Tuesday Bible Study (4/14/20)

The Question of Papal Authority

The Donation of Constantine 

c. 751 - 756 A.D.

13th century fresco from the Vatican depicting Constantine the emperor paying
homage to Sylvester I, pope, sitting in the seat of St Peter the Apostle

Scriptural Starting Places

Matthew 16:18 - "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Luke 22:38 - "And they said, 'Look, Lord, here are two swords.' And he said to them, 'It is enough.'"

John 19:23-24 - Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. They said therefore among themselves, 'Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be,' that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says, 'They divided My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.' Therefore the soldiers did these things."

>> Here we have the proof texts for Petrine supremacy and the prerogative for papal power in the temporal realm.   By the middle ages, the single, spiritual authority of the Pope in Rome was virtually unchallenged in the West. Popes such as Boniface VIII used other texts to "prove" the ultimacy of the seat of St Peter, such as the story of Noah's Ark: "There had been at the time of the deluge only one ark of Noah, prefiguring the one Church, which ark, having been finished to a single cubit, had only one pilot and guide, i.e., Noah, and we read that, outside of this ark, all that subsisted on the earth was destroyed" (from Unam Sanctum, 1302). 

Boniface also went on to offer the definite interpretations of John 19:23-24 and of Luke 22:38 for the Middle Ages. The "seamless tunic" of the Lord represents His Church, which is also whole, seamless, complete. It is not made of multiple fabrics or parts, but woven in a single piece. Since the Lord declared Peter to be the "rock" and chief disciple, this meant that he and his successors are overseers of this single Church. 

The pope then explains the text from Luke in this way: "We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: ‘Behold, here are two swords‘ that is to say, in the Church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard.' Both, therefore, are in the power of the Church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered for the Church but the latter by the Church; the former in the hands of the priest; the latter by the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God,' but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other."

This "blossoming" of biblical and Patristic "support" for papal supremacy in the Middle Ages was strongly accentuated by a forged document from the 8th century called "The Donation of Constantine." 


Background

During the latter part of Saint Augustine's career, the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. Then, during the bishop's final days, Vandals invaded North Africa and surrounded his city of Hippo. The Imperium Romanum (Roman Empire) effectively met its end in the West. The glories of ancient Rome were destroyed, sacked, and carried away by invading armies from Gaul and Germania. During this time Augustine sought to formulate the relation between churchly and princely power. In The City of God Augustine explains how the "City of the World" is ruled by the devil and is always hostile to God's ends. With the crumbling of Rome, Augustine declared to Christians that only this devilish, temporary city was being extinguished; the true city, the "City of God" (i.e. the Church), would last forever. Yet, Augustine had forgotten (or rejected) the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople. Here, for another 1,000 years, Church and state would work together to initiate mission activity, ecumenical councils, liturgical renewal, and theological development. To this day Eastern Orthodoxy has a different view of political authority than Roman Catholicism does. In the East, the emperor is still seen as God's representative, appointed to aid the Church in her work and fulfill the role as moderator in her doctrinal and disciplinary conflicts. 

Perhaps Augustine's views in The City of God are simply indicative of general differences between East and West. However, Augustine's theology did bolster theological developments in the era of the Carolingian Empire (800 - 888 A.D.).  Where the East was conceiving of temporal authority in a "Pauline" sense, such as we find in Romans 13 - "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God" etc., The West inherited this Augustinianism which looked at temporal authority in a way more akin to Peter who calls his Christian readers "sojourners and exiles" in his first letter. 

In the 8th century, the Frankish noble Pepin the Short, the son of Charles Martel, wanted Church sanction in his conflicts against the Lombards, who ruled much of Italy. Pope Stephen II was willing to assist him, but wanted Pepin to aid the church. So, in 754 Stephen II crowned Pepin as King of the Franks, and Pepin in return gave lands to the pope. 

Pepin had captured some territory from the Lombards in Italy and then donated lands and cities to the papacy, in what is now called "The Donation of Pepin." This land eventually became the papal states.  For the next 1,000 years, these papal states gave the pope temporal powers in Europe until they were handed over to Mussolini in the 1920s. 

It was around the time of Pepin the Short that a learned forger, working from a monastery in France, created the "Donation of Constantine." It was to have an enormous influence over the Carolingians and subsequent European rulers, because it seemingly justified papal authority in the temporal realm, and thus, papal oversight of kings and princes. 


The Document

The document itself is short at around 1500 words (about three single spaced pages), and purports to be from the Emperor Constantine himself to Pope Sylvester I. According to legend, Constantine had leprosy that was cleansed by a miracle of Pope Sylvester. In response to this and to a vision, he received baptism by the hand of the pope. Days later, according to "The Donation of Constantine," the emperor decided to vacate Rome and leave for the East to allow the great city to lie in the hands of the pope himself. There the pope was to exercise the temporal and ecclesiastical authority that is rightfully his by the hand of Constantine through the will of God. 

In the opening, Constantine writes, "We-together with all our satraps, and the whole senate and my nobles, and also all the people subject to the government of glorious Rome-considered it advisable, that as the Blessed Peter is seen to have been constituted vicar of the Son of God on the earth, so the Pontiffs who are the representatives of that same chief of the apostles, should obtain from us and our empire the power of a supremacy greater than the clemency of our earthly imperial serenity is seen to have conceded to it, choosing that same chief of the apostles and his vicars to be our constant intercessors with God." Therefore Pope Stephen II could declare that, in Constantine's ancient day, the pope had been recognized as the representative of Christ on earth and was owed the greatest respect, honor, and dignity from church and state alike. 

The document continues, "And to the extent of our earthly imperial power, we have decreed that his holy Roman church shall be honored with veneration, and that more than our empire and earthly throne the most sacred seat of the Blessed Peter shall be gloriously exalted, we giving to it power, and dignity of glory, and vigor, and honor imperial. And we ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well over the four principal seats, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God in the whole earth. And the Pontiff, who at the time shall be at the head of the holy Roman church itself, shall be more exalted than, and chief over, all the priests of the whole world, and according to his judgment everything which is provided for the service of God and for the stability of the faith of Christians is to be administered." Constantine thus declares that the seat of Peter is hereby given imperial honor, glory, and power, and that all the other patriarchs of the Christian world are to be subject to it. 

Later in the document, Constantine grants the priests of the Catholic Church the status of Roman senators and declares that they must receive due honors. He also insists that the pope wear the diadem of the emperor himself, the so-called "Papal Tiara." The Lateran Palace of Rome, formerly for Roman consuls and administrators, was also gifted to the pope! 

The Papal three-tiered Tiara, dating from the early
Middle Ages.

There is much that might surprise the modern reader in this document.  For example, in one section Constantine I says, "And in order that the pontifical glory may shine forth most fully, we decree this also; that the horses of the clergy of this same holy Roman church be decorated with saddle-cloths and linens, that is, of the whitest color, and that they are to so ride. And even as our senate uses shoes with felt socks, that is distinguished by white linen, so the clergy also should use them, so that, even as the celestial orders, so also the terrestrial may be adorned to the glory of God." 

Finally, the document ends with a warning: "If any one, moreover,... prove a scorner or despiser in this matter, he shall be subject and bound over to eternal damnation, and shall feel the holy ones of God, the chief of the apostles, Peter and Paul, opposed to him in the present and in the future life, and he shall be burned in the lower hell and shall perish with the devil and all the impious. The page, moreover, of this our imperial decree, we, confirming it with our own hands, did place above the venerable body of the Blessed Peter, chief of the apostles."

Charlemagne famously ignored the decrees of the document and carried on his political and military affairs without fear of the pope's (newly established) temporal powers. 

Magnificent bust of Charlemagne in the Aachen
Cathedral treasury

A Forgery! 

While various people had doubted the authenticity of the document in the MIddle Ages, it was the philosopher and bishop Nicholas of Cusa who outright declared it to be a forgery in the 15th century. 

At the same time as Nicholas of Cusa, the bishop of Chichester in England, Reginald Pecocke, also decried it as a fake. Yet it was not until the humanist priest and philologist Lorenzo Valla (c. 1407 - 1457) that someone proved it was a forgery. 

Valla examined the vocabulary and found anachronisms. He also determined the Latin did not match the style of Latin in the 4th century.  Valla argued that the Church knew the document to be a forgery all along, but had utilized it for her corrupt dealings. Valla also blamed the document for the terrible political wars in Italy and priestly overreach in temporal affairs best handled by worldly leaders. 

Luther and other reformers rejected the document on the grounds that putting temporal authority in the hands of Church leaders was found nowhere in the New Testament and represented a terrible corruption of Christ's teaching. 

In present scholarly work, some have attributed "The Donation" and a large collection of other 9th century ecclesiastical forgeries to Pseudo-Isidore, an author operating near Reims who had access to the monastic library at Corbie Monastery. 


Significance

The "Donation of Constantine" exerted considerable influence in the Middle Ages and beyond.  

In 1054 - the year of the "Great Schism" between the Eastern and Western churches - Pope Leo IX wrote a letter to the patriarch of Constantinople, Michael I Cerularius, in which he quoted "The Donation" and its remarks about the pope's authority over Constantinople and the other three historic patriarchates.  The East, of course, rejected its validity. 

During the Investiture Controversy "The Donation" was utilized by several popes. We will return to this later.

In the late 16th century, the Roman Cardinal Cesare Baronio admitted that "The Donation" was a forgery. After this, it was generally assumed that all knew it to be so, although Valla's book was suppressed for some centuries after his death. 

"The Donation of Constantine" in the Vatican, School of Raphael (1483 - 1520)