BULLS
53
BULLS
the name, from designating the seal, was eventually
attached to the document itself. This did not hap-
pen before the thirteenth century and the Dame
bull was at first only a popular term used almost
promiscuously for all kinds of instruments which
issued from the papal chancery. A much more pre-
cise acceptation has prevailed since the fifteenth
century, and a bull has long stood in sharp contrast
with certain other forms of papal documents. For
practical purposes a bull may be conveniently de-
fined to be "an Apostolic letter with a leaden seal",
to which one may add that in its superscription the
pope invariably takes the title of episcopus, servus
servorum Dei.
In official language papal documents have at all times been called by various names, more or less descriptive of their character. For example, there are "constitutions", i. e. decisions addressed to all tin- faithful and determining some matter of faith or discipline; "encyclicals" which are letters sent to all the bishops of Christendom, or at least to all those of one particular country, and intended to guide them in their relations with their Hocks; "de- crees", pronouncements on points affecting the general welfare of the t'lui re h; "decretals" (epistola tier nln It s), which are papal replies to some particular dif- ficulty submitted to the Holy See, but hav- ing the force of prece- dent - to rule all anal- ogous cases. " lie- script ". again, is a term applicable to almost any form of Apostolic letter which lias been elicited by some previ- ous appeal, while the nature of a "privilege" for itself. But all these, down to the fifteenth century, seem to have been expedited l>y the papal chancery in the shape of bulls au- thenticated with leaden seals, and it is common enough to apply the term bull even to those very early papal letters of which we know little more than the substance, independently of the forms under which they were issued.
It will probably be most convenient to divide the subject into periods, noting the more characteristic features of papal documents in each age.
I. Earliest times to Adrian I (772). — There can be no doubt that the formation of a chancery or bureau for the drafting and expediting of official papers was a work of time. Unfortunately, the earliest papal documents known to us are only pre- served in copies or abstracts from which it is difficult to draw any safe conclusions as to the forms ob- served in issuing the originals. For all that, it is practically certain that no uniform rules can have been followed as to superscription, formula of salu- tation, conclusion, or signature. It was only when some sort of registry was organized, and copies of earlier official correspondence became available, that a tradition very gradually grew up of certain customary fnnns that oiidit nut to lie ]. parted from.
Except tor the unsatisfactory mention of a body of notaries charged with keeping a record of the Acts of the Martyrs, e. 235 (Duchesne, Fiber Pontifi- calia, I, pp. c-cij, we meet with no clear reft
Monks or the Ofrtosa of P
to the papal archives until the time of Julius I
(337-353), though in the pontificate of Damasus,
before the end of the same century, there is mention
hi a building appropriated to this special purpose.
Here in the scrinium, or archivium sanctce Romance
ecclesiae, the documents must have been registered
and kept in a definite order, for extracts and copies
still in existence preserve traces of their numbering.
These collections or rrgetsta went back to the time of
Pope Gelasius (492-496) and probably earlier. In
the correspondence of Pope Hormisdas (514-525)
there are indications of some official endorsement
recording the date at which letters addressed to him
were received, and for the time of St. Gregory the
• Ileal i.V.HI iii)4) Kwald has been at least partially
successful in reconstructing the books which con-
tained the copies of the pope's epistles. There can
be little doubt that the pontifical chancery of which
we thus infer the existence was modelled upon that
of tin' imperial court. The scrinium, the regionary
notaries, the higher officials such as the primicerius
and secundicerius, the arrangement of the Regesta
by indictions, etc. are all probably imitations of
the practice of the later empire. Hence we may
infer that a code of rec-
ognized forms soon es-
tablished itself, analo-
gous to that observed
by the imperial nota-
ries. One formulary of
this description is prob-
ably still preserved to
us in the book called
the " Fiber Diurnus,"
the bulk of which seems
to be inspired by the
official correspondence
of I'i ipe Gregory the
Great, In the earlier
papal letters, however,
there are as yet but
few signs of the observ-
ance "l t tad i t iona I
forms. Sometimes the
document names the
pope first, sometimes
tin- addressee. For the
most part the pope
bears no title except
Sixtus episcopus or Leo
episcopus catholicat ec-
rb : in . s 'times, but
more rarely, he is called Papa Under Gregory the Great, servus servorum Dei (servant of the servants of God) was often added after episcopus, Gregory, it is said, having selected this designation as a protest against the arrogance of the Patriarch of Constantinople. John the Faster, who called himself "Oecumenical Bishop". But though several of St. Gregory's successors followed him in this preference, it was not until the ninth century that the phrase came to be used invariably in documents of moment. Before Pope Adeodatus (i lei ti d in 672) few salutations are found , but he used the form "salutem a Deo et benedictionem nostram ". The now consecrated phrase "salutem et apostolicam benedictionem" hardly ever occurs before the tenth century. The Benedictine authors of the "Nouveau ti aito'le diplomatique" in ascribing a much earlier date to this formula were misled by a forged hull pur- port im: to be addressed to the monastery of St. Benig- nusat Dijon. Again, in these early letters the pope often addressed his correspondent, more especially when he was a kins or person of high dignity, by the plural Vos. As ages went on this became rarer, and by the second half of the twelfth century it had com- pletely disappeared. On the other hand, it may be
Bin or
