the apostolic seat in the city of Rome”. Here the focus is on the books and the Decretum is considered to be a decretal of pope Gelasius. In the Gelasian recension there is no mention of pope Damasus and the Council of Rome. Traditional View of the Decretum For years, the commonly accepted view was that the Decretum Gelasianum was a decretal of pope Gelasius, containing the text of a canon of Scripture originally produced by the Council of Rome under Damasus a century earlier, and that this canon was identical with the “Catholic canon” issued by the Council of Trent. For instance, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, states: Likewise, Catholic apologist and historian William Jurgens writes: Some Catholic authors claim it's the Council of Rome of 382 that closed the canon, and so the Christian Church's canon of Scripture is the "Catholic canon", defined in 382 and later repeated at Trent. Thus, the Catholic Encyclopedia: And Catholic Answers, which claims to be “the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices”, says: Modern View of the Decretum The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church notes that "according to E. von Dobschütz, the Gelasian Decree is not a Papal work at all, but a private compilation which was composed in Italy (but not at Rome) in the early 6th cent. Other scholars, while accepting this date, think it originated in Gaul."Section not yet completeTextual history The complete text is preserved in the mid-eighth-century Ragyndrudis Codex, fols. 57r-61v, which is the earliest manuscript copy containing the complete text. The earliest manuscript copy was produced c. 700, Brussels 9850-2. Versions of the work appear in multiple surviving manuscripts, some of which are titled as a Decretal of Pope Gelasius, others as a work of a Roman Council under the earlier Pope Damasus. However, all versions show signs of being derived from the full five-part text, which contains a quotation from Augustine, writing about 416 after Damasus, which is evidence for the document being later than that. References External links The Development of the Canon": Decretum Gelasianum gives the full list, including the apocrypha "which are to be avoided by Catholics." Decretum Gelasianum: at The Latin Library. Decretum Gelasianum: in English. Review of Ernst von Dobschütz, Das Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis in kritischem Text Leipzig, 1912: F. C. Burkitt in Journal of Theological Studies'' 14