§ 87. Ecclesiastical Legislation.The construction of ecclesiastical legislation for the German empire was at first wholly the work of the Synods. The popes exerted scarcely any influence upon it, but all the more powerfully was felt the influence of the kings. They summoned the Synods, laid down to them the subjects to be discussed, and confirmed according to their own judgment their decisions. From the time that the Frankish bishoprics were filled by native Franks the independent life of the Synods was quenched, and ecclesiastical affairs were arranged at the national assemblies in which the bishops also took part as territorial nobles. The great national Synods, too, at which Boniface’s reorganization of the church in accordance with Roman ecclesiastical law as carried (§78, 5) wereConcilia mixtaof this kind; and even under Charlemagne and Louis of France these were still prevalent. Charles, however, made their proceedings more orderly by grouping the nobles into three ranks as bishops, abbots and counts. Under the Pepin dynasty alongside of the synodal we have the royal decrees, arranged in separate chapters, and hence the ordinances are calledCapitularia. Purely ecclesiastical Synods in later times again gained a footing and were particularly numerous in the times of Hincmar.
The construction of ecclesiastical legislation for the German empire was at first wholly the work of the Synods. The popes exerted scarcely any influence upon it, but all the more powerfully was felt the influence of the kings. They summoned the Synods, laid down to them the subjects to be discussed, and confirmed according to their own judgment their decisions. From the time that the Frankish bishoprics were filled by native Franks the independent life of the Synods was quenched, and ecclesiastical affairs were arranged at the national assemblies in which the bishops also took part as territorial nobles. The great national Synods, too, at which Boniface’s reorganization of the church in accordance with Roman ecclesiastical law as carried (§78, 5) wereConcilia mixtaof this kind; and even under Charlemagne and Louis of France these were still prevalent. Charles, however, made their proceedings more orderly by grouping the nobles into three ranks as bishops, abbots and counts. Under the Pepin dynasty alongside of the synodal we have the royal decrees, arranged in separate chapters, and hence the ordinances are calledCapitularia. Purely ecclesiastical Synods in later times again gained a footing and were particularly numerous in the times of Hincmar.
§ 87.1.Older Collections of Ecclesiastical Law.—Gregory II. furnished Boniface with aCodex canonum, undoubtedly theDionysiaca(§43, 3), and Hadrian II. presented Charlemagne with one which was solemnly received at the National Synod of Aachen inA.D.802. There was in Spain a new collection which was erroneously attributed to bishop Isidore of Seville, who to distinguish him from the Frankish Pseudo-Isidore is designated the genuine Isidore, or more correctly asHispana. This collection in form attaches itself toDionysiaca. In the 9th century it was introduced among the Franks, and here gave contents and name to the Pseudo-Isidorian collection. In close connection with this masterpiece of forgery stands the collection of laws by Benedictus Levita of Mainz, which was indeed called a collection of capitularies, but was gathered mainly from documents of ecclesiastical legislation, genuine and spurious. A collection of true and genuine capitularies was made inA.D.827 by Ansegis, Abbot of Fontenelles. Benedict’s collection was included in it as 5th, 6th, and 7th books. Besides these large collections many bishops prepared epitomized collections for the use of their own dioceses, of which several are extant under the name ofCapitula Episcoporum. Decidedly in the interest of the Pseudo-Isidore are theCapitula Angilramni, composed and subscribed by bishop Angilramnus of Metz (d.A.D.791). The dates and contents of the three first-named collections were determined in the interest of the Pseudo-Isidorian, and are still a matter of controversy. Benedict, according to his own credible statement, undertook his work at the command of the archbishop Otgar, of Mainz, for the archives of Mainz, but completed and published it probably in France only after Otgar’s death, which occurred inA.D.847.But while in earlier times it was generally believed that Benedict had used the Pseudo-Isidore, Hinschius has become convinced that the author of the capitula is identical with the Pseudo-Isidore, and from Benedict’s capitularies has unravelled first the composition of the capitula and then that of the decretals.244§ 87.2.The Collection of Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore.—In the fiftieth year of the 9th century there appeared in France under the name of Isidorus Mercator a collection of canons and decretals, which indeed completely embraced the older so-calledIsidoriana, but was enlarged by the addition of a multitude of forged decretals. The surname Mercator, otherwise Peccator, is probably derived from the well known Marius Mercator (§47, 20), who had also occupied himself with the translation of ecclesiastical documents, which the Pseudo-Isidore used for his work. It begins with the fiftyCanones Apostt., then follow fifty-nine forged decretals which are assigned to the thirty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (d.A.D.314). The second part embraces, besides the original document of the Donation of Constantine, genuine synodal decrees falsified apparently only in one passage. The third part, again, contains decretals of Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, down to Gregory II. (d.A.D.731), of which thirty-five are not genuine. The non-genuine decretals are for the most part not altogether forgeries, but are rather based upon the literature of theology and canon law then existing, amplified or altered, and wrought up to serve the purposes of the compiler. The system of the Pseudo-Isidore is characterized by the following peculiarities: Over theImperiumis raised theSacerdotium, ordained of Christ to be governor and judge of the world. The unity and head of theSacerdotiumis represented by the pope. Bishops are related to the pope as the other apostles were to Peter. The metropolitan is onlyprimus inter pares. Between the pope and the bishops as an intermediate rank we have the primates or patriarchs. This rank, however, belongs only to such metropolitan sees as either were ordained to it by the apostles and their successors, or to such sees in more recently converted lands as were elevated to this position in consequence of the multitude of bishops belonging to them. Provincial Synods should be held only with the consent of the pope, their decrees become valid only after receiving his confirmation, and allcausæ majores, especially all complaints against bishops, belong solely to his own judicature. Priests are theFamiliares Dei, theSpirituales; the laity, on the other hand, are theCarnales. No clergyman, least of all a bishop, may be taken before a secular tribunal. A layman may not appear as an accuser against a clergyman, and the Synods are enjoined to render charges against a bishop as difficult as possible. An expelled bishop, before the charges against him can be examined, must have been fully restored (Exceptio Spolii). If the accused regards his judges asinimiciorsuspecti, he may appeal to be examined before the pope. For the establishing of a charge at least seventy-two witnesses are necessary, etc.§ 87.3. The forgery originated in France, where it had been in existence for some years before it was known in Rome, as appears from the process against Rothad of Soissons (§83, 2). Rothad first brought it to Rome inA.D.864. Blondel and Kunst regard Benedict Levita as its author. He first gave currency to the forgery in his Collection of Capitularies. and so arouses the suspicion that he is himself the forger. Philipps fathers it upon Rothad of Soissons; Wasserschleben ascribes it to archbishop Otgar of Mainz, who, as a prominent head of the clerical conspiracy against Louis the Pious (§82, 4), would have reason to defend himself against the judgment which would befall conspirators. But this doom did not in any very special manner threaten Otgar. On Louis’ restoration he was not sentenced or deposed by any synod, but was without more ado received into favour by the emperor. The Pseudo-Isidore’s hostile attitude toward the chorepiscopi (§84), while gaining no footing in Germany, certainly prevailed in France; and France, not Germany, was the place where this collection first appeared betweenA.D.853 and 864. Since now, moreover, the prominence given by the Pseudo-Isidore to the rank of primate may be regarded as equally favourable to the see of Rheims as to that of Mainz, Weizsäcker and v. Noorden have sought the original home of the forgery in the diocese of Rheims, and point to Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, Hincmar’s predecessor, as the forger. And Ebo certainly stood in the front rank of the revolt referred to. Before him Louis had specially to humble himself. He was therefore taken prisoner immediately upon the emperor’s restoration, and deprived of his office at the Synod of Didenhofen inA.D.835 (§82, 4). The emperor Lothair, indeed, restored him inA.D.840, but his position was still very insecure, as he had before a year passed to save himself by flight on the approach of Charles the Bald, and never again saw Rheims, which till Hincmar’s elevation remained in the hands of chorepiscopi. The composition of the collection, according to v. Noorden, belongs to the period immediately preceding and lasting through his restitution. Finally Hinschius regards Rheims as undoubtedly the scene of the composition of these forgeries, but he cannot ascribe them to Ebo because, according to his demonstration, Benedict’s Pseudo-Isidore used as his authority only a collection completed afterA.D.847, and by that time Ebo could not have the shadow of a hope of restoration. But he also advances other weighty considerations. Ebo himself had never attempted to make good the claims which the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals would have afforded him. If his own affairs had first led him to think of forging decretals he must have foreseen that the extensive studies necessary for such a work would have demanded many years of laborious effort, and would be concluded much too late to serve his purpose. It would, therefore, seem to him safer to confine himself to what his immediately present circumstances urgently required; whereas the actual Pseudo-Isidore, on the contrary, puts in the mouths of the early popes, with no little zeal and emphasis, a vast array of other exhortations and decrees that seemed to him useful amid the troubles of that age for the well being of the church and its ministers. Thus the whole work assumes more of the character of apia frausof a somewhat high church cleric of that time than of a forgery devised in the selfish interests of an individual. This much, however, must be admitted, that the directions quoted about judicial procedure against accused bishops exactly fit the case of Ebo. As the first attempt to use the non-genuine decretals only found in Pseudo-Isidore was made at the Synod of Soissons inA.D.853, by those clerics who had been ordained by Ebo after his deposition but rejected by Hincmar, the final redaction and publication must fall betweenA.D.847 and 853.Langen fixes the date atA.D.850, and refers its authorship to Servatus Lupus (§90, 5). Nobody then doubted their genuineness. Even Hincmar seems for a long time to have had no doubts. But he decidedly repudiated their legal authority in the Frankish church, and energetically opposed them when they were sought to be enforced against the independence of the church. Thus he could always refer to them where their contentions agreed with his own, or, as in the case against his nephew, where they supported his rights as primate, in order to defeat his opponents with their own weapons. Subsequently however, inA.D.872, in a letter written in the name of his king to pope Hadrian, he characterized them in contrast with the genuine and valid decretals assecus a quoquam compilata sive conficta. The Magdeburg Centuriators were the first conclusively to prove them spurious. The Jesuit Turrianus, however, entered the lists once more on their behalf.But the reformed theologian, David Blondel, castigated so sharply and thoroughly this theological unprincipledness, that even in the Roman Catholic church their non-genuineness has been now since admitted.245§ 87.4. Among the many spurious documents which the Pseudo-Isidore included in his collection of ecclesiastical laws, we find anEdictum Constantini Imperatoris. In the first part of it, the so-calledConfessio, Constantine makes a confession of his faith, and relates in detail in what a wonderful way he was converted to Christianity by pope Sylvester, and cured of leprosy (§42, 1). Then in the second part, the so-calledDonatio, he confers upon the chair of Peter, with recognition of its absolute primacy over all patriarchates of the empire, imperial power, rank, honour, and insignia, as all privileges and claims of imperial senators upon its clergy. In order that the possessor of this gift may be able to all time to maintain the dignity of his position, he gives him the Lateran palace, transfers to him independent dominion over “Romanam urbem et omnes Italiæ seu(in Frankish Latin of the 8th and 9th centuries this means ‘as well as’)occidentalium regionum provincias, loca et civitates” (therefore not merely Italy but the whole West Roman empire); he removes his own imperial residence to Byzantium, “quoniam ubi principates Sacerdotum et Christ. religionis Caput ab Imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, justum non est, ut illic Imperator terrerum habeat potestatem.” In a letter of Hadrian I. to Charlemagne inA.D.788, in which he salutes the emperor as a second Constantine who is called upon by God not only to restore to the apostolic chair the “potestas in his Hesperiæ partibus,” which had been already assigned it by the first Constantine, but also all later legacies and donations “of various patricians and other God-fearing men,” which the godless race of the Longobards in course of time tore from it, we have the first hint at the idea of aDonatio Constantini. The same pope, too, according to theVita Hadrianiin the Romish Pontifical, on the occasion of Charles’ visit to Rome inA.D.774 is said to have reclaimed from him an enormous grant of land (§82, 2). It seemed therefore an extremely probable supposition that assigned Rome as the place where this document originated, and the period of the overthrow of the Longobard empire, whether actually accomplished or on the eve of taking place, as the date of its fabrication (§82, 1,2). Against this view, almost universally prevalent, quite recently Grauert has advanced a vast array of powerful arguments,e.g., the limitation of theDonatioof Constantine to Italy which is here suggested contradicts its own express statement. The words of the letter of Hadrian referred to speak not of a dominionoverItaly, and which they could have read, “in has H. partes,” but of a dominion in Italy which was founded upon Constantine’s munificence and enlarged by many subsequent presents. They do not, therefore, refer like the words of theDonatioto sovereign territorial authority, but to the exceedingly wide-spread and rich property included in thePatrimonium Petri(§46, 10). The “potestas,” said to have been assigned by Constantine to the Roman see, does not exceed the authority which even according to theVita Sylvestriof the Pontifical had been given by Constantine to that pope.—Thus the donation document is met with first in the Pseudo-Isidore. It was often afterwards referred to by the Frankish government. By Rome, on the other hand, although even Nicholas I. was made acquainted with the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals by Rothad, and referred to them inA.D.865, they are never used, either against the Franks or against the Byzantines until, inA.D.1053, we meet an allusion to them in a letter from Leo IX. to the patriarch Michael Cærularius (§67, 3). Grauert accounts for this by saying that there were two recensions of Pseudo-Isidore, a shorter, which had only the first part of the document, the so-calledConfessio; and a longer, which had also theDonatio, and that Rothad took probably only the shorter one to Rome. From these and other data adduced by Grauert it seems more than probable that the foundry in which the document was forged was not in Rome, but rather in France among the high church party there, from which also the full-fledged forgery proceeded. It would also seem that a double purpose was served by its composition. On the one hand, over against the Greeks it represented the chair of Peter as raised above all the patriarchates of the empire, and the Western empire as a thoroughly legitimate one transferred by Constantine the Great to the pope, and then by him to the kings of the Franks. And, on the other hand, it also made it clear to the Frankish princes that all temporal power in the West essentially, and from of old, belonged to the pope, and is bestowed upon them by means of their coronation by the pope’s hands.—That from the time when they met with the document unto the 11th century the Byzantines did not contest its genuineness, need not surprise us when we consider the uncritical character of the age. They would also be the less disposed to do so as they could only thereby hope to win that perfect equality in spiritual authority as well as in secular rank with the Roman bishop which the fourth œcumenical council had assigned to their patriarchal see. But while the Byzantines may be regarded as inconsiderately incorporating this donation of Constantine into their historical and legal books, blotting out indeed the passages which seemed to them to favour the pretensions of the pope to universal sovereignty, it is a more difficult task to secure for it acceptance among Western diplomatists. Even inA.D.999 a state paper of Otto III. describes it as a pure fiction. High church tendencies, however, raised their standard also in the West during the 11th century (§ 96, 4, 5). Indeed, even inA.D.1152, an Arnoldist (§ 108, 7), named Wetzel, wrote to the Emperor Frederick I.: “Their lies and heretical fables are now so completely exploded that even day-labourers and cow-men could prove to scholars their emptiness, and the pope with his cardinals ventures not for shame to show himself in the city of Rome.” The victory, however, of the papacy over the Hohenstaufen gained currency for it again, and it was the treatise of Laurentius Valla, “De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio,” which Ulrich von Hutten issued in multitude from the press, gave it the death blow (§ 120, 1). When, thereafter, even Baronius admitted the spuriousness of the document, though assigning its fabrication to the Greeks, who wished by it to prove that the Roman primacy was not of Christ but from Constantine, it found no longer a vindicator even in the Roman Catholic church.
§ 87.1.Older Collections of Ecclesiastical Law.—Gregory II. furnished Boniface with aCodex canonum, undoubtedly theDionysiaca(§43, 3), and Hadrian II. presented Charlemagne with one which was solemnly received at the National Synod of Aachen inA.D.802. There was in Spain a new collection which was erroneously attributed to bishop Isidore of Seville, who to distinguish him from the Frankish Pseudo-Isidore is designated the genuine Isidore, or more correctly asHispana. This collection in form attaches itself toDionysiaca. In the 9th century it was introduced among the Franks, and here gave contents and name to the Pseudo-Isidorian collection. In close connection with this masterpiece of forgery stands the collection of laws by Benedictus Levita of Mainz, which was indeed called a collection of capitularies, but was gathered mainly from documents of ecclesiastical legislation, genuine and spurious. A collection of true and genuine capitularies was made inA.D.827 by Ansegis, Abbot of Fontenelles. Benedict’s collection was included in it as 5th, 6th, and 7th books. Besides these large collections many bishops prepared epitomized collections for the use of their own dioceses, of which several are extant under the name ofCapitula Episcoporum. Decidedly in the interest of the Pseudo-Isidore are theCapitula Angilramni, composed and subscribed by bishop Angilramnus of Metz (d.A.D.791). The dates and contents of the three first-named collections were determined in the interest of the Pseudo-Isidorian, and are still a matter of controversy. Benedict, according to his own credible statement, undertook his work at the command of the archbishop Otgar, of Mainz, for the archives of Mainz, but completed and published it probably in France only after Otgar’s death, which occurred inA.D.847.But while in earlier times it was generally believed that Benedict had used the Pseudo-Isidore, Hinschius has become convinced that the author of the capitula is identical with the Pseudo-Isidore, and from Benedict’s capitularies has unravelled first the composition of the capitula and then that of the decretals.244
§ 87.2.The Collection of Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore.—In the fiftieth year of the 9th century there appeared in France under the name of Isidorus Mercator a collection of canons and decretals, which indeed completely embraced the older so-calledIsidoriana, but was enlarged by the addition of a multitude of forged decretals. The surname Mercator, otherwise Peccator, is probably derived from the well known Marius Mercator (§47, 20), who had also occupied himself with the translation of ecclesiastical documents, which the Pseudo-Isidore used for his work. It begins with the fiftyCanones Apostt., then follow fifty-nine forged decretals which are assigned to the thirty oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (d.A.D.314). The second part embraces, besides the original document of the Donation of Constantine, genuine synodal decrees falsified apparently only in one passage. The third part, again, contains decretals of Sylvester, the successor of Melchiades, down to Gregory II. (d.A.D.731), of which thirty-five are not genuine. The non-genuine decretals are for the most part not altogether forgeries, but are rather based upon the literature of theology and canon law then existing, amplified or altered, and wrought up to serve the purposes of the compiler. The system of the Pseudo-Isidore is characterized by the following peculiarities: Over theImperiumis raised theSacerdotium, ordained of Christ to be governor and judge of the world. The unity and head of theSacerdotiumis represented by the pope. Bishops are related to the pope as the other apostles were to Peter. The metropolitan is onlyprimus inter pares. Between the pope and the bishops as an intermediate rank we have the primates or patriarchs. This rank, however, belongs only to such metropolitan sees as either were ordained to it by the apostles and their successors, or to such sees in more recently converted lands as were elevated to this position in consequence of the multitude of bishops belonging to them. Provincial Synods should be held only with the consent of the pope, their decrees become valid only after receiving his confirmation, and allcausæ majores, especially all complaints against bishops, belong solely to his own judicature. Priests are theFamiliares Dei, theSpirituales; the laity, on the other hand, are theCarnales. No clergyman, least of all a bishop, may be taken before a secular tribunal. A layman may not appear as an accuser against a clergyman, and the Synods are enjoined to render charges against a bishop as difficult as possible. An expelled bishop, before the charges against him can be examined, must have been fully restored (Exceptio Spolii). If the accused regards his judges asinimiciorsuspecti, he may appeal to be examined before the pope. For the establishing of a charge at least seventy-two witnesses are necessary, etc.
§ 87.3. The forgery originated in France, where it had been in existence for some years before it was known in Rome, as appears from the process against Rothad of Soissons (§83, 2). Rothad first brought it to Rome inA.D.864. Blondel and Kunst regard Benedict Levita as its author. He first gave currency to the forgery in his Collection of Capitularies. and so arouses the suspicion that he is himself the forger. Philipps fathers it upon Rothad of Soissons; Wasserschleben ascribes it to archbishop Otgar of Mainz, who, as a prominent head of the clerical conspiracy against Louis the Pious (§82, 4), would have reason to defend himself against the judgment which would befall conspirators. But this doom did not in any very special manner threaten Otgar. On Louis’ restoration he was not sentenced or deposed by any synod, but was without more ado received into favour by the emperor. The Pseudo-Isidore’s hostile attitude toward the chorepiscopi (§84), while gaining no footing in Germany, certainly prevailed in France; and France, not Germany, was the place where this collection first appeared betweenA.D.853 and 864. Since now, moreover, the prominence given by the Pseudo-Isidore to the rank of primate may be regarded as equally favourable to the see of Rheims as to that of Mainz, Weizsäcker and v. Noorden have sought the original home of the forgery in the diocese of Rheims, and point to Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, Hincmar’s predecessor, as the forger. And Ebo certainly stood in the front rank of the revolt referred to. Before him Louis had specially to humble himself. He was therefore taken prisoner immediately upon the emperor’s restoration, and deprived of his office at the Synod of Didenhofen inA.D.835 (§82, 4). The emperor Lothair, indeed, restored him inA.D.840, but his position was still very insecure, as he had before a year passed to save himself by flight on the approach of Charles the Bald, and never again saw Rheims, which till Hincmar’s elevation remained in the hands of chorepiscopi. The composition of the collection, according to v. Noorden, belongs to the period immediately preceding and lasting through his restitution. Finally Hinschius regards Rheims as undoubtedly the scene of the composition of these forgeries, but he cannot ascribe them to Ebo because, according to his demonstration, Benedict’s Pseudo-Isidore used as his authority only a collection completed afterA.D.847, and by that time Ebo could not have the shadow of a hope of restoration. But he also advances other weighty considerations. Ebo himself had never attempted to make good the claims which the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals would have afforded him. If his own affairs had first led him to think of forging decretals he must have foreseen that the extensive studies necessary for such a work would have demanded many years of laborious effort, and would be concluded much too late to serve his purpose. It would, therefore, seem to him safer to confine himself to what his immediately present circumstances urgently required; whereas the actual Pseudo-Isidore, on the contrary, puts in the mouths of the early popes, with no little zeal and emphasis, a vast array of other exhortations and decrees that seemed to him useful amid the troubles of that age for the well being of the church and its ministers. Thus the whole work assumes more of the character of apia frausof a somewhat high church cleric of that time than of a forgery devised in the selfish interests of an individual. This much, however, must be admitted, that the directions quoted about judicial procedure against accused bishops exactly fit the case of Ebo. As the first attempt to use the non-genuine decretals only found in Pseudo-Isidore was made at the Synod of Soissons inA.D.853, by those clerics who had been ordained by Ebo after his deposition but rejected by Hincmar, the final redaction and publication must fall betweenA.D.847 and 853.Langen fixes the date atA.D.850, and refers its authorship to Servatus Lupus (§90, 5). Nobody then doubted their genuineness. Even Hincmar seems for a long time to have had no doubts. But he decidedly repudiated their legal authority in the Frankish church, and energetically opposed them when they were sought to be enforced against the independence of the church. Thus he could always refer to them where their contentions agreed with his own, or, as in the case against his nephew, where they supported his rights as primate, in order to defeat his opponents with their own weapons. Subsequently however, inA.D.872, in a letter written in the name of his king to pope Hadrian, he characterized them in contrast with the genuine and valid decretals assecus a quoquam compilata sive conficta. The Magdeburg Centuriators were the first conclusively to prove them spurious. The Jesuit Turrianus, however, entered the lists once more on their behalf.But the reformed theologian, David Blondel, castigated so sharply and thoroughly this theological unprincipledness, that even in the Roman Catholic church their non-genuineness has been now since admitted.245
§ 87.4. Among the many spurious documents which the Pseudo-Isidore included in his collection of ecclesiastical laws, we find anEdictum Constantini Imperatoris. In the first part of it, the so-calledConfessio, Constantine makes a confession of his faith, and relates in detail in what a wonderful way he was converted to Christianity by pope Sylvester, and cured of leprosy (§42, 1). Then in the second part, the so-calledDonatio, he confers upon the chair of Peter, with recognition of its absolute primacy over all patriarchates of the empire, imperial power, rank, honour, and insignia, as all privileges and claims of imperial senators upon its clergy. In order that the possessor of this gift may be able to all time to maintain the dignity of his position, he gives him the Lateran palace, transfers to him independent dominion over “Romanam urbem et omnes Italiæ seu(in Frankish Latin of the 8th and 9th centuries this means ‘as well as’)occidentalium regionum provincias, loca et civitates” (therefore not merely Italy but the whole West Roman empire); he removes his own imperial residence to Byzantium, “quoniam ubi principates Sacerdotum et Christ. religionis Caput ab Imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, justum non est, ut illic Imperator terrerum habeat potestatem.” In a letter of Hadrian I. to Charlemagne inA.D.788, in which he salutes the emperor as a second Constantine who is called upon by God not only to restore to the apostolic chair the “potestas in his Hesperiæ partibus,” which had been already assigned it by the first Constantine, but also all later legacies and donations “of various patricians and other God-fearing men,” which the godless race of the Longobards in course of time tore from it, we have the first hint at the idea of aDonatio Constantini. The same pope, too, according to theVita Hadrianiin the Romish Pontifical, on the occasion of Charles’ visit to Rome inA.D.774 is said to have reclaimed from him an enormous grant of land (§82, 2). It seemed therefore an extremely probable supposition that assigned Rome as the place where this document originated, and the period of the overthrow of the Longobard empire, whether actually accomplished or on the eve of taking place, as the date of its fabrication (§82, 1,2). Against this view, almost universally prevalent, quite recently Grauert has advanced a vast array of powerful arguments,e.g., the limitation of theDonatioof Constantine to Italy which is here suggested contradicts its own express statement. The words of the letter of Hadrian referred to speak not of a dominionoverItaly, and which they could have read, “in has H. partes,” but of a dominion in Italy which was founded upon Constantine’s munificence and enlarged by many subsequent presents. They do not, therefore, refer like the words of theDonatioto sovereign territorial authority, but to the exceedingly wide-spread and rich property included in thePatrimonium Petri(§46, 10). The “potestas,” said to have been assigned by Constantine to the Roman see, does not exceed the authority which even according to theVita Sylvestriof the Pontifical had been given by Constantine to that pope.—Thus the donation document is met with first in the Pseudo-Isidore. It was often afterwards referred to by the Frankish government. By Rome, on the other hand, although even Nicholas I. was made acquainted with the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals by Rothad, and referred to them inA.D.865, they are never used, either against the Franks or against the Byzantines until, inA.D.1053, we meet an allusion to them in a letter from Leo IX. to the patriarch Michael Cærularius (§67, 3). Grauert accounts for this by saying that there were two recensions of Pseudo-Isidore, a shorter, which had only the first part of the document, the so-calledConfessio; and a longer, which had also theDonatio, and that Rothad took probably only the shorter one to Rome. From these and other data adduced by Grauert it seems more than probable that the foundry in which the document was forged was not in Rome, but rather in France among the high church party there, from which also the full-fledged forgery proceeded. It would also seem that a double purpose was served by its composition. On the one hand, over against the Greeks it represented the chair of Peter as raised above all the patriarchates of the empire, and the Western empire as a thoroughly legitimate one transferred by Constantine the Great to the pope, and then by him to the kings of the Franks. And, on the other hand, it also made it clear to the Frankish princes that all temporal power in the West essentially, and from of old, belonged to the pope, and is bestowed upon them by means of their coronation by the pope’s hands.—That from the time when they met with the document unto the 11th century the Byzantines did not contest its genuineness, need not surprise us when we consider the uncritical character of the age. They would also be the less disposed to do so as they could only thereby hope to win that perfect equality in spiritual authority as well as in secular rank with the Roman bishop which the fourth œcumenical council had assigned to their patriarchal see. But while the Byzantines may be regarded as inconsiderately incorporating this donation of Constantine into their historical and legal books, blotting out indeed the passages which seemed to them to favour the pretensions of the pope to universal sovereignty, it is a more difficult task to secure for it acceptance among Western diplomatists. Even inA.D.999 a state paper of Otto III. describes it as a pure fiction. High church tendencies, however, raised their standard also in the West during the 11th century (§ 96, 4, 5). Indeed, even inA.D.1152, an Arnoldist (§ 108, 7), named Wetzel, wrote to the Emperor Frederick I.: “Their lies and heretical fables are now so completely exploded that even day-labourers and cow-men could prove to scholars their emptiness, and the pope with his cardinals ventures not for shame to show himself in the city of Rome.” The victory, however, of the papacy over the Hohenstaufen gained currency for it again, and it was the treatise of Laurentius Valla, “De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio,” which Ulrich von Hutten issued in multitude from the press, gave it the death blow (§ 120, 1). When, thereafter, even Baronius admitted the spuriousness of the document, though assigning its fabrication to the Greeks, who wished by it to prove that the Roman primacy was not of Christ but from Constantine, it found no longer a vindicator even in the Roman Catholic church.