What Was the Donation of Constantine? The Forged Charter of the Medieval Papacy
The Donation of Constantine was an eighth-century forgery that claimed Constantine the Great gave the pope temporal authority over Rome and the Western Empire.
The Donation of Constantine was an eighth-century forgery that purported to record the gift by the emperor Constantine the Great of temporal authority over Rome, Italy, and the Western Roman Empire to Pope Sylvester I and his successors. Composed in Rome in the second half of the eighth century, the document was used by the medieval papacy to claim a temporal dominion in central Italy and a spiritual supremacy over the Western church. Although the document was exposed as a forgery by the humanist Lorenzo Valla in 1440, it shaped the political claims of the papacy for nearly seven centuries.
The text of the donation
The Donation of Constantine is preserved in a Latin manuscript known as the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 7207, and it exists in a number of variant recensions. The text purports to be a letter from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I, written shortly after the baptism of the emperor in 326. According to the document, Constantine was cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester, and in gratitude he gave the pope “the city of Rome, and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions.” The pope was also granted “the right to wear an imperial crown, a tiara, and a purple cloak,” and the emperors of the future were to recognize the pope’s supremacy.
The text is written in a Latin style that is clearly different from that of the fourth century. It uses medieval Latin legal terminology, it includes anachronisms such as references to the “Patrimony of Saint Peter,” and it includes a list of gifts that would be impossible for an emperor of the fourth century to bestow. The forgery is also internally inconsistent: it gives the pope temporal authority over the Western Empire, but it also leaves the emperor in Constantinople in possession of the Eastern Empire, and it does not specify how the two powers were to be distinguished.
The historical context
The Donation of Constantine was produced in the second half of the eighth century, during a period of crisis for the papacy. The Byzantine Empire, which had protected the papacy during the Gothic Wars, was in retreat before the Lombards, and the Byzantine exarch in Ravenna was unable to defend Rome. The popes were forced to look for new sources of support, and they found them in the Carolingian mayors of the palace and eventually in Charlemagne himself.
The forgery was almost certainly produced in the papal chancery, perhaps during the pontificate of Paul I (757-767) or Stephen III (768-772). The document was intended to provide a legal basis for the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingians, and it was used to justify the pope’s claim to the territories that Pepin the Short had conquered from the Lombards and donated to the papacy. The Donation of Constantine was therefore not simply a forgery: it was a piece of political theology, claiming for the Roman church a temporal dominion that the papacy could not in fact defend by its own resources.
The use of the donation
The Donation of Constantine was used by the medieval papacy to support a wide range of claims. It was cited to justify the pope’s temporal authority over central Italy, the “Patrimony of Saint Peter” - a large collection of lands in central Italy that the papacy claimed as its own. It was cited to justify the pope’s claim to crown emperors, on the grounds that Constantine had given the pope the imperial authority. It was cited to justify the pope’s claim to be above the Western church, on the grounds that Constantine had given the pope spiritual supremacy. It was also cited to justify the pope’s claim to be above secular rulers in general, on the grounds that the pope had been given authority over the secular sphere as well as the spiritual.
The Donation of Constantine was particularly important in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the papacy was engaged in a series of conflicts with secular rulers. Pope Gregory VII, in his struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over investiture, cited the Donation of Constantine as evidence that the pope had been given authority over the emperor. Pope Innocent III, in his struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and the English king John, used the Donation to justify the pope’s claim to depose secular rulers. The forgery was therefore a powerful weapon in the medieval papacy’s arsenal, and it was used to support a wide range of political claims.
The exposure of the forgery
The Donation of Constantine was eventually exposed as a forgery by the humanist Lorenzo Valla in 1440. Valla was an Italian scholar who had been commissioned by the Roman curia to demonstrate that the papacy had a legitimate claim to temporal authority. In his treatise De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione (“On the False and Forged Donation of Constantine”), Valla demonstrated that the document was written in a Latin style that was clearly different from that of the fourth century, that it contained historical errors, and that it used legal and theological concepts that did not exist in the fourth century. Valla’s work was one of the most important demonstrations of the use of historical and philological evidence in modern scholarship, and it was a landmark in the development of humanist methods.
The exposure of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery was not, however, the end of the medieval papacy’s political claims. The papacy continued to claim temporal authority over central Italy, and it continued to claim the right to crown emperors and to depose secular rulers. The Donation of Constantine was simply replaced by other arguments, including the doctrine of the pope’s spiritual supremacy over the church and his indirect authority over secular affairs. The forgery was therefore a major event in the history of medieval politics, but it did not have the dramatic political consequences that one might have expected.
The legacy of the donation
The Donation of Constantine is one of the most famous forgeries in history, and it has been the subject of intense scholarly study. The forgery is significant not only for what it tells us about the medieval papacy, but also for what it tells us about medieval political thought. The document is a sophisticated piece of political theology, drawing on biblical, legal, and historical traditions to construct a claim for papal authority. The forgery was also a response to a real political crisis: the need of the eighth-century popes for a source of support against the Lombards and the Byzantine exarchs.
The Donation of Constantine is also significant for the history of historical method. Lorenzo Valla’s exposure of the forgery was one of the earliest demonstrations of the use of historical and philological evidence to refute a historical claim, and it helped to establish the methods of modern historical scholarship. The forgery has also been the subject of study by historians of canon law, theology, and medieval politics, and it remains a major topic in the history of the medieval papacy.