forth by Dante, in his treatise _De Monarchia_; he held
that inasmuch as the Empire existed before the Church, it could
not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere expressed his
abhorrence of the Donation:--

Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
_Inferno_, xix. 115.

Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular
poets from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von
der Vogelweide was sure that if the first Christian emperor
could have foreseen the evils destined to flow from his
Donation, he would have withheld it:--

Solte ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min,
So spraeche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din,
Ir zunge suenge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin,
Gedaehten daz ouch si dur Got waeren almuosenaere.
Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin,
Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik waere,
So het er wol underkomen des riches swaere,
Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete laere.
Hagen, _Minnesinger-Sammlung_, Leipsic, 1838,
bd. i. p. 270.

Ariosto, in a passage rollicking with satire, makes his
itinerant paladin find the "stinking" Donation in the course of
his journey upon the moon:--

Di varii fiori ad un gran monte passa,
Ch' ebber gia buono odore, or puzzan forte,
Questo era il dono, se pero dir lece,
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.
_Orlando Furioso_, xxxiv. 80.

The Donation was finally proved to be a forgery by Laurentius
Valla in 1440, in his _De falso credita et ementita Constantini
donatione declamatio_ (afterward spread far and wide by Ulrich
von Hutten), and independently by the noble Reginald Pecock,
bishop of Chichester, in his _Repressor_, written about
1447.--During the preceding century the theory of Gregory VII.
and Innocent IV. had been carried to its uttermost extreme by
the Franciscan monk Alvaro Pelayo, in his _De Planctu
Ecclesiae_, written at Avignon during the "Babylonish
Captivity," about 1