h vagueness as
to allow a wide latitude of interpretation. Its genuineness was
repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to have
grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX.,
who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054
to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be
held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, _Annali d' Italia_,
tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal
claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later
John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose
"of all _islands_ on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness,
hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope Adrian
IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164
King Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See
Adrian IV., _Epist._ 76, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom.
clxxxviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in treating of this matter, is more an
Irishman than a papist, and derides "this nonsense of the
pope's being the head-owner of all Christian islands."
(_Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol. iv. p.
159.)--Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all
Christian kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter
(Baronius, _Annales_, tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain,
_Histoire de Gregoire VII._, Paris, 1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61),
does not seem to have appealed to the Donation. Perhaps he was
shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection afterwards
raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the
suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then
they were successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter.
(Moneta Cremonensis, _Adversus Catharos et Waldenses_, ed.
Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But Innocent IV. summarily
disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons in 1245, when
he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II. of
Portugal,--saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as
well as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors,
so that Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to
it already. The opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently
set