[Footnote 119: The visit is described very fully in the _Liber Pontificalis_.]
[Footnote 120: _Ep._, lx. Some writers hold that this is merely an allusion to the _Acta S. Silvestri_, another forgery of the time, but the words which I have italicized point more clearly to the "Donation of Constantine." For the literature of the controversy see Dr. A. Solmi's _Stato e Chiesa_ (1901), pp. 12-13. It is now the general belief that the "Donation" was fabricated at Rome, and probably in the Lateran, between 750 and 781. Dr. Hodgkin (_Italy and her Invaders_, vi.) has charitably suggested that perhaps the document was playfully composed by some Papal clerk in his leisure hours and taken seriously by a later generation, but apologists do not seem to grasp at this straw.]
[Footnote 123: Dr. Mann (vol. i., part ii., p. 423) finds some confirmation in "a passage of Hadrian's letter to Constantine and Irene, read in the second session of the Seventh General Council." This part of Hadrian's letter was not read in the Council. It is not included in the letter in the Migne edition (vol. xcvi.), and in Mansi (xii., 1072) it is explained that the latter part of Hadrian's letter, in which the passage occurs, was not read to the Greeks. In any case, the passage merely affirms that Charlemagne gave the Roman See "provinces and cities and other territories," and this is quite consistent with the more modest estimate of his donation. A letter written by Leo III. to Charlemagne thirty years afterwards (when the Papal description of the donation certainly existed), speaking of his gift of the island of Corsica, is not conclusive.]
[Footnote 124: See the dissertation appended to vol. vi. of Dr. Hodgkin's _Italy and her Invaders_, where the author contends that a late writer used the contemporary account of Hadrian's early years to lead up to this fictitious donation. The hypothesis of interpolation in a genuine narrative is urged by Dr. W. Martens in his _Die Römische Frage_ (1881) and _Beleuchtung der neuesten Controversen über die R. Frage_ (1898). Professor Th. Lindner (_Die sogenannten Schenkungen Pippins, Karls des Grossen, und Otto's I. an die Päpste_, 1896) suggests that Charlemagne intended only to secure the patrimonies in the provinces named in the donation, but this is not consistent with the language of the _Liber Pontificalis_, though it may very well represent the actual intention of Charlemagne.]