“The fathers have justly granted prerogatives to the see of ancient Rome, as to a reigning city, and the 150 bishops of the first Council of Constantinople, very dear to God, have for the same reason given the same privileges to the new Rome; they have rightly thought that this city, in which the Emperor and Senate reside, should be equal to it in all ecclesiastical matters.”
The popes have always contested the authenticity of this canon; they have twisted and perverted its whole meaning. What did they do at length to evade this equality and gradually to destroy all the titles of subjection which placed them under the emperors like all other men? They forged the famous donation of Constantine, which has been for many centuries so strictly regarded as genuine that it was a mortal and unpardonable sin to doubt it, and whoever did so incurred the greater excommunication by the very fact of doubting.
A very pretty thing was this donation of Constantine to Bishop Sylvester.
“We,” says the Emperor, “with all our satraps and the whole Roman people, have thought it good to give to the successors of St. Peter a greater power than that of our serene majesty.” Do you not think, Romans, that the word “satrap” comes in very well there?
With equal authenticity, Constantine goes on, in this noble diploma, to say that he has put the Apostles Peter and Paul in large amber caskets; that he has built the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul; that he has given them vast domains in Judæa, Greece, Thrace, Asia, etc. (to maintain the luminary); that he has given to the pope his Lateran palace, with chamberlains and guards; and that, lastly, he gives him, as a pure donation for himself and his successors, the city of Rome, Italy, and all the western provinces; and all this is given to thank the Pope Sylvester for having cured him of leprosy, and having baptised him—though, in point of fact, he was baptised only on his death-bed, by Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia.
Never was there a document more ridiculous from one end to the other, yet more accredited in the ignorant ages in which Europe was so long detained after the fall of your empire.
Ninth Imposture
I pass over the thousand and one little daily impostures to come at once to the great fraud of the Decretals.
These false Decretals were spread everywhere in the time of Charlemagne. In these, Romans, the better to rob you of your liberty, the bishops are deprived of theirs; it is decreed that the bishop of Rome shall be their only judge. Certainly, if he is the sovereign of the bishops, he should soon be yours; and that is what happened. These false Decretals abolished the Councils, and even abolished your Senate, which became merely a court of justice, subject to the will of a priest. Here is the real source of the humiliation you have suffered. Your rights and privileges, so long maintained by your wisdom, could be wrested from you only by untruth. Only by lying to God and men did they succeed in making slaves of you; but they have never extinguished the love of liberty in your hearts. The greater the tyranny, the greater is that love. The sacred name of liberty is still heard in your conversations and gatherings, and in the very antechamber of the pope.