Donation of Constantine

 

Lat. Constitutum Constantini, forged document, probably drafted in the 8th cent. It purported to be a grant by Roman Emperor Constantine I of great temporal power in Italy and the West to the papacy. Its purpose was apparently to enhance papal territorial claims in Italy by giving them greater antiquity. The document also recognized the spiritual authority of the popes, but this statement had no weight, since at no time was it argued in the Roman Catholic Church that spiritual authority could emanate from the emperor. It was not, as a matter of fact, ever of great practical value, nor was it, as is sometimes asserted, universally accepted in the Middle Ages. It owes its great fame to the fact that the scholar Lorenzo Valla demonstrated the falsity of the document by critical methods that became the model for later textual criticism and are said by some to be the beginning of modern textual criticism.

Bibliography

See L. Valla, Treatise on the Donation of Constantine (tr. by C. B. Coleman, 1922; repr. 1971).

The Donation of Constantine (Latin, Constitutum Donatio Constantini or Constitutum domini Constantini imperatoris) is a forged Roman imperial edict devised probably between 750 and 850. The precise purpose of the forgery is not entirely certain, but it was clearly a defense of papal interests, perhaps against the claims of either the Byzantine Empire, or the Frankish king Charlemagne, who had assumed the former imperial dignity in the West and with it the title "Emperor of the Romans". The earliest date is the most probable, and it is often said that the document could have been written during the papacy of Stephen II, around 752. The Donation is included among the texts of the False Decretals of Isidore.

Origin and content

Purportedly issued by the fourth century Roman Emperor Constantine I, the Donation grants Pope Sylvester I and his successors, as inheritors of St. Peter, dominion over the city of Rome, Italy, and the entire Western Roman Empire, while Constantine would retain imperial authority in the Eastern Roman Empire from his new imperial capital of Constantinople. The text claims that the Donation was Constantine's gift to Sylvester for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him and miraculously curing him of leprosy.

It has been suggested that an early draft was made shortly after the middle of the eighth century in order to assist Pope Stephen II in his negotiations with Pepin the Short, the Frankish Mayor of the Palace. In 754, Pope Stephen II crossed the Alps to anoint Pepin king, thereby enabling the Carolingian family to supplant the old Merovingian royal line. In return for Stephen's support, Pepin apparently gave the Pope the lands in Italy which the Lombards had taken from the Byzantine Empire. These lands would become the Papal States and would be the basis of the Papacy's secular power for the next eleven centuries.

Medieval use

Inserted among the twelfth-century compilation known as the Decretum Gratiani, this document continued to be used by medieval popes to bolster their territorial and secular power in Italy. It was widely accepted as authentic, although the Emperor Otto III did denounce the document as a forgery. The poet Dante Alighieri lamented it as the root of papal worldliness in his Divine Comedy. It was not until the mid 15th-century, with the revival of Classical scholarship and textual critique, the Church had begun to realize that the document could not possibly be genuine.

Investigation

The Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla proved in 1440, in his treatise De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, that the Donation must be a fake by analyzing its language, and showing that while certain imperial-era formulas are used in the text, some of the Latin in the document could not have been written in the fourth century; anachronistic terms such as "fief" were used. Also, the purported date of the document is inconsistent with the content of the document itself as it refers both to the fourth consulate of Constantine (315) as well as the consulate of Gallicanus (317).

However, the Vatican placed Valla's work on the list of prohibited books, and the genuineness of the document was defended. It continued to be used as authentic until Baronius in his "Annales Ecclesiastici" (published 1588-1607) admitted that the "Donatio" was a forgery, and eventually the church conceded its illegitimacy.^[1] It has been suggested that this acceptance was hastened by Andeas Helwig's work Antichristus Romanus (1612) which had identified the title Vicarius Filii Dei used in the Donation as being the number of the beast.

More recently, scholars have further demonstrated that other elements, such as Sylvester's curing of Constantine, are legends which originated at a later time. Its recent editor^[2] has affirmed that at the time of the composition of Valla's work, Constantine's alleged "donation" was no longer a matter of contemporary relevance in political theory and that, rather, it furnished the theme for a brilliant exercise in legal rhetoric.

Contemporary opponents of papal powers in the Peninsula emphasized the primacy of civil law and civil jurisdiction, now firmly embodied once again in the Justinian Corpus Juris Civilis. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Cavalcanti reported that, in the very year of Valla's treatise, Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, made diplomatic overtures toward Cosimo de' Medici in Florence proposing an alliance in common defence against the Pope, as sovereign lord of the Marche, where Francesco Sforza was currently protected by papal sovereignty, in which Visconti used the words, "It so happens that even if Constantine consigned to Sylvester so many and such rich gifts— which is doubtful, because such a privilege can nowhere be found— he could only have granted them for his lifetime: the Empire takes precedence over any lordship."

Civil law was the Emperor's prerogative, according to the Imperial vassal Visconti: "and for this reason you see why the Church is without civil law."^[3] Valla's refutation was taken up vehemently by scholars of the Protestant Reformation, such as Ulrich von Hutten and Martin Luther.

Further reading

For a detailed account of textual forgery in the early Christian Church, see:

• Wheless, Joseph, Forgery In Christianity, (Moscow, Idaho, USA. 1930),reprint (1990).
• McCabe, Joseph, A History Of The Popes, (Watts & Co, 1939).

References

• Lorenzo Valla, Treatise on the Donation of Constantine (1440). online edition

See also

• Vicarius Filii Dei
• List of late imperial Roman consuls

Notes

External links

• Text of the Constitutum Donatio Constantini (Latin) at The Latin Library
• Text of the The Donation of Constantine (English) from Medieval Sourcebook.
• Lorenzo Valla's Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine
• Donation of Constantine. Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

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