25. The Exposure of a Forgery Exploited by Popes for Centuries
After it was forged, the Donation of Constantine was stashed away and forgotten for hundreds of years. Then in the eleventh century, Pope Leo IX dusted it off and cited the myth of the emperor’s great gift as evidence of his authority over secular rulers. Surprisingly, it was accepted as authentic, and almost nobody questioned the document’s legitimacy. For centuries thereafter, the Donation of Constantine carried significant weight whenever a Pope waved it before European rulers. It was not until the Renaissance and the spread of secular humanism that the Donation’s authenticity was finally challenged.
With the revival of classical scholarship and textual criticism, scholars took a fresh look at the document. It quickly became clear that the text could not possibly have dated to the days of Constantine the Great and Pope Sylvester I. For one, it contained language and terms that did not exist in the fourth century, but only came into use hundreds of years later. Additionally, it had date errors that a person writing at the time could not possibly have made. The Popes did not officially renounce the document, but from the mid-fifteenth century onwards they ceased to reference it in their Bulls and other pronouncements.
