Symmachian forgeries
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The Symmachian forgeries are a sheaf of
bishops of Rome
from criticisms and judgment of any ecclesiastical tribunal, putting them above law clerical and secular by supplying spurious documents supposedly of an earlier age.
The bishops."[4]
One of its modern editors,
Sixtus III, who cleared his name from defamation and permanently excommunicated the offender; Gesta de Polychronii episcopi Hierosolynitani accusatione concerned a purely apocryphal simonical Bishop of Jerusalem "Polychronius", who claimed Jerusalem as the first see and his supremacy over other bishops; Gesta Liberii papae concerned mass baptisms carried out by Pope Liberius during his exile from the seat of Peter; and Sinuessanae synodi gesta de Marcellino recounted the accusation brought against Pope Marcellinus, that in the company of the Emperor Diocletian he had offered incense to the pagan gods, making the point that when Marcellinus eventually confessed to the misdeed it was declared that the pope had condemned himself, since no one had ever judged the pontiff, because the first see will not be judged by anyone.[5]
Silvestri constitutum
The most important in this group of forgeries was Silvestri constitutum, a report of a fictitious synod convoked by
Pepin II dismounted to lead the Pope's horse to his palace on foot, as Constantine would have done.[6]
The second, somewhat later group centers on the figure of Sylvester, who accepts the decree of the First Council of Nicaea on the date of Easter. One of these forgeries reports a fictitious synod convoking 275 bishops in the Baths of Trajan; several canons exalt the position of the cleric.[7]
Notes
- ^ Townsend does not precisely identify who Faustus was. One possibility is Anicius Acilius Aginantius Faustus ("Faustus albus"), who is known to have served under Odoacer, Theodoric's immediate predecessor. Theodoric wrote a letter to one Faustus, praepositus.
- S2CID 170343707.
- ^
Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Pope St. Symmachus". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- ^ Townsend 1933:168–171.
- ^ This anecdote itself is reported in the Vita Stefani of the Liber Pontificalis.
- ^ Townsend 1933:171.
