forth what territories were to be given to the Pope. This is the
“donation of Pepin.” Twice did the Frankish army invade Italy—on
the first occasion at the Pope’s personal request and on the second owing
to the receipt of the letter which St Peter himself was believed to
have addressed to the king of the Franks. In the end twenty-three
cities including Ravenna were surrendered by Aistulf to Stephen III,
who, at the time of his death in April, 757, had become a sovereign
prince. But in gaining territory the Papacy lost independence by
becoming too great a prize for any man to win without a struggle.
The rest of the history of the eighth century shews that in order to
enjoy that which Pepin had bestowed the popes must become dependents
of the Franks, who were thus compelled to invade Italy as conquerors to
maintain the Papacy which they had enriched.
Paul I, the successor of Stephen, enjoyed a somewhat peaceful pontificate of ten years, a.d. 757-767; but we are able to see that the acquisition of the imperial territory on the shores of the Adriatic had further relaxed the feeble tie which still held the Papacy to Constan- tinople. Paul had to deal with Constantine V, the most formidable of the Iconoclasts; and he had to protect alike the holy images and the possessions of the Roman Church. In his correspondence with Pepin, the Greeks are styled nefandissimi. Once the Church had obtained Ravenna and the cities of Emilia and the Pentapolis there could be no restoration of the exarchate. The political connexion between Rome and Constantinople was practically severed by the donation of Pepin. The king of the Franks died in 768, a year later than Paul; and we enter upon one of the most critical eras of papal history. All on which this chapter has hitherto dwelt : the severance from the imperial authority at Constantinople, the disputes with the Lombards, the alliance with the Franks, the work of Gregory II, Boniface, and Stephen III, culminates in Charles the Great. With his accession we stand at the opening of a new epoch in the history of Western Europe, fraught with important consequences. The theological breach between East and West, the medieval theory of Papacy and Empire, the great strife of secular and spiritual powers, are traceable to the years immediately before us.
In considering the relations between the popes and the Franks during the long reign of Charles the Great it is necessary to bear in mind that, though Pepin by his donation had made the popes into priest-kings, their position was precarious in the extreme. Italy under Lombard rule was in a state of anarchy; and Rome itself was the centre of a barbarism which was intensified by being concealed under the specious name of ecclesiastical government and claimed to represent not only the piety but the civilisation of the West. When we read of kings, dukes, pontiffs, cardinals (first mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis at this time of the senate, of the exercitus or militia ; when modern terms like
