hiding-place on Mount Soracte, disclosed the identity of the gods seen in his dream, and not only cured but converted and baptised him. Thereupon the grateful monarch, proclaiming throughout the Empire his new faith, provided by edict for its safety and support, made all bishops subject to the Pope, even as are all magistrates to the Emperor, and, setting forth to found elsewhere a capital, first laid with his own hands the foundations of St Peter's and the Lateran.
It was doubtless faith in this wild tale which led the rueful Carloman, fain to atone for his own deeds of violence, to choose Sylvester's cave for his retreat and dedicate his convent to that saint. The legend must thereby have gained a wider currency among the Franks; and none could know this better than the papal court. Was it for use with them, and was it now, that there came into existence a document which made the myth a cornerstone of papal power — the so-called Donation of Constantine?
No extant manuscript of that famous forgery is older than the early ninth century, and what most scholars have believed a quotation from it by Pope Hadrian in 778 can possibly be otherwise explained; but minute study of the strange charter's diction seems now to have made sure its origin in the papal chancellery during the third quarter of the eighth century, and startling coincidences of phrase connect it in particular with the documents of Stephen II and of Paul, while to an ever-growing proportion of the students of this period the historical setting in which alone it can be made to fit is that of Stephen's visit to the Franks or of the years which closely follow it.[1]
The document makes Constantine first narrate at length the story of his healing, embodying in it an elaborate creed taught him by Pope Sylvester. Then, declaring St Peter and his successors worthy, as Christ's vicars on earth, of power more than imperial, he chooses them as his patrons before God, decrees their supremacy over all the Christian church, relates his building of the Lateran and of St Peter's and St Paul's, and his endowing them "for the enkindling of the lights" with vast
- ↑ The scholars to whom this demonstration is chiefly due are Hauck, Friedrich, and, above all, Scheffer-Boichorst. The first two ascribe it (at least in its final form) to the time of Stephen's visit, the last would connect it rather with Paul; but these two papacies were too continuous to make discrimination easy. Grauert, who ably began this textual criticism, reached a different result; but he has not maintained his position against later students. Whether the Pope was author, accomplice, or victim of the fraud cannot be guessed. Of historical scholarship there is no ground to suspect either Stephen or Paul, and there is reason to believe both dominated by that Christopher who accompanied Stephen into Francia and who soon, and under both Popes, as Primicerius, or chief of the notaries, headed the papal chancellery. During Paul's pontificate Christopher was expressly accused by the Emperor to Pepin of falsifying documents. The latest critics of the Donation — Böhmer, Hartmann, Mayer — all assign it to this period. It is perhaps not without significance that our oldest copy of it is found in a formula-book of St Denis, where it occurs between a letter of Pope Zacharias and one of Pope Stephen.
