Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.

56, Pt 1, April 2005

C O N S TA N T I N E S D O N AT I O N TO THE BISHOP AND POPE OF THE CITY OF ROME

Abstract
The salutation urbis Romae episcopo et pape in the forged Donation of Constantine is generally supposed to mean to the bishop of the city of Rome and Pope, not to the bishop and pope of the city of Rome, on the grounds that a Western writer of the eighth century would not have added any qualifier to the term Pope. This claim is disproved by chapter 14 of the Donation, while other documents from the eighth century reserve the locution urbis Romae papa for distinguished pontiffs, especially when engaged in some extension of their prerogative. The closest parallel to urbis Romae episcopo et pape occurs in [Nennius], Historia Brittonum 50, with a change in syntactic order that entails the translation bishop and pope of Rome.

No document did more to raise the pretensions of the Roman see than Constantines Donation to Pope Silvester, now considered to be a forgery of the Carolingian era.1 The proem salutes the pontiV in a vein that his successors might have envied:2
sanctissimo et beatissimo patri patrum Silvestro, urbis Romae episcopo et pape, atque omnibus eius successoribus, qui in sede beati Petri usque in nem saeculi sessuri sunt.

How should one render urbis Romae episcopo et pap(a)e? T. D. Barnes, commenting on my own version, [to the] bishop and pope of the city of Rome, insists on the alternative [to the] bishop of the city of Rome and pope.3 This translation agrees with that of Henderson,4 and indeed with the spirit of the whole
For discussion and bibliography see G. Ro sch, ONOMA BAS LLEIAS (Vienna, 1978), pp. 11722; M. J. Edwards, Constantine and Christendom (Liverpool, 2003), pp. 92131 and xllvi. 2 Patrologia Latina 130, col. 245; C. Mirbt and K. Aland (eds), Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des ro mischen Katholizismus, vol. 1 (6th edn., Tu bingen, 1967), p. 251; Constitutum Constantini, ed. H. Fu hrmann (MGH: Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui, 10; Hannover, 1968). Here, as in the other passages quoted from this document, the editors do not diVer except in spelling. 3 Commenting on Edwards, Constantine, 93 in his review of the same, JTS, ns 55 (2004), p. 355. 4 E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London, 1921), p. 319. Cf. Documents of the Christian Church, ed. H. Bettenson and C. Maunder (Oxford, 1999), p. 107.
The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org doi:10.1093/jts/fli006, available online at www.jts.oupjournals.org
1

116 M . J. E D WA R D S decree, because it intimates that the bishopric alone is local, the papacy universal. Urbis Romae episcopo et papae recurs in chapter 15, where Henderson takes it once again to mean [to the] bishop of the city of Rome and pope.5 Yet Henderson at least is aware that in this text the urbs contains the orbs, for in his translation of chapter 14 the Latin universali urbis Romae papae is properly represented by [to the] universal pope of the city of Rome.6 Since papa must be construed with urbis Romae here, and since it never appears without some qualifying term elsewhere in the document, there can be no solecism in making urbis Romae depend on it in the other two cases also. But why should a manifesto for the Papacy adopt the locution papa urbis Romae, when in almost every Latin text of the age it had given way to the simple papa, in accordance with the claim of the Roman pontiV to be the sole father of the Church? I shall argue here that it served two endsto solemnize the grant, and to secure it in perpetuity to the western Rome, whatever the fortunes of the imperial crown. Clearly no limitation of prerogative is intended in the document called the Faith of Pope Hormisdas when it celebrates the presidency of Celestine, as papa urbis Romae, at the Third Oecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431.7 Nor did most transcribers of Pope Leos letters think it unworthy of him, in correspondence with the Emperor Theodosius on the eve of the Ephesian synod of 449, to adopt the form papa ecclesiae catholicae urbis Romae.8 This is not his regular style, and the variant Romae episcopus is supported by the Greek copy;9 the longer title is none the less good Latin, as we see from its application to Leo and Zosimus in uncontested passages of the Collectio Avellana.10 Again, it is clear that the bishop who cited Leo as Romae papa at the First Council of Braga had no intention of limiting his authority: it was this authority, rather
5 6

Henderson, Select Historical Documents, p. 327. Ibid. p. 326. Quellen, ed. Mirbt and Aland, 232.56 ( Collectio Avellana 116b, 521.9: see below). The truncation papa urbis is also attested: Liber Ponticalis 99.1 (on Stephen IV); Possidius, Vita Augustini 18 (editors add Romae); Paulinus of Nola, Letter 20.2 at CSEL XXIX, ed. G. de Hartel and M. Kamptner (Vienna, 1999), 144.20 (where two MSS oVer urbis Romae). 8 Letter 29 at Patrologia Latina 54, col. 781. 9 See PL 54, col. 782 on the Ratisbon MS; the Greek is simply 2pisk0po". 10 Collectio Avellana 159.6, at CSEL XXXV.2, ed. O. Gu nther (Prague/ Vienna/Leipzig, 1895), 609.17; Collectio Avellana 17.1, at CSEL XXXV.1 (ed. idem, 1895), 63.20 (a formal petition).
7

THE BISHOP AND POPE OF ROME 117 than their own numbers, that enabled him and his seven colleagues to frame decrees with an air of catholicity.11 When, around 494, Dardanian bishops addressed Gelasius by the title papa Romae they considered it honoric; no doubt they meant to acknowledge the importance which Gelasius had attached, in a long and formidable letter, to their compliance in his suppression of Acacius and the school of Eutyches.12 The pretensions of Hormisdas (51423) were even loftier,13 and his correspondents showed that they subscribed to them on the numerous occasions when they addressed him simply as papa.14 Such inscriptions generally eschewed any other atteries,15 but in aVairs of a certain magnitude, as one salutation was heaped upon another, papa too was commonly amplied to papa urbis Romae.16 If there was a pontiV who surpassed Hormisdas and Leo in his assertion of the primacy, it was Gregory I. Yet the earliest extant life of hima writing of the eighth century, in a manuscript of the ninthis entitled Vita Beati et Laudabilis Viri Gregorii Papae Urbis Romae.17 The orthodox and learned Bede, who may have been an older contemporary of our forger, introduces Gregory as Gregorius Romae papa in transcribing his correspondence with Augustine, the evangelist of England (Historia Ecclesiastica 1.27).

Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, ed. P. Hinschius (Leipzig, 1863), p. 421. Collectio Avellana 80, at CSEL XXXV.1, 223.12. For the letter of Gelasius, which asserts that the bishop of Rome has the right to judge without a council, see Hinschius (n. 11), pp. 6415. 13 In Collectio Avellana 116 he expects the Emperor to recognize him as pater vester, sanctus papa (CSEL XXXV.2, 514.256, 515.2, etc.). His claims to universal jurisdiction are acknowledged (e.g. at Letter 165, ibid., 616.4), but are not entailed by papa, which is grammatically absolute without implying absolute power in Collectio Avellana 49, at CSEL XXXV.1, 113.1516 (Cyrillo papae). 14 For papae see Collectio Avellana 109 (CSEL XXXV.2, 501.21); 111 (ibid., 503.7), 125 (537.13), 138 (ibid., 564.15), 141 (ibid., 586.2), 181 (ibid., 636.4), 192 (ibid., 649.7), 193 (ibid., 650.22), 194 (652.2), 198 (ibid., 657, 27), 199 (ibid., 658.19), 212 (ibid., 670.22), 215 (ibid., 673.26), 232 (ibid., 701.1). 15 Only in Letters 198 and 215 have I found a longer rubric which contains the unaugmented dative papae. This dative is never part of a phrase with et, and the closest parallel to the syntax of the Donatian is supplied by archiepiscopo et patriarchae (below). 16 For papae urbis Romae see Collectio Avellana 162, at CSEL XXXV.2, 610.4; 200 (ibid., 659.10); 166 (ibid., 617.4). For urbis Romae papae, Appendix 4, ibid., 800.12. See also n. 23. 17 B. Colgrave, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great (Lawrence, KS, 1968), p. 48 dates the anonymous work of the Monk of Whitby to the rst two decades of the eighth century; on the MS see p. 63, and for the incipit, p. 72.
12

11

118 M . J. E D WA R D S While Romae is omitted in two manuscripts, it is retained in Plummers critical edition, as the majority of witnesses support it18 and it is hard to imagine a motive for its insertion. Once again the untypical form19 is employed when the Roman pontiV is engaged in a work which (in the reporters eyes) had crowned his tenure of the see. The title papa urbis Romae vindicates the dignity of the pontiV in the imperial correspondence of Honorius and Anastasius.20 In Justinians legislation, drafted in the New Rome of the east, this was expanded to papa senioris urbis Romae.21 Precedence at an oecumenical council is attested by sonority of nomenclature, and in 553 the Second Council of Constantinople honoured Leo with the title papa antiquioris Romae. In 681, the Third Council of Constantinople showed respect to the see of Pope Honorius, even while they condemned the man, by styling him papa antiquioris Romae. The venerable Leo and the incumbent pontiV Agatho were similarly described.22 In Italy, however, it was not thought necessary to distinguish the ancient see by any epithet: the impotent Vigilius may have felt that the pretensions of Constantinople were being cast in the teeth when he received a letter dubbing his forebears papae urbis senioris Romae popes of the elder city of Rome.23 When another of Justinians

18 Oxford, 1896, p. 48. The reading is supported by all ten of the M-Type manuscripts which he judges to represent the earliest draft, and in eight of ten C-Type manuscripts in which he discovers evidence of revision by Bede himself. See his introduction, pp. xcvxcviii. Cf. J. E. Kings Loeb translation (London/Cambridge, Mass., 1930, repr. 1979), p. 116; Bede: The Ecclesiastical History, ed. B. Colgrave and R. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), vol. 1, p. 80; also Hinschius (n. 11), p. 738, where the formula Responsio Gregorii papae urbis Romae is not a direct transcription from Bedes History. 19 After the initial response Gregorius papa suYces, then Gregorius. All such formulae would have entered the correspondence only after it took the form of question and answerand therefore some time after Gregorys death in 604, in the opinion of P. Meyvaert, Bedes Text of the Libellus Responsionum of Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds.), England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 1533. 20 Collectio Avellana 27, at CSEL XXXV.1, 73.6 and 113, at CSEL XXXV.2, 507.8. 21 Novella 131.2, in Corpus Iuris Civilis III, ed. W. Kunkel (Berlin, 1954), p. 655. 22 Ibid., 101.37 (Honorius), 102.36 (Agatho), 103.10 (Leo). 23 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. J. Alberigo et al. (Rome/Barcelona/ Basle/Fribourg/Vienna, 1962), 88.23; beatissimus Caelestinus Papa urbis senioris Romae, in Collectio Avellana 83, at CSEL XXXV.1, 231.14; ipsi papae senioris Romae in the same letter at 231.2021.

THE BISHOP AND POPE OF ROME 119 ordinances is reproduced, with a letter from Mennas the patriarch, in the Collectio Avellana, the eastern form has been commuted to papa urbis Romae.24 In the sixth century, German princes ceased to employ this title in correspondence with the Roman see,25 and when it recurs in the Caroline Booksa work of Charlemagnes age, if not of his handit is not an original piece of Latin, but a truncated rendering of the Eastern formula.26 For those who knew its Greek counterpart, then, the title papa urbis Romae indicates that, while there are many patriarchs, there is only one metropolis of Christendom. The bishop of Rome was in fact the only prelate to retain the title papa at the Councils of 553 and 681, but it was not until the fourth Council of Constantinople (86970), which is not deemed oecumenical by the modern Greek church, that the name of the city was waived, as though the world had now confessed that there could be but a single Pope.27 We have not yet cited a phrase in which episcopus and papa occur together. The Collectio Avellana attests a greeting, archiepiscopo urbis Romae et patriarchae, in which the genitive will have depended upon both nouns in the Greek original, and must still do so in Latin, as no Western bishop was ever known simply as the patriarch.28 (This doublet, we may add, not only oVers some resemblance in grammatical form to episcopo et papae; it is the one pontical title in the Collectio that is regularly prefaced, like the greeting to Pope Silvester in the Donation,

24 Collectio Avellana 89, at CSEL XXXV, 339.27 (Celestino papa urbis Romae, after Justinian) and 90 at CSEL XXXV, 341.27 (identical wording, after Mennas). At Collectio Avellana 159.7 (CSEL XXXV.2, 610.4), papa magnae Romae (of Hormisdas) would appear to be an ingenious mistranslation. Note also that papa urbis Romae is substituted for the Greek 2pisk0pou &R 0mh" at Collectio Avellana 71, at CSEL XXXV, 162.2 and 163.2. 25 It occurs in Cassiodorus, Variae 10.18.3, 12.20; also Institutes 1.8 on the Gelasian index of forbidden books. Ennodius, a contemporary of Cassiodorus, is thought to have been the rst to use papa consistently in preference to episcopus or any augmented title: see the edition of W. Hartel, CSEL VI (Vienna, 1882), 103.16, etc. 26 Libri Carolini, ed. A. Freeman (MGH: Concilia II.1 [Hannover, 1998]), p. 124. 27 Decreta, ed. Alberigo et al., p. 143 passim. 28 Collectio Avellana 84.7, at CSEL XXXV.1, 322.7; 89 (ibid., 338.2021); 91.6 (ibid., 344.10); Hispanic title of 160.1 at CSEL XXXV.2, 610 apparatus. Where patriarchae stands without qualication in the Collectio, so does the neighbouring archiepiscopo: 107 at 499.12; 160 at 610.1617; 234 at 710.267. The same form is used of the patriarch of Constantinople in 234 at 713.7. 29 On the likelihood that the forger knew the Collectio, see Ro sch, ONOMA, p. 121 with footnotes.

120 M . J. E D WA R D S by a full display of the Emperors martial accolades.29) But in texts of the rst eight centuries, I have not discovered a closer approach to urbis Romae episcopo et papae than in the History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, who needs two words to convey the greatness of Celestine when he writes missus est Palladius episcopus primitus a Celestino episcopo et papa Romae ad Scottos.30 The syntax here permits only one translation, bishop and pope of Rome. Once again, the reading can be questioned, since the apparatus to Stephensons edition cites the variant a Celestino papa Romano in one text of high authority.31 Nevertheless the pleonastic title is attested in all but two of the twenty manuscripts collated for this edition, including the one which Stephenson thinks most free of interpolation.32 The variant may arise from assimilation to the phrase a Celestino papa Romano in the next chapter of the Historia Brittonum,33 while the opposite substitution would be more diYcult to explain. For our purposes the fact that the phrase occurs, and in a manuscript of the tenth century, matters more than the identity of the writer. The title papa Romaealways a hallmark of great pontiVsis peculiarly apt here, for it is never bestowed on Celestine elsewhere without allusion to his role at the Council of Ephesus,34 an occasion

Ch. 50 of Nennii Historia Brittonum, ed. J. Stephenson (London, 1838), p. 41. Palladius was in fact the rst bishop, not (as this assertion seems to imply) the apostle of Ireland. The same reading is endorsed by T. Mommsen, Chronica Minora (MGH: Auctorum Antiquissimorum, 3 [Berlin, 1898]), p. 194. As will appear, it is justied both by Barness method of counting manuscripts and by a more scientic preference for the diYcilior lectio. 31 Historia Brittonum, ed. Stephenson, p. 41; see ibid., pp. xii and xxxii on the antiquity of the Vatican manuscript (a). The Cottonian MS (D) reads a Celestino papa Romae. The Vatican reading is printed, without annotation, in J. Morris, Nennius (London/Chichester/Totowa, NJ, 1980), p. 74, the entire text being attributed in the preface to L. Faral, La Litte rature arthurienne, vol. 3 (Paris, 1929). Nevertheless, D. N. Dunville, The Historia Brittonum 3: Vatican Recension (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 28 and 105 observes that the chapter on Celestine appears only in the R copy of the Vatican recension, which is marred by orthographic idiosyncrasies. Stephensons favoured Harleian recension, though imperfect, is accepted as the best in the general preface (p. vii), and is reproduced in vol. 1 of the same edition. 32 On the Harleian MS see Historia Brittonum, ed. Stephenson, p. xxi. As neither Bede (HE 1.17) nor Prosper (Patrologia Latina 51, col. 595) has the same reading, it may be original to Nennius, and since indices of date in the narrative range from 796 to the mid-tenth century, there is a small chance that this passage in the Historia Brittonum is of the same date as the Donation. 33 Ch. 51 at Historia Brittonum, ed. Stephenson, p. 42. 34 In addition to citations above see Collectio Avellana 116b, at CSEL XXXV.2, 521.9; 159.4 (ibid., 609.1); Appendix 4.2 (ibid., 801.1).

30

THE BISHOP AND POPE OF ROME 121 which (like the mission of Palladius) enabled him to build up his prerogative through the exercise of inuence abroad. On the evidence reviewed here the translation bishop and pope of the city of Rome is seen to be consonant with the usage of the Donation and of the early Middle Ages. It implies that the author was able to give a touch of verisimilitude to his edict at the beginning, as he did when naming the consuls in his coda.35 We have seen that his style is not that of Byzantium (since he never speaks of the elder Rome); we may add that it is not that of the Franks, who favoured episcopus Romae or pontifex Romanus.36 And thus it may aVord a clue to the origin and purpose of the Donation. While the latter is generally agreed to be a product of the late eighth or the early ninth centuryand therefore of the epoch in which the Roman see, renouncing its allegiance to Byzantium, lent its spiritual authority to the Frankish crownit does not make the Pope a pensioner of the lay sovereign. On the contrary, it presents the largess of Constantine as a ratication of the august status which had already been conferred by God on the apostolic see and its incumbent. The claims of the city are hallowed by the miraculous cure of Constantine, by the images of Peter and Paul that Pope Silvester displays to the royal neophyte,37 and (as we now see) by the use of a title, urbis Romae episcopus et papa, which cements the tie between the heir of Peter and the urban bishopric. It is thus not only the Lateran38 but Rome herself whose privileges are secured in the Donation. By adhering to the form papa urbis Romae which had commemorated more than one conspicuous exercise of Petrine sovereignty, it ensured that there would be no smooth path from Rome to Avignon. M. J. Edwards On the pretence and its failure see Edwards, Constantine, 115. Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni 6 (Hadriani Romanae urbis episcopus) and 19 (Hadriani Romani ponticis); Leo III is pontifex Romanus at Annales Q.D. Einhardi, anno 799, p. 107 in the edition of F. Kurze and G. H. Pertz (Hannover, 1895). In the second half of the sixth century, Gregory of Tours could still write papa urbis Romae at History of the Franks 2.1. Urbis Romae papa occurs but once in his continuator Fredegarius, Chronica III, proem, 109, in describing an embassy to the Frankish court from that vigorous adversary of the Byzantine iconoclasts, Pope Gregory III. See B. Krusch (MGH: Rerum Merovingicarum, 2 [Hannover, 1889]), p. 122. 37 Chs. 67. Even Frankish chroniclers, reproducing lexical variants from the Acts of Silvester which underlie the Donation, record that the healing occurred on Mount Soracte or Sarepta: compare Annales Regni Francorum with Annales Q.D. Einhardi in Kurtze and Pertz (n. 36), pp. 67. 38 See Edwards, Constantine, p. xlv for bibliography.
36 35

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.