Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
DONATION OF CONSTANTINE
The most famous forgery in medieval history, the Donation of Constantine is a document in which the Roman
emperor Constantine purportedly grants Pope Sylvester I (r 314−35) and his successors control of Rome and the
Western Roman Empire, as well as primacy over the holy sees of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem
and all the world's churches.
No one is exactly sure when the document was written but the consensus is that it dates to the mid- or late 8th
century. Certainly this fits with the widespread theory that the author was a Roman cleric, possibly working with
the knowledge of Pope Stephen II (r 752−57).
For centuries the donation was accepted as genuine and used by popes to justify their territorial claims. But in
1440 the Italian philosopher Lorenzo Valla proved that it was a forgery. By analysing the Latin used in the docu-
ment he was able to show that it was inconsistent with the Latin used in the 4th century.
As both religious and temporal leaders, Rome's popes wielded influence well beyond
their military capacity. For much of the medieval period, the Church held a virtual mono-
poly on Europe's reading material (mostly religious scripts written in Latin) and was the
authority on virtually every aspect of human knowledge. All innovations in science, philo-
sophy and literature had to be cleared by the Church's hawkish scholars, who were con-
stantly on the lookout for heresy.
