The Donation of Constantine

In the 8th century, a document was written that had a lasting impact on the course of medieval Europe. The Donation of Constantine granted a large amount of Roman Empire land and power to Pope Sylvester I and his successors. It was a fake.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy V. Wilson and Tracy
as you may or may not know, I bet you did.

(00:21):
In the eighth century, there was this document written that
was kind of important. I did not know this. I mean,
I knew there were important documents, but I didn't know
about this specific one. Yeah. So it ended up having
a lasting impact on the course of medieval Europe. Uh
and even a little beyond that. And this document, which
was called the Donation of Constantine, granted a large part

(00:43):
of the Roman Empire land and power to Pope Sylvester,
the first in his successors. But that document, and this
isn't really a spoiler, because this is normally how this
document is presented, was a fake. It's you'll usually see
it written up as like one of the greatest forgeries
of history. Uh So, today the Donation of Constantine is

(01:03):
recognized as a forgery, and that has been the case
for several hundred years. But for centuries it was actually
recognized as a binding document and was used to substantiate claims.
Uh And for starters. If you know your Roman Empire history,
that mentioned that we started off with of it being
written in the eighth century may have piqued your curiosity
and raised the flags because Constantine the Great ruled in

(01:26):
the early fourth century. Uh. So that's the quick intro
on the topic we were talking about today, which is
the Donation of Constantine. We're also going to talk about
how it came to be revealed as a forgery and
a little bit of the story on the man who
who did that. Uh, that research that proved it out
as false. So we don't know the exact date that

(01:48):
the paux Donation of Constantine was written. We generally think
it was composed sometime between seven hundred and fifty and
eight hundred. The document has written in two different parts.
There's the confessia and then the donatio, and the first
section details the relationship between the Emperor Constantine and Pope
Sylvestor the first, then the second lays out the specifics

(02:09):
of this donation. So for context, Constantine the Great was
the fifty seven emperor of the Roman Empire. He reigned
in various degrees as his power expanded, from the year
three hundred six to his death in three D thirty seven.
And I say that because if you look at some
of these older ones, you know he was ruling one
part and then his lands expanded and he was considered

(02:32):
ruler of other things as well. That's why it's worded
that way. Uh. And his move from Rome to Constantinople,
which we're going to discuss a little bit in this episode,
catalyzed the rise of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire.
Constantine is known for many, many things, and we're not
going through like his biography, but from a religious perspective

(02:52):
and what really relates to this episode. The key points
are that he legalized all religions in the Roman Empire.
Both religions and cults were free to be practiced however
anyone pleased. He put an end to Christian persecution, but
he didn't declare himself a Christian until fairly late in
his life. And Pope Sylvester, the first who he allegedly

(03:15):
in this document donated all of this land and power to,
was the thirty third Pope. We don't know as much
about him and his sort of life story, but he
served as pope from three to five, so kind of
right in the middle kind of with a parenthesis of
Constantine around it. In terms of timeline, according to the Confessio,

(03:37):
Sylvester the first taught Constantine about the Christian faith. Constantine
professed his own faith, he was baptized by Sylvester, and
then in doing so, Sylvester cured Constantine of leprosy. It's
a dynamic story. Um. The second section of the donation
after it it UH sets up this this great story

(03:59):
of how cons Sanine was so moved and cured by
Sylvester lays out the actual transfer of power and land,
and it names the pope as the successor to St. Peter. Uh. Basically,
the line of popes is considered to be, you know,
directly from St. Peter, and that's why he figured so
prominently in papal history. Constantine at this point was preparing

(04:22):
to move to the new capital that he had built, Constantinople,
and so he left Rome to the Pope, including control
of the Imperial Palace and the western regions of the Empire. Additionally,
he granted these seats of authority you will see these
sonimes referred to as seas of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and
Jerusalem to the Pope, as well as authority over all

(04:44):
the churches of the Empire. And here is a little
excerpt from that. Uh. It says, quote, and we ordain
and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well
over the four chief seats Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem,
as also over all the churches of God in the

(05:04):
whole world. And he who for the time being shall
be pontiff of that Holy Roman Church shall be more
exalted than in chief over all the priests of the
whole world. Yeah, that's not any small potatoes. It's basically
like you are running the show. Uh. And in the text,

(05:24):
it's also inferred that the pope's power extends to secular matters,
including appointing people to positions of power in the territories
that he controls, including positions outside of the church as well.
So the pope was also and granted the honorary rights
that the emperor was entitled to, including wearing the imperial

(05:44):
crown and purple garments. Sylvester, the text claims, refused to
wear the crown out of humility and devotion to his
religious responsibilities. And that section goes quote, but he the
most Holy Pope did not at all allow that crown
of gold to be used over the clerical crown which
he wears to the glory of St. Peter. But we

(06:05):
placed upon his most Holy head with our own hands
a ti era of gleaming splendor, representing the glorious resurrection
of our Lord Constantine. The text explains felt that as
the home of St. Peter, Rome was vital to the church,
so he was compelled to move his secular government away
so that he didn't infringe on the realm of his religion.

(06:28):
This entire setup was obviously incredibly beneficial to the church,
gave the institution unprecedented power. And this is maybe my
favorite part because it comes up in almost any falsified
document that we have talked about on the show. In
that classic wrap up that we always see, the donation
swears to its own veracity and it condemns anyone who

(06:50):
would dare question it, as it was totally signed by
none other than the everor himself and it was put
on St. Peter's tomb. So there's absolutely valid comment, you guys.
So here's the quote from that portion. Quote if anyone moreover,
which we do not believe prove a scorner or despiser
in this matter, he shall be subject and bound over

(07:13):
to eternal damnation, and shall feel that the holy chiefs
of the Apostles of God, Peter and Paul, will be
opposed to him in the present and in the future
life and being burned and the nethermost hell. He shall
perish with the devil and all the impious. Yeah, just casual, like,
if you disagree with this document, your soul is doomed. Uh. Yeah,

(07:38):
it's a little intense. So. The oldest known copy of
the Donation of Constantine is a ninth century edition that
was in the collection known as the False Decredles. And
this collection, which will also sometimes seem referred to as
the Decretals of Pseudo Isidore, is an assortment of religious
decrees and papers and letters of popes, but it included

(07:58):
a number of forged documents. It first appeared at the
Council of Suisson in eight fifty three, and it became
a recognized part of canon law for centuries. As such,
the Donation of Constantine was included alongside nearly one other
forge documents, which bolstered the position and power of bishops
in the face of potential threats to power. There's also

(08:21):
a possibility that the granting of land and power to
the Church had been part of an oral history and
that the creation of an actual written version of it
was done to sort of validate this existing idea. Yeah,
it's kind of like, oh, there's this myth I heard,
it would be great for the church. I'm just going
to write this up um and that gave it, you know, somehow,
extra validity. And a previous episode from our Archives, which

(08:45):
is hosted by Candice and Jane, actually mentioned the donation
of Peppin and its connection to the coronation of Charlemagne
and that donation given by Peppin or you'll also see
it as Pippin the Third gave the Pope at that time,
Stephen the Second, rights to significant portions of central Italy,
and it laid the groundwork for the establishment of the
Papal States. In exchange, Pope Stephen the Second recognize the

(09:09):
Carolingians as the successors to the Mayravingian dynasty, which hadn't
been in power up to that point for almost three centuries.
And just for clarity, we're using this as sort of
a contextual thing, but the donation of Peppin is legitimate.
That is not a forgery. That's an actual thing that happened,
and just a moment we'll talk about some of the
other possibilities surrounded the creation of the donation of Constantine,

(09:32):
but we're gonna pause really quickly for a sponsor break
before we do that. So it's also possible that the
donation of Constantine was created at Pope Stephen the Second's
command as part of his negotiation efforts with Peppin, in
fact establishing a fake history in which the papacy had

(09:55):
already been given this power uh in an effort to
make Peppin's donation and seemed more like a restoration than
seeding a lot of land and power. It also might
have been created for Charlemagne's coronation as a way to
bolster the donation of Peppin and to ensure that the
papal power in Italy continued to be recognized. But surprisingly,

(10:17):
the donation of Constantine doesn't appear to have been invoked
as a means of validating the Church's power until some
time later in the eleventh century, and it's not as
though there had been no challenges or power struggles during
that time, so it's a little unclear why no one
pointed to the donation for quote unquote proof Roman Constantinople,
as seats of religious and secular power had been at

(10:40):
odds repeatedly in the intervening years, so it would have
been really, really handy to produce the donation of Constantine
to end some of those conflicts. But finally Pope Leo
the Ninth held it up to support the church's power
in ten fifty four, and from that point on it
became a commonly cited example of the churches given authority.

(11:02):
We should also note that it's possible that the document
was referenced sometime before that, but Leo the Ninth reference
to it is the first one that we definitely know about,
and at that point it became so commonly used as
an establishing document and was even sited in canon law,
and people just accepted it without question for several centuries.

(11:22):
There are also paintings depicting the donation. One was painted
in twelve forty six. It's part of a series of
frescoes and Rome's San Silvestro Chapel at Santi Quatro Cornaty Basilica.
Another was painted almost three hundred years later in fifty
four by the school of Rafael. The second piece is
part of the room of Constantine that was part of

(11:44):
the four rooms that make up the stands of Rafael.
These rooms are part of an apartment on the second
floor of the Pontifical Palace at the Vatican. All of
these pieces in the Rafael rooms were painted by Rafael
and his students between fifteen o eight and fifty four. Uh.
That timing is interesting, which we are about to illustrate,

(12:08):
because it was noted as a forgery before that was painted. Uh.
And the man credited with revealing the donation of Constantine
to be a forgery was a literary critic, philosopher, and humanist,
Lorenzo Valla. And he was what you might call a
rabble rouser or a troublemaker. Uh. And he had a

(12:28):
really pretty interesting relationship with the papacy. So to give
some context to all of that, we're including a mini
biography of him here. Balla was a lawyer's son born
in fourteen o seven in Rome. His father worked on
a papal court. So while the family was originally from
Piacenza in northern Italy, Lorenzo grew up in Rome, where

(12:48):
he lived until he was in his early twenties. Valla
had hoped to also gain employment in the papal court
like his father, but despite his education in Latin, a
secretarial job in the church eluded him. So he traveled
throughout the country for several years, starting in fourteen thirty,
primarily in northern Italy, and Lorenzo worked as an educator,

(13:09):
teaching rhetoric, but he ended up really making a name
for himself as a writer. His first work on Pleasure
supported the then unpopular notion that a virtuous life could
be lived free from pain. He would revise this writing
three more times in the next decade and a half,
and this was followed up by writings advocating anti stoicism

(13:31):
and a harsh critique of the revered lawyer Bartolis, who
had practiced and taught in the early fourteenth century, and Bartolas,
in VALA's opinion, used Latin terribly. This is a theme
that comes up in VALA's work over and over. Uh
Vola's focio study had been rhetoric, as we mentioned, which
he taught in Latin, and he used this knowledge of

(13:51):
both to really break down Bartolis's work. That particular effort
didn't make Bala particularly popular among his colleague at the
University of Pavia, where he was teaching at the time.
The law faculty in particular was irate at his attack
on Bartolis. Valid didn't teach at Pavilla for much longer
after this criticism went public. Yeah, it's kind of funny

(14:14):
how that's referenced in a number of different biographies of him.
There's these scant specifics in terms of what went down,
but it's sort of like he decided it would be
best if he left that place. So presumably things were
a little, uh friction laden for a while. But this
is how after another bout of traveling, Lorenzo Vala found

(14:37):
work in the court of the King of Naples, Alfonso
of Aragon, and in fourteen forty, which is a pivotal year,
Alfonso was at war with Pope Eugenius the Fourth. That
same year, Vala once again put his knowledge as a
Latin scholar into his writing when he wrote his analysis
of the Donation of Constantine. This was titled quote Discourse

(14:59):
on the Forger of the Alleged Donation of Constantine. The
Latin that was used in the document, he concluded, was
just not indicative of a work written in the fourth century,
and one translation this criticism was translated as a quote,
the latinity of the grant is crude. In other words,
the transfer of power of this nature would have been

(15:20):
written more elegantly. I so love the phrase the latinity
of the grant is crude. It has a great scansion,
It's got a certain musicality. I just love it. Uh.
Sources seem to vary in assessments as to whether Valla
was pursuing this analysis and reveal of the forgery as
a supportive move for King Alfonso in his conflict with

(15:43):
the pope, or whether it was merely an academic interest,
as evidenced by his writing about the Lawyer of Bartolis
and writings later on that we'll talk about he really
likes to pick apart people's Latin. Also, as a humanist
during the Renaissance, it would have been pretty natural for
Lorenzo Vallet to just turn a critical eye on the
Catholic Church and the sources of its power in general.

(16:06):
This is, after all, a sentiment that was growing in
Europe at the time and eventually led to the Protestant Reformation.
Bala is not gentle in his criticism. It's a parent
in his writing that he feels that he has identified
complicity on the part of the papacy. We're including a
longish excerpt here because we want to give listeners a
sense of exactly where this rhetoric is coming from. So

(16:29):
in his introduction he writes, quote, I know that for
a long time now men's ears are waiting to hear
the offense with which I charge the Roman pontiffs. It
is indeed an enormous one. Do either to supine ignorance,
or to gross avarice, which is the slave of idols,
or to pride of empire, of which cruelty is ever

(16:51):
the companion. For during some centuries now, either they have
not known that the donation of Constantine is spurious and forged,
or else they themselves forged it, and their successors, walking
in the same way of deceit as their elders, have
defended as true what they knew to be false, dishonoring
the majesty of the pontificate, dishonoring the memory of ancient pontiffs,

(17:14):
dishonoring the Christian religion, confounding everything with murders, disasters and crimes.
They say, the city of Rome is theirs. There's the
Kingdom of Sicily and of Naples, the whole of Italy,
the Galls, the Spains, the Germans, the Britons, indeed the
whole West. For all these are contained in the instrument
of the donation itself. So all these are your, supreme pontiff,

(17:38):
And is your purpose to recover them all, to despoil
all kings and princes of the West of their cities,
or compel them to pay you a yearly tribute? Is
that your plan? I, on the contrary, think it fairer
to let the princes despoil you of all the empire
you hold. For as I shall show that donation, whence
the supreme pontiffs will have their right derived, was unknown

(18:02):
equally to Sylvester and to Constantine. In just a moment,
we will dive into a few of the points that
Vala used in this argument against the donation of Constantine's validity.
But first we are going to have one more quick
sponsor break. In addition to the Latin usage errors, there

(18:25):
are other giveaways in the donation of Constantine identified by Vala.
One of the points that his text on the subject
makes is that the coinage in Rome continued quote to
be struck in Latin. For Constantine, coinage served as a
sort of record of leadership, and the coinage did not
change to be struck in Sylvester's name at the time
that this grant is alleged. Instead, it changed over to

(18:48):
that of Constantine's secular successor when he died, indicating that
the pope was never granted the rain and land the
donation claims. Additionally, Constantine's reign as emperor, as I mentioned
that earlier in the show, outlasted Sylvester the First as pope. Also,
there is no historical record of the transfer of power

(19:09):
that's described in the donation, the only source for this information,
and there's historical evidence of Constantine still serving as ruler
in the areas that were allegedly allegedly granted to the
papacy after the document is supposed to have been written.
Some of the language of the donation text is also
out of place historically. For example, the use of the

(19:31):
words sat traps to refer to Constantine's nobles uh. That
word wasn't used in Rome until the seven hundreds, so
it would not have been part of a record written
in the fourth century, as the donation claimed to be.
Another point of contention is that there's a whole lot
of very specific writing about stuff like what the bishop's
robes would look like, in contrast to just sweeping generalities

(19:54):
that were used to grant land and power. So there
was a lot of detail about the robes, but not
a lot of details about this gi gaantic donation of land.
This incongruity seems very strange for a document that's giving
away parts of an empire, Like they get really hung
up on like the fashion part. And before anyone writes us,

(20:14):
I know it's not all about fashion. It conveyed meaning,
but it just seems very funny that it is, like,
let me tell you about the clothes you're going to
get to wear. Also, yeah, you can have all that
land over there. That's cool. It's a little bit weird. Uh.
But while Lorenzo Vala and his breakdown of this this
document is generally credited with revealing the Donation of Constantine

(20:35):
is a forgery, he was not the only and was
not even the first person to question its authenticity. Otto
the Third, who became the Holy Roman Emperor at the
tail end of the tenth century declared the donation of
Constantine to be a forgery. He refused to acknowledge it,
but there doesn't seem to be any documentation that shows
exactly why he thought that. Yeah, it could just be

(20:57):
that he didn't want the church to have all of
that power and he wanted to move it back. I'm
not clear, but it is worth pointing out that that
was many hundreds of years before VALA's work, and then
just seven years before Vala wrote his his breakdown of it,
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called out the donation of Constantine

(21:19):
as apocrypha in fourteen thirty three, and then the Bishop
of Chichester, Reginald Peacock also raised a flag regarding the
donations in his writing The Repressor of over much, blaming
the clergy, and so he raised this criticism after VALA's analysis,
but he didn't know anything about it when he wrote it.
And then finally the forgery was acknowledged by the church

(21:44):
over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeen centuries,
and ecclesiastical historian Cardinal Caesar Baronio published a twelve volume
series and in it Barronio admitted that the donation was
a fake. In the same writing, he attributes the creation
of the forgery to a Greek author, but there were
detractors to that assertion pretty much from the moment it

(22:06):
was made. Because the documents so obviously benefited the church.
It's possible that Pope Stephen the Second, who served as
Pope from seven fifty two to seven fifty seven, may
have known about its creation, that the Roman Church may
have had a hand in its writing. And it is
also even possible that the two parts of the text
of the donation were in fact written at different times.

(22:28):
So there are so many questions about not only its authenticity,
which is acknowledged as not there, but just about the
nature of of how it came to be and when
it came to be, in the possibility that it was
not on on one concise timeline, but in two pieces.
So Lorenzo Vala wrote a lot about the papacy and

(22:48):
its complacency in maintaining this forgery as a true document.
So what happened to him next might at first seem
a little contradictory. He went on to become a papal
secretary under Pope Nicholas the Fifth, but he got himself
in a lot of hot water before that ever happened. Yeah,
so for starters. He continued to pick apart the writing
of many other respected and admired figures, including the philosophers

(23:14):
and Aristotle, and he also wrote of the ways in
which he found the work of Roman lawyer and politicians
Cicero's prose lacking, and those criticisms were not always well received,
as you can imagine when their beloved figures since some
random person comes along and yells about how they should
be discredited because their grammar is bad, not everyone is

(23:35):
really enthusiastic about hearing that. But he did write a
very popular Latin grammar textbook though that ended up being
used throughout Europe. But the really dicey part of his
story is not related to the donation of Constantine at all.
It's related to the Apostles Creed. He didn't believe that
that the twelve Apostles had written the Creed. For anybody unfamiliar,

(23:56):
this is uh. The origin story of the Apostles creed
is that the Holy Spirit guided the twelve Apostles to
create this creed, but of a sort of holy ensemble
writing and for his outspoken position on the subject, Vala
found himself under investigation by the Inquisition. He was found
to be guilty of eight different counts of heresy, which

(24:16):
included his criticisms of Aristotle. He probably would have been
put to death had King Alonso not used his powers
save him. Yeah, yeah, I like that criticizing Aristotle is
a heresy. It's just a fascinating thing. Like I said,
he was a rabble rouser. People did not always enjoy him.

(24:37):
But when Nicholas the Fifth came into power, he proved
himself as a pope to be sympathetic to humanists, and
Vala moved to Rome to work under him in fourteen
forty eight, and he actually remained in that position when
Pope Collectsus the third came into power in fourteen fifty five,
and Vala remained there until he died at the age
of fifty on August one, fourteen fifty seven, having proven

(24:59):
the donation of con Sanine to be a fraud seventeen
years earlier. Telsaf some listener mail to close out today's episode.
I do we're um. I know we're in January and
and headed into February here, but I have some holiday cards.
Uh that I'm trying to do a round up on
since we did not get all of them before we

(25:19):
left the office for the holidays, and also um just
because we get so many and I wanted to thank
people for them. The first one is thank you from
uh MS Brandy. She sent us a beautiful card of
her with her adorable uh dilute orange cat and it
says wishing you a yaweek Christmas, and they are both lovely.

(25:41):
She also has a fabulous cat sweater on in that one.
We also got a lovely card from our listener Rebecca,
thanking us for all of our hard work and wishing
is merry Christmas. It is absolutely beautiful and there's lots
of holly and gold on the front of it, so
I love it. Uh. And then the other two little
pieces as we do this round up, not holiday related,

(26:01):
but I wanted to make sure to include some others. Uh.
This one is from our listener Peggy. It is a
beautiful postcard which I will describe in a moment. It
says thank you for the podcast. I have listened from
the beginning and still enjoy new episodes. I won't recommend
a topic you have a long list already instead, please
enjoy the seasons at Japan my current home. You would
love Disney see. And it's this beautiful lenticular postcard that

(26:24):
shows um this sort of forest image changing with the seasons,
and it's really quite beautiful and striking. Thank you, Peggy Um.
And then my last one got sent and it's a
photocopy piece of paper with a note on it. It
is not signed, but it is um a photocopy of
what looks like the title page of a book called

(26:47):
Women's Work the First twenty thousand Years Women, Cloth and
Society in Early Times, and it says, dear history people,
this is a book I think you'll really enjoy, although
it may be more in Holly's interest. It talks about
history through the aspects of making strings, read, spinning, weaving,
and dying. It explains in broad terms why people dressed
the way they did due to available materials, and explains

(27:07):
economic consequences, et cetera. Thank you for your work on
the podcast. And then it says sincerely, but it does
not have a signature, but I wanted to say one
thank you for the recommendation and to This is a
really smart way to send a book recommendation because it
includes all of the pertinent information someone would need to
find said book. Uh yeah, photocopying a title page is perfect.
So thank you, thank you. I am going to look

(27:28):
that book up because it looks quite interesting. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History podcast at house to works dot com.
You can also find us at missed in history dot com,
and we are available across the spectrum of social media
also as missed in History. If you do go to
our web page, you will find not only every show

(27:49):
that has ever existed long before we were the hosts,
but also show notes for any of the episodes that
Tracy and I have worked on together. So we hope
you come and visit us at missed in History dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Isn't houseba works dot com