Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYI have repeatedly referred to the Copernican shift, which can beregarded as the beginning of the scientific era and which resulted inenormous political and social upheavals. Emotions erupted duringthose years, just as they did in the middle of the 19th century on occasionof the already mentioned Darwinian theory of evolution. Yetthe best parallel to our case may well be the forgery of the so-calledDonation of Constantine, which is called the most far-reaching historicalforgery so far with good reasons. At the base of it lies a documentwhich was allegedly authored by Roman Emperor ConstantineI. It claims that on occasion of his conversion to Christianity inthe 4th century A.D. he transferred authority over Rome and thewestern part of the Roman Empire to the Catholic Church. 154 Thisdocument served as a justification for the church to claim ownershipof the entire Occident during the Middle Ages. Already in the middleof the 15th century Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa exposed the documentas a medieval forgery in a thin, sober treatise. Also due to theinvention of book printing by Gutenberg, it was only the ca. 80 pageslong, more polemical paper by the papal advisor Lorenzo Vallathat found wide recognition. It had appeared toward the end of the15th century and furnished a multitude of arguments in support ofthe forgery claim. One of the many readers of Valla was a certainMartin Luther, who, by reading this book, was convinced that thePope was the Anti-Christ. Encouraged by Valla’s writings Lutherdeveloped his well-known critique of the abuse of power by theCatholic Church, and we know only too well today what this led to,namely to the Peasants’ Wars and the Thirty Years’ War resulting inthe devastation of large swaths of Germany and to the death ofroughly a quarter of all Germans of that time.If one were to apply the logic of the German judiciary, Nicholasof Cusa, Valla, and Luther would nowadays be thrown in prison inGermany for inciting the masses and endangering public peace dueto their revolutionary historical theses or their politico-religiousviews capable of inciting emotions – although neither of them wrotein an inciting way.In such case it is not the views that are causative for emotionalreactions but the attitude of the readers, who are intolerant, fanatical,obstinate etc. Hence, whether a writing is insulting, disparaging, in-154 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine.137