that the emperors' practice contradicted the oldest traditions of the church. Collections of canon law rediscovered the False Decretals, since some were largely extracts of the forgeries. The texts were now used to increase scrutiny of the bishops, making them dependent on the pope. This situation prevailed until around 1140, when the jurist Gratian published his Concordia discordantium canonum (increasingly replacing the older collections and soon regarded as authoritative). Although Gratian also indirectly used forged texts, his work ended the immediate influence of the False Decretals. The texts had become a basis for procedural law, but the bishops' independence was increasingly restricted by the Church of Rome. During the Middle Ages, few doubted the authenticity of the alleged papal letters. This changed during the fifteenth century, when humanist Latin scholars such as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa noticed bizarre anachronisms (such as the claim that Clement I had based the preeminence of local churches on the presence of pagan high priests). During the sixteenth century, Protestant ecclesiastical historians such as the Centuriators of Magdeburg (the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries) systematically criticized the forgeries without yet recognizing them as an interconnected complex. The final proof was provided by Calvinist preacher David Blondel, who discovered that the popes from the early centuries quoted extensively from much-later authors and published his findings (Pseudoisidorus et Turrianus vapulantes) in 1628. Although Catholic theologians originally tried to defend the authenticity of at least some of the material, since the nineteenth century no serious theologian (or historian) has denied them as forgeries. References Further reading Blondel, David. Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus vapulantes… (Geneva, 1628). Fuhrmann, Horst. (1972–73). Einfluß und Verbreitung der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen. Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 24/I–III (1972–73). Fuhrmann, Horst. "The Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries," in Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington, eds. Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages. History of Medieval Canon Law (2001), p. 135–195. Harder, Clara. Pseudoisidor und das Papsttum: Funktion und Bedeutung des aposotlischen Stuhls in den pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen (Cologne, 2014). Hartmann, Wilfried and Gerhard Schmitz, eds. Fortschritt durch Fälschungen? Ursprung, Gestalt und Wirkungen der pseudoisidorischen Fälschungen. MGH Studien und Texte 31 (2002). Hinschius, Paul, ed. Decretales pseudo-isidorianae et Capitula Angilramni (1863). Knibbs, Eric. "Ebo of Reims, Pseudo-Isidore and the Date of the False Decretals," Speculum 92 (2017), p. 144–183. Knibbs, Eric. "Pseudo-Isidore's Ennodius," Deutsches Archiv 74 (2018), p. 1–52. Patzold, Steffen. Gefälschtes Recht aus dem Frühmittelalter: Untersuchungen zur Herstellung und Überlieferung der pseudoisidorischen