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Donation of Constantine: see Constantine, Donation of.

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Constantine, Donation of

Constantine, Donation of, Lat. Constitutum Constantini, forged document, probably drafted in the 8th cent. It purported to be a grant by Roman Emperor Constantine I of great temporal power in Italy and the West to the papacy. Its purpose was apparently to enhance papal territorial claims in Italy by giving them greater antiquity. The document also recognized the spiritual authority of the popes, but this statement had no weight, since at no time was it argued in the Roman Catholic Church that spiritual authority could emanate from the emperor. It was not, as a matter of fact, ever of great practical value, nor was it, as is sometimes asserted, universally accepted in the Middle Ages. It owes its great fame to the fact that the scholar Lorenzo Valla demonstrated the falsity of the document by critical methods that became the model for later textual criticism and are said by some to be the beginning of modern textual criticism.

See L. Valla, Treatise on the Donation of Constantine (tr. by C. B. Coleman, 1922; repr. 1971).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

Donation of Constantine

Document concerning the supposed grant by the emperor Constantine I (the Great) to Pope Sylvester I (314–335) and later popes of temporal power over Rome and the Western Empire. The gift was said to have been motivated by Constantine's gratitude to Sylvester for miraculously healing his leprosy and converting him to Christianity. Based on legends from the 5th century concerning Sylvester and Constantine, the Donation was probably written at Rome in the mid 8th century and was related to the coronation of Pippin III, the first Carolingian king of the Franks. Proved in the 15th century by Lorenzo Valla to be a forgery, the document was already questioned by the emperor Otto III (r. 996–1002) but was often cited in the 11th–15th centuries to support papal claims in the struggle between church and state.

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