Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine
Lorenzo VallaAD 1440
The treatise in which the humanist Lorenzo Valla showed, from its language, its anachronisms and its silence in early writers, that the Donation of Constantine could not have been issued by Constantine.
Valla wrote the discourse in 1440 while in the service of Alfonso, king of Aragon and Naples, who was then at odds with the pope, and the tone is that of an attack. The argument does not depend on the occasion. He goes through the text phrase by phrase and shows that it uses words and offices unknown to Constantine’s Rome, such as “satraps” set beside the senate, and that no early source knows of the gift.
It is the classic demonstration that the Donation of Constantine (Constitutum Constantini) is a forgery, and the conclusion has stood.
Cited in
- AD 754 to AD 756, firm date