The canons were insufficient to meet the evils of the day. Some remedy must be found of equal if not greater authority. The decretals of the Roman Pontiffs were seized for this holy purpose. Many such decretals were known to the Church. But there was a fatal hiatus of two centuries and a half after the founding of the See of Peter. That chasm must be bridged over by documents which would prove that the divine headship of Peter was consciously exercised by all his successors. With such indisputable evidence the supremacy of Rome would be established beyond question, and the entire hierarchy would be benefited. The ascendancy of the Church over the state would be established. Papal sovereignty would be acknowledged. Episcopal independence of secular control would be secured.
The sources of the Isidorian Decretals, now satisfactorily determined, were: the writings of the Church Fathers, particularly Rufinus (d. 410); the works of Cassiodorus (b. 470); Jerome's Vulgate; the _Liber Pontificales_; the general theological literature down to the ninth century; various collections of laws like _Breviarium Alaricianum_, the _Lex Visigothorum_, and the Frankish capitularies; the genuine archives of the Church like papal letters and decretals, Church canons, and minutes of Church councils; the correspondence of Archbishop Boniface (d. 754); and the forgeries.
Before this collection appeared there had been several others formed in the Western Church:[330:1]
1. Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian, who lived at Rome as a monk in the sixth century, made a collection of the fifty Apostolic Canons; decrees of the Eastern and African Church councils from 375 to 451; and letters of Popes from 314 to 498. This collection was used by Charles the Great as a basis in part for the Frankish laws.
2. Isidore of Seville, early in the seventh century, made a second collection, very much like the first one just described.
3. Then Isidore Mercator, about the middle of the ninth century put out a third collection which embraced those by Exiguus and Isidore of Seville and included all the forgeries. This last collection opens with a preface, then has a spurious letter from Aurelius to Damasus, and a forged answer; a selection from the fourth council of Toledo; a list of councils; and two spurious letters from Jerome to Damasus, with replies. After these documents the collection proper begins. It consists of three parts. The first includes the fifty Apostolic Canons; fifty-nine spurious decretals from Clement to Melchiades (90-314); a treatise _On the Primitive Church and the Council of Nicæa_; and the spurious "Donation of Constantine."[331:1] The second part opens with a genuine quotation from the Spanish collection of the decretals of the Greek, African, Gallic, and Spanish councils down to 683. The third part also begins with a quotation from the _Hispania_ and then gives the decretals of the Popes from Sylvester (d. 335) to Gregory II. (d. 731), of which thirty-five are forged and others contain many interpolations; and, finally, the _Capitula Angilramni_.