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
But since you cannot [prove anything], I for my part will show that
Constantine, to the very last day of his life, and thereafter all the
Caesars in turn, did have possession [of the Roman Empire], so that you
will have nothing left even to mutter. But it is a very difficult, and, I
suppose, a very laborious task, forsooth, to do this! Let all the Latin
and the Greek histories be unrolled, let the other authors who mention
those times be brought in, and you will not find a single discrepancy
among them on this point. Of a thousand witnesses, one may suffice;
Eutropius, who saw Constantine, who saw the three sons of Constantine who
were left masters of the world by their father, and who wrote thus in
connection with Julian, the son of Constantine’s brother: “This Julian,
who was subdeacon in the Roman church and when he became Emperor returned
to the worship of the gods, seized the government, and after elaborate
preparations made war against the Parthians; in which expedition I also
took part.”[446] He would not have kept silent about the donation of the
Western Empire [had it been made], nor would he have spoken as he did a
little later about Jovian, who succeeded Julian: “He made with Sapor a
peace which was necessary, indeed, but dishonorable, the boundaries being
changed and a part of the Roman Empire being given up, a thing which had
never before happened since the Roman state was founded; no, not even
though our legions, at the Caudine [Forks] by Pontius Telesinus, and in
Spain at Numantia, and in Numidia, were sent under the yoke, were any of
the frontiers given up.”[447]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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