374 gian the teng DECRETALS. judge to an inferior one. But even although he had not appealed to the holy see, you ought by no means to depose a bishop without our participation, in prejudice of so many decretals of our prede hastery of St. Medard; one from the e to Felix, Bishop of Messina; and ny others. D'The object of the author was to extend the authority of the pope and the bishops. 'With this view, he lays it down as a prin-cessors; for, if it be by their judgment, ciple, that they can be definitely judged only by the pope; and he often repeats this maxim, that not only every bishop, but every priest, and, generally, every oppressed individual may, in any stage of a cause, appeal directly to the pope. He likewise considers it as an incontestible principle, that no council, not even a provincial one, may be held without the per-use both without distinction, and reject mission of the pope. that the writings of other doctors are approved or rejected, how much more should that be respected which they have themselves written, to decide on points of doctrine and discipline; Some tell you that these decretals are not in the book of canons; yet those same persons, when they find them favourable to their designs, them only to lessen the power of the holy These decretals, favouring the impunity see. If the decretals of the ancient popes of bishops, and still more the ambitious are to be rejected because they are not pretensions of the popes, were eagerly contained in the book of canons, the adopted by them both. In 861, Rotade, writings of St. Gregory, and the rest of Bishop of Soissons, being deprived of the fathers, must, on the same principle, episcopal communion in a provincial { be rejected also, and even the holy scripcouncil, on account of disobedience, ap-tures themselves. peals to the pope. Hincmar of Rheims, his metropolitan, notwithstanding his appeal, deposes him in another council, under the pretext that he had afterwards renounced it, and submitted himself to the judgment of the bishops. 66 You say,' ," the pope continues, "that judgments upon bishops are not among the higher causes; we maintain that they are high in proportion as bishops hold a high rank in the church. Will you assert that it is only metropolitan affairs which Pope Nicholas I. being informed of constitute the higher causes? But methis affair, wrote to Hincmar, and blamed {tropolitans are not of a different order his proceedings. "You ought," says he, from bishops, and we do not demand dif"to honour the memory of St. Peter, and ferent witnesses or judges in the one case, await our judgment, even although Ro- from what are usual in the other; we tade had not appealed." And in another therefore require, that causes which inletter on the same matter, he threatens volve either should be reserved for us. Hincmar with excommunication, if he And, finally, can any one be found so does not restore Rotade. That pope did utterly unreasonable as to say, that all more. Rotade having arrived at Rome, other churches ought to preserve their he declared him acquitted in a council { privileges, and that the Roman church held on Christmas eve, 164; and dis-alone should lose her's?" He concludes missed him to his see with letters. That with ordering them to receive and replace which he addressed to all the bishops is Rotade. worthy of notice, and is as follows: { Pope Adrian, the successor of Nicholas "What you say is absurd, that Rotade, I., seems to have been no less zealous in after having appealed to the holy see, a similar case relating to Hincmar of Laon. changed his language and submitted him- That prelate had rendered himself hateful self anew to your judgment. Even al- both to the clergy and people of his diothough he had done so, it would have been { cese, by various acts of injustice and vioyour duty to set him right, and teach himlence. Having been accused before the that an appeal never lies from a superior council of Verberie-at which Hincmar of Rheims, his uncle and metropolitan, presided he appealed to the pope, and demanded permission to go to Rome. This was refused him. The process against him was merely suspended, and the affair went no farther. But upon new matters of complaint brought against him, by Charles the Bald and Hincmar of Rheims, he was cited at first before the council of Attigni, where he appeared, and soon afterwards fled; and then before the council of Douzi, where he renewed his appeal, and was deposed. The council wrote to the pope a synodal letter, on the sixth of September, 371, to request of him a confirmation of the acts which they sent to him; but Adrian, far from acquiescing in the judgment of the council, expressed in the strongest terms his disapprobation of the condemnation of Hincmar; maintaining that, since Hincmar declared before the council that he appealed to the holy see, they ought not to have pronounced any sentence of condemnation upon him. Such were the terms used by that pope in his letter to the bishops of the council, as also in that which he wrote to the king. The following is the vigorous answer sent by Charles to Adrian:-"Your letters say whom God has appointed to govern the world, have permitted bishops to regulate their affairs according to their ordinances, but they have never been the stewards of bishops; and if you search the records of your predecessors, you will not find that they have ever written to persons in our exalted situation, as you have done in the present instance." He then adduces two letters of St. Gregory, to show with what modesty he wrote, not only to the kings of France, but to the Exarchs of Italy. “Finally,” he concludes, "I beg that you will never more send to me, or to the bishops of my kingdom, similar letters, if you wish that we should give to what you write that honour and respect which we would willingly grant it." The bishops of the council of Douzi answered the pope nearly in the same strain; and, although we have not the entire letter, it appears that their object in it was to prove that Hincmar's appeal ought not to be decided at Rome, but in France, by judges delegated conformably to the canons of the council of Sardis. These examples are sufficient to show how the popes extended their jurisdiction by the instrumentality of these false decretals; and although Hincmar of "We will and ordain, by apostolic Rheims objected to Adrian, that, not authority, that Hincmar of Laon shall being included in the book of canons, come to Rome and present himself be- they could not subvert the discipline esfore us, resting upon your supremacy.tablished by the canons-which occa"We wonder where the writer of thissioned his being accused, before Pope letter discovered that a king, whose duty it is to chastise the guilty, and be the avenger of crimes, ought to send to Rome a criminal convicted according to legal forms, and more especially one who, before his deposition, was found guilty, in three councils, of enterprises against the public peace; and who, after his depo-terwards there was less and less scruple. sition, persisted in his disobedience. "We are compelled further to tell you, that we, kings of France, born of a royal race, have never yet passed for the depu. ties of bishops, but for sovereigns of the earth. And, as St Leon and the Roman council have said, kings and emperors, John VIII., of not admitting the decretals of the popes--he constantly cited these decretals as authorities, in his letters and other writings, and his example was followed by many bishops. At first, those only we admitted which were not contrary to the more recent canons, and af The councils themselves made use of them. Thus, in that of Rheims, held in 992, the bishops availed themselves of the decretals of Anacletus, of Julius, of Damasis, and other popes, in the cause of Arnoul. Succeeding councils imitated that of Rheims. The popes Gregory VII., that the collection was not composed till after the pontifical book. 4th. These decretals, in all the citations of scripture passages which they contain, use the version known by the name of "Vulgate," made, or at least Urban II., Pascal II., Urban III., and Alexander III., supported the maxims they found in them, persuaded that they constituted the discipline of the flourishing age of the church. Finally, the compilers of the canons-Bouchard of Worms, Yves of Chartres, and Gratian-revised, by St. Jerome. They are, thereintroduced them into their collection. fore, of later date than St. Jerome. After they became publicly taught in the schools, and commented upon, all the polemical and scholastic divines, and all the expositors of the canon law, eagerly laid hold of these false decretals to confirm the Catholic dogmas, or to establish points of discipline, and scattered them profusely through their works. It was not till the sixteenth century, that the first suspicion of their authenticity were excited. Erasmus, and many others with him, called them in question upon the following grounds :— Finally, they are all written in the same style, which is very barbarous; and, in that respect, corresponding to the ignorance of the eighth century; but it is not by any means probable that all the different popes, whose names they bear, affected that uniformity of style. It may be concluded with confidence, that all the decretals are from the same hand. Besides these general reasons, each of the documents which form Isidore's collection carries with it marks of forgery peculiar to itself, and none of which have escaped the keen criticism of David Blondel, to whom we are principally indebted for the light thrown at the present day on this compilation, now no longer known but as "The False Decretals;" but the usages introduced in consequence of it subsist not the less through a considerable portion of Europe. 1st. The decretals contained in the collection of Isidore are not in that of Denis le Petit, who cited none of the decretals of the popes before the time of Siricus. Yet he informs us, that he took extreme care in collecting them. They could not, therefore, have escaped him, if they had existed in the archives of the see of Rome, where he resided. If they were unknown to the holy see, to which they were favourable, they were so to the whole church. The fathers and coun-believers in the universal deluge, becils of the eight first centuries have made no mention of them. But how can this universal silence be reconciled with their authenticity! 2nd. These decretals do not all correspond with the state of things existing ar the time in which they are supposed to have been written. Not a word is said of the heresies of the three first centuries, nor of other ecclesiastical affairs with which the genuine works of the same period are filled. This proves that they were fabricated afterwards. 3rd. Their dates are almost always false. Their author generally follows the chronology of the pontifical book, which, by Baronius's own confession, is very incorrect. This is a presumptive evidence! DELUGE (UNIVERSAL). We begin with observing that we are cause it is recorded in the holy Hebrew scriptures transmitted to Christians. We consider it as a miracle: first, because all the facts by which God condescends to interfere in the sacred books are so many miracles. Secondly, because the sea could not rise fifteen cubits, or one-and-twenty standard feet and a half, above the highest mountains, without leaving its bed dry, and, at the same, violating all the laws of gravity and the equilibrium of fluids, which would evidently require a miracle. Thirdly, because, even although it might rise to the height mentioned, the ark could not have contained, according to known physical laws, all the living things of the earth, together with their food, for so long a time: considering that lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, ounces, rhinoceroses, bears, wolves, hyenas, eagles, hawks, kites, vultures, falcons, and all carnivorous animals which feed on flesh alone, would have died of hunger, even after having devoured all the other species. There was printed, some time ago, in an appendix to Pascal's Thoughts, a dissertation of a merchant of Rouen, called Le Pelletier, in which he proposes a plan for building a vessel in which all kinds of animals might be included and maintained for the space of a year. It is clear, that this merchant never superintended even a poultry-yard. We cannot but look upon M. le Pelletier, the architect of the ark, as a visionary, who knew nothing about menageries; and upon the deluge as an adorable miracle, fearful and incomprehensible to the feeble reason of M. le Pelletier, as well as to our own. Fourthly, because the physical impossibility of a universal deluge, by natural means, can be strictly demonstrated. The demonstration is as follows: All the seas cover half the globe. common measure of their depths near the shores, and in the open ocean, is assumed to be five hundred feet. be required to accumulate on each other, merely in order to equal the height of the mountains. Every successive ocean would contain all the others, and the last of them all would have a circumference containing forty times that of the first. In order to form this mass of water, it would be necessary to create it out of nothing. In order to withdraw it, it would be necessary to annihilate it. The event of the deluge, then, is a double miracle, and the greatest that has ever manifested the power of the eternal Sovereign of all worlds. We are exceedingly surprised that some learned men have attributed to this deluge some small shells found in many parts of our continent. We are still more surprised at what we find under the article DELUGE in the grand Encyclopedia. An author is quoted in it who says things so very profound that they may be cousidered as chimerical. This is the first characteristic of Pluche. He proves the possibi lity of the deluge by the history of the giants who made war against the gods! Briaréus, according to him, is clearly the deluge, for it signifies the loss of seArenity; and in what language does it signify this loss?-In Hebrew. But Briaréus is a Greek word, which means robust; it is not a Hebrew word. Even if, by chance, it had been so, we ought to beware of imitating Bochart, who derives so many Greek. Latin, and even French words from the Hebrew idiom. The Greeks certainly knew no more of the Jewish idiom than of the language of the Chinese. In order to their covering both hemispheres to the depth of five hundred feet, not only would an ocean of that depth be necessary over all the land, but a new sea would, in addition, be required to envelope the ocean at present existing, without which the laws of hydrostatics would occasion the dispersion of that other new mass of water five hundred feet deep, which should remain covering the land. Thus, then, two new oceans are requisite to cover the terraqueous globe merely to the depth of five hundred feet. Supposing the mountains to be only twenty thousand feet high, forty oceans, each five hundred feet in height, would The giant Othus is also in Hebrew, according to Pluche, "the derangement of the seasons." But it is also a Greek word, which does not signify anything, at least, that I know; and even if it did, what, let me ask, could it have to do with the Hebrew? Porphyrion is a shaking of the earth, in Hebrew; but in Greek, it is porphyry. This has nothing to do with the deluge. Mimas is a great rain; for once, he does mention a name which may bear upon the deluge. But in Greek mimas means mimic, comedian. There are no means of tracing the deluge of such an origin. Enceladus, another proof of the deluge in Hebrew; for, according to Pluche, it is the fountain of time; but, unluckily, in Greek it is noise. Ephialtes, another demonstration of the deluge in Hebrew; for ephialtes, which signifies leaper, oppressor, incubus, in Greek is, according to Pluche, a vast accumulation of clouds. But the Greeks, having taken everything from the Hebrews, with whom they were unacquainted, clearly gave to their giants all those names which Pluche extracts from the Hebrews as well as he can, and all as a memorial of the deluge. Such is the reasoning of Pluche. It is he who cites the author of the article DELUGE without refuting him. Does he speak seriously, or does he jest? I do not know. All I know is, that there is scarcely a single system to be found at which one can forbear jesting. a race of men in order to drown them, and then substitute in their room a race still viler than the first. How seven pairs of all kinds of clean animals should come from the four quarters of the globe, together with two pairs of unclean ones, without the wolves devouring the sheep on the way, or the kites the pigeons, &c., &c. How eight persons could keep in order, feed, and water, such an immense number of inmates, shut up in an ark for nearly two years; for, after the cessation of the deluge, it would be necessary to have food for all these passengers for another year, in consequence of the herbage being so scanty. I am not like M. Pelletier. I admire everything, and explain nothing. DEMOCRACY. Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire. Such is the opinion which Cinna gave Le pire des états, c'est l'état monarchique. Bayle, in his Philosophical Diction I have some apprehension that the article in the grand Encyclopedia, attri-ary, after having repeatedly advocated buted to M. Boulanger, is not serious. both sides of the question, gives, under In that case, we ask whether it is philo- the article Pericles, a most disgusting sophical. Philosophy is so often de- picture of democracy, and more particeived, that we shall not venture to de-cularly that of Athens. cide against M. Boulanger. posers of questions," sends us a refutation of Bayle and his apology for Athens. We will adduce his reasons. It is the privilege of every writer to judge the living and the dead; he who thus sits in judgment will be himself judged by others, who, in their turn, will be judged also; and thus, from age to age, all sentences are, according to circumstances, reversed or reformed. A republican, who is a staunch partiStill less shall we venture to ask whatsan of democracy, and one of our "prowas that abyss which was broken up, or what were the cataracts of heaven which were opened. Isaac Vossius denies the universality of the deluge: "Hoc est piè nugari. Calmet maintains it; informing us that bodies have no weight in air, but in consequence of their being compressed by air. Calmet was not much of a natural philosopher, and the weight of the air has nothing to do with the deluge. Let us content ourselves with reading and respecting everything in the bible, without comprehending a single word of it. I do not comprehend how God created ་ Bayle, then, after some common-place observations, uses these words: “A man would look in vain into the history of Macedon for as much tyranny as he finds in the history of Athens " |