Crises in the History of the Papacy / A study of twenty famous popes whose careers and whose influence were important in the development of the church and in the history of the world - Joseph McCabe

[162] Ep., cxv.

[163] Ep., cxxxv.

[164] Ep., cxxvii.

[165] Ep., xxxix.

[166] The famous collection which bears the name of Isidorus Mercator contains about sixty spurious Decretals in the first part, covering the first three centuries, and about thirty in the third part; the second part contains the canons of councils. The author makes an adroit use of older documents, and his work is largely a mosaic of genuine fragments (of Papal letters, chronicles, etc.) so pieced together and ante-dated as to father later developments of Papal authority on the earlier Popes. The best edition is that of P. Hinschius (1863), and the best survey of recent study is the article "Pseudoisidor" in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie für Protestantische Theologie. There is a useful chapter in The Age of Charlemagne (1898), by C.L. Wells. The ablest Catholic study of the relation of Nicholas to the collection is Jules Roy's Saint Nicholas (1901). See also Les Fausses Décrétales (1879), of Father Ch. de Smedt. On the general question of the Pope's use of spurious documents see the able Old Catholic work of J. Richterich, Papst Nikolaus I. (1903).

[167] See Ep., cxxx., of Servatus Lupus.

[168] Ep., xxv.

[169] It is not easy to regard Rothrad as the author of the forgery, as he was not deposed until 862. A more probable source of origin is the group of clerics ordained by Ebbo and suspended by Hincmar in 853. Even this seems too late, however, as such a compilation was not the work of a day. But it is very probable that Rothrad took the book to Rome, if it were not already there.