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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 (1) the “Donation” is a forgery, (2)
it is 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). Translated 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F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (New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 Dollinger, Fables Respecting the Popes of
the Middle Ages (London, 1871).
The “false writings” referred to in the text include also the
Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, together with other forgeries.
The
Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals are certain fictitious letters ascribed to early
popes from Clement (A.D. 100) to Gregory the Great (A.D. 600),
incorporated in a ninth century collection purporting to have been made
by “Isidore Mercator.” The name “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” has been
in use since the advent of criticism in the fifteenth century.
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