The long-suffering loyalty of so many Popes was at length exhausted. The deliverance of the Holy See and their flock from the intolerable Lombard yoke, a usurpation both upon their natural right and their divine commission to rule the people of God, combined with their desertion by the eastern emperor, whom, in despite of the most inhuman government during two hundred years ever practised by men called Christian, they had acknowledged and maintained, led Stephen II. to inaugurate [pg 358] a new political order of things. His request, accompanied with many tears, to Aistulf at Pavia to restore to “the commonwealth” of the empire the exarchate and to forbear grasping Rome, a request which the Lombard cast away in scorn, led the Pope, feeble as he was, to risk all the dangers of the Alpine passes, as well as to seek in France, where alone it could be found, an arm strong enough to save Italy both from Lombard and from Byzantine.
The king of the Franks, besides his eldest son Charles, had sent Fulrad the abbot and Rothard the duke to conduct the Pope from the monastery of St. Maurice, whom they brought with all his retinue to the king with great honour. “When,” says Anastasius, “the king heard of the most blessed pontiff's approach he hastened to meet him with his wife, his sons, and his chief men. Advancing three miles from his palace called Pontigny, he dismounted from his horse, and with great humility threw himself on the earth, together with his wife, his children, and his chieftains, and so received the Pope. He also walked for some space to a certain spot guiding the Pope's horse.” Then the papal train went on together with the king to the palace, rendering thanks to God in hymns and spiritual songs. It was the feast of the Epiphany, and Pope and king sat side by side in the oratory, when the Pope with tears besought the same most Christian king that by a treaty of peace he would arrange the cause of St. Peter and the commonwealth of the Romans. And the king satisfied the Pope by oath that he would to the utmost listen to all his requirements [pg 359] and restore the exarchate of Ravenna and the other rights and territories of the commonwealth.
“It being winter, he then caused the Pope with all his retinue to take up his abode in the abbey of St. Denys, near Paris. King Pipin, going to Quiersy and there assembling all the nobles of his royal power, inflamed them with the words of so great a father, and ordained with them to fulfil what, under favour of Christ, he had decreed with the most blessed Pope.”
By this solemn compact between the Frank realm and the Holy See, the king bound himself, should he be victorious, to give over to St. Peter, and in him to Pope Stephen, and his successors, all the places of the exarchate, and of those lands which had belonged to the empire, of which the Lombards had taken possession. If we are to follow the text of the contemporaneous statements and later references, Pipin considered this act not as a donation, but a restitution. Those for whom this restitution ensued were so blended together in the view which results from Pipin's subsequent declarations that to separate them seems impossible.[189] The one party is the Roman Commonwealth, which here takes the place of the empire, without, in its essence, containing any other idea, for empire is but one form of commonwealth; the other party is the Roman Church. There is no reference here to the duchy of Rome, the territory belonging to the city according to the Byzantine departmental administration. The Pope conferred on the king the title of Roman Patricius, a title which [pg 360] Pipin accepted simply in its true meaning, understanding by it protection of the Church, as he afterwards named himself merely Defensor or Protector of the Church.
Stephen, in the meantime, was staying at the Abbey of St. Denys, near Paris, for a long time dangerously ill, in consequence of his sufferings during his journey, and also of his great anxiety. On the 28th July, 754, he anointed in this abbey Church, afterwards the resting-place of the kings of France, Pipin and his wife, Bertrada, with their sons, Charles and Carloman. So, for the first time, the hand of a Pope touched the youthful head of that Charles, who, in riper age, was destined to act with such force on the fortunes of the western Church.
When the negotiations between the king of the Franks and Aistulf led to no result, the Frank army began its march. The Lombards were defeated near Susa, at the foot of Mont Cenis, and presently Pipin stood before Pavia. Thereupon Aistulf consented to peace. He promised to surrender Ravenna, and divers other cities: he bound himself no longer to oppress Rome and her territory. But scarcely was the covenant made, and the Frank host withdrawn, and the Pope returned to Rome, which he entered before the conclusion, having been welcomed in the meadows of Nero by the exulting people, when king Aistulf repented of his concessions. Not only did he not give up a palm of land in the exarchate: he broke again into the Roman territory, took cities, laid waste the country. In this [pg 361] distress wore away the year 755. With New Year's Day, 756, the king began the siege of Rome. He shut in the city on three sides. On the height of the Janiculum the Tuscans were encamped. Aistulf, with his main force, lay beside the Salarian and neighbouring gates: the Beneventans shut in the southern gates. His attacks upon the walls were repulsed. Every one took part in the struggle. Abbot Warnehar, the Frankish minister, put on armour and worked day and night upon the walls. The whole country round, with its churches, villas, and dwellings, was mercilessly wasted. The Lombards made a desert round Rome. Letter after letter the Pope sent to Pipin.
The Father and Head of the Christian family was in the utmost possible danger of beholding the spiritual rights of his see and the people which he loved and cared for, subjected to the half barbarous domination of intruders, who, for nearly two hundred years, had forced themselves upon Italy. In those two centuries the possession of Rome, and lordship over it, had been the coveted prize first of their heathen, and then of their semi-Christian ambition. The rule of the Goth, much nobler in his natural character, and much less savage, had yet failed, even under the genius of Theodorich, to amalgamate itself with Roman thought, law, and usage. The strong hand of the great Gothic king had seemed to tame it: as soon as he was gone, it corrupted his grandson, and murdered his daughter and heiress, Amalasunta, too good and noble for her people. But the prospect of having to submit to an Aistulf, and his [pg 362] ferocious nobles, was worse than the Gothic servitude had been, which yet had subjected the free election of their Father and Pontiff by the Roman clergy and people to a foreign domination. And this domination from Odoacer to Leo III. regarded not the good of the Church, but the ends of Byzantine or Lombard.
What, in this day of terror, Pope Stephen wrote to Pipin bears so strongly impressed the inmost belief of his own heart and of the Church at the time that I quote it in part.
“Peter, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, and in me the whole Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church of God, the head of all the Churches of God, founded upon the firm rock in the blood of our Redeemer, and Stephen, bishop of the said Church, to the most excellent kings, Pipin, Charles, and Carloman, to the most holy bishops, abbots, presbyters, monks, also to the dukes, counts, armies, and people of France, grace, peace, and valour be abundantly ministered to you by our Lord God for the rescue of that holy Church of God and its Roman people entrusted to me, from the hands of persecutors.
“I, Peter, the apostle, having been in the absolute choice of supernal clemency called by Christ, Son of the living God, to illuminate the whole earth—who hold you for my adopted children to defend from the hands of adversaries this Roman city, and the people committed to me by God, and likewise the house in which, according to the flesh, I rest, to deliver it from the contamination of the heathens: but likewise our [pg 363] Lady, the Mother of God, ever-virgin Mary, adjures, admonishes, and commands you: and with her the thrones and dominations, the whole army of the celestial host; also, the martyrs and confessors of Christ join in the adjuration, that you may grieve for that city of Rome, entrusted to us by the Lord God, and for the Lord's flock dwelling in it, and deliver it with all speed from the hands of the persecuting Lombards, who are perjured with so great a crime. Hasten and help before the living fountain, whence you have been consecrated, and born again, be dried up.”[190]