Pope the fee simple and title deeds of Rome and Italy. The Donation of Constantine belongs to the museum of historical forgeries.[113] ----- Footnote 113: We may quote the most striking sentence in the document: _Ecce tam palatium nostrum quam urbem Romam, et omnes totius Italiæ et occidentalium regionum provincias, loca et civitates, præfato beatissimo Pontifici nostra Sylvestro, universali papæ, concedimus atque relinquimus._ The forger forged boldly, and then went on to add that Constantine withdrew to Constantinople, because it was not just that an earthly monarch (_terrenus imperator_) should exercise sovereignty in the city where the Head of the Christian religion had been installed by the Lord of Heaven (_ab imperatore cælesti_). ----- [Illustration: THE DONATION OF CONSTANTINE. FROM THE PAINTING BY RAPHAEL IN THE VATICAN. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI. ] But if the repentance of Constantine did not take the form of stupendous endowments for the Bishop of Rome, we may be tolerably sure that it did manifest itself in the increased zeal of the Emperor for the building of churches, and especially in his munificence to the Christians of Rome. It is tempting, also, to connect with Constantine’s remorse and his mother’s sorrow for the murder of her grandson the pilgrimage of Helena to Palestine and Jerusalem, which followed almost immediately. Around that visit there clustered many legends which, as time went on, multiplied amazingly. Of these the most famous is that which is known as the Invention of the Cross. This, in its fullest form many centuries after the event, ran something as follows: When Helena reached Jerusalem she asked to be shown the Holy Sepulchre. But no one could tell her where the exact spot was. Buildings had been erected upon Mount Calvary and the adjoining land; a temple of Venus was still standing near the place where the body of Christ must have been laid. Helena instituted a careful search, and the authority of the Emperor’s mother would be warrant sufficient for the disturbance of the occupiers. At first their toil met with no success. Then a very clever Jew came forward with a story that he had heard of an old tradition that the site of the Sepulchre lay in such and such a spot; the direction of the excavation was entrusted to him; and the searchers were soon rewarded by finding not only the cave where Christ had lain, but also three crosses. These, it was at once determined, must have been the crosses on which Christ and the two malefactors had suffered. But which had borne the Saviour? There was nothing to show, but so sacred an object was sure to be invested with wonder-working powers, and the test was, therefore, easy. So they brought to the spot a dying woman—according to one version, she was already dead—and touched her with the wood of the three crosses. At contact with the first two no change was visible; but the touch of the