It will be observed that these foreign references are so ungallant, and so incorrect, as to give all the credit to Ferdinand, while poor Isabella is not mentioned![Back to Main Text]
Footnote 541: Harrisse, op. cit.; Additions, p. 45.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 542: Harrisse, Jean et Sebastien Cabot, Paris, 1882, p. 15.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 543: Vasconcellos, Vida del Rey Don Juan II., Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 544: "De nostra mera liberalitate, et ex certa scientia, ac de apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine." ... "auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac vicariatus Jesu Christi qua fungimur in terris." The same language is used in the second bull. Mr. Prescott (Ferdinand and Isabella, part i. chap, vii.) translates certa scientia "infallible knowledge," but in order to avoid any complications with modern theories concerning papal infallibility, I prefer to use a less technical word.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 545: A year or two later the sovereigns were further rewarded with the decorative title of "Most Catholic." See Zurita, Historia del Rey Hernando, Saragossa, 1580, lib. ii. cap. xl.; Peter Martyr, Epist. clvii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 546: The complete text of this bull, with Richard Eden's translation, is given at the end of this work; see below, Appendix B. The official text is in Magnum Bullarium Romanum, ed. Cherubini, Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The original document received by Ferdinand and Isabella is preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it is printed entire in Navarrete, Coleccion de viages, tom. ii. No. 18. Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No. 19-22; and another in Leibnitz, Codex Diplomaticus, tom. i. pt. i. p. 471. It is often called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from its opening words.
The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for giving away kingdoms is closely connected with the fictitious "Donation of Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome about the middle of the eighth century. The title of the old Latin text is Edictum domini Constantini Imp., apud Pseudo-Isidorus, Decretalia. Constantine's transfer of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended greatly to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward, was the expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian emperor meant to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in the hands of the Roman see. The edict purported to be such a donation from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I., but the extent and character of the donation was stated with such vagueness as to allow a wide latitude of interpretation. Its genuineness was repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to have grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX., who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054 to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose "of all islands on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164 King Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See Adrian IV., Epist. 76, apud Migne, Patrologia, tom. clxxxviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in treating of this matter, is more an Irishman than a papist, and derides "this nonsense of the pope's being the head-owner of all Christian islands." (Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, vol. iv. p. 159.)—Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all Christian kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter (Baronius, Annales, tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain, Histoire de Grégoire VII., Paris, 1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61), does not seem to have appealed to the Donation. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection afterwards raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then they were successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter. (Moneta Cremonensis, Adversus Catharos et Waldenses, ed. Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But Innocent IV. summarily disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons in 1245, when he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II. of Portugal,—saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as well as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors, so that Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to it already. The opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently set forth by Dante, in his treatise De Monarchia; he held that inasmuch as the Empire existed before the Church, it could not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere expressed his abhorrence of the Donation:—
Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
Inferno, xix. 115.
Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular poets from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von der Vogelweide was sure that if the first Christian emperor could have foreseen the evils destined to flow from his Donation, he would have withheld it:—