False Decretals

X. I have elsewhere considered in some detail the growth of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, through the False Decretals, in the anarchy accompanying the fall of the Carlovingian empire.

In the middle of the 9th century there appeared in Gaul the collection of false decretals commonly known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.

But this wisdom, though so natural, was already foreign to the manners of a clergy, whose ministry the False Decretals had erected into authority; and neither kings nor people were capable of that degree of attention, necessary to acquire specific ideas of their civil rights and their religious duties.

These false decretals have contributed to the extension of the popes’ spiritual power, and to invest them with political authority: their fatal effects have been fully exposed by Fleury, in his fourth discourse on ecclesiastical history.

To such length had the ‘False Decretals’ extended the jurisdiction of the Holy See.