l reasons, which lay even deeper still.

A free, plain-spoken, practical race like these Lombards; living by their
own laws; disbelieving in witchcraft; and seemingly doing little for
monasticism, were not likely to find favour in the eyes of popes. They
were not the material which the Papacy could mould into the Neapolitan
ideal of 'Little saints,--and little asses.' These Lombards were not a
superstitious race; they did not, like the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, crowd
into monasteries. I can only find four instances of Lombard sovereigns
founding monasteries in all Paulus' history. One of them, strangely
enough, is that of the very Astulf against whom the Pope fulminated so
loudly the letter from St. Peter which I read you.

Moreover, it must be said in all fairness--the Lombards despised the
Romans exceedingly. So did all the Teutons. 'We Lombards,' says Bishop
Luitprand, 'Saxons, Franks, Lorrainers, Bavarians, Sueves, Burgunds,
consider it a sufficient insult to call our enemy a Roman; comprehending
in that one name of Roman, whatever is ignoble, cowardly, avaricious,
luxurious, false, in a word, every vice.' If this was--as it very
probably was--the feeling of the whole Teutonic race; and if it was
repaid--as it certainly was--on the part of the Roman, by contempt for
the 'barbarism' and 'ignorance' of the Teuton; what must have been the
feeling between Roman and Lombard? Contact must have embittered mutual
contempt into an utter and internecine hatred, in which the Pope, as
representative of the Roman people, could not but share.

As for the political reasons, they are clear enough. It is absurd to say
that they wished to free Italy from Lombard tyrants. What did they do
but hand her over to Frankish tyrants instead? No. The true reason was
this. Gradually there had arisen in the mind of all Popes, from Gregory
the Great onward, the idea of a spiritual supremacy, independent of all
kings of the earth. It was a great idea, as the event proved: it was a
beneficent one for Europe; but a ruinous one for Italy. For the Popes
were not content with spiritual power. They could not conceive of it as
separated from temporal power, and temporal power meant land. How early
they set their hearts on the Exarchate of Ravenna, we shall never know:
the fact is patent, that it was a Naboth's vineyard to them; and that to
obtain it they called in the Franks.

Their dread was, evidently, lest the Lombards should become