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| The forgery known as the "Letter of St. Peter " was commissioned no later than 742 by Pepin the Short and Carloman to their scholars residing at the newly constructed Abbey of St. Denis. | |||||||||||||||
| The Letter --drafted on vellum and gilded with the finest fine gold leaf --represents one of the foundation documents in the creation of the Catholic Church and its claimed legitimacy against the Patriarch of Constantinople and his Imperial Christian Bishops. | |||||||||||||||
| The motive for its creation is strongly related to the famous excommunication of the Pippins by Holy Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Leo in 730. Its original intention was to make the clear claim that St. Peter was the first "Bishop of Rome" as well as being the "Vicar of Christ" --a superior position to any Byzantine Patriarch. | |||||||||||||||
| While today, virtually every christian sect believes that St. Peter was the "first Pope" and designated successor of Jesus Christ, this was a completely new and alien concept to Christians in the 8th Century. The Imperial Christian Church first formed by Emperor Constantine had based their history of apostolic succession firstly on being the undisputed "Mother Church" of christianity since 325 and secondly on a claimed unbroken line of bishops back to both blood relatives of Jesus and various of his disciples. | |||||||||||||||
| The Letter of St. Peter sought to repudiate both this real history and created history by simply demonstrating that St. Peter --not any brother (James) or any other disciple -- had apostolic authority from Jesus. The legal argument therefore became whomever is the the Vicar of Rome then can claim superior Apostolic authority over all other christian sects. | |||||||||||||||
| Text of the forgery | |||||||||||||||
Peter, elected Apostle by Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. I, Peter, summoned to the apostolate by Christ, Son of the Living God, has received from the Divine Might the mission of enlightening the whole world... Wherefore, all those who, having heard my preaching, put it into practice, must believe absolutely that by God's order their sins are cleansed in this world and they shall enter stainless into everlasting life Come ye to the aid of the Roman people, which has been entrusted to me by God. And I, on the day of Judgment, shall prepare for you a splendid dwelling place in the Kingdom of God. Signed, Peter, Prince of the Apostles |
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| Peter's Pence | |||||||||||||||
| After Pepin the Short smashed the Lombards and captured virtually all the land previously held by the Holy Roman Empire as the Exarch of Ravenna, he gave this land as a "Donation" to his cousin Vicarius Christi Stephen and the fledgling Catholic Church in 756. | |||||||||||||||
| To ensure the Catholic Church could fund itself and maintain its borders, a permanent taxation system was created -- the first since the end of the Roman Empire. The church tax known as "Peter's Pence" was derived from the authority claimed by the forged letter of St. Peter in "helping the Romans". It was even (falsely) claimed that this tax was an ancient tradition introduced by St Peter himself to help the "widows and orphans". | |||||||||||||||
| Initially this permanent ongoing tax was restricted just to the new Papal States. However, under the reign of Charlemagne, the false tax was permitted to be levied for the first time across the Frankish Empire from 782. The introduction of "Peter's Pence" caused a rebellion amongst a number of groups, most notably the Saxons--who initially refused to pay. | |||||||||||||||
| However, the tax and its completely fictional name has been surprisingly enduring and the first major kingdom to reject it correctly as a forgery was England under King Henry VIII by royal assent on 16 January 1555. | |||||||||||||||
| Exposure as a forgery and illegal tax | |||||||||||||||
| Neither the type of vellum, nor the ink used for the manuscript, nor the type of gold trimming existed at the time of St. Peter -- making the Letter an obvious fraud. However, the Catholic Church continued to defend its authenticity and the legal right upon which Peter's Pence was based right up until the split with England in 1555. | |||||||||||||||
| Since then, the Catholic Church no longer promotes the Letter of St. Peter-- instead claiming (perversely) Peter's Pence is legitimate simply because of tradition -- that people paid it for centuries. | |||||||||||||||
| Instead of conceding both the Letter of St. Peter and Peter's Pence is a complete fraud and illegal theft of property, the Catholic Church actually formalized both as claiming to be legal by Pope Pius IX in 1871 through his Encyclical Letter Saepe Venerabilis (5 August 1871). | |||||||||||||||
| Today, the illegal tax nets approximately US $80 million to $110 million each year directly to Rome. The largest constributor remains American Catholics. | |||||||||||||||
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