Medieval Forgeries, Part 4

One of the earliest discovered (so far) forgeries was the 9th-century Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals. A decretal is a papal decree concerning a point of canon law.

Pseudo Isidore is the label given to an otherwise unknown author who referred to himself as Isidore Mercator*, writing in the 840s and 850s. The collection of 60 decretals from early popes include only two authentic ones. The two are placed first, in order to give the reader assurance that all were historical.

The point of these, also called the "False Decretals," was to give more authority to Frankish prelates. The Carolingian rulers, starting with Louis the Pious, were responsible for several episcopal trials, challenging the authority of the Church over the kings, and deposing bishops. The False Decretals attempt to create an historical foundation for the Church to have more rights and authority, to have autonomy for a bishop in his diocese, and provide immunity for bishops from trial and conviction.

One of the ways the forgery was discovered was Pseudo-Isidore's tendency to have the documents make reference to events that took place after the document at hand was supposedly written.

Pseudo-Isidore could not help slipping in some personal preferences outside of the attempt to give bishops more power. In a letter purported to be from Pope Clement, Isidore includes:

De castimoniae dico cautela, cuius species multae sunt. Sed primo, ut observet unusquisque, ne menstruatae mulieri misceatur, hoc enim exsecrabile ducit lex dei.

But first that anyone should make sure not to share company with a menstruating woman, for this is considered loathsome by the law of God.

This is entirely separate from the attempt to prove episcopal autonomy, and the author's personal concern is noteworthy. This got me thinking: what did the Middle Ages think about menstruation? Well, that's obviously a new topic for a new day. See you tomorrow.

*The name seems to be a blend of two known authorities: Isidore of Seville and Marius Mercator (c.390 - c.451), who wrote anti-Pelagian treatises and to whom St. Augustine wrote at least one letter.

Medieval Forgeries, Part 3

In Parts One and Two we get the feeling that forgeries were quite common, and used to "alter history" to the benefit of an institution. One of the most famous was the Donation of Constantine, first mentioned here. It was a document from the Emperor Constantine giving the popes authority over the Western Roman Empire, until a scholar named Lorenzo Valla looked more closely and realized it was written not in 4th-century Latin but in 8th-century informal Latin. The Donation of Constantine did not work to give the popes more power.

A supposed forgery that did have a strong impact was The Ordinance of Normandy. After the Battle of Caen in 1346 (part of the Hundred Years War), the victorious English supposedly found a document that was supposedly written by Philip VI in 1338 (the year the Hundred Years War is considered to have begun).

In it, the plan for Philip and his son (later King John II) to conquer England and destroy it completely is explained. They would give all its land to French lords. This was read out in public at St. Paul's Cathedral for maximum effect and then taken to Parliament. The outrage it created among the English population helped fuel support for Edward's military plans. In our modern times, calls would be made to French officials to deny or repudiate the contents of such a document, but in 1346, it was taken at its word.

There is no evidence that this was an official French policy or plan. No originals exist in French royal records. It was a useful tool of propaganda for the English, uniting the country against its enemy across the Channel.

There was a similar document connected to the crusades. Many copies exist of a popular letter written supposedly by Emperor Alexios I Comnenos to Count Robert I of Flanders, asking for help from Western Europe against the Turks. It describes all manner of horrible acts by the Turks. There is no indication that those acts took place, or that it was composed and sent prior to Urban's calling of the First Crusade, and is most likely to have been written afterward to help keep "Crusade Fever" going.

There will be a few more examples of medieval forgeries tomorrow, then we'll move on to a related topic.

Medieval Forgeries, Part 2

Yesterday's post started the discussion of forgeries and mentioned the Abbey of Saint-Denis. Forging documents was an attempt to re-create history to change the present. Even if we can determine that a document is "un-true," the attempt to forge a document can give us insight into the medieval mind and its desire to show what a person or institution thought should happen, although it did not.

In Forgeries and Historical Writing in England, France, and Flanders, 900-1200, Robert F. Berkhofer III explains just how crafty the monks of Saint-Denis were. They wanted to make the documents—granting them ancient rights, such as independence from the bishop of Paris—not only sound advantageous to them, but also appear to be ancient:

Many of these pseudo-originals reused authentic Merovingian papyri through a clever process designed to give ancient material basis to the invented text. First, the fabricators wrote on the reverse of a genuine papyrus, imitating the handwriting on the front. Then, they erased the front, which became the ‘back’ of the forgery. To make this deception less detectable, the fragile papyri were glued onto parchment for ‘support,’ which hid the original front.

So they used an old medium for the document, and even copied the style of penmanship! Almost one-quarter of the abbey's documents from before the millennium are inauthentic. This was an enormous attempt to increase their authority and autonomy in a very methodical manner.

We'll look at more examples of trying to alter history tomorrow.

Medieval Forgeries, Part 1

Everything written is written for a reason. That reason could be to persuade, to entertain, to outrage—authors always have a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to convince the reader of something that is simply not true.

The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-century England (by Alfred Hiatt, 2004), in an overview of forgeries starting in 1066, points out that we have 208 documents from the time of William the Conqueror, but 62 were produced in the 12th century, not the 11th. Their legitimacy cannot be proven by what we know of his reign. Hiatt also relays, in the same chapter, the story of the falsarius ("falsifier") Guerno, a monk from Saint-Médard in Soissons, whose deathbed confession admitted to numerous forgeries to supplement archives in both England and on the continent.

Papal documents at Canterbury that establish the primacy of Canterbury's archbishop over the archbishop of York have been theorized (without sufficient argument to the contrary; link) to be produced by Lanfranc himself, a man who otherwise has a spotless reputation.

Forgeries could be used to assert authority, as in the Canterbury case. They could also be used to legitimize claims in court, such as when inheriting estates; to secure land rights or gain tax exemptions from the king; or even to rewrite history to avoid blame or to attribute greater glory to someone.

Forgeries can be detected by anachronisms, expressing themselves in grammatical ways or with words or references that only occurred at a later date. They could have internal inconsistencies that are easily refuted by known established facts or events. Sometimes, they are just so out of place that there is no reason to believe that they are true.

Abbeys and monasteries often produced documents on their own to convince someone that they had land rights, or independence from secular bishops or other authorities. The Abbey of Saint-Denis used many forged documents to assert its independence from the bishop of Paris. They were very clever about it, too. Tomorrow I'll tell you what techniques they used to make their documents appear authentic.

Find Prester John

Yesterday I teased information about Prester John. I wrote about him long ago (here and here), and he got mentioned in other contexts (mostly popes like Honorius III and Eugene III hoping for his aid during the Crusades, and the link to Ethiopia, since it was a Christian nation from early on).

The link to yesterday's post is because Eldad ha-Dani's description of the Bnei Moshe and the unusual geography where they lived was repeated in  letters supposedly sent to Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenos in 1165 from "John, Christian Sovereign and Lord of Lords." The letter also referred to the Bnei Moshe Jewish group living in his land.

Belief in a Christian sect or nation south and east of Europe was bolstered by the stories of St. Thomas the Apostle traveling to India to evangelize. Europeans happily accepted the idea that Thomas' mission was successful. Reports of Christian inroads into the Mongols and Turks of Central Asia by Nestorian Christianity further supported the idea that (it was hoped) there was a large and influential Christian presence in other parts of the world.

The information in the letter also spoke of John's fabulous wealth. Like many medieval literary works, the legends got copied and conflated with others. For example, John later was given adventures taken right from the tales of Sinbad the Sailor.

Besides the fanciful stories of wealth and the exotic land in which he lived, communication with John from the West was much desired because of the possibility that he would meet up with the Crusades with a large army and help to defeat the Saracens in the Middle East. Pope Alexander II sent a letter to John via Alexander's physician, Philip, on 27 September 1177. There is no record of Philip's mission. It is possible that he simply disappeared into the wilderness while fruitlessly searching for his target, but if he did return, obviously there was no recorded result.

Examination of the letter that started it all suggests that, though it was written in Hebrew, the use of several Italian words means it was written by a European, likely someone Jewish living in Italy. Why would someone produce this? To create false hope for Christians? Just to have fun?

As forgeries go, this was a very powerful seed that sprouted into a legend that hung on for centuries. The illustration above shows Prester John on his throne from a 16th century map of East Africa made for Queen Mary.

Forgeries in the Middle Ages were fairly common, and we'll look at some starting tomorrow.