The question of the pope’s position is somewhat complicated by the fact that he was probably the largest landowner in Italy. The “Patrimony of St. Peter,” as it was called, comprised great estates in the Campagna, in Samnium, on the Adriatic coast, besides a considerable portion of Sicily. Any estimate of their extent and value can be only guess-work, but it is conjectured that in the time of Gregory the Great they would, if all massed together, have formed a district as large as Lancashire,[27] and that the yearly revenue derived from them amounted to £420,000. It is to be observed that we are here dealing not with sovereignty but with ownership, and that the wide domains thus actually owned by the Bishop of Rome had probably been increased rather than diminished in the century and a half that had elapsed since the death of Gregory.
As to the purposes to which this vast wealth was applied, even a severe critic of the mediæval papacy must admit that they were, in the main, right and noble ones. We have no hint now of that nepotism which was the disgrace of the Roman see in much later ages. None of these early popes, as far as we know, ever “founded a family.” The maintenance of the large and brilliant papal household was doubtless a first charge on the revenues of the see. The costly and somewhat ostentatious gifts of plate to St. Peter’s Church, which are punctually recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, were perhaps a second charge upon them. But after all, a large proportion of these revenues must have gone towards the relief of poverty, sickness, and distress. The pope was now what the emperor had once been, the great relieving officer of Rome; not only in the Eternal City, but all over Italy, at any rate while such a pope as the first Gregory sat in St. Peter’s chair, whenever a bishop brought a case of distress under his notice there was a strong probability that he would receive a grant in aid from the papal revenues.
It is needless to point out what enormous power the ownership of such vast estates and the distribution of such princely revenues must have placed in the hands of the elderly ecclesiastic who was acclaimed as pope by the assembled multitude in the basilica of St. Peter. In the year 751 he was not yet a sovereign, but he was that kind of territorial magnate out of whom a sovereign might easily be made.
The curious and difficult relation which had subsisted for so long between the three great powers in Italy was ended in 751, the year of Pippin’s coronation, when Aistulf, King of the Lombards, captured the city of Ravenna and terminated the exarch’s rule in Italy. Believing evidently that the time had come for the long postponed consolidation of Italy under the Lombard rule, he drew nigh to the city of Rome, and in some way or other threatened its independence. What he actually did it is difficult to discover from the verbose and passionate declamation of the papal biographer, but it seems clear that his soldiers committed some depredations on the “Patrimony of St. Peter,” and it is probable that without laying formal siege to the city he threatened it with war unless the citizens would consent to pay him a poll-tax in acknowledgment of his sovereignty over them.
These depredations, or these schemes of conquest, were not needed to arouse the fierce and passionate hostility of the pope to the all-absorbing Lombard. So long as there had been three great powers in Italy there had been an equilibrium of a certain kind between them. In fact, the pope had more than once invoked the help of the Lombard, “unspeakable” as he called him, against his “most Christian” sovereign in Constantinople, when the latter pressed him too hard. But now the pope and the Lombard king stood face to face with no other rival to their greatness, and each of them probably felt, dimly but certainly, that it would be a duel to the death between them.
It was probably in the year 752, some months after the conquest of Ravenna, and when the hostile intentions of King Aistulf against Rome had been sufficiently indicated, that Pope Stephen II. sent a secret message by a pilgrim who had visited Rome, imploring the King of the Franks to give him a formal invitation to his court. In the spring of 753 the envoys of Pippin brought the desired invitation, and a letter, in which there was probably some promise of protection against the Lombards. Just about the same time a messenger, the silentiarius[28] John, arrived from the Emperor Constantine V., desiring the pope to repair to the court of Pavia and solicit King Aistulf to grant the restoration of Ravenna to the empire. The pope had sent more than one urgent message to the emperor imploring his protection, and this futile commission was the only reply. The form of the despatch showed that the emperor still regarded the pope as his subject, but its substance was certainly some justification to Stephen for that transfer of his allegiance from Constantine to Pippin, which had now begun to present itself to his mind as a possible way of escape from his difficulties. In itself the Imperial Commission was not unwelcome, since it necessitated a safe conduct from Aistulf for the journey to Pavia.
On the 13th of October, 753, Pope Stephen set forth from Rome. Many of the Romans followed him out of the gates, weeping and wailing, and striving in vain to prevent him from undertaking the journey. But, though weak in body, he had a stout heart, and was not to be turned from his purpose. When he reached Pavia he was met by the envoys of Aistulf, who brought him the king’s command not to mention the word restitution in connection with Ravenna or the exarchate. He answered boldly that no intimidation should procure his silence on that subject. When admitted to the royal presence he exhibited the gifts which he had brought for the king, and, with many tears, implored him to restore the captured cities to the empire. The request was utterly vain; probably even the imperial silentiarius, who was standing by, hardly expected that it would be anything else. But then came another request of much more serious import. Bishop Chrodegang and Duke Autchar, the high-born and powerful representatives of the King of the Franks, asked, in no obsequious tones, that the pope should be allowed to visit their master. The pope was summoned to the royal presence, and questioned as to his desire to cross the Alps. Several of the officers of the court had been sent to Stephen to warn him that he would incur the severe displeasure of the king if he persisted in his project; but when questioned by Aistulf himself, he boldly answered, “If it be your will to relax my bonds, it is altogether my will to undertake the journey.” King Aistulf, we are told, “gnashed his teeth like a lion.” He knew too well what danger this journey foreboded to himself and the whole Lombard state, but the request, so made and so supported, was one that he dared not refuse, and he most reluctantly gave his consent. On the 15th of November the pope started from Pavia, and travelled rapidly lest Aistulf should after all seek to detain him. When he reached Aosta he was already in Frankish territory, though on the Italian side of the Alps. The danger which after that point terrified the pope and his long train of trembling ecclesiastics were only the dangers of nature’s contriving, the steep cliffs and impending avalanches of the Great St. Bernard; henceforth they were safe from the fear of man. Having arrived at the great monastery of St. Maurice, in the valley of the Rhone, the pope and his followers rested there certain days. That had been the appointed place of meeting with the Frankish king, but apparently the impetuous old pope had reached it before he was expected.
“But the king,” says the papal biographer, “hearing of the pope’s arrival, went with great speed to meet him, together with his wife, his sons, and his chief nobles. For which purpose also he directed his son, named Carolus, to meet that quasi-angelic pope, together with some of his nobles. Then he himself, starting from his palace at Ponticum [Ponthieu], dismounted from his horse, and going three miles to meet him, with great humility prostrated himself before him on the ground, and so, together with his wife, sons, and nobles, received that most holy pope, to whom also he served the office of a groom, running for some distance by his stirrup. Then the aforesaid health-bringing man, with all his train, in a loud voice giving glory and ceaseless praises to Almighty God, marched to the palace, together with the king, with hymns and spiritual songs. This befell on the 6th day of January (754), on the most holy festival of the Epiphany.”
This journey of the pope across the Alps is not only the first of a long and fateful series, but affords us our first glance at that young lad who was then only “the king’s son Carolus,” but who was one day to deal with popes on his own account, and was to be known, the world over, as Carolus Magnus. The date, as well as the place of his birth, is uncertain, but it is probable that he was born in 742, the year after his father’s accession to the mayoralty, and was therefore under twelve years of age when he was sent by his father to accompany Pope Stephen II. on his journey of not less than 200 miles from St. Maurice in Switzerland, to Ponthieu in Champagne.
At the entry of the pope, the Frankish king had humbled himself before him. On the next day the parts were reversed. “The pope appeared, together with his clerical companions, in the presence of Pippin. Clothed in sackcloth, and with ashes on his head, he cast himself on the ground, and besought the king, by the mercies of Almighty God, and by the merits of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, that he would free himself and the Roman people from the hand of the Lombards, and from slavery to the proud king Aistulf; nor would he arise until King Pippin, together with his sons and the nobles of the Franks, stretched forth their hands and lifted him from the ground as a sign of their future support and a pledge of his liberation.”