From The Nineteenth Century. thenticity of the Book of Daniel and of some of the writings ascribed to Solomon. It would be venturing upon ground even more debatable to adduce analogous examples from the New Testament, but the most conservative divines will admit that the books of which its canon is composed were selected from a large mass of writ the early Church as authentic and genuine SPURIOUS and pseudonymous literature is probably nearly as old as literature it self. It was comparatively common in ancient Greece and Rome, and may be said to have flourished among the Jews and early Christians. Bentley, in his "Dissertation upon Phalaris," ,"* enumer-ings, more or less commonly accepted by ates a series of works fathered upon some of the great classical writers, which after deceiving many learned judges were discovered by others of more discernment to be unauthentic. This list of counterfeits, he tells us, might have been much longer; "in one short passage of Suidas there's an account of half a score." The epistles ascribed to the Sicilian tyrant (about 570 B.C), which were the subject of Bentley's dissection, he proved to the satisfaction of all succeeding scholars to be the work of an Attic Sophist belonging to a later age. Another such example may be mentioned. The extracts which Philo Byblius, a writer of the first century A.D., professed to have translated from the works of Sanchuniathon, an ancient Phoenician author contemporary with Semiramis, are, by the general consent of modern scholars, held to be the invention of the ostensible translator. His presumed motive for fabricating them was that, in his zeal to win converts to the doctrine of Euhemerus, that the gods were apotheosized men, he had adduced apt illustrations from Phonician history which he had no real means of substantiating.† a Rigidly to apply our modern standard of ethics to these ancient examples of fabricated literature would be obviously unjust, and discrimination is needful to determine their real character. One cannot scruple, indeed, to classify as common cheats the wily bibliopoles who, when Ptolemy Philadelphus was making a collection of Aristotle's works, "with design of getting money of him, put Aristotle's name to other men's writings."+ Nor can we hesitate to assign to a malicious motive the conduct of the historian Anaximenes who (according to Pausanias) succeeded in making his rival Theopompus hateful to the governments of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, by fabricating an invective against them in imitation of his style, and publishing it in his name.‡ It would be rash, however, to assume that the priestly custodians of the Lycian tem Since Bentley wrote, the literature of Greece and Rome has been subjected to a searching criticism, and it is probable that many works which in his time were unhesitatingly ascribed to great names would be rejected as spurious by the consensus of the best living scholars. In the province of Biblical research less unanimity yet prevails in this country, but it may be safe to say that most qualified critics, German and English, would agree in dis-ple, which boasted among its treasures a crediting the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, if not of the whole Pentateuch; the integrity and synchronism of the prophecies attributed to Isaiah; the au Second ed. Introd. pp. 13-15, 520, 539. ↑ Smith's Classical Dict. of Biography. paper epistle written from Troy by Sarpedon, were consciously imposing upon the historian Licinius Mucianus who (to Irenæus, Hær. i. 20. 1. "Ammonius on Aristotle's Categories," cited by Bentley, Phalaris, p. 12. Cited by Bentley, ut sup. Pliny's astonishment) was so credulous as to suppose it genuine.* The historical existence of Sarpedon may well have been believed by the priests as well as their visitor, and both have been innocently ignorant that paper (papyrus) was not likely to be used for letter-writing in the Homeric age. With respect to many of the spurious works fathered upon classical writers, it is unnecessary to suspect any one of intentionally uttering them under false names. To uncritical readers, su perficial resemblances between the style of a master and that of his imitator would suffice to suggest identity of authorship, and a surmise to that effect started by one inventive brain would soon circulate as assertion and be handed down to the following age as certainty. Still less are we called upon to stigmatize as forgers, in a criminal sense, the authors of works, now admitted to be pseudonymous, which the early Christians accepted as authentic. Bearing in mind that it was from the Eastern Churches these fabrications usually proceeded, we may justly make large allowance for the difference which has always subsisted between the Western and the Eastern mind with regard to the value of truth. The word "truth" [says Renan] has not the same significance for the Oriental as for ourselves. The Oriental tells, with a bewitching candor and with the accent of a witness, a crowd of things which he has not seen and about which he is by no means certain. The fantastic tales of the Exodus from Egypt which are told in Jewish families during the Feast of the Passover deceive nobody, yet none the less they enchant those who listen to them. Every year the scenic representations by which they commemorate the martyrdom of the sons of Ali in Persia are enriched with some new invention designed to render the victims more interesting and the murderers more hateful.† Add to this the consideration that the classical historians and biographers had established as a literary usage the practice of inventing orations for their heroes, statesmen, or generals, ideally appropriate to the occasions when they purported tò Nat. Hist. xiii. c. 13, cited by Bentley, p. 539. Renan, The Gospels (Mattheson's translation), c. xi. p. 104 have been delivered, and embodying the ideas and convictions the speakers were believed to entertain, but couched in language they never actually used and pervaded throughout by the mental bias of the writer. The example, again, set by Plato in idealizing the personality of Socrates, and passing his homely sense and keen dialectic through the filter of his own mind, could not fail to be taken as a precedent by members of the school which reconciled his philosophy with Christian doctrine. Further, it must be remembered how fierce and ceaseless was the strife between the "Catholic party in the Church and "heresiarchs " of various complexions who disputed its assumption of orthodoxy, all equally convinced of the truth of their own views and anxious to convert the world to them; and how necessary an advocate must have deemed it, in the absence of any canonical standard of Scripture, to adduce the authority of some reverend name among the Apostles or their immediate disciples to refute the contention of his opponent that the tenet in dispute was an unsound innovation. It was but a step from the contemplation of this necessity to the employment of any legitimate device to effect the desired object. The literary usage and philosophical precedent above mentioned afforded ample sanction for idealizations upon a larger scale and for a worthier end than they served. It were a mistake to describe the literature thus created [observes one of its most learned and judicial critics] as intended to deceive. The document so originated is rather the half-unconscious utterance of what, under the circumstances, seemed essentially necessary and true; no critical faculty existing to censure or control, and the apparent greatness or excellence of the object excusing or concealing the literary aberration or misnomer. It could little be anticipated, when this innocent fiction was first resorted to, to what lengths the principle of pious frauds would eventually be carried. With the definitive constitution of the Church and the establishment of a canon, the practice of pseudonymous writing ceased with its cause.* The Tübingen School and its Antecedents, by R. W. Mackay, pp. 335, 339. The statement that pseudonymous Christian literature ceased with its cause must be qualified. The latest date fixed for the forma era. difference which has always existed between the moral standards of various races must be taken into account. The respect for truth entertained by the Teutonic nations, for example, is and has immemorially been higher than that acknowledged by the Celts. Since the elevation of the Christian ideal, however, of which truth is an integral part, no believer in its sanctity can be held blameless for a deliberate act of deception, in spite of any attempts to justify it by the urgency of other obligations. The growth of the scientific spirit, which sprang into life at the Renaissance, with its passion for "seeing things as they really are and its reverence for precision of statement as all-essential, has further tended to enhance public reprobation of every form of fraud. Subject, therefore, to the reservation above made, the classi fication adopted may provisionally serve. For the authors of some of the later Christian apocrypha it would be difficult to offer the same excuses as for their predecessors. The clumsy interpolator of a well-known passage in Josephus (Antiq. Lib. 18, c. 3) can hardly be acquitted of a design to invent evidence wherewith to silence the assertion of Hebrew opponents that the life of the founder of Christianity was unrecorded by the historian of his It is possible, however, to believe that the Trinitarian controversialist who marginally annotated the first Johannine epistle with the verse relating to the three heavenly witnesses, was innocent of intending that a future copyist of the MS. should insert his gloss as part of the text. The propensity of copyists to incorporate marginal comments indiscriminately appears to be so largely responsible for the interpolations and equivocal readings which have crept into the MSS. of the Prominent in the first group, among the New Testament, that it would be unjust pseudonymous fabrications of tyranny, to impute sinister design to all that have stands the Athanasian Creed, which, notbeen twisted to serve controversial ends. withstanding the avowal of revered diAlthough, after the formation of a canon vines that they wished they were "well and the establishment of Catholic Chris- rid of it," still disfigures the Anglican tianity, one chief motive for the fabrica-prayer-book. Though its actual origin tion of pseudonymous literature ceased to operate, fresh occasions soon arose to call it into active being. I can do no more within the limits of this paper than glance at the salient aspects of a large and manysided subject. The fabrications which I have space to notice may be conveniently grouped under three heads: (1) those dictated by base motives, whether in the interest of tyranny, greed, vanity, spite, or jealousy; (2) those devoid of evil intention and due to the indulgence of satirical, mischievous, or playful humor; (3) those inspired by a strong dramatic impulse, to which any form of mystification appears permissible. Allowance may have to be made in some cases for an admixture of motives, which renders it doubtful whether they belong wholly to the first or in part to the second group. In estimating the culpability of a particular imposture, the tion of the canon is the beginning of the fourth century, but the fabrications ascribed to Dionysius "the Areop agite could scarcely have been written before the fifth century. (Smith's Classical Dict. of Biog.) Some critics assign even a later date to the spurious Apostolical Constitutions and date are still uncertain, it is admitted by the general consent of theologians, "orthodox" and "heterodox" alike, to be falsely fathered upon the Alexandrian bishop of the third century whose name it bears. The prevailing opinion is that it emanated from a Spanish or French source in the fifth or sixth century.* This is not the place to discuss the value of its theological definitions, but the emphatic language of its damnatory clauses leaves no room for doubt as to their primary object. To strengthen by the agency of spiritual terrorism the hands of the power which arrogated to itself the sole authority of fixing Christian dogma, and to narrow the pale of the Church so as to exclude all who dared to exercise the private right of reason and conscience, was a design which the creed-maker accomplished only too well. That the wielders of spiritual tyranny should not lack the complement of tem The chief authorities on the subject are collectively cited in Dr. Lamson's Church of the First Three Ccnturies, pp. 403-4. poral dominion was the obvious aim of two fabrications which appeared in the eighth century, and are attributed by Gibbon to the hand of a single writer who "borrowed the name of St. Isidore."* The "Decretals and the Donation of Constantine" were intended, says the historian, to be "the two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.' According to the narrative put forth by Pope Adrian the First in an epistle addressed to Charlemange, the Donation of Constantine originated in his gratitude for having been healed of leprosy and bap. tized by St. Silvester, then Bishop of Rome. In pious recognition of his deliverance, the emperor relinquished "the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the East, and resigned to the popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West." Though professedly credited by Pope Adrian and some of his successors, this monstrous fiction did not escape monastic criticism in the twelfth century, and in 1440 was mercilessly exposed by the Roman patriot, Valla. Half a century later it was generally abandoned, and eventually disavowed by the advocates of the Church in whose interest it had been forged. ing to endow them with valuable lands and franchises, which, when examined by modern experts, have been discovered to be palpable forgeries. The learned editor of the "Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis" (Canon Greenwell) devotes the bulk of his preface to an examination of "the foundation deeds of the Benedictine monastery established by" Bishop William de St. Carilef at Durham, which "form one inseparable and complete series of titles in connection with the confirming instru ments of King William the Norman, Archbishops Lanfranc and Thomas, and bulls of several popes. This series, consisting of a large number of varied and pretentious documents," he finds himself compelled by the evidence to declare to be "a tissue of forgeries." The proofs of this charge consist both in substantial discrepancies between these documents and unimpeachable records elsewhere, and in glaring falsifications of names, dates, and seals. In the case of one document it can be shown that "out of eleven attesting archbishops, bishops, and abbots, six were dead at the time when the charter affects to have been executed." Similar evidences of falsity invalidate the rest of the series. Two motives appear to have dictated "the fabrication of the charters Of the Decretals, which "purported to in question: the one, to provide written be rescripts or decrees of the early bish- and readily authenticated proof of ownerops of Rome," † it may suffice to say that ship of estates to which, though belonging they were designed to prove the antiquity to the convent, there was no book-title; of the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman the other, to establish claims to privileges See as a court of appeal. Their twofold to which the monks had no evidence of object was to weaken archiepiscopal au- right, and that were probably assumptions thority over suffragan bishops, who were without authority."* thereby made directly amenable to the papal tribunal, and to forbid the holding of national councils without special sanction from Rome. Upon these spurious Decretals [says Hallam] was built the great fabric of papal supremacy over the different national churches a fabric which has stood after its foundation crumbled beneath it, for no one has pretended to deny for the last two centuries that the imposture is too palpable for any but the most ignorant age to credit. ‡ The almost exclusive possession of clerkly learning by the religious orders afforded to unscrupulous brotherhoods facilities for abusing it in their own interests with comparatively little risk of detection. From the "Scriptoria" of English monasteries issued a large number of royal and private charters purport Decline and Fall, ix. 159, 160. † Hallam's Middle Ages, c. vii. part i. pp. 166-7. Ibid. p. 167. The occasion of the forgery was probably a bitter dispute which arose between the monks and Bishop Marsh in 1221, when both parties appealed to Rome and were called upon to produce their muni ments. Numerous examples of forged monastic charters upon a less extensive scale than the foregoing are given by Kemble in his "Codex Diplomaticus Evi Saxonici," passim, and by Sir Thos. Duffus Hardy in his "Introduction to the Charte. Rolls," PP. xxxi, xxxviii, xxxix. The "History of the Monastery of Croyland," ostensibly by its abbot, Ingulphus, which purports to embrace its annals and charters from the middle of the seventh to the early part of the twelfth century, and contains much curious information respecting the reign of the Conqueror, has been discredited since the Publications of Surtees Society, vol. lviii., pret Pp. x-lxxxi. seventeenth century, when Wharton and | during the Barons' War. The garbled Hickes successively called attention to its version of John's great charter here put fictitious statements. Sir Francis Pal- forth contains an undertaking on the part grave, who subjected it to a careful exam- of the king to expel Fawkes, among others, ination in the Quarterly Review for June, from the realm forthwith. The authentic 1826, assigns various reasons for conclud- charter makes no mention of Fawkes, who ing it to be a forgery of the reign of continued for some years in the service of Richard the Second. The code of laws Henry the Third before his insolent defiin French, which the writer ascribes to ance of law and order compelled the king the Conqueror, has been "ascertained," to banish him. It was presumably with says Hallam, "to be a translation from the hope of hastening that desired event the Latin made in the thirteenth cen- that the forger sought to show his exile tury." A further exposure of its an- had already been decreed.* achronisms and misstatements has been Lest the frauds of English monks should made by Mr. H. T. Riley † and by Sir be supposed uniquely shameful, it is but Thomas Duffus Hardy. The last-named just to instance one or two which were writer unequivocally brands it as "a monk-hatched in Continental cloisters. The ish forgery.' Even the more trustworthy monastic chroniclers-e.g., Roger de Wendover and Matthew Paris frequently insert documents accredited either to divine or human writers, which are obviously spurious and betray more or less clearly the purposes which occasioned their fabrication. Among those introduced into Wendover's Chronicle is "a letter that came from heaven" and was found "suspended over St. Simeon's altar at Jerusalem" in the year 1200. Its fulmination of the direst penalties against Sabbath-breaking lent timely aid to the efforts of some of the clergy who were just then denouncing that offence.§ The copies of " Magna Carta and the "Carta de Foresta " which Wendover and Paris seem to have accepted as authentically signed and promulgated by John, prove to be a pasticcio made up from a garbled and mutilated version of the single charter executed by that king, and of the two charters granted by his successor. The language of the later documents has been generally modified to suit the earlier date assigned to them; but a blunder of the manipulator in omitting to alter a reference made by Henry the Third to his " grandfather," Henry the Second, betrays the falsification. Dr. Luard, in his edition of Matthew Paris, adduces other clear proofs of forgery, and suggests a probable motive for it. The convent of St. Albans (whence these chronicles proceeded) cherished a bitter animus against Fawkes de Breauté, one of John's foreign mercenaries, by whose troops the monastery had been plundered 66 History of Charles the Great and Or. lando," published shortly before the year 1122, as a personal narrative, by Charlemagne's secretary, Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, appears to have been the composition of a monk who (in the words of its latest editor) designed it "for edification, for encouragement of faith in the Church, war against infidels, and reverence to the shrine of St. James of Compostella."† That the last-named object was uppermost in the writer's mind he takes much pains to make clear. Midway in his romantic account of the exploits of Charles and his paladins in Gallicia, the assumed Turpin breaks off to describe how, by the em peror's command, he dedicated "the church and altar of St. James with extraordinary splendor and magnificence." A chapter is devoted to the recital of the metropolitan rank and revenues bestowed on it. "All Spain and Gallicia was made subject to this holy place; it was moreover endowed with four pieces of money from every house throughout the kingdom, and at the same time totally freed from royal jurisdiction; being from that hour styled the Apostolic See," etc. A labored comparison follows of its relation to the Sees of Rome and Ephesus, "which are undoubtedly the true sees;" the second place in pre-eminence being emphatically claimed for it, with a significant hint in conclusion that, "if any difficulty should occur that cannot elsewhere be resolved, let it be brought before these sees, and it shall by divine grace be decided." Al though in 1122 Pope Calixtus the Second "vouched for the authorship of Turpin," the work gradually lost credit, and when the object of its fabrication was detected * Chronicle of M. Paris, ed. Luard; Rolls Series of Chronicles, vol. ii. pref. pp. 589 $99. † Medieval Tales (Universal Library), ed. Prof. H. Morley, introd. p. 5. |