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Rh as we know, produced no documents, and the citations from the False Decretals made in their later writings do not prove that they had forged them. Moreover, Hincmar would not have cited the forged letters of the popes in 852; above all, this theory would not explain the chief preoccupation of the forger, which is to protect bishops against unjust judgments and depositions. We must, then, look for conditions in which the bishops were concerned. It is precisely this which has suggested the province of Tours. Brittany, which was dependent on the province of Tours, had just for a time recovered its independence, thanks to its duke Nominoé. The struggle between the two nationalities, the Celt and the Frank, found a reflexion in the sphere of religion. The Breton bishops were for the most part abbots of monasteries, who had but little consideration for the territorial limits of the civitates; and many of the religious usages of the Bretons differed profoundly from those of the Franks. Charlemagne had divided up the Breton dioceses and established in them Frankish bishops. Nominoé hastened to depose the four Frankish bishops, after wringing from them by force confessions of simony; he then established a metropolitan see at Dol. Hence arose incessant complaints on the part of the dispossessed bishops, of the metropolitan of Tours, and his suffragans, notably those of Angers and Le Mans, which were more exposed than the others to the incursions of the Bretons; and this gave rise to numerous papal letters, and all this throughout a period of thirty years. There were requests that the bishops should be judged according to the rules, protests against the interlopers, demands for the restoration of the bishops to their sees. These circumstances fall in perfectly with the questions about which, as we have pointed out, the pseudo-Isidore was mainly concerned: the judgment of bishops, and the stability of the ecclesiastical organizations.

In the province of Tours, attempts have been made to define more clearly the centre of the forgeries, and the most recent authorities fix upon Le Mans. The sole argument, though a very weighty one, is found in the undeniable relation, revealed in an astonishing similarity both in expressions and composition, which exists between these forgeries and some other documents certainly fabricated at Le Mans, under the episcopate of Aldric (832-856), notably the Actus Pontificum Cenomanis in urbe degentium, in which there is no lack of forged documents. These certainly bear the mark of the same hand.

Though we cannot admit that the False Decretals were composed in order to enforce the rights of the papacy, we may at least consider whether the popes did not make use of the False Decretals to support their rights. It is certain that in 864 Rothad of Soissons took with him

to Rome, if not the collection, at least important extracts from the pseudo-Isidore; M. Fournier has pointed out in the letters of the pope of that time, “a literary influence, which is shown in the choice of expressions and metaphors,” notably in those passages relating to the restitutio spolii; but he concludes by affirming that the ideas and acts of Nicholas were not modified by the new collection: even before 864 he acted in affairs concerning bishops, e.g. in the case of the Breton bishops or the adversaries of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, exactly as he acted later; all that can be said is that the False Decretals, though not expressly cited by the pope, “led him to accentuate still further the arguments which he drew from the decrees of his predecessors,” notably with regard to the exceptio spolii. In the papal letters of the end of the 9th and the whole of the 10th century, only two or three insignificant citations of the pseudo-Isidore have been pointed out; the use of the pseudo-Isidorian forged documents did not become prevalent at Rome till about the middle of the 11th century, in consequence of the circulation of the canonical collections in which they figured; but nobody then thought of casting any doubts on the authenticity of those documents. One thing only is established, and this may be said to have been the real effect of the False Decretals, namely, the powerful impulse which they gave in the Frankish territories to the movement towards centralization round the see of Rome, and the legal obstacles which they opposed to unjust proceedings against the bishops.

—The best edition is that of P. Hinschius, Decretales pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni (Leipzig, 1863). In it the authentic texts are printed in two columns, the forgeries across the whole width of the page; an important preface of ccxxviii. pages contains, besides the classification of the MSS., a profound study of the sources and other questions bearing on the collection. After the works cited above, the following dissertations should be noted. Placing the origin of the False Decretals at Rome is: A. Theiner, De pseudo-Isidoriana canonum collectione (Breslau, 1827); at Mainz, the brothers Ballerini, De antiquis collectionibus et collectoribus canonum, iii. (S. Leonis opera, t. iii.; Migne, Patrologia Lat. t. 56); Blascus, ''De coll. canonum Isidori Mercatoris'' (Naples, 1760); Wasserschleben, Beiträge zur Geschichte der falschen Dekretalen (Breslau, 1844); in the province of Reims: Weizsäcker, “Die pseudoisidorianische Frage,” in the ''Histor. Zeitschrift'' of Sybel (1860); Hinschius, Preface, p. ccviii.; A. Tardif, Histoire des sources du droit canonique (Paris, 1887); Schneider, Die Lehre der Kirchenrechtsquellen (Regensburg, 1892). An excellent résumé of the question; seems more favourable to Le Mans in the article of the Kirchenlexicon of Wetzer and Welte (2nd ed.); F. Lot, Études sur le règne de Hugues Capet (Paris, 1903); Lesne, La Hiérarchie episcopale en Gaule et Germanie (Paris, 1905); for the province of Tours and Le Mans: B. Simson, ''Die Entstehung der pseudoisidor. Fälschungen'' in Le Mans (Leipzig, 1886. It is he who pointed out the connexion with the forgeries of Le Mans); especially Paul Fournier, “La Question des fausses décrétales,” in the Nouvelle Revue historique de droit français et étranger (1887, 1888); in the Congrès internat. des savants cathol. t. ii.; “Étude sur les fausses décrétales,” in Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique de Louvain (1906, 1907), to which the above article is greatly indebted.

DECURIO, a Roman official title, used in three connexions. (1) A member of the senatorial order in the Italian towns under the administration of Rome, and later in provincial towns organized on the Italian model (see 4). The number of decuriones varied in different towns, but was usually 100. The qualifications for the office were fixed in each town by a special law for that community (lex municipalis). Cicero (in Verr. 2. 49, 120) alludes to an age limit (originally thirty years, until lowered by Augustus to twenty-five), to a property qualification (cf. Pliny, Ep. i. 19. 2), and to certain conditions of rank. The method of appointment varied in different towns and at different periods. In the early municipal constitution ex-magistrates passed automatically into the senate of their town; but at a later date this order was reversed, and membership of the senate became a qualification for the magistracy. Cicero (l.c.) speaks of the senate in the Sicilian towns as appointed by a vote of the township. But in most towns it was the duty of the chief magistrate to draw up a list (album) of the senators every five years. The decuriones held office for life. They were convened by the magistrate, who presided as in the Roman senate. Their powers were extensive. In all matters the magistrates were obliged to act according to their direction, and in some towns they heard cases of appeal against judicial sentences passed by the magistrate. By the time of the municipal law of Julius Caesar (45 ) special privileges were conferred on the decuriones, including the right to appeal to Rome for trial in criminal cases. Under the principate their status underwent a marked decline. The office was no longer coveted, and documents of the 3rd and 4th centuries show that means were devised to compel members of the towns to undertake it. By the time of the jurists it had become hereditary and compulsory. This change was largely due to the heavy financial burdens which the Roman government laid on the municipal senates. (2) The president of a decuria, a subdivision of the  (q.v.). (3) An officer in the Roman cavalry, commanding a troop of ten men (decuria).

—C. G. Bruns, Fontes juris Romani, c. 3, No. 18, c. 4, Nos. 27, 29, 30 (leges municipales); J. C. Orelli, ''Inscr. Latinae'', No. 3721 (Album of Canusium); Godefroy, ''Paratitl. ad cod. Theodosianam'', xii. 1 (vol. iv. pp. 352 et seq., ed. Ritter); J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i. pp. 183 et seq. (Leipzig, 1881); P. Willems, Droit public romain, pp. 535 et seq. (Paris, 1884); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, IV. ii. pp. 2319 foll. (Stuttgart, 1901); W. Liebenam, Städteverwaltung im römischen Kaiserreiche (Leipzig, 1900).

 DÉDÉAGATCH, a seaport of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople, 10 m. N.W. of the Maritza estuary, on the Gulf of Enos, an inlet of the Aegean Sea. Pop. (1905) about 3000, 