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 538 APPENDIX The fictitious constitution of Constantine the Great, making the Bishop of Rome secular lord of Rome and the west, was drawn up under Pope Paul I. not long after the donation of Pippin. But it is not certain that it was drawn up with the deep design of serving those ends which it was afterwards used to serve ; it may have been intended merely to formulate a pious legend.*" In regard to the sending of the ke3's of 8t. Peter to Charles Martel in a. d. 739 and to Charles the Great in a. d. 796 there can be no question that Sickel is right in den3'ing that this was a "pledge or symbol of sovereignty," as Gibbon says, or of a protectorate. If it were a symbol transferring to the Frank king any rights of sovereignty it would have involved the transference of that which the keys opened. Thus the presentation of the keys of Rome would have made the king lord of the city. And if the presentation of the ke3-s of the tomb of St. Peter had any secular meaning, it could only be that the Pope alienated the tomb from his own possession and made the king its proprietor. The act must have had a purely religious import — the mere bestowal of a relic, intended to augment the interests of the kings in the Holy See. Gregory I. had long ago given a key of the famous sejiulchre as a sort of relic (Mansi, Cone. 13, p. 804). See Sickel, op. cit., p. 851-3. [Some recent literature : Friedrich, die Constantinische Schenkung, 1889 ; Kelir, op. cit, and art. in Sybel's Hist., Zeitsch. , 1893, 70, p. 388 sqq. ; Schaube, ih., 1894, 72, p. 193 S99.; Schniirer, Die Entstehung des Kirchenstaates, 1894; Sickel, op. cit., and article in Deutsche Zeitsch. fiir Geschichtswissenschaft, 11, 12, 1894 ; Sackur, in the Mitteilungen des Inst, fiir oesterreichische Geschichts- f orsehung, 16, 1896 ; T. Lindner, Die sog. Schenkuugeu Pippins, Karls des grossen und Ottos I. an die Papstc, 1896. See also Oelsner's Jahrbtichen des friinkischen Reiches unter K. Pippin, and Simson's Jahrb. d. fr. R. unter Karl dem grossen ; Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages. Eng. tr. , vol. ii. ; the notes in Duchesne's Liber Pontificalis ; Duchesne, Les premiers temps de I'etat pon- tifical in the Rev. d'hist. et de litt. religieuses, i. (in three parts), 1896 ; DoUinger, Die Pabstfabeln des Mittelalters (Gregory II. und Leo III., p. 151 sqq. ; Die Schenkung Constantius, p. Gl sqq.).^ 17. GOLD IN ARABIA— (P. 313) Gibbon states that no gold mines are at present known in Arabia, on the authorit}' of Niebuhr. Yet gold mines seem to have existed in the Hijaz under the caliphate, for M. Casanova has described some gold dinars bearing the date 105 A.H. (723-4 A.D.) and inscriptions containing the words : "Mine of the commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz" (Casanova, Inventaire sommaire de la coU. des monuaies musulmanes de S. A. la Princesse Ismail, p. iv., v., 1896). For this note I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. Lane-Poole. 18. THE SABIANS— (P. 330, 331) Vague and false ideas prevailed concerning Sabiauism, until the obscure sub- ject was illuminated by the labours of Chwolsohn and Petermann in the present century. Gibbon does not fall into the grosser, though formerly not uncommon, error of confusing the Sabians with the Sabaeans (of Yemen); the two names begin with different Arabic letters. But in his day the distinction had not been discovered between the true Sabiaus of Babylonia and the false Sabian.s of Harrau. The first light on the matter was thrown by Norberg's publication of the Sacred Book of the Sabiaus entitled Sidra Rabba, "Great Book," which he edited under the name of the Book of Adam (or Codex Nasiraeus). But the facts about tlie two Sabianisnis were first clearl_v established in Chwolsohn's work, Ssabier und Ssabismus (1856). 8 Cp. Sickel, op. cit., p. 845.