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The background for Chelc̄icky̍'s allegory is his belief in the so-called Donation of Constantine, a belief, by the way, based on the authority of John Hus, and probably also on the Waldensian version of the Donation.

There was drawn up, presumably in the papal chancellery during the third quarter of the eighth century, a forged document alleged to be a donation of the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester I. This document relates that when the pagan Constantine was healed of leprosy, by the pope, he professed Christianity. In gratitude he decided to vacate Rome,


 * ,, p.685.

" (Quoted in the great work on medieval art,, by Emile Māle, Paris: Armand Colin, 6th ed., 1925, pp.384 et sqq. Coulton remarks that this symbolism is one of the medieval methods of explaining the Atonement to the popular mind, and that it ranks side by side with that other simile, immortalized by the great schoolman Peter Lombard (.III, dist.xix, a), that God made a mouse-trap for the devil and baited it with Christ's human flesh. (G.G.Coulton, , New York, Knopf, 1928, p.298).

. NF, I, chap.XXII, pp.117f, n.9.

306–337.

314–336.