From the "Berkeley Blog," August 14, 2018
In 1440 the Italian scholar Lorenza Valla dropped a bombshell by completing a study of a old Latin document. The document, presumed to have been written in the fourth century, "proved" that the Western half of the Roman Empire had been given to the Catholic Church by the Emperor Constantine, following his miraculous recovery from an illness. For centuries the “Donation,” as it was called, had given documentary authority to the Church’s political domination of Western Europe. The only problem was that it was a fake. Read More
In 1440 the Italian scholar Lorenza Valla dropped a bombshell by completing a study of a old Latin document. The document, presumed to have been written in the fourth century, "proved" that the Western half of the Roman Empire had been given to the Catholic Church by the Emperor Constantine, following his miraculous recovery from an illness. For centuries the “Donation,” as it was called, had given documentary authority to the Church’s political domination of Western Europe. The only problem was that it was a fake. Read More