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Updated: June 3, 2025
Methinks, said Pantagruel, a man might have been more out of danger near the white of which Gymnast spoke than was formerly Diogenes near another. How is that? asked Homenas; what was it? Was he one of our decretalists? Rarely fallen in again, egad, said Epistemon, returning from stool; I see he will hook his decretals in, though by the head and shoulders.
Twenty years subsequently, the monk Gratian collected together the various papal edicts, the canons of councils, the declarations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in a volume called "The Decretum," considered as the earliest authority in canon law. In the next century Gregory IX. published five books of Decretals, and Boniface VIII. subsequently added a sixth.
"Moreover: Abraham married his half-sister; Jacob married two sisters: Moses' father married his aunt." "That is the Bible, is it? Thank you! Then I prefer the Decretals and the Councils. The Pope must dissolve the marriage." "Is it then to be dissolved?" "Didn't you know? Yes, it is. If Julius II could grant a dispensation, Clement VII can grant an absolution."
For this hypothesis there is little to be said. One or two Popes, not the greatest, have condescended to use forged title-deeds. But the effect of these frauds has been much exaggerated. The most famous of them are the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals.
Mark, an effect of heavenly wrath and vengeance! cried Homenas. At Cahusac, said Gymnast, a match being made by the lords of Estissac and Viscount Lausun to shoot at a mark, Perotou had taken to pieces a set of decretals and set one of the leaves for the white to shoot at. Miracle! cried Homenas, miracle! miracle! Clerica, come wench, light, light here.
Under the name of St. Isidore, some ready scribe produced the too-famous 'Decretals, and the 'Donation of Constantine, and Pope Adrian I. saw no reason against publishing them to Charlemagne and to the world.
Lecky, the historian, in his European Morals, writes in the following uncompromising style: The very large part that must be assigned to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the Church we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I think, investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends that, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the history of the false decretals, and the discussions that were connected with them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity most Catholic historians have displayed of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been the evil.
I will discover you a great secret. The universities of your world have commonly a book, either open or shut, in their arms and devices; what book do you think it is? Truly, I do not know, answered Pantagruel; I never read it. It is the decretals, said Homenas, without which the privileges of all universities would soon be lost. You must own that I have taught you this; ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
As for you other good people, I must earnestly pray and beseech you to believe no other thing, to think on, say, undertake, or do no other thing, than what's contained in our sacred decretals and their corollaries, this fine Sextum, these fine Clementinae, these fine Extravagantes. O deific books!
He cited St. Gregory the Great and St. Irenæus, quoted numerous articles of the Canon Law and whole paragraphs from the Decretals.
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