Lorenzo Villa was the first great fakeologist of Modernity.
He deconstructed and exposed as a fraud. the most famous forgery in history:
“The Donation of Constantine”
It marked the end of the medieval period (“Middle Ages”) and the beginning of the “modern” (“Renaissance”) in northern Italy, and throughout Europe.
It forever dethroned the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church from any claim to intellectual, moral or political authority in Europe.
It forever closed the book on the “Age of Faith” and ushered in the “Age of Discovery”.
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The earliest extant manuscript of the Donation, from the 9th century, was inserted into the collection known as the False Decretals. Despite the document’s obvious value to the papacy, no mention of it was made in the 9th or 10th centuries, even during controversies with Constantinople over matters of primacy. Leo IX (1049–54) was the first pope to cite it as an authority in an official act, and subsequent popes used it in their struggles with the Holy Roman emperors and other secular leaders. Various ecclesiastics included it in their codes of canon law, including one of Gratian’s students, and even Rome’s opponents seldom questioned its authenticity. Doubts about the document, however, were voiced about the year 1000 by Otto III and his supporters. In 1440 Lorenzo Valla showed that the Latin used in the document was not that of the 4th century.
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Donati ... onstantine
What followed in 1453, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) sealed the deal.
And the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire (Jan Huss) and England (John Wycliffe).