Forged Documents and Papal Power (A Former Catholic Nun)

http://www.CatholicConcerns.com ^ | June 2002 | Mary Ann Collins

[bkaycee]

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What we now call popes were originally bishops of Rome (one bishop among brother bishops from other cities). Then they became popes, with power over the entire Church. Then they became so powerful that they were able to depose kings and emperors. They became so powerful that they were able to force kings to use their secular might to enforce the Inquisition, which was conducted by Catholic priests and monks. In 1870, the Pope was declared to be infallible. The process of increasing papal power was influenced by forged documents which changed people’s perception of the history of the papacy and of the Church.

I’m just going to briefly summarize some information about these forgeries. At the end of this paper is a link to an on-line article which gives detailed historical information.

One of the most famous forgeries is the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” which were written around 845 A.D. (They are also known as the “False Decretals”.) They consist of 115 documents which were supposedly written by early popes. [Note 1]

The “Catholic Encyclopedia” admits that these are forgeries. It says that the purpose of these forged documents was to enable the Church to be independent of secular power, and to prevent the laity from ruling the Church. [Note 2 gives the address of an on-line article.] In other words, their purpose was to increase the power of the Pope and the Catholic Church.

In addition to documents which were total forgeries, genuine documents were altered. One hundred twenty-five genuine documents had forged material added to them, which increased the power of the Pope. Many early documents were changed to say the opposite of what they had originally said. [Note 3]

One of the forgeries is a letter which was falsely attributed to Saint Ambrose. It said that if a person does not agree with the Holy See, then he or she is a heretic. [Note 4] This is an example of how papal power was promoted by fraudulently claiming the authority of highly respected Early Fathers.

Another famous forgery from the ninth century was “The Donation of Constantine”. It claimed that Emperor Constantine gave the western provinces of the Roman Empire to the Bishop of Rome. The Pope used it to claim authority in secular matters. [Note 5]

When Greek Christians tried to discuss issues with the Church in Rome, the popes often used forged documents to back their claims. This happened so frequently that for 700 years the Greeks referred to Rome as “the home of forgeries”. [Note 6]

For three hundred years, the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forgeries were used by Roman Popes to claim authority over the Church in the East. The Patriarch of Constantinople rejected these false claims of primacy. This resulted in the separation of the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church. [Note 7 gives addresses of on-line articles.]

In the middle of the twelfth century, a monk named Gratian wrote the “Decretum,” which became the basis for Canon Law (the legal system for running the Roman Catholic Church). It contained numerous quotations from forged documents. Gratian drew many of his conclusions from those quotations. Gratian quoted 324 passages which were supposedly written by popes of the first four centuries. Of those passages, only eleven are genuine. The other 313 quotations are forgeries. [Note 8]

In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote the “Summa Theologica” and numerous other works. His writings are the foundation for scholastic theology. Aquinas used Gratian’s “Decretum” for quotations from church fathers and early popes. [Note 9] Aquinas also used forged documents which he thought were genuine. [Note 10]

The importance of Thomas Aquinas’ theology can be seen in the encyclical of Pope Pius X on the priesthood. In 1906, Pius said that in their study of philosophy, theology, and Scripture, men studying for the priesthood should follow the directions given by the popes and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. [This papal encyclical is available on-line. Note 11 gives addresses.]

William Webster is the author of “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History”. (I recommend this book.) His web site has an article entitled “Forgeries and the Papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. The article gives detailed information about the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forged documents, showing their influence on the papacy and on the Catholic Church. Four quotations from his article are below. (They are used by permission.)

“In the middle of the ninth century, a radical change began in the Western Church, which dramatically altered the Constitution of the Church, and laid the ground work for the full development of the papacy. The papacy could never have emerged without a fundamental restructuring of the Constitution of the Church and of men’s perceptions of the history of that Constitution. As long as the true facts of Church history were well known, it would serve as a buffer against any unlawful ambitions. However, in the 9th century, a literary forgery occurred which completely revolutionized the ancient government of the Church in the West. This forgery is known as the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” written around 845 A.D. The “Decretals” are a complete fabrication of Church history. They set forth precedents for the exercise of sovereign authority of the popes over the universal Church prior to the fourth century and make it appear that the popes had always exercised sovereign dominion and had ultimate authority even over Church Councils.”

“The historical facts reveal that the papacy was never a reality as far as the universal Church is concerned. There are many eminent Roman Catholic historians who have testified to that fact as well as to the importance of the forgeries, especially those of “Pseudo-Isidore”. One such historian is Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger. He was the most renowned Roman Catholic historian of the last century, who taught Church history for 47 years as a Roman Catholic.” [Webster quotes extensitely from Dollinger.]

“In addition to the “Pseudo Isidorian Decretals” there were other forgeries which were successfully used for the promotion of the doctrine of papal primacy. One famous instance is that of Thomas Aquinas. In 1264 A.D. Thomas authored a work entitled ‘Against the Errors of the Greeks’. This work deals with the issues of theological debate between the Greek and Roman Churches in that day on such subjects as the Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Purgatory and the Papacy. In his defense of the papacy Thomas bases practically his entire argument on forged quotations of Church fathers…. These spurious quotations had enormous influence on many Western theologians in succeeding centuries.”

“The authority claims of Roman Catholicism ultimately devolve upon the institution of the papacy. The papacy is the center and source from which all authority flows for Roman Catholicism. Rome has long claimed that this institution was established by Christ and has been in force in the Church from the very beginning. But the historical record gives a very different picture. This institution was promoted primarily through the falsification of historical fact through the extensive use of forgeries as Thomas Aquinas’ apologetic for the papacy demonstrates. Forgery is its foundation.”

I strongly encourage you to read William Webster’s article. It has an abundance of valuable historical information. The address of the article is:

http://www.christiantruth.com/forgeries.html

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NOTES

[1] William Webster, “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History” (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), pages 62-63. Webster is a former Catholic.

Peter de Rosa, “Vicars of Christ” (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1988, 2000), pages 58-61, 174, 208. De Rosa is a Catholic, and a former Catholic priest. He was able to do historical research in the Vatican Archives.

Paul Johnson, “A History of Christianity” (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1976, 1995), page 195. Johnson is a Catholic and a prominent historian.

[2] “Benedict Levita” in the “Catholic Encyclopedia”. [Benedict Levita is the pseudonym of the author of the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals”.]

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02466a.htm

[3] De Rosa, page 59.

[4] De Rosa, page 166.

[5] Johnson, pages 170-172.

[6] De Rosa, page 59.

[7] Orthodox Christian Information Center, “The False Decretals of Isidore”. An excerpt from “The Papacy” by Abbee Guette. The author was a devout Catholic and a historian. As a result of his historical research about the papacy, he eventually joined the Orthodox Church.

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/decretals.htm

“The Great Schism of 1054”. This is a sermon given at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist,in Washington, D.C.

http://www.stjohndc.org/Homilies/9606a.htm

[8] Webster, pages 62-63. De Rosa, page 60.

[9] Webster, page 63. De Rosa, page 60.

[10] William Webster, “Forgeries and the papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. This gives detailed accounts of Aquinas’ use of forged documents which he wrongly believed to be genuine.

http://www.christiantruth.com/forgeries.html

[11] Pius X, “Pieni l’animo” (“On the Clergy in Italy”), July 28, 1906. (See paragraph 6.)

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P10CLR.HTM

[boatbums]

That SHOULD be enough for those who honor God’s word.

[metmom]

And it will never be enough for those who don’t.

[Iscool]

What do you mean by “heaven.”?

Heaven is a place...It is where God lives...I'll even tell you where that is...

Job 26:7 He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Every compass ever made points to God and his home...

Psa 48:2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

Isa 14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

Heaven is above ALL the stars, the galaxies, the cosmos...

Heaven is shaped like a pyramid...

Isa 14:31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.

Eze 1:4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

The glory of God shows up out of the North...

Psa 75:6 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.
Psa 75:7 But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.

God is where one expect North to be...

Luk_21:28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

Look up??? Look up where???

Just follow the compass til you get north of the equator then look up towards the North Star...You'll be facing God when you talk to him, in heaven...

[Iscool]

No, they think He's in a wafer in a chalice on an altar in their churches waiting to be re-sacrificed.

I know they do...But Jesus hasn't left heaven since he got there a couple thousand years ago...

[roamer_1]

I’ve also said before and I’ll close with this: If everyone would just come to the Church without their preconceptions, without their already preformed judgements, their malformed experiences (malformed via misinformation from other people with agendas, from personal experiences with evil people in the Church), just come with an OPEN heart (”heart” in the Biblical sense which includes the mind and spirit), you WILL come to a knowledge that the Church’s claims are true.

Thank you for your kind words and civil tone, but I have to ask you what, if anything in the thought above differs in the least from the Mormons asking me to forgo attention toward the sayings of their false prophet and concentrate upon the burning in my heart? THAT is how I know your church is true? No, we live before a God who, unlike every other, makes His words plain, and never ever changes them. Our God proves Himself by Himself. All one needs to do is seek that proof out, rightly dividing.

And I have never found God in a church of any sort (yours included). It is great to get together in praise, don't get me wrong, but if I am seeking His face, I withdraw from you and everyone else to be with Him. I have learned much in solitude with the Father, deep within the wilderness among mighty ramparts that make your greatest cathedrals look like silly baubles. The sound of the Rockies singing their praise put the best of your choirs to shame.

The works of men are indeed filthy rags. There is nothing in them.

So I will counter your challenge - Come with me into the wilderness, take Communion, fast, and wait upon the Father in prayer. Seek His face. And thereafter, let us see if you care to question the authenticity of my experience (and by then yours too). In that, your religious system (and every other) will be rendered moot. There is where one will find the Spirit without ANY trinkets and rituals, without any dogmas and authorities, without a hymnal or rite at all. And if He is found there, He is found anywhere, and by the same means.

The truth is not in the teachings of the Roman church. The truth is in the teaching of the Father through His Son, and that only in the presence of the Spirit. All you need is the Book and solitude, away from every distraction in order to prove I am right in what I say.

[metmom]

Amen!

[metmom]

Acts 1:9-11 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

[roamer_1]

The Spirit always speaks through a human agent. Someone wrote these books. Someone else decided they were inspired. The Bible is a product of the Holy Tradition, which is the Holy Spirit working through the church at large. The role of the papacy in this has been a minor one, that of a custodian.

Even if I accept your premise, the question is whether the Word was assembled and preserved BY her, or IN SPITE OF her.

I might encourage you to look at your system in comparison to Temple Judaism and ponder this quote:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - Jorge Santayana

[Iscool]

The term 'interpreting' the bible has nothing to do with interpreting the bible...It's an excuse for not believing the bible, or not liking what the bible says and changing what it says or what it means to suit your version of religion...

The bible is crystal clear that there is a heaven and there's a God living there...It's crystal clear that heaven is a real place...The bible uses a term, 'willingly ignorant'...

[RobbyS]

When you pick your next bible, remember that the first formatting of the Scriptures in this style was the Paris Bible of the 13th Century. It was handwritten but produced in the thousands. Copies can still be seen That Bible was the a version of the Vulgate and was made small enough to fit in the pocket of itinerate friars as they moved from town to town and which provided them texts from which to preach. In the 15th century, preachers like John Capistrano preached to huge crowds as JohnWesley was to do in England in the 18th Century. Protestants have protested that the Bible was kept from the people by not being produced in the vernacular, but Latin was the language of the literate class all over Europe. About 10% of the people could read/understand Latin. Where the Romance languages were spoken, as Italian, a native of Naples was as likely to understand Latin as he was to understand the dialect of Milan. For more than 1000 years, Latin was the linguafranca of Europe,

One of Luther’s great gifts to Germany was his Bible, which was not the first translation into German, but was so brilliant and so inventive that it would become the basis for what is today Standard German. The spread of his creed, led to the spread of his version. of German. Still, it has only been within the last hundred years that German dialects have become so eroded that an ordinary Austrian could easily understand an ordinary Brandenberger. In any case, Latin remained the language of the educated until the 18th Century when it was replaced by French.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Roamer_1, thanks for your latest salvo. I appreciate your time and care, as well as your thoughts.

I’ll get to commenting point by point later on, but for right now, let me start out on a different tack: a few thoughts about someone you could really rassle with: Bart Ehrman.

You may well know about him, but in case you don’t, he started off 30 years ago as a young, brilliant, earnest lover and teacher of Scripture who studied at Moody and Wheaton, and got his doctorate at Princeton under one of the finest Biblical scholars in America, Bruce Metzger. Sincerely devoted to God’s Truth, and very much a conservative Evangelical. But Ehrman had a problem. He had this very pure and focused drive to discern the absolute truth of Scripture, and the more he learned, the more he saw with his own eyes that the vagaries of human influence are stamped all over every page of it.

There are many serious difficulties in the field of textual criticism, as all Biblical scholars know.. There’s the actual physical provision of a given manuscript itself: Where did it come from? Says who? What were the sources? How was it written? Was it edited? Re-written? How many times? When? And why? And --- There are strictly irresolvable difficulties in the translation of obscure or incomplete passages. --- There are variant texts that can't be harmonized. --- There are NT books for which evidence points to deliberate false attribution, which is to say, forgery ---forgery in the Biblical books themselves ---- and on and on.

Now, Ehrman is apparently a man of considerable intellectual purity. He felt violated when he saw historic discrepancies, lacunae in the genealogies, messy matters.(An example: one thing that blew his mind early on was that Jesus said that David entered into the Temple when Abiathar was High Priest but the Book of Samuel says it was when Ahimelech was High Priest. Shock. One of them must have been wrong).

Ehrman, possessed of the gift of moral indignation, decided it all needed to be forthrightly faced and exposed. He started cataloguing all of the contradictions and inconsistencies, the accounts that don’t match, the travels that don’t map, the morals, maxims and laws that violate each other, and especially the words, the thousands of words that mismatch from text to text. He ended up being the kind of Bible-Debunker who gets on all the talk shows: good grief, they sure love him at NPR. He’s scholarly, but he writes popularly. The titles of his four New York Times bestsellers outline his argument: “Misquoting Jesus,” “Jesus, Interrupted,” “God's Problem,” and “Forged”. Not retired yet, he’s still, as far as I know, scandalizing seminarians from sea to shining sea with all the human chaff and scribble found in the Biblical granary of the Word.

I think that in many details he is right, but overall, he is wrong. He is wrong to have this debunking, “if-God-is-God-this-can’t-be-so” attitude. But I feel for him. This is what happens when you start out thinking that the things of God should be Uranium-isotopic-separation pure, and you find there are things that are not pristine and can’t be re-pristinated.

The Bible is the Word of God in the words of men, and that means, yup, the leaven of human influence is all through it. My friend, that does not bother me. Bart Ehrman is a deeply bothered man, but Bart Ehrman does not bother me. Why? Because I am beginning to grasp that God’s Majesty is permeating all these human things, to make His glory known. The Holy Spirit inspires men because He penetrates the ways of men: “The Kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and buried in three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”

He --- Our Lord the Holy Spirit --- is doing this thing perfectly, and His perfect way is to do it through frail humankind, exposed to all the vagaries of purpose and chance, psychology and history. He uses chance to His purpose.

That is my overall paradigm.

The history of the Catholic Church is like the Salvation (Bible) History, in this respect: it is something human, a human thing, carrying something divine.

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us."

I think the Bible and the Catholic Church have some of the same scandalize-the-seminarians characteristics. And why? Because they are both real. That is to say, they are not ideal. They are not “an idea” that some very bright, very moral person cooked up out of utopian concepts, to make the kids behave. They are something better than that: they are what actually happens when you’re working with the kind of material you’re working with. Fallen, frail, futile, brutal, brilliant, scheming, striving, yearning, self-deceiving man-un-kind. Whom God loves beyond all reason, and has a will to save. Savior is His Name.

So. That’s my paradigm. I hope I have time to get back to your good particular points. It’s way past my bedtime.

We are under the Mercy, roamer_1.

[roamer_1]

Protestants have protested that the Bible was kept from the people by not being produced in the vernacular, but Latin was the language of the literate class all over Europe. About 10% of the people could read/understand Latin.

I reject the premise - one could better say that Latin was read and understood by the elite class, not the common man, and by the time frame we are talking about, Latin was already highly bifurcated into Spanish and Roman (Italian), with heavy dialects (Occish as an example) separating the two where they would tend to meld. So even in the Latin speaking areas, pure Latin would not readily be understood by the common man... And that still does not take into account the germanic and celtic regions in the least.

Equally against your statement is the apparent zeal with which the Word was received any time it did in fact make it into the common tongue in any region.

But what has that to do with your previous statements anyway?

[roamer_1]

[...] I appreciate your time and care, as well as your thoughts.

Likewise. Your kindness is only exceeded by your good looks and gentle manners : ) It is really nice to be able to debate without sound and fury.

There are many serious difficulties in the field of textual criticism, as all Biblical scholars know.. [...]

I am fairly familiar with most textual problems in the Word - One of the reasons I use the KJV is because it has the convenience of insertions by the translators being italicized, and for it's reliance on the Masoretic text, which I hold to be better - But for the most part, there is little that is literally offensive to the general tenor of the message... Most conflicts are removed by a reliance upon a Hebrew mindset and an interpretation that holds the Torah to be sacrosanct within the body of the entirety. One would be surprised by what the rest CAN'T mean when one has an eye toward the preservation of the beginning things. IOW, I see most problems to be interpretive.

Something like the difference between the Priests Abiathar and Ahimelech would certainly be a curiosity for me - I think most things are purposeful, and the difference may well point to something underlying - But if I can see nothing there, it doesn't bother me to write it off as a problematic error - Not that I would ever write it off altogether...

What is more problematic is something like the Johannine Comma... Something which can obviously be considered as an insertion, as it is not present in many of the proof texts, and it leans heavily toward buttressing the concept of the trinity - Such a thing, so heavily relied upon, would be more likely to give me pause.

But your criticism here seems to be comparative - You seem to be saying I can't be critical of your tradition because the Word itself has 'mistakes' - But I would counter with the idea that even if the widest berth is given to such mistakes, there is an incredible continuity (If one takes an Hebrew perspective) to the Scriptures. That is not present in your tradition, and in fact, your tradition attempts to begin with novelty that cannot be true - And from there, novelty upon novelty - it's own internal continuity is inconsistent, and wholly without continuity to the Word, which it claims to uphold, and in fact, claims to surpass.

And finally, the signature of YHWH, the Prophecy runs through every book of the Bible. Virtually the entire Book is prophetic, and that prophetic thread is remarkably (exactly) consistent and impossibly intertwined throughout nearly every page... Something wholly absent in your tradition, not to mention to a level of intertwining sufficient to confirm that major corruption is absent.

So it occurs to me that the comparison is faulty for the reasons above. In spite of any error you might think you've found, the Bible is self-confirming, having the Word and the Prophecy in a very high state of internal agreement and entanglement (assuming the Protestant canon). Since there is no confirming Prophecy interwoven in your tradition, and since it's own internal consistency is so malformed, And finally, since it does not maintain continuity with the Word, I find any comparison to be without merit.

We are under the Mercy, roamer_1.

Indeed we are. But mercy is not license. As for me, I will try to follow the Way of my Father's house. And my example is Yeshua.

[RobbyS]

I am saying that Latin served as a common bond to pull together Christians of the West. Just as Greek pulled together the Early Christians. This is the Latin of the educated. I doubt that the average Roman of the 4th century would have understood Cicero much better than the average Roman of the 14th Century. But it made it possible for an educated Roman to correspond with an educated Londoner. Furthermore, even though a Frankfurter and a Zuricher speaking Latin might have had very different pronunciations, it was probably no more difficult than the two trying to converse in German when there was no such thing as standard German.

[RobbyS]

Human language is personal. Every human being has his own language, just as he has his own DNA, as measured within the margin of error. It is a product of his own invention and his own experience. Ask him to tell the same story twice and he will tell it differently each time. Jesus must have told many difference audiences the same message, and bet he did so in different words each time. If you are a musician playing the violin, the instrument never exactly repeats the tune exactly.

[MinuteGal]

Your post iterates what I've been thinking during 15 years of reading and posting on FR. The constant Catholic-Protestant warfare adds nothing to this forum...it only divides the faithful.

On top of that, I got so ticked and disgusted during the Mormon bashing-year that I made my feelings known to management in the most effective way I could do $o.

Leni

[Steve_Seattle]

"On top of that, I got so ticked and disgusted during the Mormon bashing-year that I made my feelings known to management in the most effective way I could do so."

I did not like the Mormon-bashing either. You can say what you like about the origins of the church - which I think are actually kind of interesting - or about Joseph Smith, but most present-day Mormons are decent, law-abiding people.

[roamer_1]

I am saying that Latin served as a common bond to pull together Christians of the West. Just as Greek pulled together the Early Christians. This is the Latin of the educated. I doubt that the average Roman of the 4th century would have understood Cicero much better than the average Roman of the 14th Century. But it made it possible for an educated Roman to correspond with an educated Londoner.

Sophist nonsense. One seems to forget the extensive merchant trade system. A system populated by common men, men with no more nobility than a ship captain, perhaps. Go research bills of lading. Understand that they are present in every language. Understand that literate men were necessary to correctly divide loads, not only coming off the ships, but also on the wharves and in the warehouses... The same applies over-land, where huge merchant wagon trains went incredible distances through foreign lands, buying and selling as they went. Try to understand why it was that Rome's main opposition always seemed to be 'itinerant' dye-makers, tent-makers and such. And understand why Rome, with all her might and control, was never able to quell them.

The American melting pot is the exemplary evidence of this - when left to it's own devices. With bureaucracy and control reduced to it's minimum, enterprise trumps empire every_time. A common language is indeed helpful, but certainly not necessary... Although it is singularly necessary for empire, and central control, which is precisely why YHWH confounded the languages at Babylon.

[metmom]

On top of that, I got so ticked and disgusted during the Mormon bashing-year that I made my feelings known to management in the most effective way I could do $o.

That'll teach JR. Right?

Now about all the Prot bashing.......

[RobbyS]

Latin was the language of Rome, the capital of the Empire. It was the prestige of Rome that made Latin the language of the West. It was also the vernacular of the diocese of Rome, and after the second century the language of the liturgy. Even after Rome ceased to be the political capital, the language, culture and religion of Rome continued to have great influence. The German tribes became romanized just as the Celts had before them. The German Reich, which last a thousand years, came into being when Kaiser Carl was crowned by the pope to continue the Roman legacy in the West. It ended when Napoleon ended the Reich and himself assumed the title as Emperor of the West and he had hopes of making Constantinople the capital of a restored empire with himself as the new Augustus. Of course, this empire would have had French as its common language. But of course this all came to naught in the snows of Russia as the new Caesar sought to defeat the forces of another Tsar.