Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
arguing that Constantine was already a Christian when he met Sylvester. Among
the anti-papal Ghibellines of Germany, there arose around 1200 the legend that,
when Constantine made the Donation, the angels cried audibly “Alas, alas, this
day has poison been dropped into the Church of God.” The partisans of the Pope
retorted that, sure, the weeping was heard, but it was just the Devil in disguise,
trying to deceive us. Others argued that the Donation was not valid because Constantine
was tainted with Arian heresy, or because the consent of the people had
not been obtained, or because the grant was supposed to apply only to Constantine’s
reign. Others turned the donation into a back-handed blow at the papacy by
arguing that it showed papal primacy to be derived not from God, but from the
Emperor. Indeed, the last argument became, until the middle of the fifteenth century,
a standard attitude toward the Donation on the part of anti-papal spokesmen.
Around 1200, two writers had pointed to the fact of the continuity of imperial rule
in Italy after the alleged Donation, but their presentations were circumlocutory
and did not reveal their personal conclusions on the matter, and they had no evident
influence on future controversy.
What should have been a conclusive critique of the Donation came in 1433,
not from an anti-papal source, but from somebody we might characterize as a liberal
reformer within the Church. Cusanus, Deacon of St. Florinus of Coblenz, presented
for the use of the Council of Basle a critique of the Donation, which emphasized
the overwhelming historical evidence against any transfer of sovereignty
from Emperor to Pope in or just after the time of Sylvester and Constantine.
Cusanus’ De concordantia catholica had little direct impact, partly because of
its dry and dispassionate tone and partly because it was eclipsed by the 1440 treatise
of Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini. It is Valla’s name
that is most closely associated with the overthrow of the hoax, partly because his
own considerable talents were supplemented by Cusanus’ work, partly because of
the oratorical and passionate nature of his treatise, and partly because the quickly
succeeding developments of printing and the Reformation movement gave the
treatise a massive distribution in various translations.
Valla’s basic approach was to subject the Donation to criticism from every
perspective that was available to him. For example, he starts by trying to look at
the matter from the perspective of Constantine, “a man who through thirst for
dominion had waged war against nations, and attacking friends and relatives in
civil strife had taken the government from them,” who then allegedly would “set
about giving to another out of pure generosity the city of Rome, his fatherland, the
head of the world, the queen of states, […] betaking himself thence to an humble
little town, Byzantium.” After reading only a few pages of Valla, the Donation
seems incredible, but the treatise runs to about 80 pages in English translation and
is a classic case of “overkill.” Valla supported Cusanus’ argument that the alleged
transfer of sovereignty had not taken place with the evidence of the Roman coins
of the period, which were issued in the names of Emperors, not Popes. Valla analyzed
the language and vocabulary of the Donation document and showed they
could not have represented the sort of Latin used by Constantine. Such methods
were novel for the times.
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