Rome's Precious Forgery: And Now A Word From Our Sponsors About Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine

The fourteenth century was hard on almost everyone. Between the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and a host of other pestilences, famines, and skirmishes (where people lost important appendages, and did not have medicare), it rather made the U.S. Depression of the 1930's seem a bit more like a stock market rally. But important trends on the rise would soon raise the standard of living across Europe, and later the entire West.

Trade routes were reviving across Europe, and occasional faires formed their commercial junctions, in places long forgotten since the Fall of the Roman Empire. Universities had begun to grow up as places of learning, which began to rediscover not only the logic of Aristotle (as with the Scholastics or "Schoolmen" as they are called -- like the more famous William of Ockham or Thomas Aquainas), but also the classical literature of the Greco-Roman world.

By the next century, the beginnings of the Renaissance in Italy (and elsewhere) clearly began to show forth their colors. Trade and learning advanced under the guidance of new technological innovations, both on the farm, and among the developing guilds. Strangely, the political conflicts so often disrupting civil life in Italy, also gave rise to a competitive academic spirit that breathed new life into apologetics, the art and science of defending one's position.

In the middle of one such current sat a notable Italian humanist (and budding literary critic), named Lorenzo Valla. Probably his most lasting effort consists in exposing a forgery today commonly known as the "Donation of Constantine." A relevant excerpt from the wikipedia article on this discovery and exposition reads:

"The Donation of Constantine (Latin, Constitutum Donatio Constantini or [else] Constitutum domini Constantini imperatoris) is a forged Roman imperial edict, devised probably between [A.D.] 750 and 850. The precise purpose of the forgery is not entirely certain, but it was clearly a defense of papal interests, perhaps against the claims of .... the Byzantine Empire ... "


".... in his [Valla's] treatise De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, [he affirmed] that the Donation must be a fake by analyzing its language, and showing that while certain imperial-era formulas are used in the text, some of the Latin in the document could not have been written in the fourth century. Also, the purported date of the document is inconsistent with the content of the document itself as it refers both to the fourth consulate of Constantine (315) as well as the consulate of Gallicanus (317)."

The wiki commentator adds:

"More recently, scholars have further demonstrated that other elements, such as Sylvester's curing of Constantine, are legends which originated at a later time."

Valla was educated in Rome, where he learned Latin and Greek, and shortly thereafter, attended the University of Padua. Like Roger Bacon before him, Valla was extremely bright, and had quite a few ideas of his own, which was not always a healthy habit in the era of the Inquisition. He also accurately held that the "Apostle's creed" did not originate in the first century as a specific creedal formula. In the spirit of Voltaire, he once published a letter making fun of the prevailing (scholastic) legal procedure of the day, and lost his job. Both for this personality quirk, and for other reasons, he rather bounced from university to university for a while, staying to teach only for short stints.

Valla began circulating his treatise in 1440, and [surprise!] Rome criticized it sharply, even preventing its formal publication, until Martin Luther and his band got hold of it in 1517. Valla presented his case so forcefully, and with such acumen, that it won the day both then and now. Later scholars in fact much strengthened his thesis, that the Donation was provably forged. And it was well-known that Rome had employed it for hundreds of years to manage dissent, and promote its own declared authority and self-interest.

Martin Luther and others employed his exposition of the Donation in vigorous apologetic (and mostly successful) efforts against the lies of Rome so common, not only in the past, but in the days of the De Medicis as well, when papal nepotism was common enough (i.e. popes appointed family members as successors to the post). These empty Roman affirmations have not abated, and Rome continues lying to a world sleeping blissfully, willing to credit a virtual propaganda factory as a legitimate church, full of blasphemy and idolatry -- did I mention lies -- to bolster its own self-proclaimed "authority," in what is probably the biggest public relations coup in the history of mankind.

In truth, Rome has the same real authority over the consciences of men and women as the Oakland Raiders football team, the local Lions Club, Les Schwab Tires Co., and Denny's Restaurant. Yes, the pope can speak Latin. So could Lorenzo Valla.

And the moral of the story is ... you may wish to think twice about attending a "church," or confessing to a person who represents such a group, known for the spiritual equivalent of yellow journalism, and really bad history. Can their theology really be that much better?

Many such fabrications have been made known for hundreds of years, and still, the faithful flock still shows up for the shearing. As late as 1870, the Roman society declared the "infallibility" of the pope -- rather than Valla's "forgery of the popes" (which has much the better evidence) -- whenever the holey fodder chooses to speak "ex-cathedra."

This is simply an abomination; there is no clever, funny or quirky way to put it. The man who presumes to speak as though he were God thinks he is God. If any one said such things, we would immediately think him insane, extremely egomanical, or simply a blasphemous charlatan, or -- if one's logic is good enough and his heart stout enough -- all of the above.

Personally, I would sooner believe that he is actually a tennis shoe than a deity. If he is infallible, at any time or place, then I am the sole owner of all Denny's restaurants, and supreme commander of all tire stores.