The treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of ConstantineValla, Lorenzo
History
The treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine
Valla, Lorenzo
Church and state -- Holy Roman Empire; Constitutum Constantini; Popes -- Temporal power -- Early works to 1800
And yet, as we see, a copy of the “page” is shown. Who then was so bold
as to take it from the bosom of the most holy apostle? No one did it,
I think. Whence then the copy? By all means some ancient writer ought
to be adduced, one not later than the time of Constantine. However,
none such is adduced, but as it happens some recent writer or other.
Whence did he get it? For whoever composes a narrative about an earlier
age, either writes at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, or follows
the authority of former writers, and of those, of course, who wrote
concerning their own age. So whoever does not follow earlier writers will
be one of those to whom the remoteness of the event affords the boldness
to lie. But if this story is to be read anywhere, it is not consistent
with antiquity any more than that stupid narrative of the glossator
Accursius about Roman ambassadors being sent to Greece to get laws agrees
with Titus Livius and the other best writers.
“Given at Rome, on the third day before the Kalends of April,
Constantine Augustus consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus
consul for the fourth time.”[500]
He took the next to the last day of March so that we might feel that this
was done in the season of holy days, which, for the most part, come at
that time. And “Constantine consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus
consul for the fourth time.” Strange if each had been consul thrice, and
they were colleagues in a fourth consulship! But stranger still that the
Augustus, a leper, with elephantiasis (which disease is as remarkable
among diseases, as elephants are among animals), should want to even
accept a consulship, when king Azariah, as soon as he was affected with
leprosy, kept himself secluded, while the management of the kingdom was
given over to Jotham his son;[501] and almost all lepers have acted
similarly. And by this argument alone the whole “privilege” is confuted
outright, destroyed, and overturned. And if any one disputes the fact
that Constantine must have been leprous before he was consul, he should
know that according to physicians this disease develops gradually, that
according to the known facts of antiquity the consulate is an annual
office and begins in the month of January; and these events are said to
have taken place the following March.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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