How did the Popes in the Middle Ages attempt to establish their claims?
Popes in the Middle Ages frequently attempted to establish their claims by the use of certain decretals. These have since been proved to be forgeries. There comes to light among the Isidorian Decretals, sometime between 829 and 845, the definite statement of an edict representing the Emperor as conferring on the Pope the administration of ‘our palace, the city of Rome, and the provinces of all Italy’. The Bishop of Paris (858-870) states that the Emperor Constantine after his baptism relinquished Rome to the Apostolic See. The Donation and the Document supporting it remained undisputed down to the middle of the 15th Century and was the grand basis of the Pope’s temporal power. It was exposed by numerous writers for the colossal fraud that it was and the ruinous usurpation it imposed. It is now admitted by Rome to be a fraud.
