Eighth Imposture

No one who is acquainted with the history of the Greek and Latin Churches can be unaware that the metropolitan sees established their chief rights at the Council of Chalcedon, convoked in the year 451 by the order of the Emperor Marcian and of Pulcheria [his wife], and composed of six hundred and thirty bishops. The senators who presided in the emperor’s name had on their right the patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, on their left the patriarch of Constantinople and the deputies of the patriarch of Rome. It was in virtue of the canons of this Council that the episcopal sees shared the dignities of the cities in which they were situated. The bishops of the two imperial cities, Rome and Constantinople, were declared to be the first bishops, with equal prerogatives, by the celebrated twenty-eighth canon:

“The fathers have justly granted prerogatives to the see of ancient Rome, as to a reigning city, and the 150 bishops of the first Council of Constantinople, very dear to God, have for the same reason given the same privileges to the new Rome; they have rightly thought that this city, in which the Emperor and Senate reside, should be equal to it in all ecclesiastical matters.”

The popes have always contested the authenticity of this canon; they have twisted and perverted its whole meaning. What did they do at length to evade this equality and gradually to destroy all the titles of subjection which placed them under the emperors like all other men? They forged the famous donation of Constantine, which has been for many centuries so strictly regarded as genuine that it was a mortal and unpardonable sin to doubt it, and whoever did so incurred the greater excommunication by the very fact of doubting.

A very pretty thing was this donation of Constantine to Bishop Sylvester.

“We,” says the Emperor, “with all our satraps and the whole Roman people, have thought it good to give to the successors of St. Peter a greater power than that of our serene majesty.” Do you not think, Romans, that the word “satrap” comes in very well there?

With equal authenticity, Constantine goes on, in this noble diploma, to say that he has put the Apostles Peter and Paul in large amber caskets; that he has built the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul; that he has given them vast domains in Judæa, Greece, Thrace, Asia, etc. (to maintain the luminary); that he has given to the pope his Lateran palace, with chamberlains and guards; and that, lastly, he gives him, as a pure donation for himself and his successors, the city of Rome, Italy, and all the western provinces; and all this is given to thank the Pope Sylvester for having cured him of leprosy, and having baptised him—though, in point of fact, he was baptised only on his death-bed, by Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia.

Never was there a document more ridiculous from one end to the other, yet more accredited in the ignorant ages in which Europe was so long detained after the fall of your empire.