Forged Documents and Papal Power (A Former Catholic Nun)

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What we now call popes were originally bishops of Rome (one bishop among brother bishops from other cities). Then they became popes, with power over the entire Church. Then they became so powerful that they were able to depose kings and emperors. They became so powerful that they were able to force kings to use their secular might to enforce the Inquisition, which was conducted by Catholic priests and monks. In 1870, the Pope was declared to be infallible. The process of increasing papal power was influenced by forged documents which changed people’s perception of the history of the papacy and of the Church.

I’m just going to briefly summarize some information about these forgeries. At the end of this paper is a link to an on-line article which gives detailed historical information.

One of the most famous forgeries is the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” which were written around 845 A.D. (They are also known as the “False Decretals”.) They consist of 115 documents which were supposedly written by early popes. [Note 1]

The “Catholic Encyclopedia” admits that these are forgeries. It says that the purpose of these forged documents was to enable the Church to be independent of secular power, and to prevent the laity from ruling the Church. [Note 2 gives the address of an on-line article.] In other words, their purpose was to increase the power of the Pope and the Catholic Church.

In addition to documents which were total forgeries, genuine documents were altered. One hundred twenty-five genuine documents had forged material added to them, which increased the power of the Pope. Many early documents were changed to say the opposite of what they had originally said. [Note 3]

One of the forgeries is a letter which was falsely attributed to Saint Ambrose. It said that if a person does not agree with the Holy See, then he or she is a heretic. [Note 4] This is an example of how papal power was promoted by fraudulently claiming the authority of highly respected Early Fathers.

Another famous forgery from the ninth century was “The Donation of Constantine”. It claimed that Emperor Constantine gave the western provinces of the Roman Empire to the Bishop of Rome. The Pope used it to claim authority in secular matters. [Note 5]

When Greek Christians tried to discuss issues with the Church in Rome, the popes often used forged documents to back their claims. This happened so frequently that for 700 years the Greeks referred to Rome as “the home of forgeries”. [Note 6]

For three hundred years, the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forgeries were used by Roman Popes to claim authority over the Church in the East. The Patriarch of Constantinople rejected these false claims of primacy. This resulted in the separation of the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church. [Note 7 gives addresses of on-line articles.]

In the middle of the twelfth century, a monk named Gratian wrote the “Decretum,” which became the basis for Canon Law (the legal system for running the Roman Catholic Church). It contained numerous quotations from forged documents. Gratian drew many of his conclusions from those quotations. Gratian quoted 324 passages which were supposedly written by popes of the first four centuries. Of those passages, only eleven are genuine. The other 313 quotations are forgeries. [Note 8]

In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote the “Summa Theologica” and numerous other works. His writings are the foundation for scholastic theology. Aquinas used Gratian’s “Decretum” for quotations from church fathers and early popes. [Note 9] Aquinas also used forged documents which he thought were genuine. [Note 10]

The importance of Thomas Aquinas’ theology can be seen in the encyclical of Pope Pius X on the priesthood. In 1906, Pius said that in their study of philosophy, theology, and Scripture, men studying for the priesthood should follow the directions given by the popes and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. [This papal encyclical is available on-line. Note 11 gives addresses.]

William Webster is the author of “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History”. (I recommend this book.) His web site has an article entitled “Forgeries and the Papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. The article gives detailed information about the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forged documents, showing their influence on the papacy and on the Catholic Church. Four quotations from his article are below. (They are used by permission.)

“In the middle of the ninth century, a radical change began in the Western Church, which dramatically altered the Constitution of the Church, and laid the ground work for the full development of the papacy. The papacy could never have emerged without a fundamental restructuring of the Constitution of the Church and of men’s perceptions of the history of that Constitution. As long as the true facts of Church history were well known, it would serve as a buffer against any unlawful ambitions. However, in the 9th century, a literary forgery occurred which completely revolutionized the ancient government of the Church in the West. This forgery is known as the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” written around 845 A.D. The “Decretals” are a complete fabrication of Church history. They set forth precedents for the exercise of sovereign authority of the popes over the universal Church prior to the fourth century and make it appear that the popes had always exercised sovereign dominion and had ultimate authority even over Church Councils.”

“The historical facts reveal that the papacy was never a reality as far as the universal Church is concerned. There are many eminent Roman Catholic historians who have testified to that fact as well as to the importance of the forgeries, especially those of “Pseudo-Isidore”. One such historian is Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger. He was the most renowned Roman Catholic historian of the last century, who taught Church history for 47 years as a Roman Catholic.” [Webster quotes extensitely from Dollinger.]

“In addition to the “Pseudo Isidorian Decretals” there were other forgeries which were successfully used for the promotion of the doctrine of papal primacy. One famous instance is that of Thomas Aquinas. In 1264 A.D. Thomas authored a work entitled ‘Against the Errors of the Greeks’. This work deals with the issues of theological debate between the Greek and Roman Churches in that day on such subjects as the Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Purgatory and the Papacy. In his defense of the papacy Thomas bases practically his entire argument on forged quotations of Church fathers…. These spurious quotations had enormous influence on many Western theologians in succeeding centuries.”

“The authority claims of Roman Catholicism ultimately devolve upon the institution of the papacy. The papacy is the center and source from which all authority flows for Roman Catholicism. Rome has long claimed that this institution was established by Christ and has been in force in the Church from the very beginning. But the historical record gives a very different picture. This institution was promoted primarily through the falsification of historical fact through the extensive use of forgeries as Thomas Aquinas’ apologetic for the papacy demonstrates. Forgery is its foundation.”

I strongly encourage you to read William Webster’s article. It has an abundance of valuable historical information. The address of the article is:

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I encourage you to link to this article and to put it on your own web site. You have my permission to copy this entire article or portions of it, and to quote from it. You have my permission to incorporate this entire article or portions of it into publications of your own, including translating it into other languages. You have my permission to distribute copies of this article, including selling it for profit. I do not want any royalties or financial remuneration of any kind. Please give this information to anybody who might be interested in it.

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[1] William Webster, “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History” (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), pages 62-63. Webster is a former Catholic.

Peter de Rosa, “Vicars of Christ” (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1988, 2000), pages 58-61, 174, 208. De Rosa is a Catholic, and a former Catholic priest. He was able to do historical research in the Vatican Archives.

Paul Johnson, “A History of Christianity” (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1976, 1995), page 195. Johnson is a Catholic and a prominent historian.

[2] “Benedict Levita” in the “Catholic Encyclopedia”. [Benedict Levita is the pseudonym of the author of the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals”.]

[7] Orthodox Christian Information Center, “The False Decretals of Isidore”. An excerpt from “The Papacy” by Abbee Guette. The author was a devout Catholic and a historian. As a result of his historical research about the papacy, he eventually joined the Orthodox Church.

“The Great Schism of 1054”. This is a sermon given at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist,in Washington, D.C.

[10] William Webster, “Forgeries and the papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. This gives detailed accounts of Aquinas’ use of forged documents which he wrongly believed to be genuine.

[11] Pius X, “Pieni l’animo” (“On the Clergy in Italy”), July 28, 1906. (See paragraph 6.)

And that is good enough for me, No Mormonism, no Catholicism, no religionism period.

Do you have any idea how many of us non-Catholics agree with you?

You might be surprised.

As far as the charge of *anti-Catholic* that is lobbed at non-Catholic believers over the slightest hint of criticism of the Catholic religion.

They simply cannot tolerate dissent or critiquing, or holding their beliefs up to the light of Scripture for comparison to see if they align with Scripture or not.

When the church is shown to have operated in deceit, the reactions on this thread are the result. It pushes the Catholics right over the edge. They just can't handle it.

When Constantine the Great convoked the famous Council of Nicaea early in the FOURTH CENTURY there was no pope and no papacy.

By whose definition of the terms "pope" and "papacy"? Yours? Rome certainly had a sitting bishop; at the time of Nicaea I, Pope Sylvester. It had a sitting bishop at the time of Constantine's accession, too: Pope Melchiades. In fact, it was Constantine who gave the church (through Melchiades) the estate of Plautius Lateranus, which is why the Pope's basilica, built on the site, is today called St. John Lateran.

It's certainly true that Sylvester wasn't present at Nicaea I. He sent legates. It wasn't as though he could take a taxi to the airport and hop a jet to Constantinople, you know.

Constantine, who is not listed as a pope in Rome’s papal lineage

Because he wasn't a pope.

himself assumed the leadership of the churches

In what sense?

and took the title Pontifex Maximus – highest priest.

Wrong. Completely wrong. He already had the title "Pontifex Maximus" as the titular head of the Roman state religion. (Which was still pagan at that time.) All the Roman Emperors prior to Constantine had that title.

When the Roman state religion became Christianity under Theodosius the Great (ca AD 380), the title naturally passed to the Bishop of Rome.

It's not something "Rome" had to be forced to "admit" by an American gal with a fake name skidding into a website almost 600 years too late.

It appears that Rome was forced to admit they were forgeries, only after they could no longer prop them up.

The chief affair was the maintenance of the authority of the False decretals, Gratian, and the forgeries accepted by St. Thomas Aquinas. For a long while no one in the Catholic Church dared to expose the latter. French scholars were the first, about 1660 to tell the truth about them. Gratian's Decretum had gained new authority through the revision and correction ordered by the Popes, in the course of which many forgeries must doubtles have been detected. The pseudo-Isidore was still for a long time protected by the Index. When the famous canonist, Contius, brought forward the evidence of its spuriousness, the Preface in which this contained was suppressed by the censorship.

On the appearance of the famous work of Blondel, which completely dissected the pseudo-Isidore, the last doubts about the true nature of the fraud were exploded. But it too was placed on the Index. About the time of the Declaration of 1682, the Spanish Benedictine, Aguirre, made the last attempt worth mentioning to rehabilitate the pseudo-Isidore. It could now no longer be denied that with this forgery disappeared the whole historical foundation of the papal system for any one acquainted with history. Aguirre was rewarded with a cardinal's hat. But in the course of the eighteenth century it came to be perceived at Rome that it was impossible to maintain any longer the genuiness of this compilation, and thus at last the fraud, was admitted in the answer given by Pius VI., in 1789, to the demands of the German archbishops.

I read your posts on this thread, you appear to have made an honest attempt to answer the assertion of this thread, rather than attacking the ex-nun. You may be an honest lady yourself, but your post, however, amounts to a cover-up for a liar, the Pope during the decretals. He lied according to what one Bible handbook I have says:

Whether Nicolas [Nicolas !, 858-867, Pope during the Pseudo-Ididorian Decretals, first Pope to wear a crown] knew them to be forgeries, at least HE LIED (my caps) in stating that they had been kept in the archives of the Roman Church from ancient times. They served their purpose in stamping the claims of the Medieval Priesthood with the authority of antiquity.

The Papacy which was the growth of several centuries, was made to appear as something complete and unchangeable from the very beginning. The object was to ante-date by five centuries the Pope’s temporal power. It strengthened the Papacy more than any other agency, and formed to a large extent the basis of the canon law of the Roman Church.

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=69590

She’s been under the radar since she appeared on the web in Catholic circles and there has never been a critique about her until now. But, she’s well-known within Fundamentalist circles.

At the same time, though, her issues are the same distortions of Catholic teachings so essentially, they’ve all been covered before.

But no one until now has examined Mary Ann Collins, the source of this material. For example, when I first mentioned her in this forum, I was pointed to her biography that she wrote as proof that she was real.

Sasportas, unless my old eyes brushed over all this with too much haste, not one Catholic poster defended the Pseudo-Isidore Decretals, the Donation of Constantine, or any other Carolingian-era forged documents.

Forgery is a sin which damages the immediate victims of the fraud, and which ripples outward to destroy trust, justice, credibility and fraternal unity for even centuries thereafter, in ways that often burgeon out beyond remedy.

It was Catholic scholarship (Cardinal Cusa) which began the sorting-out of this very complex fraud (remember that legitimate and forged documents were interspersed, and in many cases merged). When the scholarship was all wrapped up, by the diligence of both Catholic and Protestant scholars, it was apparent that many ancient land-claims and political claims were based on false documentation.

Does this mean that the papacy per se was based on fraud? By no means. The papacy is not a matter of land and political claims. Does this mean that the Catholic doctrines on faith and morals were, for centuries, in error because of these forgeries? Not at all. There is not one dogma of the Catholic Church which is based on forged documents.

What about Gratian's scholarship, which makes regular reference to these false documents, and which became the basis of Canon Law? Again, neither land, titles, and political position, nor even Canon Law per se, form any part of the doctrinal deposit of the Church.

The main principles Gratian labored to set forth ---the necessary independence of the Christian Church and its mission from domination by secular politics; the Church's right, as its own society, to appoint clergy, set standards of discipline, convene its own councils and synods, and conduct itself according to its own constitutions; the whole principle of due process within the Church --- are not, or should not be, controversial to any Protestant, nor to any religious group whatsoever.

You could read all this in any number of Catholic sources, many of them online. The most detailed one (but not in the most readable typeface or writing style!) is probably the one referenced by "Mary Ann Collins" herself, the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia 1918 (Link) article on the False Decretals.

There were mental mediocrities as well as geniuses, and scoundrels as well as saints, in the history of the Catholic Church, as any properly-educated high school student should know. I don't think you'll find a FReeper Catholic who would dispute this. What is disputable is that human sin and error --- examples of which are plentiful in the very pages of the New Testament, among the Apostles themselves --- negate the spiritual mission of the Church and indict its very foundation.

That's the point "Mary Ann Collins" wants to make, and that's where she's wrong.

That he enjoys the same power conferred on Peter by Christ.

It is also shown that Peter is the Vicar of Christ and the Roman Pontiff is Peter’s successor enjoying the same power conferred on Peter by Christ. For the canon of the Council of Chalcedon says: “If any bishop is sentenced as guilty of infamy, he is free to appeal the sentence to the blessed bishop of old Rome, whom we have as Peter the rock of refuge, and to him alone, in the place of God, with unlimited power, is granted the authority to hear the appeal of a bishop accused of infamy in virtue of the keys given him by the Lord.” And further on: “And whatever has been decreed by him is to be held as from the vicar of the apostolic throne.”

Likewise, Cyril, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, says, speaking in the person of Christ: “You for a while, but I without end will be fully and perfectly in sacrament and authority with all those whom I shall put in your place, just as I am also with you.” And Cyril of Alexandria in his Thesaurus says that the Apostles “in the Gospels and Epistles have affirmed in all their teaching that Peter and his Church are in the place of the Lord, granting him participation in every chapter and assembly, in every election and proclamation of doctrine.” And further on: “To him, that is, to Peter, all by divine ordinancebow the head, and the rulers of the world obey him as the Lord Jesus himself.” And Chrysostom, speaking in the person of Christ, says: “Feed my sheep (John 21:17), that is, in my place be in charge of your brethren" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Against the Errors of the Greeks. Found in James Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism (New Rochelle: Catholics United for the Faith, 1992), pp. 182-184).

With the exception of the last reference to Chrysostom all of Thomas’ references cited to Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom and the Council of Chalcedon are forgeries. The remainder of Aquinas’ treatise in defense of the papacy is similar in nature. Edward Denny gives the following historical summary of these forgeries and their use by Thomas Aquinas

In the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals alone 313 of the 324 claims attributed to your religion are false; lies...The question is, how many of these 313 lies does the modern Catholic church still teach as truth, even knowing they are lies???

Sasportas, unless my old eyes brushed over all this with too much haste, not one Catholic poster defended the Pseudo-Isidore Decretals, the Donation of Constantine, or any other Carolingian-era forged documents.

Nope, that is correct. They didn't address them.

The first thing they did, in typical knee jerk reaction, is attack the author.

You know what is clear, though, is that Catholics are exceedingly sensitive to critique or criticism of their church (present company excluded).

It seems that the vast majority of them can hardly bring themselves to admit when the church is in error or has made an error in the past.

They deflect, excuse, rationalize, attack the messenger, accuse people who make any negative comments about Catholicism as *haters*, *anti's*, stupid, evil, liars, whatever, but just cannot bring themselves to admit that the church has not always been right and that some person, some former Catholic or non-Catholic, might actually have a valid point, supported by historical documentation.

This inability to admit that the church isn't perfect just shuts down any chance for correcting situations that need it, as has happened in the cases of priests who have been found to be molesting children.

>> When the scholarship was all wrapped up, by the diligence of both Catholic and Protestant scholars, it was apparent that many ancient land-claims and political claims were based on false documentation.<<

So did the RCC retain possession of those lands?,P. >> nor even Canon Law per se<<

Per se?

>> Does this mean that the papacy per se was based on fraud?<<

Per se?

So not Canon Law or the Papacy but only things that affect them! Wow! Now there’s a non denial denial!

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