Note 166 — Front matter (continued 3)

The famous collection which bears the name of Isidorus Mercator contains about sixty spurious Decretals in the first part, covering the first three centuries, and about thirty in the third part; the second part contains the canons of councils. The author makes an adroit use of older documents, and his work is largely a mosaic of genuine fragments (of Papal letters, chronicles, etc.) so pieced together and ante-dated as to father later developments of Papal authority on the earlier Popes. The best edition is that of P. Hinschius (1863), and the best survey of recent study is the article "Pseudoisidor" in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie für Protestantische Theologie. There is a useful chapter in The Age of Charlemagne (1898), by C.L. Wells. The ablest Catholic study of the relation of Nicholas to the collection is Jules Roy's Saint Nicholas (1901). See also Les Fausses Décrétales (1879), of Father Ch. de Smedt. On the general question of the Pope's use of spurious documents see the able Old Catholic work of J. Richterich, Papst Nikolaus I. (1903).