Zachariah, a Greek by birth, accepted the succession left vacant by Gregory III. under such critical circumstances; but he negotiated so skilfully with Luitprand, that the king not only gave back to the pontifical domain four towns which he had already seized, but further added, as an irrevocable gift, the territories of the Sabines, Narnia, Ossimo, and Ancona, and consented to evacuate the exarchy of Ravenna, occupied by his troops. Zacharias enjoyed an equal amount of credit with the Emperor Constantinus Copronymus, who granted him, in the interest of the Roman Church, concessions which were more than could have been expected from an irritated suzerain. All the sovereigns of his time seemed anxious to have recourse to his advice. Charlemagne, son of Charles Martel, and Rachis, King of the Lombards, went to Rome for the purpose of seeing him, and he invited both of them to enter the monastery of Monte-Cassino.
Stephen III., elected by acclamation to succeed Zachariah (752), was carried from the public square to the Lateran Church upon the shoulders of his supporters; and this custom has since been adhered to in cases where the election has been unanimous.
He had concluded peace for forty years with Astolfo, King of the Lombards, but that ambitious monarch failed to keep his engagements, as, a short time afterwards, he drove the exarch Eutychius out of Ravenna, and then, claiming for himself all the rights of the emperor, he aspired to become master of Rome (753). This unjust warfare was fortunately carried on so slowly that the sovereign-pontiff had time to go to France and intercede with King Pepin for help against Astolfo. The French army was sent over the Alps, and Astolfo had to submit, and to hand over Ravenna to the people, and surrender the hostages. Stephen returned to Rome, accompanied by Prince Jérôme, the brother of Pepin; but in the following year Astolfo again took up arms, and Pepin, who had again crossed the Alps, this time compelled him to abandon definitely the exarchate of twenty-two towns, together with the territories attached to them, which he made over absolutely to St. Peter and his successors. This, with the Duchy of Rome, constituted the temporal dominion of the Church.
A few years later Adrian I., who had avoided falling into the political snares laid for him by Didier, appealed to Charlemagne for his intervention, and the latter, crossing the Alps, laid siege to Pavia, the capital of the Lombard kings, took Didier prisoner, and sent him to the monastery of Corbie. Not content with delivering Rome, Charlemagne, during the two visits which he paid to that city, during and after the war, confirmed the gift solemnly made by his father of the territories which were to be inalienably annexed to the Holy See; and, at the same time, he added the coast of Genoa, Corsica, Mantua, Venetia, Istria, the duchies of Spoleto, Benevento, and the entire exarchate over its thirty towns.
Adrian had the consolation of seeing the heresies of the iconoclasts condemned by the second Nicene Council; and the Empress Irene and her son Constantine submitted to the decision.
Adrian died in 795. His successor, Leo III., sent to the great Emperor of the Franks the standard of the city of Rome, and the keys of the Confession of St. Peter, as to the protector of the Eternal City. The emperor responded to this homage by the gift of immense treasure which he had taken from the enemy, and the pope devoted the greater part of it to the decorating of the Lateran Palace, and various churches.
Fig. 208.—Byzantine Dalmatic, said to have belonged to Leo III., but probably dating from the Twelfth Century, preserved in the Treasury of St. Peter’s at Rome. Upon this garment, which is of dark-blue silk, are several designs embroidered in gold and colours. The most remarkable is one upon the front representing Christ in his glory. Seated upon a rainbow, with his feet upon two circles of fire and the right hand stretched out, he holds in his left the New Testament, which is open at the following passage: “Come unto me, ye chosen of my Father.” Above his head is seen the cross with the crowns of thorns. Around him is a choir of angels, the Virgin, the saints, David and Solomon, the bishops and the religious orders; below, to the right and to the left, St. John the Baptist, and Abraham receiving the souls of the just; above, on the two shoulders, Jesus is giving the Holy Communion to the Apostles, the wine being administered on one side and the bread on the other.
A conspiracy, which Leo III. only escaped by climbing the walls of Rome and by taking refuge with the Duke of Spoleto, who had marched to his succour, gave him an opportunity for going to see Charlemagne at Paderborn, who promised to come himself into Italy to confound the enemies of the holy father; in the meanwhile he dispatched commissioners to Rome, who reinstated the pope in his pontifical city (November 30, 799). Charlemagne came to Rome in the following year, when, convoking an assembly of the people, he declared the object of his visit and summoned the accusers of the pope to appear before his tribunal. As they did not dare to put in an appearance, he declared that the holy father should be allowed to justify himself on oath. Then in the great cathedral of St. Peter, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, Leo, with his hand upon the books of the Evangelists, cried out, “I know nothing of the crimes with which the Romans have charged me.” His declaration was received with shouts of applause that rung through, the vaults of the sacred edifice. Charlemagne, who had returned to St. Peter’s on Christmas Day, for the service, knelt before the altar. The pope, upstanding before him, placed upon his forehead a golden crown studded with jewels and proclaimed him emperor, thus giving him a real supremacy over all the Christian princes and people of the West. (Figs. 208 and 209.)
