Popes claimed imperial power with forged document
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Historians discovered that ten popes used a false document, the Donatio Constantini, to justify claiming authority over lands and territories for centuries.
In the eighth century, Pope Hadrian I requested more land from the Frankish king Charlemagne, hinting he knew of a document that would later support papal ambitions. The Donatio Constantini claimed the Roman Emperor Constantine had granted Pope Sylvester I authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.
The document described Constantine as cured of leprosy after receiving baptism from Sylvester, and as rewarding the pope with political power and property across vast regions. However, no historical record mentioned the Donatio Constantini before the eighth century. In 1054, Pope Leo IX cited the document, but Byzantine authorities rejected its claims. Critical analysis of the document began in the fifteenth century.
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa and the humanist Lorenzo Valla pointed out inconsistencies in the language and legal arguments, dating its creation to between 750 and 850 AD. Though later scholars like Reginald Pecocke and even future Pope Pius II agreed with these findings, widespread acceptance of the forgery didn’t occur until the seventeenth century with the work of Cesare Baronio.
