For the majority, however, the authority of the Liber Pontificalis, the Roman biographies of the popes, was irresistible. The fable of the baptism in Rome had already passed into the oldest list of the popes, one reaching back to the sixth century and in like manner into the enlarged collection which was based upon this one, the so-called Anastasius. In like manner Ado (died A.D. 875) inserts in his universal chronicle, which is based upon Bede, the fable of Constantine having been baptized in Rome, being misled by Bede, and by the Liber Pontificalis. He betrays the latter source by the long list of ecclesiastical donations and buildings, which Constantine is Isaid to have ordered in Rome, and which Ado borrowed from that Roman chronicle of the popes. On the other hand, Ordericus Vitalis (about A. D. 1107), and Hugo of Fleury (in the year 1109), who in their ecclesiastical works narrate the whole fable,-leprosy, bath of children's blood and all-have drawn directly or indirectly from the legend of Sylvester; while Otto of Freysing, though he declares these details to be apocryphal, nevertheless holds fast to the baptism in Rome by Sylvester, “in accordance with the Roman tradition," as he says.

The first critical attempt to remove the contradiction between the old and new versions of the story

was made about the year 1100 by Eccard, a monk in the monastery of Michaelsberg, and from 1108 onwards abbot of the monastery of Aurach. The means which he employed were these. He transferred the outrageous cruelty of Constantine, the execution of his nephew, of his son, his wife, and many friends, to the earlier part of the emperor's reign, after his victory over Licinus. Thereupon the Cæsar is struck by God with leprosy, but baptized by Sylvester. He says, in conclusion: "Some persons "maintain that Constantine fell into the Arian heresy, "and was rebaptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia. The "church histories, however (that of Eusebius, namely, "of which Eccard made much use), do not state this, "but that he died in great sanctity." Eccard, therefore, understood the version of Jerome to relate to a second baptism, by means of which Constantine got himself received into the sect of the Arians,—a means of getting out of the difficulty at which many since Eccard have caught. Nevertheless the author of the Magdeburg1 Annals (written in the year 1175), a monk in the monastery of Bergen, near Magdeburg, does not allow himself to be misled by the authority of Eccard, whom he otherwise uses as his basis. He

1 Formerly known as Chronographus Saxo; now as Annales Magdeburg., in Pertz's collection, xvi., p. 119.

remains true to the version of the Ecclesiastical History (the Tripartita), that Constantine put off his baptism till the end of his life.

Another variation is tried by the Italians, under the leadership of Bonizo, bishop of Sutri, and subsequently of Piacenza (died A.D. 1089), an authority not used by the Germans. In his history of the popes, 2 Bonizo had to choose between three accounts of Constantine's baptism. That is to say, besides the two ordinary accounts, he had also before him the one contained in a spurious decretal of pope Eusebius, now no longer extant, stating that this pope (and therefore in the year 3108) had already instructed, and baptized the emperor. The decretal was, of course, pure intention, in order that, by changing the Nicomedian into the Roman Eusebius, support might be got for the theory of Constantine's baptism in Rome, a theory of immense importance to the Romans. Bonizo will only allow the first half of the statement, considers the "baptizatum," as a vitium scriptorum, and gives it as his opinion, that after the instruction which he had received in Rome, Constantine postponed baptism on account of the dis

2 It is found in the fourth book of his Libri Decreti, whence Mai gives it in the Nova Bibliotheca Patrum, vii., P. 3, p. 39.

3 [The papacy of Eusebius falls wholly within the year 310.]

tracting cares of government, receiving it at the hands of Sylvester, and not before. But he wholly denies the statement in the Tripartita Historia, that he was not baptized until the end of his life, and then into the Arian faith. None but a maniac could believe that, after the council of Nicæa, and after the circumstances of Arius' death, of which the emperor had been a witness, he still could have lapsed into Arianism. Bonizo goes so far as to claim the authority of the whole Church in favour of his opinion. "That Constantine was baptized by

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Sylvester," he says, "is the undoubting belief of "the Catholic Church." And the Italian chroniclers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Sicard1, bishop of Cremona, and Romnald, 2 of Salerno, have copied him in this, the latter word for word. On the other hand, Gotfried of Viterbo, in his Pantheon, undismayed by the "mente captus" of Bonizo, avails himself of the hypothesis of an Arian re-baptism in Nicomedia. In this bishop Anselm of Havelberg (about the year 1187) had already preceded him in his dialogues against the Greeks.3 Anselm was misled by another apocryphal writing, viz., a spurious History of Pope Sylvester, forged under the name

1 Muratori, SS., vii., 555.

2 Ibid., vii., 78. 3 In D'Archery's Spicilegium, nov. edit., i, 207. 4 It exists in manuscript, according to D'Achery, in the library

of Eusebius of Cæsarea, and differing from the legend.

Of great influence in the matter was the additional fact, that the popes also themselves made use of the apocryphal legend of Sylvester, and maintained Constantine's baptism at Rome as historical. Hadrian I., in the letter which was read at the second council of Nicæa, A.D. 787, quoted a long passage out of the legend as evidence of the primitive use of images. 1 Nicolas I. (858-867) cited a supposed passage from a pseudo-Isidorian letter which bore the name of Sylvester, with the distinctive title "Magni Constantini baptizator." 2 Leo IX., also, in the controversy with the Patriarch Cærularius, laid stress on

of St. Germain. Ratramnus (in D'Achery, I. c., p. 100) quotes a passage from it. It seems to have been forged, in order to defend Roman claims and customs against the objections of the Greeks

1 In Harduin, iv., 82 [The gist of it is this. The apostles Peter and Paul appear to Constantine, and tell him to abandon the idea of the bath of blood, and seek out Sylvester in his exile on Mt. Soracte; he will cure the emperor of his leprosy. Constantine goes to Sylvester, who produces images of SS. Peter and Paul, in order to prove to the emperor that the two who appeared to him in the vision were not gods, but these two apostles. Constantine recognises the likeness, is convinced and baptized, and proceeds to build and restore churches, which he takes care to adorn with images Compare the curious and very different version of the story given in the U bis Roma Mirabilia, reprinted from the Vatican manuscripts by Gustav Parthey, Berlin, 1869.]

2 lbid., v., 144.