Dante and The Donation of Constantin#Park PDF

Dante and the Donation of Constantine
Author(s): DABNEY G. PARK

Source: Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, No. 130 (2012), pp. 67-
161
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Dante and the Donation of Constantine
DABNEY G. PARK
stantine the Great, the emperor of all that Rome possessed from
The stantine Hadrian's Hadrian'
story thes Wall
is Wallto Thebes
an Great,andancient to Thebes
from Lisbon the one, emperor
to Trebizond, had and embedded from of all Lisbon that in the Rome murky to Trebizond, possessed past.1 Con- from had
contracted the dread disease of elephantaic leprosy. His pagan priests
advised him to bathe in the warm blood of 3,000 freshly killed infants.
Faced with their wailing and ululating mothers, Constantine broke into
tears and relented - an act that was taken as confirmation that the Roman
Empire was founded not on violence but on piety. In a dream, he was

visited by Saints Peter and Paul, who told the emperor that Sylvester, the
bishop of Rome and the leader of Christianity in the West, could cure his
leprosy. Constantine begged Sylvester to leave his cave on Mount Soracte
and to come to Rome to help him. Sylvester baptized Constantine at the
emperor's palace in the Lateran. When Constantine was immersed, he
saw a marvelous light, the heavens opened, Christ appeared, and his lep-
rosy was miraculously cured. In gratitude, Constantine made Sylvester the
head of all the bishops in the Christian Church throughout the world: he
bestowed on him the Lateran palace and many imperial insignia, and he
gave him the city of Rome and the western half of the empire.
The trouble is, there is no evidence that all of this really happened. In
fact, Constantine was baptized not by Sylvester but by the Arian Bishop
Eusebius of Nicomedia just before his death in 337.2 A conflicting version
of the story of Constantine, reported by Eusebius of Caesarea, altogether
ignores Sylvester. It relates that in a noonday dream before the Battle of
Milvian Bridge, Constantine saw a fiery cross in the sky and heard angels
singing "in hoc signo vinces" (by this sign you will conquer).3 Otto of
Freising, writing in the mid- thirteenth century, says that "what we read
67
Dante Studies, CXXX, 2012
in the Life of St. Sylvester about his [i.e., Constantine's] leprosy is seen to
be apocryphal."4 In 1440 Lorenzo Valla was able to prove that the entire
story of Constantine's conversion and his award of the empire to Sylvester
was a forgery.5 According to Johannes Fried, the "Donation of Constant-
ine" became "the most infamous forgery in the history of the world."6
The Document
The first fabrication was the Vita sancii Sylvestri papae (Life of Pope
Sylvester ), which dates from the fifth century.7 The Vita starts with th
story of Constantine's leprosy, his baptism, and his cure,8 and then
relates how the emperor promulgated an edict on each of the seven d
following his baptism.9 On the fourth day Constantine's edict grante
"privilege to the Roman Church and its pontiffs: that all the priests in th
Roman world should have him as the head."10 This edict made Sylvest
the head of the clergy of the Roman Church; it did not award him an
temporal domains or tides. Sylvester is referred to by the tides episco
and pontifex. Pontifex was at the time a pagan title for religious advisors
the emperor; it had not previously been applied to, nor was it reser
for the pope.11 On the eighth day the emperor went to church of S
Peter and confessed his sins aloud, after which he promised to build
temple in the Lateran palace. The document says nothing about a gift
donation of churches, land, or property, much less imperial authority.
The second fabrication of the story of Sylvester and Constantine w
imbedded in a document known as the Constitutum Constantini ( Constitu
tion of Constantine). This document, forged in the papal chancery in
mid-eighth century, went much farther. Here Constantine was far m
generous: he gave Pope Sylvester and his successors the Lateran pala
the city of Rome, certain imperial insignia, and all of the provinces
western regions, places, and cities of Italy.12 The story presented in
Constitutum Constantini is not about events in the early fourth century,
instead about a major shift in the territorial and political position of
popes in the eighth century, over four hundred years after Constanti
By this time the district of Rome was a subdivision of the Byzantin
Empire, governed under the exarchate of Ravenna. The popes ow
the Lateran Palace, St. Peter's across the Tiber, St. Paul's outside the wa
other church buildings both in Rome and beyond, and some large lan
68
Dante and the Donation of Constantine, dabney g. park
estates in Rome and the surrounding area, in southern Italy and in Sicily.
These lands had been left to popes as prominent families had become
extinct over the course of four dark centuries.13 Laymen looking for abso-
lution of their sins and admission to heaven continued to leave vast prop-
erties to the church through the following centuries.14 Charters granting
lay properties to the church were occasionally forged, and during the
crusades the church inherited and purchased many landed estates when
crusading nobles either died in the Holy Land or sold their properties to
churches to fund the trips.15 Although its landed possessions were scat-
tered, the Roman church became the largest landowner in Italy.
By the early eighth century the Byzantine Empire was stretched to its
limits, unable to protect or effectively control the city of Rome. In 726
the Byzantine emperor issued an edict unilaterally commanding the
destruction of all saints' images in the Christian world. The Western
church simply could not accept this edict, and the emperor in Constanti-
nople was unable to enforce it. A 731 synod in Rome responded by
declaring that anyone who attacked the images of the saints would be
excommunicated. The iconoclastic controversy effectively "broke the
cord that bound [Rome] to the East."16 The popes began to fill the power
vacuum in the West and to hew an independent course for the Roman
church.17
The Lombard threat further divided Rome from Constantinople. By

the early eighth century these barbarians had conquered almost all the
Italian peninsula and severed the lifeline between the cities of Ravenna
and Rome. In 751 the Lombards conquered Ravenna and drove out the
Byzantine exarch. The new pope, Stephen II (752-757), saw opportunity
in adversity. He sought to unite under his rule the Duchy of Rome, the
city of Venice, and the duchies of Ravenna, Spoleto, Benevento, and the
Pentapolis (the five cities on the Adriatic to the south of Ravenna). But
he needed help. In France, Charles Martel and his son Pepin had recently
replaced the Merovingian monarchy. Stephen decided to make a deal
with the Carolingian Franks. For the first time a pope crossed the Alps:
Stephen II met with Pepin at St. Denis, anointed him a Christian king in
754, and named him "Patrician of the Romans," a title formerly held by
the Byzantine exarch of Ravenna. In gratitude King Pepin attacked the
Lombards and conquered the Duchy of Ravenna, the Duchy of the Pen-
tapolis, and other cities between Ravenna and Rome. He then handed
69
the great iron keys of twenty-two cities to Stephen II. They were depos-
ited in St. Peter's tomb, where they may be found today.
It was in this context that a clever papal bureaucrat used the legendary
hagiography of Sylvester to forge the Constitutum Constantini , which in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries became known as the Donation of
Constantine.18 The forged Constitutum cemented this position and gave
the popes a legitimate claim to dominion over this territory. The pope
had become de jure as well as de facto a feudal lord, controlling vast lands
and cities in central and southern Italy and enjoying their income.19
The story of Constantine's alleged gift eventually found its way into
the Decretum , the great compilation of canon law accomplished by Gratian
in the twelfth century, where it was included as a palea, or supplementary
material.20 It was used occasionally by the popes in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries to justify their temporal and political authority over
Rome and the areas that became known as the Patrimony of St. Peter and
later as the Papal States. The Donation was sometimes used by hierocratic
popes, canon lawyers, and theologians to claim papal superiority over the
empire.21 In a parallel development on the imperial side, the validity of
the Donation was rejected by civil lawyers and imperial publicists.
There is no doubt that Constantine transformed the Western world.
Christianity became the dominant religion, the bishops of Rome became
the popes of the Roman Church, and over time they became securely
established as the undisputed heads of Latin Christendom. Dante would
later say that the eagle of the empire had collided with the chariot of the
church and left it covered with the feathers of property, temporal power,
and earthly cares ( Purg . 33.38). However, it was in the eighth century, not
in the fourth, that the papacy acquired significant temporal power. In
Dante's time, no one rejected the authenticity of the gift; that is, both
sides accepted as fact that Constantine had made the gift to Sylvester.
Dante and the imperial side rejected the validity of the Donation on
grounds that we shall shortly explore.
The controversy over the Donation continued even after Lorenzo
Valla proved that the Constitutum Constantini was a forgery.22 Prue Shaw
says that for Dante, Constantine's gift of property and temporal power
"was the key event in human history which explained the sorry state of
the modern world."23 Dante marked with the Donation of Constantine
the moment when the Church started down the path of corruption by
acquiring property, wealth, temporal power, and political authority.
70
The Commedia
Readers of Dante are familiar with the references to Constantine and the
Donation in the Commedia. The nineteenth canto of Inferno opens with

an apostrophe bewailing the sin of simony, the sale of church offices:
O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci

che le cose di Dio, che di bontate
deon essere spose, e voi rapaci
per oro e per argento avolterate.
Inf. 19.1-424
Simon Magus was the Samarían magician who tried to buy the power of
conferring the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. Peter rebuked him,
saying "Keep thy money to thyself, to perish with thee, because thou has
thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money" (Acts 8:18-
20).25 The "followers'' of Simon Magus were prelates guilty of the sin of
simony, traffic in the offices of the church or, in more general terms, misuse
of ecclesiastical authority.26 Dante's passage is pertinent to the Donation
because it sets up his subsequent direct reference to Constantine. The
"things of God" include ordination to holy orders and appointments to
church offices, including promotion to canon, bishop, archbishop, abbot,
and cardinal. Such appointments were almost always tied to specific proper-
ties and to the income from those properties. These "things of God" should
be the brides of goodness or of good men, but they cannot honor their
good spouses because they are preyed upon by prelates guilty of simony,
who commit adultery with them. In this act the corrupt prelates betray a
promise as sacred as a marital vow and as holy as Christ's promise to be
faithful to the church.
Simony and nepotism, both violations of the church's proper role as

stewards of temporal goods for the poor of Christ, dominate Canto 19 of
Inferno. Dante the pilgrim finds Pope Nicholas III buried upside down in
a tube in the rock, with flames coming off his feet. The rock is an infernal
parody of the church. Because they sought only earthly things, the simo-
niac popes are set upside-down in the rock, a parody of the crucifixion.27
Incensed, Dante addresses Nicholas III, saying:28
Di voi pastor s'accorse il Vangelista,

quando colei che siede sopra Taque
puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista.
Inf 19.106-8
71
Note that Dante does not say that Nicholas III is like the Great Whore of
Babylon in chapter 7 of the Apocalypse of St. John - he says that Nicholas
is "she that sitteth upon the waters."29 Dante continues:
Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre,

non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
Inf 19.115-17 (emphasis added)
In Inferno 19 we experience Dante's extreme anger with the sin of

simony, the pomp and luxury of the Holy See, and the misuse of church
property. Dante scorchingly upbraids Nicholas III for promoting mem-
bers of his own family, and in the process he names two other popes who,
in Dante's eyes, were as guilty of abusing the power and wealth of the
church: Boniface VIII and Clement V. The Donation of Constantine,
he charges, was the mother of much evil. Constantine's conversion
prompted an act of generosity, but this was not the cause of such evil; the
evil followed because Sylvester "took" (prese) the dowry from him and
used it to become "the first rich Father." It is most interesting that the
early commentators, most of the later ones, and many of the English trans-
lators have missed the significance of Dante's selection of the word prese,
which clearly puts the burden of blame on Sylvester for the evil that
resulted from Constantine's act.30
In calling Sylvester "the first rich Father" and alluding to the Great
Whore of Babylon, Dante foreshadows his treatment of the Donation of
Constantine in Purgatorio as the critical, disastrous event in the history of
the early church. Note, however, that Dante does not accuse Constantine
for this disaster, and he even comes close to excusing the emperor by
excepting his conversion to Christianity from the evil that followed. Bit-
terly as his words in Inferno 19 lament the Donation, Dante does not
challenge the fact that Sylvester took Rome and parts of the West from
Constantine. However, it was the pope, not Constantine, who was at
fault for the devastating result.
Dante's anger about the Donation of Constantine in Inferno 19 turns to
dismay in Purgatorio 32. Here the pilgrim witnesses the pageant of the
Church Militant, a reenactment of the history of the church from the
time of Christ to his own day. Beatrice commands Dante to keep his eyes
on the chariot of the church and to write down what he sees when he
gets back to earth for the sake of the world that lives in an awful state:
72
Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive,

al carro tieni or li occhi, e quel che vidi,
ritornato di là, fa che tu scrive.
Purg. 32.103-531
With this command, Beatrice raises Dante's version of the history of the
church to the highest level of importance.
First, an eagle attacks the chariot of the church with full force and
shakes it violently (Purg. 32.109-17). Since this eagle is described as the
"uccel di Giove" (112), the event is commonly interpreted as the perse-
cution of the early church by the Roman Empire. Then a fox pounces
on the chariot and is repelled by Beatrice (Purg. 32.118-23). Most com-
mentators interpret the fox as the heresies that threatened the church in
the first few centuries. Third, the eagle descends upon the chariot again,
this time leaving it laden with feathers (Purg. 32.124-29). At this point, a
voice from heaven cries out, "O navicella mia, com' mal se' carca!" (Purg.
32.129).32
All commentators agree with Pietro di Dante in identifying the feathers
with temporal goods and the episode with the Donation of Constantine.33
The eagle's feathers multiply and the chariot of the church becomes cov-
ered with the plumage of wealth and earthly power (Purg. 32.136-41). It
is then transformed into the beast of the Apocalypse, who carries the
Great Whore "like a fortress on a towering mountain" (Purg. 32.142-
50). 34 In the next canto, Dante calls the Great Whore a thief ( fuia , Par.
33.44), 35 further reinforcing the nature of Sylvester's act in taking the
Donation from Constantine. The emperor's intention, however, may
have been pure; he awarded the gift "forse con intenzion sana e benigna"
(Purg. 32.138).36 If the Donation were an occasion for sin, the fault lay
not with Constantine but with the church, which became mired in ava-
rice* wealth, and corruption.
Expressed as extreme anger in Inferno and as profound dismay in Purga-
torio , Dante's perspective on the Donation of Constantine in these two
cantos is completely consistent. This is also true of the third important
reference to the disastrous gift in Paradiso (20.55-60). Dante places Con-
stantine in the heaven of Jupiter with those who loved and exercised
justice. Here the eagle of the empire names the souls that form its eye. At
line 55 the eagle turns to Constantine:
L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco,

sotto buona intenzion che fé mal frutto,
per cedere al pastor si fece greco:
73
ora conosce come il mal dedutto

dal suo bene operar non li è nocivo,
avvenga che sia 'l mondo indi distrutto.
Par. 20.55-60
Constantine "turned Greek" by ceding the West to Sylvester and by

moving his capital from Rome to Byzantium, renamed as Constantinople.
Here we learn that Dante accepted Constantine's intentions as worthy but
stated that they bore an awful fruit. The Donation did not prevent the
emperor from being elected to Heaven, but because the popes mistreated
Constantine's award, the world was destroyed. Dante says here that the
Donation of Constantine brought not only the church but the entire
world to ruin.
Constantine enjoys exceptional status for Dante not only because he

was emperor of the entire Roman Empire and the first emperor to
become a Christian, but also because he believed that Virgil foretold the
birth of Christ in the Fourth Eclogue.37 Dante refers to Constantine in two
other places in the Commedia. In the heaven of Mercury, he has Justinian
say that "Costantin l'aquila volese / contr' al corso del ciel" (Par. 6.1-2),
referring to Constantine's decision to move his capital to Byzantium. By
implication, this act left Rome and the West in the hands of Sylvester. In
turning eastward, Constantine unnaturally reversed the westward journey
of Aeneas.38
The other reference to Constantine is a bit more complex. Among the

evil counselors in Hell, we find Guido da Montefeltro, the famous warrior
turned Franciscan. In telling his story to Dante and Virgil, Guido uses a
simile to describe his summons by Boniface VIII:
Ma come Costantin chiese Silvestro

d'entro Siratti a guerir de la lebbre,
così mi chiese questi per maestro
a guerir de la sua superba febbre.
Inf. 27.94-97
Here the roles are reversed: it is the pope who is sick, and he calls a former
layman to come and help him. While this episode underlines Dante's
view of Boniface's deceitfulness, it does not shed light on the Donation
of Constantine.39
Dante's view of the Donation of Constantine is closely tied to his con-

cept of the church's proper role as stewards for the poor in Paradiso , where
74
he has Bonaventure of Bagnoregio40 say that St. Dominic appealed to the

Holy See for the "privilege of fighting / against the errors of the world":
non dispensare o due o tre per sei,

non la fortuna di prima vacante,
non decimas , quae sunt pauperum Dei.
Par. 12.91-93
Unlike St. Dominic, other pastors sought favors from the popes, including
lucrative benefices that enabled them to give away only small portions of
their income ("two or three instead of six"), to look for opportunities to
fill the next vacancy, and to get their hands on the tithes that really belong
to Christ's poor instead of to the church. The notion that the tenths, or
tithes, were for the poor was a common idea throughout the Middle
Ages.41
Later in Paradiso Dante returns to the theme of the church as a guardian
of property for the needs of its people instead of for nepotism, which is
closely tied to simony. Criticizing the abuses of his own order, St. Bene-
dict says:
che quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tutto

è de la gente che per Dio dimanda;
non di parenti né d'altro più brutto.
Par. 22.82-84
The church guards rather than owns temporal wealth, and it does so in
behalf of those who need it; temporal wealth does not exist to be distrib-
uted to relatives. The "poor of Christ" are "those who ask for it [i.e.,
what the church guards] in God's name." Others saw two purposes for
the church's temporal goods: they were for building up the church and
for the poor. Dante never admitted that the church's resources were for
anything other than the poor of Christ.42
The Convivio , the Monarchia, and the Letters
Dante does not mention the Donation of Constantine in the Convivio ,

but he prepares the way for his treatment of the subject in the Monarchia
with his discussion of scope of the emperor's authority. In Book 4 he says
that it is necessary for the "umana generazione" (human race) for there
to be a
75
monarchy, - that is, a single principality, having one prince who, possessing all
things and being unable to desire anything else, would keep the kings content within
the boundaries of their kingdoms and preserve among them the peace. ( Conv .
4.4.4; emphasis added).43
Since the monarch possesses everything, the implication of this passage is

that the rights to all property flow from the emperor. Although Dante
clearly sees the authority of the emperor founded on his ultimate posses-
sion of everything in the world, it is interesting that Dante declines here
and elsewhere to use the label dominus mundi (lord of the world) for the
emperor, which was embedded in Roman law.
While Dante expresses anger, dismay, and regret regarding the Dona-
tion of Constantine in the Commedia , he uses the sharp scalpel of reason
to analyze it in the Monarchia - without, however, completely abandoning
the intensity of his emotion. The Monarchia , after all, was written as a
piece of rhetoric in an effort to persuade its readers of its fundamental
point: that the world should be ruled by a single monarchy. Although
most scholars now accept Corrado Ricci's and Giorgio Petrocchi's dating
of the first few cantos of Paradiso to 1316 and the Monarchia to 1317 or
1318, it is possible, as we shall see, that the Monarchia was written as early
as 1312-14.44 In either case, Dante stopped writing the Commedia to turn
his attention to this other, very different rhetorical project.45 Dante was
probably living in Verona at the time, hosted by Cangrande della Scala,
the Lord of Verona, who had been appointed imperial vicar of Verona
and Vicenza for life by the emperor Henry VII.
In the Monarchia , Dante discusses the proper relationship between the
papacy and the empire in scholastic, canonistic, legal, and philosophical
terms. Toward the end of the first book he claims that the worldwide
peace established by the perfect monarchy of Augustus Caesar was
destroyed when "that seamless garment [tunica inconsutilis ,46 i.e., the
empire] was first rent by the talon of cupidity [cupiditatis ungue]" (Mon.
1.16.3). As a result the state of the world became so woeful that Dante
wishes "that we might not [have to] witness it" (Mon. 1.16.3).47 The
seamless garment of the empire was whole until it was cut into pieces by
the Donation of Constantine, to which this passage clearly refers.48 The
talon of cupidity must refer to Sylvester; the seamless garment was torn
by him in taking the Donation, not by Constantine, who bears no blame
for the awful results.
76
In the second book of the Monarchia, Dante extends the blame beyond
Sylvester to corrupt pastors and prelates in the church, "those who style
themselves ardent defenders of the Christian faith." These pastors "have
no pity for Christ's poor": they steal the patrimony (patrimonium) of the
poor and defraud the churches of their revenues. These pastors use the
church's resources to increase the wealth of their own relatives. Further-
more, they offer no thanks for receiving these resources from the empire:
But the impoverishment of the church does not happen without God's judg-
ment, since her resources are not used to help the poor (whose patrimony the
church's wealth is), and since no gratitude is shown for receiving them from the
empire which offers them. (Mon. 2.10.2)49
Immediately following this sentence, Dante makes the astounding

statement that the church's resources should be returned to the empire:
Let them [i.e., the church's resources] return [redeant] where they came from.
They came well, they return badly, since they were given in good faith and badly
held [male possessa]. (Mon. 2. 10. 3) 50
Dante here makes two charges: that the church has either acquired or
used the resources of the church badly; and that the church has failed to
show gratitude for the Donation. It should be noted that Dante's use of
the word possessa in this passage is one of three places in any of his works
where he uses a form of the word possessio with regard to church property,
and here of course it is coupled to the word male. "Male possessa" could
mean that the church's resources were being abused, or it could mean
that the process of giving or receiving possession of those resources could
be mala (that is, illegitimately given or received), or it could mean both
things. The close link in this passage between bene data and mala possesa
clearly emphasizes the third interpretation, that the church's resources
were improperly transferred and poorly used. As we shall see below, pos-
sessio in Roman law was used to denote physical control of a thing,
including the right to use it, but not to refer to the ultimate right of
ownership, or dominium. Dante reinforces this point in the third book of
the Monarchia when he says that the church could not accept the Donation
of Constantine by way of possession (Mon. 3.10.15); it could, however,
accept the Donation as a patrimony awarded as a protectorate or guard-
ianship (patrocinium ), but non tanquam possessor (Mon. 3.10.17). Thus Dante
denies both dominium and possessio to the church.
77
Dante Studies , CXXX, 2012
In preparation for his thorough analysis of the Donation of Constantine

in the third book of the Monarchia , Dante places a poignant apostrophe at
the very end of the second book. The region of Italy had been torn
asunder by the consequences of the Donation. He addresses the people of
Italy with deep irony: "O happy people, O you glorious Ausonia! If only
that man who made your empire weak [infirmatovi had never been born,
or [if] only his pious intention 'pia intentio ] had not seduced him!" (Mon.
2.1 1.8). 51 Constantine is the infirmator, his pia intentio is the Donation.
Antonino Pagliaro points out that Dante here clearly sees the Donation as
a great mistake, in which Constantine fell under the thrust of his good
intention.52 The implication is that the world would not have fallen into
great evil had Constantine not made the award. In this passage Dante
comes close to attributing blame to Constantine. However, while Con-
stantine is the agent of this action, Dante still sees his intention as pious.
Sylvester is not named here, but he must be at fault because Dante excul-
pates Constantine once again. The stage is now set for the third book
of the Monarchia , where we learn much more about the Donation of
Constantine.
The drama of the Monarchia reaches its apex Book 3, Chapter 10,
where Dante offers his most direct and most detailed discussion of the
Donation of Constantine. Here he shows that he was well aware that the
canon lawyers known as the Decretalists used the Donation to claim that
imperial authority was dependent on papal authority. They declared that
Constantine gave the imperial seat (Rome) to Sylvester and to the church
along with many other dignities and privileges. Dante does not directly
refer to the text of the Donation; instead, he says that "some people
maintain" that Constantine had made such a gift. Of course Dante rejects
the claims of the Decretalists. This is the only place in Dante's works
where he uses any version of the word dona or donare in relation to the
Donation of Constantine, and here he puts the word donavit in the
mouths of the Decretalists. In fact Dante seems assiduously to avoid calling
the Donation of Constantine a gift.53
For his part, Dante proposed a different concept of the act of Constan-
tine's generosity. Disputing what these people say, he turns his attention
from arguments based on theology to arguments based on human reason
(Mon. 3.10.3). Following medieval logic, he offers seven syllogisms to
prove that the Donation of Constantine, as conceived by those who use
it to claim that imperial authority is dependent on papal authority, is
78
invalid. (For brevity, I offer here only the conclusions of these syllogisms;
for the full analysis, see the appendix to this study.)
The first syllogism is the false proposition against which Dante argues
in this chapter. The false conclusion of this overall syllogism is this:54
1 . No one can hold [temporal authority] legitimately unless granted it

by the church (Mon. 3.10.3).
To reject this conclusion Dante denies the minor premise that "Roman
authority to rule belongs to the church,"55 which, he says, his opponents
base on the authority given by Constantine to the church via the Dona-
tion. "I say that their 'proof' proves nothing," Dante says, "because Con-
stantine was not in a position to give away [alienare] the privileges of the
empire [imperii dignitatem ], nor was the church in a position to accept
them" (Mon. 3.10.4).56
Arguing against the interpretation of "some people" and presenting his
own view of the Donation, Dante then offers six syllogisms drawn from
reason to demonstrate that it would be impossible for Constantine to have
made any such donation. The next five syllogisms end with the following
positive conclusions:
2. The emperor cannot split up the empire (Mon. 3.10.6).57

3. The empire cannot destroy itself (Mon. 3.10.9).
4. The empire precedes the emperor (Mon. 3.10.10).
5. The emperor, as emperor, cannot change the empire (Mon.
3.10.11).
6. The emperor can cut off some part of the empire [false] (Mon.
3.10.12).
All but one of these five syllogisms deal, in one way or another, with
the fundamental point that the empire is an inalienable and indivisible
unity, which neither Constantine nor any other emperor could possibly
break apart.58 Gustavo Vinay in his edition of the Monarchia claims that
these conclusions of Dante's all come from Roman law,59 and Bruno
Nardi asserts that they are drawn from an imperial legal tradition dating
back to Otto III.60 Both Vinay and Nardi note that the title "Augustus"
comes from the word "augment," suggesting that the emperor must
increase and not diminish the empire; and both refer to the principle that
79
the emperor has no equal (par in parem non habet imperium ), meaning that
the successors of an emperor cannot countermand a precedessor's edicts.
Vinay quotes from Accursius's Glossa ad Authenticum of Roman law,
which includes the additional point that there can be only one office of
the empire. On closer examination, however, it is clear that Dante did not
in these passages use the argument stemming from the title of Augustus, or
the concept of the emperor having no equal,61 or the principle that there
cannot be two offices of the empire. He did use a fundamental principle
from Roman law that relates generally to four of the five syllogisms,
namely, the idea that the emperor cannot destroy or give away any part
the empire "because in that way the entire empire could perish [quia sic
possit totum imperium perire ]."62
Now we reach the sixth and final syllogism. This conclusion entirely
changes the course of the argument to involve the relationship between
the empire and the papacy. Dante here makes an astonishing statement.
7. The church could not accept [the Donation] as a possession, nor

could Constantine give it as an irrevocable gift (Mon. 3.10.13-15).63
Dante repeats the assertion that Constantine could not give the empire
away, and he vigorously asserts the principle that the church could not
receive such a donation. In his comments on this syllogism, he refers to
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to distinguish between the giver (the agent)
and the receiver (the patient) in order to maintain that "for a donation
[collationem]64 to be legitimate requires a suitable disposition [dispositio] not
just in the giver, but in the recipient as well" (Mon. 3.10.13). In other
words, for a gift to be valid, the person receiving it must be able to receive
it legitimately. It is true that in the fourth book of the Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle says that "a generous act does not depend on the amount given,
but on the characteristics of the giver," but he says nothing about the
proper disposition of the recipient.65 Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary
on the Ethics , stretches Aristotle's meaning to include the person receiving
the gift.66
Following Aquinas, Dante then focusses on the disposition of the
church to receive a gift like the Donation of Constantine:
But the church was in no sense properly disposed [indisposita erat] to receive
temporal things on account of the express prohibition recorded by Matthew
[10:9]: "Possess not [Nolite possidere] gold or silver, nor money in your girdles,
80
nor purse for your journey, etc." And although we find a slight modification of
this precept in certain respects in Luke [22:35-36], still I have been unable to
discover that permission to possess [ad possessionem ] gold and silver was granted
to the church subsequent to that prohibition. (Mon. 3.10.14)67
Dante's reason for declaring that the church is not capable of receiving
temporal things is that the gospel of Matthew expressly prohibits posses-
sion when Christ tells the apostles to "Possess not gold, silver, or money"
(Matt. 10:9 - 10).68 He then allows that this precept was somewhat relaxed
in Luke 22:35-36, 69 but insists that he has not been able to find that the
church was ever granted permission to possess gold and silver after the
prohibition in Matthew.
And thus, if the church could not receive it, then even supposing that Constant-
ine had been in a position to perform that action, nonetheless the action itself
was not possible because of the unsuitability [ indispositionem ] of the "patient" or
recipient. It is therefore clear that the church could not accept it as a possession
[per modum possessionis ], nor could Constantine give it as an irrevocable gift [per
modum alienationis ]. (Mon. 3.10.15)70
Dante then clearly and concisely states his position on the Donation of
Constantine and on the nature of church property:
The emperor could however delegate [deputare] a patrimony and other resources
[ Patrimonium et alia] to the church [ecclesie] as a protectorate [in patrocinium], pro-
vided it was without prejudice to the superior imperial authority [inmoto semper
superiori dominio ], whose unity admits no division. And God's vicar could receive
it, not as owner [non tanquam possessor] but as administrator [dispensatoi] of its fruits
for the church for Christ's poor, as the apostles are known to have done [Acts
4:34-37]. (Mon. 3.10.16-17)71
The emperor was capable of making the pope a deputy and awarding the
church a patrimony in patronage or as a protectorate (in patrocinium) but
not as an outright gift, in which property would be alienated and owner-
ship would be tranferred. It would be difficult for Dante to state more
clearly his view that the church had absolutely no right to the ownership,
possession, or dominion of property.72 It is equally clear that the superior
dominion of the property of the church belonged, and still belongs, to
the emperor alone. Dante had previously summarized this point before
detailing the syllogisms: "Constantine was not in a position to give away
the privileges of empire, nor was the church in a position to accept them"
81
(Mon. 3.10.5). The Donation of Constantine, according to Dante, was

not a gift but a revokable patronage or protectorship (patrocinium).
Dante repeats the idea that the emperor has ultimate dominium over the
whole world in a public letter that he wrote in September or October of
1310, addressed to "To all and singular the Princes of Italy, and the Sena-
tors of the Sacred City [Rome], as also the Dukes, Marquises, Counts,
and Peoples [of Italy]" ( Ep . 5, Address).73 After stating that the power of
Peter and Caesar bifurcate from God as from one point (Ep. 5.5), he
underlines the emperor's ultimate dominion of the whole world in a dif-
ferent and more animated way by urging all the peoples of Italy, of what-
ever station,
to stand in reverent awe before his [i.e., Henry VII's] presence, ye who drink of
his streams, and sail upon his seas; ye who tread the sands of the shores and the
summits of the mountains that are his; ye who enjoy all public rights and possess
private property [res privates . . . possidetis] by the bond of his law, and no other-
wise. Be ye not like the ignorant, deceiving your own selves, after the manner
of them that dream, and say in their hearts, "We have no Lord" [Dominum non
habemus]. For all within the compass of the heavens is his garden and his lake; for
"the sea is God's, and He made it, and His hands prepared the dry land" [Psalms
95:5]. Wherefore it is made manifest by the wonders that have been wrought that
God predestined the Roman Prince, and the church confesses that He afterward
confirmed him by the word of the Word. (Ep. 5.7)74
Shortly afterward Dante refers to Christ's admonition to "Render there-

fore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are
God's" (Matt. 22:21), "as if He were dividing two kingdoms" (Ep. 5.9).75
While the church could not actually own property, Dante thought that
it could and should act as a steward or caretaker for the resources awarded
to the church by Constantine and other laymen over the years - a theme
already expressed in the Commedia . Dante returns to the theme of stew-
ardship in Chapter 13: "Indeed, if Constantine had not had authority,"
Dante tells us, "he could not legitimately have handed over to the church
as a protectorate [in patrocinium Ecclesie ] those things of the empire which
he did hand over [ilia que de Imperio deputavit ]" (Mon. 3.13.7).76 Had this
occurred, the church would have used the bestowal of this benefice (collat-
ione) unjustly. But "God wishes offerings to be spotless [i inmaculatas ]," like
those of the Levites, so "it is foolish [stultum] to think that God would
wish that something should be received which he has forbidden should
be offered" (Mon. 3.13.8). The proposition is false, Dante says, because it
82
would be "terribly improper" {valde inconveniens) for the church to abuse

its patrimony this way {Mon. 3.12.9).
The Levites were a model for Dante of how the clergy should function.
As the tribe in charge of sacred things, they were to avoid being unclean
in any way,77 and they were prohibited from inheriting in Israel; therefore
they did not own property.78 Without mentioning the Donation of Con-
stantine, Marco Lombardo bewails the Roman church's involvement in
temporal affairs and charges Dante to tell the world that the church has
fallen in the mud:
"Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma,

per confondere in sé due reggimenti,
cade nel fango, e sé brutta e la soma."
Purg. 16.127-29
Dante the pilgrim responds by saying that he now understands why the
Levites could not inherit property:
"O Marco mio," diss' io, "bene argomenti;

e or discerno perché dal retaggio
li figli di Levi furono essenti."
Purg. 16.130-32
In Monarchia 14.3, Dante returns to the issue of the church's involve-

ment in temporal things, which flows from the ownership of property. In
an effort to prove that divine law did not give the church the power
{virtutem) to confer authority on the Roman prince, Dante writes:
But it [the power to confer authority on the Roman prince] did not come [to
the church] by divine law either, for the whole of divine law is encompassed
within the two Testaments, and I am quite unable to find in them that involve-
ment in or concern for temporal things was recommended to the first or later
priesthood. On the contrary, I find that the first priests were expressly enjoined
to keep aloof from such involvement, as is clear from God's words to Moses
[Numbers 18:20 and 25]; as were the priests of the new order in Christ's word
to his disciples [Matt. 10:9]; freedom from such involvement would not be possi-
ble if the authority of temporal power flowed from the priesthood, since at the
very least it would have had the responsibility for taking action to confer author-
ity, and then for continual watchfulness lest the person on whom authority had
been conferred deviate from the path of righteousness. {Mon. 3.14.4-5)79
All of divine law, he says, is contained within the Old and New Testa-
ments. Dante states that in reading these texts he has not been able to find
83
any scriptural authority to support the church's involvement in temporal

affairs. On the contrary, he cites again the passages from Numbers and
Matthew prohibiting both the Levites ("the first priests") and "the priests
of the new order" from any involvement in or care for (. sollicitudinem sive
curam) temporal things. He goes on to say that if temporal power flowed
from the priesthood, it would be impossible for the church to be free of
such involvement and concern.
Dante drives this point home: "The power to confer authority on the
realm (regnum) of our mortality [i.e., on temporal affairs] is in conflict with
the nature of the church" (Mon. 3. 15.1), 80 with the result that this cannot
be numbered among the church's powers. What is the nature of the
church? "The 'form' of the church is simply the life of Christ [Forma
autem Ecclesie nichil aliud est quam vita Cristi] " (Mon. 3.15.3)81 - as clear and
as direct a statement as Dante makes anywhere that the whole church
should follow the example of Christ in word and deed. He then says that
Christ's "life was the model and exemplar for the church militant, espe-
cially for the pastors, and above all for the supreme pastor, whose task it
is to feed the lambs and the sheep [John 21:16-17]" (Mon. 3.15.3).82 The
implication clearly is that the pope's task is only to feed the lambs and the
sheep and not to manage property, administer temporal authority, and
meddle in temporal affairs; for these are things that Christ renounced for
himself:
Christ renounced this kind of kingdom in the presence of Pilate, saying: "My
kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my
servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom
not from hence [John 18:36]." (Mon. 3.15.5)83
Of course, Christ is Lord of this world, but "as a model for the church,
he had no concern for this kingdom" (Mon. 3.15.6).84 Instead of hunger-
ing after temporal power, the church "should speak in this same way and
feel in this same way" (Mon. 3.15. 8), 85 for it is in the very nature of the
church to renounce this world: "From this we deduce that the power to
confer authority on this earthly kingdom is in conflict with the nature of
the church" (Mon. 3.15.9).86 Dante concludes: "Thus we have sufficiendy
proved . . . that the authority of the empire in no way derives from the
church" (Mon. 3.15.10).87
84
The Text of the Donation of Constantine
Dante himself implies that his knowledge of the Donation is secondhand.

In fact, he does not mention the text of the Donation direcdy, only claim-
ing that "some people maintain" (dicunt adhuc quidam) that certain things
are true:
Again, some people maintain that the emperor Constantine, cured of leprosy
the intercession of Sylvester who was then supreme Pontiff, made a gift ( donav
to the church of the seat of empire [i.e., Rome], along with many other imp
privileges ( dignitatibus ). From this they argue that since that time no one can
on those imperial privileges ( dignitates ) unless he receives them from the chur
to whom (they say) they belong; and it would indeed follow from this that
one authority is dependent on the other, as they claim {Mon. 3.10.1-2; emph
added).88
Bruno Nardi claimed that Dante had no direct knowledge of Gratian's

text,89 but Michele Maccarrone believed it to be Dante's source.90 The
entire forged ninth-century Constitutum Constantini found its way into
the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals.91 Gratian cut the text in half, leaving out
the front end of the story, which told of Constantine's leprosy, con-
version, confession of faith, and baptism.92 From this point on the Con-
stitutum Constantini , the Pseudo-Isidorian version, and Gratian's text are
virtually identical. They describe Constantine giving awards to Sylvester
that are considerably more extensive and detailed than those Dante may
have known or imagined. Beyond the ample adulation of Sylvester, the
documents state that Constantine delivered to Sylvester and his successors,
until the end of the world (in finem mundi),
our imperial Lateran Palace . . . then a diadem, that is, the crown of our head,
and at the same time a tiara; and also, the shoulder band, - that is, the collar that
usually surrounds our imperial neck; and also the purple mantle and crimson
tunic, and all the imperial raiment; and the same rank as those presiding over the
imperial cavalry; conferring also the imperial scepters, and, at the same time, the
spears and standards; also the banners and different imperial ornaments, and all
the advantage of our high imperial position, and the glory of our power.93
The Lateran Palace had been equipped with a new baptistery, and Con-
stantine also built two new churches for the pope: St. Peter's and St.
85
Paul's. The documents make the clergy into senators, patricians, and con-
suls and grant other privileges, such a using saddle-cloths of white linen
and wearing shoes made with goat's hair, that would allow them to proc-
ess in imitation of imperial splendor. Sylvester, it says, would not put the
imperial diadem on his head, but he did accept a tiara "of gleaming splen-
dour representing the glorious resurrection of the Lord." The emperor
took the part of groom, holding the bridle of Sylvester's horse. Further-
more, the emperor completely gave over and relinquished power and
dominion to the pope and his successors permanently over "the city of
Rome and all the provinces, districts and cities of Italy or of the western
regions," for them to be "enduringly and happily possessed ... for where
the principality of the priesthood and of the Christian religion has been
established, it is not just that an earthly emperor should have jurisdic-
tion."94 The Constitutum Constantini , in the part not copied by Gratian,
went even further; in it Constantine, out of his largesse, conceded to
Sylvester and his successors more distant lands, including Judea, Greece,
Asia, Thrace, Africa, and Italy, as well as various islands.95
This language is all very strong, much stronger than the hearsay infor-
mation against which Dante makes his case against the Donation. The
words dote, Patrimonium , and patrocinium are nowhere to be found in any
of the versions of the Donation. The word possidenda does appear, but, as
we have seen, this is a term that Dante directly rejects.96 Given his attitude
toward the Donation in the Commedia and the Monarchia , we might
expect that a close reading of the text would have pushed Dante to even
sharper language.
Another possible source for Dante's information about the Donation
also deserves consideration. In the Vita sancti Sylvestri papae , Constantine
stops the "miserable ululation" of the mothers at the prospect of losing
their babies by addressing the assembled crowd thus:
Hear me, counts and soldiers and all the people who are here: The authority of
the Roman people was born in the fount of piety [dignitas Romani populi de fonte
nascitur pietatis ] ,97
Dante repeats this phrase on two occasions: in Monarchia (2.5.5), where

he explained that the Roman people took on the office of monarch by
right, not by violence; and in his letter "To the Princes and Peoples of
Italy" (Ep. 5.3), where he reminds his audience that Henry VII "is Caesar,
86
and his authority derives from the fountain of piety."98 F. E. Brightman

discovered this phrase in a legend of St. Sylvester contained in a passionale,
a set of texts to be read on various saints' days, written 1204 by Matthew
the Florentine. The passionale version makes it likely that the core features
of the story of St. Sylvester were commonly known, and that Dante may
even have heard the story of Sylvester in church on more than one occa-
sion." Both versions of the story list eight edicts by Constantine following
his baptism and cure, but not one of these edicts concerns land, property,
or imperial authority. Neither the Legenda aurea nor the passionale says
anything about Constantine making a donation or gift to Sylvester of any
kind. The closest Constantine comes to a donation is a promise to build
a temple in his palace in the Lateran.100
Dante might also have learned about the Donation from the pro-papal
documents that emerged from the conflict between Henry VII and Clem-
ent V in 1312-14, where it is clear that those against whom Dante argues
in Monarchia 3.10 believed that Constantine's gift included temporal
authority over the city of Rome, the Patrimony of St. Peter, and even
over the emperor. Few of the official documents and treatises from this
period repeat the elaborate language of Gratian and the Constitutum Con-
stantin^ but all of the papal documents say enough about the Donation to
qualify the writers as the "some people" against whom Dante writes in
Mon. 3.10. 101
Dante's Use of Legal Terms
There is no doubt that Dante was reasonably familiar with Roman and
canon law and well enough informed about the two laws to consult the
books of the Corpus iuńs civilis of the emperor Justinian, the Glossa ordinaria
of Franciscus Accursius,102 the Decretum of Gratian, and commentaries on
canon law.103 Scholars now agree that his approach to Roman law was
one of an "amateur of genius rather than an expert."104 As a young politi-
cian in Florence and as a lord prior from June 15 to August 15, 1300, he
would have inevitably become acquainted with civic statutes and provi-
sions, and he actively participated in framing civil legislation. If he was in
Bologna around 1304-6 or at any other time during the early years of his
exile, he may have learned a good deal about both Roman and canon
law. During these years he may exchanged poems with his friend, Cino
87
da Pistoia, who was well on his way to becoming one of the University
of Bologna's most important jurists.105
Regarding the Donation of Constantine, Dante's competence in the
law is particularly important. Charles Davis points to Dante's lack of inter-
est in legal detail and cites disagreements among scholars about the Dona-
tion as evidence of "how imprecise Dante's legal formulations can be."106
But precision is one thing, detail is another. Dante's approach to law and
sometimes to theology involved precise but often general statements.107
The generally accepted notion that his first five arguments against the
Donation of Constantine came from Roman law illustrates this point.
Dante did not in fact take all of these arguments from Roman law; instead,
he elaborated on the general principle that the empire could not be cut
up into pieces because it then might eventually disappear.108
Both Edward Peters and Lorenzo Valterza, among others, have estab-
lished Dante's capacities with regard to Roman and canon law.109 As a
competent amateur, Dante's language about the Donation of Constantine
and church property is remarkably precise and consistent throughout the
Commedia and the Monarchia. Clearly Dante's role as a rhetorical poet and
a reformer of secular and religious society trumped his role as a civil or
canon lawyer,110 and his language in both the Commedia and the Monarchia
serves the higher purpose given to him by Beatrice in Purg. 32.103-5.
His prose and poetry are therefore more often than not infused with con-
siderable vigor, but he nevertheless uses with significant care an abun-
dance of canonical and civil legal terms regarding the Donation of
Constantine and church property.
Some key terms that require explanation include dignitas, dominium,
proprietas, possession, sposa /sponsa, dote, patrimonia, and patrodnium . Other
frequendy used words carry substantially the same meaning in Medieval
Latin and in modern English; they do not call for fiither discussion. These
words include auctoritas , potes tas, iurisdictio , deputare, dispensator, and collatio.
The word dignitas carries a meaning equivalent to the term honors in
English law. It involves the respect normally associated with the word
dignity , but more specifically dignitas was used in Roman law to refer to a
high administrative office.111 The emperor's dignitas was his official capac-
ity as a ruler and the privileges that that accompanied that official posi-
tion.112 Like the word honors , it could be used loosely as a reference to the
property attached to the office. Dante uses some version of the word
dignitas four times in Monarchia 3.10-11. 113
88
Dominium in medieval Latin as in modern English denotes absolute or

ultimate ownership. Dominium is title or ownership beyond which there
is no claim.114 In Roman law, the Emperor was seen as dominus mundi, in
both political and proprietary senses.115 By the late Middle Ages, Ger-
manic law had contributed the element of proprietorship, or individual
ownership of property.116 By this time, dominium was regarded as either
universal ownership (dominium eminens or universale) or as effective owner-
ship ( dominium utile or particulate). Dominium utile or particulare was held by
the vassal or the subordinate individual.117 Once the political and proprie-
tary elements were blended, according to Ugo Nicolini, they were not
clearly separated until the seventeenth century.118
Italian jurists sometimes translated dominium as signoria (lordship); today
we might think of it as title to property.119 In medieval Latin proprietas
was often used interchangeably with dominium , but proprietas carried the
additional meaning of something owned by a private individual.120 The
words dominium and proprietas describe the ownership of property and all
other tangible and intangible things that go with ownership.121 Property
can be immobile (land, castles, roads, etc.), mobile (the fruit of the land,
slaves, catde, furniture, etc.), or intangible (legal rights, titles, offices,
patronage, and defined personal relationships). The fundamental rights of
dominium or proprietas are the rights to keep, use, rent, lend, and defend
property or to alienate property by selling it or giving it away.122
Dominion of property is accompanied by legal, economic, and political
rights and powers. Dominion, legal rights, civil law, and political power
became inextricably intertwined. Individual ownership of property (pro -
prietas) is the starting point that leads to legal rights, temporal dominion,
and political power, including (later) at the national level, sovereignty.
The legal rights associated with property offered justification for armed
violence to keep and protect what was owned. Hugh of St. Victor, in his
widely influential book De sacramentis (On the sacraments), said that
earthly power could be used for two reasons, "for just distribution and to
defend against unjust attacks."123 Defense against unjust attacks provided
the rationale for just wars.
Possessio denoted the factual, physical control of a corporeal thing,
combined with the intention to keep it under physical control.124 It was
not the same as dominium.125 This situation involved the difference
between who owns a thing (de jure) and who has it (de facto). Properties,
offices, and other material goods were sold or given by those who enjoyed
89
dominium to others (normally subordinates or subjects) in implied perpetu-

ity. Loans were given with fixed deadlines for the return of the thing
loaned. When things were awarded to others without any deadline for
return, they came to be regarded as in the possessio of the recipient, partic-
ularly when they were transferred from generation to generation. Dante
uses the word possessio only three times in connection with the Donation
of Constantine: in Mon. 2.10.3 he says that the church's resources are
"male possessa," possibly meaning that they were abused but certainly
meaning that they were wrongfully transferred to the church; in Mon.
3.10.15 he says that the Donation could not be received by the church
"per modum possessionis"; and in Mon. 3.10.17 he says that the church
could not receive the Donation "tanquam possessor." Dante therefore
denies not only dominium of any kind but also possessio to the church.
The terms used in Roman law, canon law, and theology were not used
by all writers in exactly the same way. From the strict perspective of
Roman law the emperor's position as dominus mundi gave him dominium
over everything in the world, a position that Dante clearly accepts, even
though he does not repeat the epithet. In practice lay persons alienated
their property by donating it or transferring possessio to the church
through gifts and bequests. This was a one-way street, however. Lay
property could come into the possessio of the church, but ecclesiastical
property was not to be alienated without permission of the hierarchy.
From the perspective of the church, a donation was an irrevocable gift of
a corporeal thing made by a person capable of disposing of the corporeal
thing and accepted by the church.126 Whether from gratitude, insolvency,
or fear of damnation, laymen donated more and more property to the
church.127 It was plain for all to see that a good deal of the landed property
of Europe and of the wealth generated by the new market economy was
finding its way into the coffers of the church, and it was no surprise that
this occurred at the expense of the secular order, including the cities, the
kingdoms, and the empire. By the year 1200 almost one quarter of all the
property in Italy was in the hands of the church.128
With reference to church property, Dante also used the words sposa/
sponsa and dote. Sponsalia are marital promises that are mutual, true, freely
exchanged, and manifest in public.129 In his letter to the Ephesians (5:21-
33), St. Paul says that the relationship between a husband and wife is like
the relationship between Christ and the church. Referring to the church
as the bride ( sponsa ) of Christ implies a holy, binding promise. When
90
Dante says (Inferno 19.1-4) that the "things of the God" (le cose di Dio)
should be the brides (spose) of goodness or of good men, he accuses pre-
lates of infidelity by committing adultery with "the things of God" for
silver and gold, and he in effect condemns them for violating Christ's
promise to be faithful to his church.
A dowry (dote) is the gift of movable goods, service, or property
awarded by the family of the bride or another benefactor to a couple that
is married, for the support of the bride. While the husband could manage
the dowry, he faced certain limitations in doing so, including the inability
to alienate the property.130 Upon dissolution of the marriage the dowry
was frequently returned to the bride, to her family, or to her children,
depending on the marriage contract.131 Some jurists described the dowry
as a "patrimony of the woman" (patrimonium mulieris).132 In ecclesiastical
terms, a dowry is an endowment for a church or a sum of money given
for the support of a nun entering a convent. 133 Whether for a nun or a
wife, the intent of the donor of the dowry must be respected. The giving
of a dowry was an endowment, carrying with it the obligation to execute
the intent of supporting the wife or the nun. In Inferno 19.116 Dante calls
the act of Constantine's generosity a dowry (dote), which was taken from
the emperor by "the first rich Father" (Sylvester). Constantine's benign
intent to support the poor by awarding such a dowry to Sylvester was
thereby violated even before the transfer of the gift because it was taken
rather than freely given and accepted.
Property could also be awarded to the church by way of an endow-
ment, a trust, a specific bequest, or a patrimony. While the first two terms
are undoubtedly modern in usage, all four terms mean essentially the same
thing: that the use but not the dominium of property is given over to the
recipient, usually with a stated intent for the management and distribution
of the property and its proceeds. In Dante's time, lay persons awarded
property to the church either as an outright gift, with no strings attached;
as a bequest, with contingent responsibilities, such as the saying of masses
for the soul of the deceased; as a patrimony (patrimonium ), usually with
some intention involved; or as a patronage or protectorate (patrocinium) .
In Roman law the word patrimonium referred to the whole property of
a person or to the property inherited from one's father or ancestor.134
Within the church, the word signified simply an estate or a domain con-
trolled by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Patrimonies were not normally
revocable; once given, they remained in the church because property
91
controlled by the church could not be alienated. However, the expecta-

tion remained that the intention of the giver, if any, would be honored.
Failing that, it could be an open question as to whether the original giver
could reclaim the property. After a generation or two, revocability
became a moot question.
The word patrocinium denoted something else entirely. As Dante uses
the word, it is perhaps best translated by the English "protectorate" or
"guardianship."135 The word patrodnium has its origins in the late days of
the Roman Empire, when slave owners granted freedom to some of their
slaves and when small landowners put themselves under the patronage or
protection of wealthy men as their patroni. In the first case, patrocinium
described the "protective power of a master over a manumitted slave." In
the second, the small landowner's property was transferred into the pos-
session of the wealthy patron in return for ongoing protection.136 In both
cases, a patronage or protectorate involved the responsibility of the
stronger party to ensure protection for the weaker party. When a layman
built and endowed a new church or replaced a church that had been
destroyed, it was called a patrocinium. With patronage, the patron acquired
certain rights. For example, the patron was entided to nominate a clergy-
man to fill the benefice, subject to the bishop's approval. The patron was
also entided to be honored, to have precedence in processions to his
church, to occupy a prominent seat at the church, and to receive support
from the patrodnium should he ever become so impoverished as to be in
need of such support. However, the bishop retained the right to approve
the clerical candidate and to make the actual collation or transfer of the
benefice to the recipient.137 Patronage also involved the obligation on the

part of the patron to defend and protect the church as well as to repair it
when necessary.138 The receiver of a patrodnium was legally dependent on
the grantor. Property awarded in a patrodnium was not alienated by the
award and could not be alienated by the recipient. Awarding a patrodnium
could involve appointing a deputy or a person authorized to carry out
certain functions in place of the owner. Use of the word deputare made it
clear that the person to whom the patronage was delegated was not the
officer or owner but rather someone responsible to the owner.139
Hugh of St. Victor asserts that while the church may possess property,
any rights to such property come under the law of the temporal power -
not, by implication, under the law of the church. Princes sometimes give
92
possessions to the church only for the church to have use of them (ali-
quando concédant solam utilitatem ), but at other times they grant both the
use and the power (potestatem ) over the things given. Even in the latter
case it is incumbent on the entity that receives such possessions from a
prince to acknowledge the source, to understand that possessions can
never be alienated from the royal power, and to render the necessary
subservience (obsequium) to the prince. He then defines church property
as a patrocinium received from a royal power:
Just as the royal power cannot give away a patrocinium which it owes to another
person, in that same way, when a possession 'possessio ] has been obtained by an
ecclesiastical person the subservience [obesequium] which is due to the royal power
cannot by law be denied. Because it is written: "Render therefore to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:21). 140
Here Hugh of St. Victor uses the critical word patrocinium in the way
Dante does in Monarchia 3. IO.141 Various versions of the word (patronus ,
patronatus , patrocinare , patrocinium , patrocinalis) were probably quite com-
mon in the Middle Ages, as they are now in the Romance languages.
However, none of the popes, canonists, emperors, or Roman jurists used
patrocinium to describe the Donation of Constantine, and scholars who
have examined this passage have not called attention to Dante's use of this
vital word.142
This analysis suggests that Dante's language in Monarchia 3.10.16

regarding the Donation of Constantine is abundantly clear and precise.
He says that the emperor could delegate (deputare) a patrimony and other
things to the church as a protectorate (in patrocinium Ecclesie Patrimonium et
alia deputare), as long as it did not change the superior temporal dominion
of the emperor (inmoto semper superiori dominio) - and that the pope could
receive such an award not even as possessor (actual controller) (non tam-
quam possessor) but as a deputy, an administrator, or a dispenser of the
intent of the award, which was for the fruit of the property to be used
for the poor of Christ (tanquam fructum pro Ecclesie pro Cristi pauperibus
dispensatoi) .143 This after all is what the apostles were known to have done.
The aposdes did not own property; they acted as dispensers (dispensatores)
of the resources that came to the church in behalf of the poor.144
The question of whether or not Dante thought that the Donation of
Constantine was an irrevocable gift remains. In the Middle Ages land was
most often held in return for homage and military service. It was therefore
93
revocable if the vassal failed to fulfill his obligations. But a donation

implied something else. In legal terms, a donation is "a legitimate transfer-
ence of a thing belonging to one person to the dominium of another."145
Therefore, if Constantine's gift were a donation, it would have been
irrevocable because dominium had been transferred to Sylvester.146 How-
ever, the forgers were apparently not that clever; the word "donation"
does not appear in the Constitutio Constantini. Dante appears to have sim-
ply ignored this distinction, opting instead to consider the "Donation" of
Constantine as a patrimony awarded to Sylvester in the form of a protec-
torate (patrocinium ). Had the popes respected the emperor's intent to have
the resources used for Christ's poor, the church would not have dragged
the world into such an awful state.
Bruno Nardi pointed out that Roman law lists two reasons that a gift
can be revoked: improper stewardship and ingratitude on the part of the
receiver of the gift. He quoted Justinian's Institutes , which stipulate that
for ingratitude and other reasons a gift ( donatio ) can be revoked:
It is well understood that even when gifts are fully given, if the men to who
whom a benefice has been transferred are ungrateful, the donors may in certain
cases revoke the gift, according to our constitutions; lest those who bestowed
their things on others should suffer injury or cost, according to the rules expressed
in our constitution.147
In discussing the resources of the church (ecclesie facultates ), Dante says that
they were not gratefully accepted (nec . . . cum gratitudine teneantur) and
were badly possessed or used (bene data , male possessa) and that they should
therefore be returned where they came from. Redeant unde venerunt (Mon.
2.10.2-3).
Redeant - let them return (Mon. 2.10.3): this is one of the much-
disputed words among those who have studied the manuscripts of the
Monarchia. Gustavo Vinay148 and Michele Barbi149 accepted the present
subjective redeant, 150 but Pier Giorgio Ricci, for the official 1965 text of
the Italian Dante Society insisted on using the present tense redeunt (they
return) because all but two of the manuscripts contain this reading.151
Bruno Nardi took vigorous exception to this reading and argued force-
fully for Redeant on the grounds that only this reading makes sense.152 For
the 2009 official text of the Italian Dante Society, Prue Shaw accepted
Nardi's redeant,153 and her translation reads "Let them return where they
came from." If Dante intended for this phrase to recall the Donation of
94
Constantine, he appears to be saying that the emperor could and should

revoke the Donation and that the church should allow the emperor to
take back the properties and powers supposedly awarded to the popes.154
This review of Dante's use of legal terms should make it clear that,
regarding the Donation of Constantine, his language in Monarchia and the
Commedia was anything but imprecise.155 Dante was exceptionally clear in
stating that (1) the emperor could not give away any part of the empire,
(2) the church could not receive the Donation because it has no right to
own property, (3) the Donation could instead be considered a patrimony
delegated to the church as a protectorate, and (4) the "donation" should
in any case be returned to the emperor.
The Early Commentators
The early commentators shed little light either on the Donation of Con-
stantine or the church's right to own property.156 One of the most impor-
tant of the early commentators was Dante's own son, Pietro, who was
trained in law at the University of Bologna.157 John Scott has called atten-
tion to "Pietro's valiant attempt to prove Dante's complete orthodoxy."158
In this context we would not expect Pietro to highlight Dante's radical
approach to the Donation of Constantine, his insistence that the church
should not own property, or his emphasis on the model of the apostolic
church.
Almost all of the early commentators who discussed Inferno 19.115-17

blame Constantine for the trouble that ensued, even though they agree
that his intentions were good.159 None of them blames Sylvester or notes
that it was he who took the gift from the emperor. Most early commenta-
tors say that the church was poor before the Donation and that it became
wealthy and corrupt afterward. Many say that Constantine left Sylvester
with the signoria or temporal jurisdiction of Rome.
Opinion among the early commentators was even more solid with
regard to the eagle leaving its feathers on the chariot of the church in
Purgatorio 32.124-29. All but one of those who comment on this passage
see the empire as the eagle and the Donation as the feathers. But none of
them explains the meaning of navicella in Purgatorio 32.129. Instead, many
of them, following Jacopo della Lana and Pietro di Dante, quote a differ-
ent phrase to explain the cry from Heaven: Hodie diffusum est venenum in
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ecclesia Dei (today poison is diffused into the church of God).160 Only John
of Serravalle (1416-17) goes into more detail about the intent of the gift.
He says that just as Constantine gave the Donation with good intention,
so Sylvester received it with equally good intention.161 With due respect
for Dante's opinion, John says, even kings and other lords in the present
day want the pope to give up the church's income, but his own opinion
is that there are many good clergy around and that "it would not be a
good thing for the church to lose its possessions and its [temporal] domin-
ion in any way."162
When Justinian points out "the next one there" in Paradiso 20.55-60,
the reference to Constantine is clear to all the early commentators. Jacopo
della Lana, L'Ottimo Commento, and the Anonimo Fiorentino go into
more depth than the others, trying to explain how Constantine's good
intention could have landed him in Heaven even though his act bore such
bad fruit that it resulted in the destruction of the world. Jacopo and the
Anonimo Fiorentino point out that Aristotle in the third book of the
Nicomachaean Ethics explains that evil itself is ignorant of the intent of an
act (omnes malus est ignorans); therefore the evil of an act flows from the
intent of the actor. Constantine's intention could not generate a bad result
unless his intent were evil or the intent of the recipient were corrupt.163
Therefore, the only way that the bad result (the destruction of the world)
could occur would be through the evil intent of the recipients, that is,
Sylvester and his successors. Constantine's benevolent intent is in no way
responsible for the deplorable state of the world; the burden of guilt lies
directly on the papacy.
Surviving the Long Nineteenth Century
Further discussion of the issues of the Donation of Constantine and

church property awaited the revival of interest in the Commedia and
Dante's other works that took place in the first half of the nineteenth
century. It is worth remembering in this context that the Monarchia
remained on the Index of Prohibited books until 1881. 164 In contrast to
the early commentators these early nineteenth-century critics saw Dante
as a vigorous opponent of the church and, by implication, an ardent sup-
porter of incipient Italian nationalism. Vincenzo Monti, Gabriele Ros-
setti, and Ugo Foscolo emphasized Dante's role as a religious and political
96
reformer. Giuseppe Mazzini, the best-known representative of this view,

saw Dante as "the citizen, the reformer, the religious apostle, the prophet
of the nation."165 For the publicists of the Risorgimento, Dante became a
nationalist, the apostle of a unified Italy. It was clear to them that Italy
could become a nation only at the expense of the Papal States. They read
Dante's arguments against the Donation of Constantine, and particularly
against the church's right to own property, as justification for expropriat-
ing the Papal States and the city of Rome, by force if necessary. The popes
made it necessary. 166
The army of the new Kingdom of Italy captured Rome in September
of 1870. Pius IX and his successors froze into an attitude of recalcitrance,
refused to accept the nation's authority to confiscate papal territory, and
declared themselves to be "prisoners of the Vatican." It was not until
1929 that Pius XI finally signed the Lateran Concordat that created the
modern state of Vatican City. In this environment Father Francesco
Berardinelli wrote H dominio temporale dei papi nel concetto politico di Dante
Alighieri , urgendy underlining the religious and Roman Catholic culture
of Dante's work, strongly defending the church's right to own property,
and flatly denying that Dante's reading of the Donation of Constantine
and his criticism of corrupt prelates in any way suggested that the papacy
could not rightfully own the Patrimony of St. Peter and the Papal
States.167 Berardinelli asserted that he wrote both against the partisans of
the revolution, who were out to destroy Catholicism, and against those
aristocratic liberals who admitted that Dante was a Catholic Christian168
but insisted that he was nevertheless an Italian patriot. As a result of his

study, Father Berardinelli was able to "demonstrate apodictically that
Dante never excluded from his political system the temporal dominion
and the civil principality of the popes."169
Meanwhile, scholars such as Giosuè Carducci and Francesco De Sanctis
worked to lift the study of Dante above current political interpretations,170
while others, such as Giacomo Poletto, worked to make Dante safe for
Catholicism.171 Alberto Buscamo Campo wrote a response Poletto, accus-
ing him and others of saying that Dante was the most Catholic of writers,
a paragon of orthodoxy, and that he embraced papal sovereignty.172
Near the turn of the twentieth century, the literary critic Francesco
d'Ovidio and the historian G. B. Siragusa exchanged point and counter-
point essays in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of the tenzone between
97
Dante and Forese Donati. The controversy began in 1897 with D'Ovi-
dio's remark, based on Monarchia 2.10, that "Dante did not deny the
church the right to have material goods."173 D'Ovidio did not mention
the crucial passage about church property in Monarchia 3.10. While he did
admit that the church's property is a patrimony, he then asserted that the
patrimony was possessed by the church, despite Dante's "non tanquam
possessor" (Mon. 3. 10.17). 174 Siragusa countered in 1899 with an article
in Giornale dantesco upbraiding D'Ovidio for ignoring Mon. 3.10, the most
important passage regarding church property in the treatise, where he says
that Dante's position is "chiara, intera ed esplicita" (clear, whole, and
explicit). But in the end he effectively agreed with D'Ovidio: "The
church can possess, not in the way of a proprietary interest but rather as
the administrator of temporal things to the benefit of the poor."175 He
called this a via di mezzo (a middle way) between those who say that the
church can or cannot possess property.176
Offended as much by Siragusa's tone as by his statements, D'Ovidio
responded condescendingly that the Monarchia 3.10 passage was "facile e
ovvio."177 He repeated his assertion that "Dante's teaching . . . was not
an isolated opinion, it reflected the teaching of the luminaries of the
church," and stated that "Dante not only didn't care whether the church
possessed some small corner of land ... he even admitted it."178 As for
the transformation of the church into a true monarchy, however, D'Ovi-
dio stated that Dante would have objected to such a result - an outcome
that had, in fact, been thoroughly realized by 1300 and was visible to all
in 1900.
In England, Edward Moore in 1899 weighed in with his essay on

Dante's religious teaching,179 but the primary focus of his article was on
the question of Dante's orthodoxy vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic theology
at the turn of the century. He did state that Dante "declares that the
church has no right to hold even any temporal possessions whatsoever"
but appears to contradict this by saying that there is "no proof that [Dante]
would have resented the claim for the small amount of 'temporal power'
which is maintained to-day."180
Meanwhile, Felice Tocco could not resist commenting on the
D'Ovidio / Siragusa tenzone , agreeing with Siragusa regarding the "mid-
dle way" and repeating that Dante "well admits that the church can pos-
sess" and "accept donations and possess a patrimony," but endorsing
98
D'Ovidio's view that this did not mean that he accepted a papal political
dominion that could be substituted for imperial authority.181 In his Quel
che non c'è nella "Divina Commedia," o Dante e V eresia, Tocco used the
passage in Paradiso 6.94-96, where Justinian says that Charlemagne came
to the aid of the church against the Lombards in 774, as evidence that
Dante accepted the popes' right to the patrimony because they castigated
the Lombards who tried to take the patrimony from them and praised
Charlemagne for coming to their defense.182 However, is it is one thing
to say that the Santa Chiesa (1. 95) needed the emperor's support at that
time and another to say that this amounted to an endorsement of the
church's right to property and temporal power. D'Ovidio, Siragusa, and
Tocco failed to explain the word patrocinium or to note that Dante says
that the emperor could give such a patronage only if his superior owner-
ship were not changed ( inmoto semper superiori dominio) (Mon. 3:10.16).
The consensus that D'Ovidio, Siragusa, and Tocco expressed about the
papacy's ownership of the patrimony, despite their differences on other
points, seemed to satisfy the literary and historical worlds for some time.
If not the most Catholic of Catholics, Dante appeared at least to be safe
for the Roman Catholic Church. Now that the Monarchia was off the
Index, no one need fear that the divine poet was a heretic. The partisan
positions of the Risorgimento were left behind, and attention could be
focused on the "scientific" study of literature and history.
It was not until 1942 that Bruno Nardi, already a mature scholar, pub-
lished a major article on Dante and the Donation of Constantine in Studi
Danteschi. 183 This was the first thorough attempt to place Dante's position
on the Donation and church property in the context of canon law, theol-
ogy, civil lawyers, and church reformers. Nardi recognized that Dante
rejected the political dominion of the patrimony of St. Peter and denied
the church's right to own property, but he did not fully elaborate on this
point.184 Nardi's article prompted a somewhat spicy exchange between
himself and Michele Maccarrone, who weighed in with articles on hiero-
cratic theory in Purgatorio 16 in 1950, on theology and canon law in Mon.
3.3 in 1952, and on the third book of the Monarchia in 1955, 185 only to be
countered by Nardi in 1960 with an article directly addressing Maccar-
rone's contributions.186 These articles are the foundation for all subsquent
studies of Dante and the Donation of Constantine.
99
The Context of Dante's Ideas: The Visual Sources
Historians and literary critics have long sought to identify the "sources"
of Dante's Commedia and his other work in an effort to make better sense
of the poet's words and to enrich their meaning. The method has tradi-
tionally focused on text; more recently it has included visual evidence as
well. Detailed analysis of the words and images left behind by Dante and
others might convince us that he drew from a particular text or image.
Often commentators have performed this kind of analysis in a genuine
attempt to elucidate what Dante wrote; sometimes, it has been done to
reinforce the writer's own point of view.
With all due respect to textual and visual analysis, we should pause to
consider that Dante was a human being who was surrounded by family,
friends, acquaintances, strangers, opponents, and enemies as well as by
texts and images. He saw things and had conversations with the people
he met, and those sights and conversations must have fed the stream of
information and ideas that flowed into and out of his brain. As "scientific"
scholars or scholarly historians, we must understand that texts and images

operate in a broad, interactive context that includes (at least) conversations
that are forever lost. Trying to identify a new "source" has become a
game. A more prudent - and, I submit, scientific or scholarly - approach
is to elucidate Dante's words by describing the broad context in which
his thought was developed. This approach suggests keeping in mind
where Dante was and whom he may have known, as well as what he may
have read, when we analyze both his texts and theirs.
A few scholars have called attention to two fresco cycles that existed in
Dante's day that depicted the Donation of Constantine, and one of them
has been suggested as a source for some of Dante's ideas. Only a few
blocks up the street from the Lateran, the chapel at the palace of Quattro
Coronati in Rome contains an eight-panel treatment of the sickness and
baptism of Constantine, the Donation itself, and of Sylvester blessing the
emperor in such a way as to underline the superiority of the pope. This
cycle, painted in the 1240s, has been thoroughly studied by Ronald Herz-
man and William Stephany.187 There is no doubt that the Quattro Coro-
nati frescoes express a strong hierocratic point of view and that Dante
argued against such a view in Monarchia 3.10. However, the likelihood
that Dante ever saw the chapel is somewhat tenuous. The two possible
occasions would have been the two trips he might have made to Rome.
100
Dante and the Donation of Constantine , dabney g. park
The first dates from 1300, when he could have joined the pilgrims seeking
the plenary indulgence offered by Boniface VIII's proclamation of the
Jubilee.188 The second would have been in October of 1301, when he
was sent by the Commune of Florence as an ambassador to treat with the
pope, presumably about the threat of Charles of Valois entering the city.189
Dino Compagni says that Boniface VIII sent two of the ambassadors scur-
rying home shortly after they arrived, and it appears likely that he detained
Dante for an indefinite period.190
If Dante was detained in Rome by Boniface VIII, there is a reasonable
chance that he could have been taken to the palace of Quattro Coronati,
where he might even have seen the frescoes in the chapel. There he
would have seen a strong presentation of the stories contained in the
eighth-century Constitutum Constantini , with a distinct emphasis on the
pope's superiority over the emperor. Interestingly, there is no hint in this
fresco cycle of the position adopted by Innocent IV (who was pope dur-
ing the time when they were painted) that the Donation was a restoration
and confirmation of property, imperial power, and temporal dominion
over things previously given to Peter by Christ. If the Quattro Coronati
cycle influenced Dante in 1300 or 1301, it did so as did other accounts of
the Donation, by presenting the story against which Dante would react.
The other fresco cycle in Rome depicting the Donation of Constantine
was in a very public place: the portico of the Lateran Palace, built to
demonstrate the power of the papacy at the time of the Jubilee of 1300.
Boniface may have engaged Giotto to paint these frescoes, though there
is no solid evidence for this.191 Only one small piece of the cycle still
exists: the picture of Boniface VIII on the new portico, flanked by his
prelates, blessing the pilgrims below who had come to Rome for the
Jubilee. This fragment is preserved and visible to the public in the Basilica
of St. John Lateran. Thanks to Onorio Panvinio, who described the fres-
coes in 1570 (16 years before most of them were destroyed), we know
that the full cycle showed the conversion and baptism of Constantine, his
gift of the crown of Rome to Sylvester, the decay of the Lateran, and
Boniface's restoration of the palace and the basilica.192 Depending on
when the frescoes were completed and on whether Dante went to Rome
as a pilgrim in 1300 or 1301, he may have seen them. If he and Giotto
were friends at this early date, he would certainly have taken this opportu-
nity to view Giotto's fresh work in the Lateran portico. But the frescoes
101
depicted a scene that turned out later to be alien to Dante's political phi-
losophy; furthermore, we shall never know exactly how they told the
story of Sylvester and Constantine; nor shall we ever know whether these
images influenced Dante's thinking. Regarding the Lateran frescoes, it is
noteworthy that Boniface VIII would make such a strong point about the
Donation in these images while, as we shall see, he avoided basing his
claims to temporal power on Constantine's gift.193
Both fresco cycles presented the hierocratic point of view. Of the
Quattro Coronati frescoes, Gray Dickson says, "The political iconogra-
phy of the scene affirms papal plenitudo potestatis , foreshadowing the con-
clusion of Unam sanctam . . . This was a theocratic statement indeed."194
Discussing the Lateran cycle, Charles Mitchell sees the purpose of "the
decoration of the loggia as illustrating Boniface's claim to be heir to Con-
stantine and his appeal to buttress his secular pretensions."195 In both cases
the visual iconography presented ideas that Dante argued against rather
than for, and in both cases other more easily available sources exist for the
concepts embedded in the frescoes. While Dante may well have seen both
of these fresco cycles, nothing in his writings indicates an interest in the
Donation for at least another decade, and nothing appears in these images
that Dante would not have encountered elsewhere.
Early Acquaintances and Textual Sources
Whatever he drew from images, Dante clearly relied on the text of Scrip-
ture to inform his position on the Donation of Constantine and church
property. Other than this obvious source, what was the broad context in
which Dante's thought developed? In order to understand Dante better,
it seems logical first to look at the people whom he may have known
personally, or to written works with which he was familiar, or both.196
To begin with, Dante was imbued with the thought of the Franciscan
order.197 There is no doubt that he drew from the ideas of St. Francis
himself, from Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, and from the rigorist or spiri-

tual wing of the Franciscan order, which was in turn influenced by the
mystical and prophetic writings of Joachim of Fiore, the late twelfth-
century Calabrian abbot. It is apparent that Dante was directly acquainted
with perhaps only one of Joachim's works, the Liber figuramm ,198 but he
could well have known of Joachim's ideas from other sources. Bonaven-
ture was one of the sources for Dante's portrait of the life of Francis, told
102
by Thomas Aquinas in Canto 12 of Paradiso,199 and he may have known

some of Bonaventure's other works as well,200 but we have no clear
evidence that Dante was acquainted with his great work defending the
Franciscan concept of poverty, the Apologia pauperum. The two most sig-
nificant Franciscans whom Dante probably knew personally were Peter
Olivi and Ubertino da Casale. Most scholars now agree that Dante most
likely made their acquaintance while both were in Florence teaching at
Santa Croce in 1285-87 and that his comment in the Convivio that he
attended "the schools of the religious orders and the disputations held by
the philosophers" ( Conv . 2.12.7) included study at the Franciscan church
of Santa Croce.201 However, the full import of the influence of Olivi and
Ubertino did not appear in his work until some twenty years later.202 Both
Olivi and Ubertino drew heavily on the work of Bonaventure, especially
in their understanding of Franciscan poverty, but both went well beyond
Bonaventure in certain areas.
As for Joachim of Fiore, Dante would have found no precedents for

his position on the Donation of Constantine in his works. Joachim defi-
nitely sided with the hierocratic theologians and canonists who supported
papal power in the temporal realm. Not only did Joachim see the pope as
"both king and priest," but he also saw Constantine's gift of imperial
dignities in the Donation as the return of something for which the
emperor was indebted to Christ.203 For Joachim, the age of Constantine
was a time of freedom and peace, an age of spiritual contemplation in
which the infusion of the Holy Spirit inspired the great doctors of the
early church. As for the acquisition of property and temporal power, Joa-
chim saw no problem with glorifying the church in this way, for was not
Christ both priest and king?204 Furthermore, the spiritual renovation that
would take place in Joachim's third age of the Holy Spirit would be purely
an age of monasticism, with no room for an emperor or civil society.205
Nor was Bonaventure a source for Dante's view of the Donation of
Constantine. He ignores the Donation altogether and mentions Constant-

ine only on rare occasions. In one quaestio he asks whether it is better to
correct one rich man than many poor ones. Responding affirmatively, he
offers the example of the conversion of Constantine, an act that benefited
the church more than the conversion of many other people.206 In a ser-
mon he remarks that God revealed the sign of the cross to only two
people, Francis and Constantine- Francis on receiving the stigmata and
Constantine before the battle of the Milvian Bridge.207 His description of
103
the ages of church history, influenced in part by Joachim, presents the

third age beginning with Sylvester as a wonderful period for the church,
during which the great doctors benefited from peace and universal rule.
He does not mention the Donation; the only reference to Constantine is
to his move to Byzantium.208
Dante's argument in Monarchia 3.10 that Constantine did not grant
dominium to the papacy was clearly rooted in Franciscan tradition. Francis
himself was explicit in requiring his followers to imitate the poverty of
Christ and the apostles.209 The Rule of 1223 declared that the friars should
not "appropriate anything to themselves, neither a house, or a place, or
any other thing."210 Gregory IX issued Quo elongati in 1230 in an attempt
to clarify that Franciscan poverty meant that the friars "ought not to have
proprietas , either individual or in common," and that they could use mov-
able items (e.g., books) and immovable things (property, buildings), so
long as the dominium of these goods was kept by those to whom they are
known to belong.211 Fifteen years later Innocent IV in Ordinem vestrum
virtually copied the first part of this passage from Gregory IX, but instead
of leaving ownership of Franciscan goods with the donors, he accepted
papal dominium of Franciscan property.212
Bonaventure may have been a source for Dante's understanding of
dominium. It was left to him to elaborate on the meaning of the word in
the Franciscan context. In the Apologia pauperum , written in 1269 to
defend the Franciscan observance of poverty against secular theologians at
the University of Paris,213 Bonaventure says that the highest form of pov-
erty involves the total renunciation of dominium, both individually and in
common. In a passage that parallels Dante's point about the proper dispo-
sition required for the receiver of a gift, Bonaventure stresses the intention
of the Friars Minor to have no dominium over property.214 He later quotes
(as Dante does) Matthew 10:9-10 ("Do not possess gold nor silver, nor
money in your purses, nor scrip for your journey").215 Bonaventure goes
on to explain that the purse or bag that Jesus permitted in Luke 22:35-36
was a temporary concession to the apostles traveling in hostile Samaria
but was not meant to denote the highest form of poverty,216 where Dante
simply says that despite the relaxation in Luke, he has not been able to
determine that "the church was ever granted permission to posses gold or
silver" (Mon. 3.10.14). Bonaventure explicates a third text mentioned by
Dante, the passage from Acts 3:6 where the apostles pooled their goods
and held them "not as owner but as administrator of the fruits of the
104
church for Christ's poor" (Mon. 3.10.17). Here Bonaventure says that the
concession was to the crowd; in no way was it a license for the apostles
to possess anything, either individually or in common.217
For Bonaventure as for Dante, apostolic poverty was the proper form
of the church. Speaking of the injunction just discussed against gold and
silver, Bonaventure says: "In these words, the Lord imposed on the apos-
des and preachers of the truth the form of serving on the apostles and
preachers of the truth in so far as not caring for not only possessions
but also money and other movable goods."218 Unlike Dante, however,
Bonaventure does not apply this standard of poverty to the whole church.
It is a special commandment meant only for those who wished stricdy to
imitate the life of Christ.219
While we do not know whether Dante was direcdy acquainted with

Bonaventure's Apologia pauperum , the parallel treatments of these three
passages from the Gospel would suggest that possibility. But a very impor-
tant difference remains: Bonaventure is clear that the standard of apostolic
poverty is for the Franciscan order, not for the whole church.220 Bonaven-
ture did not object to the church's ownership of property, including of
course papal dominium of Franciscan property. He affirmed that the wealth
of prelates is not contrary to perfection, but neither is it safe. But to say
that the church's ownership of possessions is tantamount to corruption,
he says, is heresy.221 Bonaventure decried abuses of poverty within his
own order,222 and he insisted on the strictest standard of poverty for all
Franciscans.223 He may have criticized the secular clergy, but (unlike Olivi
and Ubertino) he avoided attacks on the hierarchy.224 Bonaventure never
questioned the temporal power of the papacy.
Similarly, neither Olivi nor Ubertino saw the Donation of Constantine
as the critical step in the decline of the church or as a keystone of their
suggestions that the entire church should be poor. Since a large portion
of Olivi's works remain in manuscript form, it is impossible at this point
to identify all the passages in which he might have mentioned the Dona-
tion of Constantine. However, Olivi deals with the Donation, the tempo-
ral power of the papacy, and church property in one particular treatise
that has received remarkably litde attention, given its title: An papa habeat
unversalissimam potestatem (Whether the pope has universal power).225
Olivi's response was in the negative. One reason he gives is that "what-
ever earthly power Constantine gave to the pope, it follows from that
same donation that this power was not previously the pope's, neither via
105
Christ's commission to Peter nor via the spiritual power itself."226 Here
Olivi directly rejects Innocent IV's notion that the Donation is a restitu-
tion of authority that the pope had all along. However, Olivi says, it
doesn't matter anyway because temporal power can be gained and lost in
many ways: "Non est nobis nunc cure" ([the Donation of Constantine]
is not now our concern).227 Olivi demonstrates no interest here in the
Donation, nor is there any vestige of the concept that the Donation was
the cause of the degeneration of the world. He reveals no trace of Dante's
insistence that the emperor's temporal authority comes from God.228
Based on this passage, Decima Douie says that Olivi regarded the Dona-
tion "as revocable at the whim of the secular power by whose authority
it had orginally been bestowed."229 Dante, of course, shared the idea of
the revocability of the Donation, but he differs from Olivi in seeing the
Donation as the beginning of the downfall of the church. Olivi, in fact,
passes off the Donation rather lightly. While church property might be
revocable by the temporal authority, Olivi does not argue for confiscation
by the emperor or anyone else.230
David Burr and Charles Davis have pointed out that Olivi's view of
the age of Constantine elsewhere was essentially postive. In fact, Olivi
said that Constantine bound Satan by expelling idolatry from the city of
Rome, he compared Constantine's support of Christianity to the Pharaoh
who favored Joseph,231 and he saw the time after Constantine as the dawn
of a new age following the great persecutions in which the great doctors
thrived.232 In the Lectura super Apocalipsim, Olivi goes to far as to say that
the church was "usefully and reasonably" allowed to have property from
the time of Constantine through the fifth age.233
Elsewhere in An papa , Olivi makes other points with which Dante
would have agreed. The pope does not have temporal dominion over the
whole world, he says, because if Christ had wanted the popes to be tem-
poral rulers, he would have made them rich instead of commissioning
them to live in the most extreme poverty.234 In support of this he cites
Matthew 10:9 and Acts 3:6, suggesting that the hierarchy should practice
poverty.235 Unlike Dante and Bonaventure, he does not here address the
relaxation mentioned in Luke 22:35-36, but he adds that Christ gave the
apostles no wider power over temporal things than to eat what they were
given (Luke 10:7) and to have only the things necessary to their office.236
For Olivi as for Dante, the proper form or model for the church was
the life of poverty established by Christ and the apostles.237 At one point
106
Olivi expressed the hope that all bishops would follow the life of evangeli-
cal perfection, which of course included practicing strict poverty: "Let us
imagine that all bishops today were to live according to the counsel of
Christ as did the apostles, and especially with regard to poverty and even
poor use so that the Church's temporal goods would be used for the poor
... is it not possible that the faithful and even the infidels would be
brought back to God in an incomparably more full and more perfect
way?"238 For Olivi, usus pauper involved the daily practice of living in the
strictest poverty, coupled with the intention to avoid all worldly things.
Usus pauper was the high standard that Olivi insisted on for all Franciscans,
and he even claimed that usus pauper was integral to the Franciscan vow.
However, Olivi does not insist on strictly applying the evangelical stan-
dard of poverty to the whole church after the reign of Constantine until
the present day.
In the end, Olivi's position on church property reveals an ambivalence
not found in Dante. On the one hand, he offers the evangelical life of
poverty as a model for the whole church; on the other hand, he offers a
concession to ecclesiastical possessions in the ages following Constant-
ine.239 Church property is revocable, but he sees no need for an emperor
to step in and relieve the church of its riches, even though property and
temporal power have led to serious abuses in the church.240 In describing
the twelve characteristics for a perfect prelate or pope, he does not even
mention evangelical poverty.241
In Ari papa Olivi approvingly quotes a long passage from the chapter
of Hugh of St. Victor's De sacramentis entitled "Quomodo ecclesia terrena
possideat" (How the church possesses earthly things). As we have seen, in
this chapter Hugh says that the church possesses temporal power only
from the temporal authority, that the church's temporal possessions are
under the civil law, that they are revocable, and that the church holds its
possessions as a patrocinium (protectorate), because Christ said, "Render
therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Matt. 22:21).242 It may
very well be that Dante picked up the critical word patrocinium and the
concept behind it from this chapter of Hugh of St. Victor and that he
learned of it through Olivi's An papa.243
Olivi's disciple Ubertino da Casale was no more focused than Olivi on
the Donation of Constantine as the beginning of ecclesiastical decline.
Writing in 1305, Ubertino mentions Constantine only in passing, and he
fails to say anything about the Donation. The time of Constantine, he
107
says, was a time of clear teaching and contemplation and of the doctors of
the church and the anchorites.244 In his list of the ages of the church, he
says that the third age began with Constantine, but he gives equal impor-
tance to the Council of Nicea.245 He does not see the decline of the
church beginning until the current, fifth age.246
Ubertino was more strident than Olivi in condemning the abuses of
the fifth age, going beyond his mentor to deny the validity of Celestine
V's resignation. For Ubertino the resulting election was not only invalid,
but it produced, in Boniface VIII and Benedict XI, popes who were
themselves the veritable Antichrist, Babylon the Great, the whore of the
Apocalypse who fornicated with the kings of earth.247 However, it is one
thing to criticize the clergy for their misbehavior and another to hold up
evangelical poverty as a standard for all clergy and prelates. Ubertino does
this more clearly and consistently than Olivi. He addresses the topic in a
sermon embedded in the first book of the Arbor, where Marino Damiata
says that he demands of the secular clergy a respect for poverty no less
severe than that of the Franciscans.248 Poverty was not only for the Fran-
ciscans, and Francis was not the only icon of the apostolic life. Prelates of
the present day, he says, have forgotten Augustine, Dominic, Bernard,
Benedict, and Basil, as well as Francis.249
For Ubertino, the life of apostolic poverty was the proper form for the
entire hierarchy. Poverty meant renunciation of all possession. Ubertino
decried the luxury, the precious chalices, the majestic palaces, and the
voracious appetite of the prelates for worldly goods.250 For him the renun-
ciation of such possessions was the outer expression of a deep inner con-
version to reject all things earthly in favor of all things spiritual. E.
Randolph Daniel has reminded us that Ubertino's underlying point was
that "conversion was first of all a total renovation of the interior man. He
must reorient his entire self, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and spiri-
tual, toward complete conformity to the crucified Christ."251
Not all Franciscans were in complete accord with the opinions and
beliefs of Olivi, Ubertino, and those who had come to be called the
Spiritual faction within the order. Many members of the overall Fransican
community were content to feign poverty while living, eating, drinking,
and studying comfortably in palatial churches and convents. The story of
the internal disputes within the order is too complex to be told here, but
it is worth mentioning that in the years leading up to the Council of
Vienne in 1314, Ubertino found himself to be the principal spokesman
108
for the Spirituals and the chief defender of Olivi's work and writings,
and especially those focused on Franciscan poverty.252 While accepting
renunciation of dominium, both Olivi and Ubertino went beyond that to
stress the importance of austerity in the life of a proper Franciscan, an idea
phrased as usus pauper ; the way of strictest poverty.
Although Dante never used the term usus pauper ' the standard which
he held forth for the church throughout both the Commedia and the Mon-
archia was one of strict poverty - a principle on which he insisted not only
for the Franciscan order but for the whole church.253 Like Ubertino,
Dante offers a parade of paragons of poverty, including Peter, Paul and
Mary; the popes Linus, Cietus, Sixtus, Pius, Callixtus, and Urban; Peter
Damian and Bernard of Clairvaux; and Dominic and Francis.254 The con-
cept behind usus pauper was certainly territory shared by Olivi, Ubertino,
and Dante.
However, when it came to the different question of the proper order

of the world and the divinely ordered relationship between the papacy
and the empire, Dante parted ways with his Franciscan teachers. Olivi
and Ubertino could hardly be less interested in the empire or in the idea
of a secular order offering its own earthly beatitude, structured under the
unity of the emperor. For both Olivi and Ubertino, the world and the
church were one. While they may have disapproved of the pope's exces-
sive role in temporal affairs, they tended to think of the world as the
church and the church as the world. Ubertino's relentlessly Christo-
centric view of the world precluded any room for a temporal authority
that was not subordinated to the church.255 Olivi identifies the woman
clothed with the sun in Apocalypse 12 as the church, a figure most often
identified as the Virgin Mary.256 When the dragon threatens her, she is
saved by receiving the two wings of the great eagle, which allow her to
soar to a place of nourishment (Apoc. 12:13-14). Her persecution took
place, Olivi says, until the conversion of Constantine, when she was given
the two wings of temporal and spiritual powers that bore her aloft:
Likewise the imperial or temporal power and the spiritual power over the whole
world are the two wings. Although according to the proper order of things the
spiritual power should have the first place, it is nevertheless evident and effica-
cious that the Roman empire should be its servant and devoted subject
[subiectum].257
Although Dante believed that the emperor "should show that reverence
toward Peter that a first-born son should show his father" (Mon. 3.16.18),
109
he is very clear that "the Roman Prince is not in any way subject ( non
subiaceat) to the Roman Pontiff" (Mon. 3. 16.17). "258 The ecclesiology
that Olivi presents here could not be farther from the entire thrust of the
Monarchia. Dante unequivocally posits two powers and two leaders, both
deriving their authority from God, while Olivi sees the empire and the
papacy as two wings of the one church.
Dante had two other teachers or mentors of note during his time in
Florence: Brunetto Latini and Remigio dei Girolami. Brunetto, a layman
and a highly respected civil servant for the Florentine government, may
have introduced Dante to Boethius, Cicero, and Aristotle. While he was
more interested in city government than in the empire or the church, he
did address Constantine's Donation in a chapter of his encyclopedic Livres
du Tresor. Here he tells the story of Sylvester's cure of "Gostantin l'emper-
eor" and of his gift of "all the imperial dignity that you can see, because
prior to that the church had nothing. ',259 There is no hint here of the
Donation leading in any way to the corruption of the church.
Neither did Remigio contribute significantly to Dante's thought about
the Donation of Constantine. Scholars have speculated that Dante may
well have studied under Remigio when he attended "the schools of the
religious orders and the disputations held by the philosophers" ( Conv .
2.12.7), around the time he probably made the acquaintance of Olivi and
Ubertino.260 Embedded in his Contra falsos ecclesie professores (Against those
who teach falsehoods about the church) are thirty-two chapters that focus
on the nature and extent of papal authority in what amounts to a compen-
dium of statements made in earler writings, including the Bible, theolo-
gians (Augustine, Dionysius, and Bernard, but not Hugh of St. Victor),
canon lawyers, papal declarations, hierocratic theologians, plus Aristotle,
civil law, and imperial declarations.261 This quasi-encyclopedic treatment
flows, no doubt, from the core purpose of Contra falsos, which was to
provide material for sermons.262 Remigio quotes from the version of the
Donation in Gratian's Decretum and mentions Constantine and/or the
Donation at least six times. Only one of these could be construed as

unfavorable to the gift. Writing well after Manfred's Manifesto (1265), he
quotes the voice from Heaven that supposedly accompanied the Donation
("Hodie infiisum est venenum ecclesie Dei" [Today poison is infused in
the church of God]) and declares that this shows that Christ wanted the
church to be poor in temporal affairs.263 Just before this he had claimed
that prelates should not have primary and direct dominion over temporal
110
goods because temporalities diminish devotion to and love of God,264

sentiments certainly in line with Dante's. In a later chapter, he deviates
significantly from the hierocratic line by saying that even though Christ
was the lord of temporal things, that does not mean that he intended for
his vicar the pope to have temporal dominium.265
For the most part, however, Remigio follows the views of the hiero-
crats that Dante argues against in the Monarchia. He does say that evangeli-
cal poverty is the proper model for the church, but he also says that the
pope receives his authority directly from God, while the secular princes
receive theirs from God through the pope.266 He claims that there is only
one body and one head of all Christians and of the church, and that head
is the pope.267 At the same time, as Charles Davis has pointed out,
Remigio made "every effort to reduce the most celebrated examples of
papal intervention in secular affairs to the ground of "ratio peccati " (by
reason of sin).268 In the end it must be said that while some of Remigio's
ideas are consistent with Dante's, his positions remain confusing and
sometimes contradictory, lacking the clarity that Dante consistently
offers.269
Finally, among those who were close to Dante, we must consider Cino
da Pistoia, civil lawyer and poet. Robert Hollander has pointed out that
the two poets were in close contact during three periods of their lives
(before 1291, between 1304 and 1306, and possibly between 1310 and
1313), that they became close friends, that they knew each other's poems
well, that Dante included Cino in the narrowly restricted "school" of the
dolce stil nuovo ( Purg . 24.57), and that Cino recognized Dante's superior
poetic skills.270 Of course Cino's legal skills were clearly superior to
Dante's. To put Cino's position on the Donation in the proper context,
we must review how popes and theologians used the Donation over the
preceeding century or so to consider how the Donation was treated dur-
ing and after the dispute between Henry VII and Clement V.
Earlier reformers including Arnold of Brescia (d. 1155)271 and Peter
Waldo (d. 121 8)272 had cited the Donation of Constantine as the begin-
ning of the Church's decline and insisted that prelates and clerics should
follow the poverty of Christ. Both had been condemned for heresy. In
Dante's own time Fra Dolcino reprised these assertions,273 but he could
hardly have influenced the poet, who has Mohammed ask Dante to warn
Dolcino that Dolcino will join him among the schismatics in Hell unless
he changes his ways ( Inf. 28:55-60).
ill
Dante's own contribution was to incorporate the idea that the church's
corruption began with Constantine's Donation (a view not found among
the Franciscans) into the Joachite-influenced Franciscan presentation of
the ages of church history. As we have seen, he declares that the decline
of the church started with Sylvester's acceptance of Constantine's pur-
ported gift, a point that he shares with certain heretics but not with Joa-
chim, Bonaventure, Olivi, or Ubertino.
The Thirteenth Century
During the thirteenth century the Donation of Constantine once again

became an issue in the ongoing contest between the papacy and the
empire.274 Prior to that, Bernard of Clairvaux, who received the honor
of serving as Dante's third and final guide in the Commedia , alluded to
Constantine (but not to the Donation) only once in his work.275 In his De
consideratione , addressed to Eugenius III, he urged the new pope not to
process "adorned with either jewels or silks, covered with gold" because
"in this finery, you are the successor not of Peter but of Constantine."276
Using language similar to Dante's in Monarchia 2.10.2, St. Bernard wrote
of th e facultates ecdesiarum (resources of the church), saying that they are
the patrimony of the poor.277 But St. Bernard in no way denied the
church's right to own property. He did believe that the proper form of
the church was that it should be apostolic and poor,278 and that would
have pleased Dante, who was certainly acquainted with this work.279 Yet
De consideratione was not the only and not even the most significant place
where Dante encountered the idea of a poor church.
More important than St. Bernard were the declarations of strong popes
of the thirteenth century and their supporters. When Innocent III referred
to Constantine in a sermon prepared for the feast of St. Sylvester, he
repeated key parts of the Donation from Gratian and called Sylvester "not
only a great priest, but the greatest, sublime with pontifical and regal
power, truly the vicar of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords [1
Timothy 6:15; Apoc. 19:16], a priest for ever after the order of Mel-
chisedech [Psalm 110:4]."280 According to Kenneth Pennington, the
model of Melchisedech was Innocent's "most dramatic argument for
papal monarchy, far more important to him than the Donation of Con-
stantine."281 Despite the height of this claim, in practice Innocent III
112
appears to have limited his intervention in temporal affairs to certain

causes (causaliter): for reason of sin (rattorte peccati), for the vacancy of the
empire ( vacante imperio), and for heresy.282 His most famous and important
statement about what has been called the indirect power of the papacy in
temporal affairs was made in a letter to William VIII, Lord of Montpellier,
entitled Per venerabilem (1202), but since it dealt with a matter regarding
the succession of illegitimate children in France and had nothing to do
with the empire, Innocent had no reason to mention the Donation of
Constantine.283 Walter Ullmann wrote that "Innocent III was too cau-
tious and shrewd to base his claim upon this slender foundation [i.e., the
Donation]."284
According to Brian Tierney, it was Gregory IX who renewed papal
focus on the Donation in a letter to the emperor Frederick II in which he
stated that "Constantine . . . established not only in the City of Rome but
in the whole Roman Empire - that as the vicar of the Prince of the Apos-
tles governed the empire of priesthood and of souls in the whole world
so he [i.e., the pope] should also reign over things and bodies throughout
the whole world."285 Gregory IX so overstated the content of the Dona-
tion as to make it a weak argument. His successor, Innocent IV, decided
to come up with a new interpretation of the ancient gift. In the encyclical
letter Eger cui lenia (ca. 1246) defending his deposition of Frederick II, he
"turned the Donation on its head" by stating that it was in fact not a gift
but a restitution of property that Christ had given to Peter, so it had been
illegally held by the empire all along.286
Later popes rarely mention the Donation or Constantine. Boniface
VIII's principal conflict was not with an emperor but with Philip IV of
France, so the pope had no reason to use the Donation to assert claims
against the king. In fact the Donation is not mentioned in Boniface's three
most famous bulls written to claim his authority over Philip: Clericis laicos
(August 18, 1295), Asculta fili (December 6, 1301), and Unam sanctam
(November 18, 1302), regarded as the most extreme position of papal
power in the Middle Ages.287 Similarly, in a letter to the German electors
(May 13, 1300) asserting his right to claim imperial rights in Tuscany,
Boniface skipped right over the traditional mention of the Donation and
took papal credit for translating the empire to the Germans by crowning
Charlemagne. A papal consistory was held on June 24, 1302, with French
ambassadors in attendance, in which both Cardinal Matthew of
Acquasparta and Boniface VIII spoke in strong terms about papal power
113
in temporal affairs, but neither of them said anything about Sylvester,

Constantine, or the Donation.288 It is possible, as we have seen, that Boni-
face's strongest reliance on the Donation of Constantine was manifest in
the Lateran frescoes, completed in 1300.
If Boniface avoided the Donation in his bulls and letters, he failed to
prevent writers on different sides of the issue from bringing it back into
the conversation. Ptolemy of Lucca used the Donation to support his
"early and influential exposition of high papalist views" in the Determi-
natio compendiosa de iurisdictione imperii (Summary judgment on imperial
jurisdiction), probably written around 1300, repeating the concept that it
was not a gift but a restitution.289 When the struggle between Boniface
VIII and Philip IV came to a head, conflicting opinions were expressed
on all sides. However, since this conflict was between the papacy and the
kingdom of France, and since the empire was at a low ebb at the time,
the imperial side was not heavily involved.
Perhaps the most original contribution to ideas about the Donation
during this period was made by the French Dominican theologian John
of Paris in his treatise De potestate regia et papali (On royal and papal
power), written in 1302-3 in support of the Philip IV.290 In Chapter
21, "On the Donation of Constantine and What the Pope Can Do as a
Consequence of It," John denied the validity of the gift, but he attacked
it from a point of view fundamentally different from Dante's. His eager-
ness to exempt the kingdom of France from papal control led John effec-
tively to deny the universality of the empire and to claim that France was
never part of it.291 He referred to the version of the story told by Vincent
of Beauvais in which Constantine awarded Sylvester only "one province,
namely Italy, along with certain other territories, not including France."292
He then cited the four arguments against the Donation in Accursius's
Glossa ordinaria ad authenticum and added (inaccurately) that the Life of Pope
St. Sylvester proved that the gift was displeasing to God because angelic
voices were heard to say "This day poison has been spread abroad in the
church."293 Even if we grant the validity of the Donation and its applica-
bility to the whole empire, John continues, the document gave the pope
no power over the king of France because the Franks were never con-
quered by the Romans; and even if the Franks had been subject to the
empire, the Donation gave the pope no power over the French king
because he was the pope, not the emperor.294 Furthermore, in another
114
argument antithetical to Dante's view, he claimed that the Romans

achieved dominance by force.
Elsewhere in his treatise, John of Paris explicitly allows the church to
own temporal property, but only as a community. He explains that the
pope and other ecclesiastics have dominium or proprietatem over properties,
but that these rights have been given to communities rather than individ-
uals. The pope, as head of the church, is the "general steward" ( universalis
dispensator) of all ecclesiastical goods whether spiritual or temporal. He is
not indeed lord of them, for only the community of the universal church
is the mistress and proprietress of all goods generally."295
It is not likely that Dante was familiar with this treatise.296 If he read it,
this portion of John's treatise might have reinforced his concept of the
church as a guardian of property, but nowhere does John of Paris use the
critical word patrocinium to describe the Donation, and nowhere does he
absolutely deny the church the right to ownership of property. John col-
lected a list of 42 arguments from those who say that the pope has jurisdic-
tion over all temporal affairs, and then he proceeds to answer these
arguments one by one.297 All in all, John of Paris addresses the issue of
papal versus royal authority with more detail and care than anyone else,
and the comparisons between his work and the Monarchia are instructive.
But a wide gulf divides him from Dante on the critical issues of the uni-
versality of imperial authority, the prohibition of church ownership of
property, and the apostolic life as the proper form of the church. In fact,
he says that one of the six powers that Christ gave to the pope and the
apostles was "the power to receive what is necessary to maintain a suitable
standard of living from those to whom they minister spiritually,"298 and
he accuses the Waldensians of error in their claim that the status of the
pope and the prelates as successors to the apostles was incompatible with
temporal dominium and earthly riches.299
Though a theologian, John of Paris reflected the ideas of the French
jurists of the second half of the thirteenth century. The school of the
glossators had reached its height with Accursius's Glossa ordinaria in the
mid-thirteenth century. Jacques de Revigny, Pierre de Belleperche, and
other jurists at the University of Orleans developed a new way of studying
the civil law by combining scholastic dialectics with jurisprudential analy-
sis. The proponents of this new French school became known as the
commentators, and they focused in more detail on the practical applica-
tion of the law to contemporary situations. The French commentators
115
had an enormous influence on the University of Bologna.300 Here we find

the link to Cino da Pistoia. It is important to note that Cino was not an
ordinary law professor - he was the "initial pillar" of the Italian school of
Commentators.301
Cino and Dante had previously built a close relationship based on

mutual respect for each other's poems. During a later period they came
together in support of the empire. Domenico Maffei sees Cino's state-
ments regarding the Donation of Constantine as a particularly important
part of his early legal thought, illustrating the influence of the French
school.302 In his monumental Lectura super Codice , Cino expressed the
opinion that the commonwealth should be governed by one authority,
who can be called "mundi dominus," and asserted that his rule extends
over all the earth, day and night.303 Following Pierre de Belleperche, Cino
therefore rejected the validity of the Donation of Constantine. He made
a distinction between the emperor's authority over things belonging to
his own personal patrimony ( beni patrimoniali) as against things that are in
public use as part of the imperial fisc, such as theaters and roads.304 Cino
concluded that the emperor was not capable of alienating, giving away,
or prescribing things in public use, including, most importantly, the juris-
diction of the empire and the signa subiectionis , the signs or markers of
imperial authority integral to the imperial office. More importantly, Cino
says that the popes could not ascribe the signa subiectionis to them-
selves - an echo of Dante's view that Sylvester took (prese) the Donation
from Constantine.305 The Donation must therefore be considered a patri-
monial emolument of those things that can be legitimately alienated.306
And since that which can be alienated can be revoked, the Donation is a
revocable grant, not a transfer of dominium over inalienable imperial
things. Cino here differs from Dante by implying that the emperor could
give the church some of his own private buildings or land;307 he does not
make Dante's argument that the church is indisposed to receive temporal
goods. But Cino and Dante both agree that the emperor is not capable of
giving away any of the dignities, authorities, or powers of the empire.
While Dante did not go into the distinction between the alienability
and inalienability of the things belonging to the emperor, while Cino did
not use the key word patrocinium, and while Cino did not employ the
argument of the apostolic form of the church, their expressed positions
on the Donation of Constantine shared important elements. As a fellow
supporter of the empire, Cino must have welcomed the arrival of the
116
Henry VII with enthusiasm at least somewhat equivalent to Dante's jubi-

lation in the letter he wrote "To the Princes and Peoples of Italy" in 1310
(Ep. 5). 308 Surely they were in contact during these years. It is possible that
they were together at Henry VII's coronation as king of the Lombards in
Milan.309
The 1312-14 Controversy
When Henry VII descended into Italy, he provoked a fierce struggle with
Clement V and Robert of Anjou.310 On the assassination of Albert of
Austria in 1308, the German electors made the unlikely choice of Henry,
Count of Luxembourg, and crowned him king of the Romans at Aachen
on January 6, 1309. Because of his weak standing in Germany, Henry
decided to secure additional prestige by traveling to Rome to receive
the imperial crown.311 Clement V approved of the emperor-elect's Italian
campaign, promised to place the imperial crown on the emperor's head
with his own hands in St. Peter's in Rome, and even instructed all good
Christians to pay him the proper respect,312 but he hedged his bet by
appointing his vassal, King Robert of Naples, as papal vicar in the
Romagna in August 131 0.313 Despite this appointment, Henry signed the
Promise of Lausanne on October 11, 1310, 314 on his way across the Mt.
Ceniš pass to Italy to be crowned king of the Lombards in Milan and
Holy Roman emperor in Rome. But trouble broke out between Henry
and Robert, and the pope was eventually forced to make a choice.315 After
some nasty conflicts with rebellious cities on the Lombard plain, Henry
decided to press on to Rome to receive his crown.
Meanwhile, in Avignon, Clement V decided to allow Robert's troops
to impede Henry's entrance into Rome - an act that Dante describes as
deceit (inganno).316 As a result, when Henry arrived in Rome he was
opposed by Robert's troops, who held Trastevere and the Castel San
Angelo. Unable to reach St. Peter's, Henry settled for a coronation cere-
mony in the Lateran on June 29, 1312. Ten days before the coronation
Clement V wrote a letter proclaiming a truce between Henry and Robert
and commanding Henry not to oppose the very troops who were block-
ing his coronation.317 Through the cardinals the pope soon ordered Henry
to get out of the city of Rome, which, he said, belonged to the papacy
and not to the empire.318 Henry left for Tivoli a few days after the corona-
tion and lingered there for a couple of months before moving to Arezzo.
117
Once there he posted a proclamation on the doors of the cathedral accus-

ing Robert of the crime of treason against the empire.319 He also started
negotiations with Frederick III, king of Trinaria (Sicily), against the
pope's wishes.320 By now Henry had contracted malaria. After a half-
hearted effort to take Florence in December of 1312, Henry took up
residence in Pisa for about eight months, during which he issued the
Constitutions of Pisa and condemned Robert to beheading and the loss
of his lands. In August of the next year he started for Rome with a recon-
stituted army. Barred by the Guelfs from entering Siena, Henry moved
south to Buonconvento, where the malaria finally overtook him on
August 24, 1313. Following the emperor's death, Clement V issued two
bulls very critical of Henry VII's actions in Italy, Romani principes and
Pastoralis cura (March 14, 1314).
In the end the contest between Clement V, Robert of Naples, and
Henry VII may have generated more parchment than blood. The struggle
was accompanied from beginning to end by a flurry of documents -
edicts, constitutions, proclamations, condemnations, papal bulls, treatises,
and legal opinions on both sides. These documents made important con-
tributions to the development of civil law.321 Many of them address the
Donation of Constantine.322 Dante contributed the three letters described
as "political" to the fracas, all written before Henry's coronation in

Rome: first, a letter "To the Princes and Peoples of Italy," urging them to
welcome Henry with open arms (September or October 1310); second, a
letter "To the Florentines," urging them to give up their rebellion against
the future emperor (March 31, 1311); and third, a letter "To the Emperor
Henry VII," pleading with him to give up his struggles with the cities in
Lombardy and to attack Florence, the root of the problem (April 17,
1311). 323 We know from the letters that Dante was at the casde of Poppi
at least until April 17, 1311. He may have traveled to Milan to welcome
Henry VII and to witness his coronation as king of the Lombards. He
does not mention the Donation of Constantine in any of these letters, all
of which were written before the pamphlet war began.
The Donation of Constantine seems to grow in prominence as it is
brought into the arguments on both sides. How Dante might have seen
any of these documents is a matter for speculation. Through the Malas-
pina family, Cino da Pistoia, or Cangrande della Scala, he may have had
some access to the imperial court, or he may at least have received copies
of documents distributed to Henry's supporters in Italy. His son Pietro
118
may have also studied law in Bologna during these years, and in any case,
Bologna, the epicenter of legal studies in Italy, was easily accessible both
from the Casentino and from Verona, where Dante resided around this
time.324
Boniface VIII may not have cared much for the Donation, but Clem-
ent V was eager to have Henry promise to reconfirm in very strong terms
the Donation and other privileges given to the church. In the Promise of
Lausanne (October 11, 1310) Henry obligated himself in every way possi-
ble to maintain and conserve all of the status, preeminence, dignities,
and privileges granted to the Roman church and the Roman pontiff by
Constantine, Charlemagne, Henry, Otto IV, Frederick II, and Rudolph,
including the lands and provinces of the Roman church wherever they
are with all the cities, lands, and boundaries with their laws and jurisdic-
tions intact. The list included the march of Ancona, the exarchate of
Ravenna, the Pentapolis, Bologna, Perugia, Spoleto, Massa Trabaría, the
patrimony of St. Peter in Tuscany, Todi, Narni, Civitavecchia, Rieti, the
Campagna, and others. Beyond this, Henry pledged to recognize that
the 4 'law and possession and property rights" of these cities and lands
belonged wholly to the Roman church and that he would make no claim
for them. He further promised never to occupy any of these places and to
serve as advocate and defender of the Holy Roman church against anyone
who might encroach on its territories.325
By March of 1311, now that Henry and his army were in Lombardy,
it had become clear to all that Henry was serious about restoring imperial
rights in Italy. Clement's support of Henry began to wane as Henry's
determination and his sense of what it meant to be emperor increased. It
became clear that he interpreted the oaths he had made to the pope in a
different way. Immediately after he was crowned Holy Roman emperor
on June 29, 1312, Henry issued an encyclical letter to the princes of
Europe declaring that the emperor's role was to keep men from sinning,
that Rome was the proper seat of both empire and papacy, that as emperor
he was king of kings and lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15; Apoc. 19:16), 326
and that everthing was subject to him. In this letter he managed to avoid
mentioning the Donation of Constantine.327 In another document written
on the same day against heretics and sacrilegious people, he mentioned
Constantine but not the Donation, saying only that his precedessor had
defended and supported the Roman church.328 A week later he wrote the
pope to reassure him by confirming the Promise of Lausanne, neglecting
119
again to mention the Donation.329 Nor did Henry refer to the Donation
or Constantine in his response to the cardinals' order to quit Rome. Here
he did not object to Clement's territorial claims or even dispute the pope's
assertion that he could be in Rome only with special permission; instead,
he agreed to free the Roman prisoners and restore the houses and palaces
he had seized. He made the excuse that he had stayed in Rome only to
pacify the city according to the pope's wishes. If Clement was deceitful,
Henry was equally disingenous.330
So much for the official documents. The pamphlet war now began in
earnest. The publicists, theologians, and lawyers on both sides addressed
many issues other than the Donation, including especially whether Henry
could legitimately accuse Robert of Naples of lèse majesté , summon him
to court, and condemn him in absentia.331 Few of these documents are
specifically dated, but almost all of them were written after Henry's coro-
nation or after his condemnation of Robert and before his death.
Cino da Pistoia's comments in the Lectura super Codice about the Dona-
tion can be regarded as a contribution to of this war of words, since this
commentary on the civil law was finished between 1312 and 1314.332 It
was probably the strongest argument on the imperial side. Two other
important imperial documents exist.333 A Pavian jurist, Johannes Brancha-
zolus, weighed in on November 14, 1312, with a treatise arguing that
both powers were divine in origin, the emperor was dominus mundi and
lord of all temporal things, all nations were under him, his authority was
above the apostolic authority, and the imperial coronation by the pope
added nothing but was simply a recognition of a fact. Branchazolus does
not mention Constantine or the Donation, but he does say that "the
emperor was generally called the head of the church, as we read in the
legend of the blessed Sylvester."334 Dante would not have agreed with an
expression of imperial power pushed to such an extreme.
The second important imperial document (not dated) was a product of
the Sicilian court of Frederick of Trinacria.335 The author, who may have
been the Sicilian jurist Giovanni de Calvaruso,336 focuses primarily on the
legality of the truce with Robert imposed by the pope, but he also calls
the emperor dominus mundi , declares that nothing is greater than the
empire in temporal things, and says that spiritual things do not include
temporal things.337 He denies the validity of Constantine's Donation by
referring to the Authenticum, saying that the pope could in no way prevent
the emperor from being in Rome, because the Roman emperor derived
120
his name from that city, which therefore must be his.338 Furthermore,
Sicily belongs to the empire; it cannot belong to the church because from
apostolic times the Lord charged the navícula (small boat) of the church
with the mission of going throughout the world and preaching the gospel
and admonished the aposdes not to be bogged down by gold and silver.
If Dante knew this juridical treatise, it may have stimulated his thinking.
This last point at least foreshadows the critical argument regarding the
poverty of the church that Dante uses in Monarchia 3.10 against the valid-
ity of the Donation of Constantine,339 and the word navícula offers a closer
resonance to Dante's use of navicella than the almost universally accepted
gloss that points to the phrase Ho die venenum diffusum est in ecclesia sancta
Dei (Today poison is diffused into the Holy Church of God).
The treatises on the papal side were far stronger. Three documents
edited by Jacob Schwalm address the papal concerns: (1) a summary of
the oaths Henry had taken, including his confirmation of the Donation,
followed by a list of 10 questions regarding the controversy; (2) a juridical
analysis of the 10 questions; and (3) a theological explication of the 10
questions.340 The juridical analysis simply states that the pope can order
the emperor out of Rome because it has been in his dominium since the
Donation of Constantine, and for the same reason the emperor cannot
enter the kingdom of Naples by force and without papal permission.341
Here also the papalists bring into full view a principle implied by the pope
in the act of requiring Henry to quit Rome: that the authority of the
emperor has geographical boundaries, which do not include the kingdom
of Naples342 or the territory awarded to the pope by the Donation. This
was a principle diametrically opposed to Henry VII's and Dante's concep-
tions of the universal authority and dominium of the emperor. Similar
arguments were made in the Tractatus de Jurisditione Ecclesie super Regnum
Apuliae et Siciliae ( Treatise on the Church's Jurisdiction over the Kingdom of
Apulia and Sicily).343
It should be noted, however, that Henry VII in practice and even in
theory accepted limits on his authority that Dante would not have coun-
tenanced. Unlike Dante, the emperor implicidy recognized that the
empire had geographical limits. Commenting on these differences,
Charles Davis wrote that Dante's Epistle 7 contains "a vigorous exposition
of his [i.e., Henry VII's] universal authority, as if Henry needed to be
reminded of his own power," and that "Dante writes to Henry with the
121
air of one who is guilty of serious ignorance, not realizing the full extent
of his authority."344
By far the most extreme statements in the papal documents and pre-
sumably the most annoying to Dante are contained in a treatise purporting
to address Henry VII's sentence against Robert of Naples.345 The author
invalidates the condemnation by undermining the emperor's authority. In
doing so he takes a completely different tack on the Donation of (Kon-
stantine. While repeating that Constantine did in fact make a donationem
legitimam et expressam (legitimate and clear donation) of the city of Rome
and other provinces, he says that with this act the res publica (common-
wealth) of Rome either ceased to exist or now existed apud summum
Romanům pontificem (in the highest Roman pontiff) because Rome and
these provinces had been transferred to the pope in perpetuity.346 Human
things change, the writer says, including the status of dignities and author-
ities. At one time the emperor was dominus quasi omnium (lord of almost
all), whence he called himself dominus mundi. But today there are many
kings princes, marqueses, counts, barons, and communes throughout the
world that possess their own dignities; once the emperor was over all the
kings and nations, but now it is widely recognized that the kings of
France, Sicily, Spain, Aragon, England, Portugal, Armenia, Hungary, and
Cyprus are not subject to him and do not obey him.347 Furthermore,
Rome acquired its empire by violence and imposed its laws on subject
nations, a situation that could not last forever. Then this writer reaches a
crescendo. It is clear, he says, that to talk in these modern times about the
power and authority of the emperor is in a way "to misstate things,
because the emperor is said to have everything but in fact he possesses
nothing, and he is called the emperor of the Roman people, but he has
no dominion, imperium, power, or jurisdiction over the Romans ever
since the abdicado and donation of Constantine, and after his coronation
it was legitimate that he was not allowed to stay even one day in the city.
Without doubt the dominion ( dominium ) of the emperor has been
aborted, his authority diminished, his power restricted, and his imperium
and jurisdiction mutilated."348
Not long after Henry VII's death, Clement attacked the emperor's
memory with the bull Romani principes (March 14, 1314) and accused
him of violating his oaths, neglecting to confirm the papacy's ownership
( proprietatem ) of Rome and other lands and provinces and failing to honor
the privileges granted by Constantine and his successors.349 In the bull
122
Pastoralis cura , issued on the same day, Clement rendered Henry's sentence
of Robert invalid, declared that the emperor had no jurisdiction outside
the boundaries of the empire, including Sicily, asserted papal authority
vacante imperio (when the imperial office is vacant), and claimed superiority
over the empire, which was given to Peter by Christ.350 If Dante read
Clement's two bulls, they would certainly have made him angry.
It is indeed difficult to read these documents and not speculate about
the thoughts and feelings Dante might have had upon reviewing them.
Nicola Zingarelli long ago suggested that Dante wrote the Monarchia to
support Cangrande when John XXII rescinded his title of imperial vicar
with the bull Sifratrum (March 31, 1317). 351 Piero Giorgio Ricci, Michele
Maccarrone, Prue Shaw, Richard Kay, Anthony Cassell, Giorgio Padoan,
Francesco Furlan, Enrico Fenzi, and others have agreed with him, partly
because Dante's reference in Monarchia 1.12.6 to Paradiso 5.19-22 would
date the prose work much later.352 But Charles Davis pointed out that the
core argument of John's bull is that the pope is in charge of the empire
when the imperial seat is vacant (vacante imperii) and that Dante does not
address this issue in the Monarchia.353 Furthermore, John XXII did not
even mention the Donation in Si fratrum . If the Monarchia were written
against this bull, why would Dante have made his argument against the
Donation the cornerstone of his treatise?
The prominent place of the Donation of Constantine in the Monarchia

and in the 1312-14 controversy confirms Davis's arguments and strongly
suggests an earlier date for the treatise. What Dante says about the Dona-
tion makes it reasonable to believe that he wrote the Monarchia to shore
up the weak arguments on the imperial side and possibly even to stiffen
Henry VII's resolve to oppose these encroachments on imperial authority.
However, such a theory depends on accepting both Dante's placement of
Clement V with the simoniac popes in Inferno 19.79-87 and his reference
to Paradiso 5 in the Monarchia as later interpolations. This theory could
also suggest that the reference in that canto to the Donation ("Ahi, Cos-
tantin, di quanto mal fu matre, / non la tua conversion, ma quella dote /
che da te prese il primo ricco patre!" [Inf. 19.115-17]) might also have
been a later addition.
As for Cino da Pistoia, from Dante's point of view, he was a turncoat.

Although he was a strong supporter of the empire in 1312-14, he eventu-
ally drifted into the Guelph / Angevin camp. In 1319 he participated in a
123
group called by the inquisitor of Florence for the purpose trying a Francis-
can monk as a heretic, and he worked for the papacy a year later in
prosecuting some Ghibellines in the Marches.354 His Lectura super Digesto
Vetere , published about a decade later, approves the papacy's use of tempo-
ral power, says that the empire comes not from God but from the people,
and claims that the church is the greater of the two powers.355 What
brought about Cino's about-face we do not know. Domenico Maffei
explains the change as a natural reaction to Ludwig of Bavaria's Germanic
barbarism rather than a shameless act of opportunism or a religious con-
version.356 Cino received his doctorate in law from the University of
Bologna in 1314, 357 not long after Henry VII's death. Perhaps he became
one of the greedy lawyers toward whom Dante developed such an aver-
sion. Whatever its cause, Cino's radical change clearly started as early as
the late 1310s, and his adoption of the hierocratic point of view lends
credence to Robert Hollander's hypothesis that Dante left Cino out of
the Commedia because they had parted ways on fundamental beliefs
regarding the relationship between the church and the empire.358 Cino
does not mention the Monarchia , so we have no way of knowing whether
he read it; but Dante must have been very bitterly disappointed that the
power of his imperial vision, as expressed both in the Monarchia and in
the Commedia , failed to reach the heart and convince the mind of his
once-dear friend.
Conclusion
The narrative of the Monarchia culminates in Book 3, Chapter 10, where

Dante addresses the Donation of Constantine. Here Dante presents an
argument from reason to support the independence of imperial, temporal
authority from the church. In this same chapter he delivers the most effec-
tive attack on the excesses of papal claims to power in the temporal
sphere. Both arguments are based on the ownership of property, for it is
from property that all other forms of individual and state authority flow:
legal rights, wealth, political interests, taxes, coinage, social control, co-
ercion, war, and eventually national sovereignty. In Chapter 16 Dante
makes it clear that he is not making a distinction between secular and
sacred authority, for the function of the emperor is a sacred one: he is to
serve as the Augustinián bridle to cupidity and also to establish the peace
124
and justice in the world that will make it possible for Christians to fulfill
their potential in an Aristotelian sense and achieve blessedness in this life
as well as salvation in the next. Dante's arguments against the Donation
of Constantine thus form the critical fulcrum of the Monarchia , and this
point of view echoes throughout the Commedia.
At the very center of the sacred poem Dante the pilgrim states the
obvious to Marco Lombardo:
Lo mondo è ben così tutto diserto
d'ogne virtute, come tu mi sone,

e di malizia gravido e coverto.
Purg. 16.58-50
The pilgrim asks how this has happened. "Frate, / lo mondo è cieco,"
Marco replies ( Purg . 16.65-66). He then explains the doctrine of free will,
concluding that laws exist to guide men to the true city (Purg. 16.94-96).
But the pastor (the pope) ignores them. So "la mala condotta / è la cagion
che 'l mondo a fatto reo" (Purg. 16.103-4). Without at this point explic-
itly naming the Donation, Marco Lombardo goes on explain how the
papal and imperial powers, both rooted in Rome, have become confused:
Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo,

due soli aver, che l'una e l'altra strada
facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
L'un l'altro ha spento: ed è giunta la spada
col pasturale, e l'un con l'altro insieme
per viva forza mal convien che vada;
però che, giunti, l'un l'altro non teme.
Purg. 16.106-12
What is to be done about this state of affairs? What will it take for the
world to be set once again on the right track? How can the church be
rid of its corrupting wealth and the pernicious effects of Constantine's
Donation? Dante comes forth with a direct answer in the Monarchia.
Speaking of the church's riches, he emphatically urges: "Redeant unde

venerunť - Let them return whence they came (Mon. 3.10.3). Dante here
declares that the wealth of the church should be returned to the empire,
in the sense that the emperor's superior dominion should once again be
acknowledged over the patrimony which he has entrusted to the ecclesi-
astical hierarchy as a protectorate. The emperor, in other words, must
125
reassert his universal jurisdiction over the whole world, including Rome.
At the same time the church must recognize its subordination to imperial
authority as far as temporal goods and political power are concerned.
Only then can the sword be separated from the crook, and only then can
the two suns properly illuminate the world so that men may attain their
dual goals of happiness in this life and eternal blessedness in the life beyond
(Mon. 3.16.7-10). The return to a proper understanding of the Donation
will be an initial and substantial step toward the reform both of the church
and of secular society. As the nexus between the secular and religious
aspects of Dante's reform thought, therefore, the Donation of Constant-
ine occupies a special place in ushering the forthcoming age of political
and ecclesiastical reform.
Dante's unique contribution to the understanding of the Donation was

a three-part concept of denying the church's right to own property, hold-
ing up the life of Christ and the apostles as the model for the contempo-
rary church, and pointing to the role of the emperor as the proper holder
of all dominium , including church property, and as the prime agent for the
reform of the church.
Whenever it was that Dante wrote the Monarchia and Paradiso , he
soared above all of his contemporaries by countering the arguments of
popes and hierocrats, by adopting the judgments of the civil lawyers
against the diminution of the empire, and by combining these concepts
with the proper apostolic and poor form of the church, drawn from Fran-
ciscan and earlier traditions. This was a position far more radical than has
been generally accepted by modern scholars, but one clearly understood
by Dante's subsequent antagonists. Guido Vernani da Rimini wrote a
treatise in 1327 against the "heresy" of the Monarchia;359 Cardinal Bertrand
del Poggetto, effective lord of Bologna, committed the Monarchia and
very nearly Dante's bones to the flames in 1397;360 and in 1323 John XXII
promulgated the bull Cum inter nonnullos , declaring that it was heresy to
say that Christ and the apostles lived in poverty.361
One has only to read R. W. Southern's Western Society and the Church
in the Middle Ages to see how hopelessly unrealistic was Dante's idea that
the church should be divested of all temporal power and wealth.362 The
wealth and temporal power of the church had long and deep roots in
history, tradition, and canon law. We can agree with Lino Pertile that
Dante's vision looked backward rather than forward,363 that it was a vision
that was deeply conservative in Dante's desire to roll the medieval world
126
back to a halcyon time of Augustus and Christ. And we can agree that
Dante's vision was patently unfeasible, not even slightly realistic, espe-
cially with regard to reclaiming church property. But we cannot soften
his message without doing violence to Dante, to his own times, and to
our understanding of the critical years during which he lived. Be that as
it may, it is just possible that a dose of humility, evidence of spirituality,
and a public life of reasonable austerity on the part of popes and prelates
might have gone a long way to assuage the concerns that Dante, among
many, had about ecclesiastical corruption. But that was not to be. The
papacy instead became increasingly protective of its possessions, its tem-
poral power, and its demand for money.
In the end, it was not simply the three parts of his concept of church
property and the Donation of Contantine that made Dante's position
different. The vigor of his argument in the Monarchia and the magnifi-
cence of his poetic expression in the Commedia ensured that Dante's voice
would be heard by contemporaries and for centuries to come. This was a
voice so powerful and a program so radical that generations of scholars
have devoted barrels of ink to explaining Dante's position away, to soften-
ing his message. But there is no softness in Dante's message. There is no
equivocation in his voice. He meant what he wrote: the church should
own no property, it should follow the poverty of Christ and the apostles,
and an emperor will come to make this happen.
However, all of this happens here on this earth. The scriba Dei has St.
Peter remind us that all of our temporal concerns in the end play out in a
space that in comparison with eternity is a tiny "patch of earth" (Par.
27.86; Mon. 3.16.1 1).364 Important as earthly beatitude is, eternal salvation
ranks infinitely higher. Dante's own salvation comes through grace, medi-
ated first by a pagan man and then by a lay Christian woman, and only at
the very end by a monk of the church. Serving allegorically as everyman,
Dante teaches that men are not passive subjects of empire or papacy but
both secular and sacred creatures who play a vital role in their own des-
tiny, both here and beyond.
The breach between persons of faith and reason like Dante and a
church hierarchy increasingly focused on temporal power and wealth
was growing wider and wider in the early years of the fourteenth cen-
tury. Boniface VIII added two crowns to the papal tiara, for a total of
three, mimicking the emperor's silver, iron, and gold crowns. He also
bedecked it with precious jewels, including a large ruby at the top.
127
Moved to Avignon, the popes' triple crowns acquired fleurs-de-lis

pressed into the gold, reflecting the domination of France. It came to
be called "the Tiara of St. Sylvester," boldly connecting papal power to
the Donation of Constantine.365
Coral Gables , Florida
128
Appendix
Dante's Arguments against the Donation: Monarchia 3.10
Dante opens chapter 10 of the third book of the Monarchia with a brief
summary of the Donation of Constantine. "Some people," he says,
"maintain that the emperor Constantine, cured of leprosy by the interces-
sion of Sylvester who was then supreme Pontiff, made a gift to the church
of the seat of empire (i.e., Rome), along with many other imperial privi-
leges. From this they argue that since that time no one can take on those
imperial privileges unless he receives them from the church, to whom
(they say) they belong; and it would indeed follow from this that the one
authority was dependent on the other, as they claim" (Mon. 3.10.1-2).
Dante reminds the reader that he has just "stated and refuted those
arguments which appeared to be based on the word of God." That said,
"it now remains to state and refute those [arguments] which are based
on human actions and human reason" (Mon. 3.10.3). The first of these
arguments is the overall topic of Chapter 10. This argument is followed
by five more specific arguments that are based on the nature of the
empire. The final argument is based both on the nature of the empire and
on the proper form or nature of the church.
These seven arguments in Monarchia 3.10 are parsed below, syllogism
by syllogism, to clarify the most important statements that Dante made
regarding the Donation of Constantine. The Latin text is from Prue
Shaw's edition. The English translation is also based on Shaw's translation,
but I have added, changed, left out some words, and taken liberties with
punctuation, capitalization, parentheses, and occasional word order. The
resulting translations can be taken as mine, with gratitude to Shaw's
English text. Dante's subordinate points and comments are in braces.
THE OVERALL ARGUMENT AGAINST WHICH DANTE WILL

ARGUE (Mon. 3.10.3-4):
1. That no one can hold [temporal authority]

legitimately unless granted it by the Church ¡false].
Major premiss:
"Those things which belong to the church can only be held le
mately by someone to whom the church has granted them"
{and this we concede};
129
"Ea que sunt Ecclesie nemo de iure habere potest nisi ab Ecclesia"
{et hoc conceditur};
Minor premiss:
[Some people say that] "Roman sovereign authority belongs to
the church;"366
"Romanům regimen est Ecclesie;"
Conclusion:
Therefore no one can hold it [i.e., sovereign authority] legiti-

mately unless granted it by the church
{and they prove the minor premiss with reference to what was touched
on earlier about Constantine}.
"Ergo ipsum nemo habere potest de iure nisi ab Ecclesia"
{et minorum probant per ea que de Constantino superius tracta sunt}.
Dante's comment on the false syllogism:
{It is this minor premiss which I therefore deny, and when they
"prove" it I say their "proof" proves nothing, because Constantine
was not in a position to give away the privileges of empire, nor was
the church in a position accept them.}
{Hanc ergo minorem interimo et, cum probant, dico quod sua pro-
bado nulla est, quia Constantinus alienare non poterai Imperii dignita-
tem, nec Ecclesia recipere.}
FIRST ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.5-6):

2. That the emperor cannot split up the empire.
Major premiss:
Nobody has the right to do things via an office he holds which are
in conflict with that office
{otherwise one and the same thing would oppose itself in its own
nature, which is impossible};
Nemini licet ea facere per offitium sibi deputatum que sunt contra illud
offitium
{quia sic idem, in quantum idem, esset contrarium sibi ipsi: quod est
impossibile};
Minor premiss:
But to split up the empire is in conflict with the office bestowed on
the emperor
130
{since his task is to hold mankind in obedience to a single will [its

commands and is prohibitions], as can easily be seen from the first book
of this treatise};
Sed contra offitium deputatum Imperatori est scindere Imperium;
{cum offitium eius sit humanum genus uni velie et uni nolle tenere
subiectum, ut in primo huius de facili videre potest};
Conclusion:
Therefore the emperor is not allowed to split up the empire.

Ergo scindere Imperium Imperatori non licet.
Dante's comment on the syllogism:
{Thus if certain privileges had been taken away from the empire by
Constantine, as they maintain, and had passed into the control of the
church, that seamless garment would have been torn which even those
who pierced Christ the true God with their lance dared not to divide.}
{Si ergo alique dignitates per Constantinum esse alienate - ut dicunt
- ab Imperio, et cessissent in potestatem Ecclesie, scissa esset tunica
inconsutilis [cf. Mon. 1.16.3], quam scindere ausi non sunt etiam qui
Cristum verum Deum lancea perforarunt.}
SECOND ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.7-9):
3 . That the empire cannot destroy itself.
Introduction:
{Moreover, just as the church has its foundation, so too the empire has
its own. For the foundation of the church is Christ; hence the Apostle
in Corinthians says: "For other foundation can no man lay than that is
laid, which is Jesus Christ." He is the rock on which the church is
built.}
{Preterea, sicut Ecclesie suum habet fiindamentum, sic et Imperium
suum. Nam Ecclesie fiindamentum Cristus est; unde Apostolus ad Corin-
thios : "Fundamentum aliud nemo potest ponere preter id quod pos-
itum est, quod est Cristus Iesus" [1 Cor. 3:11]. Ipse est petra super
quam hedificata est Ecclesia.}
Major premiss:
The foundation of the empire is human right;
Imperii vero fundamentum ius humanum est;
Dante's comment toward the minor premiss:
131
{Now I say that, just as the church is not allowed to act against its own
foundaton, but must always rest upon it, in accordance with those
words in the Song of Solomon : "Who is this that cometh up from the
wilderness, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?" so
too . . .}
{Modo dico quod, sicut Ecclesie fundamento suo contrarian non licet,
sed debet semper inniti super illud iuxta illud Canticorum "Que est ista,
que ascendit de deserto delitiis affluens, innixa super dilectum?" [Song
of Solomon, 8:5], sic et . . .}
Minor premiss:
The empire is not allowed to do anything which is in conflict with
human right
{but if the empire were to destroy itself that would conflict with
human right};
Imperio licitum non est contra ius humanum aliquid facere
{sed contra ius humanum esset, si se ipsum Imperium destrueret};
Conclusion:
Therefore the empire is not allowed to destroy itself.

Ergo Imperio se ipsum destruere non licet.
Dante's comment on the conclusion:
{Since therefore to divide the empire would be to destroy it - for

empire consists precisely in the unity of universal monarchy - it is clear
that whoever embodies imperial authority is not allowed to split up the
empire. For it is clear from what was said earlier that to destroy the
empire is in conflict with human right.}
{Cum ergo scindere Imperium esset destruere ipsum, consistente
Imperio in unitate Monarchie universalis, manifestum est quod Imperii
auctoritate fungenti scindere Imperium non licet. Quod autem
destruere Imperium sit contra ius humanum, ex superioribus est
manifestum.}
THIRD ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.10)

4. That the empire precedes the emperor .
Major premiss:
All jurisdiction is prior to the judge who exercises it
{for the judge is appointed for the sake of the jurisdiction, and not vice
versa};
132
Omnis iurisdictio prior est suo iudice

{iudex enim ad iurisdictionem ordinatur, et non e converso};
Minor premiss:
The empire is a jurisdiction which embraces within its scope
every other temporal jurisdiction;
Imperium est iurisdictio omnem temporalem iurisdictionem ambitu suo
comprehendens;
Conclusion:
Therefore it [i.e., the empire] is prior to the judge, who is the

emperor
{for the emperor is appointed for its sake, and not vice versa}.
Ergo ipsa [i.e., Imperium] est prior suo iudice, qui est Imperator
{quia ad ipsam Imperator est ordinatus, et non e converso}.
FOURTH ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.10-11)
5. That the emperor, as emperor, cannot change the empire.
Major premiss:
{From this it is clear that}
The emperor, precisely as emperor, cannot change it [i.e., the
empire]
{because he derives from it the fact that he is what he is};
{Ex quo patet quod}
Imperator ipsam [i.e., Imperium] permutare non potest in quantum
Imperator
{cum ab ea recipiat esse quod est};
Minor premiss:
{Either [Constantine] was emperor when he is said to have conferred
this power on the church [i.e, the Donation], or he was not}.
{Aut ille [Constantinus] Imperator erat cum dicitur Ecclesie contulisse,
aut non},
a. [That] he was not [emperor];
a. [Quod] non [erat Imperator];
b. [That] he was [emperor]
{since such a conferring of power would be a lessening of his own
jurisdiction};
b. [Quod] sic [erat Imperator]
133
{cum talis collatio esset minoratio iurisdictionis, in quantum Imperator

hoc facere non poterai};
Conclusion:
a. Then it is obvious that he could not give away any aspect of the
empire.
a. Planum est quod nichil poterai de Imperio conferre.
b. Then precisely because he was emperor he could not do it [i.e.,
change the empire].
b. In quantum Imperator hoc facere non poterat [i.e., Imperium
permutare].
FIFTH ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.12).

6. That the emperor can cut off some part of the empire [false].
Major premiss:
{If one emperor could cut off some portion of the jurisdiction of the
empire, then so could another on the same grounds}
{Si unus Imperator aliquam particulam ab Imperii iurisdictione dis-
cindere posset, eadem ratione et alius}
The temporal jurisdiction [of the empire] is finite;
Iurisdictio temporalis finita sit;
Minor premiss:
Every finite thing can be destroyed by a finite series of
subdivisions;
Omne finitum per finitas decisiones assummatur;
Conclusion:
It would follow that the primary jurisdiction [of the empire] could
be entirely obliterated.
{and this is against reason}.
Sequreretur quod iurisdictio prima posset annichilali
{quod est irrationabile}.
SIXTH ARGUMENT FROM REASON (Mon. 3.10.13-17)

7. That the church could not accept [the Donation] as a possession, nor
could Constantine give it as an irrevocable gift.
Dante's comment toward the major premiss:
{Since a person who gives functions as an agent, and a person who
receives as a patient, as Aristotle says in the fourth book of the
Ethics . . .}
134
{Cum conferens habeat se per modum agentis et cui confertur per

modum patientis, ut placet Phylosopho in quarto ad Nicomacum . . .}
Major premiss:
For a collation to be legitímate requires a suitable disposition not
just in the giver, but in the recipient as well
{"for it seems that the action of active agents is transferred to the
'patient' if he is disposed to receive it" [Ethics]367};
Non solum ad collationem esse licitam requiritur dispositio conferentis,
sed etiam eius cui conferetur
{videtur enim in patiente et disposito actus activorum inesse};
Minor premiss:
But the church was utterly unsuited to receiving temporal things
because of the command which expressly forbade it;
Sed Ecclesia omnino indisposita erat ad temporalia recipienda per pre-
ceptum prohibivum expressům;
Dante's comment following the minor premiss:
{as we gather from these words in Matthew "Provide neither gold,
nor silver, nor money in your purses, nor scrip for your journey," etc.
For even if in Luke [22:35-36] we find that this command was relaxed
with regard to certain things, yet I have been unable to find that after
that prohibition the church was ever granted permission to possess gold
and silver. And thus if the church could not receive it, then even sup-
posing that Constantine had been in a position to perform that action,
nonetheless the action itself was not possible because of the unsuitabil-
ity of the "patient" or recipient}.
{ut habemus per Matheum [10:9-10] sic: "Nolite possidere aurum,
ñeque argentum, neque pecuniam in zonis vestris, non peram in via"
etc. Nam etsi per Lucam habemus relaxationem precepti quantum ad
quedam, ad possessionem tamen auri et argenti licentiatam Ecclesiam
post prohibitionem illam invenire non potui. Qua re, si Ecclesia reci-
pere non poterai, dato quod Constantinus hoc facere potuisset de se,
actio tamen ilia non erat possibilis propter patientis indispositionem.
Conclusion:
It is therefore clear that the church could non accept it as a posses-

sion, nor Constantine give it as an irrevocable gift.
Patet igitur quod nec Ecclesia recipere per modum possessionis, nec ille
[i.e., Constantinus] conferre per modum alientationis poterat.
135
Dante's comment on the conclusion:
{The emperor could however consign a patrimony and other resources

to the church as a protectorate, provided it was without prejudice to
the superior imperial authority, whose unity admits no division. And
God's vicar could receive it, not as owner but as administrator of its
fruits for the church and for Christ's poor, as the aposdes are known to
have done.}
{Poterai tarnen Imperator in patrocinium Ecclesie Patrimonium et alia
deputare, inmoto semper superior dominio, cuius unitas divisionem
non patitur. Poterai et vicarius Dei recipere non tanquam possessor, sed
tanquam fructum pro Ecclesia pro Cristi pauperibus dispensator: quod
apostolos fecisse non ignoratur.}
NOTES
I am indebted to Professors Robert Hollander, John Scott, V. Stanley Benfell, Edward Pete
Howard Kaminsky for their critical reading of this manuscript. A much earlier redaction
paper was read at Fifth Biennial Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan Univ
Kalamazoo on May 21, 1970, and a slighdy later version serves as chapter IX in Dabney Park
as a Reformer (New Orleans: Tulane University Doctoral Dissertation, 1971), 329-49, written
the guidance of Charles Till Davis.
1. The principal studies of this topic are Bruno Nardi, "La 'Donatio Constantini' e Dante,"
Danteschi 26 (1942): 47-95, reprinted with additions in Nel Mondo di Dante (Rome: Storia e
tura, 1944), 109-59; Michele Maccarrone, "Il terzo libro della 'Monarchia,'" Studi Dantes
(1955): 5-142; Nardi, "Intorno ad una nuova interpretazione del terzo libro della Monarc
tesca," in Dal " Convivio " alla " Commedia " (Sei saggi danteschi) (Rome: Istituto Storico Itali
Medio Evo, 1960), 151-313; Giovanni Gonnet, "La donazione di Costantino in Dante e pr
eretici medievali," in Dante nel pensiero e nella esegesi dei secoli XIV e XV (Florence: Olschk
237-59; Giovanna Puletti, "La Donazione di Costantino nei primi del '300 e la Monarchia d
Medioevo e Rinascimento 1 (1993): 113-35; Sergio Cristaldi, "Dante, il profetismo gioachi
donazione di Costantino," Letture Classensi 29 (2000): 7-65; Anthony Cassell, The " Monarch
troversy: An Historical Study with Accompanying Translations of Dante Alighieri' s " Monarchia G
nane s Refutation of the " Monarchia " Composed by Dante, and Pope John XXII's Bull "Si f
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004); see also Enciclopedia dantes
"Costantino," by Enzo Petrucchi, II (1970), 236-39, and "Donazione di Costantino," by Pi
gio Ricci, II (1970), 569-70.
2. On the Constantine legends see Samuel N.C. Lieu, "Constantine in Legendary Liter
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge at the Un
Press, 2006), 298, and Lieu, "From History to Legend and Legend to History: The Medi
Byzantine Transformation of Constantine's Vita," in Constantine: History, Historiography, and L
ed. Samuel N.C. Lieu and Dominic Monserrat (London: Routledge, 1998), 136-49. For a t
treatment of the issue of wealth and the church in the fourth century, see Peter Brown, Throu
Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
3. Eusebius of Caesara, Life of Constantine, 1: 28, trans. A. Cameron and S.G. Hall (O
Clarendon Press, 1999), 80. Eusebius claimed that he heard the story direcdy from Con
136
himself. See H.A. Drake, "The Impact of Constantine on Christianity," The Cambridge Companion to
the Age of Constantine, 113.
4. Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., 4:1,
trans. Charles Christopher Mierow, ed. by Austin P. Evans and Charles Knapp (New York: Columbia
University Press), 277.
5. Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, trans. G. W. Bowersock (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2007).
6. Johannes Fried, The Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini : The Misinterpretation of
a Fiction and its Original Meaning (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 1. See also Christopher B. Cole-
man, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine: Text and Translation into English (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 1.
7. Vita sancti Sylvestri papae et confessoris. One version of the life of St. Sylvester, current in Dante's
time, is to be found in a passionale (a book of Matins readings for saints' days) written by one Matthew
the Florentine in 1204 and published by Boninus Mombritius, Sanctuarium (c. 1477-78), ff. 280v-
284v, pp. 570-80 (= Vita Sylvestri, ed. Mombritius); this version is available at DOI urn:nbn:
de:bvb:12-bsb00067878-9 ( - Passionale); Louis Duchesne, Le liber pontificate, vol. 1 (Paris, 1886),
cix ff., says that the core of this apocryphal story was written in the East and that it was ex-
panded in Rome in the late fifth century. Another version of the life of St. Sylvester found its
way into Iacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea , as "Historia de Sancto Silvestro," available at http://
www.thelatinlibrary.com/voragine/silv.shtml ( = Legenda aurea); English translation by William
Granger Ryan, The Golden Legend (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2:62-70. Still useful
is J. J. I. Döllinger's Fables Regarding the Popes in the Middle Ages , trans. Alfred Plummer (New York,
1872), 88-182.
8. See F. E. Brightman, "Some Dante Notes," Modem Language Review 14 (1919): 326-27; and
Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante , ed. Paget Toynbee, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966), hereafter cited as Toynbee edition, 49-51. Toynbee quotes this part of the story from Bodleian
MS Canon. Misc. 230, f. 32v.
9. The seven edicts are described in both versions of the story, but they are not quoted by
Toynbee.
10. Vita Sylvestri, ed. Mombritius, f. 283va: "Quarta die privilegium ecclesiae romanae pontifi-
cique contulit: ut in toto orbe romano sacerdotes ita hune caput habeant."
1 1 . The word papa (father) was used for any bishop in the fourth century. It was not until the
sixth century that the imperial chancery at Constantinople addressed the bishops of Rome with the
tide papa, and not until the eleventh century that Pope Gregory VII declared it to be their exclusive
tide. See Philippe Levillain, s.v., "pope," The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Philippe Levillain (New
York: Rutledge, 2002), 3:1227-28, and s.v. "pope," The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed.
F.L. Cross, 3rd edn. revised by Elizabeth A. Livingstone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),
1317. A more thorough treatment may be found in Yves Congar, "Titres donnés au Pape," Conrílium
108 (1975): 55-64.
12. This document was edited by Horst Fuhrmann in Das Constitutum Constantini (Konstantische
Schenkung ), Monumenta Germaniae Histórica, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui, 10 (Hannover: Hahn-
sche, 1968), 56-98 ( = ed. Fuhrmann). An English translation may be found in E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London: Biblo and Tannen, 1965), 319-29. Part of this
version of the story is also in Gratian, Decretum, Distinctio 96, c. 14, Corpus Iuris Canonici , ed. Aemilius
Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879); photographic reprint (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt,
1959) ( = CICan), I, 342-45. The most complete study of this document is by Fried, Donation.
13. J. W. C. Ward, A History of the Early Church to A.D. 500 (London: Methuen, 1937), 215-16.
He says that as early as the beginning of the fifth century, "the very absence of the Emperor from
Rome threw into strong relief the prestige of the Pope, and even made it necessary for him to
exercise much political influence which would never have fallen to his lot if he had been overshad-
owed by the rule of the State. The Bishop of Rome was thus already the undisputed head of a great
organization over which the Emperor had very litde control." See also Louis Duchesne, The Begin-
nings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes , A.D. 754-1073 , trans. Arnold Harris Mathew (London:
137
Kegan Paul, 1907), 15 and 28, who says that papal influence went into temporal affairs, that Rome
and the surrounding area was a kind of "apostolic sanctuary," and that "Papal authority certainly
extended in the direction of sovereignty," but it was not until Stephen II that the popes became the
recognized political leaders of the former Duchy of Rome, and therefore took on the role of temporal
lords.
14. R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin Books,
1970), 225-30.
15. Oswald J. Reichel, The See of Rome in the Middle Ages (London, 1870), 348-49.
16. E. R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), 13.
17. Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, Í050-1300 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1964), 16, says that from the time of Gregory I (590-604), the pope was " de facto ruler of the
city," and that "from that year [i.e., 756] we can date the beginning of formal papal claim to sover-
eignty in central Italy." However, Thomas X. Noble, "Morbidity and Vitality in the History of the
Early Medieval Papacy," The Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995): 505-40, esp. 508-18, cautions that
there is little evidence of strong papal claims to juridical and legal authority until much later.
18. Lieu, "Constantine," 301-2; Döllinger, Fables , 89-99.
19. Duchesne, Temporal Sovereignty , 32-48. The story is also told in William Russell, The History
of Modem Europe (London, 1818), 1:40-41. Key documents, including the Donation of Pepin, are
translated by Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar H. McNeal, A Source Book for Mediaeval History: Selected
Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age (New York: Scribner's, 1905), 37-38 and
102-5.
20. Gratian, Decretum , Prima Pars, Dist. 96, c. 14, CICan, 1:342-45.
21. F. Zinkeisen, "The Donation of Constantine as Applied by the Roman Church," English
Historical Review 9 (1894): 625-32; see also the helpful comments on Zinkeisen's article by Henry
Charles Lea, "The Donation of Constantine," English Historical Review 10 (1895): 86-87; and J. P.
Kirsch, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), s.v. "Donation of Constantine."
22. Robert Black, "The Donation of Constantine: A New Source for the Concept of the
Renaissance," in Languages and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. Alison Brown (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995), 51-85 at 54-55, and Lieu, "From History to Legend," 148-49, who quotes Martin
Luther's reaction in 1520 to the news that the Donation had been forged: "Good heavens! What
darkness and wickedness is at Rome ... I am in such a fit that I scarcely doubt that the Pope is
Antichrist expected by the world." John M. Headley, Luther's View of Church History (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1963), 198, says that Luther called the Donation "an absurdity," but he did
not see the age of Constantine as the beginning of the fall of the Church.
23. Dante: Monarchy , trans, and ed. Prue Shaw, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political
Thought (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996) ( = Shaw trans.), 80, n. 1. Quota-
tions in English are taken from the Shaw translation unless otherwise noted; I have also adopted
Shaw's chapter numbering.
24. Except where otherwise noted, I use the Italian text edited by Giorgio Petrocchi, Dante
Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, Le Opere di Dante Alighieri, Edizione Nationale a
cura della Società Dantesca Italiana (Verona: Mondatori, 1966-1967). On Canto 19 see especially
Charles Till Davis, "Canto XIX: Simoniacs," in Lectura Dantis: Inferno , 264, ed. Alien Mandlebaum,
Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) and John A.
Scott, "The Rock of Peter and Inferno XIX," Romance Philology 23 (1970), 462-79. Scott, 479, notes
that Ernesto Parodi, Poesia e storia nella Divina Commedia" (Vicenza: Pozza, 1965), 357, called Inferno
19 "quel terribile canto XIX, che, contenendo l'invettiva contro i Pontefici simoniaci, è come il
programma religioso-politico dell'intero Inferno ." See also V. Stanley Benfell, s.v. "Simony," and
"Simonists," in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000), 781-82,
and Michael Sherberg, "Coin of the Realm: Dante and the Simonists," Dante Studies, 129 (2011),
7-23.
25. References to the Bible are to the The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version, translated from the
Latin Vulgate (Charlotte, N.C.: Saint Benedict Press, 2009). Subsequent quotes in English from the
Bible are from this edition, but noted only by book, chapter, and verse.
138
26. Davis, "Canto XIX," 264.

27. Scott, "The Rock of Peter," 464.
28. Davis, "Canto XIX," 263, declares, "Nowhere in the poem is [Dante] more personally
involved. Nowhere does he seem to regard his message as more important to his purpose."
29. Davis, "Canto XIX," 269, says that "The Apocalypse had clearly identified the woman with
Rome; Dante's exegesis therefore can be called literal. It was also radical, however, in extending the
meaning of the symbol to include the papal as well as the pagan city and in connecting the image of
the woman with her new governors the popes." I would suggest that this literal meaning is reinforced
by the directness of Dante's accusation using the words "Di voi."
30. Of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators, only Francesco Torracca (1905),
La Divina Commedia di Dante Aligheri nuovamente commentata da Francesco Torraca , 4th ed. (Milan:
Segati, 1920), comment to Inf. 19:115-17, highlights the word prese, without further elaboration.
Robert and Jean Hollander, in Inferno (New York: Doubleday, 2000), translate da te prese as "had from
you," following John D. Sinclair, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , vol. 1, Inferno (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1939), 243: "had from thee." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Divine
Comedy of Dante Aligheri (Boston, 1867): "left." Charles H. Grandgent, La Divina Commedia di
Dante Aligheri (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1933), 175 (in note): "received." Dorothy L. Sayers, The Comedy
of Dante Aligheri the Florentine, Cantica I: Hell (L'Inferno) (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1949), 191:
"received." Louis Biancolli, Dante: The Divine Comedy (New York: Washington Square, 1968), 86,
hereafter cited as Biancolli translation: "received." Robert Pinskey, The Inferno of Dante (New York:
Farrar, Straus, 1994), 197: "accepted." Henry Francis Cary, The Vision : or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise
of Dante Aligheri (New York, 1868): "gained." Three of the English translators reviewed use "took"
with no further discussion: Charles Eliot Norton, The Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1929), 125; Thomas G. Bergin, Dante Aligheri: Inferno (New York: Appleton
Century Crofts, 1948), 66; and John Ciardi, Dante Aligheri: The Inferno (New York: New American
Library, 1954), 170.
31. On Dante's mission to remember and tell about his journey, see Gian Roberto Sarolli, Dante
"scriba Dei " (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1963) and also Robert Hollander, "Dante as
Uzzah? ('Purg.' X 567, and 'Ep.' XI 9-12," in Sotto il segno di Dante. Scritti in onore di Francesco
Mazzoni, ed. Leonella Coglievina and Domenico De Robertis (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998), 143-51.
32. Since the fourth or fifth century, a mosaic called the Navicella depicting the scene in Matt.
14:24-32 of the aposdes' boat being tossed by a tempest decorated the entrance to St. Peter's in
Rome. Dante would have certainly seen this mosaic when he was in Rome in 1300 or 1301. In 1310
Giotto was commissioned to reconstruct the mosaic. Claus Virch, "A Page from Vasari's Book of
Drawings," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s. 19 (1961), 186, says that this was Giotto's
"most conspicuously monumental work, perhaps his masterwork ... it must have been a spectacular
sight." If Giotto and Dante were friends, Dante would have heard about the painter's Navicella. Dante
here transforms the image of the boat laden with aposdes to a boat laden with worldly power and
goods, thanks to the Donation of Constantine. It is worth noting that Dante had the voice from
Heaven bewail the condition of the navicella, thereby choosing not to use the commonplace declara-
tion that at the moment of the Donation the voice from Heaven cried out "Hodie infusum est
venenum in ecclesie Dei." Dante also uses the word naviculum for the church in Ep. 8:5, Toybee
edition, 133, where he says it is foundering (fluctuantem ).
33. Hollander and Hollander, note to Inf. 32.124-29, p. 679.
34. For a careful comparison of the whores in Inferno 19 and Purgatorio 32, see Charles Till Davis,
"Rome and Babylon in Dante," in From Florence to Rome to the Heavenly Jerusalem, Dante: The Critical
Complex, vol. 5, edited by Richard Lansing (New York: Roudedge, 2003), 72-76; reprinted from
Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. P.A. Ramsey (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State
University, 1982), 19-49.
35. This point is made by Bruno Nardi, "La 'Donatio'," 155.
36. Compare Mon. 2.11.8. Constantine's pious intention in awarding the Donation reflects the
statement in the Vita sancii Sylvestri papae about the Roman Empire's foundation in piety.
139
37. Charles T. Davis, Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 7; John A.
Scott, Understanding Dante (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 180.
38. Nick Havely, Dante and the Frandscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the "Commedia" (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 155.
39. For an interesting treatment of Inferno 27, see Ronald Herzman, " 'Io non Enea, io non Paolo
sono': Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro, and Franciscan Traditions in the Commedia" Dante Studies 123
(2005): 23-69.
40. Bonaventure was not canonized until 1482.
41. St. Augustine, Epistola ad Bonifadum 9, PL 33, 809, was often quoted in this regard: "Si autem
privatim quae nobis sufficiant, possidemus, non sunt ilia nostra, sed pauperum quorum procurationem
quodammodo gerimus, non proprietatem nobis ursurpatione damnabili vindicamus." See for exam-
ple John of Paris, Tractatus de regia et papali, ed. Jean Leclercq, Jean de Paris et l'ecclésiologie du XlIIe siècle
(Paris: Vrin, 1942), 187, hereafter cited as Leclercq edition.
42. Even Bruno Nardi missed this point; in "La 'Donatio'," he says: "Il patrimonio di S. Pietro
non è, per Dante, un dominio politico, ma una 'dote' a favore della chiesa e dei poveri di Cristo"
(emphasis added).
43. Convivio , ed. Franca Brambilla Ageno, trans. Richard Lansing, Edizione Nazionale (Florence:
Le Lettere, 1995), available at http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/convivio.html: "Monarchia,
cioè uno solo principato, e uno prencipe avere; lo quale, tutto possedendo e più desiderare non possendo,
li regi tegna contenti nelli termini delli regni, sì che pace intra loro sia."
44. S.v. "Monarchia" (Pier Giorgio Ricci); Giorgio Petrocchi, Vita di Dante (Bari: Laterza, 1986;
originally published in 1983), 192.
45. Ibid.
46. The image of the seamless tunic comes from John 19:23, the tunic of Christ for which the
soldiers drew lots. Dante returns to the seamless tunic in Monarchia 3.10.16, but here instead of saying
that the tunic has already been rent, he maintains that if Constantine had alienated any imperial
dignities (via the Donation), the "seamless garment would have been torn which even those who
pierced Christ the true God with their lance did not divide." Boniface VIII had appropriated the
image to describe the unity of the church in Unam Sandamt while Dante uses it for the unity of the
empire. The Latin text can be found in Carl Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des
Römischen Katolizismus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911), 162-64 (no. 309).
47. "Qualiter autem se habuerit orbis ex quo tunica ista inconsutilis cupidi tatis ungue scissuram
primitus passa est, et legere possumus et utinam non videre." Unless otherwise noted, I use the Latin
edition and chapter numbering by Prue Shaw, Dante Alighieri, Monarchia (Florence: Le Lettere,
2009), hereafter cited as Shaw edition.
48. Shaw translation, 28 n. 5.
49. "Nec iam depauperado talis absque Dei iudicio fit, cum nec pauperibus, quorum patrimonia
sunt Ecclesie facilitates, inde subveniatur, nec ab offerente Imperio cum gratitudine teneantur."
50. "Redeant unde venerunt: venerunt bene, redeunt male, quia bene data, et male possesa
sunt."
51. "O felicem populum, o Ausoniam te gloriosam, si vel nunquam infirmator ille Imperii tui
natus fiiisset, vel nunquam sua pia intentio ipsum fefellisset!" I have used my own translation because
Constantine's pia intentio is the subject of the sentence.
52. Antonio Pagliaro, " 'Ahi Costantin'. . . ," in Ulisse: Ricerche semantiche sulla Divina Commedia
(Messina: D'Anna, 1966), 1:285.
53. In the Commedia the only cognate he uses is dona, and that only once, when Solomon
describes the freely given light that the souls in Heaven will receive upon the resurrection of the
body (Par. 14.46). He uses various versions of the root dona- several times in the Convivio and II Fiore ,
always in the sense of give, giver, gift. Donare is one of the sweet and polished words he lists in the
De vulgāri eloąuentia , 2.7.5. The word donatione appears only once in the entire canon, in Epistles 10.4,
where he chooses that word to describe the copy of the Paradiso that he sent with the letter to
Cangrande.
140
54. The translations of the seven syllogisms are mine. This brief statement is a foretaste of Dante's
conclusion, which is expressed more definitively in Mon. 3.10.16-17.
55. "Nemo habere potest de iure nisi ab Ecclesia."
56. "Dico quod sua probatio nulla est, quia Constantinus alienare non poterat Imperii dignita-
tem, nec Ecclesia recipere."
57. Of course the fundamental argument of the Monarchia is to explain and defend the concept
that the world should be ruled by a single monarchy: "Primum igitur videndum quid est quod
'temporalis Monarchia' dicitur, typo ut dicam et secundum intentionem. Est ergo temporalis Mon-
archia, quam dicunt 'Imperium', unicus principatus et super omnes in tempore vel in hiis et super
hiis que tempore mensurantur" (Mon. 1.2.1-2).
58. In making these arguments, Dante reflected the interest in theories of inalienability of sover-
eign rights developed during the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries. See Peter N. Riesen-
berg, Inalienability of Sovereignty in Medieval Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press,
1956; repr. New York: AMS, 1970).
59. Dante Alighieri, Monarchia , ed. Gustavo Vinay (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), 246-47 n. 1, here-
after cited as Vinay edition.
60. Bruno Nardi, "La 'Donatio,' " 127-29.
61. We know that Dante was well aware of the phrase "par in parem non habet imperium"
because he quoted it in Mon. 1.10.3, but he did not see fit to quote it in relation to the Donation of
Constantine.
62. See esp. Mon. 3.10.8-9. Franciscus Accursius (Senior), Glossa ordinaria, Corpus iuris civilis,
Authenticum, Codex, Liber 10-12 Coll. I, Tit. VI, prefatio, Conferens generi (Venice, 1489), f. Ilva,
p. 22: "Conferens generi apparet ergo quod nec papa in temporalibus nec imperator in spiritualibus
se debent immiscere. Nunquid habet ergo papa temporalem iurisditionem in hiis que sunt imperii,
quod constantinus imperator donavit beato silvestro pape? Videtur quod sic licet immensa fuerit
donatio, preterea quod vult princeps hoc est lex. Item sicut patrimonialia ita imperialia donare potest,
cum nulla sit differentia. Et contra videtur quod non quia tunc esset augustus dietus. Item imperare
non potuit pari, idest imperatori venienti post se. Item ne turbetur opus [Dei] si clerici intromittunt
se in temporalibus. Item ne unus duorum officium habeat. Sed licet solutio facti ad nos non pertineat,
solvimus de iure quod non valuit talis collado sive donatio. . .quia sic posset totum imperium perire."
In 1942 Nardi, "La Donatio,' " 127 n. 3, first called attention to this important passage. Walter's
Ullmann's exaggerated statement about this passage, Medieval Papalism: The Political Theories of the
Medieval Canonists (London: Methuen, 1949), 164 and n. 2, is off course: "Dante's refutation of the
Donation appears like a paraphrase of the civilian's [i.e., Accursius's] statement." The point was
repeated by Vinay in his edition, 246 n. 1, who quotes almost all of the passage but says that Dante's
"argomenti si possono tutti ricondurre a quelli introdotti dalla Glossa which is not quite accurate.
Michele Maccarrone, "Il terzo libro della 'Monarchia,'" Studi Danteschi 33 (1955): 74-75 n. 2,
repeats the reference to the name of Augustus which Dante does not mention. Manfred, in his
Manifesto to the Romans (May 24, 1265), in Eugenio Dupré Theseider, L'idea imperiale di Roma nella
tradizione del medioevo (Milan: Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale, 1942), 223-24, had made
the arguments from the name Augustus and from par in parem non habet imperium that Dante does not
mention.
63. A brief phrase from Accursius, Glossa ordinaria, contains this point: "ne turbetur opus Dei si
clerici intromittant se in temporalibus." Dante's comments on the major premise, the minor premise,
and the conclusion of this syllogism extend the argument against the church's involvement in tempo-
ralities much farther than this brief phrase.
64. Oxford University English Dictionary on Historical Principles , ed. William Litde, H.W. Fowler,
and J. Coulson, rev. and ed. C.T. Onions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), II, 340, s.v.
"collation," says that a collation is the bestowal of a benefice on a clergyman. As mentioned, Dante
avoids the word "donation," using instead "collation."
65. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , IV, 1, trans. Martin Ostwabi (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1962), 85.
141
66. St. Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri ethicomm, Liber 4, cap. 1, n. 13, in Opera Omnia, 4 (Stutt-
gart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980), 173, says: "manifestum est autem quoniam ex eo quod aliquis
dat, benefacit et bene operatur; ad sumptionem autem, idest receptionem pertinet bene pati, inquan-
tum scilicet aliquis recipit unde oportet, vel non turpe operan, inquantum scilicet non recipit unde
non oportet." Cf. Conv. 4.20.7, Edizione Nazionale: "Ché, secondo che dice lo Filosofo nel secondo
dell'Anima, 'le cose convengono essere disposte alli loro agenti, e [a] ricevere li loro atti"(Aristode,
De anima, 2.2).
67. "Sed Ecclesia omnino indisposita erat ad temporalia recipienda per preceptum prohibitivum
expressům, ut habemus per Matheum sic: 'Nolite possidere aurum, ñeque argentum, neque pecuniam
in zonis vestris, non peram in via,' etc. Nam etsi per Lucam habemus relaxationem precepti quantum
ad quedam, ad possessionem tarnen auri et argenti licentiatam Ecclesiam post prohibitionem illam invenire non
potui (emphasis added)." I have used the translation by Donald Nicholl, Dante Alighieri, Monarchy
and Three Political Letters (London: Weidenfeld, 1954), hereafter cited as Nicholl translation, because
Prue Shaw's translation weakens the effect of this passage by using "unsuited" for indisposita , "provide
not" for Noli possidere , and of "brass" for pecuniam. Dante's interpretation of Matt. 10:9 was signifi-
candy at variance with the standard and strictly allegorical reading found in the Glossa ordinaria, in
Biblia Sacra cum glossa interlineari ordinaria, et Nicolai Lyrani Postilla, eiusdemque Moralitatibus, Burgensis
Additionibus et Throringi Replicis (Venice, 1588), V, f. 36v: "Per aurum, ostenditur sapientia secularis.
Per argentum, facundia rhetorica. Per pecuniam in zone: sapientia abscondita. Per peram, onus seculi.
Per calceamenta, mortuorum operum exempla."
68. Nicholl translation.
69. Luke 22:35-36: "Then he said unto them: 'But now he that hath a purse, let him take it,
and likewise a scrip; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat, and buy a sword.' "
70. "Qua re, si Ecclesia recipere non poterat, dato quod Constantinus hoc facere potuisset de se,
actio tarnen illa non erat possibilis propter patientis indispositionem. Patet igitur quod nec Ecclesia
recipere per modum possessionis, nec ille conferre per modum alientationis poterat."
71. "Poterat tarnen Imperator in patrocinium Ecclesie Patrimonium et alia deputare, inmoto
semper superiori dominio, cuius unitas divisionem non patitur. Poterat et vicarius Dei recipere non
tanquam possessor, sed tanquam ťřuctum pro Ecclesia pro Cristi pauperibus dispensator: quod apos-
tolos fecisse non ignoratur." I have altered Prue Shaw's translation in two ways. First, Shaw's version
reads "consign a patrimony and other resources to the guardianship of the church," implying that
the church is the guardian involved in this statement, but the guardian or protector in a patroncinium
is the patron offering the grant. Second, I have removed the word "and" because it is not in the
Latin text: "for the church for Christ's poor."
72. Yet many Dante scholars have apparendy been reluctant to accept the poet's total rejection
of the church's right to own any property at all. See, for example, Felice Tocco, "Questioni crono-
logiche intorno al De Monarchia di Dante," Bulletino della Sodetà Dantesca Italiana 8 (1900-1901):
245: Dante "ammette bene che la Chiesa possa possedere, e contro la legittimità del patrimonio non
ha obbiezioni da muovere . . . Non si deve dunque negare il diritto che ha la Chiesa di accettare
donazioni e possedere patrimonio"; Vinay edition, 178 n. 1: "Dante ammette . . . una proprietà
ecclesiastica; poi dice che le 'facilitates' della Chiesa sono 'patrimonium' dei poveri"; and 179 n. 2:
"Dante non aveva idee precise sul carattere della sovranità imperiale e certo non si era mai posto in
termini chiari il dilemma 'proprietà' "; John J. Rolbiecki, The Political Philosophy of Dante Aligheri
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Doctoral Dissertation, 1921), 124: "It appears
. . . that Dante in his zeal for the integrity of the empire has here spoken a litde more stricdy than he
really intended." Even Michele Maccarrone, "Il terzo libro," 71-111, and and Pier Giorgio Ricci,
"Dante e l'Impero di Roma," in Dante e Roma: Atti del convegno di studi, Comitato nazionale per le
celebrazioni del VII centenario della nascita di Dante (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965), 140 and 144-45,
hedged when it came to dealing with this issue. See Charles Till Davis, "Dante and Ecclesiastical
Property," in Law in Medieval Life and Thought , ed. E. B. King and S. J. Ridyard (Sewanee, Tennessee:
The Press of the University of the South, 1990), 244-57, reprinted in Dante and History: From Florence
to Rome to the Heavenly Jerusalem , ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Roudedge, 2003), 294-307.
While Davis says that Dante "seems to deny clerics any proprietary rights at all," he softens the point
142
by saying that "there is an impressionistic and allusive quality about Dante's arguments in regard to
these matters that should remind us that he was not a jurist, but rather a philosopher and theologian
with intense political and legal interests, and also a most eloquent rhetorician" (300). Similary, Gio-
vanna Puletti, "La Donazione," 129, says that "l'Alighieri sembra al fondo non voler inficiare la
Donazione di Costantino, mentre la accetta con un significato diverso rispetto a quello vulgato."
Guido Vernani, in his Tractatus de reprobation Monarchie, in H più antico oppositore politico di Dante: Guido
Vemani da Rimini, Testo critico del " De Reprobatioe Monarchie," ed. Nevio Matteini (Padua: CEDAM,
1958), 114-15, was clear that Dante had said that "ecclesia non est capax terrene possessionis"; Guido
said that in holding this position, Dante "ignoranter dicit, non intelligens neque de quibus loquitur
neque de quibus affirmat," pronouncing finally that "ille qui dixit quod terrenarum possessionum
Dei ecclesia non est capax." Felice Battaglia, Impero chiesa e stati particolari nel pensiero di Dante (Bolo-
gna: Zanichelli, 1944), 54, also understood this point: "Il diniego della donazione di Costantino, a
nostro avviso, non solo invalida nelle basi il dominio temporale dei papi, storicamente formatosi, ma
è in relazione al più ampio diniego fatto da Dante della proprietà privata da parte della Chiesa."
73. Toynbee edition, 58. On this and Dante's other political letters see especially Lino Pertile,
"Dante Looks Forward and Back: Political Allegory in the Epistles," Dante Studies 115 (1997): 1-17.
74. Toynbee edition, 61, except that I have changed Toynbee's "God ordained the Roman
Prince beforehand" to "God predestined the Roman Prince" because Dante uses the word
praedestinasse.
75. Ibid., 57: "Et Hic [i.e., Christ], quum ad revelationem Spiritus, Homo factus, evangelizaret
in terris, quasi dirimens duo regna, Sibi et Caesari universa distribuens, alterutri duxit reddi quae sua
sum."
76. "Si edam Constantinus auctoritatem non habuisset, in patrocinium Ecclesie illa que de Impe-
rio deputavit ei de iure deputare non potuisset."
77. Leviticus 11:43 and 2:11.
78. "And the Lord said to Aaron, 'You shall possess nothing in their land, neither shall you have
a portion among them" (Numbers 18:20). See also Deuteronomy 11:8-9.
79. "Sed nec per divinam [legem]: omnis nanque divina lex duorum Testamentorum gremio
continetur; in quo quidem gremio reperire non possum temporalium sollicitudinem sive curam sacer-
dotio primo vel novissimo commendatam fuisse. Quinymo inverno sacerdotes primos ab illa de
precepto remotos, ut patent per ea que Deus ad Moysen [Num. 18:20 and 25]; et sacerdotes novís-
simos, per ea que Cristus ad discípulos [Matt. 10:9]: quam quidem ab eis esse remotam possibile non
est, si regiminis temporalis auctoritas a sacerdotio demanaret, cum saltem in auctorizando sollicitudo
provisionis instaret, et deinde cautela continua ne auctorizatus a tramite rectitudinis deviaret."
80. "Virtus auctorizandi regnum nostre mortalitatis est contra náturám Ecclesie: ergo non est de
numero virtù tum suaram."
81. Scott, Understanding Dante, 38, points out that "The Aristotelian term forma designates the
'medium' that actualizes potency."
82. "Vitam enim ipsius ydea fuit et exemplar militantis Ecclesie, presertim pastoram, maxime
summi, cuius est pascere agnos et oves."
83. "Cristus huiusmodi regnum coram Pilato abnegavit: 'Regnum' inquit 'meum non est de hoc
mundo; si ex hoc mundo esset regnum meum, ministri mei utique decertarent ut non traderer Iudeis;
nunc autem regnum meum non est hinc.' "
84. "Ut exemplar Ecclesie, regni huius curam non habebat."
85. "Formale igitur est Ecclesie illud idem dicere, illud idem sentire."
86. "Ex quo colligitur quod virtus auctorizandi regnum hoc sit contra naturam Ecclesie."
87. "Sufficienter igitur . . . probatum est auctoritatem Imperii ab Ecclesia minime dependere."
88. "Dicunt adhuc quidam quod Constantinus imperator, mundatus a lepra intercessione Silvestri
tunc summi Pontificis, Imperii sedem, scilicet Romam, donavit Ecclesie cum multis aliis Imperii
dignitatibus. Ex quo arguunt dignitates illas deinde neminem assummere posse nisi ab Ecclesia recip-
iat, cuius eas esse dicunt; et ex hoc bene sequeretur auctoritatem unam ab alia dependere, ut ipsi
volunt."
89. Nardi, "Intorno," 240; see also "La 'Donatio,' " 144-47.
143
90. Maccarrone, "Il terzo libro," 76; Gratian's Decretum, Dist. 96, c. 13 and 14, CICan , 1:342-
45. Here I must agree with Nardi.
91. Isidore Mercatoris, Decretalium Colledio, PL 130, 245-52.
92. The Constitutum Constantin i, 13; ed. Fuhrmann, 84-85; English translation by Ernest F. Hen-
derson, Select Historical Documents, 319-29, at 328.
93. Constitutum Constantini , 13; ed. Fuhrmann, 84-85; English translation by Ernest F. Hender-
son, Select Historical Documents, 319-29, at 328.
94. Ibid., 18, ed. Fuhrmann, 94-95: "iustum non est, ut illic imperator terrenus habeat postes-
tatem"; Gratian, Decretum, Dist. 96, c. 14, CICan , 1:343 (my translation). It should be noted that the
Constitutum Constantini 20, contains the following addition at the end of the document, not found in
Pseudo-Isidore or Gratian: "Ibique eidem dei apostolo spondentes, nos cuncta inviolabiter conservare
et nostris successoribus imperatoribus conservanda in mandatas relinqui, beatissimo patri nostro Silves-
tro summo pontifici et universali papae eiusque per eum cunctis successoribus pontifìcibus, domino
deo et salvatore nostro lesu Christo annuente, tradidimus perenniter atque feliciter possidenda (emphasis
added)." The use of inviolabiter suggests that the property involved could not be alienated.
95. Ibid., 13, ed. Fuhrmann, 85-86.
96. Mon. 3.10.17.
97. Legenda aurea , "Historia de Santo Silvestro," 3. It is worth noting that, although the Constitu-
tum Constantini drew heavily on the legend of St. Sylvester, the forger managed to leave out this
reference to Rome's founding in piety.
98. Ep. 5.3, Toynbee edition, 51: "quum sit Caesar, et maiestas eius de fonte defluat pietatis." In
the Actus Sylvestri, Constantine addresses the crowd saying "Audite me, comités et commilitones, et
omnes populi qui adstatis, Romani imperii dignitas de fonte nascitur pietatis." I have used the word
"authority" for dignitas instead of Toynbee's "sovereignty" because the full meaning of sovereignty
did not exist until later; see Walter Ullmann, "The Development of the Medieval Idea of Sover-
eignty," English Historical Review 64 (1949): 1-33.
99. F. E. Brightman, "Some Dante Notes," Modem Language Notes 14 (1919): 326-27, cites
Bodleian MS Canon. Misc. 230 as his source; Toynbee edition, 49-51 n. 1. Toynbee provides a long
quote from the Bodleian manuscript (f. 32v), noting that "it is quite possible, therefore, that Dante
may have known the legend of St. Sylvester" from this source, "quite apart from the Legenda aurea."
It is interesting that the Passionale describes Constantine's leprosy as "elefantiae," a word not found
in the Legenda aurea version, a detail that reinforces the suggestion that Dante may have relied on the
Passionale instead of the more widely known Legenda aurea.
100. Passionale, 576 and passim; Legenda aurea 2 and passim.
101. Although he wrote later than Dante, Giovanni Villani's Chronicle, 1:59, Villani' s Chronicle:
Being Selections from the First Nine Books of the Croniche Fiorentine of Giovanni Villani, tr. Rose E. Seife
and ed. Philip H. Wicksteed (London: Constable, 1906), offers a glimpse of what may be thought of
as the common awareness of the Donation in Dante's day: "Constantine . . . endowed the Church
with all the possessions of Rome, and gave liberty to the Christians in the time of the blessed Pope
Sylvester, who baptized him and made him a Christian, cleansing him from leprosy by the power of
Christ. . . . The said Constantine caused many churches to be built in Rome to the honour of Christ,
and having destroyed all the temples of paganism and of the idols, and established the Holy Church
in her liberty and lordship, and having brought the temporal affairs of the Church under due system
and order, he departed to Constantinople" (38).
102. Richard Kay, "Roman Law in Dante's Monarchia in Law in Medieval Life and Thought, ed.
Edward B. King and Susan J. Ridyard (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South), 263.
103. What follows pertains primarily but not exclusively to Roman law. For Dante's familiarity
with and use of canon law, see P. Fedele, "Dante e il diritto canonico," Ephemerides Iuris Canonici 21
(1965): 213-396.
104. Davis, "Ecclesiastical Property," 294-307. At 300 and 307, Davis downplays Dante's legal
abilities: "Dante's theory was rather general and theoretical, not detailed and legalistic ... we are
dealing with a poet and publicist rather than a systematic theorist." Kay, "Roman Law," 263, agrees:
"we can conclude that Dante was certainly capable of using Roman law when he chose. But ... we
144
should also note that his juristic expertise seems to be homemade. There is a decidedly amateurish air
to his citations."
105. Robert Hollander, "Dante and Cino da Pistoia," Dante Studies 110 (1992): 202.
106. Davis, "Ecclesiastical Property," 296, n. 3, discussing the difference of opinion between
Bruno Nardi, "La 'donatio,'" 109-59, and Pagliaro, "'Ahi Costantin'. . . ," 253-91.
107. I am inclined to think that Piero Fiorelli, "Sul senso del diritto nella Monarchia Letture
Classensi 16 (1986): 79-97, would agree with me on this point.
108. Mon. 3.10.8-9.
109. Edward Peters, "The Frowning Pages: Scythians, Garamantes, Florentines, and the Two
Laws," in The "Divine Comedy " and the Encyclopedia of the Arts and Sciences , Acts of the Internationa
Dante Symposium, 13-16 November 1983, Hunter College, New York, ed. Giuseppe Di Scipio and
Aldo Scaglione (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1988), 285-314, esp. 293-95; Lorenzo Valterza, "Dante's
Justinian, Cino's Corpus: The Hermeneutics of Poetry and Law," Medievalia et Humanística , n.s., 3
(2006): 89-110. Bruno Nardi, " Nomina sunt consequentia rerum Giornale storico della letteratura italiana
93 (1929): 105, points out that Dante refers to the Corpus iuris civilis with a respect equivalent to h
citations of Scripture, using "si come è scritto" for both, and he notes that the poet must have ha
some familiarity with the Corpus iuris civilis as early as the writing of the Vita Nuova. On Dante an
Roman law see also Filippo Cancelli, Enciclopedia dantesca , s.v. "Diritto Romano"; Pier Giorgio Ricc
"Dante e l'Impero di Roma," in Dante e Roma , 137-49; L. Chiappelli, "Dante in rapporto alle fon
del diritto ed alla letteratura giuridica del suo tempo," Archivio storico italiano , 5th ser., 41 (1908
2-44, and "Ancora su Dante e il diritto romano," Giornale dantesco 20 (1912): 202-6; M. Chiudano
"Dante e il diritto romano," Giornale dantesco 20 (1912): 37-56 and 94-119; Francesco Ercole, "L
cultura giuridica di Dante," in II pensiero politico di Dante , voi. 2 (Milan: Alpes, 1928), 7-37; Arrig
Solmi, "Dante e il Diritto," in H pensiero politico di Dante: Studi storia (Florence: La Voce, 1922
212-52; Nicola Jaeger, "Il diritto al tempo di Dante," in Dante nella critica d'oggi: Risultati e prospettive,
ed. Umberto Bosco (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965), 167-79; Sebastiano Vento, Dante e il diritto pubblico
italiano: Studio critico (Milan: Sandron, 1923); Carlo Bozzi, Dante e il diritto (Turin: Intemazionale,
1965); and James Williams, Dante as Jurist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1906).
110. See my Dante as a Reformer ; passim; Charles Till Davis, "Dante's Vision of History," Dante
Studies 93 (1975): 143-60, reprinted in Dante's Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia: University o
Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 23-41, and "Poverty and Eschatology in the Commedia ," Yearbook of Italia
Studies 4 (1980): 59-86, reprinted in Dante's Italy , 42-70; Joan Ferrante, The Political Vision of th
Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); the three articles under the title
"Why Did Dante Write the Commedia ? Or the Vision Thing," by Teodolinda Barolini, Joan Ferrante
and Robert Hollander, Dante Studies 111 (1993): 1-25; and Jefferson B. Fletcher, "The Crux of
Dante's Comedy ," Romanic Review 16 (1925): 63-92.
111. J. F. Niermeyer and C. Van de Kieft, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden: Brill, 2002),
s.v. "dignitas," hereafter cited as MLLM ; Adoph Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Trans-
actions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 43 (1953) ( = Berger), 437.
112. Prue Shaw, Shaw translation, 80-83, translates dignitas as "privilege" and "honour."
113. Mon. 3.10.1, 2, and 4; 3.11.1.
114. See s.v. "dominium": MLLM , 463-64; Berger, 442; Black's Law Dictionary, 7th edition (St.
Paul, Minn.: West, 1999). Janet Coleman, "Property and Poverty," in The Cambridge History o
Medieval Political Thought c. 350-c. Î450, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 607-48, at 612 says that " Dominium in classical Roman law was an ultimate right . . . i.e., tha
which has no right behind it." W. W. Buckland and Arnold D. McNair, Roman Law and Common
Law: A Comparison in Outline , 2nd ed. revised by F. H. Lawson (1952; repr. with corrections, 1965),
65-66, define dominium as "the ultimate right to the thing or, as it has been more paradoxicall
expressed, it is minimal residual right, what is left when all other rights vested in various people ar
taken out."
115. Ugo Nicolini, La proprietà, il principe e l'espropriazione per pubblica utilità (Milan: Giuffrè,
1940), 91 and 98. He cites in particular Justinian's statement that "omnia principis esse intelligantur
145
(Codex, 7, 37, 3) and Antonius's description of himself as "mundi dominus, lex autem maris" ( Digesta ,
14, 2, 9).
116. Nicolini, La proprieta, 93.
117. According to Nicolini, La proprieta, 91, the question usually asked was "An princeps sit
dominus rerum particularum?" The standard, negative answer provided the groundwork for subse-
quent discussion of the manner in which the emperor was dominus mundi. Property was always a
critical issue, even when dominium eminens or universale was under discussion. Its significance is
revealed by an anecdote concerning the Emperor Frederick I. As the story goes, Mārtiņus and Bul-
gārus, two of Barbarossa's lawyers at the Diet of Roncaglia, were asked by the emperor "utrum de
iure [imperator] esset dominus mundi?" Bulgārus unfortunately replied "quod non erat dominus
quantum ad proprietatem." Mārtiņus was rewarded by the gift of the emperor's own horse for his
simple if ambiguous response "quod erat dominus." The story is told by Nicolini, 94, n. 3. The list
of twelfth- and thirteenth-century civil lawyers and jurists who accepted a similar view of the emper-
or's role as dominus mundi is considerable; it includes, among others, Accursius, Odofredo, Buoncom-
pagni, Jordan of Osnabrück, and Alberico da Rosate. On this see Nicolini, 93-102; R. W. and A. J.
Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, Vol. 5 (Edinburg: Blackwood, 1928),
141-46; and Walter Ullmann, "Sovereigny," 4-5. Among canon lawyers such an opinion was much
more rare, but by no means altogether absent. For example, the Carlyles, 143, n. 1, quote the
influential Hostiensis, who stated clearly that "Ipse [i.e., imperator] est mundi dominus, et omneš
nations sub eo sunt." According to Ullmann, "Sovereignty," 1-2 and 25-27, the papacy did not
deny imperial superiority over the kingdoms until Clement V's Pastoralis cura was issued. See also
M. H. Keen, "The Political Thought of the Fourteenth-Century Civilians," Trends in Medieval Politi-
cal Thought, ed. Beryl Smalley (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 105-26.
118. Nicolini, La proprietà, 106.
119. Coleman, "Property and Poverty," 612; Buckland and McNair, Roman Law and Common
Law, 65.
120. Berger, 601, s.v. "possessio," and 636, s.v. "nudus proprietas." The entry (Alessandro Nic-
coli) "proprietà," in Enciclopedia dantesca, deals with the philosophical question of the properties or
qualities of things, not with land or possessions; nor is there an entry on proprietà ecclesiastica or beni
ecclesiastici.
121. Berger, 441, says that dominium is "full legal power over a corporeal thing, the right of an
owner to use it, to take proceeds therefrom, and to dispose of it freely"; it amounts to plena potestas
in re.
122. S.v. "possessio": Berger, 636; MLLM, 1065; Ethelred Taunton, The Law of the Church: A
Cyclopedia of Canon Law for English-Speaking Countries (London: Kegan Paul, 1906), s.v. "alienation."
123. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 2.2.6, "De potestate terrena," PL 176, 419b-419c:
"Potestas terrena pertinent ad vitam terranam. Et omnia quae ad terrenam vitam spectant subjecta
sunt terrenae potestati . . . possidentibus secundum justitiam distribuât; et contra injustitiam impugn-
antium defendat."
124. Berger, 636, s.v. "possessio."

125. Corpus iuris civilis, Vol. 1, Digesta 41:2:12:1, ed. Theodore Mommsen, 11th ed. (Berlin:
Wiedmann, 1908), 699: "Nihil commune habet proprietas cum possessione: et ideo non denegatur
ei interdictum uti possidetis, qui coepit rem vindicare: non enim videtur possessioni renuntiasse,
quem rem vindicavit."
126. Charles W. Sloane, s.v. "Donation," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 12, ed. Charles G. Herb-
ermann et al. (New York: Universal Knowledge Foundation, 1911), 116-17.
127. David Herlihy, "Church Property on the European Continent, 701-1200," Speculum 36
(1961): 81-100, provides percentages of land held by lay persons and ecclesiastics. When all of the
ecclesiastical property is taken together the church was clearly the largest landowner for centuries.
The percentage of land held by the church may have decreased after 1200, but the acreage must have
gone up because of the fairly rapid process of bringing new land into ownership boundaries. In
England, the permanent alienation of lay property to the church became such a large problem that
provisions prohibiting mortmain (the passing of property into the "dead hand" of the church) were
146
embedded in the Magna Carta as early as 1215 and reinforced in the Statute of Mortmain in 1279.
Henry Charles Lea, The Dead Hand: A Brief Sketch of the Relations between Church and State with Regard
to Ecclesiastical Property Rights and the Religious Orders (Philadelphia: Dornan, 1900), 6.
128. Herlihy, "Church Property," table 3.
129. Taunton, The Law of the Church , s.v. "sponsalia."
130. Percy Ellwood Corbett's chapter on "Dowry," in The Roman Law of Marriage (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1930), 147-204.
131. Ibid. See also Maristella Botticini and Aloysius Siow, "Why Dowries?" published electroni-
cally by Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Science, University
of Toronto. Available at http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~siow/papers/dowry.pdf, 6-7.
132. Corbett, "Dowry," in Marriage, 179.
133. Taunton. The Law of the Church, s.v. "dowrv."
134. S.v. "patrimonium": MLLM , 1010; Berger, 662.
135. We have seen that Dante would allow the emperor to delegate things to the church in
patrocinium {Mon. 3.10.16). He uses the word patrocinium and its cognates three other times in the
Monarchia and once in his letters. In Monarchia 3.13.7 he repeats the statement in 3.10.16 that "he
could not legitimately have handed over to the church as a protectorate (in patrocinium Ecclesie) those
things of the empire which he did hand over ( ilia que de Imperio deputavit )." In Monarchia 2.5.7 he
quotes Cicero, De Offiäis 2.8.26-27, to say that the Roman rule was better described as the "protec-
tion" (patrocinium) of the world as opposed to "domination" (imperium). In Monarchia 3.3.5 he points
out that falsehood sometimes finds defenders (f abitas patrocinium habeat). In the letter to Henry VII
(Ep. 7.4) he says that he (and presumably other just Italians) have "unceasingly prayed for the protec-
tion of a just king" (patrocinia iusti regis incessanter implorabamus).
136. S.v. "patrocinium": MLLM, 1010-11; Berger, 622.
137. Taunton, s.v. "collation," 207-8.
138. Ibid., s.v. "patrimony, "474-75, and "patronage," 475-83.
139. Black's Law Dictionary, s.v. "deputy." Deputare in law amounted to delegating certain author-
ity and responsibility to a subordinate to act in behalf of and to be accountable to the officer or
owner.
140. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 2.2.7, "Quomodo Ecclesia terrena

420: "Sicut enim regia potestas patrocinium quod debet alteri non potest dare; s
ab ecclesiasticis personis obtenta, obsequium quod regiae potestati pro patrocinio
non potest. Sicut scriptum est: Reddite quae sunt Caesaris Caesari, et quae sunt
(emphasis added). My thanks to Jennifer Ferriss-Hill of the University of Mi
translation of his passage.
141. Note, however, that Hugh of St. Victor was a favorite of the hierocrats.
of the De sacramentis 2.2.4, PL 176, 418, he states that "Nam spiritualis potestas
et instituere habet, ut sit, et judicare habet si bona non fuerit."
142. The Enciclopedia dantesca does not contain an entry for "patrocinium."
Problemi fondamentali per un nuovo commento della " Divina Commedia" (Floren
61. Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 41, may be an exception; he says that "Il patr
prevede a nessun patto trasferimento di sovranità; la supremazia statuale rima
writer who used patrocinium in relation to the Donation was Otto of Freising.
125, quotes this passage from his chronicle: "Verum imperii fautores Const
Romanis pontificibus hoc modo tradidisse, sed ipsos tanquam summi Dei s
reverentiam in patris absumpsisse, ab eisque se ac successores suos benedicendo
tionum fulciendos contendunt" (emphasis added). However, Nardi does not
crucial significance of the word, either here or on pp. 146-47, where he offers
to mine but hangs it on the word patrimonium. Pagliaro, " 'Ahi Costantin,' " 28
views the Donation as an award of usufruct - thus arriving at a position closer
than he would probably want to admit. To get there he offers a convoluted ar
rejects Nardi's view of the Donation as a dowry or a patrimony and insists on
and a renunciation. However, Dante never uses the word donatio for Constanti
147
does not admit that the emperor renounced anything. Had Pagliaro understood the significance of
the word patrocinium as a protectorate, he might not have wandered down this strange path.
143. Although he did not focus on the word patrocinium Bruno Nardi, "Intorno," 256-57, clearly
understood that according to Dante "Constantino non rinunziò né intese di rinunziare alla sovranità
imperiale né su Roma, né sul Patrimonio, né su altra parte dell'Impero; ma deputò a vantaggio della
Chiesa alcuni territori, non perché questa li ritenesse di sua proprietà, ma perché ne dispensasse i
proventi ai poveri di Cristo."
144. The concept of the pope and prelates as dispensers of resources for the good of the poor
was founded on canon law; for example, Gratian, Decretum, Secunda Pars, Causa 12, q. 1, c. 23,
CICan I, 684: "Episcopus ecclesiasticarum rerum habeat potestatem ad dispensandum erga omnes,
qui indigent." The administrative functions of the bishops, in fact, were among their most widely
acknowledged duties. However, to say that the bishops and the pope were dispensers of wealth did
not, according to canon law, mean that the church could not own property. On the contrary, the
law of the Church spoke clearly in favor of the church's right to possess temporal goods. See Gratian,
Decretum, loc. cit., c. 13, CICan, I, 681, and c. 17, CICan, I, 683. On this question see Piero Rasi, "Il
concetto di 'Res' nel 'Decretum Gratiani'," Studia Gratiana 3 (1955): 143-58, and R. Naz, "Biens
ecclesiastiques ou temporels," Dictionnaire di Droit Canonique (Paris: Letouzey, 1937), 2:836-41.
145. Taunton, The Law of the Church , s.v. "donation," 305.
146. Davis, "Ecclesiastical Property," 297: "Presumably this clerical use was also precarious, and
the emperor had the right to take back the good he had entrusted to them [i.e., the popes] whenever
he pleased, and especially when he judged that his trust had been betrayed."
147. Justinian, Institutes 2.7, "De donationibus," §2, quoted by Nardi, " 'Redeant unde vener-
um,' "411: "Sciendum tamen, quod etsi plenissimae sint donationes, si tamen ingrati existant homi-
nes, in quos beneficium collatum est, donatoribus per nostram constitutionem licentiam praestitimus certis
ex causis eas revocare ne illi, qui suas res in alios contullerint, ab his quandam patiantur iniuriam vel
iacturam, secundum enumeratos in constitutione nostra modos" (Nardi's italics, my translation).
148. Vinay edition (1950), 178, accepted edeant but failed to explain why he made this choice.
149. Barbi, Problemi fondamentali , 60-61.
150. Redeant is also found in Alessandro Torri's edition, La Monarchia di Dante Allighieri col volgari-
zzamento di Marsilio Ficino , ed. Alessandro Torri (Leghorn, 1844), 70, which was based on Marsilio
Ficino's edition.
151. Pier Giorgio Ricci, Monarchia (Florence: Mondadori, 1965), 212-13 n. 12, says that Redeant
is a capricious reading found only in two subordinate manuscripts.
152. Bruno Nardi, " 'Redeant unde venerunt' (Mo«., II, x, 3)," L'Alighieri 6 (1965): 58-62, repr.
in Saggi e note di critica dantesca (Milan: Ricciardi, 1966), 408-14. At 414 he objects to Ricci's reading
as a case of "pura filologia" overriding the obvious meaning of the passage. Redeunt, he says, "non
dà nessun senso. Proprio nessuno."
153. Shaw edition, 398; Shaw translation, 81. She explains her choice in her edition at 171,
saying only of Ricci's choice that "Nardi's enegetic defense of the reading preferred by all modern
editors is by contrast entirely persuasive." However, she must have changed her mind. In her article
entitled "Sul testo della 'Monarchia,' " Studi Danteschi 53 (1981): 208, she says of Torri's and Nardi's
editions, based on Ficino's volgarizzamento, that "sarebbe assurdo dare troppo peso a questa converge-
nza col Ficino." I would side with Nardi and ask what meaning the sentence could have with redeunt?
Certainly none with regard to the Donation. There is every reason to respect the manuscript evidence
presented by Ricci and others, but even so we may not stray far from Dante's intended meaning by
reading the word in the present subjunctive. Robert Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2001), 150, points out that the Monarchia was declared heretical and put to the
flames in 1329. In view of this I would venture to suggest that the early scribes who made copies of
Dante's treatise might have used redeunt instead of redeant to be cautious, and that as a result redeant is
absent in the earliest manuscripts of the stemma.
154. Barbi, Problemi fondamental i, 60-61, speculates that once the providential restoration toward
which Dante looked had been achieved, and once the superior role of the empire in temporal affairs
148
had been duly recognized, the Patrimonium would have been restored to the church as a benefice for
the poor.
155. Neither Bruno Nardi nor Antonio Pagliaro focused on the crucial word patrodnium ; the
lack of precision that Charles Davis notes in this context is not Dante's but theirs.
156. By the phrase "early commentators," I refer to Jacopo Alighieri (1322) through Cristoforo
Landino (1481). This research was conducted with the invaluable aid of the Dante Dartmouth Project
(DDP), where all bibliographical references may be found: http://dante.dartmouth.edu/.
157. Arnaldo D'Addario, s.v. "Alighieri, Pietro," Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , voi. 2 (1960),
available at http://www.trecani.it/ enciclopedia/bartolomeo-fiadoni_(Dizionar io-Biografico )/. Pie-
tro was not recorded as a student of law until 1327.
158. John A. Scott, "The Rock of Peter, "475. Scott references Luigi Rocca, Di alcuni commenti
della Divina Commedia composti nei primi vent' anni dopo la morte di Dante (Florence: Sansoni, 1891),
391, and he goes beyond Rocca to explain Pietro's position in more detail.
159. Typical are the comments of Graziolo de' Bambaglioli (1324): "auctor reprendit liberalita-
tem Constantini," and the Anonimo Fiorentino (1400[?]): "Dice l'Autore che Costantino imperatore
è stato cagione del peccare de' prelati, per la dote grande ch'egli diede alla Chiesa" (DDP).
160. Jacopo della Lana, DDP, comment to Purg. 32.125-32, was the first of the early commenta-
tors to quote this common phrase, but he used diffusum. Pietro di Dante, DDP, comment to Purg.
32.109-29, used injusum instead, and he was followed by others. Thanks no doubt to his legal training
Pietro refers to Gratian's Decretum , but of course the cry from Heaven does not appear there. His
reference is to not to Gratian's chapter on the Donation of Constantine but to Decretum , Secunda
Pars, Causa 12, Questio 1, c. 35, CICan , 1:699, a brief paragraph which says that clerics cannot
alienate church property without the permission of their superiors; however, the entire Causa 12,
CICan , 1:675-700, deals with the proper disposition of property legitimately owned by the church.
According to Döllinger, Fables, 168, the earliest declaration of a cry from heaven at the Donation
("owe, owe, zem dritten wê . . .") appeared in a poem by Walther von der Vogelweide, written in
1198. The complete poem is in Mirbt, Quellen , 147 (no. 284). According to Malcolm Lambert,
Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation , 2nd ed. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), 156, the Latin cry "Hodie diffusum est venenum in ecclesia sancta Dei" appeared
among the Waldensians. Dupré Theseider, L'idea imperiale, 224, prints the phrase as it appeared in
Manfred's 1265 Manifesto to the Roman populace, and it was repeated by John of Paris in 1302-3,
De potestate regia et papali 21, Leclercq edition, 245 (using ęffusum for diffusum), and by Remigio dei
Girolami, Contra fabos ecclesie professores, in Per lo studio di Fra Remigio dei Girolami (fi3ì9): Contra
fabos ecclesie professores cc. 5-37 , ed. Emilio Panella (Pistoia: Memorie Dominicane, 1979), 136 (cap.
26).
161. Johannis de Serravalle, comment to Purg. 32.124-26: "quam licet dederit Constantinus
cum bona intentione, et sic Papa Silvester cum intentione [bona] receperat."
162. Ibid.: "non expedit quod Ecclesia perdat bona sua, iura et possessiones, atque dominium,
ullo modo."
163. Comments by Jacopo della Lana, L'Ottimo Commento, and the Anonimo Fiorentino to
Par. 20.55-60, DDP.
164. Hollander, Life in Works , 150.
165. Charles Till Davis, "Dante and Italian Nationalism," in A Dante Symposium in Commemora-
tion of the 700th Anniversary of the Poet's Birth (Í265-Í965), ed. William de Sua and Gino Rizzo
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 203-5.
166. See Stefano Jossa, "Politics vs. Literature: The Myth of Dante and the Italian National
Identity," in Dante and the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Aida Avdeh and Nick Haverly (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), 30-50.
167. Berardinelli's work appeared first in a series of articles in Civiltà Cattolica in 1865; these were
revised and published as II dominio temporale dei papi nel concetto politico di Dante Alighieri (Modena,
1881).
168. Including presumably such critics as Cesare Balbo, whom Davis, Nationalism , 205, calls a
neo-Guelf.
149
169. Berardinelli, Il dominio , 5 and 12-13: "dimostrare apoditticamente, che Dante non esclu-
deva per nulla dal suo sistema politico il dominio temporale e il principato civile de' Papl."
170. Davis, "Nationalism," 209.
171. Giacomo Poletto, Alcuni studi su Dante Alighieri (Siena, 1892).
172. Alberto Buscamo Campo, Dante e il potere temporale di' papi (Messina, 1893).
173. Francesco D'Ovidio, "La proprietà ecclesiastica secondo Dante e un luogo del De Mon-
archia ," in Studii sulla Divina Commedia , Parte II (Caserta: Moderna, 1931), 161; originally published
in Atti della Real Accademia di Scienze morali e politiche di Napoli 29 (1897).
174. Ibid., 165.
175. G. B. Siragusa, "La proprietà ecclesiastica secondo Dante," Giornale dantesco 1 (1899): 294.
176. Ibid., 295.
177. D'Ovidio, "La proprietà," 174.
178. Ibid., 170, 177.
179. Edward Moore, "Dante as a Religious Teacher," Studies in Dante: Second Series, Miscellaneous
Essays (Oxford, 1899), 1-78.
180. Moore, "Religious Teacher," 16 and 18 n. 1.
181. Felice Tocco, "Questioni cronologiche intorno al De Monarchia di Dante, Bulletino della
Società Dantesca Italiana 8 (1900-1901): 245.
182. Felice Tocco, Quel che non c'è nella "Divina Commedia ," o Dante e l'eresia (Bologña, 1899),
25.
183. Bruno Nardi, "La 'Donatio,' " 109-59, reprinted from the 1942 issue of Studi Danteschi.
184. Ibid., 147: "Il patrimonio di S. Pietro non è, per Dante, un dominio politico, ma una dote
a favore della chiesa e dei poveri di Cristo."
185. Michele Maccarrone, "La teoria ierocratica e il canto XVI del Purgatorio," Rivista di storia
della chiesa in Italia 4 (1950): 359-98; "Teologia e diritto canonico nella Monarchia, III, 3," Rivista
della storia della chiesa in Italia 7 (1952): 7-42; and "Il terzo libro della 'Monarchia,' " Studi Danteschi
33 (1955): 5-142.
186. Bruno Nardi, "Intorno," 151-313.
187. Ronald B. Herzman and William A. Stephany, "Dante and the Frescoes of Santi Quattro
Coronati," Speculum 87 (2012): 95-146.
188. Giorgio Petrocchi, Vita di Dante (Rome: Laterza, 1986), 78.
189. Dino Compagni, La cronica di Dino Compagni delle cose occorrenti ne' tempi suoi , ed. Isidoro
Del Lungo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1908), 112 (2.25), mentions Dante only once - when he lists the
Whites exiled in April of 1302: "Dante Allighieri, che era ambasciadore a Roma"; Compagni, 86
(2.11), also says that two other ambassadors were sent on the mission in late September or early
October 1301, and, at 71 (2.4) and n. 16, he says that Boniface VIII soon sent two of the three back,
from which it is inferred that he retained Dante in Rome. On Dante's embassy see Isidoro Del
Lungo, Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica, voi. 3 (Florence, 1879), 210-27.
190. Compagni, 71 (2.4) and n. 16.
191. Charles Mitchell, "The Lateran Fresco of Boniface VIII ," Journal of the Warburg and Cour -
tauld Institutes 14 (1951): 2.
192. Ibid., 1-6.
193. Mitchell, "The Lateran Fresco," 1, says that "Boniface, as restorer of the Lateran, appeared
firmly set in the line of Constantine, its founder, and deliberate stress was laid on the dominion which
Constantine conferred on Sylvester."
194. Gary Dickson, "The crowd at the feet of Pope Boniface VIII: pilgrimage, crusade and the
first Roman Jubilee (1300 )" Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999): 279-307.
195. Mitchell, "The Lateran Fresco," 3.
196. Previous scholars have shed much light on the matter of Dante's sources for Book 3 of the
Monarchia and offered a wide array of earlier and contemporary texts, but none of the studies so far
has taken this approach.
197. See especially Havely, Dante and the Franciscans , passim; Davis, "Poverty and Eschatology,"
42-70; and Park, Dante as a Reformer, 266-349.
150
198. Magone Reeves, "Dante and the Prophetic View of History," in The World of Dante
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 55.
199. Marguerite Chiarenza, "Dante's Lady Poverty," Dante Studies 111 (1993): 154.
200. Rebecca S. Beai, "Bonaventure, Dante and the Apocalyptic Woman Clothed with the
Sun," Dante Studies 114 (1996): 209-28, esp. 211; Edward Hagman, "Dante's Vision of God: The
End of the Itinerarium Mentis Dante Studies 106 (1988): 1-20.
201. Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), voi. 2, parte 2, 368, speaking
of Ubertino, says "Non è quindi più che probabile che Dante, che aveva allora da 22 a 24 anni, lo
abbia consciuto, e avendolo udito predicare e discutere abbia poi da lui personalmente attinto parte
di quei pensieri, che poi compaiono nella Divina Commedia ?" Speaking of Ubertino, Olivi, and
Dante, Davidsohn points out that "quei tre hanno vissuto per vario tempo vicini nella stessa città."
Ubertino's biographer, Fredegand Callaey, L'idéalisme franciscain spirituel au XI Ve siècle: Étude sur Uber-
tin de Casale (Louvain: Bureau du Recueil, 1911), 16, agreed with Davidsohn; so did Francesco Sarri,
"Pier di Giovanni Olivi e Ubertino da Casale: Maestri di Teologia a Firenze (Sec. XIII)," Studi
francescani 22 (1925): 88-125, at 115, and Davis, Rome , 227 and 242, who says "Dante may have
known Olivi personally; certainly he is likely to have heard Ubertino's sermons at Santa Croce."
However, Decima L. Douie, The Nature and the Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli (Manchester, 1932;
repr., New York: AMS Press, 2009), 48 n. 2 and 120, disagreed on the grounds that she believed
Dante's reference to Ubertino in Par. 12.124 to be derogatory. However, even if Dante meant
the reference to be derogatory, that does not eliminate the possibility that Dante knew Ubertino
personally.
202. The key works on this topic are Felice Tocco, Lectura Dantis: U Canto XXXII del Purgatorio
(Florence: Sansoni, 1902), who first suggested Dante's connection with Olivi; Michele Barbi, Pro-
blemi fondamentali, 39-42, who minimized Dante's Joachism and the Spiritual Franciscan influence;
Charles Till Davis, "Note B: Influence upon Dante of the Doctrines of the Joachites and Spiritual
Franciscans," in Rome, 239-43; Raoul Manselli, "Ecclesia Spiritualis," 115-35 and "Dante e gli
Spirituali francescani," Letture Classensi 11 (1982): 47-61; and Cristaldi, "Il Profetismo," 7-65. It is
clear by now that at the very least, Olivi's Lectura super Apocalipsim informed Purgatorio 32 and that
Ubertino's Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu contributed to the story of St. Francis in Paradiso 11. On the latter
see Marguerite Chiarenza, "Dante's Lady Poverty," 153-75.
203. Joachim of Flora, Liber de Concordia noui ac ueteris testamenti, 4.1.3, ed. E. Randolph Daniel,
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 73 (1983): 329: "Oportebat Romanům pontificem esse
simul regem et sacerdotem." Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 9.
204. Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 10-13. He quotes passages to substantiate this position not only
from Joachim's Liber de Concordia, but also from the Tractatus super quatuor Evangelia and the Liber
Figuarum. See also Pietro De Leo, "L'età costantinana nel pensiero di Gioacchino da Fiore," Florensia
1 (1987): 9-34.
205. Reeves, "The Prophetic View," 56-57.
206. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Opusculum XIII, Determinations quaestionum 1.2, Opera Omnia
8 (Quaracchi, 1898), 353.
207. Bonaventure, Sermones 4 de S. Francisci, in Opera Omnia 9, 585-90.
208. Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days , 16th Collation, 18, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson,
N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970), 240 and 245; Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St.
Bonaventure , trans. Zachary Hayes (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971), 21.
209. Malcom Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the
Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210-1323 (London: S.P.C.K., 1961), 66. Marci Bartoli, Petrus Iohan-
nis Olivi, Quaestiones de Romano Pontífice (Grottaferrara: College of S. Bonaventura, 2001), 36, here-
after cited as Bartoli edition, says that the words dominium, ius, and iurisdictio are not to be found in
any of the writings of Francis.
210. Lambert, Poverty , 86: "Fratres nichil sibi approprient nec domum nec locum nec aliquam
rem."
211. Gregory IX, Quo elongati (September 30, 1230), Bullarium Franciscanum , ed. J. H. Sbaralea
(Rome, 1759), 1:68-70: "Dicimus itaque, quod nec in communi, nec in speciali debeant proprietatem
151
habere; sed utensilium ac librorum, et eorum mobilium, quae licit habere, eorum usum habeant . . .
salvo locorum et domorum dominio illis, ad quos noscitur pertinere" (emphasis added). See Lambert,
Franciscan Poverty ; 86.
212. Innocent IV in the bull Ordinem vestrum (November 14, 1245), Bullarium Franciscanum
l:400a-402b, speaking of the movable and immovable property of the Franciscans, says that "omnia
in ius et proprietatem Beati Petri suscipimus." See also Lambert, Franciscan Poverty, 97 n. 3.
213. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty , 126-31.
214. Lambert translation, Frandscan Poverty, 139. Bonaventure, Apologia pauperum 11.9, Opera
Omnia 8:313: "Patet igitur per haec verba legis expressa, neminem posse proprietatem sive domin-
ium, immo nec possessionem acquirere, nisi vere, vel interpretative animum acquirendi habeat. Cum
igitur Fratres Minores animum acquirendi non habeant, quin potius voluntatem contrarium, etiam si
res corpore contingant; nec dominium nec possessionem acquirunt nec rerum huiusmodi possessores
vel domini dici possunt."
215. Ibid., 7.4, Opera Omnia 8:273; Lambert, Franciscan Poverty , 128, and compare Monarchia
3.10, 14.
216. Apologia pauperum 7.39, Opera Omnia 8:285; Lambert, Franciscan Poverty , 137. Nicholas III,
in the bull Exiit qui seminai (August 14, 1279), CICan, 2:1109-21, repeated this explanation of Luke
22:35-36, but he used the term proprietas more fřequendy than dominium throughout.
217. Apologia pauperum 7.32, Opera Omnia 8:283: "Nequaquam est intelligendum, quod Apostoli
proprium aliquid vel commune possederint, quia communitas illa non refertur ad Apostolos, sed at
turbam"; Lambert, Frandscan Poverty ; 137.
218. Apologia pauperum 7.5, Opera Omnia 8:273: "In his igitur verbis [i.e., Matt. 10:9], Dominus
Apostolis et praedicatoribus veritatis extremae ac penuriosae paupertatis formam servandam imponit
quantum ad carentiam non solum possessionum, sed etiam pecuniarum et aHorum mobilium."
219. Ibid.: "Hanc paupertatis normám tanquam speciali praerogativa perfectam et Christus in se
ipso servavit et Apostolis servandam instituit, et his qui eorum cupiunt imitari vestigia, consulendo
suasit."
220. In fact in the Apologia pauperum 7.36-39, Opera Omnia 8:284-85, Bonaventure lists several
reasons why the church can have money.
221. Ibid., 8.7, Opera Omnia 8:288: "Si enim possessiones Ecclesiae commendarent ut licitas, ut
expedientes, ut perfectioni compossibiles in his qui communiter possident, et in eis qui sánete dispen-
sant; viam sequeretur sacrorum doctorum et Canonum confiitantium perversos haereticos, qui Eccle-
siam Dei propter possessiones acceptas a statu iustitiae et perfectionis asserunt esse collapsam." Dante,
in applying the Franciscan ideal of poverty to the whole Church, would certainly fall under Bonaven-
ture's condemnation at this point.
222. See Epistolae 1 and 2 of the Epistolae offidales, Opera Omnia, 8:468-71.
223. See Epistola de imitatione Christi, Opera Omnia, 8:501; Determinations quaestionum arca regulam
Fratrum Minorum, Quaesto 24, Opera Omnia, 8:353-54; Apologia pauperum 7:3, Opera Omnia,
8:272-73; and Expositio super regulam FF. Minorum, 1:2 and 6:15, Opera Omnia, 8:393 and 422.
224. Raoul Manselli, "Spirituali francescani," 52.
225. Peter of John Olivi, An papa habeat unversalissimam potestatem, Quaestio 18 in Quodlibeta Petri
Joan[n]is P[re] ue[n]zalis doctoris solen [njissimi Or. Minor[um] (Venice: Lazarus de Suardis, 1505), ff.
8rb-9rb. This edition is extremely rare; ; Quaestio 18 is now available in the Bartoli edition, 171-79.
Bartoli has edited this and several other writings of Olivi's on the papacy.
226. Ibid., 1Í33 (my references are to the paragraphs in the Venice edition, which I have num-
bered for this purpose), Bartoli edition, 178-79: "Quod quantumcumque terrenam postestatem
Constantinus pape dederit ex ipsamet donatione constant quod potestas ilia non sibi prius inerat ex
sola Christi commissione seu ex sola potestate spirituali." The quodlibet is mentioned by Maccarrone,
"Il terzo libro," 6-7, 67, 71, and 81, but he does not draw out the implications of what Olivi says
about the Donation of Constantine.
227. Ibid., Bartoli edition, 179: "Quod autem et quantum dederit non est nobis nunc cure, quia
potestas temporalis sicut temporaliter est acquisibilis, sic et amissibilis et hoc multiplicibus modis."
152
228. Maccarrone, "Il terzo libro," 81, calls Olivi the "primo e più grande teologo antierocrat-
ico," but this claim is difficult to establish based on the documents in the Bartoli edition. While the
overall thrust of An papa is toward detailing the limitations on papal power, it does not follow that
Olivi can be accurately described as antihierocratic.
229. Douie, Fraticelli , 111, n. 4.
230. Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 28.
231. Davis, "Rome and Babylon," 31 and 39, n. 53.
232. Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 28. Kevin Madigan, Olivi and the Interpretation of Matthew in the
High Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 83-84, points out that
in his Commentary on Matthew, Olivi interprets Christ's instructions to the disciples to tell John the
Baptist that "the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed," etc., as the seven
ages ( status ) of the church, and that "the cleansing of the lepers symbolizes the healing of Constant-
ine's leprosy and the expurgation of the idolatry of the gentiles in the third period."
233. Raoul Manselli, "Ecclesia Spiritualis," 133 n. 42, long ago pointed this out. He quotes
from Olivi's Lectura super Apocalipsim : "Consimiliter autem pontificates Christi fuit primo stirpi vite
evangelice et apostolice in Petro et Apostolis datus ac deinde utüiter et rationabiliter fuit ad statum
habentem temporalia commutatus, saltem a tempore Constantini usque ad finem quinti status." The
passage may also be found in Warren Lewis, Peter John Olivi, Prophet of the Year 2000: Ecclesiology and
Eschatology in the "Lectura super Apocalipsim" (Tübingen: University of Tübingen Dissertation, 1976),
2:51-52 ( = Lewis edition; not seen by me).
234. Olivi, An papa, fl9; Bartoli edition, 175: "Si enim papa ex absoluto iure evangelico et ex
absoluta Christi commissione esset temporalis rex et dominus mundi, tunc Petro apostolorum principi
non commisisset statum et consilium altissime paupertatis, sed potius summarum divitiarum et terrene
temporalitatis, cuius oppositum patet ex textu, quia precepit eis dicens: Nolite possidere aurum, etc.
[Matt. 10:9]." (I have here corrected Bartoli's use of consilum for consilium.)
235. Ibid.
236. Ibid., Bartoli edition, 176.
237. Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 115-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility,
Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 104. Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 27.
238. Peter of John Olivi, Questio de usu paupere, in Petrus Ioannis Olivi, De usu paupere: The
" Quaestio " and Tractatus (Florence: Olschki, 1992), 64: "Preterea imaginemur quod omnes episcopi
sic hodie quantum ad Christi Consilia viverent sicut vivebant apostoli et maxime quantum ad pauper-
tatem et quo ad eius pauperem usum." David Burr, Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: The Origins of the
Usus Pauper Controversy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 23, alludes elsewhere
to "Olivi's occasional tendency to offer Franciscan poverty as a pattern for the entire church." See
also Lambert, Franciscan Poverty , 153 and n. 1, who says that Olivi here "comes close to saying that
the observance of the usus pauper was essential to the office of any bishop."
239. Peter Olivi, Quaestiones de perfezione evangelica, Q. 8: An status altissime paupertatis sit simpliciter
melior omni statu divitiarum, quoted by Cristaldi, "Il profetismo," 30 n. 41: "Usque ad sextum tempus
ecclesiae . . . permiserunt in ecclesiis gentium ad opus ecclesiae possessiones ecclesiasticus habere." I
have not been able to find evidence for Cristaldi's statement, "Dante, Il profetismo," 60, that "Dante
raggiunge Olivi su [varie] punti . . . soprattutto la sua estensione [della Nolite possidere] alla Chiesa
tutta."
240. Olivi, Lectura super Apocalipsim, quoted by Manselli, "Ecclesia Spiritualis," 133 n. 42 and
Lewis edition, 51-52, goes on to say that in the sixth status the Church will again conform to Christ,
leaving behind the many abuses of the fifth status which has almost made the church into a new
Babylon: "Congruum est ergo quod in fine omnino redeat et assurgat ad ordinem primum, ad quem
spectat iure promogeniture et perfectionis maioris et Christo conformioris. Ad iustum autem reditum
valde, quamvis per accidens, cooperabitur non solum multiplex [imperfectio] in possessione et dis-
pensatione temporalium ecclesie in pluribus comprobata, sed etiam multiplex enormitas superbie et
luxurie et symoniarum et causidicationum [sic], litigiorum et fraudum et rapinarum ex ipsis occasion-
aliter accepta, ex quibus circa finem quinti temporis a pianta pedis usque ad verticem est fere tota
ecclesia infecta et confusa et quasi nova Babilon effecta."
153
241. Peter of John Olivi, De perfectionibus Summi Pastoris , Battoli edition, 185-89.
242. Olivi, An papa , 1Í21, Bartoli edition, 176; see also 1Í23, Battoli edition, 177. Hugh of St.
Victor, De sacramentis 2.2.7, PL 176, 419-420.
243. No link between Hugh of St. Victor and St. Bernard is apparent on this issue, although
Olivi quotes both authors. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratane 1.5, PL 182, 410, uses the word
patrodnium only one time, and then not in reference to the Donation of Constantine. Hugh of St.
Victor was a favorite of the hierocrats. The foundation of the "dualist" view was Pope Gelasius I's
letter to the Byzantine emperor Leo I, PL 54, 104, asserting that there are two powers in the world:
"Duo quippe sunt, imperator auguste, quibus principaliter mundus hie regitur: auctorictas sacra pon-
tificum, et regalis potestatis." In the second part of the De sacramentis, which is entitled "De unitate
ecclesiae," at 2:4, PL 176, 418, Hugh alludes to this formulation, but instead of two powers he
describes two lives: "Duae quippe vitae sunt: una terrena, altera coelestis; altera corporea, altera
spiritualis." He goes on to say that both vitae are within the church and that the authority to institute
and judge the temporal power belongs to the spiritual power: "Nam spiritualis postestas terrenam
potestatem et instituere habet, ut sit, et judicare habet si bona non fuerit." In the latter phrase we see
the roots of Innocent Ill's declaration that he had the right to intervene in secular affairs, ratione
peccati. Olivi and Dante, however, appear to have been less interested in this passage than Hugh's use
of the word patrodnium , which they used to arrive at a different conclusion.
244. Ubertino da Casale, Arbor vitae crudfixae Jesu (Venice, 1485); facsimile reproduction with an
Introduction by Charles Till Davis, Monumenta Politica et Philosophica Rariora, ser. 1, no. 4 (Turin:
Bottega d'Erasmo, 1961), 5.1, 412b-413a. The converted gentiles, he says, were sometimes lost in
darkness and idolatry "usque ad Constantium. Eius vero meridies fuit in preclarea doctrina et vita
doctorum et anachoritarum." This passage is also cited by Marino Damiata, Pietà e storia nelV Arbor
vite di Ubertino da Casale (Florence: Studi francescani, 1988), 222 and n. 10. See also Arbor vitae 2.6,
123a and 5.1, 409b, where Constantine is not mentioned in connection with the third age.
245. Arbor vitae 5.1, 407a. In a later passage, at 409b, he neglects to mention Constantine when
listing the ages of the church.
246. Arbor vitae 5.1, 412b-413a: "Declinatio vero huius solis fiiit in quinto tempore." H. Wayne
Storey, "Canto XXXII: The Parallel Histories," in Lectura Dantis: .Purgatorio, ed. Allen Mandelbaum,
Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 360-77, says
that the Donation was "a document particularly suspect among the Spirituals," but I have been
unable to find evidence to suggest either that the Spirituals took a negative view of the Donation or
that such a view influenced Dante.
247. Ubertino believed that the pope is married to the church, so that he can relinquish the
office only by death or heresy. He who takes the place of the rightful pope commits adultery with
the church and therefore becomes a whore. See Damiata, Pietà e storia , 279.
248. Damiata, Pietà e storia , 196.
249. "redite redite ad cor prevaricatores, attendite ad . . . Iesum paupertatis spiritum genitorem,
et suos educatores veraces ... et observatores eximium . . . Augustinum Dominicum Franciscum
Bernardům Benedictum Basilium," Arbor vitae 1.11, 64a.
250. Damiata, Pietà e storia , 197.
251. E. Randolph Daniel, "Spirituality and Poverty: Angelo da Clareno and Ubertino da
Casale," Medievalia et Humanística 4 (1973): 91.
252. For this story, see esp. Lambert, Frandscan Poverty ; 184-207; and Burr, The Spiritual Frands-
cans , 111-58.
253. Endclopedia dantesca , s.v. "povertà" (Dabney Park). See also Davis, "Poverty and Eschatol-
ogy," 53: "In one important way, however, Dante seems more radical even than the Spiritual Francis-
cans. He thought that the clergy as a whole should have remained poor, and should have shunned all
temporal jurisdiction from the time of Christ to the end of history."
254. Park, "povertà," 629.
255. Damiata, Pietà e storia, 198.
256. Olivi, Lectura super Apocalipsim, Lewis edition, 679. Apoc. 12:1. Beai, "The Apocalyptic
Woman," 209-28, argues that Dante identifies the mulier amicta solis not only with the Virgin but
also with Beatrice, and he sees both as representing the church.
154
257. Olivi, Lectura super Apocalipsim, Lewis edition, 680. Unlike Olivi, Ubertino, Arbor vitae, 5.1,
413b, saw the two wings of the eagle as the anchorites Anthony and Athanasius.
258. "Romanus Princeps in aliqo romano Pontifici non subiaceat"; my translation. Maccarrone,
"Il terzo libro," 6-7 and 67, referring to Olivi, An papa, says that Olivi advocated the potestas indirecta
of the pope to intervene in temporal affairs, but only "Quantum spirituali saluti animaram et spirituali
gubernatione totius ecclesie expediret" (1Í36, Bartoli edition, 179), a point which Dante seems to
have ignored. Nardi, "Intorno," 168-69, criticized Maccarrone for makng Olivi into more of a
hierocrat than he actually was. One can agree with Nardi that Olivi's underlying theme in An papa
was the apostolic model of the church, but it must also be said that Olivi was no great fan of the
empire. In fact, in An papa he spends so few words on the empire and the kingdoms that his point is
clearly more about the limitations on the pope's power than about the independent powers of the
temporal authorities.
259. Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. Spurgeon Baldwin and Paul Barrette (Tempe:
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), 48-49 (no. 87): "Il doua la Sainte
Eglise & li dona tout l'anperial degnité que vos veés, que premièrement n'avoit l'Eglise auchune
chose"; my translation.
260. Charles Till Davis, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia , ed. Christopher Kleinhenz (New York:
Routledge, 2004), s.v. "Remigio dei Girolami," says that this "theory remains unproved, but it has
been widely accepted and is not improbable."
261. Remigio, Contra fabos 5-37, ed. Panella, passim. On Remigio see also Charles Till Davis,
"An Early Florentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio de' Girolami," Proceedings of the American Philo-
sophical Society 104 (1960): 662-76.
262. Charles Till Davis, "Prefazione," in Remigio dei Girolami, Contra falsos ecclesie professores ,
ed. Filippo Tamburini, "Utrumque lus" (Rome: Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1981), ix.
263. Remigio, Contra falsos 26, ed. Panella, 136.
264. Ibid.: "quia occupatio circa temporalia diminuit devotionem et amorem circa Deum et
spiritualia; et ideo prefectus ecclesiasticus non debuit habere principale et directum dominium super
temporalia."
265. Contra falsos 27, ibid., 141: "Licet Christus fuerit dominus temporalium tarnen noluit vicario
suo pape commictere istud dominium, ut scilicet / magis spiritualibus posset intendere . . . ergo papa
non potest dici simpliciter vicarius Christi, ex quo non habet totum Christi dominium." However,
Davis, "Prefazione," xvii, points out that Remigio later contradicted this point of view in sermon,
where he says that the pope is universal in the sense that "he possesses all things."
266. Contra falsos 18, ibid., 125: "Papa immediate habet auctoritatem suam a Deo; . . . Principes
autem seculares habent auctoritatem scilicet a Deo mediante homine, etiam ipso papa."
267. Contra falsos 18, ibid., 126-27: "Omnes christiani et tota ecclesia . . . sunt unum corpus . . .
oportet quod istud corpus habeat [unum] caput . . . oportuit quod esset aliquod caput summum in
terra corpori coniunctum. Hoc enim caput papa est."
268. Davis, "An Early Florentine," 675.
269. Davis, "Prefazione," xvi, says that the difficulty of determining the extent to which
Remigio might have been a hierocrat lies in "a fundamental lack of coherence in his thought about
the relationship between the two powers."
270. Hollander, "Dante and Cino," 201. Dante cites Cino numerous times in the De vulgāri
eloquentia. See also Enciclopedia dantesca , s.v. "Cino da Pistoia" (Mario Marti).
271. Lambert, Heresy, 53.
272. Lambert, Heresy, 156-57, and Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of
Heterodoxy to Dissent c. 1250-1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967), I, 9 and II,
457.
273. Lambert, Heresy, 53, and Leff, Heresy, I, 193.

274. Tierney, Crisis, 142, says that "during the preceding two centuries [before 1236] the Dona-
tion had played surprisingly little part in all the arguments and counterarguments about the temporal
power of the papacy. Around 1054 Pope Leo IX made the last strong statement of the authority
155
conferred on the papacy by the Donation of Constantine in a letter to Michael, Patriarch of Constan-
tinople, PL 143, 752-53, going so far as to say "sicut nostra est terrena imperialis potentia."
275. Elizabeth Kennan, "The 'De consideratione' of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the papacy in
the Mid-Twelfth Century: A Review of Scholarship," Traditio 23 (1967): 87.
276. Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books on Consideration: Advice to a Pope , trans. John D. Anderson
and Elizabeth T. Kennan, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 13 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian
Publications, 1976), 117 (4.6) and 202 n. 4, hereafter cited as Anderson and Kennan translation; De
consideratione , PL 182, 438.
277. Bernard of Clairvaux, Declamationes de colloquio Simonis cum Jesu , PL 184, 449-50; this lan-
guage was pointed out by Vinay in his edition, 178-79 n. 1.
278. Speaking of the church's possessions, Bernard, De consideratione 2.10-11, PL 182, 419,
Anderson and Kennan translation, 58-59: "You may claim these things on some other ground but
not by apostolic right. For the Aposde could not give you what he did not have. What he had he
gave: responsibility for the churches, as I have said. Did he give dominion [ dominationem ]? ... It is
clear: dominion [dominatus] is forbidden for apostles. Therefore, go ahead and dare to usurp the
apostolic office as lord [ dominans ], or as pope usurp dominion [dominatum]. Clearly, you are forbidden
to do either."
279. Joan Ferrante, Political Vision , 23 n. 42, points out that Dante cited the De consideratione in
the letter to Cangrande, Epistles 10.28, Toynbee edition, 191, and that he used the letter in several
chapters of the Monarchia.
280. Quoted by Brian Tierney, "The Continuity of Papal Political Theory in the Thirteenth
Century: Some Methodological Considerations," Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965): 241; PL 217, 481.
Kenneth Pennington, "Pope Innocent Ill's Views on Church and State: A Gloss to Per venerabilem,"
in Law, Church and Society Church, and Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977),
49-67; available at http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Medieval%20papacy/InnocentPerVen.htm,
says at n. 38 that Innocent III was the first "to connect Melchisedech with the pope's royal powers."
See also Brian Tierney, " 'Tria quippe distinguit iudicia ...'A Note on Innocent Ill's Decretal Per
venerabilem ," Speculum 37 (1962): 48-59.
281. Pennington, "Pope Innocent Ill's Views," 9 (page numbering is from printout of the online
source). See also Tierney, " 'Tria quippe,' " 48-59, who clarifies Innocent's assertion of direct author-
ity to act in temporal matters, stemming from the Melchisedech claim.
282. Pennington, "Innocent Ill's Views," 6-7; Per venerabilem , PL 214, 1132: "pienam in tem-
poralibus gerimus potestatem, verum etiam in aliis regionibus, certis causis inspectis, temporalem
jurisdictionem causaliter exercemus;" Novit Ule , in Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England
(1198-Í216), ed. C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953), 64:
"Non enim intendimus iudicare de feudo . . . sed decernere de peccato, cuius ad nos pertinet sine
dubitatione censura quam in quemlibet exercere possumus et debemus."
283. PL 214, 1130-34.
284. Ullmann, Medieval Papalism , 109.
285. Tierney, Crisis, 142. At 143-44, Tierney published an English translation of Gregory IX's
October 1236 letter to the Frederick II, trans. S. Z. Ehler and J. P. Morrall, Church and State Through
the Centuries (London: Burns & Oates, 1954), 77. It is worth noting that Frederick II's response to
the deposition, a letter to the kings of Christendom in 1246 published in English by Tierney, Crisis ,
145-46, accuses the contemporary clergy of abuses similar to those itemized by Dante and claims
that they "should continue to the end as they were in the early days of the Church living an apostolic
life and imitating the Lord's humility," and adds "that it was our intention especially to reduce those
of highest rank to this condition."
286. Johannes Fried, The " Donation of Constantine " and "Constitutum Constanti™, " 26-27 and n.
77. For this hierocratic point of view see also Michael Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later
Middle Ages: The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists (Cambridge at the Uni-
versity Press, 1964), 543. If Dante had known about Innocent IV's argument that the Donation was
a restitution, one would expect him to counter this position in Monarchia 3.10, which he does not
156
do. This point adds further support to the suggestion made below that Dante was countering argu-
ments made during the 1312-14 controversy.
287. Clerids laicos and Unam sanctam may be found in Mirbt, Quellen, 161-64 (nos. 807 and 809).
On these bulls, see T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII (London: Constable, 1933), 138-42 and 317-24,
respectively.
288. Matthew of Acquasparta's sermon is published in Sermones de S. Francisco de S. Antonio et de
S. Clara, ed. Gedeon Gal (Quaracchi: College of St. Bonaventure, 1962), 176-90. Gal, 14*, supplies
the date and the setting. Matthew's sermon is also printed along with Boniface's remarks in Pierre
Dupuy, Histoire du différend d'entre le pape Boniface VIII, et Philippes le Bel roy de France (Paris: Cramoisy,
1655), 73-79.
289. Charles Till Davis, "Roman Patriotism and Republican Propaganda: Ptolemy of Lucca and
Pope Nicholas III," Speculum 50 (1975): 411-33; reprinted in Dante's Italy, 224-53, at 225. Davis
says that the Determinatio was written in 1278, but more the recent testimony of Ludwig Schmugge,
s.v. "Fiadoni, Bartolomeo (Tolomeo, Ptolomeo da Lucca)," Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available
at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/bartolomeo-fiadoni_(Diziona rio-Biografie o), accessed on
12/24/12, dates it "intorno al 1300."
290. John of Paris, De potestate regia et papali, Leclercq edition; English translation by J. A. Watt,
John of Paris: On Royal and Papal Power (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971),
hereafter cited as Watt translation. On John of Paris see also Carlo Cipolla, "Dante e Giovanni da
Parigi," Memorie della R. Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 2nd ser., 42 (1892): 325-419, reprinted as
Il trattato "De Monarchia" di Dante Aligheri e l'opuscolo "De potestate regia et papali" di Giovanni da Parigi
(Turin: Clausen, 1982), and Jean Rivière, Le problème de l'église et de l'état au temps de Philippe le Bel:
Étude de théologie positive (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1926), 281-300.
291. Watt translation, 220-28, and Leclercq edition, 243-47, and passim.
292. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historíale 13.56.
293. Leclercq edition, 245 n. 7, cites a Legende inèdite de la vie di S. Silvestre, but I have not been
able to find this phrase in any of the versions of Sylvester's life.
294. Watt translation, 224-25 and Leclercq edition, 246.
295. Watt translation, 96-97 and Leclercq edition, 186.
296. Cipolla, "Dante and Giovanni da Parigi," 387; Rivière, Le problème, 333, n. 1, agrees with
Cipolla that Dante may not have been familiar with John's treatise.
297. Chapter 11; Watt translation, 96-97 and Leclercq edition, 186. The answers are found in
the chapters 14-20.
298. Watt translation, 149; Leclercq edition, 211. Puletti, "La Donazione," 113-35, devotes
most of her article to pointing out the similarities between John of Paris and Dante, saying at 126
that "gli argomenti che Dante utilizza sono più o meno gli stessi di Giovanni da Parigi," but she
completely neglects their differences.
299. Watt translation, 69-70; Leclercq edition, 173: "Nam error Valdensium fuit successoribus
apostolorum scilicet pape et prelatis ecclesiasticis repugnare dominium in temporalibus nec eis licere
habere dividas temporales." Dante of course avoided the second and third errors of the Waldensians
(according to John) of declaring that the Roman Church was no longer the Church of God and that
the true church was restored by themselves.
300. Domenico Maffei, "Il pensiero di Cino da Pistoia sulla Donazione di Costantino, le sue due
fonti e il dissenso finale da Dante," Letture Classensi 16 (1987): 119-27.
301. Maffei, "Il pensiero di Cino," 120.
302. Ibid.
303. Cino da Pistoia, Lectura super Codice, 1. Comperit, c. De praescriptione, XXX vel XL
annorum (c. 7, 39, 6), Nos. 1-2 (Frankfurt: Sigismundi, 1578), f. 448r; quoted and dated by Domen-
ico Maffei, "Cino da Pistoia e il 'Constitutum Constantini,' " Annali della Università di Macerata 24
(1960): 96-97: "Ratio est, quia expedit Reipublicae per unum consuli et per unum gubernari, et
ideo de pluribus gubernatoribus in unum solum translatum est ius imperii . . . quia est mundi dominus
. . . quia pro toto orbe terrarum die noctuque vigilat."
304. Maffei, "Il pensiero di Cino," 123.
157
305. Ciño, Lectura super Codice : "Et ideo signa subiectionis suae non possunt praescribi, unde
est contra illos, qui dicunt Romanam ecclesiam praescripisse sibi donationem fàctam ab Imperatore
Constantino, quod saltim subiectionis signa non potuerit praescribere, et sic nec iurisdictionem
Romani imperii, cui subiectus est totus orbis."
306. Domenico Maffei, La donazione di Costantino nei giuristi medievali (Milan: Giuffrè, 1964),
141.
307. Ibid., 140.

308. Toynbee edition, 42-62.
309. Dante's statement in the letter to Henry VII (Aprii 17, 1311), Ep. 7.2, Toynbee edition,
101, that "I too, who write as well for myself as for others, beheld thee most gracious, and heard
thee most clement, as beseems Imperial Majesty, when my hands touched thy feet, and my lips paid
their tribute" has been taken by many as evidence that Dante was present at the coronation in Milan.
See Paget Toynbee, Dante Alighieri: His Life and Works, ed. Charles S. Singleton (New York: Harper,
1965; originally published in 1900), and Petrocchi, Vita, 148.
310. On this conflict see Davis, Rome, 146-94, and appendix 2, "Clement V and the Dante of
the Monarchia 263-69; William Bowsky, Henry VII in Italy: The Conflict of Empire and City-State,
1310-1313 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), passim, and "Clement V and the
Emperor-elect," Medievalia et Humanística 12 (1958): 52-69; Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the
Law, 1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1993), chapter V: "Henry VII and Robert of Naples," 165-201; and Egidio Gorra, "Dante
e Clemente V," Giornale storico della leteratura Italiana, 59 (1917): 193-216.
311. Davis, Rome, 147.
312. Clement V, Exultet in gloria, in Acta Henrici VII Romanorum Imperatoris et Monumenta Quaedam
Alia , ed. Francisco Bonainio, Pars Prima (Florence: Cellinii, 1877), No. 26, pp. 42-45. The Toynbee
edition of the letters, 45 n. 2, quotes the latter phrase: "Regem praedictum [i.e., Henry] honorificen-
tia debita veneran."
313. Davis, Rome, 153.
314. Monumenta Germaniae Histórica, Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum , vol. 4
(1298-1313), ed. Jakob Schwalm (Hannover: Hahn, 1909-1911), 1:395-98 (no. 454); hereafter cited
as MGH Schwalm.
315. Davis, Rome , 269.
316. Par. 17.82: "ma pria che 'l Guasco [i.e., Clement] l'alto Arrigo inganni." Some scholars
have dated the "betrayal" of Henry to March 28, 1312, when Clement made the decision not to
dispatch orders to Robert's troops to allow Henry to enter Rome without opposition. However,
Dante could not have seen these orders because they remained sealed. We know of them from secret
dispatches sent by the agents of James II of Aragon at Vienne, published in MGH Schwalm,
2:1423-26 (no. 1288). On this episode see Bowsky, Henry VII , 67.
317. Kern, Acta imperii, June 19, 1312, 150-51 (no. 227).
318. The cardinals' document is lost; we know of its contents from Henry's response, entided
Responsiones cardinalibus factae (August 6, 1312), MGH Schwalm, 2:844-47 (no. 841).
319. Pennington, The Prince, 169.
320. Davis, Rome, 157; MGH Schwalm, 2:823-25 (nos. 821 and 822). Henry had actually
opened these negotiations in April of 1312 - an act virtually contemporaneous with Clement's
"inganno," and one which the pope would most likely have seen as a betrayal of the papacy.
321. Pennington, The Prince, 183.
322. Davis, Rome, 144, says that "In the city of Rome itself we shall perhaps find the focal point
of the whole controversy, ... in the prominence of the question of the Donation in almost all of the
controversial writings."
323. Toynbee edition, 42-105. On these letters see Pertile, "Dante Looks Forward and Back,
1-17.
324. Petrocchi, Vita, 154; Hollander, s.v. "Dante Alighieri," Dictionary of the Middle Ages , ed.
Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Scribner's, 1984), 4:103.
158
325. Promissio Lausannensis (October 11, 1310), AfGHSchwalm, 1:397 (no. 454): "lus ac posessi-
onem [sic] et proprietatem ipsorum cum omni plenitudine [sic] recognoscimus iure pienissimo ad ius
et proprietatem sánete Romane ecclesie spectare ac omnimode pertinere, ac ipsas omnes terras atque
provincias de novo avoamus [sic], innovamus atque concedimus, quitamus libere et dimittimus, resti-
tuimus et renunciamus."
326. Interestingly Dante does not use this phrase to describe the emperor as monarch.
327. Littera encyclica imperatoris (June 29, 1312), MGH Schwalm, 2:801-4 (no. 801).
328. Constitutio contra haereticos et sacrilegos (29 June 1312), MGH Schwalm, 2:799-800 (no. 799):
"Romane ecclesie, qua dive memorie Constantinus noster inclitus predecessor Romanům munivit et
auxit imperium, cunctosque populos nostro subiectos imperio, nostre dicioni subditos in ista vol-
umeus religione versali."
329. Iuramentum imperatoris (July 6, 1312), AfGHSchwalm, 2:807-809 (no. 807).
330. Responsiones cardinalibus factae (August 6, 1312), MGH Schwalm, 2:844-47 (no. 841). It
would seem that Henry was as capable as Clement of applying a "double standard." See Bowsky,
"Clement V," 66.
331. See Pennington, "The Prince," 165-201, for a full discussion of the legal issues involved.
332. Dated by Maffei, "Il pensiero di Ciño," 121 and ""Cino da Pistoia," 95.
333. A third document, Consilium iudiäs aulae imperialis super rebellibus (before May 1, 1313),
MGH Schwalm, 2:1015-17 (no. 981), written by one Milancius, an imperial judge, argues that
Venice is subject to the empire and that Bologna is not a possession of the church, without reference
to the Donation of Constantine.
334. De principio et origine et potencia imperatoris et pape , in Nova Alamanniae: Urkunden, Briefe und
andere Quellen besonders zur deutschen Geschichte des 14. Jarhunderts , ed. Edmund E. Stengel, vol. 1
(Berlin: Wiedmannsche, 1921), 44-52 (no. 90): "licet et imperator sit caput ecclesie generaliter
appellatus, ut in legenda beati Silvestri legitur" (47) and "dominus est omnium terrenorum (ut legitur
in legenda beati Silvestri)" (49).
335. Memoriale imperatori porrectum (between April 26 and 24 August 24, 1313), MGH Schwalm,
2:1308-17 (no. 1248). See Davis, Rome , 178-80.
336. Bowsky, Henry VII, 263, n. 28.
337. Memoriale imperatori porrectum, 1314.
338. Ibid., 1315.
339. Ibid., 1316-17; Davis, Rome , 179.
340. MGH Schwalm), 2: 1317-62 (nos. 1249-1251).
341. Memoriale pontifici contra imperatorem tradia, Disqusitio prior iuridica, MGH Schwalm,
2:1330-32 (no. 1250).
342. Ibid., 1331: "Imperator non potest dici princeps in terris ecclesie, que ab eius potestate
omnimoda sunt exempta"; and 1338: "Romanům imperium habet fines et limites suos. Alioquin
quomodo lex distingueret populos quosdam esse sub imperio, quosdam sub regibus suis, quosdam
nec sub imperio nec sub regibus, sed per se liberos esse"; see also 1339, where the Donation is
mentioned in this context.
343. Tractatus de Jurisdiction Ecclesiae super Regnum Apuliae, & Sidliae , in Tutelensis Miscellanea novo
ordine digesta , ed. Etienne Baluze and Giovan Domenico Mansi (Lucca, 1761-1764), I, 468-73. This
treatise is ascribed to a Cardinal Nicholas "Aragonii." He can be identified either with Cardinal
Nicholas of Prato or Cardinal Nicholas de Fréauville, both Dominicans, because they were the only
two cardinals named Nicholas living in 1312-14, although neither appears to have had ties to Aragon.
See Salvador Miranda's website entided "The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church," at http://
www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas /cardinals.htm.
344. Davis, Rome , 143 and 166.
345. Traktat über die Ungültigkeit der Sentenz K. Heinrichs VII. gegen K. Robert von Neapel , in Acta
imperii Angliae et Franciae ab anno 1267ad annum 1313: Dokumente vornehmlich zur Geschichte der auswärti-
gen Beziehungen Deutschlands in ausländischen Archiven , ed. Fritz Kern (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911), No.
295, pp. 244-47. See Davis, Rome, 184-85.
346. Traktat, 244-45.
159
347. Ibid., 246: "Sed hodie satis est apertum videre, quod dominium habet in mundo tot regibus
et principibus, tot marchionibus, tot comitibus et aliis baronibus et comunitatibus per universum
orbem . . . dominia et iura earundem dignitatem suaram habentibus et possidentibus per se ipsos . . .
sed hodie bene videtur in aperto . . . [quod] rex Francie, rex Sicilie, rex Ispanie, rex Aragonie, rex
Anglie, rex Portogallie, rex Armenie, rex Ungarie, rex Cipri . . . nec sibi subiciunt nec obediunt."
348. Ibid., 247 (emphasis added): "Ex predictis patet, quod loquendo moderno tempore de
potestate et auctoritate imperatoris est quodammodo sermo abusivus, quoniam ipse omnia habere
dicitur et quasi nichil possidet et vocatur imperator Romanorum, tarnen nullum dominium, impe-
rium, potestatem aut iurisdictionem in Romanos habeat nihilque ibi corporale aut incorporale possi-
deat ratione predicte abdicationis et donationis Constantini . . . Nimirum itaque, exquo sic breviatum
est dominium imperatoris, eiusdem diminuta auctoritas, restricta potestas, imperium et iurisdictio
mutilata."
349. Romani principes, Clementarium, Lib. II, Tit. IX, CICan, 2:1147-50.
350. Pastoralis cura , Tit. XI, II, 1151-53 a 1152-53: "Nullatenus omittamus, quod regem, extra
districtum imperii, in regno scilicet Siciliae . . . citare non potuit imperator . . . nos tam ex superiori-
tate, quam ad imperium non est dubium nos habere, quam ex potestate, in qua vacante imperio
imperatori succedimus, et nihilominus ex illius plenitudine potestatis, quam Christus Rex regum et
Dominus Dominantním nobis, licet immeritis, in persona beati Petri concessit."
351. Nicola Zinagrelli, La vita, i tempi e le opere di Dante, Storia Letteraria d'Italia (Milan: Vallardi,
1947), 2:683-84. John XII, Si fiatrum , Constitutiones 20, Ioannis Papae XXII, Titulus 5, CICan,
2:1211; English translation by Cassell, The "Monarchia Controversy," 198-201.
352. For lists of scholars who accept 1318 for the date of the Monarchia see Cassell, The " Mon-
archia " Controversy, 203-204 n. 1, and Enrico Fenzi, "È la 'Monarchia' l'ultima opera di Dante? (A
proposito di una recented edizione)," Studi Danteschi 72 (2007): 215-22 nn. 1-12; Fenzi's article is
essentially a long review of Dante, Monarchia; Cola di Rienzo, Commentario; Marsiglio Ficino, Volgarizza-
mento, ed. Francesco Furlan (Milan: Mondadori, 2004). Neither Cassell, Fenzi, nor Furlan deals with
the important contribution by Davis, "Clement V," in Rome, 263-69, and consequendy they do not
address the arguments he makes for the 1312-14 date of the Monarchia.
353. Davis, 'Clement V, in Rome, 265.
354. Hollander, "Dante and Cino," 218; at 230 n. 100, he cites Gerolamo Biscaro, "Cino da
Pistoia and Dante," Studi medievali 1 (1928): 496-97.
355. Maffei, "Il pensiero," 124.
356. Ibid.
357. See Enciclopedia dantesca , s.v. "Cino da Pistoia" (Mario Marti).

358. Hollander, "Dante and Cino," 219.
359. Guido Vernani, De Reprobatione Falsae Monarchiae, ed. Nevio Matteini, H più antico oppositore
di Dante: Guido Vemani da Rimini (Padua: CEDAM, 1958), 91-118; English trans. Cassell, The " Mo-
narchia " Controversy, 174-97.
360. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Life of Dante, trans. Philip H. Wicksteed (London: Moring, 1904),
97-98, tells us that when Ludwig of Bavaria had himself crowned Holy Roman emperor against
Pope John XXII's wishes, he and his supporters found a copy of the Monarchia and used it to defend
the coronation on the grounds that the book said that the emperor's authority comes directly from
God. This act made the book famous. After Ludwig returned to Germany, Cardinal Bertrand "seized
the aforesaid book, and condemned it publicly to the flames, as containing heresies." He also wanted
to exhume and burn Dante's bones but was persuaded against doing so. The veracity of the story is
is confirmed by Bartolo da Sassoferrato, who, without naming the cardinal, says that after his death
Dante was almost damned for heresy. See also Corrado Ricci, L'ultimo rifugio di Dante Aligheri (Milan,
1891), 187-94; and Lisetta Ciaccio, H Cardinal Legato Bertrando del Poggetto (1327-34) (Bologna:
Zanichelli, 1905), 75.
361. John XXII, Cum inter nonnullos (November 13, 1323), in Bullarium Franciscanum 5:256-59;
English translation by Lambert, Poverty, 235-36. In a subsequent essay I intend to argue that Dante's
endorsement of the poverty of Christ and the aposdes amounted to views (both in the Commedia and
the Monarchia) that were declared heretical by John XXII in 1323, and that the poet had no intention
160
to condemn Ubertino da Casale for excessive rigor or radicalism. Dante was in fact more radical than
Ubertino by applying the Franciscan ideal of poverty to the whole church. Ubertino could no longer
be counted among the pages (members) in the volume of the Franciscan order because he left the
order to become a Benedictine in 1317.
362. Southern, Western Society, esp. chap. 4, "The papacy," 90-169.

363. Pertile, "Dante Looks Forward and Back," 13: "The dream Dante was intent on pursuing
was not only unrealistic but, to use a modern term, much more reactionary." However, Davis, Rome ,
186, in commenting on the Monarchia cautions that "Dante's treatise is by no means the anachronistic,
isolated, and completely theoretical work that it is sometimes called," because it addressed issues that
were vigorously debated at the time (1312-14). Pier Giorgio Ricci, "Dante e l'Impero di Roma,"
in Dante e Roma, 144-45, describes Dante's imperial vision as "di pienissima realtà . . . Non d'utopia
si deve dunque parlare nel caso di Dante, ma anzi di realisimo conservatore." A. P. d'Entrèves, Dante
as a Political Thinker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 24, and Rivière, Le problème , 340, agree.
364. Hollander and Hollander, Par. 27.86. Dante uses areola in Monarchia 3.16.11 and aiuola in
Paradiso 22.151. I am indebted to John Scott, Understanding Dante , 371 n. 22, for pointing out that
the common (and incorrect) translation for these words is "threshing-floor."
365. Edward Twining, A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe (London: B. T. Batsford, 1960),
377-79. See also Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Bonifacio VIII (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 223-25: "Le tre
corone simboleggerebbero dunque l'universalità del potere pontificio, il dominium sul mondo (la
superiorità del papa sui re e sull'imperatore) e la soveranità sacerdotale" (225); Mitchell, "The Lateran
Fresco," 2-3; and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Le Chiavi e la Tiara: Immagini e simboli del papato
medievale (Rome: Viella, 2005).
366. A full articulation of the idea of sovereignty did not develop until somewhat later, so excep-
tion may be taken to Shaw's use of this word, but the sense would remain the same if one were to
delete it. See Ullmann, "Sovereignty," 1-33, passim.
367. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 4.1; 1120a:14-15. Aristotle mentions the disposition of the
giver but not of the recipient. St. Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics,
Sententia libri ethicorum 4.1.13, Opera Omnia 4 (Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1980), 173, stretches
Aristotle's meaning to include the person receiving the gift: "manifestum est autem quoniam ex eo
quod aliquis dat, benefacit et bene operatur; ad sumptionem autem, idest receptionem pertinet bene
pati, inquantum scilicet aliquis recipit unde oportet, vel non turpe operali, inquantum scilicet non
recipit unde non oportet."
161

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Dante and the Donation of Constantine

Author(s): DABNEY G. PARK

Empire was founded not on violence but on piety. In a dream, he was

The Lombard threat further divided Rome from Constantinople. By

Donation in the Commedia. The nineteenth canto of Inferno opens with

O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci

Simony and nepotism, both violations of the church's proper role as

Di voi pastor s'accorse il Vangelista,

Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre,

In Inferno 19 we experience Dante's extreme anger with the sin of

Però, in pro del mondo che mal vive,

L'altro che segue, con le leggi e meco,

ora conosce come il mal dedutto

Constantine "turned Greek" by ceding the West to Sylvester and by

Constantine enjoys exceptional status for Dante not only because he

The other reference to Constantine is a bit more complex. Among the

Ma come Costantin chiese Silvestro

Dante's view of the Donation of Constantine is closely tied to his con-

he has Bonaventure of Bagnoregio40 say that St. Dominic appealed to the

non dispensare o due o tre per sei,

che quantunque la Chiesa guarda, tutto

The Convivio , the Monarchia, and the Letters

Dante does not mention the Donation of Constantine in the Convivio ,

Since the monarch possesses everything, the implication of this passage is

Immediately following this sentence, Dante makes the astounding

In preparation for his thorough analysis of the Donation of Constantine

1 . No one can hold [temporal authority] legitimately unless granted it

2. The emperor cannot split up the empire (Mon. 3.10.6).57

7. The church could not accept [the Donation] as a possession, nor

(Mon. 3.10.5). The Donation of Constantine, according to Dante, was

Shortly afterward Dante refers to Christ's admonition to "Render there-

would be "terribly improper" {valde inconveniens) for the church to abuse

"Dì oggimai che la Chiesa di Roma,

"O Marco mio," diss' io, "bene argomenti;

In Monarchia 14.3, Dante returns to the issue of the church's involve-

any scriptural authority to support the church's involvement in temporal

The Text of the Donation of Constantine

Dante himself implies that his knowledge of the Donation is secondhand.

Bruno Nardi claimed that Dante had no direct knowledge of Gratian's

Dante repeats this phrase on two occasions: in Monarchia (2.5.5), where

and his authority derives from the fountain of piety."98 F. E. Brightman

Dante's Use of Legal Terms

Dominium in medieval Latin as in modern English denotes absolute or

dominium to others (normally subordinates or subjects) in implied perpetu-

controlled by the church could not be alienated. However, the expecta-

benefice to the recipient.137 Patronage also involved the obligation on the

This analysis suggests that Dante's language in Monarchia 3.10.16

revocable if the vassal failed to fulfill his obligations. But a donation

Constantine, he appears to be saying that the emperor could and should

The Early Commentators

Almost all of the early commentators who discussed Inferno 19.115-17

Surviving the Long Nineteenth Century

Further discussion of the issues of the Donation of Constantine and

reformer. Giuseppe Mazzini, the best-known representative of this view,

but insisted that he was nevertheless an Italian patriot. As a result of his

In England, Edward Moore in 1899 weighed in with his essay on

The Context of Dante's Ideas: The Visual Sources

scholars or scholarly historians, we must understand that texts and images

Early Acquaintances and Textual Sources