Content
In terms of content, the bull is simply the format in which a decree of the Pope appears. Any subject may be treated in a bull, and many were and are, including statutory decrees, episcopal appointments, dispensations, excommunications, apostolic constitutions, canonizations and convocations. The bull was the exclusive letter format from the Vatican until the fourteenth century, when the papal brief began to appear. The brief is the less formal form of papal communication and is authenticated with a wax impression (now a red ink impression) of the Ring of the Fisherman. There has never been an exact distinction of usage between a bull and a brief, but nowadays most letters, including encyclicals, are issued as briefs.
Read more about this topic: Papal Bull
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“What is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn’t have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Here form is content, content is form.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)