A History of Western Philosophy

(Martin Jones) #1

power; moreover they only became emperors when the Pope crowned them. For all these reasons,
the emancipation of the Pope from Byzantine domination was essential both to the independence
of the Church in relation to secular monarchs, and to the ultimate establishment of the papal
monarchy in the government of the Western Church.


Certain documents of great importance, the "Donation of Constantine" and the False Decretals,
belong to this period. The False Decretals need not concern us, but something must be said of the
Donation of Constantine. In order to give an air of antique legality to Pepin's gift, churchmen
forged a document, purporting to be a decree issued by the Emperor Constantine, by which, when
he founded the New Rome, he bestowed upon the Pope the old Rome and all its Western
territories. This bequest, which was the basis of the Pope's temporal power, was accepted as
genuine by the whole of the subsequent Middle Ages. It was first rejected as a forgery, in the time
of the Renaissance, by Lorenzo Valla (ca. 1406-57) in 1439. He had written a book "on the
elegancies of the Latin language," which, naturally, were absent in a production of the eighth
century. Oddly enough, after he had published his book against the Donation of Constantine, as
well as a treatise in praise of Epicurus, he was made apostolic secretary by Pope Nicholas V, who
cared more for latinity than for the Church. Nicholas V did not, however, propose to give up the
States of the Church, though the Pope's title to them had been based upon the supposed Donation.


The contents of this remarkable document are summarized by C. Delisle Burns as follows:


After a summary of the Nicene creed, the fall of Adam, and the birth of Christ, Constantine says
he was suffering from leprosy, that doctors were useless, and that he therefore approached "the
priests of the Capitol." They proposed that he should slaughter several infants and be washed in
their blood, but owing to their mothers' tears he restored them. That night Peter and Paul appeared
to him and said that Pope Sylvester was hiding in a cave on Soracte, and would cure him. He went
to Soracte, where the "universal Pope" told him Peter and Paul were apostles, not gods, showed
him portraits which he recognized from his vision, and admitted it before all his "satraps."
PopeSilvester thereupon assigned him a period of penance in a hair shirt; then he baptized him,
when he saw a hand from heaven touch-

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