Donation of Pepin

Donation of Pepin

The situation up to the Franco Pepin vision of the - for the time being - Western World was in fact a world divided into four regions of which the main region was Byzantium. It is hence obvious that there were four patriachs of the Imperial Church and that did not include Rome. Hence there was no such thing as Roman Catholicism before Charlemagne and even then the use of the term catholic was a fiction not a fact since the Carolingian Church was not universal even at a glance. Of course Roman history found an easy solution to that problem: The whole world besides the Roman western world was this large unknown entity still to be discovered after the Renaissance.

Not by any chance was this the case. The early Chinese imperial state of affairs were too similar to those in Byzantium to not have any connections. Not by accident were all the families involved in the 'discoveries' of the world after the Renaissance had been established refugees or newcomers from.... the Byzantine Empire. 

These four regions of the world then were the Western World with a Patriarch in Ravenna, the Byzantine empire with a Patriarch in Constantinople, the Southern Mediterranean (African) region with a Patriarch in Alexandria, who was in fact Pope and the Asian region with a Patriarch in Antiochia. The Rome in Italy had been abandoned after the project of a unified global empire had failed. It may very well have been the true Babylon, namely the city of the Pepins, Bobone Orsini Babi-on.


The donation of Pepin to the old discarded city of Rome was a first attempt to restore these state of affairs. But it did not last very long for several reasons. There still were those four Imperial regions and its unifying emperor in Byzantium. 

You can't deny that the Pepins were bold and had vision. But since the Donation of Pepin - later renamed donation of Constantin - was by and large a fraud, it only follows that all the privileges claimed through the Donation were a fraud too. Well, a fraud as far as Constantin was concerned, not a fraud as far as the Pepin-Orisinis were concerned, because it was a blueprint of their vision. But non of the privileges claimed did actually exist before then.

1. Constantin desires to promote the Chair of Peter over the Empire and in its seat on earth by bestowing on it imperial power and honor.
2. The chair of Peter shall have supreme authority over all the churches in the world
3. It shall be judge in all the concerns the service of God and the Christian faith
4. Constantin had given him and his successors the phrygium - the tiara - and the lorum which adorned the Emperors neck.
5. the Roman clergy shall enjoy the high privileges of the Imperial Senate being eligible for the dignity of Patrician.
6. The Roman clergy shall ride on horses decked with white coverlets.
7. This document was presented to Charlemagne by Adrian I in 774 claiming its authenticity

Of course non of it was authentic. And the outrage at the time by Byzantium (and many nobles in the West) says enough.