kings.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. x. can, v.

The tribunals of kings are subjected to the power of priests.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. x. can. vi.

All the ordinances of the apostolic seat are to be inviolably observed.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xix. can. ii.

The yoke which the holy chair imposes must be borne, although it may seem unbearable.
Corpus Juris Canonici, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xix. can. iii.

The decretal epistles are to be ranked along with canonical scripture.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xix. can. vi.

The temporal power can neither loose nor bind the Pope.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xcvi. can. vii.

It does not belong to the Emperor to judge the actions of the Pope.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xcvi. can. viii.

The Emperor ought to obey, not command, the Pope.
Idem, Decreti, pars i. distinct. xcvi. can. xi.

We ordain that kings, and bishops, and nobles, who shall permit the decrees of the Bishop of Rome in anything to be violated, shall be accursed, and be for ever guilty before God as transgressors against the Catholic faith.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xxv. quest. i. can. xi.

The Bishop of Rome may excommunicate emperors and princes, depose them from their states, and assoil their subjects from their oath of obedience to them.
Decreti, pars i, distinct. xcvi. can. x., and Decreti, pars ii. causa xv. quest. vi. can. iii. iv. v.

The Bishop of Rome may be judged of none but of God only.
Decreti, pars ii. causa iii. quest. vi. can. ix.

If the Pope should become neglectful of his own salvation, and of that of other men, and so lost to all good that he draw down with himself innumerable people by heaps into hell, and plunge them with himself into eternal torments, yet no mortal man may presume to reprehend him, forasmuch as he is judge of all, and is judged of no one.
Decreti, pars i. distinct. xl. can. vi.

The Bishop of Rome has power to absolve from allegiance, obligation, bond of service, promise, and compact, the provinces, cities, and armies of kings that rebel against him, and also to loose their vassals and feudatories.
Clementin. lib. ii. tit. i. cap. ii.

The pontifical authority absolves some from their oath of allegiance.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xv. quest. vi. can. iii.

The bond of allegiance to an excommunicated man does not bind those who have come under it.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xv. quest. vi. can. iv.

An oath sworn against the good of the Church does not bind; because that is not an oath, but a perjury rather, which is taken against the Church's interests.
Decret. Gregorii, lib. ii. tit. xxiv. cap. xxvii.

It is not lawful for laymen to impose taxes or subsidies upon the clergy. If laics encroach upon cleric immunities, they are, after admonition, to be excommunicated. But in times of great necessity, the clergy may grant assistance to the State, with permission of the Bishop of Rome.
Decret. Gregorii, lib. iii. tit. xlix. cap. iv. and vii.

It is not lawful for a layman to sit in judgment upon a clergyman. Secular judges who dare, in the exercise of a damnable presumption, to compel priests to pay their debts, are to be restrained by spiritual censures.
Decret. Gregorii, lib. ii. tit. ii. cap. i. ii. vi, and Sexti Decret. lib. ii. tit. ii. cap. ii.

The man who takes the money of the Church is as guilty as he who commits homicide. He who seizes upon the lands of the Church is excommunicated, and must restore four-fold.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xii. quest, ii. can. i. iv. vii.

The wealth of dioceses and abbacies must in nowise be alienated. It is not lawful for even the Pope himself to alienate the lands of the Church.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xii. quest. ii, can. xii. xix. xi.

Temporal princes shall be reminded and exhorted, and, if need be, compelled by spiritual censures, to discharge every one of their functions; and that, as they would be accounted faithful, so, for the defence of the faith, they publicly make oath that they will endeavour, bona fide, with all their might, to extirpate from their territories all heretics marked by the Church; so that when any one is about to assume any authority, whether of a permanent kind or only temporary, he shall be held bound to confirm his title by this oath. And if a temporal prince, being required and admonished by the Church, shall neglect to purge his kingdom from this heretical pravity, the metropolitan and other provincial bishops shall bind him in the fetters of excommunication; and if he obstinately refuse to make satisfaction within the year, it shall be notified to the supreme pontiff, that then he may declare his subjects absolved from their allegiance, and bestow their lands upon good Catholics, who, the heretics being exterminated, may possess them unchallenged, and preserve them in the purity of the faith.
Decret. Gregorii, lib. v. tit. vii. cap. xiii.

Those are not to be accounted homicides who, fired with zeal for Mother Church, may have killed excommunicated persons.
Decreti, pars ii. causa xxiii. quaest v. can. xlvii.

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