PSEUDO-ISIDORE. - Under this name there hides a person or rather a group of persons from the 9th century, whose identity has still not been ascertained today, and to whom one must attribute one of the most famous forgeries that history records. Their work is not only the so-called Pseudo-Isidorian Collection, also known as the Pseudo-Decretals or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, but also the collection of the Capitularies of Benedict the Levite, the one called the Capitula Angilramni (v. ANGILRAMNUS) and the form of the Hispana that goes under the name of the Hispana of Autun (v. CANONICAL COLLECTIONS).
The personality and work of Pseudo-Isidore cannot be understood outside of their historical context. 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 ascetical-moral norms of penitential discipline that the missionaries of the insular Church had brought with them; moreover, Germanic juridical conceptions were undermining ecclesiastical discipline, causing over time a true decline in II.
Furthermore, due to political conditions, the hierarchy itself was a victim of this decline, inasmuch as high offices