Page 56 . Forged writings . --Among the documents that at the present time are generally admitted to be forgeries , the Donation of Constantine and the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals are of primary importance . " The ' Donation of Constantine ' is the name traditionally applied , since the later Middle Ages , to a document purporting to have been addressed by Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester I , which is found first in a Parisian manuscript ( Codex lat . 2777 ) of probably the beginning of the ninth century . Since the eleventh century it has been used as a powerful argument in favor of the papal claims , and consequently since the twelfth it has been the subject of a vigorous controversy . At the same time , by rendering it possible to regard the papacy as a middle term between the original and the medieval Roman Empire , and thus to form a theoretical basis of continuity for the reception of the Roman law in the Middle Ages , it has had no small influence upon secular history ." --The New
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge , vol . 3 , art . " Donation of constantine ," pp . 484 , 485 . The historical theory developed in the " Donation " is fully discussed in Henry E . Cardinal Manning ' s The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ , London , 1862 . The arguments of the " Donation " were of a scholastic type , and the possibility of a forgery was not mentioned until the rise of historical criticism in the fifteenth century . Nicholas of Cusa was among the first to conclude that Constantine never made any such donation . Lorenza Valla in Italy gave a brilliant demonstration of its spuriousness in 1450 . See Christopher B . Coleman ' s Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine ( New York , 1927 ). For a century longer , however , the belief in the authenticity of the " Donation " and of the False Decretals was kept alive . For example , Martin Luther at first accepted the decretals , but he soon said to Eck : " I impugn these decretals ;" and to Spalatin : " He [ the pope ] does in his decretals corrupt and crucify Christ , that is , the truth ."
It is deemed established that the " donation " is ( 1 ) a forgery , ( 2 ) the work of one man or period , ( 3 ) the forger has made use of older documents , ( 4 ) the forgery originated around 752 and 778 . As for the Catholics , they abandoned the defense of the authenticity of the document with Baronius , Ecclesiastical Annals , in 1592 . Consult for the best text , K . Zeumer , in the Festgabe fur Rudolf von Gneist ( Berlin , 1888 ). Translat- ed in Coleman ' s Treatise , referred to above , and in Ernest F . Henderson , Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages ( New York , 1892 ), p . 319 ; Briefwechsel ( Weimar ed .), pp . 141 , 161 . See also The New Schaff- Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge ( 1950 ), vol . 3 , p . 484 ; F . Gregorovius , Rome in the Middle Ages , vol . 2 , p . 329 ; and Johann Joseph Ignaz von Doellinger , Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages ( London , 1871 ).
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