Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/154

 DONATION

120

DONATION

tionis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore per eius largitatcni sancta Uei Catholica et Apostolica Homana ecclesia elevata et exaltata est et potestatem in his Hesperise partibus largiri dignatus, ita et in his vestris felicissunis temporibus atque nostris sancta Dei eccle- sia, id est beati Petri apostoli, germinet atque exultet. . . .) several writers, e. g. DoUinger, Langen, Meyer, and others have concluded that Adrian I was then aware ■^f this forgery, so that it must have appeared before 77S. Friedrich assmnes in Adrian I a knowledge of the " Constitutum " from his letter to Emperor Con- stantLne VI written in 785 (Mansi, Concil. Coll., XII, 105G). Jlost historians, however, rightly refrain from asserting that Adrian I made use of this docu- ment; from his letters, therefore, the time of its origin cannot be deduced.

Most of the recent writers on the subject assimie the origin of the '' Donatio " between 752 and 795. Among them, some decide for the pontificate of Stephen II (752-757) on the hypothesis that the author of the forgeiy wished to substantiate thereby the claims of this pope in his negotiations with Pepin (Dollinger, Hauck, Friedrich, Bohraer). Others lower the date of the forgery to the time of Paul I (757-767), and base their opinion on the political events in Italy under this pope, or on the fact that he had a special venera- tion for St. Sylvester, and that the "Donatio" had es- pecially in view the honour of this saint (Scheffer- Boichorst, Mayer). Others again locate its origin in the pontificate of Adrian I (772-795), on the hypo- thesis that this pope hoped thereby to extend the sec- ular authority of the Roman Church over a great part of Italy and to create in this way a powerful ecclesias- tical State under papal government (Langen, Loan- ing). A smaller group of writers, however, remove the forgery to some date after 800, i. e. after the coro- nation of Charlemagne as emperor. Among these, Martens and Weiland assign the document to the last years of the reign of Charlemagne, or the first years of Louis the Pious, i. e. somewhere between 800 and 840. They argue that the chief purpose of the forgery was to bestow on the Western ruler the imperial power, or that the "Constitutum" was meant to indicate what the new emperor, as successor of Constantine the Great, might have conferred on the Roman Church. Those writers also who seek the forger in the Prankish Empire maintain that the document was written in the ninth century, e. g. especially Hergen- rother and Grauert. The latter opines that the "Constitutum" originated in the monastery of St- Denis, at Paris, shortly before or about the same time as the False Decretals, i. e. between 840 and 850.

Closely connected with the date of the forgery is the other question concerning the primarj- purpose of the forger of the "Donatio". Here, too, there exists a great variety of opinions. Most of the writers who locate at Rome itself the origin of the forgerj- main- tain that it was intended principally to support the claims of the popes to secular power in Italy; they differ, however, as to the extent of the said claims. Ac- cortling to Dollinger the " Constitutum ' ' was destined to aid in the creation of a united Italy under papal gov- ernment. Others would limit the papal claims to those districts which Stephen II sought to obtain from Pepin, or to isolated territories which, then or later, the popes desired to acquire. In general, this class of historians seeks to connect the forgery with the hLs- torica! events and political movements of that time in Italy (Mayer, Langen, Friedrich, Loening, and others). Several of these writers lay more stress on the eleva- tion of the papacy than on the donation of territories. Occasionally it is maintained that the forger sought to secure for the pope a kind of higher secular power, something akin to imperial supremacy as against the Prankish Government, then solidly established in Italy. Again, some of this class limit to Italy the ex- pression occidentalium regionum proinncias, but most

of them understand it to mean the whole former West- ern Empire. This is the attitude of Weiland, for whom the chief object of the forgery is the increase of papal power over the imperial, and the establishment of a kind of imperial supremacy of the pope over the whole West. For this reason also he lowers the date of the " Constitutmn " no further than the end of the reign of Charlemagne (814). As a matter of fact, however, in this document Sylvester does indeed ob- tain from Constantine imperial rank and the emblems of imperial dignity, but not the real imperial suprem- acy. Martens therefore sees in the forgery an effort to elevate the papacy in general ; all alleged preroga- tives of the pope and of Roman ecclesiastics, all gifts of landed possessions, and rights of secular govern- ment are meant to promote and confirm this eleva- tion, and from it all the new Emperor Charlemagne ought to draw practical conclusions for his behaviour in relation to the pope. Scheffer-Boichorst holds a singular opinion, namely that the forger intended pri- marily the glorification of Sylvester and Constantine, and only in a secondary way a defence of the papal claims to territorial possessions. Grauert, for whom the forger is a Frankish subject, shares the view of Hergenrother, i. e. the forger had in mind a defence of the new Western Empire from the attacks of the By- zantines. Therefore it was highly important for him to establish the legitimacy of the newly founded empire, and this purpose was especially aided by all that the document alleges concerning the elevation of the pope. From the foregoing it will be seen that the last word of historical research in this matter still re- mains to be said. Important questions concerning the sources of the forgery, the place and time of its origin, the tendency of the forger, yet await their solution. New researches will probably pay still greater atten- tion to textual criticism, especially that of the first part or "Confession" of faith.

As far as the evidence at hand permits us to judge, the forged "Constitutimi" was first made known in the Frankish Empire. The oldest extant manuscript of it, certainly from the ninth century, was written in the Frankish Empire. In the seconil half of that cen- tury the document is expressly mentioned by three Frankish writers. Ado, Bishop of Vienne, speaks of it in his Chronicle (De sex tetatibus mundi, ad an. 306, in P. L., CXXIII, 92); ^neas. Bishop of Paris, refers to it in defence of the Roman primacy (Adver- sus GriPcos, c. ccix, op. cit., CXXI, 758); Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, mentions the donation of Rome to the pope by Constantine the Great according to the "Constitutum" (De ordine palatii, c. xiii, op. cit, CXXV, 998). The document obtained wider circula- tion by its incorporation with the False Decretals (840-850, or more specifically between 847 and 852 ; Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, Leipzig, 1863, p. 249). At Rome no use was made of the docu- ment during the ninth and the tenth centuries, not even amid the conflicts and dtfticulties of Nicholas I with Constantinople, when it might have served as a welcome argument for the claims of the pope. The first pope who used it in an official act and relied upon it, was Leo IX; in a letter of 10.54 to Michael Ca'ru- larius, Patriarch of Constantinople, he cites the "Don- atio" to show that the Holy See possessed both an earthly and a heavenly imperium, the royal priest- hood. Thenceforth the "Donatio" acquires more importance ami is more frequently used as evidence in the ecclesiastical and political conflicts between the papacy and the secular power. .A.nselm of Lucca and Cardinal Deusdedit inserted it in their collections of canons. Gratian, it is true, excluded it from his " De- cretum", but it was soon aiided to it as " Palea". The ecclesiastical writers in defence of the papacy during the conflicts of the early part of the twelfth century quoted it as authoritative (Hugo of Fleun,-, De regii potestate et ecclesiastica dignitate, II; Placidus of