with the Frisians, the Saxons, the rebellious Bavarians,
Alemannians, and Aquitanians. But from alliance
with the Church to alliance with Rome was a natural
step for his successors. Shortly before his death
(741) he divided his power between his sons Carlmann
and Pepin, giving Austrasia to the one, Neustria to
the other. But Carlmann abdicated to become a
monk (747) and Pepin his junior was left to continue
the work of their father single-handed. Both brothers
employed Boniface to reorganise and reform the clergy
of their dominions; Pepin allowed the saint to take
from all the Frankish bishops an oath of subjection
to the Holy See; and accepted him as Archbishop of
Mainz and primate of the German church. Three
years later the Mayor obtained the permission of Pope
Zacharias to depose the last of the Merovingian puppet-kings
and to assume the regal style; the Pope justly recommending
that he should have the title to whom the power belonged
(751). So ended the line of Clovis, and with it
the barbarian period of Frankish history. For
the next sixty years the history of Europe is that
of Carolingian conquests and essays in political reconstruction.
And now the growing connection with the Papacy acquired
a new character. Since the beginning of the eighth
century the Eastern Empire had forfeited the last
claim to Italian allegiance by embracing the Iconoclastic
heresy, a protest at once belated and premature against
the growing materialism and polytheism of Catholic
Christianity. Pope and Lombards made common cause
to protect the images in imperial Italy. Gregory
III excommunicated the iconoclasts (731); the Lombard
King Aistulf seized Ravenna, the last important stronghold
of the Byzantines in the peninsula (751). Too
late the Papacy realised that the orthodox Lombard
was a greater menace than the Greek heretic. Aistulf
regarded Rome, in common with the other territories
of the Empire, as his rightful spoil. For the
first time the issue was raised between secular statesmanship
scheming for Italian unity and a Roman bishop claiming
sovereign power as the historical and indispensable
adjunct of his office. Pope Stephen II visited
the Frankish court to urge, not in vain, the claims
of religion and of gratitude. By two raids across
the Alps Pepin forced the Lombard to withdraw the
claim on Rome, and furthermore to restore what had
been conquered from the Empire. These territories,
lying in Romagna and the Marches, the Frankish King
conferred on the Pope, as the legitimate representative
of imperial power (756). Pepin’s Donation,
made in defiance of Byzantine protests, greatly extended
the temporal power which the predecessors of Stephen
had long exercised in Rome and the neighbourhood.
A shrewd expedient for crippling the most formidable
rival of the Franks, it was to be the rock on which
ideals then undreamed of were to founder. For
it was the temporal power which provoked the last
and mortal struggle of the Holy Roman Empire with the
Papacy, which presented the most stubborn obstacle
to the leaders of the Risorgimento.
