stantinople, and thus upsetting the canons of 381 and 451, which gave her the precedence.1

While this tendency to forging documents was so strong in Rome, it is remarkable that for a thousand years no attempt was made there to form a collection of canons of her own, such as the Easterns had as early as the fifth century, clearly because for a long time Rome took so very little part in ecclesiastical legislation. No doubt constant appeal was made to the canons of Councils, and Rome professed her resolve to secure their observance with all her might, and by her conspicuous example; but the canon she had chiefly at heart was the third of Sardica, and the Sardican canons were never received at all in the East. When Dionysius gave the Roman Church her first tolerably comprehensive collection of canons, viz., his translation of the Greek canons, with the African and Sardican, more than twenty Synods had been held in Rome since 313, but there were no records of them to be found.

2

1 These documents are printed from MSS. of the eighth century in Amort's Elementa Juris Canon. ii. 432-486.

2 Dionysius Exiguus observes this in the Preface to the second edition of his Collection, prepared by command of Pope Hormisdas. See Andres, Lettera à G. Morelli (Parma, 1802), p. 66. It will be seen that there was always a quarrel about the Nicene canons, and one party wished to replace them (probably the sixth canon) by others. This points to the decisions of Silvester and his Synod, mentioned above.

Towards the end of the sixth century a fabrication was undertaken in Rome, the full effect of which did. not appear till long afterwards. The famous passage in St. Cyprian's book on the Unity of the Church was adorned, in Pope Pelagius II.'s letter to the Istrian bishops, with such additions as the Roman pretensions required. St. Cyprian said that all the Apostles had received from Christ equal power and authority with Peter, and this was too glaring a contradiction of the theory set up since the time of Gelasius. So the following words were interpolated: "The primacy was given to Peter to show the unity of the Church and of the chair. How can he believe himself to be in the Church who forsakes the chair of Peter, on which the Church is built?"1 The varying judgments of the later Roman clergy on Cyprian, who had up to his death been a decided opponent of Rome, seem to have had an influence on this interpolation. He was at first almost the only foreign martyr whose annual feast was kept in Rome; but after Gelasius had included his writings in a list of works rejected by the Church, it became necessary to find some way of reconciling the

1 Cf. the notes of Rigault, Baluze, and Krabinger, to their editions of Cyprian.

high reverence accorded to the man with the disapproval of his writings. This seems to have led to the interpolation, so that the first rank among orthodox Fathers was assigned to Cyprian in the revised edition of the catalogue of Gelasius, in direct contradiction to the passage in the same decree placing him among "apocryphal," viz., rejected authors.1 But as Cyprian's writings had not spread from Rome, but had long been much read in the Gallican and North Italian Churches, the additions did not get into the manuscripts.

pur

Earlier than this an interpolation of the old catalogue of Roman bishops had been undertaken for a definite pose, and thus the foundation was laid of the Liber Pontificalis, afterwards enlarged. It exists in Schelstrate's

2

1 When in later times Cyprian was edited at Rome by Manutius in 1563, the Roman censors insisted on the interpolated passages being retained, though not found in the MSS., as the editor, Latino Latini, complains in his Letters (Viterbii, 1667, ii. 109). The minister, Cardinal Fleury, made the same condition for the Paris edition of Baluze. See Chiniac, Histoire des Capitul. (Paris, 1772), p. 226. The minister named a commission to decide whether the interpolations erased by Baluze, and expunged from every critical edition, should be printed, but Fleury was Cardinal as well as minister, and "à moins que de vouloir se faire une querelle d'état avec Rome impérieuse, il falloit que le passage fût restitué, parceque en le laissant supprimé en vertu d'une décision ministérielle, il auroit semblé qu'on vouloit porter atteinte à la primauté Romaine. Le passage fut restitué par le moyen d'un carton."

2 The Liber Pontificalis, or Anastasius (falsely so called), was usually quoted as a work of Pope Damasus in the middle ages.

edition, in its original form, of about 530.1 The second edition, and continuation to the time of Conon (687) written about 730, and afterwards brought down to 724 by the same hand, is based on contemporary records for the sixth and seventh century. It is the first edition of 530 which is chiefly to be reckoned as a calculated forgery, and an important link in the chain of Roman inventions and interpolations. It is all composed in the barbarous and ungrammatical Latin common to the Roman fabrications of the sixth century.2 The objects were first, to attest the mass of spurious acts of Roman martyrs, and the reiterated statements that the earliest Popes had appointed a number of notaries to compile these acts, and seven deacons to superintend them; secondly, to confirm the existing legends of Popes and Emperors,such as the Roman baptism of Constantine, the stories about Silvester, Felix, and Liberius, Xystus III., and the like; thirdly, to assign a greater antiquity to some later liturgical usages; fourthly, to exhibit the Popes as legislators for the whole Church, although, apart from the liturgical directions ascribed to them, and the constantly

1 He has collated the two editions in his Antiq. Eccl. Rom. 1693, i. 402-495; in parallel columns.

2 See the careful analysis of the whole work in Piper's Einleitung in die Monum. Theol. (Gotha, 1867), pp. 315-349.

recurring assertion that they had marked out the parishes and the hierarchical grades of the clergy in Rome, no particular ordinances of theirs could be quoted, and people had to be content with stating generally that Damasus or Gelasius or Hilary had made a law binding the whole Church. In the later and more historical portion (from 440 to 530) the Pope is specially represented as teacher of doctrine and supreme judge, with a view to the Greeks. In the first edition every historical notice, except about buildings, sacred offerings, and cemeteries, is false: the author's statements about the fortunes and acts of particular Popes never agree with what is known of their history, but rather contradict it, sometimes glaringly; and thus we must regard as fabulous even what cannot be proved such from sources now accessible to us, for there is almost always an obvious design.2

The fictions of the Liber Pontificalis had a far-reaching influence after they became known, and were used

1 The phrase "fecit Constitutum de omni Ecclesiâ" is repeated on nearly every page, but what the ordinance was is never specified, while the pretended liturgical appointments are always precisely expressed.

2 The Liber Pontificalis has been critically examined by Tillemont, and more fully by Coustant, and its gross anachronisms proved, so that there can be no doubt about its fabulous character, and it gives one the impression throughout of deliberate fraud. Clearly the compilers had no historical or documentary evidence. The first enlargement of the Liberian catalogue reached almost to Damasus, and must have been composed early in the