BULL (5)

Bull, n. [[OE. bulle, fr. L. bulla bubble, stud, knob, LL., a seal or stamp: cf. F. bulle. Cf. Bull a writing, Bowl a ball, Boil, v. i.]] 1. 1. A seal. See Bulla.
2. 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. 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. (1356), containing what became the fundamental law of the German empire; — so called from its golden seal. Syn. — See Blunder.