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.
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Famous quotes containing the word content:
“First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental content or concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.”
—William of Occam (c. 1285–1349)
“Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little.”
—Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)