Chapter 4 – The Church Claims Ownership of the Western World

Once rooted in tradition and strengthened by the credulity of the times, the dubious seedling of the Donation grew into a mighty oak tree under the shadow of which papal authoritarianism thrived. From the birth of the Carolingian Empire in the year 800 onwards, the gifts of Pepin, the Donation of Constantine, and the False Decretals were assiduously used by the pontiffs to consolidate their power. This they did, until , with additional forgeries and the arbitrary exercise of spiritual and temporal might, these documents became the formidable foundation stone upon which they were eventually to erect their political and territorial claims, the rock upon which stood the whole papal structures of the Middle Ages.

The Donation was given increasingly varied meanings by the succeeding generations of theologians. Notwithstanding the disparity in their views, however, they all agreed upon one fundamental interpretation: the Donation gave the widest possible power and authority to the papacy. Thus, for instance, whereas Pope Hadrian I stated that Constantine had “given the dominion in these regions of the West” to the Church of Rome, Aeneas, Bishop of Paris, asserted about the year 868 that as Constantine had declared that two emperors, the one of the realm, the other of the Church, could not rule in one city, he had removed his residence to Constantinople, placing the Roman territory “and a vast number of various provinces” under the rule of the Apostolic See, after conferring regal power on the successors of St. Peter.

The Popes acted upon this, using the argument as a basis to increase their territorial sway, with the inevitable new accumulation of wealth which went with it. Gregory VII (1073) directed all his energies to that effect. He concentrated spiritual and political jurisdiction in himself, the better to administer the Western Empire as a fief of the papacy. That implied the extension of his temporal dominion over the kings and kingdoms of the earth and therefore over their temporal riches.

Indeed, Gregory had no qualms in openly asserting temporal supremacy over the whole of the Byzantine Empire, including Africa and Asia. He went even further by declaring that his ultimate goal was simply the establishment of the universal temporal domain of St. Peter. Hence his continual exertions to take possession of, in addition to Rome and Italy, all the crowns of Europe, many of which he succeeded in placing under his direct vassalage.

Although his vast scheme only partially materialized during his reign, his successors continued his work. Pope Urban II, following in his footsteps, decided to bring under subjection the churches of Jerusalem, of Antioch, of Alexandria and of Constantinople, with all the lands wherein they flourished. Under the pretext of liberating the tomb of Christ, he simply mobilized the entire western world into an irresistible army which, leaving the shores of Europe, plunged into Asia Minor like a tornado, creating the greatest military, political and economic commotion in both continents.

The capture of Jerusalem and the success of the First Crusade gave incalculable prestige to the pontiffs. While the nations of Europe attributed this vicotry to manifest supernatural power, the Roman Pontiffs were quick to transform the great martial movements of the Crusades into powerful instruments to be used to expand their spiritual and temporal dominion. This was done by employing them as military and political levers which never ceased to yield territorial and financial advantages throughout the Middle Ages.

Such policies went a step further when, basing papal claims on an even more daring interpretation of the Donation, it was stated that the secular rulers should be made to pay tribute to the papacy. A vehement advocate of this was Otto of Freisingen, who in his Chronicles composed in 1143-6, did not hesitate to declare that as Constantine, after conferring the imperial insignia on the pontiff, went to Byzantium to leave the empire to St. Peter, so other kings and emperors should pay tribute to the popes.

For this reason the Roman Church maintains that the Western kingdom have been given over to her possession by Constantine, and demands tribute from them to this day, with the exception of the two kingdoms of the Franks (i.e. the French and German).

Such advocacy was made possible because only a century earlier, in 1054, Pope Leo IX had declared to the Patriarch Michael Cerularius that the Donation of Constantine really meant the donation “of earthly and heavenly imperium to the royal priesthood of the Roman chair.”

From all this it followed that soon Lombardy, Italy, and Germany began to be reckoned, in the eyes of Rome, as “papal fiefs,” the popes declaring ever more boldly that the German kings had possessed the Roman Empire, as well as the Italian Kingdom, solely as a present from the pontiffs. Such claims, of course, did not go unchallenged, and they often caused the profoundest political commotion – for instance, the one that broke out in Germany in 1157, when a letter from Pope Hadrian to Frederick Barbarossa spoke of “beneficia” which he had granted to the Emperor, or could still grant, and expressly called the imperial crown itself such a beneficium – i.e. a feod, as it was understood at the imperial court. Hadrian said, on the strength of the fact that it was he who had placed the crown on the Emperor’s head, that the pope was the real owner of Germany.

It was not only the princes who rebelled against the papal pretensions. Men otherwise devoted to this religious system spoke in no uncertain words against papal infringement upon civil power. Provost Gerhoh of Reigersburg, for instance, commenting upon the custom (which, of course, rested for support on the Donation of Constantine) of the emperor were represented as vassals of the popes, concluded that this besides causing the embittered feelings of temporal rulers, went also against the divine order by allowing the popes to claim to be emperors and lords of emperors.

A few years later Gottfried, a German educated in Bamburg, chaplain and secretary to the three Hohenstaufen sovereigns, Conrad, Frederick, and Henry IV, building on what Aeneas, Bishop of Paris, had already said, went a step further than Pope Adrian and included France in the Donation. In his Pantheon, which he dedicated to Pope Urban III in 1186, he stated that in order to secure greater peace for the Church, Constantine, having withdrawn with all his pomp to Byzantium, besides granting to the popes regal privileges, had given dominion over Rome, Italy and Gaul, with all the riches therein.

With passing of the centuries, the popes, instead of abating their claims, continued to increase them by declaring that, by virtue of the Donation, emperors were emperors simply because they permitted them to be so the sole ruler in spiritual and temporal matters being, in reality, the pontiff himself.

Such pretensions were not left to wither in the theoretical field. They were directed to concrete territorial, political, and financial goals which the pontiffs pursued with indefatigable pertinacity. Pope Innocent II (1198-1216), the most energetic champion of papal supremacy, thundered incessantly to all Europe that he claimed temporal supremacy over all the crowns of Christendom: for, as the successor of St. Peter, he was simultaneously the supreme head of the true religion and the temporal sovereign of the universe. His tireless exertions saw to it that papal rulership was extended over sundry lands and kingdoms. By the end of his reign, in fact, the Vatican had become the temporal ruler of Naples, of the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, of almost all the States of the Iberian peninsula such as Castile, Leon, Navarre, Aragon and Portugal, of all the Scandinavian lands, of the Kingdom of Hungary, of the Slav State of Bohemia, of Servia, Bosnia, Bulgeria, and Poland. A proud list!

He became also the true de facto and de jure sovereign of England, after having compelled John to make complete submission. During the last years of that king’s reign and the first few of Henry III, Innocent governed the island effectively through his legates. That was not enough, however, for Innocent proclaimed himself the temporal ruler of the Christian states founded in Syria by the Crusaders. Indeed, he went even further. Taking advantage of the Franco-Venetian Crusade of 1202, he planned the annexation of the Byzantine Empire. A Latin Empire came into being in the East, and while the Byzantine became the temporal vassals of the pope, the Greek Orthodox Church was compelled to acknowledge Roman supremacy. Later on, such immense dominion was extended by his successors through the conversion to Roman Catholicism of the pagans of the Baltic.

At this time, as in the past, one country more than any other opposed the irresistible ecclesiastical absorption: the powerful German Empire. But the pope, in spite of many setbacks, never recognized Germany as being outside this formidable papal imperium, on the familiar ground that she was an integeral part of the patrimony of St. Peter.

Not content with the Donation of Constantine, Innocent IV asserted that when Constantine gave to the Church had not belonged to him at all, for Europe has always belonged to the Church. In an encyclical published shortly after the close of the Council of Lyons in 1245, Innocent expressly stated:

“It is wrong to show ignorance of the origin of things and to imagine that the Apostolic See’s rule over secular matters dates only from Constantine. Before him this power was already in the Holy See. Constantine merely resigned into the hands of the Church a power which he used without right when he was outside her pale. Once admitted into the Church, he obtained, by the concession of the vicar of Christ, authority which only then became legitimate. ”

After which, in the same encyclical, Innocent fondly dwelt upon the idea that the pope’s acceptance of the Constantine Donation was but a visible sign of his sovereign dominion over the whole word, and hence of all the wealth to be found on earth.

Belief in the Donation and in the wide extent of territory which Constantine included in it grew ever stronger. Gratian himself did not include it, but it was soon inserted a palea, and thus found an entry into all schools of canonical jurisprudence, so that from this time on the lawyers were the most influential publishers and defenders of the fiction. The language of the popes also was henceforward more confident.

“Omne regnum Occidentis ei (Silvestro) tradidit we dimisit,” said Innocent II (1198-1216)

Gregory IX (1227-41) followed this out to its consequences, in a way surpassing anything that had been done before when he represented to the Emperor Frederick II that Constantine the duchy and the imperium to the care of the popes forever. Whereupon the popes, without diminishing in any degree whatever the substance of their jurisdiction, established the tribunal of the empire, transferred it to the Germans, and were wont to concede the power of the sword to the emperors at their coronation. By now, this was as much as to say that this imperial authority had its sole origin in the popes, could be enlarged or narrowed at their good pleasure, and that the pope could call each emperor to account for the use of the power and the riches entrusted to him.

But the highest rung of the ladder was as yet not reached. It was first achieved by Gregory’s successor, Innocent IV, when the synod of Lyons resulted in the deposition of Frederick, in which act this pope went beyond all his predecessors in the increase of his claim and the extent of the authority of Rome.

The Dominican, Tolomeo of Lucca, author of the two last books of the work De Regimine Principum, the first two books of which were by Thomas Aquinas, went even further and explained the Donation as a formal abdication of Constantine in favor of Sylvester. Connection with this other historical circumstances, which were either inventions or misconceptions, he thence drew the conclusion that the power and wealth of all temporal princes derived its strength and efficacy solely from the spiritual power of the popes. There was no halting half way, and immediately afterwards, in the contest of Boniface VIII with Philip of France, the Audutinian monk Aegidius Colonna of Rome, whom the pope had nominated to the archbishopric of Bourges, drew the natural conclusion without the slightest disguise in a work which he dedicated to his patron.

The other theologians of the papal court, Agostino Trionfo and Alvaro Pelayo, surpassed all previous claims and declared, that if an emperor like Constantine had given temporal possession to Sylvester, this was merely a restitution or what had been stolen in an unjust and tyrannical way. (1)

Emperors and kings were compelled very often, not only to acknowledge such claims as true, but to swear that they would defend them with their swords; to cite only one before his coronation. Pope Clement V made this monarch swear that he would protect and uphold all the rights which the emperors, beginning with Constantine, had granted to the Roman Church – without, however, stating what these rights were. (2)

The power given by the Donation to the Roman Church was further enhanced by that inherent in the papacy itself. As the direct successors of Peter, the popes were the only true inheritors of the might of the Church, and hence of whatever and whoever were under her authority. The theory ran as follows:

‘Christ is the Lord of the whole world. At his departure he left his dominion to his representatives, Peter and his successors. Therefore the fullness of all spiritual and temporal power and dominion, the union of all rights and privileges, lies in the hands of the pope. Every monarch, even the most powerful, possesses only so much power and territory as the pope has transferred to him or finds good to allow him.’

This theory was supported by most medieval theologians. (3) It became the firm belief of the popes themselves. In 1245, for instance, Pope Innocent IV expounded this doctrine to none other than the Emperor Frederick, saying that, as it was Christ who had entrusted to Peter and his successors both kingdoms, the heavenly and the earthly, belonged to him, the pope: by which he meant that the spiritual dominion of the papacy had to have its counterpart also in papal dominion over all the lands, territories and riches of the entire world.

Not even the most ambitious emperors of the Ancient Roman Empire had ever dared to claim as much.

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