11. A “Donation” That Had Never Been Made
After it was created, the forged Donation of Constantine was stashed away and forgotten for hundreds of years. In the eleventh century, however, Pope Leo IX dusted it off, and cited it as evidence to assert his authority over secular rulers. Surprisingly, the document was widely accepted as authentic, and almost nobody questioned its legitimacy. For centuries thereafter, the Donation of Constantine carried significant weight whenever a Pope pulled it out to figuratively wave in the face of secular rulers. It was not until the Renaissance and the spread of secular humanism that the Donation’s authenticity was finally challenged.
In the Renaissance, classical scholarship and textual criticism witnessed a revival. Scholars, most prominent among them Lorenzo Valla (circa 1407 – 1457), took a fresh look at the Donation. It quickly became clear that the text could not possibly have dated to the days of Emperor Constantine the Great and Pope Sylvester I. One hint was the use of language and terms that did not exist in the fourth century, but only came into use hundreds of years later. Additionally, the document contained dating errors that a person writing at the time could not possibly have made. The popes did not officially renounce the document. However, from the mid fifteenth century, onwards they ceased to refer to the Donation in their bulls and pronouncements.