ne of Demarcation carried farther to the
west. After a year of diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at
Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, in which Spain consented to the moving of the
line to a distance of 370 leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.[548]
It would thus on a modern map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th
meridians west of Greenwich. This amendment had important and curious
consequences. It presently gave the Brazilian coast to the Portuguese,
and thereupon played a leading part in the singular and complicated
series of events that ended in giving the name of Americus Vespucius to
that region, whence it was afterwards gradually extended to the whole
western hemisphere.[549]

[Footnote 546: The complete text of this bull, with Richard
Eden's translation, is given at the end of this work; see
below, Appendix B. The official text is in _Magnum Bullarium
Romanum_, ed. Cherubini, Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The
original document received by Ferdinand and Isabella is
preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it is
printed entire in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii.
No. 18. Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus,
_Annales ecclesiastici_, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No.
19-22; and another in Leibnitz, _Codex Diplomaticus_, tom. i.
pt. i. p. 471. It is often called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from
its opening words.

The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for
giving away kingdoms is closely connected with the fictitious
"Donation of Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome
about the middle of the eighth century. The title of the old
Latin text is _Edictum domini Constantini Imp._, apud
Pseudo-Isidorus, _Decretalia_. Constantine's transfer of the
seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended greatly
to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume
that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward,
was the expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian
emperor _meant_ to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in
the hands of the Roman see. The edict purported to be such a
donation from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I., but the extent
and character of the donation was stated with suc