| #### 3. THE ORIGIN OF THE PAPAL STATE |

| #### #### It was now more than a century since any of the descendants of Clovis had actually reigned. Since the death of Dagobert (638) the kings had merely succeeded. The power was entirely in the hands of their chief subjects, and since 687 in the hands of the family of Pepin. It was they, the Mayors of the Palace, who ruled, the Merovingian kings only appearing in public once or twice in the course of their reign. So real was the power of the Carolingians that, within half a century, of their first laying hold of it Charles Martel was able to leave the kingship vacant for thirteen years. Pepin, when he succeeded his father, filled it once more, but in 751, flushed with a series of new victories, and, since the retirement of Carloman his brother to an Italian monastery, sole ruler of the Franks like his father before him, he determined to end the anomaly once for all. The Merovingian should be deposed and himself, with the reality of power, have the title also. He set the problem before the pope as a case of conscience. The pope agreed to the abstract case that whoever really ruled should be called king, and Pepin, strong in this ratification, assumed the succession for himself and his family in a general assembly of the nation. The last of the Merovingians was tonsured, with his son, and Pepin was consecrated king by St. Boniface. #### This consecration, a solemn anointing with holy oil, already in use among the Visigoths and the Anglo-Saxons, [ ] was a novelty in Gaul. It gave the new monarchy, from the beginning, something of a sacred character; and in the eyes of the new kings also, it may be, warranted that control in Church matters which they took over from the Merovingians and which they were to develop very strikingly in the next hundred years until it reached to the nomination of the popes themselves. Three years later the anointing was repeated with even greater solemnity. This time, in 754, it was the pope himself who conferred it, and on Pepin's sons as well -- Carloman and the future Charlemagne -- announcing, "It is the Lord who through our lowliness consecrates you as king." #### It was not merely to ratify the act of Boniface that, in 753, Stephen II had made the long journey from Rome to Quierzy. Between the first and second consecrations of Pepin a revolution in Italy had altered the whole temporal status of the papacy, and in that revolution the Frankish king's action had been the decisive factor. It has already been noted how, in the time of St. Gregory the Great, the Roman popes found themselves faced with the insoluble problem of being the loyal subjects of an emperor who would not come to terms with the Lombard invaders and who yet could not defeat them. As the seventh century wore on this problem grew even more acute. The Lombards increased their conquests until -- outside Calabria -- Aquileia, Venice, Rome, Naples, and their neighbouring countrysides were all that was left of Justinian's Italy. The Lombards, meanwhile, had abandoned their Arianism; they were now devout Catholics. The emperors, on the other hand, were the leaders and chief promoters of new heresies, of Monothelism in the seventh century, of Iconoclasm in the eighth. They showed themselves as ready to tyrannise in matters of religion, as willing to harry and even to murder the popes, as they were incompetent to defend their inheritance against the Lombards. Their representative at Ravenna lost his hold on all except the actual territory round that city; and while the duchies of Naples and Venice tended to become autonomous, the duchy of Rome, thanks to the popes, not only remained loyal but, more than once, helped by the circumstance that it was papal territory no less than imperial, it came to the assistance of the beleaguered exarch in Ravenna. It was a curious situation when the pope, whose properties the emperor had confiscated, whose arrest he had ordered, and against whom he had fitted out a great fleet, was the solitary defence in Italy of the emperor's representative. #### But during the reigns of the popes who were the patrons of St. Boniface -- Gregory II, Gregory III and Zachary -- events occurred that brought this anomaly to an end. The Lombard chiefs were, by this time (c. 715), three in number; there was the king of the Lombards, whose capital was Pavia; there were the two dukes of Spoleto and Benevento, nominally his subjects, but actually more than half independent. The king contemporary with these three popes was Liutprand (712-744), the greatest of all the Lombard kings and, as events were to show, an excellent Catholic. #### It was the new religious policy of the Emperor Leo III that occasioned the beginnings of change. When Gregory II denounced the imperial laws that forbade the veneration of images and banished them from the churches, the creaking imperial machinery was set in motion to reduce him to submission, as it had been set in motion against his predecessors, Sergius I in 695 and St. Martin I in 654. As in 695, the Roman people and the Roman division of the imperial army stood by the pope. The Lombards too joined with them, and it was their army that halted the exarch as he marched from Ravenna to execute the imperial will against St. Gregory. The exarch retreated to his capital, his troops mutinied and in the riot he lost his life. His successor preferred the ways of negotiation and, as a preliminary to reducing the pope, was bidden to break the new, unheard-of, papal alliance with the Lombards. The involved diplomacy, in which the mutual rivalry of the Lombard king and dukes played its part, ended curiously enough in a three-cornered pact between pope, exarch, and the Lombard king. This was in 730. The next year Gregory II died. #### His successor Gregory III, a Syrian, was just as resolute in his opposition to the Iconoclast emperor and in his defence of Leo's victims. The emperor confiscated the papal estates in Sicily and southern Italy. He cut the communications between the pope and the bishops of these provinces. But against the pope himself he was powerless, thanks to the growing autonomy of the duchies now separated from Ravenna by intervening Lombard territories, and thanks to the Lombard reduction of the exarch's power. The ten years of Gregory III's rule (731-741) were years of Lombard conquest, and the Romans were sufficiently ill-advised to assist the Duke of Spoleto against the king, and so to give Liutprand every excuse he needed to capture Rome itself. Rome the king did not indeed attack, but he had captured four towns in the north of the duchy when Gregory III died. The next pope, Zachary -- yet another oriental -- was more diplomatic. As Liutprand marched on Rome the papal policy changed. The cause of the rebel Duke of Spoleto was abandoned. The king promised to evacuate the Roman territory, and to restore the captured towns; and the Roman army joined with his to attack Spoleto. Two years later it was the turn of Ravenna to feel the weight of the Lombard power. Liutprand, master of Bologna, and of Cesena, had Ravenna in his hands when Zachary besought him to spare it. Once more the papal diplomacy, because it was papal, was successful. #### In the following year (744) Liutprand died. The new king, Ratchis, was equally warlike, and equally docile to the voice of St. Peter. As Liutprand had abandoned his campaign against Ravenna, so Ratchis now gave up the siege of Perugia. He did more, for in 749 he abdicated, and buried himself in the monastery of Monte Cassino -- an ill event for the fortunes of the imperial rule. Aistulf who succeeded him was of quite another stamp. Before Pope Zachary died (March, 752) Aistulf had taken Ravenna and its duchy, bringing the imperial rule to an end once and for all. He then turned to the towns that lay between his new territories and Rome -- Perugia, Todi, Amelia -- and to the conquest of Rome itself. The new pope, Stephen II (752-757), set himself to negotiate, and secured a peace of forty years. That was in June, 752. By the autumn the treaty was in pieces, and Aistulf demanding tribute from the Romans as the price of his "protection." Once more the pope negotiated, but this time in vain-Aistulf was inflexible. The papal ambassadors were both of them his own subjects, and the king sent them back to their respective monasteries. #### The winter passed with the Romans anxiously awaiting the descent of Aistulf's army with the first good days of spring From the emperor -- Constantine V -- all that came was an order to the pope to negotiate with Aistulf for the restoration of Ravenna. The Romans evidently must save themselves; the pope must somehow defeat the Lombards -- and he had no resources-or become their subject, losing the de facto independence he had enjoyed for half a century, and submitting to a barbarian master: unless he could find an ally who would deal effectively with the Lombards and disinterestedly with himself. The pope turned to the Franks, with whose princes, very largely because of St. Boniface, the papacy had been in close relation for thirty years and more. #### That the Franks should be called in to defend Rome against the Lombards was in keeping with Roman political tradition. Its last appearance had been so recently as the time of Pope Stephen's own predecessor Gregory III, who had made a great appeal to Charles Martel in 739, but fruitlessly. The Frank was then the ally of Liutprand, and saw no good reason why he should make war on his friend to restore Byzantinism at Rome. Thirteen years later the situation was very different. Byzantinism was dead, in Rome and even in Ravenna. Nor was the pope appealing now for its restoration. It was protection for St. Peter himself, his shrine, his people, his city that was the motive of the appeal. Charles Martel, too, was dead. In his place the pious Pepin reigned, and as recently as a matter of months ago Pepin had sought, and obtained, from St. Peter that ratification which consecrated as a religious act the coup d’etat by which he and his family had succeeded to the heritage of Clovis. #### The pope approached Pepin with the utmost secrecy, using a pilgrim as his agent. Pepin, in return, sent to Rome the Abbot of Jumieges. The reply which the abbot carried back to France was to the effect that the pope wished to treat personally of the important matter and besought Pepin to provide a suitable escort for his protection. Pepin agreed, and in the September of 753 the escort arrived in Rome. #### It found the pope prepared for his momentous journey, and it found with him yet another ambassador from the emperor. In the very hour when the pope, determined to end at last the dangerous futility of his nominal dependence on Constantinople, was setting out to meet his new protector, Byzantinism had again intervened. The pope was ordered to seek out Aistulf and to induce him to restore Ravenna to the empire. #### It was then a curiously mixed caravan, where the last of one age and the first of another met, that set out from Rome on October 14, 753, the pope, the imperial ambassador, the Franks. At Pavia they met the Lombard king. The pope made his appeal, the imperial ambassador supplemented it with his own eloquence and a letter from Constantine V. Aistulf, of course, remained unmoved. Whereupon the convoy split up. The Greeks returned to Constantinople; the pope, despite Aistulf's efforts to detain him, made his way to Aosta and the pass of the St. Bernard. At St. Moritz envoys from Pepin met him; at Langres, Pepin's son, the future Charlemagne. By the feast of the Epiphany 754 the pope had reached the royal palace at Ponthieu. Pepin with his court had gone out to meet him, had prostrated himself before the pope and in the procession walked beside him holding his stirrup. #### The next day the fateful interview took place. The pope and his court appeared before the Frankish king clad in sackcloth, ashes on their heads. They besought him to bring about a peaceful settlement of the cause of St. Peter and of the Roman State. Pepin consented, and pledged himself to restore the exarchate with all its rights and territories. Negotiations with Aistulf were opened forthwith. Pepin began by demanding a pledge that the Lombards, out of reverence for St. Peter and St. Paul, would for the future abstain from all hostilities against their city. Aistulf refused, and in two great assemblies of the Franks (at Braisne on March 1 and at Kiersy-sur-Oise on April 14, 754) it was agreed-not without opposition -- that the Lombards should be compelled by force of arms. Pepin marched his army across the Alps and laid siege to Pavia. Aistulf consented to treat. He agreed to surrender Ravenna and his other conquests and even Narni, a Roman town taken years before by Liutprand. In October, 754, the pope returned to Rome. #### Aistulf made over Narni to Pepin's representatives, and waited until Pepin and his army were safely over the Alps. Then he went back on his word. He refused to complete the surrender, and returned to the war of raid and pillage against Rome which had driven Pope Stephen to call in the Franks. On January 1, 756, he laid siege to Rome itself. The pope had already urged Pepin to return and complete the work of his first campaign. Now he managed to send a further embassy from the beleaguered city. The envoys took with them, among other letters, one addressed to the whole Frankish nation, written in the name of St. Peter, "I, Peter the Apostle." #### Pepin did not delay. As the Frankish army moved south Aistulf abandoned the siege of Rome and marched to meet it. He was defeated and locked himself up in Pavia. Pepin followed and as he prepared to lay siege to the town, once more the ghost of Byzantine Italy appeared. The same high official from Constantinople who had accompanied the pope in the mission of 753 now returned, to demand, of Pepin this time, that the disputed territories should, when he had reconquered them, be made over to the imperial government. Pepin refused. He had gone to war, he explained, for love of St. Peter, hoping by delivering the apostle to win pardon for his sins. The ambassador retired, this time finally. It was the old empire's definitive abandonment of its claim to the city whence it had sprung. Rome was to begin its history anew, independent of the empire which still continued to bear its name. #### The holy war continued. Aistulf was once more compelled to plead. This time the terms were more severe, and Pepin installed an army of occupation until they had been executed. Frankish officials went from town to town receiving the surrenders and the keys of the gates and then, making their way to Rome, they laid the collection before the tomb of the apostle. The pope was now, through the Frankish king's devotion to St. Peter, independent of any temporal ruler, was himself ruler, in name as in fact, of the city and State in which his see was fixed. A new and immense complication was thereby added to the development of Catholicism in the lands once ruled by the Roman Emperor of the West. ####  |