The pope’s commissioners received the keys of the towns, which were placed upon the altar of St. Peter; and this, the Dotation of Pepin, the Dotation of the Exarchate, was the first legal temporal sovereignty of the Popes:—born in sin, and conceived in iniquity, as you may see.
The Lombard rule now broke up rapidly. The Lombards of Spoleto yielded to the double pressure of Franks and Romans, asked to be ‘taken into the service of St. Peter,’ and clipt their long German locks after the Roman fashion.
Charlemagne, in his final invasion, had little left to do. He confirmed Pepin’s gift, and even, though he hardly kept his promise, enlarged it to include the whole of Italy, from Lombardy to the frontier of Naples, while he himself became king of Lombardy, and won the iron crown.
And so by French armies—not for the last time—was the Pope propt up on his ill-gotten throne.
But the mere support of French armies was not enough to seat the Pope securely upon the throne of the western Cæsars. Documentary evidence was required to prove that they possessed Rome, not as the vassals of the Frankish Kaisers, or of any barbarian Teutons whatsoever; but in their own right, as hereditary sovereigns of Rome. And the documents, when needed, were forthcoming. Under the name of St. Isidore, some ready scribe produced the too-famous ‘Decretals,’ and the ‘Donation of Constantine,’ and Pope Adrian I. saw no reason against publishing them to Charlemagne and to the world.
It was discovered suddenly, by means of these remarkable documents, that Constantine the Great had been healed of leprosy, and afterwards baptized, by Pope Sylvester; that he had, in gratitude for his cure, resigned to the Popes his western throne, and the patrimony of St. Peter, and the sovereignty of Italy and the West; and that this was the true reason of his having founded Constantinople, as a new seat of government for the remnant of his empire.
This astounding falsehood was, of course, accepted humbly by the unlettered Teutons; and did its work well, for centuries to come. It is said—I trust not truly—to be still enrolled among the decrees of the Canon law, though reprobated by all enlightened Roman Catholics. Be that as it may, on the strength of this document the Popes began to assume an all but despotic sovereignty over the western world, and—the Teutonic peoples, and Rome’s conquest of her conquerors was at last complete.
What then were the causes of the Papal hatred of a race who were good and devout Catholics for the last 200 years of their rule?
There were deep political reasons (in the strictest, and I am afraid lowest sense of the word); but over and above them there were evidently moral reasons, which lay even deeper still.
A free, plain-spoken, practical race like these Lombards; living by their own laws; disbelieving in witchcraft; and seemingly doing little for monasticism, were not likely to find favour in the eyes of popes. They were not the material which the Papacy could mould into the Neapolitan ideal of ‘Little saints,—and little asses.’ These Lombards were not a superstitious race; they did not, like the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, crowd into monasteries. I can only find four instances of Lombard sovereigns founding monasteries in all Paulus’ history. One of them, strangely enough, is that of the very Astulf against whom the Pope fulminated so loudly the letter from St. Peter which I read you.