The Title Deeds To Western Europe

Having recently had to re-familiarise myself with all things medieval, I came across this again. There are two crude forgeries which have shaped the destiny of Europe. One is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the other is the Donation of Constantine. The Donation purports to be an edict by the Emperor Constantine. According to legend Constantine was afflicted by leprosy and was advised to bathe in the blood of murdered infants. Constantine was struck with a bout of squeamishness, whereupon St. Peter took pity on him and directed him to Pope Silvester who promptly cured him. Constantine, in gratitude handed over the Western Empire. Of course, this is nonsense. The miraculous elements aside Constantine divvied up the Empire between his sons after his death and neglected to tell them that the Pope had dibs on the West. The pagan Emperor Julian the Apostate, whom one would have expected to repeal such an edict, is silent about it. Furthermore the edict refers to the Emperor's satraps when satraps were a Persian and not a Roman official. These points were all made in 1440 by Lorenzo Valla. The Donation was almost certainly written between 750 and 850 AD. As recently as the early 1300s Dante, who objected strongly to the claims of the Papacy to temporal power accepted the authenticity of the document, arguing in De Monarchia that Constantine didn't have the authority to sign over half the Empire and lamenting the Donation in the Inferno.

How such a forgery imposed on European opinion for over half a millenium is an interesting question. Part of the answer relates to the widespread rate of illiteracy during the period. The literate tended to be clergy who, therefore, were disinclined to question the Donation. Part of the answer relates to the absence of a sense of the past. Great rulers would, for various reasons, donate huge tracts of land to the Church. The Donation was only a contemporary magnates endowment of an abbey or church writ large. Part of the answer was, I think, an inabillity to question the assumptions that dominated society. Valla's sterling work notwithstanding, the decline of High Papalism was brought about when Boniface VIII over reached himself. Philip IV of France sent a royal official, Guillame de Nogaret (who was later instrumental in the condemnation of the Templars), to kidnap Boniface who died of a stroke shortly afterwards. For the next century the Papacy would be based at Avignon. It would still be important but it would no longer presume to depose kings. By the time Valla exposed the Donation as a fake it was a dead letter. There was no rear guard action, no attempts to silence or condemn Valla.

Doubtless we are all a bit more sophisticated than people in the Middle Ages. But it does make one wonder. Dante, after all, was not stupid or incurious or unlearned. What unquestioned assumptions of our society will future generations regard with bewilderment?