When Sylvester I (reign 314-335) was pope at Rome, Constantine the Great (r. 306-337) conquered the city and began the Christianization of the great capital. Many of the greatest basilicas of Rome — Old St. Peter’s, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Saint Paul Outside the Walls, and St. John Lateran — were built by Constantine while Sylvester was pope. Together Constantine and Sylvester began the process by which Rome was transformed from a pagan imperial capital into a Christian shrine.
Sylvester was the subject of an early sixth century legendary biography titled “The Life of Blessed Sylvester.” The biography relates the story of how Sylvester had converted Constantine and healed him of leprosy. In return, the emperor is said to have recognized the supreme authority of the popes and received his imperial crown from Sylvester. The point of this story — legendary though it is — is that the pope actually has authority over the Roman emperor and all other secular rulers, as well as supremacy over the church.
In practical terms, however, whatever early popes might claim, they were unable to exercise such power. Indeed, political rulers often selected popes, not the other way around. From the sixth through the eighth centuries, Rome was ruled by the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople, who were crowned not by the popes of Rome, but by the patriarchs of Constantinople.
When the Byzantines were driven from central Italy by the Lombards in the mid-eighth century, the popes sought a new protector for their city. For this, they turned to a new warlord of the Franks, Pepin the Short (r. 751-768). Pepin was crowned King of the Franks by Pope Zachary, and in return Pepin invaded Italy and drove off the pope’s Lombard enemies.
The next pope, Stephen II (r. 752-757), presented Pepin with a parchment titled the “Donation of Constantine,” professing to be a document written by Constantine to Pope Sylvester around 315. In it, Constantine recognized the supremacy of popes over emperors, also granting Sylvester and all subsequent popes authority over the four other great Christian patriarchates in the Roman empire of the time — Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople.
In Italy, Constantine donated to Sylvester several provinces and cities around Rome to provide for the financial and defense needs of Rome and the popes. The “Donation of Constantine” then, is this grant in perpetuity to Sylvester and all future popes of Rome and other regions in central Italy by the emperor Constantine.
When Pepin was informed of the contents of this document in 756, he confirmed the privileges described in the “Donation” to Pope Stephen, and militarily secured the lands described in the Donation for the Pope. Originally called the Duchy of Rome, this territory is more commonly known as the “Papal States.”
Half a century later, Pepin’s son Charlemagne (r. 768-814) was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III (r. 795-816). Hence, in a new symbiotic relationship, the pope had received land and authority from the emperor, while the emperor in turn received his crown and imperial title from the pope. In both the “Life of St. Sylvester” and the “Donation of Constantine,” the authority of the pope over the emperor was expressly affirmed.
For the next seven centuries, the popes ruled central Italy as feudal lords and asserted the authority to crown, or excommunicate, kings and emperors. Though often challenged and threatened, medieval popes could not be ignored.
In 1440, however, Renaissance humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) demonstrated the “Donation of Constantine” to be a forgery. But even when the forgery was conclusively proven, many Catholic churchmen continued for centuries to affirm the powers and lands that the “Donation of Constantine” had granted to the popes. The Papal States were dismantled only during the Italian wars of unification in 1871. Even so, in a sense the old “Donation of Constantine” still exists, though it is now reduced to Vatican City in Rome.
The best that can be said is that a papal scribe — with or without the pope’s knowledge — forged a document that he believed to express the divinely ordained authority and power of the popes. The story of how the popes had received the “Donation of Constantine” might be fiction, but it was a fiction that revealed a divine truth. Of course, another option is that an anonymous papal scribe cynically forged a document to increase and secure the power of the medieval popes, a forgery that influenced and transformed the religious history of Europe for over 700 years.
Daniel Peterson founded the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, chairs The Interpreter Foundation and blogs on Patheos. William Hamblin is the author of several books on premodern history. They speak only for themselves.