[413] retro was used at Rome in the latter part of the eighth century with the peculiar meaning of “still” or “again.” This is one of the clues to the date and place of the document. Henderson’s translation is erroneous.
[414] Ps. cxxxix, 7.
[415] I Tim. v, 20.
[416] Valla’s error for Marcellinus. The whole story is apocryphal.
[417] A reference to the reforming councils of the fifteenth century.
[418] Valla was in the service of the king of Sicily and of Naples when he wrote this.
[419] The phrase “Italy and the western provinces,” in the Donation of Constantine, meant to the writer of that document the Italian peninsula, including Lombardy, Venetia, Istria, and adjacent islands. Other countries probably did not occur to him as part of the Roman Empire. Valla, however, followed the current interpretation.
[420] In many versions of the Life of Sylvester there is a marvellous story of an enormous serpent, finally subdued by the saint. Cf. infra, [p. 143]; Coleman, Constantine the Great and Christianity, pp. 161 et seq.; Mombritius, Sanctuarium, Sive Vitae collectae ex codibus (Milan, c. 1479), v, ii, pp. 279 et seq., also Paris edition, 1910. For the story of Bel and the Dragon, cf. the book of that name in the Apocrypha.
[421] I have made two English paragraphs of the rather long Latin one. [Ed.]
[422] Acts xx, 35.