Roman Catholicism, wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky “has proclaimed a brand new Christ, not like the previous one, however one who has been seduced by the third temptation of the satan — the temptation of the kingdoms of the world: “All these items will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me!” That is the primary reproach made by the Orthodox to the Roman Church. I discover it completely justified, and I’d add that the Catholic false Christ is in truth Yahweh in disguise.
Not like the Patriarch of Constantinople or later that of Moscow, who solely claimed the “religious sword” (sacred authority), the medieval popes additionally claimed the “temporal sword” (secular energy). Not solely did they immediately govern one of many richest principalities in Italy, however they claimed to rule over kings and emperors (learn “The Failed Empire: the Medieval Origin of the European Disunion”).
To justify their undertaking of common monarchy, the popes employed a military of authorized students who developed a brand new canon regulation to prevail over feudal and customary regulation, whereas utilizing forgeries to make their new system look like the oldest.
Essentially the most well-known medieval forgery is the “Donation of Constantine.” It was fabricated in a papal scriptorium between 750 and 850, and later included in a group of 100 different false decrees and synodal acts identified immediately because the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. The primary function of those false decrees was to invent precedents for the train of the sovereign authority of the Bishop of Rome over the common Church, on the one hand, and over all Western secular sovereigns, on the opposite. These forgeries have been included within the twelfth century into the Decretum of Gratian which might turn into the premise of all canon regulation.
The Donation of Constantine is the centerpiece of this large enterprise of falsification of historical past. It may be thought to be the Structure that the Roman Church gave Western Europe. It in all probability had extra political affect than some other written doc in human historical past.
By this doc, Emperor Constantine the Nice, out of gratitude for having been miraculously cured of leprosy by the water of baptism, ceded “to Sylvester the common pontiff and to all his successors till on the finish of the world” all of the imperial insignia — pallium, scepter, diadem, tiara, purple cloak, scarlet tunic — that’s to say the totality of “the imperial greatness and the glory of our energy.” Constantine additionally ceded to pope Sylvester “each our [Lateran] palace and town of Rome and all of the provinces, localities and cities of Italy or the western areas.” And to go away the pope full energy over the West, Constantine determined to withdraw to Byzantium; “for, the place the supremacy of clergymen and the pinnacle of the Christian faith has been established by a heavenly ruler, it isn’t becoming that there an earthly ruler ought to have jurisdiction.” On this foundation, for half a millennium, the popes would declare to have obtained full imperial authority and the proper to bestow this authority on the person of their selection, or to withdraw it from him if he falls wanting their expectation. By advantage of this precept Gregory VII compelled the Germanic Emperor Henry IV to humble himself earlier than him and acknowledge his suzerainty at Canossa in January 1077.
Having obtained from Constantine full temporal energy over your entire West, the popes would additionally attempt to remodel all kingdoms into papal fiefs, and their kings into vassals. In 1059 Pope Nicholas II gave southern Italy and Sicily (if he may conquer it) to the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard, on the situation that he pays homage to him. A couple of years later, Alexander II gave England to William of Normandy beneath the identical situation. Then Adrian IV (1154-1159) gave Eire as a “hereditary possession” to the King of England Henry II, as a result of “all of the islands are speculated to belong to the Roman Church beneath historical regulation, in accordance with the donation of Constantine, who richly endowed them.” Slowly however absolutely, from one coup d’état to the following, due to its magic weapon of excommunication, the pope grew to become probably the most highly effective overlord of Europe, receiving allegiance and tribute from numerous kings. All that on the premise of the authority conferred to him by the false Donation of Constantine.
The forger of the Donation of Constantine was not content material with asserting that the pope holds temporal supremacy over your entire West. He additionally gave him religious supremacy over your entire world, that means, virtually, over all of Japanese Christianity. Constantine the Nice is made to decree that the Bishop of Rome “shall govern the 4 patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople, in addition to all of the Church buildings of God all through your entire world. And the pontiff who will now preside over the future of probably the most holy Roman Church would be the highest, the pinnacle of all clergymen in the entire world, and all issues can be regulated in accordance with his selections.” The Donation, after all, led to what we within the West name the Japanese Schism, however the Orthodox name the Western Schism. The pope’s declare for supremacy over different patriarchs was a betrayal of the unique conciliar structure of the Church, an tried coup in opposition to the precept of brotherly entente that was the situation for the Holy Spirit to information the common Church.
Whereas the Donation was used as a authorized doc by the papacy from the eleventh century, its authenticity or its validity have been sometimes challenged. Within the 12 months 1001, in response to a request from Pope Sylvester II to “restore” to the Holy See eight counties of Italy, Emperor Otto III denounced the “negligence and incompetence” of the pontiffs, in addition to “the lies solid by themselves” written “in letters of gold” and positioned “beneath the title of the good Constantine”. At the start of the thirteenth century, Walther von der Vogelweide, a poet near Frederick II, didn’t dispute the origin of the Donation however noticed it as an amazing misfortune, which reversed the pure order of the world and induced infinite struggling to the Europe. Frederick II had his legal professionals declare it illegal: Constantine merely had no proper to make it. Harmless IV responded that, all issues belonging to Christ, whom the Pope represented on earth, the Donation was solely a “restitution”.
It was not till the fifteenth century that the fraudulent origin of the Donation started to be widely known, by a reasonably easy vital evaluation (for instance, how may Constantine evoke the Patriarchate of Constantinople which didn’t but exist?). And but, no official apology was ever introduced by the Vatican for this diabolical hoax. The truth is, nothing modified basically within the discourse and perspective of the papacy. Though unmasked because the second biggest liar on earth (the self-proclaimed “chosen folks” come first), the Church later resorted to probably the most ridiculous declare of “papal infallibility” (1870).
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The popes used Constantine’s solid signature as the premise for his or her theocratic undertaking. What else did they make up beneath Constantine’s title? To what extent did they create the Constantine that they wanted? How a lot credit score deserves Constantine’s biography written by the clerical historian Eusebius of Caesarea? This biography is introduced by its writer to have been written primarily based on direct dialog with Constantine. Current tutorial editors of this Vita Constantini admit that “it has proved extraordinarily controversial,” with some students being “extremely skeptical.”
Certainly, the integrity of Eusebius as a author has typically been attacked and his authorship of the VC [Vita Constantini] denied by students desperate to discredit the worth of the proof it gives, with dialogue focusing notably on the quite a few imperial paperwork that are cited verbatim within the work.
The Vita Constantini is believed to have been written in Greek, however it was solely identified till the thirteenth century within the Latin translation attributed to the legendary Saint Jerome, as was the identical writer’s Church Historical past (the autobiography of the Church, so to talk). There isn’t any assure that it was written within the East, or earlier than the eighth century. It could be as pretend because the Donation of Constantine.
Exterior Eusebius’s prose, there’s not a single piece of proof that Constantine was a Christian, and even favorable to Christianity. Two panegyrics (public speeches of reward) of Constantine have been preserved they usually make no point out of Christianity. As a substitute, one accommodates the account of a imaginative and prescient obtained by Constantine from the solar god Apollo, “with the signal of victory”, after which Constantine positioned himself beneath the safety of Sol Invictus.
What “Eusebius” writes — and allegedly heard from Constantine’s mouth — concerning the battle of the Milvian Bridge is clearly a rewriting of that motif drawn from the imperial faith. When marching on Rome to overthrow Maxentius, Eusebius tells us, Constantine “noticed together with his personal eyes, up within the sky and resting over the solar, a cross-shaped trophy shaped from gentle, and a textual content hooked up to it which mentioned, ‘By this conquer’” (I,28). The next night time, Christ appeared to him in a dream to substantiate the imaginative and prescient. Constantine instantly had his troops paint the signal on their shields — turning Christ into highly effective a army god — and received the battle. Our writer needs us to imagine he bought this story from Constantine himself:
If another person had reported it, it could maybe not be simple to just accept; however for the reason that victorious Emperor himself advised the story to the current author a protracted whereas after, after I was privileged together with his acquaintance and firm, and confirmed it with oaths, who may hesitate to imagine the account, particularly when the time which adopted offered proof for the reality of what he mentioned? (I,28)
I don’t learn about you, however my feeling is {that a} good biographer wouldn’t write like that. Solely a devoted liar would. The lie is definitely confirmed by the truth that the arch constructed by Constantine to commemorate his victory over Maxentius in Rome accommodates quite a few representations of pagan deities, and particularly of the solar god Apollo, however not the slightest reference to Christ. Can there be a stronger proof that “Eusebius” invented Constantine’s encounter with Christ?
The identical writer has this to say concerning the signal adopted by Constantine as a army commonplace (now referred to as the labarum):
This was one thing which the Emperor himself as soon as noticed match to let me additionally set eyes on, God vouchsafing even this. It was constructed to the next design. A tall pole plated with gold had a transverse bar forming the form of a cross. Up on the excessive high a wreath woven of treasured stones and gold had been mounted. On it two letters, intimating by its first characters the title ‘Christ’, shaped the monogram of the Saviour’s title, rho being intersected within the center by chi. These letters the Emperor additionally used to put on upon his helmet in later occasions. (I,31)
This Chi-Rho signal is immediately the coat of arms of the papacy. However archeology and numismatics have confirmed that it predates Christianity. It’s discovered, for instance, on a drachma of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-222 BC) — between the eagle’ legs.
The Chi-Rho even seems on a coin minted by Maxentius, whom Constantine is claimed to have defeated exactly by this signal. It’s clear that the Chi-Rho — or chrismon or christogram — was a pre-Christian imperial image stolen by the Church. It’s unclear, nonetheless, what it stood for earlier than Christianity. As it’s typically discovered inside by a vegetal wreath, it could have referred to a cosmic precept related to the resurrection of Nature at Easter time, a logo of Anastasis. And for the reason that Chi-Rho seems behind the pinnacle of Constantine in a mosaic in Hinton St Mary, Dorset, England (lead image), and since Constantine favored to be portrayed with a photo voltaic or radiant crown, it’s seemingly that Chi-Rho has a photo voltaic significance.
Some see it as a logo borrowed from the cult of Mithras, carefully linked to Sol Invictus. The analogies between Mithras and Jesus are so quite a few that Justin and Tertullian accused Mithras of imitatio diabolica (watch this ten-minute video or this longer scholarly presentation). We additionally know that a number of Italian church buildings, together with Saint Peter’s Basilica, have been constructed on Mithraic crypts. Word on the frontispiece of Saint Peter’s that the P comes earlier than the X, suggesting an acronym starting with P. Might or not it’s that the signal was initially a Latin brief for PAX? I discover it unlikely, due to its frequent affiliation with the Greek letters α and ω.
The primary level is that this: we should not have a single archaeological clue that Constantine claimed and even promoted the Christian religion. And we’ve critical causes to imagine that Eusebius lied. We do know, nonetheless, that he had himself represented because the solar god Apollo in Rome in addition to in Constantinople, the place there stood a 100-feet-high column topped with a statue of himself with a radiating crown. Sol Invictus was publicly celebrated on December 25, but in addition each Sunday (day of the solar), by a regulation enacted in March 321. For the reason that earliest reference to December 25 because the date of Christ’s start doesn’t come earlier than 354 (within the Depositio Martyrum), seventeen years after Constantine’s loss of life, and because it was Emperor Theodosius I who in 380 banned the cult of Sol Invictus to make December 25 a Christian vacation, we’ve proof that Christianity usurped components of the cult of Sol Invictus. The evergreen wreath of Christmas is a legacy from pre-Christian occasions.
By the way in which, Theodosius was of Phoenician origin, and Phoenicians have been indistinguishable from Jews (many, if not most, grew to become Jews after the autumn of Carthage). Does that time to a vengeful Phoenician-Jewish conspiracy to beat Rome from inside by Christianity, as Flavio Barbiero speculated (learn “How Yahweh Conquered God”)? That could be for an additional article. However keep in mind that saint Augustine was additionally, most likely, a Phoenician (he lived in Carthage and claimed to talk Punic), and that he wrote a eulogy of Theodosius (Metropolis of God V,26).
We all know that there was a shift in spiritual coverage after Constantine’s dynasty, when Theodosius conquered Rome. However the shift might have been far more radical than generally assumed. The cult of Sol Invictus, which Constantine had meant to make the unifying faith of the Empire, was changed by the cult of the Jewish Messiah Jesus and his jealous, theoclastic god. The shift might have concerned a whole rewriting of latest historical past; Theodosius wanted to assert continuity with Constantine, so he commissioned pseudo-Eusebius (who can be pseudo-Jerome) to jot down the official “Church Historical past.”
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The issues with Constantine’s Christian religion are quite a few. Right here is one other clue that it’s masking up one thing. We’re advised that Constantine convened and presided over the primary Council of Nicaea in 325, and compelled all of the bishops current to signal the occupation of religion drawn up on the event in opposition to the doctrine of Arius. However Eusebius himself additionally tells us that Constantine later favored Arianism and was baptized into this “heresy” by his relative Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arianist that he had made patriarch of Constantinople. His son Constantius II adopted the identical creed. Is it credible {that a} Roman emperor of sane thoughts would thus revert his personal coverage, and destroy the unity of Church that he had simply enforced? We’re led to suspect that the Council of Nicaea, of which no hint survives exterior Eusebius, is a fiction fabricated lengthy after the loss of life of Constantine. Arianism itself is an enormous thriller, by the way in which: it has left just about no identified materials hint, even in Spain the place it’s speculated to have been the faith of the ruling Visigoths for 3 centuries. It is a nice puzzlement for archeologists like Ralf Bockmann (“The Non-Archaeology of Arianism,” 2014), or Alexandra Chavarria Arnau (“Discovering invisible Arians,” 2017), suggesting that what’s introduced immediately as a Christian heresy may need been one thing completely completely different. What precisely? It’s unimaginable to say, aside from the truth that it resisted the declare {that a} man might be God.
There are such a lot of inconsistencies within the historical past of Christianity as much as the early sixth century, which you’ll be able to learn in my ebook Anno Domini. Some are literally hinted in informal mentions by unsuspecting students. Right here is, for instance, a comment from the editor of Boethius’s Comfort of Philosophy (524):
What we discover in Boethius’s works — at the least in these which can be genuine — is the absence of any trace, irrespective of how distant, of the Christian faith. Judging by his written phrases alone, we might be led to imagine that this faith had appeared on earth the day past, and that its ethical educating and dogmas have been nonetheless confined to the catacombs.
Boethius wrote the Comfort whereas awaiting loss of life and is taken into account a Christian martyr. Does that sound believable?
The Vita Constantini was in all probability written centuries after the Church Historical past ascribed to the identical writer. It’s totally in line with the Donation of Constantine and will belong to the identical interval, and be simply as fraudulent. It places particular emphasis on Constantine’s translatio of the capital of the Roman Empire from Italy to the Bosphorus, in order to go away the pope full dominion over your entire West.
That notion of translatio imperii is saturated with contradictions, as I’ve identified earlier than. First, Constantine didn’t transfer his capital to the East, since he himself was from Moesia, within the Balkans. Educational historiography acknowledges that Constantine had by no means set foot in Rome earlier than conquering it from Maxentius. Constantine’s father Constantius was additionally from Moesia, as was his colleague and rival Licinius. So was his predecessor Diocletian, who lived primarily additional east in Nicomedia, on the jap financial institution of the Bosphorus.
Secondly, Constantine can’t have moved the imperial capital from Rome to Byzantium, as a result of Rome had already ceased to be the imperial capital earlier than Constantine was born, being changed by Milan in 286. By the point of Diocletian and Constantine, all of Italy had fallen into anarchy in the course of the “Disaster of the Third Century” (235-284). Underneath Diocletian, Rome was already “a lifeless metropolis.”
Moreover, can we actually imagine within the switch of an imperial capital a thousand miles away, with its excessive administration and senatorial the Aristocracy, resulting in the metamorphosis of a Roman empire into one other Roman empire with utterly completely different language, tradition, faith and political construction (learn “Byzantine Revisionism Unlocks World Historical past”)? And for what function? For Ferdinand Lot, a specialist of Late Antiquity who has thought lengthy and onerous about this query, “the founding of Constantinople is a political enigma”. In a determined effort to make sense of it, he concludes that “Constantinople was born from the caprice of a despot prey to intense spiritual exaltation,” and that, by this “political insanity,” “Constantine believed he was regenerating the Roman Empire,” however that, “unwittingly, he based the Empire so rightly referred to as ‘Byzantine’.”
Such unreasonable hypothesis solely proves the failure of educational historiography to provide credibility to a narrative that needs to be analyzed, not as critical historical past, however as a component of propaganda produced by the identical brains because the Donation of Constantine. This paradigm of translatio imperii might be a legend invented to masks the alternative and really actual motion of translatio studii, the switch to the West of the Greek tradition preserved by Byzantium, a switch that started earlier than the crusades and culminated within the plunder of 1204.
When one begins questioning about Constantine and the connection between the 2 Roman empires, chronological oddities seem, rapidly reaching a vital mass that makes the usual narrative about historical Rome collapse beneath your toes.
That narrative is predicated on sources which can be unimaginable to hint earlier than the eleventh century, a few of them popping up a lot later. It has been argued, for instance, that the works of Tacitus, found within the fifteenth century by Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), “betray the pen of a fifteenth century humanist” (Polydor Hochart).
The structure of Rome is itself inconsistent with the narrative. “The place is the Rome of the Center Ages,” requested British historian James Bryce, “the Rome of Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence got here the instructions at which kings bowed? … To this query there is no such thing as a reply. Rome, the mom of the humanities, has scarcely a constructing to commemorate these occasions.” There could also be a solution: this darkish gap of the Center Ages is an phantasm. What we regard as constructions of Roman Antiquity are actually from the Center Ages, and generally even from the late Center Ages.
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Now we have at all times identified that Roman Antiquity is, to some extent, a ghost conjured up by those that claimed to supply its “Renaissance”. However to what extent precisely? Take into account that in 1144 the Commune of Rome was based as a Republic, after Pise in 1085, Milano in 1097, Gene in 1099, Florence in 1100. Rome used the acronym SPQR on its buildings and cash, whereas across the similar time forty-two different medieval Italian cities used the acronym SPQ adopted by the preliminary of town’s title: SPQP for Pisa, SPQT for Tusculum, SPQL for Lucera, and so forth. In 1362, the Roman poet Antonio Pucci pointed that SPQR stood for the Italian phrases Sanato Popolo Qumune Romano (“The Senate and Individuals of the Commune of Rome”). These information are usually not appropriate with the idea that SPQR was coined in 509 BC and means Senatus Populusque Romanus. Most definitely, SPQR was by no means used earlier than the founding of the Commune of Rome within the twelfth century. Now what unsuspecting French scholar Robert Folz writes brings to thoughts an alternate interpretation:
In 1143, the Capitol grew to become the residence of the Council of the Commune of Rome. … In an setting the place the previous was the article of such a ardour as in Rome, any try at new creation needed to take the facet of a restoration of the previous: the Council of the Commune was referred to as Senate, the senatorial period was used within the relationship of acts, whereas the signal SPQR additionally reappeared. All of it occurred as in the event that they have been returning to the custom of republican Rome.
One other manner to have a look at it’s: All of it occurred as in the event that they have been inventing the custom of republican Rome whereas claiming to revive it. This was frequent observe, in a world the place antiquity meant status and status meant energy. When the cities of Reims and Trier have been competing for the distinction of crowning emperor Otto the Nice, Reims got here up with the declare of getting been based by Remus, and Trier responded by claiming to have been based by Trebeta, a recent of Abraham. Each produced texts to again their declare. Some medieval Roman patriots had the motive, means and alternative to manufacture their metropolis’s antiquity. Petrarch (1304-1374), who “found” Cicero and concurrently grew to become a Ciceronian, was a part of a circle of Italian propagandists who celebrated Rome’s previous glory. “His intentions,” writes French medievalist Jacques Heers, “have been intentionally political.” He was “probably the most virulent writers of his time, concerned in an amazing quarrel in opposition to the papacy of Avignon,” doing his utmost to carry it again to Rome.”
These are daring hypotheses. But when we’ve discovered one factor over the past 20 years, it’s that historical past is usually a lie, generally a really large lie. The historical past of Rome was written within the context of its competitors with Constantinople: it’s akin to Jacob’s lie as a way to get his father’s blessing a cheat Esau of his birthright. The query I’ve raised listed here are reputable. Those that have an interest would possibly take pleasure in my ebook Anno Domini. It raises extra questions than it offers solutions.
However one factor appears fairly positive: the Empire of Lies has a protracted, very lengthy historical past of lies behind it. The false Donation of Constantine and the false biography of Constantine are its authentic sin.
Notes
Feodor Dostoievsky, The Diary of a Author, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919, “March 1876”, p. 255.
Within the phrases of chronicler John of Salisbury, quoted in I. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073-1198, Cambridge UP, 1993, p. 310-311.
Diploma n° 389 within the Monumenta Germaniae, Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae, II, p. 819, quoted by Robert Folz, L’idée d’empire en Occident du Ve au XIVe siècle, Aubier, 1953, p. 202 ; Robert Folz, Le Memento et la légende de Charlemagne dans l’Empire germanique médiéval, Les Belles Lettres, 1950, p. 85.
Johannes Fried, “Donation of Constantine” and “Constitutum Constantini”, De Gruyter, 2007, p. 7.
Domenico Maffei, “The cast donation of Constantine in medieval and early fashionable authorized thought,” Fundamina (a Journal of Authorized Historical past), quantity 3, 1997, pp. 1-23, on https://archive.org/particulars/the-forged-donation-of-constantine.
Eusebius’s Lifetime of Constantine, translated with introduction and commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Corridor, Clarendon, 1999, on p. 1.
Eusebius, Lifetime of Constantine, translated with introduction and commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Corridor, Clarendon Press, 1999, p. 81.
Eusebius, Lifetime of Constantine, translated with introduction and commentary by Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Corridor, Clarendon Press, 1999, p. 81.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientCoins/feedback/17evfa0/%C3percentA6_triobol_of_ptolemy_iii_euergetes_246222_bc/ and https://www.cointalk.com/threads/the-chi-rho-monogram-challenge.350188/
Whether or not this mosaic portrays Christ or Constantine is debated. If it portrayed Christ, it could be the earliest illustration of Christ identified, and it could be utterly not like some other.
Flavio Barbiero, The Secret Society of Moses: The Mosaic Bloodline and a Conspiracy Spanning Three Millennia, Inside Traditions, 2010, pp. 156-165.
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk4EL_oaB-E
On the theoclastic nature of the Hebrew god, learn Jan Assmann, The Worth of Monotheism, Stanford College Press, 2009.
Ralf Bockmann, “The Non-Archaeology of Arianism – What Evaluating Circumstances in Carthage, Haidra and Ravenna can inform us about ‘Arian’ Church buildings” in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, ed. Gudo M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher, Ashgate, 2014; Alexandra Chavarria Arnau, “Discovering invisible Arians: An archaeological perspective on church buildings, baptism and non secular competitors in sixth century Spain”, 2017, additionally out there on the Web.
Foreword to Louis Judicis de Mirandol’s version, Boèce, La comfort philosophique (1861), p. xxvi.
Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde vintage (1927), Albin Michel, 1989, p. 29.
Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde vintage, op. cit., p. 33.
Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde vintage, op. cit., pp. 47-52.
Polydor Hochart, De l’authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1890, on archive.org, pp. viii-ix.
Viscount James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (1864), on www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44101
Antonio Pucci [1362], Libro di varie storie (a cura di Alberto Varvaro, AAPalermo, s. IV, vol. XVI, parte II, fasc. II, 1957) [anno accademico 1955-56], pp. 136-137, talked about in it.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPQR
Robert Folz, L’Idée d’Empire en Occident du Ve au XIVe siècle, Aubier, 1953, p. 107.
Heinrich Fichtenau, Dwelling within the Tenth Century: Mentalities and Social Orders (German version 1984), trans. Patrick Geary, College of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 9.
Jacques Heers, Le Moyen Âge, une imposture, Perrin, 1992, pp. 55-58.
