People sometimes mention a “Council of Rome”, said to have been held in 382 AD by Pope Damasus, a perfectly mundane piece of church history: At this council, the Canon of Scripture is said to have been “authoritatively defined”, with all the implications about the capacity of Rome/Papacy to decide what is scripture, and the supremacy of the Popes even in the ancient church. Indeed it plays a key role in today’s Romanist apologetics, for the Pope’s awesome authority and for counting the Apocrypha as Scripture: Never mind that Saint Jerome the editor of the Latin Bible, denied apocrypha to be scripture in his famous prologus galeatus. In the Middle Ages most theologians had no problem of counting Scripture by the Hebrew measure which excluded the apocrypha (as later echoed by the Reformation). Even into the early 16th century, Cardinal Cajetan seems to have been unaware of this 382 “Council of Rome”, and listed the canon as did Luther and the other Reformers. (Only at Trent was apocrypha actually declared to be scripture.) What was the 382 “Council of Rome”? So we are left with the question: what exactly was this 382 AD “Council of Rome”, and how come nobody has heard of it? The only record we have of it comes from an 8th century manuscript, where it’s typically titled as the “Decretum Gelasianum”. The full text of it is here: link. -sections I and II which are of interest to us here, list the acts of the putative 382 Council of Rome, along with the canon. -sections III-V are less germane, listing some decrees of Pope Gelasius I (492-496). However even here the credibility of the text is cast into doubt, because the text mentions facts which took place after 496 AD (see below). Is this document trustworthy? It would seem this document is not trustworthy, for four reasons: 1) No awareness of the Decree. Historical figures aren’t aware of this Decree on the canon of Scripture. This includes St Jerome who just at that time was compiling his monumental Latin Bible, and injected jibes against the apocrypha which would be echoed for centuries thereafter. None of the Latin Fathers (not to mention the Greek Fathers) show any awareness of a decree on the Canon; they never reference it, or even hint at being aware of its existence. Obviously the medieval theologians all the way up to Cardinal Cajetan in the 1500s have no idea of its existence, citing the canon as Martin Luther would, and not as “Pope Damasus of the 382 Council of Rome” would. 2) No evidence of the Council. There is no historical record from antiquity of any Council being held in Rome! It’s as simple as that. We have detailed ecclesiastical histories from Late Antiquity, with descriptions of councils, synods, and church proceedings. There is no record of a council being held in Rome in all of the 4th century, under Pope Damasus or anyone else. Yet we have records of councils from less significant cities such as Carthage, held in 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries. 3) The era of forgeries. In the period of 500-1000 AD the Papacy is known to have engaged in a vast array of documental forgeries, to prove itself as the supreme (effectively only) church in all the world, its bishop as the Pastor of the World, and its right to temporally rule and conquer worldly kingdoms as it saw fit. The existence of this document would bolster the right of the Papacy to all of those claims. 4) Textual evidence of forgery. The text itself shows signs of forgery. One of the best critical analyses was done by F. C. Burkitt in 1913: https://www.tertullian.org/articles/burkitt_gelasianum.htm It was he who noted that: -the text purportedly dating to 382, contains a quote from a St Augustine book written in 416. -the part attributed to Pope Gelasius I (492-496) contains facts which took place after 496. -the existence and date of this “Council of Rome” were first claimed in 1794. In other words, a forgery first crafted in the Middle Ages, was reused a second time as a forged evidence, by an 18th century Roman polemicist. Burkitt writes: Yet we open the Wikipedia today, and there it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Damasus_I "Pope Damasus I (/ˈdæməsəs/; c. 305 – 11 December 384) was Bishop of Rome, from October 366 to his death in 384. He presided over the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of Sacred Scripture."
Well, we all know how far we can trust Wickid-pedia. (As the saying goes, "as far as we can throw it.")
The Donation of Constantine and Isidors decretals are probably the most (in)famous of these. They were exposed by the same word/style inconsistencies that Stalwart mentioned for documents about the alledged Council of Rome, in the 15th century.
Any institution that needs to keep making constant forgeries to uphold their claims is a complete farce. This is the fruit of usurping the visible and invisible head of the church on earth, Christ.