In the 13th century, a document started to float around the corridors of power in continental Europe. The document was entitled Donatio Constantini, the Donation of Constantine and was, in effect, revelatory.
The document stated that it was drawn up and authorized by Emperor Constantine, a 4th century Roman Emperor. It stated that, on his death, his power and authority, in effect the political structure of the Western Roman Empire, was to pass to the Catholic Church in Rome.
At a stroke this document gave the Catholic Church and the Pope the political authority they had long desired. It did nothing less than place the Pope at the head of the Roman Empire, and of course it was a fake.
Nice Try
The donation of Constantine had been seen before this time, and had been turning up in one form or another since the 8th century. The original document was purported to be dated to the 4th century and was signed by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.
The document gave supreme spiritual and temporal power to the Church. In the document, there were claims that the emperor was cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester I in 315 AD, which apparently prompted his extremely generous legacy to them.
The Roman Emperor then surrendered his lands to the hands of the Pope, and the Pope then gave the lands and power back to the emperor. The idea was that the Emperor ruled with the Pope’s permission, and this gave the Pope sudden and enormous power.
The Donation of Constantine may have turned out to be a fake, and spurious claims of its legitimacy were hardly here nor there for the Papal States. But when it was created the document was far more important, principally for the impact it had on one man.
The Donation of Constantine was originally written to convince Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, to give his lands that he had conquered from the Lombards to Pope Stephen II. The document was also presented to Charlemagne and was shown to many other European monarchs until it was proved to be a forgery by a scholar named Lorenzo Valla.
Scholars and historians are not sure when was the Donation of Constantine written. The document was probably written between 751-756 AD. The document was written at the same time as Pepin the Short’s ruled over the Franks and was held till Pepin himself was convinced to do his own version the “Donation of Pepin”.
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The plot thickens, eh? The Donation of Pepin included large land grants of the area he had conquered from the Lombards. Although such donations to the church were not unheard of, the size of the Donation of Pepin and its timing was undoubtedly influenced by the much more generous (although false) Donation of Constantine.
In choosing their target, the church was canny. Pepin the Short was the true power of the Merovingian Dynasty and in the palace of the Franks long before he was king.
Pepin was responsible all the decrees that King Childeric III issued, controlling his king and directing policy. Pepin was getting tired of the discrepancy in power distribution, and he wrote to the Pope, Pope Zachary, about the situation.
The Pope at that time was consumed with problems of his own when the Church’s territory was taken over by the Lombards in Italy. Another crisis that the Roman Church was facing was resistance from the Eastern Church.
The Eastern Church condemned the use of idols with a strong voice. The Eastern Church had declared that any illustration of Christ or the saints in painting and sculpture was a Pagan practice. The Church believed that all the graven images of Christ and his saints were prohibited from use, and it wanted the Roman Church to align with it too.
Pope Zachary saw the letter from Pepin the Short as a sign of help from God. He saw that a noble king was asking for his help and could very well be the future champion of the Roman Church. With the help of Pepin, the Pope could defeat the Lombards and strengthen the Church’s eastern territories.
Both Pepin and the Church needed each other. Pepin also had the need to be legitimized by the Church. He needed the Church’s support to reign in peace and with power. He did not want to use political tactics and hard power to depose Childeric III and become king. If he had done so, he would not have got the trust of the nobles of his court.
The self-interests of both the men coincided in time, and so Pope Zachary declared Childeric deposed and toppled him from power. In his place, in 751 AD and with the support of the church Pepin the Short was crowned as the ruler of the Franks.
Pepin the Successful
Pepin went to war against the Lombards right after his ascension to the throne of the Franks, defeating them the next year in 752 AD. He also seized the lands and annexed the territory of the Lombards.
The year after that in 753 AD, Pope Stephen crossed the Alps and met with Pepin to discuss the lands he had annexed and what to do with them. The lands had earlier belonged to the Byzantine Empire that were given to the Church.
The forgery of the document was made easy because Pepin was illiterate. So, even if Stephen waved any other paper at his face, he would not have known if its contents were true or not.
It would be intriguing to see what this original document, carefully designed to convince an illiterate king of its pomp and authority, looked like. Sadly any images of grand flowing letters in gold and bright colors must remain in the mind’s eye, as nothing of the original document survives.
It also didn’t help the Catholics’ case that the Donation of Constantine was not previously not mentioned anywhere, and it is possible that the “Donation of Constantine” was not actually presented during the meeting. The church claimed that they had needed to show the document to Charlemagne, so it would however make sense to show it to Pepin, too.
Stephen anointed Pepin as the “Patrician of the Romans” in 754 AD, which cleverly linked him with Constantine the Great and therefore reminded him of how that previous patrician had behaved. And, it worked.
After his coronation, Pepin forced the Lombards to surrender the lands and promptly gave the lands to the Papacy through the Donation of Pepin. The Donation of Pepin established them as Papal property and created the Papal states of Italy.
The Original Donation of Constantine
The document of the Donation of Constantine has many things in it. For example, it begins with a long prologue about the grace and goodness of God.
The document also talks about the sanctity of the Church and the rights and claims of Papacy. The document talks about the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The document also talks about Jesus as the Son of God.
The donation of Constantine solved multiple problems for the Church. It solved the Lombard crisis, removing them as a threat to the Church and scoring the Catholics the Lombards’ lands into the bargain.
Pepin’s donation also established the church as a state in Italy, in that it gave the Church more land and gave it power and property as the legitimate sacred entity in Europe. The Donation of Constantine also aimed at resolving the issues the Church had with the Eastern Church about the use of idols and images of the apostles Peter and Paul.
Many generations of rulers did not question the legitimacy of the document. The Donation of Constantine remained unquestioned till the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. The document was first questioned by philosopher and writer Nicholas of Cusa in the 1400s. The claim of forgery was finally proven by scholar Lorenzo Valla.
But by then it was ancient history. The Donation of Pepin, however coerced, was definitely real, and so with the Donation of Constantine the church created the Papal States of Italy, and became a key political player to this day.
Top Image: This fresco in Rome depicts Constantine transferring authority to Pope Sylvester I. Except, of course, he never did. Source: Unknown Artist / Public Domain.
By Bipin Dimri
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