This proffered alliance was refused, but Charles offered to mediate between the Pope and the Lombards.[304:1] He dealt with Church endowments as with any other part of the royal domain. He gave to his liege Milo the archbishoprics of Rheims and Treves, and to his nephew Hugh the archbishoprics of Rouen, Paris, and Bayeau with several abbeys. When he died in 741, "he divided his kingdom between his sons"—a proof that not only the office of mayor of the palace, but also that of king, had become practically hereditary in his family; yet Charles Martel had never assumed the title of king.
The actual alliance of the Pope with the Franks was consummated with Pepin the Short. The occasion for the compact was the Iconoclastic Controversy in the East, and the change of dynasty in the West. Pepin the Short accepted what Charles Martel had refused. He ruled Neustria, while Carloman, his brother, ruled Austrasia (741-747). When Carloman became a monk (747), Pepin was left as the sole ruler of all France, but still under a phantom Merovingian king. In 751, with the consent of the Franks in their annual assembly, two churchmen were sent to Rome to ask Pope Zacharias, acting in the capacity of an international arbiter, whether the real king ought not to take the name of king. The Pope answered in the affirmative, and thus authorised the usurpation.[304:2] Thus a new prerogative of the Holy See came into active existence. The next year the assembly of Soissons elected Pepin and his wife King and Queen of France. Childeric III., the Merovingian weakling, was shorn of both his royal hair and his royal crown, and shut up in a monastery.
Boniface in all probability then anointed the head appointed by the Pope to wear the French crown.[305:1]
Through this alliance, the Pope expected to make the declaration of independence from the eastern Empire good, to increase and extend papal power in the West, to establish a precedent for deposing and enthroning kings—a significant thing for the future,—and to gain material help against the Arian Lombards who were threatening Rome.[305:2] In 753, Pope Stephen II., who succeeded Zacharias (752), fled to France from the Lombards to implore aid from Pepin against them. In sack-cloth and ashes, he threw himself at the King's feet and would not rise until his petition was granted.[305:3] The Pope himself now solemnly anointed Pepin and his family with royal power, at St. Denis, and made him and his two sons patricians of Rome.[305:4] After that Pepin called himself "by the grace of God, King of the Franks."
Pepin repaid the Pope by making two excursions into Italy against the Lombards. He took an army to Italy in 754, defeated the Pope's enemies, and compelled them to sign a treaty respecting the rights
and territory of the Roman See, but the Franks had scarcely recrossed the Alps before the promises were broken. Pepin, therefore, entered Italy a second time (755), called thither by the famous letter purporting to be from St. Peter himself.[306:1] The Lombard power was effectually broken. The towns and lands of the exarchate and Romagna, claimed by both the Lombards and the eastern Emperor, were given to the Pope.[306:2] This is the famous "Donation of Pepin" by which his envoy laid the conquest of twenty-two cities at the shrine of St. Peter, and thus began the temporal power of the Pope.[306:3] The act of donation is lost.[306:4] The Pope had owned tracts of land all over the Empire before, but now he becomes through this gift a temporal sovereign over a large part of Italy known as the "Patrimony of St. Peter," or the "States of the Church," which continued until 1870, when it was absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. This act changed the whole later history of the Papacy[306:5] and provoked a long controversy with the secular powers of Europe. Pepin continued to labour to build up the Church in France by restoring confiscated Church property,[306:6] by undertaking needed reforms in discipline and organisation,[306:7] and by giving material assistance and valuable relics to many religious foundations.
This alliance between the most powerful representative
of the Germanic world and the leader of Roman Christendom in the West was one of the most eventful coalitions in the history of Europe.[307:1] It was the event upon which all mediæval history turned. It created a new political organisation in western Europe with the Pope and German Emperor at the head. For centuries, it affected every institution in western Europe. After Pepin, each new Pope sent a delegation with the key and flag of Rome and the key of St. Peter's tomb to the Frankish rulers for confirmation of the election and to give the king the oath of allegiance. Thus, the strongest western king assumed the same prerogative over the Church which the eastern Emperor had exercised. Pepin's policy was followed by Charles the Great, the German Emperors, the Austrian Emperors, Napoleon the Great, and Napoleon III.
The next important step in the relations between Church and state was the restoration of the Roman Empire in the West in 800 by Charles the Great,[307:2] the son of Pepin. Charles was born in 742, and received the education of a warrior. At the age of twelve, he was anointed king, with his father and brother, by Pope Stephen II. (754). As a boy, he participated in military expeditions and gained considerable renown for his ability, his independence, and his prowess. When his father died in 768, he ruled jointly with his brother Carloman, whom he apparently hated very bitterly, and with whom he quarrelled continually, until 771, when Carloman died and Charles assumed his rule as King of all the Franks.
The first problem which engaged his attention was to strengthen and extend his kingdom. This he