The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 688
emanated from the aggressive new church party which formed in the
ninth century at Rheims, France. It is agreed that Bishop Hincmar of
Rheims used these Decretals in his deposition of Rothad of Soissons,
who brought the Decretals to Rome in 864 and laid them before Pope
Nicholas I.
Among those who challenged their authenticity were Nicholas
of Cusa (1401-1464), Charles Dumoulin (1500-1566), and George
Cassender (1513- 1564). The irrefutable proof of their falsity was
conveyed by David Blondel, 1628.
An early edition is given in Migne Patrologia Latina, CXXX.
For the oldest and best manuscript, see P. Hinschius, Decretales
Pseudo-Isidorianiae at Capitula Angilramni (Leipzig, 1863). Consult
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1950),
vol. 9, pp. 343-345. See also H. H. Milman, Latin Christianity (Vols.),
vol. 3; Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council
(1869); and Kenneth Scott Latourette, A history of the Expansion of
Christianity (1939), vol. 3; The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, art.
“False Decretals,” and Fournier, “Etudes sure les Fausses Decretals,” In
Revue D’Historique Ecclesiastique (Louvain) vol. 7 (1906), and vol. 8
(1907).
Page 57. The Dictate of Hildebrand (Gregory VII).—For the original
Latin version see Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, Ann. 1076, vol.
17, pp. 405, 406 of the Paris printing of 1869; and the Monumenta
Germaniae Historica Selecta, Vol. 3, p. 17. For an English translation
see Frederic A. Ogg, Source Book of Medieval History (New York:
American Book Co., 1907), ch. 6, sec. 45, pp. 262-264; and Oliver J.
Thatcher and Edgar H. McNeal, Source Book for Medieval History (New
York: Charles Scribner’s sons, 1905), sec. 3, item 65, pp. 136-139.
For a discussion of the background of the Dictate, see James Bryce,
The Holy Roman Empire, Rev. Ed., Ch. 10; and James W. Thompson
and Edgar N. Johnson, An Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300-1500,
pages 377-380.
Page 59. Purgatory.—Dr. Joseph Faa Di Bruno thus defines
purgatory: “Purgatory is a state of suffering after this life, in which those
souls are for a time detained, who depart this life after their deadly sins
have been remitted as to the stain and guilt, and as to the everlasting
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