Lest any should anticipate herein a loaded or exclusively one-sided anti-Christian polemic, I would like to open by commending the role of various Christian denominations in some areas of geo-political strategy. It would be hard to deny, for example, the influence of Catholicism in nurturing the populist movements in Eastern Europe which have led to the demise of totalitarian regimes, particularly in Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Similarly the role of Hospitals and Relief Agencies staffed and/or inspired by Christians cannot be ignored in attempts to alleviate the effects of famine, war and disease across the Third World. It might be argued, though, that such a role is entirely appropriate, since, to paraphrase Eldridge Cleaver, having been for many centuries "part of the problem" in those regions, it is now fitting that Christianity should be attempting to be seen to be "part of the solution".

A word might also be said for the solace which an acceptance of the Christian paradigm can bestow on individuals faced with emotionally distressing circumstances, or the advance of years. In marketing jargon, the 'Unique Selling Proposition' of Christianity has always been the promise of a blissful afterlife to compensate for whatever miseries befall during the preceding mortal phase. The only drawbacks lie in knowing not only that you may have to share eternity with a load of holier-than-thou fanatics, but worse, that any of your most implacable adversaries may also wind up in the same Happy Hunting Ground if you are unfortunate enough that they should undergo some inappropriate death-bed confessional.

GLASNOST

In considering contemporary events in Eastern Europe, it is clear that an important feature in the dissolution of the totalitarian regimes has been the relaxation of the absolute suzerainity which the Soviet Union has exercised over those territories for the past half century, and that relaxation itself went hand-in-hand with the development of a policy of "Glasnost", usually translated as 'Openness', within that Empire State. Although Christian prayers for the fall of the Berlin Wall may have been answered, the concept of Glasnost, which represented a major associated philosophical change or paradigm shift, is hardly one for which any Christian denomination has shown any energetic enthusiam. It is of the nature of Empires that there should be 'skeletons in the closet', and keeping them out of sight is most easily effected by exerting the maximum possible control on acquisition and dissemination of information. History shows us, though, that frauds, forgeries, and massacres have a nasty habit of resurrecting themselves, along with the 'economies of truth' employed to cover them up during a greater or lesser elapse of time. Glasnost is in many ways a bold experiment; but while the British Goverment has offered some muted applause, there has been no rush to follow suit here, for example even by releasing material which has been withheld from placement in the Public Record Office beyond the usual 30 year rule. Even more conspicuous by its absence has been any echo of Glasnost by those bodies who control the archives of Christendom; that other declining empire which for so long has attempted to impose an arbitrary moral and intellectual hypothesis on the rest of humanity.

I personally find it offensive that persons who adhere to any irrefutable hypothesis or irrational but self-consistent belief system should have some state sanctioned right to attempt to indoctrinate my impressionable school age children, and moreover that such state sanction should be presented as underpinning the validity and/or moral rectitude of any such hypothesis. I feel the same about state endorsement of Islam in Iran and elsewhere, of Shinto in Japan, of Judaism in Israel etc., but "We Live in a Christian Country", so it is there that the spotlight must fall.

Religions generally enjoy state support in as much as they make the process of governing and/or oppressing people easier. That associative observation was probably first made by the Roman Emperor Constantine who, when considering the diverse tapestry of belief in his dominions, remarked that "Christians make good subjects". What follows is a critique of the events which resulted in an obscure Jewish cult becoming established throughout the Roman Empire and of the processes by which that pre-eminence and influence became perpetuated into our own time, Schism and Reformation notwithstanding.

"THE AGE OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT" (c 280 - 337 AD)

By any conventional yardstick, Constantine was not a nice person to know. The respected historian Jakob Burckhardt characterises him as a "murderous egoist". He topped his eldest son Crispus in 326, basically because the lad was getting too big for his boots, and then followed up by having his wife, Fausta, asphyxiated in a steam bath. Most of those two unfortunates' close associates followed them shortly afterwards. Like so many psychopaths and serial killers in our own time, it seems that in expiation of these misdeeds (not to mention the breach of a solemn Oath of Trust by which he was obligated to his comrade-in-arms and brother-in-law, Licinius), Constantine was drawn to embrace Christianity after an earlier flirtation with that belief paradigm.

When first his conscience pricked him, he turned for absolution to the Pagan Priesthood, but on being told by the Neoplatonist sage Sopater that there was "no expiation for such malefaction", he allowed himself to be convinced by the Egyptian heirarch Hosius that Christianity was "able to wash every misdeed away". Thus assured of his personal salvation, whatever the circumstances, he arranged the subsequent execution of Sopater, while his propagandist, Eusebius, set about putting a better gloss on events, and produced the improbable 'official story' of the Emperor's conversion.

Early in Constantine's campaign to consolidate his claim to the Imperial Purple, he took his responsibilities as Pontifex Maxiuus (high priest) of the diverse pagan cults of Rome seriously, and extended the scope of that job-title to encompass the doctrines of Christianity. Having observed that adherents of that persuasion were philosophically disposed towards meek behaviour, he promulgated the 'Edict of Milan' in 313, formally ending the persecution initiated by his recent (though not immediate) predecessor Diocletian, and it must be said that that document is a model of universal tolerance which would sit well on the statute book of any enlightened modern state. Regrettably, it did not remain in force for long.

Eusebius would have us believe that on the eve of an important battle against Maxentius, one of the rivals for the throne of the Western Empire, Constantine saw a heavenly vision of the Christian Chi/Rho sigil, accompanied by a celestial voice portending "In This Sign Conquer". In another account (by Laurentius) it was a dream about painting the same device on his legionaries' shields. In any event, he won the battle after taking the advice, and the ecclesiastical version holds that he was 'born again' from that point forward, even if not baptised. It is not in dispute that he started becoming involved in Church affairs from that time, but his role appears to have been that of making plain which elements in the doctrine and practice he liked, with the full-time clerics going along with whatever he wanted, partly in the euphoria of seeing an end to a decade of persecutions, and partly in the interest of self preservation. The Council of Nicaea, which Constantine summoned in 325 to standardise the Church heirarchy and establish theological orthodoxy, followed that pattern closely.

Nicaea is the first Council of the Christian Church accepted as being 'Ecumenical' (that is 'binding in regard to matters of faith and morals') by most (if not all) denominations of the Church. If Nicaea is mentioned to a Christian today, a typical reaction is "Oh yes, I know all about that; that's when they worked out the method for calculating Easter". What is much less widely known is that, besides scuppering concepts of Gnosticism and Manichacanism, Nicaea was primarily convened to deal with with the heresy of Arianism, a doctrine expounded by one Arius of Alexandria.

Arian doctrines were popular and widespread throughout the Empire, and, stepping within the Christian paradigm for a moment, one can see a certain logic to the basic tenets that God the Father was superior in essence to God the Son, with God the Holy Ghost also filling a subordinate niche. Constantine argued strongly against this concept in favour of 'con-substantiality' of the Christian Trinity, and it might, at first sight, seem a narrow academic point. The advantage of the Con-Substantial Trinity is that it gives equal force to the dictums of God the Father, to the Gospel accounts of God the Son, and, of course, to those matters which are ascribed to the guidance of God the Holy Ghost - like the deliberations of Church Councils. Thus, with that crucial point of doctrine established, no-one could challenge Ecumenical decisions solely by reference to theological tradition. Infallibility was built into the system, and this concept concurred exactly with one of the traditional attributes of the Roman Emperor, who opened and chaired the proceedings "stiff with purple, gold and precious stones".

The dictats of Nicaea were not 100% effective immediately and, although some books may have been burnt in the aftermath, church practice continued much as before, albeit that Easter was celebrated on the same date throughout the Empire. There was no prohibition of paganism , and Constantine devoted much energy in the latter part of his reign to building both churches and pagan temples, particularly in his new Eastern capital, Constantinople.

After Constantine's death his affairs were entrusted to his second son Constantius (20), a pious Arianist. He discovered (or invented or had planted on him) a testament left by Constantine to the effect that his death had been occasioned by poison; the miscreants were pointed out as Constantine's own brothers, and his sons were, in Gibbon's words, "conjured ... to revenge his death, and to consult their own safety, by the punishment of the guilty". Without awaiting the return of his brothers Constantine (21) and Constans (17), Constantius set about his late father's bidding in circumstances where "the spirit and even the forms of legal proceedings were repeatedly violated in a promiscuous massacre". One of the few family survivors was a cousin, Julian, who made himself scarce, at the same time deciding that he needed nothing more to do with Christianity of any flavour. And who could blame him?

Almost two decades later, having established himself in good favour with Constantius' Empress Eusebia, Julian was reconciled with the Imperial Court, and, in recognition of his abilities, was sent off to put down a revolt in Gaul. This he proceeded to do, attributing his successes to his re-adoption of the original forms of Roman paganism - in that sense he was perceived by the Christians as an Apostate (someone who reverts to a former belief paradigm), and he is referred to in Christian histories as 'Julian the Apostate' and presented as a backsliding 'baddie'. Several massacres later, in 361, Julian entered Constantinople as Emperor after the death of Constantius, whereupon he set about the restoration of paganism.

Julian's reign only lasted a couple of years. He was very much a warrior, and launched an injudicious campaign to invade Mesopotamia. After a decisive military reverse at the hands of the Persian King Sapor at Cteisiphon (near modern Baghdad), Julian died after leading his forces in an ignominius retreat back across the Syrian desert. The Imperial succession then passed back to individuals who were nominally Christian: Jovian, Valentinian, Valens, another Valentinian, and Gratian. In the period up to 380 there was, broadly speaking, a climate of religious toleration, albeit that pressing concerns of invasions, rebellions and civil war kept the various emperors busy. Eventually a fanatic from Spain named Theodosius was appointed Emperor of the West.

It was at this point that Orthodox Christianity moved to consolidate the supremacy endorsed at Nicaca. Under the subtle guidance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Theodosius was baptised, and summoned the second Ecumenical Church Council at Constantinople. At this gathering God the Holy Ghost ordained the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and initiated the concept of 'punishable heresy' which encompassed all variant interpretations from what was defined as ~ Christian doctrine, as well as placing severe penalties on pagan practices.

A rearguard action on behalf of traditional paganism was led by the Senate in Rome, whose deliberations were ceremonially prefaced by devotions at the Altar of Victory in their debating chamber. As Theodosius' Christian Barbarians ravaged the temples of antiquity, smashing priceless works of art by dragging them through city streets behind their chariots, and burning ancient repositories of learning, the resistance became focussed with the assembly of an army by a pagan usurper, Eugenius. Theodosius marched against them with the Eastern Legions and Christian Goth auxiliaries, and Paganism met its Culloden in 394 at the Frigidus (now Vipava) River inlind from modern Trieste. The confrontation was not a straightforward affair. Pagan Gauls slaughtered 10000 of Theodosius' auxiliaries, and night fell with the Christian forces retreating in disarray. The pagans thought they had won and, without bothering to check, went straight ahead with the victory party. Their own contingent of Goths must have taken exception to the fare provided, though, because they appear to have deserted en masse, and, the following day, joined the regrouped Christian legions in falling upon the hung-over pagans. A Culloden style mop-up ensued.

Typical of the sort of action Theodosius took against enclaves of both paganism and Christian heresy was the suppression of the Sedition of Thessalonika in 390. The incident started because one of the city's circus charioteers developed a crush on "a beautiful boy" who happened to be a personal slave of Theodosius' local garrison commander, Botheric. Gibbon tells us that the charioteer was "a brutal lover" and that Botheric had him thrown into prison for insolence. The populus became incensed when their champion was not released for the next public games, as they "considered the skill of a charioteer as an object of more importance than his virtue". Botheric and several of his principal officers were murdered and dragged mangled through the streets. Theodosius prepared a treacherous reprisal. After a few months interval the people of Thessalonika were invited, in the Emperor's name, to "the games of the circus", and, being enthusiastic for these entertainments, "numerous spectators" showed up. At the signal for the start of the games, instead of races, a legion of Theodosius' Christian Goths emerged from concealment and set about a general massacre. Gibbon records that "the promiscuous carnage continued three hours, without discrimination of strangers or natives, or age or sex, of innocence or guilt; it is affirmed by some writers that more than fifteen thousand victims were sacrificed ... ".

This wholesale slaughter annoyed Ambrose, at least to the extent that he withheld Christian sacraments from Theodosius for a whole eight months before deeming that the Emperor had done pennance enough to have returned to a state of grace.

The final triumph of Theodosius reign after the Battle of the Frigidus River was his desecration of the Altar of Victory at the Senate in Rome, with the focal image being dragged in the dust of the Forum behind his chariot, as had become customary. The newly converted Augustine of Hippo was enlisted by Ambrose to construct a morally palatable backdrop for what was taking place and to present a philosophical basis to justify similar operations in the future, should they prove necessary. The scene was set for 1000 years of an intellectual monopoly to be enforced by the imperial legions and their successors. Church and State were united in grace by the benign dispositions of the Holy Ghost on principles still accepted today as being Ecumenical throughout Christendom, although, as Primate, the Bishop of Rome remained subordinate to the Emperor.

"COLLAPSE OF THE STATE VECTOR"

It could be admitted in one sense that Christ did finally achieve the overthrow of the Roman Empire, but, by the time it happened, it was less a matter of conspiracy (though there were a few of those), than of a total cock-up by the Christians who were attempting to hold the State together. In the latter days of Theodosius the senior echelons of the army and the administration were purged of all who were not Christians, and after his death the Empire was divided East/West between his infant sons.

The usual presentation is that the Christianised Empire was gradually overwhelmed by hordes of baby-eating barbarians, who wreaked a lot of damage on the venerable ancient monuments and precipitated the 'Dark Ages'. I don't read it quite like that. The most numerous relevant barbarians in the late 4th and early 5th centuries were the Goths, and most of them were Christians. They were widely used by the now exclusively Christian led legions as auxiliaries, and gradually became more autonomous as they came to make up the most significant and effective proportion of the imperial army.

The first major unauthorised incursion was by the forces of Alaric, a Christian Goth King, who was upset at not having been paid by the Emperor of the East. He advanced on Constantinople, but decided that city was too well fortified, and plundered Greece instead, effectively dividing the two capitals of the Empire, and, in the process, eradicating what remained of traditional Greek paganism. The temples of Eleusis and Delphi effectively ceased functioning at this time in 396.

Alaric was bought off with the award of several provinces south of the Danube, and then used this territory as a power base from which to launch a series of invasions of Italy. From the Imperial loyalists arose a Christian general, Stilicho, who was probably of Goth extraction himself. He recalled the legion which defended Hadrian's Wall at the extremity of Roman Britain in 404, and part drove, part negotiated, Alaric back out of Italy more than once. Meanwhile the effeminate young Emperor Honorius, Theodosius' son, retreated to a fortress in the marshes of Ravenna (deemed impregnable) with an entourage of eunuchs and Christian clerics. The affairs of the Empire went from bad to worse.

An army of pagan Vandals, Suevi, Alani and Burgundians cut a swathe westwards across the frozen Rhine and carried on through Gaul until they got to the Atlantic Ocean, then they headed South towards Spain. What was left of the legions in Britain declared one of their commanders, another Constantine, Emperor, and deserted the province to march on Rome. They were defeated by Stilicho, but the legions were becoming steadily depleted with loss of life in continuous.civil wars. Through this period the Bishops of Rome kept a low profile, and the de facto authority in the Church derived from Ambrose, Augustine, and, above all, the whim of whatever eunuch or cleric had the favour of the Emperor.

The "Byzantine" paradigm of plots, oligarchies, foul murder, and revenge was in full spate, not just in Constantinople, but in Rome, in Milan, in Ravenna, and even among the Goths. History shows that absolutist heirarchies often degenerate into the Byzantine paradigm; there are many examples today - some of them running countries, some of them running religions, some of them running terrorist organisations, some of them running organised crime fraternities, and some of them running police forces. How many examples can you think of?

THE "DONATION OF CONSTANTINE"

In any phase of disordered social structure, such as that which obtains during 'Byzantine Paradigm' manifestations, Chaos Theory should lead us to expect the occurrence of some improbable chance event by which a new structure and control matrix - Cybermorph, if you like - can become established. In the relationship between Church and State, that improbable chance event was that in 754 there happened to be one Pepin, King of the Franks, who was sufficiently gullible to be taken in by a document known as the 'Donation of Constantine', which is probably one of the most unprofessional forgeries ever to have been perpetrated. The fact that it was accepted at face value is probably the most impressive objectively sustainable miracle in the entire history of the Church.

Within 50 years culminating in the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, that document formed the basis for the establishment of the relationship between the Christian Church and all secular states of the old Western Empire, which still survives in the relationship between the Church of England and the British Monarch. The procedure for perpetuating the Cybermorph consists in what is, to all intents and purposes, a magical ritual forming part of the Coronation ceremony. Interspersed with passing of ceremonial regalia between the Prelate, representing the Church, and the Monarch, representing the State, mutually binding personal oaths are made; on the Monarch's part an undertaking to uphold the position of the Church, and on the Prelate's part, an undertaking to uphold the position of the Monarchy. This is effectively a re-enactment, with embellishments, of a procedure described in the 'Donation of Constantine', which allegedly was performed between that Emperor and Pope Sylvester back in 314, a decade prior to the council of Nicaca. The joke is that the forgers in the Vatican even got the dates messed up, and, if the event had actually happened when it was supposed to have done, it would have been his predecessor Pope Miltiades who was the recipient of Constantine's generosity, specifically. "our palace, as preferrment, and likewise all provinces, palaces and districts of the City of Rome and Italy and of the regions of the West", and also the subject of the "decree that the same be placed at his disposal, and do lawfully grant it as a permanent possession to the Holy Roman Church".

This forgery provided the ritual basis for an epoch of divinely endorsed monarchies throughout the lands of the old Western Empire which endured for a full 1000 years until the French and American revolutions. The feudal system was introduced as the means of enforcing political control on the populus, while the Church maintained social control. Feudalism was introduced to Britain, with the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as proxy for the Pope, with the Vatican endorsed Norman invasion in 1066.

The first extension of the remit of the 'Donation' outside the domains of the original Roman Empire occurred in 1155, during the reign of the only Englishman ever to sit on the Throne of Peter, Pope Adrian IV (otherwise Nicholas Breakspear, Bishop of St Albans). Basically, Adrian made a wide interpretation of the phrase "regions of the West", and, in his Bull 'Laudabiliter', addressed to the King of England, he makes the following statement: "It is beyond all doubt, as your Highness also doth acknowledge, that Ireland and all the islands upon which Christ, the Sun of Justice, hath shone, and which have received the knowledge of the Christian Faith, are subject to the authority of Saint Peter and of the most Holy Roman Church." On this disingenuous interpretation of a forged document he then goes on to "donate" sovereignty of Ireland to the English crown, in the person of Henry II, notwithstanding that monarch's recent complicity in the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas A Beckett.

There is a school of thought which holds that the Bull 'Laudabiliter' itself is yet another forgery, and that it was written after the event as a justification for a quite arbitrary invasion of Ireland by Henry; certainly the document was not published until the Synod of Waterford in 1175, by which time the Irish chieftains had already submitted.

Adrian's loose interpretation of "regions of the West", of course, became infallible papal writ, and subsequently provided the basis for sovereignty claims in the Americas and throughout the world by the divinely endorsed European monarchs. Thus it was that when expeditions of invasion were carried out by the Spanish, the Portuguese, the British, etc., missionaries always accompanied the armed forces so that it could be claimed of the new territories that 'Christ had shone upon them' and that they had 'received the knowledge of the Christian Faith'. On that basis the claim of sovereignty could then "legitimately" be made, the indigenous people dispossessed, and their culture obliterated. The whole construct was absolutely cynical and devilishly clever!

THE PLOT UNMASKED

From the 9th to the mid 15th Century, the Papacy lurched in and out of the 'Byzantine Paradigm. Successive Popes were mostly from an oligarchy of old Italian families, the Orsini, the Medici, the Borgias, and some of the incumbents were distinctly 'dodgy'. Instances of rival Popes simultaneously excommunicating each other kept everyone amused. Some pontiffs were so old they only survived in office a few days, some were barely in their teens, some were heretics, some were pagans, and one may have been a woman. A few of them, though infallible, were quite mad by any standard, and presided over a judicial process gone completely crazy. For example, after Pope Formosus died in 896, his successor Stephen VII assembled a Synod to investigate his alleged crimes. The late incumbent was dug up and put on trial for heresy; the rotting stiff was interrogated, and then stripped of the vestments and regalia of office, condemned, cursed, and dumped in the Tiber. Formosus' remains were later retrieved by admirers and re-interred, minus the two fingers of benediction, which had been confiscated by the inquisition.

Although a few brave souls had cast doubt on the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine, it was not subjected to much detailed scrutiny, because the arrangement suited both Church and State. It allowed for reasonably stable government, and produced tithes, taxes, and "Peter's Pence" which were supposed to be collected by the Monarch and remitted to the Pope. Eventually a Christian Monarch, Alfonso of Aragon, decided, perhaps speculatively, that he had a legitimate claim to the Kingdom of Naples. You couldn't just invade somewhere in those days without papal approval, and, unsurprisingly, the last thing the Pope Eugene IV wanted in 1440 was an invading Spanish army within 200 miles of Rome. The basis of his objection to Alfonso's claim was, as usual, the rights conferred on his office by the 'Donation of Constantine'.

King Alfonso commissioned his secretary, who taught 'Eloquence' and was named Lorenzo Valla, to examine the 'Donation'. Valla published his findings in a treatise sometimes referred to as his 'Libellus'. Libellous indeed, some might say! The striking feature of the document is not so much in the detailed and meticulous way in which Valla takes the Donation to bits, as in the way in which he makes a complete mockery of anyone who could be so stupid as to have ever taken it seriously. He describes it in summary as "comprised of contradictions, impossibilities, stupidities, barbarisms and absurdities". He recalls the era of Constantine, and comments that if these territories had actually been donated to Pope Sylvester, he would "scarcely have survived, I think, a single day". In my own view, no one could seriously continue to assert the Donation's validity after reading Valla's 'Libellus', yet the Vatican continued to do so for a further three centuries, and no other Monarch seriously challenged its validity.

Even the English Monarchy, which ceded from Rome in 1530, found it convenient to carry on as if the 'Donation' had been valid, since it provided the legitimacy, not only for their suzerainity over Ireland, but also the divine endorsement for the administrative fabric of the state, and thus a veneer of legitimacy under which to pursue their own imperial ambitions.

CONCLUSIONS

It could be asserted that, since the whole basis of sovereignty in those countries which are part of, or have ever been colonies of a part of, the old Western Roman Empire appears to be nothing more than a poor forgery perpetrated by the Christian Church, then any subject of any of those countries would have a legitimate right to refuse to pay taxes, do military service etc., on the basis that those states owe their existence to nothing more sanctified than an HUMUNGOUS fraud. But this would cause Chaos.

One might certainly feel that the Irish government could have a basis for challenging any right of sovereignty in that island on the part of the government of Britain.

More significantly, any territory which was subject to annexation by any of the countries of Western Europe after publication of Valla's 'Libellus' would seem to have a strong case for challenging the quasi-divine basis on which any such annexation took place. Moreover, the indigenous inhabitants of such territories would probably have a basis for some claim of compensation (or even reparations), since any such annexation would have been made originally with the certain knowledge that its basis of legitimacy was fraudulent. Herein perhaps lies an angle which might be considered by those who feel concerned about Third World debt.

In closing I would like to stress that the issues involved here are essentially trans-denominational with respect to the Church. The Nicene doctrine of the Christian Trinity which underwrote the transformation of the Church into a state religion, and justified the enforcement (with all the brutality of pagan Roman tradition) of its own intellectual and academic monopoly, has been accepted and is accepted to this day by Catholic and Protestant alike.

There have been calls recently for 'disestablishment' of the Church of England - that is its formal separation from the state. As things are, the relationship between the established church and the British Crown is probably the last intact survivor maintaining the cozy compact embodied in the forged 'Donation of Constantine'. I would support such calls for disestablishment, even though in so doing I am surprised to find myself in the company of two other unlikely bedfellows, and Privy Counsellors of the Queen no less - The Right Honourable Tony Benn, and the Right Honourable Norman Tebbit.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING.

(Covering material in lecture papers 'Saint Augustine and Sex Magick' and 'We live in a Christian Country')

AUGUSTINE, Saint Confessions c. 400
-. The City of God c. 410
(translu M Dods; ed Univ Chicago) 1952
BAIGENT, M (et al) Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Corgi) 1983
BETTENSON, H Documents of the Christian Church COUP) 1963
BOARDMAN, S (et al) Oxford History of the Classical World COUP) 1986
BREWSTER, C G Liber Cyber (Ecliptica) 1990
The History of Eroticism in Ritual 1991
Liber Ritus Libera (unpublished) 1991
BURCKHARDT, S The Age of Constantine the Great (RKP) 1949
CHADWICK, H The Early Church (Pelican) 1967
COLEMAN, C B The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the 1922
'Donation of Constantine' (Yale Univ Press)

DE ROSA, P Vicars of Christ (Corgi) 1988
GIBBON, E Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1776

KRISTELLER, P 0 Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (ref ch 2. Lorenzo Valla) (Chatto & Windus) 1965

LAROUSSE World Mythology 1977
LEA, H C Studies in Church History (London) 1869
MALONE, v Rev S Adrian IY and Ireland (Dublin) 1899
RICHARDS, J Sex, Dissidence and Damnation (Routledge) 1991
YATES, F A Renaissance and Reform. The Italian Contribution (Collected Essays Vol II) (RKP) 1983
YORKE, Rev P A The Alleged Bull of Pope Adrian IY 1886 (a lecture to the Catholic Commercial Club)

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Various references including.- ed 1988

North Africa (History)

Constantine the Great

Carthage

Theodosius the Great

Saint Ambrose

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Valla, Lorenzo

Formosus, Pope

Donation of Constantine

Adrian IV, Pope