the decrees of the canon law. [70] The emperors, and the
Romans, were incapable of discerning a forgery, that subverted their
rights and freedom; and the only opposition proceeded from a Sabine
monastery, which, in the beginning of the twelfth century, disputed the
truth and validity of the donation of Constantine. [71] In the revival
of letters and liberty, this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen
of Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot.
[72] His contemporaries of the fifteenth century were astonished at his
sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and irresistible progress
of reason, that, before the end of the next age, the fable was rejected
by the contempt of historians [73] and poets, [74] and the tacit or
modest censure of the advocates of the Roman church. [75] The popes
themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; [76]
but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the
same fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles,
the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.

[Footnote 68: Piissimo Constantino magno, per ejus largitatem S.
R. Ecclesia elevata et exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiae
partibus largiri olignatus est.... Quia ecce novus Constantinus his
temporibus, &c., (Codex Carolin. epist. 49, in tom. iii. part ii. p.
195.) Pagi (Critica, A.D. 324, No. 16) ascribes them to an impostor of
the viiith century, who borrowed the name of St. Isidore: his humble
title of Peccator was ignorantly, but aptly, turned into Mercator: his
merchandise was indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold
for much wealth and power.]

[Footnote 69: Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 4-7) has enumerated
the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin. The copy which
Laurentius Valla recites and refutes, appears to be taken either from
the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from Gratian's Decree, to which,
according to him and others, it has been surreptitiously tacked.]

[Footnote 70: In the year 1059, it was believed (was it believed?)
by Pope Leo IX. Cardinal Peter Damianus, &c. Muratori places (Annali
d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 23, 24) the fictitious donations of Lewis the
Pious, the Othos, &c., de Donatione Constantini. See a Dissertation of
Natalis Alexander, seculum iv. diss. 25, p. 335-350.]

[Footnote 71: See a large account of the controversy (A.D. 1105) which
arose