At the heart of the so-called Dark Ages, or the politically correct early Middle Ages, copying of manuscripts became a major monastic chore.  The monastic scriptorium became more important as the conserver of traditional writings.  The various canonical collections contained the authorities (auctoritates), upon which the medieval scholastics manuals based all later theological speculation.  Due to the lack of critical appraisal techniques, in the turbulent post-Charlemagne times, a rash of pseudo documents flourished that were accepted as authentic for centuries afterwards.  In the mid-9^th century, there was a search for ancient Roman texts to defend ecclesiastical privileges, so that a new series of canonical documents began to appear.  The most important of these canonical collections was the False Decretals, the Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries, probably from Le Mans in southern France between 847 and 852.  As late as the 19^th century, this Isidore Mercator groupings of spurious papal briefs were considered authentic.  Today, they have become known as one of the great forgeries of all time.  This Pseudo-Isidore collection is an interesting combination of authentic and forged documents that are still extant in at least a few hundred different manuscripts.  The first collection was attributed to Pope Clement I (88-97) and Pope Melchiades (311-314) with sixty letters, as fifty-eight or 97% of them are forgeries.  The only authentic decrees are from Pope Siricius (384-399) and Pope Innocent I (401-417).  The many new false decrees on initiation are ascribed to Pope Urban I (222-230), Pope Eusebius (309-310), and Pope Melchiades (311-314).  These last three false papal documents are nothing other than parts of the Faustus Pentecostal homily.  Thus, the importance of this 5^th century Pentecostal Confirmation homily on the current doctrine of Confirmation cannot be overestimated, since practically all the false papal decrees are from the homily of Faustus of Riez.  How would you know that a decree was forged?