The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

Pepin now retired to his royal residence at Dietenhoven (Thionville, Villa Theudonis), on the Moselle, and spent the few months of peace that followed the Saxon war in ordering the affairs of the church, which he effected chiefly through the instrumentality of ecclesiastical synods.b

We may now profitably revert briefly to the affairs of the Lombards whom we left just at the moment of Liutprand’s death in 744.a

LOMBARD AFFAIRS

[744-751 A.D.]

The influence of Charles Martel with his ally and friend Liutprand, and the reverence which the latter entertained for the popes in their spiritual character, had caused a temporary lull in the affairs of Italy. But Liutprand died about two years after the accession of Pepin, and was succeeded, first by his grandson Hildebrand, who reigned seven months, and then by Ratchis, duke of Friuli, under whom the Lombards renewed the war against Rome. In this emergency, Zacharias, who, like many other popes, trusted greatly and with good reason to his personal influence over the rude kings and warriors of the age, went himself to Perugia (Perusia) to beg a peace from Ratchis. The result was favourable to a degree beyond his highest expectations. The Lombard monarch not only recalled his troops—which were already besieging the towns of the Pentapolis—and granted a peace of forty years, but was so deeply affected by the dignified demeanour and eloquent exhortations of the holy father, that, like another Carloman, he renounced his earthly crown, and sought a refuge from the cares of government in the quiet cloisters of Monte Cassino.b

This is the story as told in the Liber Pontificalis,i but there are reasons for thinking that Ratchis lost the favour of his own Lombards by winning the smile of the pope, and that a revolution unseated him and he was fortunate enough to be immured in a convent instead of meeting the probable fate of his predecessor, Hildebrand, whose disappearance is unexplained. It is a strange fact that Ratchis went to the same convent where the ex-king Carloman lived.a

[749-753 A.D.]

Ratchis was succeeded in 749 by his brother Aistulf, a man by no means so sensible to spiritual influences, and remarkable for his energy and strength of purpose. In three years from his accession to the Lombard throne, he succeeded in driving out Eutychius, the last exarch of the Greek emperors, from the exarchate of Ravenna, and made himself master of the city. Having thus secured the possession of the southern portion of the Roman territory, he marched upon Rome itself; and when Pope Zacharias died, March 15th, 752, it must have been with the melancholy conviction that all his efforts to preserve the independence of Rome, and to further the lofty claims of the papacy, were about to prove fruitless. Once more was Hannibal at the gates; but, fortunately for the interest of the threatened city, the successor of Zacharias, Stephen II, was a man in every way equal to the situation. By a well-timed embassy and costly presents, he stayed the uplifted arm of the Lombard for the moment, and, as often happens in human affairs, by gaining time he gained everything.

After remaining quiet for a few months, Aistulf again resumed his threatening attitude towards the Romans, and demanded a palpable proof of their subjection to himself, in the shape of a poll-tax of a gold solidus per head. A fresh embassy from the pope, which the Lombard king received at Nepi (near Sutri, north of Rome), met with no success, and the holy abbots of St. Vincent and St. Benedict, who composed it, returned to their monasteries in despair. Nor was any greater effect produced by the arrival of Joannes, the imperial Silentiarius, who was sent by the Greek emperor from Constantinople. This pompous messenger brought letters for the pope and King Aistulf, in which the latter was called upon to desist from his present undertaking and to restore the whole of the territory of which he had unjustly robbed the Grecian Empire. The high-sounding language and haughty requirements of the Byzantines, unsupported as they were by any material power, could make no impression upon such a man as Aistulf, and he dismissed the imperial envoy with an unmeaning answer.

The danger of Rome had now reached its highest point, and no deliverance seemed nigh. “King Aistulf,” in the language of the papal biographer,i “was inflamed with rage, and, like a roaring lion, never ceased to utter the most dreadful threats against the Romans, declaring that he would slay them all with the sword, if they did not submit themselves to his rule.” An appeal which the pope had made to the Byzantine emperors for protection was entirely fruitless, and the Romans were utterly unequal to sustain unaided a contest with the warlike Lombards. It was in this extremity that Stephen determined to test once more the value of that close relation which it had been the object of so many popes to form with the Frankish people, and more especially with the Carlovingian family. He knew that it would be no easy matter to induce King Pepin or his Franks to undertake an expedition into Italy with a force sufficient for the object in view. He felt, too, that a mere letter from Pepin, such as Charles Martel had sent to his good friend Liutprand, would be of no avail to turn the ambitious Aistulf from his purpose. He therefore adopted the resolution of crossing the Alps, throwing himself at the feet of the Frankish monarch and thus giving him a convincing proof that the very existence of the papacy was at stake.