Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/43

 DIOSPOLIS

21

DIPLOMATICS

Dioscurus refused to appear or to make any defence. The accusations were dropped, and judgment must necessarily go against Dioscurus, if only for contempt of court. The bishops therefore repeatedly de- manded that the legates should deliver judgment. Paschasinus, therefore, the senior legate, recited the crimes of Dioscurus — he had absolved Eutyches con- trary to the canons, even before the council ; he was still contumacious when others asked for pardon; he had not had the pope's letter read; he had excommu- nicated the pope; he had been thrice formally cited and had refused to appear — " Wherefore the most holy and blessed Archbishop of elder Rome, Leo, by us and the present most holy council, together with the thrice blessed and praiseworthy Peter the Apostle, who is tlie rock and base of the Catholic Church and the foundation of the orthodox Faith, has stripped liim of the episcopal and of all sacerdotal dignity. Wherefore this most holy and great council will decree that which is in accordance with the canons against the aforesaid Dioscurus." All the bishops signified their agreement in a few words, and then all signed the papal sentence. A short notice of his deposition was sent to Dioscurus. It is taken almost word for word from that sent to Nestorius by the Council of Ephesus twenty years before. With the rest of the council — its definition of the Faith imposed upon it by Pope Leo, its rehabilitation of Theodoret and of Ibas, etc. — we have nothing to do. Dioscurus affected to ridicule his condemnation, saying that he should soon be restored. But the council decreed that he was in- capable of restoration, and wrote in tliis sense to the emperors, reciting his crimes. He was banished to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he died three years later. The whole of Egj^jt revered him as the true representative of Cyrillian teaching, and from this time forth the Patriarchate of Alexandria was lost to the Church. Dioscurus has been honoured in it as its teacher, and it has remained Eutychian to the present day.

The chief authority for the events which preceded the Robber Council {beside.s some letters of Theodoret) is the Syriac version of the Acts of that council, published from a codex of 535 in the Brit. Mus.; Secundam Synodum. Ephesinam necnon excerpta quce ad earn pertinent . . ., Perry ed. (Oxford, 1875); The second Synod of Ephesujs. from Syriac MSS., tr. by Perry (Dartford. 1881); German tr. by Hoffmanx, Verhandlungen der Kircfienversammlung zu Ephesus am xxii. August CDXLIX aus einer ayrischen HS. (Kiel, 1873): the best dissertations on it are Martin, Le Pseudo-Synode connu dans I'histoire sous h nom de brigandage d'Ephcse, etudie d'aprt:s ses actes, en syriaque (Paris. 1875), and articles by the same in Rev. des Qu. Hist., XVI (1874). and in Rev. des Sciences EccL, IX-X; also Largent in Rev. des Qu. Hist., XXVII (1880); Rivington, The Roman Primacy, UiO-l^l (London, 1899). Dr. Rivington has well noted the mistakes of Briffht, but he has fallen into some him- self, e. g. when he calls Dioscurus the nephew of St. Cyril or blames him for ignoring the so-called Constantinopolitan Creed. The appeals of Flavian and Eusebius were fir^t published by Amelli. San Leone Magna e I'Orientc (Rome, 1882, and Monte- cassino, 1890) and with other documents in his Spicitf-g. Cassin. (Montecassino, 1893); also by Mommsen. in Neucs Archiv der Gesellschaft fur altere deutsche Geschichtskunde, XI (1886). The older historians, who wrote before the discovery of the Syriac Acts, are antiquated as regards Dioscurus, including Hefele (but we await the next volume of the new French edition by Leclercq), and Brijiht, with the exception of his posthumous The Age of the Fathers (London, 1903). For more general literature see Chalcedon; a fragment of a letter of Dioscurus written from Gangra to the Alexandrians is found in the Antirrhetica of NlcEPHoncs in Pitra, Spicileg. Solesm., IV. 380. A panegyric on Macarius of Tkhofi. preserved in Coptic, is not genuine (published by AMiiuNEAC, Monum. pour scrvir i Vhist. de VEgyple chr. au A"' et .<;"■« siicUs (Paris, 1888). see Revilloot in Rev. EgyptoL. 1880-2], .\ Coptic life has been published in French and Syriac by F. Nau. Histoire de Dioscore. . . par son disciple Thiophiate, in Journal Asiatiqne, X»"s^rie (1903) 5,241; Coptic fragments of the paneg, and the life pub, by Crum. in Proceedings of Soc. of BM. Archa'ol. (1907). xxv. 267, A letter to Dioscurus from St, Leo, 21 June, 445 (Ep, xi), is interesting. The pope, politely but peremp- torily, orders all ordinations of priests and deacons to be in the night between Saturday and .Sunday; also that on festivals when there is a great concourse the Sacrifice is to be repeated as often as the basihca is refilled, that none may be deprived of his devotion.

John Chapman. Diospolis, Diocese of. See Sebaste.

Diospolis, Synod of. See Pelagianism,

Diplomatics, Papal. — The word diplomatics, fol- lowing a Continental usage which long ago found recognition in Mabillon's "DeRe Diplomatica", hasof late come to denote also in English the science of an- cient official documents, more especially of those emanating from the chanceries of popes, kings, emper- ors, and other authorities possessing a recognized jurisdiction. Etymologically dip?o/?ia(!fs should mean the science of diplomas, and diploma, in its classical acceptation, signified only a permit to use the cursus publicus (i.e. the public posting-service), or else a dis- charge accorded to veteran soldiers and imparting cer- tain privileges. But the scholars of the Renaissance erroneously supposed that diploma was the correct classical term for any sort of charter, and from them the word came into use among jurists and historians and obtained general currency.

History of Diplomatics. — Thefe is abundant evi- dence that during the Middle Ages a certain watchful- ness, necessitated unfortunately by the prevalence of forgeries of all kinds, was exercised over the authen- ticity of papal Bulls, royal charters, and other instru- ments. In this control of documents and in the precautions taken against forgery the Chancery of the Holy See set a good example. Thus we find (liregory VII refraining even from attaching the usual leaden seal to a Bull for fear it should fall into unscrupulous hands and be used for fraudulent purposes (Dubitayi- mus hie sigillum plumbeum ponere ne si illud inimici caperent de eo falsitatem aliquam facerent. — Jaff^ Lowenfeld, "Regesta", no. 5225; cf.no. 5242); while we owe to Innocent III various rudimentary instruc- tions in the science of diplomatics with a view to the detection of forgeries (see Migne, P. L., CCXIV, 202, 322, etc.). Seeing that even an ecclesiastic of the standing of Lanfranc has been seriously accused of con- niving at the fabrication of Bulls (H. Bohmer, "Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanf ranks", 1902; cf. Lieber- mann's review in "Deutsche Literaturzeitung", 1902, p. 2798, and the defence of Lanfranc by L. Saltet in "Bulletin de litt. eccl.", Toulouse, 1907, 227 sqq.), the need of some system of tests is obvious. But the medieval criticism of documents was not very satis- factory- even in the hands of a jurist like Alexander III (see his comments on two pretended privileges of Popes Zacharias and Leo, Jaff^^ Lowenfeld, " Regesta ' ', no. 11,896), and though Laurentius Valla, the human- ist, was right in denouncing the Donation of Constan- tine, and though the Magdeburg Centuriator, Matthias Flacius, was right in attacking the Forged Decretals, their methods, in themselves, were often crude and inconclusive. The true science of diplomatics dates, in fact, only from the great Benedictine Mabillon (16.32-1707), whose fundamental work, " De Re Diplo- matica" (Paris, 1681), was written to correct the mis- leading principles advocated in the criticism of ancient documents by the Bollandist Father Papenbroeck (Papebroch). To the latter's credit be it said that he at once publicly recognized the value of his rival's work and adopted his system. Other scholars were not so discerning, and assailants, like Germon and Hardouin in France, and, in less degree, George Hickes in England, rejected Mabillon's criteria; but the ver- dict of posterity is entirely in his favour, so that M. Giry quotes with approval the words of Dom Toustain: " His system is the true one. Whoever follows any other road cannot fail to lose his way. W' hoever seeks to build on any other foundation will build upon the sand." In point of fact, all that has been done since Mabillon's time has been to develop his methods and occasionally to modify his judgments upon some point of detail. After the issue of a " Supplement " in 1704, a second, enlarged and improved edition of the " De Re Diplomatica" was prepared by Mabillon himself and published in 1709, after his death, by his pupil,