We need not doubt the sincerity of his repentance. Zosimus depicts the Emperor remorsefully begging the priests of the old religion to purify him from his crime, and says that when they sternly refused, Constantine turned to accept the soothing offices of a wandering Egyptian from Spain. Another account, current among pagans, was that he applied for comfort to the philosopher, Sopater, who would have nothing to say to so heinous a sinner, and that he then fell in with certain Christian bishops, who promised him full forgiveness at the price of repentance and baptism. The motive of these legends is as obvious as their falsity. The pagans, in defiance of chronology, sought to explain the Emperor’s conversion to Christianity as a result of the murders that lay heavy upon his soul, murders so revolting as only to admit of pardon in the eyes of Christians. Among the late legends of the Byzantine writer Codinus, we find the story that Constantine raised to the memory of Crispus a golden statue, which bore the inscription, “To the son whom I unjustly condemned,” and that he fasted and refused the comforts of life for forty days. Of even greater interest is the legend that Constantine was baptised by Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, and, in gratitude for the promise of pardon, bestowed upon the see of Rome the _damnosa hæreditas_ of the Temporal Power. There is no necessity to discuss at length the once famous, but now simply notorious, Donation of Constantine. The legend is so grotesque that one wonders it ever imposed on the credulity even of the most ignorant. For it represented Constantine as being smitten with leprosy for having persecuted the Church and for having driven the good Pope Sylvester into exile. The Emperor consulted soothsayers, priests, and physicians in turn, and was at last informed that his only chance of cure lay in bathing in the blood of little children. Forthwith, a number of children were collected for this dreadful purpose, but their cries awoke the pity of Constantine and he gave them respite. Then, as he slept, Peter and Paul appeared to him in a dream and bade him let the children go free, recall Sylvester from exile, and submit at his hands to the rite of baptism. This was done; the baptism was administered; Constantine was cured of the leprosy, and in return he made over to Sylvester and his successors full temporal dominion over the city of Rome, the greater part of Italy, and certain other provinces. Such is the story, which was long accepted without demur and confidently appealed to as the origin of the Temporal Power. It is now universally admitted that the whole legend is a fraud and the letter of Constantine to Sylvester announcing the Donation a forgery of the eighth century. Constantine never persecuted the Church; he never had leprosy; he never contemplated bathing in infants’ blood; he did not receive the rite of baptism until he was on his death-bed, and he did not hand over to the