The Donation of Constantine

The Donation of Constantine

The Donation of Constantine, Latin Donatio Constantini and Constitutum Constantini, the most important forgery of the Middle Ages. (Britannica). This document purport to record the Roman emperor Constantine the Great’s bestowal of territory and spiritual power on pope Sylvester the first and his successors. (Britannica). Constantine granted the pope (therefore the Roman Church) dominion over all Italy, as well as over Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Alexandria. (Christian History). This document comes from the 5th century, the Donation was composed and written by an unknown writer in the 8th century. (Britannica).  Lorenzo Valla an Italian Catholic priest and Renaissance humanist, is credited with first exposing the forgery with solid philological arguments in 1439-1440. (Wikipedia). This document had great influence over political and religious affairs in medieval Europe until it was clearly demonstrated to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla in the 15th century. (Britannica). Although the authorship of this document of this document is still wrapped in obscurity, critics have attributed it to the author of the False Decretals or to some Roman ecclesiastic of the 8th century, without giving sufficient reason. (New Advent). According to Anales ad.an.1081, this document was done in the East by a schismatic Greek; it was found in Greek canonical collection. (New Advent). During the Middle Ages, the Donation was widely accepted as authentic, although the Emperor Otto III did possibly raise suspicions of the document "in letters of gold" as a forgery, in making a gift to the See of Rome. (Wikipedia). It was not until the mid-15th century, with the revival of Classical scholarship and textual criticism, that humanists, and eventually the papal bureaucracy, began to realize that the document could not possibly be genuine. (Wikipedia). Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa declared it to be a forgery and spoke of it as an apocryphal work. (Wikipedia).

This document took place in the Middle Ages. (Christian History). For centuries the Donation was accepted by all giving the popes great political clout. (Christian History). Then, papacy during that period was in constant struggle for control with the powerful Carolingian rulers (such as the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne). (Christian History). The church at Rome, seeing its power threatened, devised the idea, and produced the document that came to be known as the Donation. (Christian History). The Waldensians (unaware that the document was a forgery) considered Sylvester’s supposed acceptance of worldly political power as a denial of the humility and poverty fundamental to obedient followers of Christ and the Apostles. (Christian History). They believed that from the 4th century on, the Church had compromised with the world, and therefore had denied Christ. (Christian History).  The power and luxury they saw in the Church seemed to support their claim. (Christian History). Despite containing such a massive benefit to the papacy, the document appears to have been forgotten in the ninth and tenth centuries, when struggles between Rome and Constantinople raged over who was superior, and when the Donation would have been useful. (Christian History). It wasn’t until Leo IX in the mid-eleventh century that the Donation was quoted as evidence, and from then on it became a common weapon in the struggle between the church and secular rulers to carve up power. (Christian History). Its legitimacy was rarely questioned, although there were dissenting voices. (Christian History). It has been suggested that an early draft of the Donation of Constantine was made shortly after the middle of the 8th century, in order to assist Pope Stephen II in his negotiations with Pepin the Short, who then held the position of Mayor of the Palace (i.e., the manager of the household of the Frankish king). (Wikipedia).  In 754, Pope Stephen II crossed the Alps to anoint Pepin king, thereby enabling the Carolingian family to supplant the old Merovingian royal line. (Wikipedia). In return for Stephen's support, Pepin gave the Pope the lands in Italy which the Lombards had taken from the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. (Wikipedia). These lands would become the Papal States and would be the basis of the Papacy's temporal power for the next eleven centuries. (Wikipedia). In one study, an attempt was made at dating the forgery to the 9th century, and placing its composition at Corbie Abbey, in northern France. (Wikipedia). Mediaevalist Johannes Fried draws a distinction between the Donation of Constantine and an earlier, equally forged version, the Constitutum Constantini, which was included in the collection of forged documents, the False Decretals, compiled in the later half of the ninth century. (Wikipedia). Fried argues the Donation is a later expansion of the much shorter Constitutum. Christopher B. Coleman understands the mention in the Constitutum of a donation of "the western regions" to refer to Lombardy, Venetia, and Istria. (Wikipedia).