pes were asserting a political power as belonging to S. Peter.
They were asserting that the exarchate had ceased in political theory
as well as in practical fact. In this new order Pippin was to be
involved as supporter of the protectorate which the papacy assumed to
itself.

Then the Franks came forward to save Rome from the Lombards. The last
act of the romantic life of Carloman was to plead for justice to
Aistulf,--that what he had won should not be taken from him,--and to be
refused. Twice Pippin came south and saved the pope: and then the
cities he had won he refused to give up to the envoys of the distant
emperor and declared that "never should those cities be alienated from
the power of S. Peter and the rights of the Roman Church and the
pontiff of the Apostolic See." From this dates the Roman pope's
independence of the Roman emperor, the definite political severance of
Italy from the East, and therefore a great stop towards the schism of
the Church. Iconoclasm and the independence of the popes alike worked
against the unity of Christendom.

[Sidenote: The papal power.]

Pope Stephen, thanks to Pippin, had become the arbitrator of Italy.
The keys of Ravenna and of the twenty-two cities which "stretched along
the Adriatic coast from the mouths of the Po to within a few miles of
Ancona and inland as far as the Apennines" were laid on the tomb of S.
Peter. The "States of the Church" began their long history, the
history of "the temporal power."

And this new power was seen outside Italy as well {150} as within.
From the eighth century, at least, the popes are found continually
intervening in the affairs of the churches among the Franks and the
Germans, granting privileges, giving indulgence, writing with explicit
claim to the authority which Christ gave to S. Peter. Into the
recesses of Gaul, among Normans at Rouen, among Lotharingians at Metz,
to Amiens, or Venice, or Limoges, the papal letters penetrated; and
their tone is that of confidence that advice will be respected or
commands obeyed. And this is, in small matters especially, rather than
in great. The popes at least claimed to interfere everywhere in
Christian Europe and in everything.[2] Within Italy events moved
quickly.

The first step towards a new development was the destruction of the
Lombard kingdom by Charles, who succeeded his father Pippin in 768. At
first joint ruler with his brother he became on the latter's death in
771 sole ki