Source: Orthodox History
November 17, 2025
In 1054, Pope Leo IX of Rome wrote a letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Michael Cerularius, defending his claims to supremacy by citing a document known as the “Donation of Constantine.” This document purported to be a decree of St Constantine the Great, endowing the Pope of Rome with temporal imperial powers over the western part of the Roman Empire. The decree presents the evocative image of the Roman Emperor serving the Pope: “holding the bridle of his horse, out of reverence for St. Peter, we performed for him the duty of groom.” Most critically, the Donation grants to the Papacy “supremacy as well over the four principal sees: Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God over the whole earth. And he who for the time being shall be pontiff of that holy Roman Church shall be more exalted than, and chief over, all the priests of the whole world and, according to his judgment, everything which is to be provided for the service of God or the stability of the faith of the Christians is to be administered.”
If you know a little bit about church history, you can probably spot some immediate problems with this text. It assumes the existence of the “Pentarchy” of chief sees (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem), but this wasn’t yet fully formed in St Constantine’s day. It wasn’t until the Second Ecumenical Council, decades after Constantine’s death, that Constantinople was raised to a preeminent position, and Jerusalem’s elevation came even later.
The reason is simple: the “Donation of Constantine” was a fake. It’s been dated by scholars to the late first millennium — created, possibly, as part of the jockeying for power between the papacy and the Frankish rulers in the mid-eighth century. Later, in the eleventh century, the Papacy tried to use the Donation as part of its push for supremacy over the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
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