A ridiculous document was produced by the Popes, probably about the middle of this eighth century, with which we are dealing. It was called the Imperial Edict of Donation. Its alleged author was Constantine the Great. It professed to give to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome in Constantine’s time, and to his successors, the Imperial Palace (that is, the Lateran) and the City of Rome; all the provinces, districts, and cities of the whole of Italy; and, in the Latin copy of the forgery, all islands. The islands are absent from the Greek copy of the forgery. It was on the strength of this forged donation of islands that a later Hadrian, the one English Pope, Hadrian IV, professed to be the owner of Ireland, and gave it to our king Henry II just four centuries after the time with which we are dealing. Muratori was of opinion that this audacious forgery was concocted between 755 and 766, that is, when Alcuin was from twenty to thirty years of age, and while Offa was king of Mercia. In 774, when Karl had conquered the Lombards, he went to Rome, as we have seen; ratified the donation of his father Pepin, of which we must next speak, and laid the deed of donation on the altar or on the tomb of St. Peter in the ancient basilica of St. Peter. The original deed of Karl’s donation has, so far as is known, long since perished; its terms are at best only vaguely known. It is said to have comprehended the whole of Italy, the exarchate of Ravenna, from Istria to the frontiers of Naples, and the island of Corsica. Karl, then, ratified the forged Donation of Constantine, at that time a quite recent forgery. The whole story, however, is very vague, and historians differ considerably in the deductions which they draw from the inadequate records. They differ almost more widely as to the date at which the document was first brought forward, the dates ranging from 760 to 1105. Of the fact of the forgery there is no question; it cannot be denied, and so far as I know no one of the Romans now is bold enough to deny that it is a forgery. There is one point in the forgery which has an important bearing on a very important question, namely, the true basis of the reputation of the city of Rome as the chief ecclesiastical centre of the Church of the West. Constantine is made to declare, in this forged donation, that it was by the merits of St. Peter and St. Paul that he emerged from the font at baptism cleansed of his sins. More than that, he is made to declare that he makes this enormous donation to the blessed chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and through them to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome. Either, then, at the time of the forgery it was completely recognized as a fact that the Popes claimed their sovereignty on the twin authority, in the twin name, by the twin princeship, of Peter and Paul; or it was completely recognized at the time of the forgery that in the earliest times, and notably in the