24 /. BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST that much of the Karohngian legislation had failed to pro- duce a permanent effect. Those fratricidal wars were begin- ning. The legal products which are to be characteristic of this unhappy age are not genuine laws ; they are the forged capitularies of Benedict the Levite and the false decretals of the fseudo-Isidore. Slowly and by obscure processes a great mass of ecclesi- astical law had been forming itself. It rolled, if we may so speak, from country to country and took up new matter into itself as it went, for bishop borrowed from bishop and transcriber from transcriber. Oriental, African, Spanish, Galilean canons were collected into the same book, and the decretal letters of later were added to those of earlier popes. Of the Dionysiana we have already spoken. Another cele- brated collection seems to have taken shape in the Spain of the seventh century ; it has been known as the Hispana or I sidoriana,^ for without sufficient warrant it has been attrib- uted to that St. Isidore of Seville (ob. 636), whose Origines ^ served as an encyclopaedia of jurisprudence and all other sciences. The Hispana made it sway into France, and it seems to have already comprised some spurious documents before it came to the hands of the most illustrious of all forgers. Then out of the depth of the ninth century emerged a book which was to give law to mankind for a long time to come. Its core was the Hispana; but into it there had been foisted, besides other forgeries, some sixty decretals pro- fessing to come from the very earliest successors of St. Peter. The compiler called himself Isidorus Mercator ; he seems to have tried to personate Isidore of Seville. Many guesses have been made as to his name and time and home. It seems certain that he did his work in Frankland and near the middle of the ninth century. He has been sought as far west as le Mans, but suspicion hangs thickest over the church
- Maassen, op. cit. i. 667 ff.; Tardif, op. cit. 117. Printed in Migne,
Patrol, vol. 84.
- For the Roman law of the Origines, see Conrat, op. cit. i. 150. At
first or second hand this work was used by the author of our Leges Henrici.. That the learned Isidore knew nothing of Justinian's books seems to be proved, and this shows that they were not current in Spain.
