The seventh and eighth centuries in European history reveal the elements of religious and political life in a state of incessant and violent fermentation. Sudden changes took place in the relative position of nations. The old Empire was disintegrating and new kingdoms were appearing. During this period of political transformation, the Church was the only system that persisted in the old channel that it had created for itself. The Papacy, though not yet an acknowledged kingdom in the world, still stood among the political powers as a self-existent organisation, exercising an influence over princes and subjects. The governments were isolated, divided, anarchical. In the Church alone was there unity, order, method, organisation, and supreme purpose. There alone was found facility of communication and cordial interchange of views. The Popes of Rome kept up a constant intercourse with all nations from Asia to the Atlantic and constituted the one recognised unifying force in
Europe standing for the highest ideals of the age along all lines.
Up to this period the See of Rome had gone far toward establishing an ecclesiastical monarchy. Every principle of an unlimited religious autocracy had been asserted and to a considerable extent established. The outward machinery for this spiritual absolutism had been created and partially put in motion. But many obstacles to the smooth working of the system were still encountered. Chief among these impediments was the strong arm of the eastern Empire. Until the fetters of political dependence were broken, the Papacy could never accomplish its great mission.
Hitherto the Church of Rome had assumed a political headship on many occasions, but it was the result of some accidental emergency and soon disappeared. Nevertheless the experience gained in this exercise of secular authority created an ambition on the part of the Roman Pontiffs for political independence, furnished precedents for future claims, and led the Italians to believe that the head of the Church could give them efficient government in temporal affairs as well as spiritual. The great problem before the successors of St. Peter at this time was how to manage the ecclesiastical ascendency already gained over the Western Church, so as to render it serviceable in securing that political self-existence so essential not only to maintain the ground already won but also to realise their high hopes in other directions. At this juncture a combination of external causes, unparalleled in the world's history, came in to favour the emancipation of the Papacy from the last feeble bonds of a nominal dependency and to permit of the assumption of temporal sovereignty
virtually if not in recognised title. This meant the realisation of the mediæval Church.
Emperor Leo's attempt to abolish the worship of images in Christendom provoked a rebellion in Italy headed by the Pope. Luitprand, seeing his opportunity as King of the Lombards, fell on the exarchate as the champion of images and on Rome as the supposed ally of the Emperor. The Pope, perilously placed between a heretic and an invader, appealed for help to a Catholic chief across the Alps who had just saved Christendom by defeating the Mohammedans on the field of Poitiers. Gregory III. excommunicated the eastern Emperor and begged Charles Martel to hasten to the succour of the Holy Church. Here the Roman Pontiff leads a political revolt against his legitimate sovereign and appeals to a foreign power to make the revolt successful. The Bishop of Rome has stepped into the position of a temporal prince with the political future of Italy in his hands.
The alliance of the Papacy with the Franks marks a new epoch not only in Church history, but in the history of western Europe. These Franks settled in northern France about 250, and began to Germanise the Celtic and Romanic races and institutions found there. But the current of Roman civilisation was so strong that the Franks were swept into it before they realised it. Under Clovis, they were converted directly to Roman Christianity.[302:1] With the aid of the Roman Christians, he was able to conquer the Arian princes of the western Goths, Burgundians, and Bavarians. He and his successors gave the Church much property, acquiesced in the papal claims, and helped
to extend the papal power throughout the West, though they ruled the bishops and clergy as their vassals.[303:1] Clovis, himself, convoked synods and enacted Church laws. Later rulers followed these precedents.[303:2] Thus the way was prepared for a successful alliance between the Frankish ruler and the Papacy.[303:3]
The house of Pepin was to play an important part in this new arrangement. In 622, Pepin of Laudon, a zealous champion of Christianity, was made mayor of the palace in Austrasia. Pepin of Herstal, grandson of the first Pepin, became in 688 a mayor of the palace for all France (d. 714). He succeeded in making the office hereditary in his family. A series of infant kings[303:4] made the mayor virtually king. Pepin viewed the Church as a powerful ally, and fostered missionaries. Under him, twenty bishoprics were founded, and the Church secured large territorial possessions.[303:5]
Charles Martel, after a contest of four years, succeeded to his father's office in 718. He ruled France with the hand of a master, Christianised the Frisians on the north by force, aided Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, defeated the Saracens at the battle of Tours (732), and drove them back into Spain.[303:6] On the death of Theodoric IV. (737), Charles ruled the Franks directly without setting up another puppet king. Pope Gregory III. in 739 sent him the keys of St. Peter's grave, with the offer of the sovereignty of Rome and Italy in return for aid against the Lombards.[303:7]