Clement of Rome
False Decretals

A 9th-century collection of church legislation known as the False Decretals, which was once attributed to Isidore of Seville, is largely composed of forgeries. All of what it presents as letters of pre- Nicene popes, beginning with Clement, are forgeries, as are some of the documents that it attributes to councils; and more than forty falsifications are found in the decretals that it gives as those of post-Nicene popes from Sylvester I (314–335) to Gregory II (715–731). The False Decretals were part of a series of falsifications of past legislation by a party in the Carolingian Empire whose principal aim was to free the church and the bishops from interference by the state and the metropolitan archbishops respectively.

Clement is included among other early Christian popes as authors of the Pseudo-Isidoran (or False) Decretals, a 9th-century forgery. These decrees and letters portray even the early popes as claiming absolute and universal authority. Clement is the earliest pope to whom a Pseudo-Isidoran text is attributed.
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