not carry out this plan; but he could annoy the Pope throughout the territory of Italy which was still in possession of the Empire. At that time Ravenna and the Exarchate, Rome itself (in theory) and Naples with their duchies, Calabria, Sicily, and some maritime cities of Apulia, were still imperial. The Emperor wrote to enforce his Iconoclast decrees in these provinces. This led to rebellion throughout most of Italy. "The wickedness of the Emperor being known, all Italy took counsel to choose a new Emperor and to lead him to Constantinople; but the Pontiff repressed this plan, hoping for the Prince's conversion."[1] At Rome the Government of Constantinople could do nothing. There was a great rebellion against it at Naples, where the people were particularly Roman in feeling.[2] It was this quarrel which resulted eventually in the loss to the Empire of Ravenna with the Exarchate, and of Rome, when Gregory called in Charles Martel and his Franks
Meanwhile, in Sicily and the South, where the Emperor had more power, he began a campaign against the Pope. In this campaign we must distinguish three objects. The Emperor tried first to force the people and the clergy to accept his Iconoclasm; secondly, he confiscated the territorial possessions of the Holy See in the South;[3] thirdly, he tried to detach all the dioceses of the South and of Sicily from their allegiance to Rome, and to unite them to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. There is a difference in the importance of these three policies. The first was a matter of heresy which, if it had succeeded, would, of course, have involved schism. On this point there could be no question of compromise. The confiscation of the property of the Holy See was robbery and spoliation; but it did not involve any point of faith or Church order. The third, the annexation of dioceses to the
- ↑ "Liber Pontificalis, xci, Greg. II" (ed. Duchesne, Paris, 1886-1892, vol. i, pp. 404-405). Cf. Theophanes, "Chron.," ad ann. M. 6221 (P.G., cviii, col. 825, B). For the relations of the Pope, Emperor, and people of Italy after the first Iconoclast law, see J. S. Assemani, "Italicæ historiæ scriptores" (Rome, 1751-1753), vol. iii, pp. 215-227, and Hefele-Leclercq, "Hist. des Conciles" (Paris, 1910, iii), pp. 647-675.
- ↑ See p. 85.
- ↑ The Holy See at that time had vast properties in the Campagna, Calabria, Sicily, Tuscany, Corsica, Sardinia, Dalmatia, Gaul, Africa. See Assemani, "Ital. hist. script.," vol. iii, cap. v, pp. 297-339; L. A. Muratori, "Antiq. Ital.," v, Diss. 69, cols. 797-908; L. di Brolo, "Storia d. Chiesa in Sicilia," i, cap. xxii, pp. 445-485; K. Schwarzlose, "Die Patrimonien der röm. Kirche bis zur Gründung des Kirchenstaates" (Berlin, 1887).
