2. A letter, edict, or respect, of the pope, written in Gothic characters on rough parchment, sealed with
a bulla, and dated "a die Incarnationis," i. e., "from the day of the Incarnation." See Apostolical brief,
under Brief.
A fresh bull of Leo's had declared how inflexible the court of Rome was in the point of abuses.
Atterbury.
3. A grotesque blunder in language; an apparent congruity, but real incongruity, of ideas, contained in a
form of expression; so called, perhaps, from the apparent incongruity between the dictatorial nature of
the pope's bulls and his professions of humility.
And whereas the papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholic, it is a mere contradiction, one of the
pope's bulls, as if he should say universal particular; a Catholic schimatic.
Milton.
The Golden Bull,
an edict or imperial constitution made by the emperor Charles IV. containing what
became the fundamental law of the German empire; — so called from its golden seal.
Syn. — See Blunder.