Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/237

Rh as early as the middle of the eleventh century as a  weapon against the German claim. But by this time it had been discovered to prove too much, and Innocent the Fourth had to explain that the terms of this notable document were inaccurate: Constantine could not have granted to the papacy that which it possessed by the irrefragable gift of Christ; he could only have restored that which had been violently usurped from its legitimate owner. Such was the view which found special favour among the churchmen of the fourteenth century, like Augustin Trionfo and Alvaro Pelayo. Still whether it were a donation or an act of restitution, few (if any) questioned the reality of the fact or suspected the impudence of the fraud; and it exercised as much the wits of jurists and of those who were opposed to the temporal aggrandisement of the church, as it did of the defenders of that power.

The second fiction to which we have referred is that of the Translation of the Empire, which, though previously suggested by one or two controversialists, was not put des Grossen into an authentic form until the famous decree, Venerabilem, of Innocent the Third. It gained a sudden and lasting publicity from the moment that it was included in Gregory the Ninth's collection of Decretals, and hence forward it was the shield behind which the popes fought; it entered into all polemics and all history-books down to and beyond the close of the middle ages. The problem was to explain how it came about that Charles the Great