Why did Daniel van Papenbroeck question the authenticity of early medieval charters?

Daniel van Papenbroeck, a member of the Bollandists commission, questioned the authenticity of early medieval charters after inspecting monastic documents while working on the Acta Sanctorum.1

Upon discovering that some of the documents he examined were forgeries, Papenbroeck made the sweeping assumption in 1675 that nearly all early medieval documents were spurious. Specifically, he claimed that almost all Merovingian-era documents were fakes and that no authentic charters survived from before 700 CE. This assertion sparked a significant controversy between the Jesuits and the Benedictines, as many of the documents in question were associated with Benedictine monasteries.12

This dispute ultimately led Jean Mabillon to write De Re Diplomatica (1681), which established the formal principles of diplomatics for verifying the authenticity and dates of historical documents. Papenbroeck later acknowledged the validity of Mabillon’s findings.12