Inflections in a Constantinian Forgery
Latin sytax depends on word order, not endings. That can result in some syntactic ambiguity, as it did in the salutation of Constantine’s (probably forged) Donation to Pope Silvester—sanctissimo et beatissimo patri patrum Silvestro, urbis Romae episcopo et pape. M. J. Edwards untangles the inflections and referents in the current issue of the Journal of Theological Studies:
How should one render urbis Romae episcopo et pap(a)e? T. D. Barnes, commenting on my own version, ‘[to the] bishop and pope of the city of Rome’, insists on the alternative ‘[to the] bishop of the city of Rome and pope’.3 This translation agrees with that of Henderson,4 and indeed with the spirit of the whole decree, because it intimates that the bishopric alone is local, the papacy universal. Urbis Romae episcopo et papae recurs in chapter 15, where Henderson takes it once again to mean ‘[to the] bishop of the city of Rome and pope’.5 Yet Henderson at least is aware that in this text the urbs contains the orbs, for in his translation of chapter 14 the Latin universali urbis Romae papae is properly represented by ‘[to the] universal pope of the city of Rome’.6 Since papa must be construed with urbis Romae here, and since it never appears without some qualifying term elsewhere in the document, there can be no solecism in making urbis Romae depend on it in the other two cases also.
Next entry: How to Speak Nootka
Previous entry: Res, verba, and rhetorical relatives