He then goes on to beg Pipin to execute fully all that he had promised to St. Peter by oath. He mentions specially Imola, Ferrara, Ancona, Bologna, with their complete territories; and begs him to favour the new king, Desiderius, if he restore, as he had promised, fully the justitia, which we may translate sovereignty, “to the Holy Church of God, or Commonwealth of the Romans, St. Peter, your protector”. He also prays him that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith may be preserved by him from “the pestilent malice of the Greeks”. He ends with the prayer:—“O victorious king, may God, in all your acts, extend His right hand over you, your queen, and mine and your dearest sons: and, as He has given you the royal power in this life, may you also hear the divine promise, 'Come, blessed of my Father, you have fought the good fight, you have finished your course, you have kept the faith; so take the crown laid up for you, and the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'”.
A few days after this letter, that is, on the 24th April, 757, Stephen II. closed in peace his course on earth. He died in the Lateran patriarchal palace, acknowledged by all as king of Rome: and attended by his brother, Paul, who was to be his successor. He was [pg 432] buried with extraordinary honours in St. Peter's. In his short pontificate of five years he set the crown upon the work of his three great predecessors, Gregory II., Gregory III., and Zacharias, and is counted among the most illustrious of the Popes. He closed the seven centuries of Popes who were subjects: he opens the eleven centuries of Popes who have been kings. From the Pope who was crucified on the Roman hill to the Pope who died a king in the patriarchal Lateran palace, 93 in number, enemies have tried to deface the memory of two—but the voice of impartial history regards those rulers of the Church with unalloyed gratitude as men who, through trials and difficulties unsurpassed, kept the faith of the Church inviolate. That the city of Rome existed in their day, and exists now, is due to the pastoral staff of St. Peter, planted in its soil, which became, in the hand of Stephen II., the most gracious, the most prolific, the most honoured of sceptres.
Stephen II. was succeeded immediately by his brother Paul, who had been the chosen companion of his counsels and anxieties during the severe trials of his pontificate, ending so gloriously. It was the first instance of a brother to the Pope succeeding to his chair. He had been brought up, like his brother Stephen, in the Lateran patriarchal palace from the time of St. Gregory II., and was made a cardinal deacon by Pope Zacharias. “He was meek and very merciful, never rendering evil for evil to anyone.”[223] He sat from 757 to 767, ten years and a month. During the whole time the [pg 433] closest union was maintained between the Holy See and King Pipin. A series of letters from the Pope to the king is extant, testifying the affection and the confidence which existed between them. It was by the influence of Pope Stephen II. that the new king of the Lombards, Desiderius, was accepted by that people after the untimely death of King Aistulf. He bound himself strictly to carry out the compact at Pavia between the Franks, the Lombards, and the Romans, in virtue of which, at the subjection of King Aistulf to Pipin, the Lombard monarchy continued to exist. The reign of Desiderius from 757 until he was finally overthrown and deposed by Charles in 774 shows a repetition of attempts by fraud or by violence to evade the conditions which he had bound himself to accept. Already, in 757, Pope Paul I. wrote to King Pipin: “We[224] make known to your Excellence that we have hitherto received nothing of those things which by our legates we committed to your charge, for, according to their wont, those perfidious and malignant Lombards, persisting in great arrogance of heart, are by no means inclined to restore the justice of St. Peter”. The possession of the cities and territories of Imola, Bologna, Osimo, Ancona, and Umana were in question. In the next year, 758, Desiderius ravaged with fire and sword the Pentapolis. Then he attacked the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which had put themselves under the protection of the Pope and the king of the Franks.
At another time the Greek emperor Kopronymus was [pg 434] bent upon recovering Ravenna and the Pentapolis, and upon attacking Rome itself. Desiderius met his agent and wrote to the emperor, exhorting him to send an army into Italy, and promising that he with all his Lombards would help him to recover Ravenna, and whatever else he desired.[225]
Through the whole ten years of Paul's pontificate, this king Pipin discharged with fidelity his office of Roman Patricius, that is, the sworn defender of the Holy See. It was this protection alone which enabled the Pope to maintain his newly founded State against the perpetual wiles of the Lombard, as well as against the Greek enmity. As to Kopronymus, the Iconoclastic heresy was the furious passion of his whole life. Pope Paul wrote to King Pipin:[226] “You know well how those most nefarious Greeks pursue us only to destroy and tread under foot the orthodox faith and the tradition of the fathers”.
When Pope Paul I. died, in 767, his pontificate of ten years had been throughout agitated by the perpetual oscillations of king Desiderius, alternating acts of devotion with acts of hostility, promises with violations of them, restitution of rights with fresh acts of plundering.[227] Scarcely had Paul I. closed his eyes when the duke Toto, a very powerful baron of the Roman Tuscany, conspired with his three brothers, Constantine, Passivus, and Paschalis, to get possession of Rome and the papacy.[228] Toto and his party, while preparation was being made [pg 435] for the solemn obsequies of Paul I. and the due election of his successor, broke into Rome, suddenly elected his brother Constantine, a layman, introduced him by violence into the Lateran palace. He seized upon George, bishop of Palestrina, and compelled him to confer minor orders upon Constantine. The next day he was made deacon by the same bishop, and on the following Sunday Toto, attended by a large body of armed men, carried the intruded Constantine to St. Peter's, where the three suburbican bishops, the said George of Palestrina, and the bishops of Albano and Porto, gave him episcopal consecration. In such fashion Constantine seated himself in the chair of Peter; he forced the people to make oath of fidelity to him. Thus the layman of a week before, thrust upon the clergy and people of Rome by the rudest violence, held possession of the Apostolic See for thirteen months. He wrote lying letters to King Pipin, who was not deceived by them. But Rome was filled with conspiracy and unrule.
A year after this event, in July, 768 the intruder Constantine was deposed, his brother Toto killed, while a second pretended Pope, named Philip, set up for the moment, was driven away. By the exertions of Christophorus, first of the seven Palatine judges, and his son Sergius, Stephen III., a Sicilian, and at the time cardinal priest of St. Cecilia, was duly elected Pope. He sat during three years and six months, in the course of which great events took place. His first act was to send Sergius to King Pipin and his sons, beseeching him to depute a number of Frankish bishops to Rome to hold a council [pg 436] there with him, and to make regulations which might prevent the recurrence of violence so deplorable.
Sergius found king Pipin dying. He expired at St. Denys on the 24th September, 768. There he was buried and afterwards his monument bore the inscription, “Pipin, the king, father of Charles the Great”. He left his states, with the consent of the nobles and bishops, between his sons Charles and Carloman, who were crowned and anointed on the same day, 9th October, 768, Charles at Noyon, Carloman at Soissons. Pipin died aged fifty-five, having ruled France for twenty-seven years, ten as Mayor of the palace, seventeen as king of the Franks.
The legate Sergius proceeded at once to the kings, Charles and Carloman. They granted all which he desired. They gave him twelve Frankish bishops well instructed in the scriptures and the holy canons, the archbishop of Sens, the bishops of Mainz, Tours, Lyons, Bourges, Narbonne, Rheims, Langres, Noyon, Worms, and two others with sees of names unknown. These bishops came to Rome in April, 769, and Pope Stephen III. assembled bishops from Tuscany, Campania, and the rest of Italy, and held a council in the Lateran Basilica. Among other decrees they passed one under anathema: “that no laymen, nor any one save a cardinal, deacon or priest, ascending through the distinct degrees, be promoted to the honour of the sacred pontificate”.[229] The Pope, all the priests, and the Roman people, prostrate on the pavement, deplored the sin they had [pg 437] committed in receiving Communion from the unhappy intruder, Constantine, who had been deprived of sight during the wild struggle which attended his deposition, and now in most abject guise confessed his crime before the council, and was condemned to penance.
In this terrible outburst of ambition and crime, which showed but too clearly to what sudden dangers Rome was exposed, the two great officers, Christophorus, the first of the seven Palatine judges, and his son Sergius, had done their utmost to prevent the usurpation, and in the end delivered the Holy See from the intruder Constantine. Desiderius had taken no part in the intrusion of the anti-pope. He even assisted Christophorus and Sergius in removing him. But in doing this a Lombard priest, Waldepert, sought to set up another anti-pope, and lost his life. After the due appointment of Stephen III., the master stroke of the Lombard king's policy was to sever, if he could, the two Frank kings from friendship with the Holy See, and so sooner or later to get possession of Rome. He proposed in 770 a double marriage; on one side the marriage of his daughter Desiderata or Ermengarde either with Charles or with Carloman; on the other that of their sister, the princess Gisela, with his son Adelchis. The queen mother, Bertrada, set her hand to accomplish the first. There is a most earnest letter from Pope Stephen III. to the kings Charles and Carloman, entreating them not to stain the noble Frank race, the most eminent of all, by a connection with the faithless and perfidious Lombard. “You have likewise,” he said, “by the will of God, and the command [pg 438] of your father, contracted lawful marriages with excellent royal ladies out of your own people, conspicuous for their nobility and beauty. It is not lawful for you to repudiate them. To take other wives would be an impiety. Heathens only can so act. Forget not, most illustrious sons, that you received holy unction from St. Peter's successor, that your father of glorious memory listened to the injunctions of our predecessor Stephen, and forebore to separate from your mother, Bertrada, and be mindful of your repeated promise to St. Peter and his successor that you would ever be friends of our friends and enemies of our enemies. Would you now bind yourselves to our enemies? For the faithless people of the Lombards, which ceases not to attack the Church of God, and make incursions on our province of Rome, is our manifest enemy.”[230]