“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666” (Revelation 13:18)

Pastor Charles T. Russell, Question Book (1911), page 37. “What about the number of the beast, 666?”

ANSWER. — “There are various interpretations given to this. I am not specially prepared to say all about my view of the matter, except that I believe it would represent the title of papacy. There are three Latin words inscribed on the Pope’s crown, Vicarius Filii Dei, the Vicarious Son of God. This title attached to the Pope would seem to be an illegitimate one. He is not the vicarious Son of God; he is not the vicar of Christ; he is not reigning instead of Christ; and therefore every intimation to the effect that he is the substitute or representative of Christ in reigning power would seem to be that much of a blasphemy. Not that the Pope and the Catholics understand that they are blaspheming. I presume they feel fully confident that this is all very true of him. But to our understanding it is untrue, and he is in a false position, and is really anti-Christ, or the counterfeit Christ, as the Bible would express the matter.”

THE LATIN PAPAL TITLE VICARIUS FELII DEI

The origins of this Latin title for the Pope, Vicarius Filii Dei, which translates to the “Vicarious (or Substitute) Son of God” may be traced to the fabricated document called the Donation of Constantine. Historians have declared this document, “the most famous forgery in European history” (Coleman).

Continuing to quote from Coleman; “The Donation of Constantine, written … in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (about 847-853). Parts of it were included in most of the medieval collections of canon law; Anselm’s, Deusdedit’s, and Gratian’s great work (the Decretum, or Concordia discordantium canonum). It purports to reproduce a legal document in which the Emperor Constantine the Great, reciting his baptism and the cure of his leprosy at the hands of Sylvester, Bishop of Rome 314-336, confirmed the privilege of that pontiff as head of all the clergy and supreme over the other four patriarchates; conferred upon him extensive imperial property in various parts of the world, especially the imperial Lateran palace, and the imperial diadem and tiara, and other imperial insignia; granted the Roman clergy the rank of the highest Roman orders and their privileges; gave Sylvester and his successors freedom in consecrating men for certain orders of the clergy; it tells how he, Constantine, recognized the superior dignity of the Pope by holding the bridle of his horse; grants Sylvester Rome, all of Italy, and the western provinces, to remain forever under the control of the Roman See; and states his own determination to retire to Byzantium in order that the presence of an earthly emperor may not embarrass ecclesiastical authority. This remarkable document was almost universally accepted as genuine from the ninth to the fifteenth century.”

Finally, even Catholic scholarship from the early 20th century admitted to the fabrication (U.B., Catholic His­torical Review).

Emperor Constantine kneels before Pope Sylvester and presents him with his crown.

THE FALSE DECRETAL

Recognizing that few of our readership have fluency in Latin, the opening lines of the decretal in Latin appear in the References (Coleman). The English translation is:

“THE Emperor Constantine the fourth day after his baptism conferred this privilege on the Pontiff of the Roman church, that in the whole Roman world priests should regard him as their head, as judges do the king. In this privilege, among other things, is this: “We — together with all our satraps, and the whole senate and my nobles, and also all the people subject to the government of glorious Rome — considered it advisable, that as the Blessed Peter is seen to have been constituted vicar of the Son of God on the earth, so the Pontiffs who are the representatives of that same chief of the apostles, should obtain from us and our empire the power of a supremacy greater than the clemency of our earthly imperial serenity is seen to have conceded to it, choosing that same chief of the apostles and his vicars to be our constant intercessors with God.”

Such is the inflated language of delusion. The most significant and comprehensive passage of the entire document reads as follows (Camporeale):

“In order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with glory and power even greater than the dignity of earthly rule, behold, we give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, our palace, as has been said, and also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the Holy Roman Church.”

THE FALSE DECRETAL AND THE RENAISSANCE

In the 15th century, the Papacy and the Spanish king Alfonso of Aragon contested the rule of the Kingdom of Naples. Such political bickering was not at all unusual. What was unusual was that Alfonso tasked Lorenzo Valla, a scholar of high ability, to examine the claims of the Donation of Constantine. Valla did not disappoint Alfonso.

In 1440 Valla authored a document that examined the Donation line by line and word by word, declaring all of it false. Writing to the Cardinal and defending himself against the certain fatal charge of heresy:

“Why did I write about the Donation of Constantine? … Bear one thing in mind. I was not moved by hatred of the Pope, but acted for the sake of the truth, of religion, and also of a certain renown-to show that I alone knew what no one else knew” (Valla to Cardinal Trevisan, 1443, Camporeale).

The shock to the scholarly community from Lorenzo Valla’s work, the Oration on the Falsely­-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, is believed to be an event of great importance that awoke Europe from its one-thousand year sleep and launched the Renaissance, or Rebirth.

666

By itself, it is clear that the imperfect number “6” is repeated three times in 666. The Greek word for “Six” is “Hex” which when used in English retains the sense of “cursed.” In this case, a full “threefold” curse!

Gematria, or summing up the numerical value of the letters in a word, was well established both among Jews and other peoples of the world at the time John wrote Revelation. One incontrovertible example of gematria in the New Testament is found in the opening of the Gospel of Matthew 1:17 (written originally in the Aramaic language of Jesus and the Apostles). Here a full “threefold” blessing of “14” is referenced. Any Jew would have recognized “14” as the number of David: 14 = 4 + 6 + 4 = דוד

How Vicarius Filii Dei, in Roman numerals, adds up to 666.

Hence, the full “threefold” curse clearly is significant, but there appears to be a more direct application. Since Revelation was originally authored in Greek, searches for titles that summed to 666 went on in earnest from early in the Gospel Age. Many solutions were proposed. For example, the early Christian author Irenaeus’ solution in Greek (ca. AD 180) noted that the original spelling of the name for Rome was Lateinos (Λατεινος) — letter numbers 30, 1, 300, 5, 10, 50, 70, 200 — which sum to 666 (Randolph Elwood Streeter, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, Volume 2, PBI, 1924, page 143).

Why should Vicarius Filii Dei be considered the answer to Revelation 13:18, when many proposed titles in both Latin and Greek have a numerical value of 666?

There are two answers. The Donation of Constantine giving the Pope the title Vicarius Filii Dei had great power for six centuries during the height of Papal power (~840 – 1440 AD). As noted, “This remarkable document was almost universally accepted as genuine from the ninth to the fifteenth century.”

Secondly, Lorenzo Valla, discrediting the Donation, changed the course of Western Civilization and ushered in the Renaissance, an unbridled exuberance to expand the intellect and develop the arts. It seems not to be coincidence that this date 1440 AD happens to be the common date given for the invention of the printing press which made it possible to disseminate information widely at an unprecedented low cost. It would seem that this year 1440 AD saw two enormous factors that began the weakening of papacy!

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man.

— Br. Richard Doctor

 

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REFERENCES

Coleman, Christopher B., Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine by Lorenzo Valla, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press (1922). Latin decretal text from Gratian:

CONSTANTINUS imperator quarta die sui baptismi privilegium Romanae ecclesiae Pontifici contulit, ut in toto orbe Romano sacerdotes ita hunc caput habeant, sicut iudices regem. In eo privilegio ita inter cetera legitur: “Utile iudicavimus una cum omnibus satrapis nostris, et universo senatu optimatibusque meis, etiam et cuncto populo Romanae gloriae imperio subiacenti, ut sicut B. Petrus in terris Vicarius Filii Dei esse videtur constitutus, ita et Pontifices, qui ipsius principis apostolorum gerunt vices, principatus potestatem amplius quam terrena imperialis nostrae serenitatis mansuetudo habere videtur, concessam a nobis nostroque imperioobtineant, eligentes nobis ipsum principem apostolorum vel eius vicarios firmos apud Deum esse patronos.

Camporeale, Salvatore I., “Lorenzo Valla’s Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 57, No. 1 (January 1996), pages 9-26.

Watts, Pauline Moffitt, “A Mirror for the Pope: Mapping the “Corpus Christi” in the Galleria Delle Carte Geografiche,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Volume 10 (2005), pages 173-192.

U.B., “The False Decretals,” Catholic Historical Review, Volume 9, No. 4 (January 1924), pages 566-569.

 

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