21. A Fraud Whose Impact Lasted Long After the West Broke With the Byzantine Empire
The Donation of Constantine describes how Pope Sylvester I miraculously cured Constantine the Great from leprosy, which convinced the emperor to convert to Christianity. The emperor demonstrated his gratitude by making the Pope supreme over all other bishops, and “over all the churches of God in the whole earth“. Vast landed estates throughout the Roman Empire were also granted, for the upkeep of the churches of Saint Paul and Saint Peter. To top it off, the Holy Father and his successors were granted imperial regalia, a crown, the city of Rome, and all of the Western Roman Empire.
After it was created, the forgery was stashed away and forgotten for hundreds of years. Then Pope Leo IX dusted it off in the mid-eleventh century, and cited it as evidence to assert his authority over secular rulers. Surprisingly, the Donation was widely accepted as authentic, and almost nobody questioned its legitimacy. For centuries thereafter, long after the Catholic Church had irrevocably broken with the Byzantine Empire and its Orthodox Christianity, the Donation of Constantine continued to carry significant weight in the West whenever a pope pulled it out to figuratively wave in the face of secular rulers.
