History

The authenticity of papal Bull

Papal bull

A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....

s, alongside royal charters, and other legal instruments, was already a live issue in the Middle Ages. The papal Chancery saw control of documents and precautions taken against forgery. Pope Gregory VII

Pope Gregory VII

Pope St. Gregory VII , born Hildebrand of Sovana , was Pope from April 22, 1073, until his death. One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor affirming the primacy of the papal...

 refrained even from attaching the usual leaden seal to a Bull for fear it should fall into unscrupulous hands and be used for fraudulent purposes; while Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III

Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....

 issued instructions with a view to the detection of forgeries. An ecclesiastic of the standing of Lanfranc has been seriously accused of conniving at the fabrication of Bulls, the need of some system of tests is obvious.

But the medieval criticism of documents was not very satisfactory even in the hands of a jurist like Pope Alexander III

Pope Alexander III

Pope Alexander III , born Rolando of Siena, was Pope from 1159 to 1181. He is noted in history for laying the foundation stone for the Notre Dame de Paris.-Church career:...

. Though Laurentius Valla, the humanist, was right in denouncing the Donation of Constantine

Donation of Constantine

The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the pope. During the Middle Ages, the document was often cited in support of the Roman Church's claims to...

, and though the Magdeburg Centuriator, Matthias Flacius

Matthias Flacius

Matthias Flacius Illyricus was a Lutheran reformer.He was born in Carpano, a part of Albona in Istria, son of Andrea Vlacich alias Francovich and Jacobea Luciani, daughter of a wealthy and powerful Albonian family...

, was right in attacking the Forged Decretals, their methods, in themselves, were often crude and inconclusive. Diplomatics dates, in fact, only from the Benedictine Mabillon (1632–1707), whose fundamental work, De Re Diplomaticâ (Paris, 1681), was written to correct the principles advocated in the criticism of ancient documents by the Bollandist

Bollandist

The Bollandists are an association of scholars, philologists, and historians who since the early seventeenth century have studied hagiography and the cult of the saints in Christianity. Their most important publication has been the Acta Sanctorum...

 Father Papenbroeck (Papebroch).

Scholars including Barthélemy Germon (1663–1718) and Hardouin

Hardouin

Hardouin may refer to:* Hardouin de Graetz, or Ortwin , German scholar and theologian* Hardouin Mansart, or Jules Hardouin Mansart , French architect* Jean Hardouin , French classical scholar...

 in France, and, in less degree, George Hickes

George Hickes

George Hickes was an English divine and scholar.-Biography:Hickes was born at Newsham, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1642...

 in England, rejected Mabillon's criteria; but in point of fact, all that has been done since Mabillon's time has been to develop his methods and occasionally to modify his judgments upon some point of detail. After the issue of a Supplement in 1704, a second, enlarged and improved edition of the De Re Diplomaticâ was prepared by Mabillon himself and published in 1709, after his death, by his pupil, Thierry Ruinart

Thierry Ruinart

Dom Thierry Ruinart was a French Benedictine monk and scholar. He was a Maurist, and a disciple of Jean Mabillon....

. This pioneer work had not extended to any documents later than the thirteenth century and had taken no account of certain classes of papers, such as the ordinary letters of the popes and privileges of a more private character. Two other Maurists

Maurists

The Congregation of St. Maur, often known as the Maurists, were a congregation of French Benedictines, established in 1621, and known for their high level of scholarship...

, Dom Toustain and Dom Tassin, compiled a work in six large quarto volumes, with many facsimiles etc., known as the "Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique" (Paris, 1750–1765). It was a small advance on Mabillon's own treatise, but was widely used; and was presented in a more summary form by François Jean de Vaines, and others.

With the exception of some useful works specially consecrated to particular countries, as also the treatise of Luigi Gaetano Marini

Luigi Gaetano Marini

Luigi Gaetano Marini was a natural philosopher, jurist, historian and archeologist...

 on papyrus documents, no great advance was made in the science for a century and a half after Mabillon's death. The "Dictionnaire raisonné de diplomatique chrétienne", by Maximilien Quantin, which forms part of Migne's "Encyclopedia", is a digest of older works, and the sumptuous "Eléments de paléographie" of de Wailly (2 vols., 4to, 1838) has little independent merit.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the field was active, with the names of Léopold Delisle, the chief librarian of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, M. de Mas-Latrie, professor at the Ecole de Chartres, and Julius von Pflugk-Harttung, the editor of a series of facsimiles of papal Bulls. A calendar of early papal Bulls began appearing from 1902, the results of researches of P. Kehr, A. Brackmann, and W. Wiederhold, in Nachrichten der Göttingen Gesellsehaft der Wissenschaften. Papal regesta were published, especially by members of the Ecole Française de Rome.

Subject-matter

Officials who are concerned in the preparation of the documents collectively formed the "Chancery". The constitution of the Chancery, which in the case of the Holy See seems to date back to a schola notariorum, with a primicerius at its head, of which we hear under Pope Julius I

Pope Julius I

Pope Saint Julius I, was pope from February 6, 337 to April 12, 352.He was a native of Rome and was chosen as successor of Mark after the Roman seat had been vacant for four months. He is chiefly known by the part he took in the Arian controversy...

 (337-352), varied from period to period, and the part played by the different officials composing it necessarily varied also. Besides the Holy See, each bishop also had some sort of chancery for the issue of his own episcopal Acts. The procedure of the Chancery is only a study preparatory to the examination of the document itself.

Secondly, we have the text of the document. As the position of the Holy See became more fully recognized, the business of the Chancery increased, and there arose a marked tendency to adhere strictly to the forms prescribed by traditional usage. Various collections of these formula, of which the Liber Diurnus is one of the most ancient, were compiled at an early date. Many others will be found in the "Receuil général des formules" by de Rozière (Paris, 1861–1871), though these, like the series published by Zeumer, are mainly secular in character.

After the text of the document, which of course varies according to its nature, and in which not merely the wording but also the rhythm (the so-called cursus) has often to be considered, attention must be paid:

• to the manner of dating,
• to the signatures,
• to the attestations of witnesses etc.,
• to the seals and the attachment of the seals,
• to the material upon which it is written and to the manner of folding, as well as
• to the handwriting.

Under this last heading the whole science of palæography may be said to be involved.

All these matters fall within the scope of diplomatics, and all offer different tests for the authenticity of any given document. There are other details which often need to be considered, for example the Tironian notes

Tironian notes

Tironian notes is a system of shorthand said to have been invented by Cicero's scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro. Tiro's system consisted of about 4,000 signs, somewhat extended in classical times to 5,000 signs. In the European Medieval period, Tironian notes were taught in monasteries and the system...

 (or shorthand), which are of not infrequent occurrence in primitive Urkunden, both papal and imperial. A special section in any comprehensive study of diplomatics is also likely to be devoted to spurious documents: the number is surprisingly great.