Rome was still under the shadow of this brutal quarrel when, in the year 772, Hadrian became Pope. He came of a noble Roman family, and, having been left an orphan in tender years, he had been reared by a pious uncle. Culture at Rome in the eighth century had sunk to its lowest depth, and the letters of Hadrian, like all documents of the time, are full of the grossest grammatical errors. In the school of virtue and asceticism, however, he was a willing pupil. His fasts and his hair-shirt attracted attention in his youth, and he was so favourably known to all at the time of Stephen's death that he was at once and unanimously elected.
Didier pressed for the new Pope's friendship. Charlemagne had already tired of his daughter, or no longer needed her dowry (the Lombard alliance), and had ignominiously restored her to her father's court and ventured upon a third matrimonial experiment. We do not find Hadrian rebuking the Frank King, but he sent his chamberlain Afiarta to the Lombard court, to arrange for the restoration of the cities ceded to Rome and, presumably form an alliance with Didier. While Afiarta was away, however, two things occurred which caused him to change his policy. Carlomann died in France, and his share of the kingdom was annexed by Charlemagne. Carlomann's widow then fled to the Lombard court, and Didier pressed Hadrian to anoint her sons in defiance of Charlemagne. When Hadrian hesitated, Didier invaded the Papal territory and took several towns; while Afiarta, the Pope heard, was boasting that he would bring Hadrian to Pavia with a rope round his neck. Meantime, however, Afiarta's rivals at Rome informed the Pope that Afiarta had had the blind prisoner Sergius murdered, and Hadrian was shocked. He ordered the arrest of his chamberlain, and, in defiance of his more lenient instructions, Afiarta was delivered to the secular authorities at Ravenna and executed.
Didier now set his forces in motion. Hadrian, hurriedly gathering his troops for the defence of the duchy, appealed to Charlemagne and threatened Didier with excommunication. It seems also that he made efforts to secure other parts of Italy for the Papacy. Some professed representatives of Spoleto, which was subject to Didier, came to Rome to ask that their duchy might be incorporated in the Papal territory, and their long Lombard hair was solemnly cropped in Roman fashion. We shall find grave reason to doubt whether these men had an authentic right to represent Spoleto, but from that moment the Popes claimed it as part of their temporal dominion, Didier seems to have underrated the power of the young French monarch. Both Hadrian and Charlemagne (who offered Didier 14,000 gold solidi if he would yield the disputed cities) endeavoured to negotiate peacefully with him, but he refused all overtures, and the Franks crossed the Alps and besieged him in Pavia.
Charlemagne remained before Pavia throughout the winter of 773-774, and, when Holy Week came round, he went to Rome for the celebration of Easter. Hadrian hurriedly arranged to meet his guest with honour, though the account of his ceremonies makes us smile when we recall how imperial Rome would have received such a monarch. Thirty miles from Rome the civic and military officials, with the standards of the Roman militia, met the conqueror; a mile from the city the various "schools" of the militia, and groups of children with branches of palm and olive, streamed out to meet the Franks, and accompanied them to St. Peter's. The awe with which Charlemagne approached the old capital of the world, and the feeling of the Romans when they gazed on the gigantic young Frank, in his short silver-bordered tunic and blue cloak, with a shower of golden curls falling over his broad shoulders, are left to our imagination by the chronicler.[119] His one aim is to show how the famous donation of temporal power was the natural culmination of the piety of the Frankish monarch. He tells us how Charlemagne walked on foot the last mile to St. Peter's: how, when he reached the great church on Holy Saturday, he went on his knees and kissed each step before he embraced the delighted Pope: how Frank bishops and warriors mingled with the Romans, and how the vast crowd was thrilled by the emotions of that historic occasion. He describes how Charlemagne humbly asked permission to enter Rome, and spent three days in paying reverence at its many shrines; and how, on the Wednesday, Pope and King met in the presence of the body of Peter to discuss the question of the Papal territory.
In a famous passage, which has inspired a small library of controversial writing, this writer of the life of Hadrian in the Liber Pontificalis affirms that Charlemagne assigned to St. Peter and his successors for ever the greater part of Italy: in modern terms, the whole of Italy except Lombardy in the north, which was left to the Lombards, and Naples and Calabria in the south, where the Greeks still lingered. The duchies of Beneventum and Spoleto, the provinces of Venetia and Istria, and the island of Corsica, which were not at the disposal of Charlemagne, are expressly included; and it is said that one copy of the deed, signed by Charlemagne and his nobles and bishops, was put into the tomb of St. Peter, and another copy was taken to France. This is the basis of the claim of later Popes to the greater part of Italy.
But the suspicions of historians are naturally awakened when they learn that both copies of this priceless document have disappeared: that the only description of its terms is this passage of the Liber Pontificalis, which was presumably written in the Papal chancellery: and that the art of forging documents was extensively cultivated in the eighth century. The famous "Donation of Constantine," a document which makes the first Christian Emperor, when he leaves Rome, entrust the whole Western Empire to Pope Silvester, is a flagrant forgery of the time; indeed, most historians now conclude that it was fabricated at Rome during the Pontificate of Hadrian. Certainly the Pope seems to refer to it when, in 777, he writes to Charlemagne: "Just as in the time of the Blessed Silvester, Bishop of Rome, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church was elevated and exalted by the most pious Emperor Constantine the Great, of holy memory, and he deigned to bestow on it power in these western regions."[120]
The equally mendacious Acta S. Silvestri was certainly known to Hadrian, and we do not trace it earlier; and it is probable enough that one or both of these documents were shown to Charlemagne. Some historians believe that the "Fantuzzian Fragment" (a similarly false account of the Donation of Pippin) belongs to the same inventive period, and this is not unlikely.
It cannot be questioned that Charlemagne renewed and enlarged his father's donation, since Hadrian's letters to him repeatedly affirm this. Immediately after his return to France, Hadrian reminds him that he has confirmed Pippin's gift of the exarchate,[121] and, a little later, he recalls that, when he was in Rome, he granted the duchy of Spoleto to the Blessed Peter.[122] Spoleto did not, in point of fact, pass under Papal rule, but we must conclude from the Pope's words that Charlemagne in some way approved the action of Hadrian in annexing the duchy, and in this sense enlarged the donation made by his father. Beyond this single instance of Spoleto, however, the letters of Hadrian do not confirm the writer of his life in the Liber Pontificalis in his description of the extent of Charlemagne's gift,[123] and their silence supports the critical view. While he complains of outrages in Istria and Venetia, while he occupies himself in a long series of letters with the affairs of Beneventum, he makes no claim that these provinces were given to him by Charlemagne. The whole story of the Papacy during the life of Charlemagne is inconsistent with any but the more modest estimate of the donation: that it was a vague sanction of the Spoletan proceeding, in addition to confirming the Donation of Pippin.