The Donation of Constantine - a forgery from the Middle Ages
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The Donation of Constantine refers to a document dated around 800, which was allegedly issued by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 315/317. In it, Pope Sylvester I (pontiff from 314-335) and all his successors until the end of time were granted supreme rule over Rome, Italy, the entire western half of the Roman Empire and the entire globe.
The popes used the document to establish their supremacy in Christendom and territorial claims. By the 11th century at the latest, the Donation of Constantine became an integral part of canon law.
In 1440, the humanist Lorenzo Valla proved the "Donation of Emperor Constantine" to be a forgery. But from the medieval understanding of law, it was above all important that a document was plausible. The origin itself, on the other hand, was secondary and so forgeries were not uncommon.
Lorenzo Valla showed that the Latin of the document rules out an origin in the early 4th century. Moreover, the name Constantinople (Constantinopolis) is mentioned in the document, although the city was still called Byzantion or Nova Roma at the alleged time of issue (315/317).
Since the early 17th century, the Catholic Church has held the view that the document was a forgery, but that there really was a donation by Constantine and that the forgery was not committed in the service of the papacy, but by Greeks.
In the 19th century, however, the Catholic scholar Ignaz Döllinger proved that the claim of a Greek origin and subsequent translation into Latin was untenable. In the same century, the Vatican had established the forgery and recognised that the claim to temporal power could not be justified by a gift from the Roman Emperor.
