DCHindley

On account of all the talk on the HABR board (and the "not to be named" predecessor) about Constantine's alleged fabrication of early Christian history and literature, I think it is necessary to compare the theories to the actual, and rather well researched case of the "False Decretals." Decretals "are letters of the pope that formulate decisions in ecclesiastical law of the Catholic Church" per the Wiki page for Decretal.

This is from the Wiki article on the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals:

The Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals (or False Decretals) are a set of extensive and influential medieval forgeries, written by a scholar or group of scholars known as Pseudo-Isidore. The authors, who worked under the pseudonym Isidore Mercator, were probably a group of Frankish clerics writing in the second quarter of the ninth century. They aimed to defend the position of bishops against metropolitans and secular authorities by creating false documents purportedly authored by early popes, together with interpolated conciliar documents ...

...The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, along with certain fictitious letters ascribed to early popes, from Clement to Gregory the Great, were incorporated in a ninth-century collection of [Church] canons purporting to have been made by the pseudonymous Isidore Mercator.

... the forger of the Pseudo-Isidore collection took as the basis of his work a quite genuine collection, Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis, and interpolated his forgeries among the genuine material that supplied credibility by association. The official Liber pontificalis was used as a historical guide and furnished some of the subject matter. The Pseudo-Isidorian collection also includes the earlier (non-Pseudo-Isidorian) forgery, the Donation of Constantine.

Who or whom ever the author(s) of these documents were, they were created with the aim of supporting an agenda. The creation of this collection of canon law was created to justify the ecclesiastical penance imposed upon Carolingian Emperor Louis I the Pious upon his reinstatement to the throne after a coup by his sons. The Emperor had taken the criticisms and the penalties personally and had sacked a number of high church officials.

How did the author(s) do it? What are the components of these forgeries?

Textual overview

1. The addition of forged material to an earlier, entirely authentic Spanish collection containing texts from councils and papal letters originating in the 4th through 8th centuries — the so-called Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis (the name is derived from a manuscript that was at some time in the French city of Autun, Latin Augustodunum).

2. A collection of falsified legislation of Frankish rulers allegedly from the sixth to the ninth centuries (Capitularies) — the so-called Capitularia Benedicti Levitae — after the name of the alleged author in the collection's introduction: deacon (Latin levita) Benedictus, as he calls himself. The author falsely states that he has simply completed and updated the well-known collection by abbot Ansegis of Fontanelles (died 833).

3. A brief collection on criminal procedure — the so-called Capitula Angilramni — allegedly handed over by Pope Hadrian I to Bishop Angilram of Metz.

4. An extensive collection of approximately 100 forged papal letters, most of which were allegedly written by the Roman bishops of the first three centuries. In the preface to the collection, the author of the collection calls himself bishop Isidorus Mercator (hence the name of the whole complex). Besides the forged letters, the collection contains a large amount of genuine (and partly falsified or interpolated) council texts and papal letters from the fourth to the eighth centuries. The genuine and interpolated material derives predominantly from the Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis.

While many of these documents were forged, they were very carefully crafted to appear to be genuine. They also interpolated these documents into genuine collections of documents to give the forged documents the veneer of plausibility and authortity.

What I want to do is challenge the proponents of Constantinian fabrication of Church history to deconstruct the NT and early Church documents with the same thoroughness (to the best of their ability, of course, but no shooting from the hip or sweeping generalizations) as the researchers who investigated the matter of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, and then provide a coherent explanation of the sources and motivations of the author(s).

I do not mean to suggest that the historical situation of Constantine as he consolidated his rule of the empire is equivalent to the historical situation in the Frankish area in the mid 9th century CE, but the exercise should be instructive.

To research what is already known about the False Decretals make web searches worded several different ways with key terms of more than one word encased in quotation marks. Download the PDF articles by academics that are online and study them. Familiarize yourselves with the terminology and methodology they employ and search the sources they cite as best you can.

Have fun! :jump:

DCH

Roger Pearse

I read somewhere that the key purpose of the forged decretals was to shore up the position of the church leaders in that realm, against the semi-barbarian barons and kinglets (who were local, and had swords), by appealing to the power of the pope (who was a long way away and unlikely to interfere). You probably know more about it than I do, tho.

aa5874

What are your views on the matter because you have merely copied and paste what is found in Wikipedia?

It is already known that MANY manuscripts were forged by Apologetics in antiquity.

It would appear to me that there are far more forgeries than the False Decretals. There are writings attributed to Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius and others that appear to be forgeries or were manipulated.

It is also extremely important to recognize that there are forgeries under the name of Constantine and this becomes very significant when writers like Eusebius makes claims about the activities of Constantine with respect to doctrines of the Church at the Council of Nicea c 325 CE.

It is very disturbing to me that the Council of Nicea was convened and we have no involvement by the very Highest Bishop of the Church--the Bishop of Rome.

Even, after the supposed Council of Nicea under Constantine c 325 CE, it was Eusebius who transmitted the details of the Nicene Creed which is supposed to be the very CORE BELIEF of the early Roman Church.

Where was the Bishop of Rome in c 325 CE?

The False Decretals are not just mere forgeries but show that a character who NEVER did exist could have been invented and was accepted as a figure of history for hundreds of years.

Isidore Mercator would have been UNKNOWN in the History of Church yet the writings of this fictitious person was in the hands of the Church until they were exposed as fraud.

There was NO such person as Isidore Mercator which would mean that when writings started to appear in that name there was NO known previous history of such a writer in the Church or anywhere outside.

mountainman

Of course such a challenge must be accepted although it did occur to me that this could just be a ruse to make me disappear for a few weeks, considering the extensive terrain of research such a challenge will require. A link from the WIKI page to the blog Reading Pseudo-Isidore indicates a mass of material. Eric Knibbs, Assistant Professor of History at Williams College in Williamstown, MA has been blogging on this forgery for three years and appears to have many more years of material left to cover.








εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

In 2007 I assembled an article entitled The Fabrication of the Galilaeans that outlined a number of components in a theoretical forgery of the Christian material in the time of Constantine. Since that time almost 6 years ago I have done a tremendous amount of research. For example the module on the non canonical Christian material has been entirely reversed, as can be perceived by my posts in this forum concerning the gnostic heretics. This research has involved reading more than 100 of the non canonical texts.

In a preliminary burst of research I have determined that to do justice to the substantiation of a 4th century forgery of the earliest christian material that there are other forgeries between the 4th century and the 9th century as follows:


9th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Isidorian_Decretals

8th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine

6th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmachean_forgeries
The Symmachean forgeries are a sheaf of forged documents produced in the papal curia
of Pope Symmachus (498—514) in the beginning of the sixth century...
One of these forgeries reports a fictitious synod convoking 275 bishops in the Baths of Trajan;


6th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis
(concerning the creation of laws ex nilo. The Archives have such discussions)


4th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustan_History
The "Historia Augusta" dedicated in part to Constantine is quite relevant to the OP.







What guarantee may I expect from Toto, after I expend such time and energy researching this OP, that he will not summarily dispense this thread to ~Elsewhere as he has summarily done to other threads on the same subject? Understandably I do not take kindly to such treatment and you DCH (and others hopefully) should understand this.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

stephan huller

Please don't stop on their account. Keep being entirely predictable. Swiss watches are less reliable. You make the Elder Cato seem spontaneous by comparison. Your posts are so repetitive you make environmentalists reconsider whether recycling is a good idea. Need I go on?

Then stop repeating yourself. Take up an alternative view point. The evidence for the fourth century conspiracy theory isn't so decisive that it prevents you or anyone else from taking a different point of view. Show your originality and get 'inspired.' Color code different days of the week to try out different positions or alternative view points. If no one else is studying the possibility that the canon was forged in the fourth century, that might be a sign it's not a good thesis.

Toto

Can you explain why simply showing that a few doucments in the 4th or the 9th century are forgeries is relevant to the question of whether all allegedly earlier Christian documents were forged by Eusebius in the 4th century?

The challenge that Dave issued to you was to provide a coherent theory of why particular passages were forged. What sources were used? What were the particular motives?

mountainman

I understand the challenge. I made a preliminary comment that's all.

It will take time to draw up the parallels.

And I am sick and tired of these threads going to elsewhere.

Too bad Jeffrey Gibson isn't around to jerk Huller's chain.

You seem to have a blind eye.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

Why don't you just <edit> Huller?


If I need a thesis advisor I wont seek advice from a rabid Marcionite self-professed know it all.

Go and start another Marcion thread FFS.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Toto

If you make a quality post that says something new, it will not go off to elsewhere.

(And you need to self edit that last rant . . . quickly)