Editing Clement of Rome (section)

====False Decretals====
{{main|Pseudo-Isidore}}
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-[[First Council of Nicaea|Nicene]] popes, beginning with Clement, are forgeries, as are some of the documents that it attributes to councils;{{efn|The Encyclopædia Britannica places the [[Donation of Constantine]] in this section; the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church places it in the section of the pre-Nicene Popes.}} 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 [[Pope Gregory II|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 archbishop#Roman Catholic|metropolitan archbishops]] respectively.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/200996/False-Decretals Encyclopædia Britannica: ''False Decretals'']</ref>{{sfn|Bunson|2004|p=345}}<ref name="CrossLivingstone2005p601">{{cite book|last1=Cross|first1=Frank Leslie |author-link1=Frank Leslie Cross|last2=Livingstone|first2=Elizabeth A. |title=The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fUqcAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA601|year=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-280290-3|page=601|chapter=False Decretals}}</ref>

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.{{efn|{{harvnb|Durant|2011|p=525}} writes, "These early documents were designed to show that by the oldest traditions and practice of the Church no bishop might be deposed, no Church councils might be convened, and no major issue might be decided, without the consent of the pope. Even the early pontiffs, by these evidences, had claimed absolute and universal authority as vicars of Christ on Earth."}} Clement is the earliest pope to whom a Pseudo-Isidoran text is attributed.