Lorenzo Valla, Declamatio
on the Donation of Constantine
Fifteenth century
This document is one of the monuments of historical criticism.
Lorenzo Valla here attacks the Donation of Constantine, an
eighth-century forgery which supported the papacy's claim to supreme
political authority in Europe. Valla shows that the text could not have
been written in the fourth century, the age of Constantine the Great, by
revealing many anachronisms in form and content.
Donation of Constantine
(Lat., Donatio Constantini).
Manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS. Latin 2777) And it bears
the title: "Constitutum domni Constantini imperatoris".
It is addressed by Constantine to Pope Sylvester I (314-35) and consists
of two parts. In the first (entitled "Confessio") the emperor relates ….
In the second part (the "Donatio") Constantine is made to confer on
Sylvester and his successors the following privileges and possessions:
the pope, as successor of St. Peter, has the primacy over the four
Patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, also
over all the bishops in the world. …
It was proved to have been written hundreds of years after the
Emperor Constantine died.
Here is a 15th Century manuscript proving that this document to be a
forgery. . Lorenzo Valla shows that the text could not have been written
in the fourth century, the age of Constantine the Great, by revealing
many anachronisms in form and content. It is an eighth-century forgery |