We know nothing of that siege and capture and practically
nothing of the splendid victory of the Venetians.
But the tremendous significance of the fall of Ravenna,
which had been the impregnable seat of the empire
in Italy since Belisarius entered it in 540, must not
escape us. Rightly understood it made necessary
all that followed.
At this dramatic moment the Emperor Leo died, to be
followed in 741 by Pope Gregory and Charles Martel.
Gregory was succeeded by Pope Zacharias, who in the
year of his election met Liutprand at Narni and obtained
from him the restoration of the four frontier towns
he had taken two years before. But though Rome
was thus secured Ravenna was in worse danger than
ever, for Liutprand now renewed his attack upon it
and it was only the intervention of the pope in person
at Pavia that saved the city. Zacharias set forth
along the Flaminian Way; at Aquila perhaps near Rimini
the exarch met him, and he entered Ravenna in triumph,
the whole city coming out to meet him. In spite
of the opposition of Liutprand he made his way to
Pavia, and was successful in persuading him to give
up his attempt to take the once impregnable city and
to restore much he had captured. Liutprand was
an old man; perhaps he was not hard to persuade, for
he was on the eve of his death, which came to him
in 744. His successor Hildeprand reigned for
six months and was deposed. Ratchis became king,
a pious man who made truce with the pope, and in 749
abdicated and entered a monastery. Aistulf was
chosen king, and at once turned his thoughts to Ravenna.
The crisis so long foreseen, so often prevented by
the papacy, came at last with great suddenness.
In 751 Ravenna fell and the Byzantine empire in Italy
thereby came to an end.
We know nothing of this tremendous affair; we do not
know whether the great imperial city, full of all
the strange wonder of Byzantium, and heavy with the
destiny of Europe, was taken suddenly by assault or
after a long siege. We know only that it fell,
and that Aistulf was master there in the year of our
Lord 751.
A sort of silence followed that fall. In 752
Pope Zacharias died. His successor was never
consecrated, but died within three days of his election
and made way for Pope Stephen. In the confusion
of all things it is said that a party in Rome urged
Aistulf to usurp the empire. This was enough;
it might have been, and perhaps was, expected.
The pope had his answer ready. The heir of the
empire in Italy was not the Lombard but the Holy See.
Aistulf threatened to invade Roman territory, and,
indeed, occupied Ceccano in the duchy of Rome.
Again the pope had his answer. That answer was
the appeal to Pepin and his Franks. The papacy
had found a champion.
X
THE PAPAL STATE
PEPIN AND CHARLEMANGE
The appeal of Stephen, which was to have for its result
the resurrection of the empire in the West and the
establishment of the papacy as a temporal power and
sovereignty, was made in a letter now lost to us,
which a pilgrim on his way back to France from Rome
carried to Pepin the king of the Franks. In reply
to it, the abbot of Jumieges appeared in Rome as Pepin’s
ambassador to invite the pope himself to cross the
Alps.
