{ "item_title" : "The False Letters of Authority", "item_author" : [" Samuel Ashford "], "item_description" : "Who gave ancient popes words they never wrote-and why did those words matter for centuries?In the ninth-century Frankish Church, a collection of supposed early papal letters offered authoritative answers to a dangerous question: who had the right to accuse, judge, or remove a bishop? The documents became known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. Their claims to antiquity were false, but their place in the history of medieval canon law was real.The False Letters of Authority investigates how a body of forged and altered documents entered the Church's legal inheritance. It traces the genuine councils and papal rulings that existed before the fabrication, the tensions between bishops and rulers in the Carolingian world, and the way a compiler writing as Isidorus Mercator could make new arguments appear to speak with ancient authority.The investigation follows the making of the collection itself: authentic passages blended with invented letters, disputed attributions, and different manuscript versions. From the possible connections with the monastery of Corbie to the significance of Vatican Latin 630 and the Yale manuscript witness, the book explores what surviving evidence can establish-and what historians still debate about the forgers, their methods, and the dates of their work.The consequences become concrete in conflicts involving Hincmar of Reims, Rothad of Soissons, and Hincmar of Laon. Questions of episcopal trials, appeals to Rome, and metropolitan jurisdiction were not abstract theological disagreements. They affected who could remain in office, whose testimony could be heard, and which judgments could stand. Pope Nicholas I's intervention in Rothad's case illustrates the importance of Roman review without proving that a forged letter alone produced the outcome.The story continues beyond the ninth century. Later canonical collections carried Pseudo-Isidorian material into the legal tradition associated with Gratian and medieval Church reform. Yet the book distinguishes influence from simple causation: the expansion of papal jurisdiction did not begin with these forgeries, nor can the development of papal government be explained by them alone.Drawing on manuscript history, documentary comparison, and the scholarly reassessment of the False Decretals, this is an accessible, evidence-conscious account of religious authority and historical deception. It considers both sides of episcopal protection: safeguards against arbitrary removal and legal privileges that could make legitimate complaints harder to pursue.For readers interested in medieval European history, the history of Christianity, church government, and canon law, this investigation asks a lasting question: how can an institution inherit rules whose authority rests partly on a false account of the past?", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/816/507/9798165071287_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "13.49", "online_price" : "13.49", "our_price" : "13.49", "club_price" : "13.49", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details