epresenting them as the
quintessence of all impurity and hypocrisy. The first story in his
famous Decameron is of a scoundrel who comes to be reputed as a saint,
invoked as such and performing miracles {48} after death. The second
story is of a Jew who was converted to Christianity by the wickedness
of Rome, for he reasoned that no cult, not divinely supported, could
survive such desperate depravity as he saw there. The third tale, of
the three rings, points the moral that no one can be certain what
religion is the true one. The fourth narrative, like many others,
turns upon the sensuality of the monks. Elsewhere the author describes
the most absurd relics, and tells how a priest deceived a woman by
pretending that he was the angel Gabriel. The trend of such a work was
naturally the reverse of edifying. The irreligion is too spontaneous
to be called philosophic doubt; it is merely impiety.

[Sidenote: Valla, 1406-56]

But such a sentiment could not long remain content with scoffing. The
banner of pure rationalism, or rather of conscious classical
skepticism, was raised by a circle of enthusiasts. The most brilliant
of them, and one of the keenest critics that Europe has ever produced,
was Lorenzo Valla, a native of Naples, and for some years holder of a
benefice at Rome. Such was the trenchancy and temper of his weapons
that much of what he advanced has stood the test of time.

[Sidenote: The Donation of Constantine]

The papal claim to temporal supremacy in the Western world rested
largely on a spurious document known as the Donation of Constantine.
In this the emperor is represented as withdrawing from Rome in order to
leave it to the pope, to whom, in return for being cured of leprosy, he
gives the whole Occident. An uncritical age had received this forgery
for five or six centuries without question. Doubt had been cast on it
by Nicholas of Cusa and Reginald Peacock, but Valla demolished it. He
showed that no historian had spoken of it; that there was no time at
which it could have occurred; that it is contradicted by other
contemporary acts; that the barbarous style contains {49} expressions
of Greek, Hebrew, and German origin; that the testimony of numismatics
is against it; and that the author knew nothing of the antiquities of
Rome, into whose council he introduced satraps. Valla's work was so
thoroughly done that the document, embodied as were its conclusions in
the Canon Law, has never found a