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Indissolubility 87
making it work to solve a real-life, high-profile case. It is typical
of Carolingian history: ninth-century events foreshadowing structures
of the thirteenth century and beyond, a moment anticipating
a later longue dur‹ee.
The ‘False Decretals’ and the attitude of the Church establishment,
c.850–1200
The indissolubility principle may have been strengthened in the
long term by ideas about the episcopal oce in the legal compilations
called the ‘False Decretals’. In these we find a stress on
the marriage of the bishop to the church he ruled. The False
or Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals seem to have been put together in
the mid-ninth century to strengthen the hand of ordinary bishops
in dealing with metropolitan bishops who claimed authority
over them. It was a world in which bishops might be driven from
their sees (perhaps because of their own shortcomings) and the
symbolism of indissolubility delegitimized such expulsions: just
as Christ is indissolubly married to the whole Church, so is the
individual bishop indissolubly married to his see. The symbolism
of the bishop’s marriage to his church was widely di·used by
canon-law collections that drew on the False Decretals, including
the most influential collection of all, Gratian’s Decretum. Bishops
were, needless to say, influential in the thought and life of Church
and society. The False Decretals and the subsequent collections
they influenced must have made bishops think more about marriage
symbolism and indissolubility, in connection with their own
oce but also generally. It was not enough to transform society, but
sacramentum”, en se r‹ef‹erant ›a l’union indissociable du Christ et de son ‹Eglise. On
retrouve la m^eme id‹ee et la m^eme justification chez beaucoup d’auteurs de l’‹epoque
carolingienne’ (with further references).
J. Gaudemet, ‘Le symbolisme du mariage entre l’‹ev^eque et son ‹eglise et ses
consequences juridiques’ (1985), repr. in id., Droit de l’ ‹Eglise et vie sociale au Moyen
A^ge (Northampton, 1989), no. ix, 110–23 at 113–14.
The standard study is H. Fuhrmann, Einflu¢ und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen
F•alschungen: Von ihrem Auftauchen bis in die neuere Zeit (3 vols.; Schriften
der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 24. 1–3; Stuttgart, 1972–4).
Gaudemet, ‘Le symbolisme du mariage’, 114: ‘Trop d’‹ev^eques, en ce milieu du
ixE si›ecle, sont indignes et leur peuple, scandalis‹e etoutr‹e, les chasse. C’est contre
ce d‹esordre et ces voies de fait que s’insurgent les Fausses-D‹ecr‹etales. Le principe
est celui de l’attache ind‹efectible au si›ege. Les textes sur l’union des ‹epoux viennent
le fortifier’ (the analogy breaks down in that the pope’s power to remove a bishop is
admitted).
Ibid. 114–15. Noteesp.Pars2,C.7,q.1,c.11.