As we continue to look at Belloc's The Catholic Church and History and its influence on Sigrid Undset in our Son Rise Morning Show series on Monday, October 26, I wanted to highlight some evidence of how important this book was to Undset. I received this information from Jan Frederik Solem on Facebook: "Sigrid Undset had "The Catholic Church and History" by Hilaire Belloc translated ("authorised translation") into Norwegian ("Den katolske kirke og historien") by a fellow Dominican tertiary (Ellen Faaberg) and published at her own expense in 1929." Thus she thought it was important to Norwegians to have access to Belloc's defenses of the Catholic Church.
I've selected one of the defenses Belloc offers against a charge that the Catholic Church "has actually relied on falsehood when she knew it to be falsehood and particularly in the case of errors originally committed in good faith, but continued with the deliberate intention to deceive.": the Donation of Constantine. As Belloc states the case against the Church:
The accusation in connection with the Donation of Constantine exemplifies the supposed deliberate use of forgery by the Church: the Galileo case exemplifies her supposed tenacity in demonstrated error—an authority claiming infallibility and reluctant to admit that it has been clearly proved fallible. . . .
It is asserted in the case of the Donation of Constantine that this document was a forgery: that on that forgery was based a particular docrine, to wit, the supremacy of the see of Peter: that when it was proved a falsehood the Church continued to defend it, and that, since her spokesmen were compelled at last to abandon it, with it there fell the necessary prop of the Papal contention.
The Donation of Constantine is a document purporting to be a grant by the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, his contemporary, of civil jurisdiction over the town of Rome; of temporal sovereignty over certain adjacent districts in Central Italy; of sundry ritual dignities in dress and public office; of the Lateran Palace for a residence in perpetuity; and with all this the recognition of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over the universal Church.
Belloc concedes that eventually the Donation of Constantine was acknowledged to be a forgery, or at least could not proven to exist according to rigorous archival standards. It was:
a conglomeration of legend, arisen for the most part in Syria, the growth of which can be traced through the centuries. The weight of evidence would show that it was accepted as true, not first in Rome, but in Northern France—the policy of whose monarch it exactly suited. It was first quoted, not in Rome, but in Rheims. It was not brought in to support the Papal claims even in temporal sovereignty, let alone in spiritual jurisdiction, till long after even the temporal claims had been universally admitted throughout the West, and the spiritual jurisdiction, of course, for centuries.
And that's where Belloc makes his strongest statement against the idea that the Donation of Constantine was the basis of Catholic Church teaching about the primacy and jurisdiction of the Pope "over the universal Church" because "no doctrine was based on it." Those are Belloc's italics. He asserts:
Catholic doctrine in the matter may be very simply stated. You will find it expressed everywhere by all competent authorities over a prodigious lapse of time in words almost identical; for it is as clear as it is brief. That doctrine is as follows:
Our Lord constituted the Apostolic College. Of that College he gave Peter the Primacy. This Primacy by divine constitution successively attached to the sees which Peter founded, first at Jerusalem, then at Antioch, finally at Rome. Its power lies not in the fact that Rome was the capital of the ancient world, but in the fact that St. Peter chose it for his final see. This Primacy of the see of Rome is superior to, and more universal than, its patriarchate of the West.
Belloc asserts that this was the understanding in the Catholic Church long before the document was referenced by Pepin the Short in Rheims (not the mythical son of Charlemagne, Pippin).
That's just an example of Belloc's method: he grants all the facts against the Church about this purported document and demonstrates it was without any influence on Church teaching in matters of the organization of the Church. It's not the source of the authority of the Successor of Peter: it has no effect on foundation of the Church (Matthew 16:16-19 and 28:16-20).
He follows the same process with the Galileo controversy, noting the restrictions on Galileo were not from the Pope or a Council but "from a particular disciplinary organ of the Catholic Church, with no authority whatsoever for finally establishing a point in doctrine" and they were "disciplinary action[s] against a man who had done everything he could to provoke the constituted authorities of religion by querulous and bitter insult . . . "There was no definition binding upon Christians . . ."
Next week: Some examples of how Belloc countered the more important--in his view--attack on the reality of the Catholic Church:
The Sceptical appeal to History—much the most formidable to-day, and always intellectually the most respectable—speaks in much bolder tones, thus: “The whole of the Catholic Faith from beginning to end is man-made. It is a mass of illusions: of projections of the human mind thrown by the human imagination upon the void; of deceptions, some of them conscious in some degree, many more but half-conscious; by far the most unconscious, implanted in the mind by early training." . . .
Image Source (Public Domain): Pope Sylvester I and Constantine in San Silvestro Chapel at Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome.
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