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Updated: June 3, 2025
From the "Master of Sentences," he had passed to the "Capitularies of Charlemagne;" and he had devoured in succession, in his appetite for science, decretals upon decretals, those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispalus; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms; those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; next the decretal of Gratian, which succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne; then the collection of Gregory IX.; then the Epistle of Superspecula, of Honorius III. He rendered clear and familiar to himself that vast and tumultuous period of civil law and canon law in conflict and at strife with each other, in the chaos of the Middle Ages, a period which Bishop Theodore opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in 1227.
In addition to the missals, psalteries, antiphonies, and martyrologies, the convent at Youghal had several copies of the Bible together with some of the principal commentaries thereon, collections of sermons by well-known authors, several of the works of the early Fathers and of the principal theologians of the Middle Ages, the Decrees of Gratian, the Decretals and various works on Canon Law, spiritual reading-books, including the life of Christ, and works on ascetic theology, the works of Boetius and various treatises on philosophy, grammar, and music, and some histories of the Irish province of the Franciscans.
But then, said Didius, the intention of the priest's pronouncing them grammatically must have been proved to have gone along with it. Right, answered Kysarcius; and of this, brother Didius, we have an instance in a decree of the decretals of Pope Leo the IIId.
The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.
Luther, however, lost no time in following up their execution of the bull with his reply. On December 10 he posted a public announcement that the next morning, at nine o'clock, the antichristian decretals, that is, the Papal law-books, would be burnt, and he invited all the Wittenberg students to attend.
The clergy had its decretals, the nobility its law of fiefs, the people its corporations; everything was independent, because everything was private.
The following authoritative principles are divulged in the Corpus Juris Canonici, which contains the Decretals, Canons, &c. of the Popes and Councils; and other participants of the pretended Papal infallibility. "If the Pope fall into homicide or adultery, he cannot be accused, but is excused by the murders of Samson, and the adultery of David."
The Pope also gradually established his authority as supreme and sole lawgiver within the Church. The Dictatus Papae asserts that for him alone it is lawful to frame new laws to meet the needs of the time. Meanwhile the Forged Decretals had found their place in the various collections of the Canons made in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
The Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men's minds. Also, the essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them.
Among the vast mass of forgeries which gradually built up the supremacy of the Roman see, the famous Isidorian Decretals deserve a word of notice. They were issued about A.D. 845, and consisted of "about one hundred pretended decrees of the early Popes, together with certain spurious writings of other church dignitaries and acts of synods.
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