Donation of Constantine

[Kaste]

Hello,

The Donation of Constantine was a forged document that surfaced in the Middle Ages that gave a great deal power to the Pope. It was used by the Popes to justify a lot of actions. How do Catholics approach this embarrasment? Is it a big hit against Rome?

K

 

[wardrandolph]

 

[Third_Day]

Hello,

The Donation of Constantine was a forged document that surfaced in the Middle Ages that gave a great deal power to the Pope. It was used by the Popes to justify a lot of actions. How do Catholics approach this embarrasment? Is it a big hit against Rome?

K

It is my understanding that the few Popes that used the Donation of Constantine believed that is was a true document. There was no intentional deception involved.
I don’t see how this is a “big hit against Rome”. The Donation has nothing to do with infallible teachings on faith and morals. What exactly did the Church gain by it? List specifics if you can.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Hello,

The Donation of Constantine was a forged document that surfaced in the Middle Ages that gave a great deal power to the Pope. It was used by the Popes to justify a lot of actions. How do Catholics approach this embarrasment? Is it a big hit against Rome?

K

This document is supposedly an 8th century forgery. So if there was only evidence of Roman primacy from that point forward, the polemicists would have a point. Of course, Roman primacy is pretty widespread prior to that doc. It also assumes that any arguments for Roman primacy after the 8th century are drawn off the Donation of Constantine, which is just nonsense.

 

[zz912]

troll much?

Could you possibly explain WHY we should be embarrased about something that happened 1000 years ago? And why would Rome and the Catholic Church take a “hit” over it in 2009?

 

[Kaste]

Thanks guys. Interesting, Marco Polo, and good point.

ZZ916, grow up.

Please keep any more views coming. And to the first responder: what’s this popcorn character supposed to mean? haha

K

 

[MarcoPolo]

Yeah. Essentially, what the Pope gained by it, according to this Fordham University summary, was land. The mentions of Rome as having the sacred seat of Peter long predate this. Here is an excerpt from the summary:*Probably at least a first draft of it was made shortly after the middle of the eighth century in order to assist Pope Stephen II in his negotiations with the Frankish Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Short. The Pope crossed the Alps to anoint the latter as king in 754, thereby enabling, the Carolingian family, to which Pepin belonged, to supplant the old Merovingian royal line which had become decadent and powerless and to become in law as well as in fact rulers of the Franks. In return, Pepin seems to have promised to give to the Pope those lands in Italy which the Lombards had taken from Byzantium. The promise was fulfilled in 756. Constantine’s alleged gift made it possible to interpret Pepin’s grant not as a benefaction but as a restoration.*So essentially, the only part of the forgery that appeared novel is the part that said Constantine had given this land up 400 years earlier. The parts about the Roman bishop as Peter’s successor, etc… were commonplace by the 8th century.

When you think about it, the reason the forgery was convincing in the first place is because the Roman bishop WAS seen to have great authority, and so they believed the part about Constantine giving up this particular land to the Pope’s control. You can read the whole doc in the link in this post.

p.s. The Popcorn smiley typically means the person is expecting a fight to break out in the thread, or that he has great interest in seeing the answer. It’s supposed to represent a person immersed in a movie.