The Donation of Constantine

The term “the donation of Constantine” refers to a medieval forgery, long used to support the claims and authority of the medieval papacy.  According to the document, the emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, transferred as a gift the city of Rome and the western part of the Roman empire to the bishop of Rome.  The story goes like this.

       A dragon was menacing Rome (a problem for the Romans) and the emperor had leprosy (a problem for the emperor).  The Pope of the day, Pope Sylvester I, rescued the Romans from the threat of the dragon and cured the emperor of his leprosy through the sacrament of baptism.  In gratitude for the cure (and maybe for help with the dragon) the emperor bestowed on the see of Peter a “supremacy over the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople as also over all the churches of God in the whole earth”.  To support the papacy in style he also gave him the city of Rome and all the provinces and cities of Italy and the western regions.  That included gift of the Lateran Palace in Rome.

       Even apart from the bit about the dragon, for us the legendary and unhistorical nature of the story leaps off the page.  In fact, the story was rooted in a fifth-century legend The Acts of Sylvester.  The story was later used as part of the forged Donation of Constantine which was composed in about the eighth century to support the Pope’s struggle for power.  Though its authenticity was contested as early as about 1000 A.D., it was used to great effect in the thirteenth century.  Its inauthentic nature was exposed decisively in 1440 by Italian Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla using philological arguments.  It is now one of those embarrassing bits of western papal history now remembered mostly by historians and left buried by Catholic apologists.

       Why then drag it out of the dustbin and mention it now?  Because in the fourth century there was a donation of Constantine made to a bishop of Rome, though not the one made famous by the forgery.

       The bishop of Rome from 311-314 was a North African named Miltiades of whom pretty much nothing is known.  Eusebius in his Church History records that Constantine sent him a letter informing him that he had ordered some quarrelling bishops in North Africa to appear in Rome so that their quarrel (the future Donatist schism) might be settled; it seems that Miltiades was only to be present as the host bishop, the quarrel being adjudicated and settled by other bishops appointed by him. Nothing more is known of Bishop Miltiades.

       There was in that day in Rome a large property once belonging to a notorious playboy named Plautius Lateranus, later confiscated by the emperor Nero.  This valuable property, now called “the Lateran” property, eventually came to be part of the dowry of Fausta, the wife of the emperor Constantine (thus H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Rome). When Constantine assumed the throne and began to favour the churches, one of his favours was the gift of the Lateran to the bishop of Rome, then Bishop Miltiades. “There cannot have been” (as Morton wrote) “a more bewildered Pope in history”.

       Indeed.  Miltiades’ immediate predecessors had been martyred and exiled, had seen the sacred Scriptures sought out and burned, and watched their flock terrorized by the greatest pagan persecution in the entire history of the church.  And now to have the emperor grant to him and his flock the tremendous gift of the Lateran palace!  The property, transformed into a cathedral, was to be the home of the Popes for centuries afterward.  It was not until Pope Gregory XI returned from Avignon to Rome in 1377 that the move was made from the (then uninhabitable) Lateran to the Vatican.  Now that was a donation!

       The days of Bishop Miltiades began the long history of Christendom in the West and of Byzantium in the East— days which are now long gone.  At least here in the West the governments will not be favouring us with the gifts of large churches anytime soon.  If we want a Lateran or a Vatican or a large mega-church building we will have to fund and build it ourselves.

       This means that most of us will not be worshipping not in large Lateran-like buildings but in more modest structures.  And that, I suggest, is a good thing.

       The problem with large buildings is the amount of people that they can hold.  St. Peter’s Basilica nearby the Lateran can hold about 60,000 people standing and about 25,000 or more seated.  That means that St. John’s Lateran might hold about 18,000 people seated (figures are obviously estimates).  That is not so much a congregation as it is a medium-sized town, with far too many people to get to know.  Worshipping there is a bit like getting lost at a large concert: you feel you are there by yourself, lost in a sea of other anonymous concert-goers.

       Such gatherings are valuable as an occasional pilgrimage but less so as a weekly experience.  The New Testament epistles presuppose that the Sunday congregation is a family where everyone knows everyone else.  That is why the early church had the office of “door-keeper”.  The pre-Nicene doorkeeper was not a greeter welcoming all who approached but more of a security guard, making sure that he knew all who were coming in and keeping the Roman police out.  As Gregory Dix once observed in his The Shape of the Liturgy “people who are jointly risking at the least penal servitude for life by what they are doing generally make certain that they know their associates”.  

       The church as family is the norm and is the only real way that an individual Christian can be truly accountable to the local clerical leadership, for only in a family can the priest know his flock personally and well enough to take care of them. Christian discipleship and love are best exercised in a community small enough that the others in the congregation can be known by name and supported in their needs.  It is not so much that “small is beautiful” as it is that “family is essential”.  People are not truly persons to us until we know their names.  That is why the Good Shepherd calls us “by name” and why we are bid greet each other “by name” (Greek κατ᾽ὂνομα/ kat’onoma) as well (John 10:3, 3 John 14).

       Mega-church buildings are okay for mass gatherings such as concerts, conferences, pilgrimages, or ecumenical councils.  Buildings such as St. John’s Lateran, St. Peter’s basilica, and other emperor-sized structures of course were intended not just to house worshippers but also to express other and less functional meanings.   

Specifically, they were intended to make a political statement that the emperor was favouring the Christians and so Christians ought to be respected by the populace. Fair enough.  Cultural and political statements are inevitable and when making such statements through architecture, “size matters”.  But for the needs and growth of your average congregation size matters in a different way and the nurture of family relationships in those cases must be paramount.  If the congregation grows too big to function as a family, perhaps it is time to create a daughter congregation somewhere else.

       Constantine’s donation to Bishop Miltiades was a generous one and accomplished what he intended it to accomplish.  But it need not function as a paradigm for us today.  Those for whom worship revolves around a praise-band concert may indeed build and use concert-sized buildings to house their hundreds.  But those who strive to become a close family knit together by bonds of loving mutual service should be governed by different principles.  Presumably even Bishop Miltiades would understand.