September 2, 2009

Q: During the Middle Ages, canonists and jurists used a document called the “Donation of Constantine” to authenticate papal claims to both spiritual and secular authority over Christendom. That document is now universally recognized as a forgery. If the claims of the papacy were so clear, readily recognized and founded on incontrovertible evidence, why the necessity to forge documents? I would think that this would be very embarrassing to our Church. I wonder how we deal with this question in ecumenical dialogue?

A: It is true that the collections of documents used by medieval scholars included forgeries like the “False Decretals” and the “Donation of Constantine.”

The latter, specifically, pretends to be a document by which the Emperor Constantine conferred on Pope Sylvester sweeping imperial, secular authority over the Western empire. It seems to have been forged to address the new questions raised by the establishment of the Papal States and the Frankish Empire in the eighth century. Why the need for such a forgery? Precisely because those issues were new and could not be resolved by recourse to “clear, readily recognized (and) incontrovertible evidence” from earlier periods. Questions that perplexed people of the eighth century may not have been asked, perhaps could not have been asked (let alone answered), by people of the fourth century. In order to highlight the continuity of past and present, it is sometimes tempting to fabricate a vision of history in which present situations with their questions and answers are projected into the past.

Naturally, when such sins against historical truth are discovered, people lose confidence in the decisions the forgeries informed. However, medieval papal claims to authority never rested solely on the evidence of the forgeries. Historical knowledge is dynamic, not static; it involves the constant gathering and assessing of many pieces of evidence, none of which by itself is “incontrovertible.” To understand the meaning of its past and to discern the unifying consistency of its experience in time—of which the Petrine ministry of the bishop of Rome is an important element—the Church, as it gathers and evaluates the evidence, must rely on the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. Ecumenical dialogue is productive when the partners together engage the evidence of the past, forgeries and all, while together invoking the Spirit of Truth to guide them into a fuller communion in the Truth.

This week’s apologist is Joel Barstad, a professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary currently teaching the Trinity, patristics and sacred art. Send your question for Ask an Apologist to:  editor@archden.org.