How Fake Is Church History?

罗马教会的历史有多假？


The Gregorian Coup and the Birthright Theft

格里高利的政变和欺世盗名

This is the second of three articles drawing attention to major structural problems in our history of Europe in the first millennium AD. In the first article (“How fake is Roman Antiquity?”), we have argued that the forgery of ancient books during the Renaissance was more widespread than usually acknowledged, so that what we think we know about the Roman Empire — including events and individuals of central importance — rests on questionable sources. (We have not claimed that all written sources on the Roman Empire are fake.)

这是这个系列的三篇文章中的第二篇，这三篇文章关注的都是公元后的首个千年中我们欧洲历史中的主要结构性问题。在第一篇文章（古罗马的历史有多假)中,我们指出，在文艺复兴时期，古书的伪造比通常所认为的更为普遍，因此我们可以这样理解罗马帝国--其核心的事件和个人--都是基于可疑的来源。(当然我们并没有声称所有关于罗马帝国的文字资料都是假的)
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


We have also argued that the traditional perspective of the first millennium is distorted by a strong bias in favor of Rome, at the expense of Constantinople. The common representation of the Byzantine Empire as the final phase of the Roman Empire, whose capital had been transferred from the Latium to the Bosphorus, is today recognized as a falsification. Politically, culturally, linguistically, and religiously, Byzantium owes nothing to Rome. “Believing that their own culture was vastly superior to Rome’s, the Greeks were hardly receptive to the influence of Roman civilization,” states a recent Atlas de l’Empire Romain, mentioning only gladiator combats as a possible, yet marginal, debt.[1]

我们也认为，对第一个千年的传统认知被对罗马的强烈偏爱所扭曲，而这是以君士坦丁堡为代价的。有一个通常的看法，拜占庭帝国是都城从意大利转移到博斯普鲁斯的罗马帝国的最后阶段，这在今天被认为是对事实的歪曲，在政治上，文化上，语言上，以及在宗教上，拜占庭不欠罗马什么，“希腊人相信他们自己的文化比罗马的优越得多，很难接受罗马文明的影响。”最近的一部罗马帝国地图集中如此写道，其中提到角斗士竞技仅是一种可能因债务而存在的影响很小的活动。

The assumption that Western civilization originated in Rome, Italy relies partly on a misunderstanding of the word “Roman”. What we now call “the Byzantine Empire” (a term that only became customary in the sixteenth century) was then called Basileía t?n Rh?maí?n (the kingdom of the Romans), and for most of the first millennium, “Roman” simply meant what we understand today as “Byzantine”.

认为西方文明起源于意大利罗马(Rome)的假设，部分是基于对“罗马人（Roman)”一词的误解。我们现在所称的“拜占庭帝国”(这个术语在16世纪才成为习惯用语)当时被称为“罗马人王国”，在第一个千年的大部分时间里，“罗马人”只是指我们今天所理解的“拜占庭人”。

Our perception of Rome as the origin and center of Western civilization is also lixed to our assurance that Latin is the mother of all Romance languages. But that filiation, which became a dogma in the mid-nineteenth century,[2] is under severe attack (we thank the commenters who directed us to this documentary and that one, to Yves Cortez’s book Le Fran?ais ne vient pas du latin, and to Mario Alinei’s work). It seems that Dante was correct when he assumed in De vulgari eloquentia (c. 1303), the first treatise on the subject, that Latin was an artificial, synthetic language created “by the common consent of many peoples” for written purposes.[3]

我们认为罗马是西方文明的起源和中心，这也与我们确信拉丁语是所有罗曼语之母有关， 但是，这种在19世纪中期成为了一种教条的语言谱系，受到了严重质疑，似乎但丁在"俗语论"（公元1303）中的假设是正确的，他关于这个问题的第一篇论文认为，拉丁语是一种人造的语言，是“在许多人的共同意志下”为书写目的而创造的人工合成语言。

The distortions that produced our textbook history of the first millennium have both a geographical and a chronological dimension. The geographical distortion is part of that Eurocentrism that is now being challenged by scholars like James Morris Blaut (The Colonizer’s Model of the World, Guilford Press, 1993), John M. Hobson (The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, Cambridge UP, 2004), or Jack Goody (The Theft of History, Cambridge UP, 2012). The chronological distortion, on the other hand, is not yet an issue in mainstream academia: historians simply do not question the chronological backbone of the first millennium. They don’t even ask themselves when, how and by whom it was created.

我们教科书上对第一个千年历史的歪曲既有地理维度上的，也有年代时间维度上的，这种地理上的歪曲是欧洲中心主义的一部分，现在正受到James Morris Blaut等学者的挑战(《殖民者的世界模型》，吉尔福德出版社，1993，约翰·m·霍布森(《西方文明的东方起源》，剑桥大学出版社，2004年，或杰克·古迪(《盗窃历史》，剑桥大学出版社，2012年)，另一方面，年代维度上的歪曲在主流学术界还没作为一个问题: 历史学家根本不会质疑第一个千年的时间主干，他们甚至不会问自己，它是何时、如何以及由谁创建的。

So far, we have formulated the working hypothesis that the Western Roman Empire is, to some extent, a phantom duplicate of the Eastern Roman Empire, conjured by Rome in order to steal the birthright from Constantinople, while concealing its debt to the civilization that it conspired to assassinate. The Roman Empire, in other words, was a dream rather than a memory, exactly like Solomon’s empire. But, one will instantly obxt, while archeologists have found no trace of Solomon’s empire, the vestiges of Augustus’ empire are plentiful. True, but are these vestiges really from Antiquity, and if so, why are medi vestiges nowhere to be found in Rome? If Rome was the beating heart of medi Western Christendom, it should have been busy constructing, not just restoring.

到目前为止，我们已经建立了一个有效的假说，在某种程度上，西罗马帝国是东罗马帝国的影子复制品，罗马塑造它是为了从君士坦丁堡窃取名分，同时隐瞒自己对这个文明的亏欠，因为它曾谋害这个文明。换句话说，罗马帝国是一个梦，而不是一个记忆，就像所罗门帝国一样。但是，立刻就会有人反对说，虽然考古学家没有发现所罗门帝国的遗迹，但奥古斯都的帝国遗迹非常之丰富。 是的，但这些遗迹真的来自古代吗? 如果是这样，为什么中世纪的遗迹在罗马找不到呢？如果罗马是中世纪西方基督教世界跳动的心脏，它应该忙于建设，而不仅仅是修复古迹。

The Commune of Rome was founded in 1144 as a Republic with a consul and a senate, in the wake of other Italian cities (Pise in 1085, Milano in 1097, Gene in 1099, Florence in 1100). It defined itself by the phrase senatus populusque romanus (“the Senate and the Roman people”), condensed in the acronym SPQR. Beginning in 1184 and until the early sixteenth century, the city of Rome struck coins with these letters. But, we are told, SPQR was already the mark of the first Roman Republic founded in 509 BC and, more incredibly, it was preserved by emperors, who apparently didn’t mind being thus ignored. As outrageous as it sounds, one cannot easily brush aside the suspicion that the ancient Roman Republic, known to us thanks to Petrarch’s “piecing together” Titus Livy’s History of Rome,[4] is an imaginative portrait of late medi Rome in antique garb. Petrarch was part of a circle of Italian propagandists who celebrated Rome’s past glory. “His intentions,” writes French mediist Jacques Heers, “were deliberately political, and his approach was part of a real struggle.” He was “one of the most virulent writers of his time, involved in a great quarrel against the papacy of Avignon, and this relentlessness in fighting determined his cultural as well as political options.”[5]

罗马公社是继意大利其他城市之后，于1144年建立的共和政体，有执政官和元老院（比萨的公社建立于1085年，米兰的建立于1097年，热那亚的建立于1099年，佛罗伦萨的建立于1100年），它用词语senatus populusque romanus来定义自己，意为元老院与罗马人民， 缩写为SPQR。从1184年开始直到公元 16世纪早期，罗马城都把这些母铸在硬币上。但是，有人告诉我们说，SPQR本来是公元前509年建立的第一罗马共和国的标志，而且更令人难以置信的是，它被皇帝保留了下来，显然皇帝不介意如此被忽视，尽管这听起来很离谱，但人们不能轻易地忽视，因彼特拉克的“拼凑历史”和提图斯·李维的《罗马史》而闻名于世的古罗马共和国，其实是披着古董服饰的中世纪晚期罗马的一幅富有想象力的画像。法国中世纪史学家雅克·希尔写道：“彼特拉克有刻意的政治意图，他的创作方式与其真实意图充分结合，他是那个时代最有恶意的作家之一，他深度卷入了一场针对教皇阿维尼翁的大论战，这场残酷的斗争也决定了他的文化观点与政治取向。”

In the first article, we have questioned the obxtivity and even the probity of those humanists who claimed to resurrect the long forgotten splendor of Republican and Imperial Rome. In this second article, we turn our attention to ecclesiastical historians of earlier times, who fashioned our vision of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Their history of the Christian Church, peopled with miracle-performing holy men and diabolical heretics, is hard to connect with political history, and secular historians specialized in Late Antiquity are generally happy to leave the field to “Church historians” and teachers of faith. That is a shame, because the credibility of this literature has largely gone unchallenged.

在第一篇文章中，我们曾质疑那些声称要复兴被遗忘已久的罗马共和国与罗马帝国的辉煌历史的人文主义者们的的客观性，甚至是公正性。在第二篇文章中，我们将注意力转向早期的教会历史学家们，他们塑造了我们对古典时代晚期和中世纪早期历史的认识，他们的基督教历史之中，充满了展现奇迹的圣人和邪恶的异教徒，这实在很难与政治史联系起来，而且专门研究古典时代晚期的世俗历史学家通常乐于离开这个领域，将其留给“教堂历史学家”和信仰导师们。这是一大遗憾，因为这使得这些文献的可信性在很大程度上没有受到挑战。

The pontifical forgery factory

罗马教皇的造假工厂

“Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature is the degree to which it was forged.” So Bert Ehrman begins his book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. Throughout the first four centuries AD, he says, forgery was the rule in Christian literature, and genuine authorship the exception. Forgery was so systemic that forgeries gave rise to counterforgeries, that is, forgeries “used to counter the views of other forgeries.”[6] If forgery is part of the DNA of Christianity, we can expect it to continue throughout the Middle Ages.

“可以说，早期基督教文学最鲜明的特征是无所不在的伪造。”所以，伯特·埃尔曼开始了他的著作《伪造与反伪造:早期基督教辩论中文学欺骗的运用》他说，在公元前四个世纪，伪造是基督教文学的惯例，不伪造的创作者是例外。伪造是如此的系统性，以至于伪造产生了反伪造，也就是“用来反驳其他伪造的观点”的伪造。如果伪造是基督教基因的一部分，那么我们可以预期它会一直延续到中世纪。

One of the most famous medi forgeries is the “Donation of Constantine.” By this document, Emperor Constantine is supposed to have transferred his own authority over the Western regions of the Empire to Pope Sylvester. This forgery of outrageous audacity is the centerpiece of a whole collection of about a hundred counterfeit decrees and acts of Synods, attributed to the earliest popes or other Church dignitaries, and known today as the Pseudo–Isidorian Decretals. Their aim was to set forth precedents for the exercise of sovereign authority of the popes over the universal Church, as well as over kings and emperors.

最为著名的中世纪伪作是所谓的“君士坦丁赠礼”，根据这份文件，君士坦丁皇帝应该将自己的权力移交给了罗马帝国西部地区的西尔维斯特教皇，在上百件伪造的法令和主教会议议案组成的一整套赝品中，这一件最为无耻，它们被认为是最早的教皇或其他教会要人所为，今天被称为伪伊西多利安教令集，他们这么做的目的是为教皇对普世教会以及国王与皇帝们行使最高权力提供先决条件上的合法性。

These documents were not used until the middle of the eleventh century, and it is not before the twelfth century that they were incorporated by Gratian into his Decretum, which became the basis of all canon law. Yet the scholarly consensus is that they date back from the time of Charlemagne. For that reason, Horst Fuhrmann, a specialist in medi forgeries, classifies them as “forgeries with anticipatory character,” which “have the characteristic that at the time they were written, they had hardly any effect.” According to him, these fakes had to wait, depending on the case, between 250 and 550 years before being used. Heribert Illig rightly protests against this theory of forgeries allegedly written by clerics who had no immediate use of them and did not know what purpose their forgeries could serve a few centuries later. Forgeries are produced to serve a project, and they are made on demand when needed. The Donation of Constantine and other false Decretals are therefore most probably pure products of the Gregorian reform. Their “anticipatory character” is an illusion created by one of the chronological distortions that we have set out to correct.[7]

这些文件直到十一世纪中叶才被使用，直到十二世纪，格兰西才把它们纳入他编撰的后来成为所有教会法令基础的《教令集》，然而学术界的共识是，它们都可以追溯到查理曼大帝时代，出于这个原因，研究中世纪赝品的专家霍斯特·福尔曼(Horst Fuhrmann)将它们归类为“具有预期特征的赝品”，这种赝品“在当时被写下来时，几乎没有发挥任何影响，”据他说，根据具体情况，这些赝品需要等待250到550年才有用。赫里伯特·伊利格(Heribert Illig)明确地反对这种伪造理论，他说，该理论声称是由神职人员写的，他们没有立即使用它们，也不知道他们的伪造可以在几个世纪后发挥什么作用。而他认为，伪造品是为某个项目服务的，而且在需要的时候可以按需制作。因此“君士坦丁赠礼”和其他虚假的法令很可能纯粹是格里高利改革的产物，大家所说的“预期特征”只是一种错觉，是由我们经手修正后的时间排列上的某种扭曲所造成的。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处



The Gregorian reform, which started with the accession of Pope Leo IX in 1049, was a continuation of the monastic revival launched by the powerful Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, which a century after its foundation in 910 had developed a network of more than a thousand monasteries all over Europe.[8] The Gregorian reform can be conceived as a monkish coup over Europe, in the sense that celibate monks, who used to live at the margin of society, progressively took the leadership over it.

格里高利改革始于1049年教皇利奥九世登基，它是强大的克吕尼本笃会修道院发起的修道复兴运动的延续，克吕尼本笃会修道院于910年建立，在一个世纪之后，它在整个欧洲发展出一个由1000多所修道院组成的网络，格里高利改革可以被认为是对整个欧洲的一场修道士政变，从这个意义上说，曾经生活在社会边缘的独身的修道士们逐渐掌握了领导权。

It is worth insisting on the revolutionary character of the Gregorian reform. It was, wrote Marc Bloch in Feudal Society, “an extraordinarily powerful movement from which, without exaggeration, may be dated the definite formation of Latin Christianity.”[9] More recently, Robert I. Moore wrote in The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215: “The ‘reform’ which was embodied in the Gregorian program was nothing less than a project to divide the world, both people and property, into two distinct and autonomous realms, not geographically by socially.” The reform triumphed at the Fourth Lateran Council convoked by Innocent III in 1215. The world created by Lateran IV was “an entirely different world — a world pervaded and increasingly moulded by the well-drilled piety and obedience associated with the traditional vision of ‘the age of faith’, or medi Christianity.” Yet in a sense, Lateran IV was only a beginning: in 1234, Innocent III’s cousin Gregory IX instituted the Inquisition, but the great period of witch-hunting — the last battle against paganism — was still two centuries away.[10]

格里高利改革的革命性是值得强调的，对此，马克·布洛赫在《封建社会》一书中写道:“这是一场非常强大的运动，可以毫不夸张地说，它标志着罗马基督教的形成。”不久前，罗伯特·i·摩尔在其《第一次欧洲革命:970-1215年》一书中写道:“体现在格里高利的策划中的改革，不亚于一个分裂世界的计划，它将世界上的人和财产划分为两个截然不同的自治范畴，而不是地理上和社交上的。”在教皇英诺森三世于1215年在罗马召开的第四次拉特兰会议上，改革取得了胜利。第四次拉特兰会议创造的世界是“一个完全不同的世界——一个被传统的‘信仰时代’或中世纪基督教所推崇的虔诚和顺从所渗透和塑造的世界。”然而，从某种意义上说，第四次拉特朗只是一个开始:1234年，英诺森三世的堂兄教皇格里高利九世建立了宗教裁判所，但大规模的猎巫时代——对异教徒的最后一战——仍然在两个世纪之后。

In his book Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Harvard UP, 1983), Harold Berman also insists on the revolutionary character of the Gregorian reform, by which “the clergy became the first translocal, transtribal, transfeudal, transnational class in Europe to achieve political and legal unity.” “To speak of revolutionary change within the Church of Rome is, of course, to challenge the orthodox (though not the Eastern Orthodox) view that the structure of the Roman Catholic Church is the result of a gradual elaboration of elements that had been present from very early times. This was, indeed, the official view of the Catholic Reformers of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries: they were only going back, they said, to an earlier tradition that had been betrayed by their immediate predecessors.”[11] The Reformers, in other words, established a new world order under the pretense of restoring an ancient world order. They created a new past in order to control the future.

哈罗德·伯曼(Harold Berman)在《法律与革命:西方法律传统的形成》(Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Harvard UP, 1983)一书中也坚持格里高利改革的革命性特征，“神职人员成为欧洲第一个跨地方、跨种族、跨封建、跨国界的阶级，实现了政治和法律上的统一。”“谈到罗马教会内部的革命性变化，当然是在挑战正统(不过不是东正教)的观点，即罗马天主教会的结构是由从很早时候就存在的元素逐渐细化的结果，这确实是11世纪末12世纪初天主教改革者的正式观点，他们说，他们只是回到了被他们的前任们所背叛的更早的传统。”换而言之，改革派打着恢复古代世界秩序的幌子，建立了新的世界秩序。为了控制未来，他们创造了一个新的古代历史。
【译注，格里高利七世是公元1073—1085年在位的罗马教皇，意大利人，早年曾领导克吕尼运动，担任教皇后进行一系列教会改革措施，这与其后的帕斯卡尔二世等教皇的改革活动一起统称为“格里高利改革”。格里高利要求已婚的教士离婚，强调主教授职权应属于教会。其后的帕斯卡尔二世宣布教会不再充当国王和世俗封建主的封臣。这场改革提出了许多原则和具体办法来捍卫教皇权威，加强教会独立性和整肃神职人员风纪】

For that, they employed an army of legists who elaborated a new canonical legal system to supersede customary feudal laws, and made their new legal system appear as the oldest by producing forgeries on a massive scale. Besides the Pseudo–Isidorian Decretals and the false Donation of Constantine, they crafted the Symmachian forgeries, destined to produce legal precedents to immune the pope from criticism. One of these documents, the Silvestri constitutum, contains the legend of Pope Sylvester 1st curing Constantine the Great of leprosy with the waters of baptism, and receiving in gratitude Constantine’s imperial insignia and the city of Rome. Charlemagne’s father was also made to contribute with the false Donation of Pepin. It is now admitted that the vast majority of legal documents supposedly established before the ninth century are clerical forgeries. According to French historian Laurent Morelle, “two thirds of the acts entitled in the name of the Merovingian kings (481-751) have been identified as false or falsified.”[12] It is very likely that the real proportion is much higher, and that many documents which are still deemed authentic are forgeries: for instance, it is our view that the wording of the foundation charter of the Abbey of Cluny, by which its founder William I (the Pious) renounced all control over it, cannot possibly have been dictated or endorsed by a medi duke of Aquitaine (virtually a king).[13]

为此，他们雇佣了一批法学家，精心炮制了一套新规范的法律制度，以取代传统的封建法律，并通过大规模制造赝品，使他们的新法律制度显得最为古老，除了假伊西多利安教令和假君士坦丁赠礼，他们还伪造了西马基亚赝品，刻意创造出一些成文的法令判例，以免除教皇受到批判。《西尔维斯特立宪书》是其中的一份文件，该文件讲述了教皇西尔维斯特一世用洗礼水治愈了君士坦丁皇帝的严重麻风病的传说，以及教皇以感激的心情接受了君士坦丁捐赠的帝国徽章和罗马城，查理曼大帝的父亲也被编造捐献出了丕平城。现在人们承认，绝大多数据说创立于九世纪之前的法律文件都是神职人员伪造的，在法国历史学家洛朗·莫雷勒看来，“在墨洛温王朝的国王(481-751年)的名义下的作品中，有三分之二被认定为虚假或伪造的。”但很可能实际的比例要高得多，许多现在仍然被认为是真实的文件都是伪造的，例如，在我们看来，位于法国的克吕尼大修道院的建造特许状中的文字，不可能是由中世纪的阿基坦公爵(实际上是国王)口述或签批的，这些文字称它的创建者威廉一世(一个虔诚的基督徒)放弃了对它的所有控制。

These fake documents served the popes on several fronts. They were used in their power struggle against the German emperors, by backing up their extravagant claim that the pope could depose emperors. They were also powerful weapons in the geopolitical war waged against the Byzantine church and empire. By bestowing on the papacy “supremacy over the four principal sees, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God in the whole earth,” the false Donation of Constantine justified Rome’s claim for precedence over Constantinople, which led to the Great Schism of 1054 and ultimately the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1205. By a cruel irony, the spuriousness of the Donation of Constantine was exposed in 1430, after it had served its purpose. By then, the Eastern Empire had lost all its territories and was reduced to a depopulated city besieged by the Ottomans.

这些虚假文件在几个方面为罗马教皇服务，他们被用来与德国皇帝进行权力斗争，按照他们过分的主张，教皇可以废黜皇帝，在同拜占庭教会和拜占庭帝国的地缘政治斗争中，这些也是强有力的武器。通过赋予罗马教皇“凌驾于亚历山大、安条克、耶路撒冷、君士坦丁堡四大牧首区之上的至高无上的权力，同时也凌驾于全世界的所有教会之上，”虚假的君士坦丁赠礼证明了罗马对君士坦丁堡具有优先地位，它导致了1054年的东西方教会的大分裂，并最终在1205年君士坦丁堡被拉丁人洗劫。讽刺的是，君士坦丁赠礼的谎言在达到了它的目的之后，于1430年被揭穿，在那时，那个东方的帝国已经失去了所有的领土，只剩下一个被奥斯曼人包围的人口不多的城市。
【译注：君士坦丁赠礼的文本在1430年前后被德国人尼古拉主教和意大利人瓦拉先后证明是伪造的，尤其是瓦拉，利用严密的词源考证证明该文本是后人的伪作】

It is little known, but of great importance for understanding medi times, when ethnicity played a major part in politics, that the Gregorian reformers were Franks, even before Bruno of Egisheim-Dagsburg gave the first impulse as pope Leo IX. That is why Orthodox theologian John Romanides blames the Franks for having destroyed the unity of Christendom with ethnic and geopolitical motivations.[14] In Byzantine chronicles, “Latin” and “Frank” are synonymous.

有一点很少有人知道，但对于理解种族在政治中扮演重要角色的中世纪非常重要，格利高里时期的改革派是法兰克人，甚至在布鲁诺以教皇利奥九世的身份第一次推行改革时也是如此，因此，东正教神学家约翰·罗马尼德斯指责法兰克人利用种族和地缘政治动机破坏了基督教世界的统一，在拜占庭编年史中，“拉丁”和“弗兰克”是同义词。
（待续......)