The Donation of Constantine was a letter supposedly written by the Roman emperor Constantine (285-337 A.D.) to Pope Sylvester I, granting the Catholic Church ownership of vast territories within the western Roman Empire. For centuries, Popes used the Donation to legitimate the Church’s possession of the papal lands in Italy. The truth was that the Church only officially acquired the papal lands in 756 ad when King Pepin of the Frankish Empire gave them to the Church as a gift. But for almost 700 years, until 1440, the Donation was considered to be authentic. More→

The Holy Foreskin of Christ first made an appearance in medieval Europe around 800 ad, when King Charlemagne presented it as a gift to Pope Leo III. Charlemagne said it had been given to him by an angel. However, rival foreskins soon began to pop up all over Europe. More→

The Shroud of Turin first came to the attention of the public in 1355, when it was exhibited at the Church of St. Mary in Lirey, France. It had been given to the church by a French knight, Geoffroy de Charny, who probably acquired it in Constantinople. Its supporters claim that this fourteen-foot piece of cloth bearing the image of a naked man was the funeral shroud of Christ. They argue that only supernatural means could have created such an image. Skeptics dismiss the shroud as a medieval forgery, arguing that: 1) there was a flourishing trade in false relics during the middle ages; 2) a medieval forger could definitely have created such an image (researchers have offered a variety of theories to explain how it might have been done); and 3) the man's body is oddly proportioned (his head is too large), which suggests the image is a painting. More→

Crowland Abbey, located deep in the Lincolnshire fens of England, was once a center for medieval religious life. Today, however, it lies mostly in ruins. A few quatrefoil window carvings and undamaged statues provide a sense of the building's former glory, but the abbey itself is less well known for its artwork than it is for an outrageous historical hoax that its former inhabitants once perpetrated. More→

Jean Hardouin (1646-1729) was not himself a forger, but he was the author of an unusual theory about forgery. As librarian of the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, he came to the conclusion that virtually all classical texts, and most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, had been forged by a group of thirteenth-century monks led by a mysterious figure whom he called Severus Archontius. The goal of this group was supposedly to "establish Atheism amongst men, by paganising all the facts of Christianity". The name Severus Archontius was probably a veiled reference to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen.

Hardouin was, at the time he first proposed his theory in 1693, a highly regarded scholar. Other learned men tried to take him seriously and argued the merits of his theory with him, but as he persisted in his views, he gradually came to be seen as a pariah in the scholarly community. One contemporary described him as "very confident, arrogant, and violently addicted to hypothesis and paradox." His critics referred to his theory dismissively as "Harduinismus".

Hardouin claimed he "detected the whole fraud" by spotting a series of clues embedded in classical works, clues that included instances of poor writing as well as apparent anachronisms. He believed the thirteenth-century forgers had not only forged the core classical texts, but also a range of later references to these texts, thereby creating a vast web of mutually reinforcing deception.

A nineteenth-century historian remarked that, "The legitimate inference from his theory is that he wished to establish Romanism on the ruins of universal learning, and to reduce mankind to an implicit submission to the Popedom: for, to the obvious question, which he states himself, 'If we must not believe the Fathers, whom can we believe?' he boldly replies: 'Not the Fathers, I say, but our Holy Mother the Church of Rome.'"

Viewed in a broader context, Hardouin's theory can be seen as an extreme expression of a growing awareness amongst seventeenth-century scholars of the number of errors, exaggerations, and inventions in the historical record.

In 1747 word of a major new historical discovery reached England. Charles Bertram (1723-65), a 24-year-old English teacher in Denmark, had found an ancient manuscript and accompanying map, titled De Situ Brittaniae, that detailed the layout of roads and settlements in Roman Britain.

The material caused a buzz of excitement amongst antiquarians because it revealed numerous Roman landmarks whose existence had not been previously known and suggested the existence of an entire unknown Roman province. But in fact, the map and manuscript turned out to be one of the greatest forgeries of the century. More→

The Kinderhook Plates were an archaeological hoax designed to embarrass the Mormons by tricking their leader, Joseph Smith, into "translating" phony hieroglyphics written on them.

The plates were six bell-shaped pieces of flat copper, unearthed from an Indian burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois in April 1843. The hieroglyphics were inscribed on the front of the plates. The plates were supposedly found buried beside the skeleton of a man.

Joseph Smith, who was living sixty miles away in Nauvoo, did examine the plates, but there is controversy about whether he attempted to translate the hieroglyphics. Some reports state that he did. An account published in the Mormon Deseret News in 1856 stated that Smith translated a portion of them and found them to contain "the history of the person with whom they were found. He was a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt."

However, the Mormon Church denies Smith ever made a translation.

The hoax was later revealed to be the work of three men — Wilbur Fugate, Robert Wiley, and Bridge Whitton — who lived near Kinderhook. According to a letter written by Fugate, the trio had heard a prophecy by Mormon Elder Orson Pratt that "truth is yet to spring from the earth", and they decided to "prove the prophecy by way of a joke."

Whitton, who was a blacksmith, made the plates, and Wiley, a local merchant, pretended to discover them in the Indian mound.

Lucas's career as a forger began in 1851 when he met the esteemed French mathematician Michel Chasles. Lucas showed the mathematician a few letters he claimed to have found written by famous historical personages such as Joan of Arc and Charlemagne. Chasles was intrigued, so Lucas began "finding" more letters for him. More→