Alternative Religion/ Library

A HOLY CONSPIRATION

 The next step in the progress “conquering and to conquer” of Christ's prostituted Church was on a broader stage and with yet vaster consequences. Pepin died in 768, dividing his realms between his two sons, Carloman and Charles, later “by the Grace of God” and great villainy known to fame as Charles the Great or Charlemagne; Charles receiving the German part, Carloman the French. On the death of Carloman, in 771, Charles seized the Frankish kingdom. The widow and young heirs of Carloman fled for protection and aid to ²⁰⁶ Desiderius, king of the Lombards, part of whose stolen territory the pope held for God and Church. Desiderius was also father of the repudiated first wife of Charles; the holy matrimonial mess is thus defined: “Charles was already, in foro conscientiae, if not in Frankish law, wedded to Himiltrude. In defiance of the pope's protest, Charles married Desiderata, daughter of Desiderius (770); three years later he repudiated her and married Hildegarde, the beautiful Swabian. Naturally, Desiderius was furious at this insult, and the dominions of the Holy See bore the first brunt of his wrath.” (CE. iii,.612.) Charles thereupon “had to protect Rome against the Lombard”; finally the Lombards were “put to utter rout”; Charles proceeded to Rome; and “history records with vivid eloquence the first visit of Charles to the Eternal City. ... Charles himself forgot pagan Rome and prostrated himself to kiss the threshold of the Apostles, and then spent seven days in conference with the successor of Peter. It was then that he undoubtedly formed many great designs for the glory of God and the exaltation of Holy Church, which, in spite of human weaknesses, and, still more, ignorance, he did his best to realize.” (Ib. 612.) The principal fruit of this weakness and ignorance of Charles seems to be that he could so easily let himself be duped by His Holiness through the enormous forgeries for Christ's sake that were now imposed upon him. In 774 Charles finally defeated Desiderius and “assumed the crown of Lombardy, and renewed to Adrian [now Holiness of Rome] the donation of territory made by Pepin.” The “genuineness of this donation,” as well as of “the original gift of Pepin,” have been much questioned, says CE., but are “now generally admitted,”—which is none too assuring; but another document, this time favorable to Charles, is just the other way: “The so-called ‘Privilegium Hadriani pro Carolo' granting him full right to nominate the pope and to invest all bishops, is a forgery.” (CE. xi, 612). Here is precisely the reason and only effective use of this forged “Donation of Constantine”—it was the basis for the inducement to Charlemagne to win the Lombard territories for the Church and to reinstate it in the “Patrimony of Peter,” largely swollen by the pretended new gifts of the ambitious king, who, in the seven days' conference with His Holiness, had, undoubtedly, formed together “some great designs for the glory of God and the exaltation of Holy Church,” now begun to be realized.

 The quarter of a century passed, and much history was made. The Roman emperors ruled from Constantinople; Roman popes and kings were legitimately their liegemen; “the Emperor of Constantinople, legitimate heir of the imperial title,” now becomes the victim of papal and kingly conspiration, thus brought to its climax: “On Christmas Day, 800, took place the principal event of the life of Charles. During the Pontifical Mass celebrated before the high altar beneath which lay the bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul, the pope (Leo III) approached him, placed upon his head the imperial crown, did him formal reverence after the ancient manner, saluted him as Emperor and Augustus and anointed him,” while the Roman rabble shouted its approval. Thus, again by collusion and usurpation, began that Holy Roman Empire, of nefast history, which Bryce qualifies as “neither holy, nor Roman, nor empire”; but the Vicars of God were now well started on their way to worldly grandeur and moral degradation. Now for their forgeries. ²⁰⁷ 

THE POPE SYLVESTER FORGERIES

 The monumental forgeries which were boldly used by their Holinesses to dupe Charlemagne and Christendom into recognizing the papal claim of right of ownership and sovereignty over a great part of Italy are a series of spurious documents harking in pretended date and origin back to the “first Christian emperor” Constantine and to His Holiness Pope St. Sylvester (314-335). About the name of Sylvester arose “the Sylvester Legend later surrounded with that network of myth, that gave rise to the forged document known as the Donation of Constantine.” (CE. xiv, 257.) This fable, says Prof. Shotwell, “made its way, gathering volume as it went, reinforced eventually by a forged Donation, until it had imposed upon all Europe the conception of Sylvester as the potent influence behind Constantine's most striking measures and of Constantine himself as the dutiful servant of the See of Peter.” (See of Peter, xxvi.) The extensive variety but common general nature of these Sylvester forgeries is thus indicated:

“At an early date legend brings Pope St. Sylvester into close relationship with the first Christian emperor, but in a way that is contrary to historical fact. These legends were introduced especially into the ‘Vita beati Sylvestri,' and in the ‘Constitutum Sylvestri'—an apocryphal account of an alleged Roman council which belongs to the Symmachian forgeries and appeared between 501 and 508, and also in the ‘Donatio Constantini.' The accounts given in all these writings concerning the persecution of Sylvester, the healing and baptism of Constantine, the emperor's gift to the pope, the rights granted to the latter, and the council of 275 bishops at Rome, are entirely legendary” (CE. xiv, 370-371).

“Ah, Constantine! to how much ill gave birth,
Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dewer,
Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee!”
- Dante, Inferno, xix, 115.

 By Lord Bryce a graphic sketch of this notorious fraud is given, with comments as to the mental and moral qualities of the priestcraft which it reflects. It is, he says, the—“most stupendous of medieval forgeries, which under the name of Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the unquestioning belief of mankind. Itself a portentous falsehood, it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of the priesthood which framed it, sometime between the middle of the eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved, on the fourth day of his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty over Italy and the countries of the West.” (Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, Ch. vii, p. 97; Latin text, extracts, p. 98.) In addition to these extraordinary investitures, all forms of imperial pomp, privileges and dignities were spuriously granted to the Pope and his clerics, “all of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them showing the same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar, the purple cloak, to carry the scepter, and to be attended by a body of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and receive the honors and immunities of the senate and patricians,” including “the practice of kissing the pope's foot, adopted in imitation of the old imperial court.” (Ib. pp. 97-98.)

The grossness and absurdity of these stupendous forgeries, with their pious recitals of Constantine's leprosy cured by Sylvester's prayers, the consequent conversion and baptism of the Emperor in the Lateran font, and the abandonment of Rome by Constantine in order to leave it free for God's Vicar, just up from the catacombs, to ape imperial pomp, is made manifest by a moment's notice of dates, and recollection of contemporary history. Sylvester's Holiness dates from 314, he died in 335; Constantine in 337. Constantine's “conversion” by the “In Hoc Signo” miracle, was in 312, before Sylvester became pope; at no time did Constantine have leprosy, other than moral, therefore no physical cure was wrought by Sylvester's prayers, and certainly no moral cleansing worthy of note; Constantine was not baptized by Sylvester in Rome, but heretically received that rite long after Sylvester's death, and just before his own, in Nicomedia of ²⁰⁹ Asia Minor. (CE. i, 709.) But Christians were too sodden in ignorance to know these things, and it was only with the “revival of historical criticism” which marked the beginning of the end of the Ages of Faith, that the truth was disclosed, or could have been perceived. In words that blast and sear with infamy the perpetrators and the conscious beneficiaries of this monumental fraud and forgery, Gibbon says:

“Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though ignorant barbarian, was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal policy. ... The Decretal and the Donation of Constantine, the two magical pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes. This memorable donation was first introduced to the world by an epistle of Adrian the first, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and revive the name, of the great Constantine. ... So deep was, the ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. The emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning a forgery, that subverted their rights and freedom.

... The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline Oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.”

(Gibbon, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. xiv, pp. 740, 741, 742.)

In a paragraph which gives a word of credit to Valla for his exposure of the forgeries of the “Donation” and the immense and remarkable “Pseudo-Areopagite” Forgeries, previously mentioned, ²¹⁰ the vast extent of the output of the Vatican Forgery-Mill—and the evil persistence of the Church in clinging to them after exposure, is thus admitted: “Lorenzo Valla, 1440, counselled Engenius IV not to rely on the Donation of Constantine, which he proved to be spurious. ... It was Valla who first denied the authenticity of those writings which for centuries had been going about as the treatises composed by Dionysius the Areopagite. Three centuries later the Benedictines of St. Maur and the Bollandists were still engaged in sifting out the true from the false in patristic literature, in hagiology, in the story of the foundation of local churches” (CE. xii, 768),—such Liars of the Lord were the pious parasites of Holy Church. 

THE “SYMMACHIAN FORGERIES”

 Among the sheaf of forged documents above confessed by CE. are the so-called “Symmachian Forgeries,” forged by or in behoof of His Holiness Pope St. Symmachus (498-514), products of the Church Forgery Mill operated by the Pope to further papal pretensions of the independence of the Bishops of Rome from the just criticisms and judgment of ecclesiastical tribunals, and putting them above law clerical and secular. Whenever there was need for false precedents, a simple turn of the crank of the wheel of the papal forgery-mill produced them just to order. Thus, in this instance: “During the dispute between Pope St. Symmachus and the anti-pope Laurentius, the adherents of Symmachus drew up four apocryphal writings called the ‘Symmachian Forgeries'. ... The object of these forgeries was to produce alleged instances from earlier times to support the whole procedure of the adherents of Symmachus, and, in particular, the position that the Roman bishop could not be judged by any court composed of other bishops.” (CE. xiv, 378.) Our Confessor is careful twice to impute these confessed forgeries to the “adherents” of His Holiness; but they were forged for him, used, of course with his knowledge and consent, to further his cause in the dispute; they are thus distinctly forgeries by His Holiness. 

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