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The Donation of Constantine
One of the most famous forged documents of the mediæval era,
the Donation of Constantine was one of the pillars
on which the
Roman papacy rested its claim to
supreme secular authority. The Donation pretends
to be a decree by St. Emperor
Constantine I rewarding
Pope St. Sylvester I for curing the emperor's leprosy;
in effect, it makes the pontiff emperor of the West. Already
viewed with suspicion by some scholars in the early Middle
Ages, it was conclusively shown to be fraudulent by Lorenzo
Valla in the XV century. The specific anachronisms in the text
(e.g. the un-classical use of the terms "satrap" and "consul" for
certain Roman aristocrats, the use of the word seu
to mean "and" instead of "or", and a reference to the
Patriarchate of Jerusalem) combine to suggest a date of composition
in the VIII Century. The true author's intention, however, is
not entirely clear; the Donation may have been an attack on
either Frankish or Byzantine imperial authority or a ploy
in some internal ecclesiastical power struggle rather than
a simple attempt to aggrandise papal power. Easterners as well as
Westerners cited the Donation when doing so was to their
advantage, since while it exalted the papacy, the document also
cast doubt upon the right of the Frankish kings to the imperial
title.
--- Norman Hugh Redington
- ABOUT:
-
ECOLE glossary entry:
- Samuel N. C. Lieu:
Constantine in Legendary Literature, (2006).
From
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine,
edited by N. Lenski,
(Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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