Note 120 — Front matter (continued 2)

Ep., lx. Some writers hold that this is merely an allusion to the Acta S. Silvestri, another forgery of the time, but the words which I have italicized point more clearly to the "Donation of Constantine." For the literature of the controversy see Dr. A. Solmi's Stato e Chiesa (1901), pp. 12-13. It is now the general belief that the "Donation" was fabricated at Rome, and probably in the Lateran, between 750 and 781. Dr. Hodgkin (Italy and her Invaders, vi.) has charitably suggested that perhaps the document was playfully composed by some Papal clerk in his leisure hours and taken seriously by a later generation, but apologists do not seem to grasp at this straw.