The siege[191] had entered into the third month when tidings came that the king of the Franks was on his way to answer the appeal of Pope Stephen. In April, 756, he passed Mont Cenis. Again the enemy did not venture to defend the Alpine passes. It would seem that Aistulf had not expected so early a movement. The siege of Rome was broken up. The siege of Pavia took its place. Pavia yielded sooner than Rome. Pipin was still in camp before the city when a mission from the Greek emperor appeared to desire the surrender to the empire of the lands which had been or were to be taken from the Lombards. Here was seen in what sense the king of the Franks had understood the word “restitution”. The eastern deputies promised rich presents to Pipin,[192] if he would give back Ravenna and the other cities and fortresses of its territory to the empire. The king of [pg 364] the Franks replied that for nothing on earth would he suffer those cities to be taken from the rule of St. Peter, the jurisdiction of the Roman Church, or of the pontiff of the Apostolic see. He declared upon oath that for no man's favour had he repeatedly entered into this conflict, but only for the love of St. Peter and the pardoning of his sins, adding that no amount of treasure could persuade him to take away what he had once given to St. Peter.
Then Aistulf, in fear of losing everything, asked for peace. The Frank nobles in the army who had previous connections with the Lombard, managed the agreement. Aistulf not only ratified the previous contract, but surrendered the third of his treasure, and promised the payment of a tribute which had been paid in the time of the dukes. Pipin presented to the Pope a solemn document respecting the gift of the conquered territory. The Abbot of St. Denys, accompanied by the Lombard Commissioner, with full powers, executed the agreement and the royal will. Upon arriving at Rome, he laid the keys of the cities ceded by the Lombard upon the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. The exarchate and the Pentapolis, and a large portion of Umbria, were to belong to the Roman Church, and partly then, and partly later, came into its actual possession, on one side from Comacchio, in the swampy lowlands along the Adriatic coast, down to what was afterwards the mark of Ancona; on the other side as far as Narni, not far from the confluence of the Nera and the Tiber, where the duchy of Rome began. That it did not need. If [pg 365] the distant emperor exercised nominal authority there, the virtual authority had long belonged to the Pope, who ruled there with acceptance of the people.
It was the summer of 756. About the end of the winter Aistulf died through a fall from his horse, hunting. After his death ensued a struggle for the throne. The monk Rachis strove again for the sovereignty, which Desiderius, duke in Tuscany, contested. It is not clear how parties in the Lombard kingdom had been so transformed that he who had been compelled once to quit the throne for yielding to Rome now was unsuccessful against a competitor favoured by Rome. But this one bought his victory dearly. He renounced in favour of the Church several cities not mentioned by name in Pipin's gift, from Ferrara and Bologna down to south of Ancona. At the same time Spoleto and Benevento put themselves under protection of the Pope and the king of the Franks, as the dukes and nobles swore fidelity. “This change is of the hand of the Lord,” wrote Pope Stephen to Pipin at the beginning of 757.
In the course of a few years a new State, the State of the Church, had been founded.[193] For a new State it was, even if its connection with the empire was not dissolved. Its geographical position in the centre of the Peninsula and touching both seas, enhanced its importance. The moment was great and decisive. The times of the Roman empire were fulfilled. East and West had more and more decidedly parted, as well especially on the field of theological science as on the field of political [pg 366] formations. Agreement had become impossible unless the West was willing to give up its civilising mission. Italy's political formation was closely bound up with that mission. The Gothic domination had fallen inasmuch as it had been powerless to assimilate land and people. The Lombard people, inferior in energy and in warlike qualities to the Goths, in its late attempt to unite Italy under one sceptre, had failed less through the weak resistance of the last remains of the Roman empire than through the deep-lying failures of its political and military constitution. These showed themselves soon after its permanent occupation to the south of the Alps by its parting into numerous military fiefs, with slight internal connection. Moreover, the instability of relation between the two nationalities from the beginning made almost impossible the task which Liutprand and Aistulf had set themselves. Attempts to assimilate in life, custom, and law had followed a long period of barbarous oppression, when the hand of the Church had already enfolded conquerors and conquered. These attempts had there produced a reaction which threatened to undo what had been accomplished. After two hundred years of settlement the Lombards were still held to be strangers. Not to mention numerous other tokens of this, it has a deep meaning when under the successor of Pope Stephen “the whole Senate and all the people of the God-protected city of Rome” write to king Pipin concerning the extension of this province “rescued by you out of the hand of the heathen”.[194] The [pg 367] national Italian elements made their complete effect sensible in the State of the Church, and secured its establishment in opposition to that temper of aliens represented by the Lombards. The new temper was not one-sided and exclusive, but assimilating, and therefore certain of development and progress. Never has a State arisen under circumstances so remarkable, in the midst of a violent shock, yet with so general a concurrence. It was due to the consistently-pursued management of a series of distinguished men as the result of their moralising influence. This did not limit itself to the populations immediately participating in it, which had found steady advocates and actual protectors in the Popes, notwithstanding the extreme need and oppression suffered by them. It embraced the whole Christian world. The Church absolutely required secular independence in order to maintain in living energy this moralising influence, to fulfil this her great mission. This necessity must appear clear to every one if there were in the history of Italy and the Papacy no other period than that of the last Lombard times, or that following when the Carlovingian rule was falling to pieces. The foundation of the temporal power was no artificial plan devised by Gregory II. for himself and his successors when he began the great battle against the Iconoclasts. It was a necessity in the world's history, developing itself rapidly, yet step by step, out of the situation of things both in politics and religion. And as if it should not want a legitimate title also, the new formation rose at a moment [pg 368] when, independently of action on the part of the Popes, the whole claim of the empire practically disappeared in the centre of Italy. It was recognised by the Popes alone even when scarcely anything more remained of it than a mere form and name.
Chapter VII. Rome's Three Hundred Years, 455-756 From Genseric To Aistulf, Between The Goth, The Lombard, And The Byzantine.
I propose to give a continuous review of the Roman pontiff's position in the city of Peter from the plundering of imperial Rome by the Vandal Genseric in 455 to the siege of papal Rome and desolation of the Campagna by the Lombard king Aistulf, beginning January 1, 756. This attack was followed in that year by the enfranchisement of Rome and the gift of the exarchate by Pipin, king of the Franks, to St. Peter and his successors, when he laid the keys of the cities surrendered by the Lombards on the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles.
Three hundred years of suffering unbroken and of glory unsurpassed which preceded the passage of the Roman pontiff from servitude to sovereignty.