Pseudo-Isidore

PSEUDO-ISIDORE. - Under this name is hidden a personality, or rather a group of persons of the 9th century, whose identity is still not established today and to whom one of the most famous forgeries in history must be attributed. Their work is not only the so-called Collectio Pseudo-Isidoriana, also called the Pseudo-Decretals or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, but also the collection of the Capitularies of Benedict the Levite, the one called Capitula Angilramni (v. ANGILRAMNO) and the form of the Hispana that goes under the name of Hispana of Autun (v. COLLEZIONI CANONICHE).

The personality and the work of the P.-I. cannot be understood outside their historical setting. In the Kingdom of the Franks various forms of ecclesiastical discipline had accumulated: the ancient universal law, the regional particularisms of the Churches of Gaul and the norms of an ascetico-moral character of the penitential discipline that the missionaries of the Irish Church had brought with them; moreover, Germanic juridical conceptions were encroaching upon ecclesiastical discipline, in time causing a true decadence of it.

Then, because of political conditions, the hierarchy too was a victim of the decadence, inasmuch as the high offices ecclesiastical offices were often held by persons who served the State and its interests more than the Church. The latter, since the time of Clovis, had been the object of great territorial donations, which could not fail to hold great attraction for princes; hence expropriations on a grand scale, and the conferring of episcopal sees and other ecclesiastical dignities upon persons compliant with the wishes of princes. When, on the occasion of the so-called Carolingian reform, many properties were restored to the Church, this was done only in the form of a fief, so that, through the beneficium, which under the influence of Germanic conceptions had already overpowered the officium, the latter remained bound to the feudal lord, for the most part a layman.

Remedies for this situation were few. Princes were ready for reform only insofar as it did not touch them; the bishops, besides being divided, did not have sufficient authority to impose themselves. The Pontiffs intervened at that time only in individual concrete cases, in which their authority was invoked in the face of disagreement among the ordinary ecclesiastical organs (bishops, metropolitans, councils), but not to reorganize from the foundations an entire situation that demanded a general and theoretical elaboration of principles.

At that moment a group of reformers, convinced of the ineffectiveness of all the legitimate means by which it had not been possible to bring about the reform that had been invoked for a hundred years in the Kingdom of the Franks, thought to make up for it by illegitimate means, that is, thought to project into the past a necessary positive legislation, making appear, through falsifications of attributions (inscriptiones) and of texts, as done in the past by the two supreme authorities (Pontiffs and kings of the Franks), what bishops and civil princes were to observe in matters of ecclesiastical discipline and life.

Pseudo-epigraphy and the apocryphal character of texts had already been used, as the history of the preceding canonical collections shows; here, however, what was involved was a grandiose work of systematic falsification.

The principal instrument of this was the Hispana collection, which in the second half of the 8th century had had a wide diffusion throughout the Carolingian Kingdom and which contained the canons of the universal and particular Councils of the individual regions of the Church: East, Africa, Gaul, Spain; and, in the second part, a series of Decretals of the Pontiffs from Damasus to Gregory the Great. This collection had undergone in Gaul, probably in not a few codices, a very profound alteration with regard to the integrity of the texts. This form of the Hispana is called the Hispana Gallica and owes its origin to an unintentional corruption.

It was used by the Pseudo-Isidorian forgers to create another form of the Hispana, the so-called Hispana Augustodunensis, which represents the first work of the group, consisting in the interpolation of the genuine texts in systematic form and with precise aims pursued by the reformers: and which was to be the preparation of the principal of the Pseudo-Isidorian collections, that is, of the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae.

These, generally called the Pseudo-Isidoriana, thus present themselves as the Hispana chronologica augmented and further falsified. A first part, truly new, is constituted by a series of Decretals of the Roman Pontiffs from Clement I to Miltiades (90-314); the second part corresponds to the first of the Hispana (canons of the Councils) and the third part reproduces the second of the Hispana and comprises the Decretals increased in number (from Sylvester to Gregory II: 314-731).

It was necessary, however, to prove, in the face of temporal Lords, that the same principles contained in the ecclesiastical documents had been manifested by the most famous Carolingians. For this reason the same reformers compiled a collection of royal dispositions, called Capitularies (especially of Pepin, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious), which a certain Benedictus Levita of Mainz was supposed to have discovered there. These dispositions were arranged in three books, which were to be added to the four books of the (genuine) collection of Ansegisus already in existence. There followed, a little later, four other Additiones.

In the meantime another small collection had been made under the name of Capitula Angilramni (v. ANGILRAMNO), which contained texts concerning the question of the forum of clerics and of the right to accuse them.

These four collections may be called the concrete fruit of Pseudo-Isidorian activity. The falsifications carried out by it are of varying quality and quantity. They consist in the first place in purely formal interpolations, which make the texts linguistically more fluent and intelligible. In the second place they affect the very substance, in that they restrict, extend, or vary the sense of the dispositions contained in the genuine texts, and attribute original texts to other material sources (e.g., dispositions of ecclesiastical authority to civil authority or vice versa, texts of the Holy Fathers to Councils or to the Roman Pontiffs, especially dispositions of later popes to popes who lived centuries earlier). Finally there are also texts invented from scratch, albeit composed of genuine fragments. These are found especially among the Decretals of the Roman Pontiffs: the entire series (60) of the first part of the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae and many (over 40) of the series of the third part. In this work of fabricating the Pontifical Decretals the forgers proceeded with the greatest circumspection: they did not invent and attribute texts at will, but, scrutinizing the historical sources, especially the Liber Pontificalis, they reconstructed documents of which historical notices were preserved, adhering to the tenor and the terms of such notices.

Through these interpolations and falsifications it is possible to discern the intentions of the forgers. While gathering material that embraces the whole of ecclesiastical discipline, they insist in a particular way on the radical points that must ensure a lasting reform of the historical conditions mentioned above. An attempt is therefore made to free the Church and in particular the bishops from all interference, combating everything that diminished their authority: every right of the laity to judge or even only to accuse clerics; the same on the part of inferior clerics with regard to superiors; every excessive power of the metropolitan, who too many times, being a creature of the temporal lord, took the side of the latter against the well-intentioned bishop; the power of the chorepiscopi; also the synods, insofar as they were often an instrument of the metropolitans and of personalities subservient to the enemies of the reform.

The time of elaboration of the collections of this, which may be called the spurious Carolingian reform, is relatively brief. From internal and external criteria, especially of use, one may conclude that they were composed between the extreme limits of 845 and 857, but most probably between 847 and 852, in this order: Hispana of Autun, Capitula Angilramni, Capitularia Benedicti Levitae, with the Additiones, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae.

On the place there is still discussion today: the thesis of a Roman origin, evidently inspired by sectarian preconceptions supported by a superficial evaluation of the exaltation of the Roman Primacy that is noted in the collections, has been abandoned by all. The thesis of a Mainz origin has also been almost set aside, at least for the definitive work. Three hypotheses remain, each of which has its defenders and arguments that are not, however, of such force as to overcome those of the others. Some are for Le Mans in the province of Tours, others for Reims; lately they have been attributed to the court chapel of Charles the Bald.

Connected to this is evidently the even more enigmatic problem of the person of the P.-I. Today it is agreed that it cannot be a matter of a single man, but of a group of forgers. This group must have included, either as leaders or as executors, the most intelligent and erudite men of the time, the most profound connoisseurs of the Latin language and of its style in the various historical epochs and in the different Chancelleries. The whole work of falsification presupposes a supreme competence. It is also certain that the name Benedictus Levita, like that of Isidorus Mercator (Mercatus, Peccator), are pseudonyms, probably chosen with skill to conceal the trick, to divert attention, as is certainly the case in the combination of Isidorus (which was meant to evoke the memory of the great Isidore of Seville) with Mercator, an attribute which suggested another man, Marius Mercator, a writer of the 5th century, to whom the first words of the introduction allude precisely (cf. Hinschius [v. infra], 17 and PL. 48, 753).

The fate of the collections was different according to places and times. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals spread rapidly, at least the texts that reproduced Pontifical Decretals, beyond the Alps. On this side they had considerable diffusion and peaceful recognition (but not too much!) only from the time of the Gregorian reform. From then on they preserved for four centuries an almost uncontested dominion. Despite some doubt raised from time to time against their genuineness, only in the 15th century, through the work of the humanists, was the falsification recognized and proved. The other collections, having had less fortune in intensity, had it however for longer: only in the last century was the origin and spurious character of the other three decisively and definitively recognized, as belonging to the same pseudo-Isidorian workshop.

As regards the influence exercised by this audacious fraud on ecclesiastical discipline and the evolution of the law of the Church, it may be observed that the forgers generally did nothing other than "codify" what was really the persuasion and normal usage of the time, which could not arouse any wonder at finding in provisions of authority, both ecclesiastical and civil, well-intentioned and exemplary. The influence of the P.-I. on discipline may therefore be called in part only formal, inasmuch as it gave a form, drafted in writing, in feigned positive laws, what materially existed both in the principles of ancient discipline and in the practice of all genuine Christians, which did not then find, owing to circumstances, the legitimate, respected and operative legislative authority.

Besides this purely formal influence, it also exercised a more substantial one. In a first sense by giving an impulse, according to the individual chapters more or less considerable, to a further evolution in a determined sense of certain juridical institutions (for example, to the elimination of the chorepiscopate, to the limitation of metropolitan power, to a renewed practice of the privileges of clerics, to the use of appeal, to ecclesiastical procedural practice, etc.). In a second sense by seeking to introduce norms newly held to be necessary, which the forgers took care to demonstrate as conforming to the principles of ancient discipline (prohibition to laymen of accusing clerics, restitution of the despoiled before beginning the process against him, permission of Rome for the celebration of synods, intervention of the Pope for a definitive sentence of deposition against a bishop); now precisely these points, because they were new applications, struggled to establish themselves and in part were not accepted.

This demonstrates that the apocryphal documents did not constitute, in their complex, a substantial novelty, that they were, rather, in the line of the ancient universal law represented by the previous most famous and authoritative compilations, revived or brought forth by the genuine Carolingian reform, such as the Dionysio-Hadriana, the Hispana, the Dacheriana.

In this same order of ideas is to be judged the Roman Primacy in the Pseudo-Isidorian collections: not only do these not create it, but they presuppose it, they are a clear testimony of its existence in the conviction of contemporaries. The texts that exalt it do not aim at an end in themselves, but constitute a means to achieve the ends of the reform. The Roman Primacy was therefore considered by the forgers the most effective instrument for the success of the enterprise and they exploited it across the board, making of it the pivot of their action. If a provision appeared throughout the tradition of the Pontifical Decretals, it had to be genuinely ecclesiastical and therefore observed. They knew therefore that this conviction was so much common property that nothing else was needed to obtain obedience. It is true however that this insistent appeal to the Roman Primacy greatly favored the authority and the exercise of it; and in this sense it must be said that the P.-I. contributed notably to its development, understood as practical affirmation.

This judgment on the pseudo-Isidorian influence in this particular point and with regard to the evolution of the whole law of the Church is, moreover, shared by scholars of all confessions. Not for the history of canon law itself, but for the history of the collections, does the P.-I. constitute a milestone. Suffice it, for all, to recall the unsuspected thought of one of the most distinguished and competent in this matter, of E. Seckel; with the P.-I., he says, a new period in the history of the sources does indeed begin, but not a new epoch of the law of the Church.

Edd.: the Hispana Augustodunensis is unpublished; it is found in the ms. codex Vat. lat. 1341; G. H. Pertz, Capitularia Benedicti Levitae in MGH, Legea, II, part 2, Hannover 1837, p. 17 ff.; also in PL 97, 698 ff.; P. Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni, Leipzig 1863. PL 130, 1 ff. reports the unsatisfactory ed. of the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae from Merlinus, Coll. Concil., Cologne 1530.

Alfonso M. Stickler