The Historians' History of the World 07

The emperor, instead of yielding to Gregory II, at least in appearance, and so securing his assistance in resisting the encroachments made by Liutprand, still further widened the gulf between the pope and himself by his stubborn and ungracious demeanour. The consequences were not slow to follow. Even if the many attempts against his life and position described in the biography of the pope are rather imaginary (and due to the dread felt in Rome of Leo III) than attacks which actually occurred, they nevertheless give us the right idea of the temper in Rome at that time; there is no doubt that the appointment of a new pope favoured by the emperor and who might be removed to Constantinople, was contemplated in Italy. The fact of a later successful understanding between the two, such as Gregoroviusaa and Schlosserbb

would have us accept, has no authenticated probability. In 728-729 Liutprand and Eutychius were still acting in concert against the pope and his friends; and the imperial edict of 728, wherein “all images of angels, saints, and martyrs were proscribed under penalties” shows no inclination towards reconciliation. Whether the Lombards, who defended the pope at the Ponte Salario against the forces of Eutychius and the exarch Paulus, which were approaching to depose him from the papal chair, acted under instructions from Liutprand, or from Transamund II, duke of Spoleto, or on their own initiative, we cannot discover from the Vita Gregorii,z

which contains the record.

Accordingly whilst a state of great confusion and warfare prevailed both in the east and west of Italy, as well as in the district surrounding Naples, Liutprand continued his victorious career.

To favour the Greeks was not his idea, so long as the pope gave him no offence; moreover he had a certain awe of the church, and of its head, which he never uprooted from his inner nature. Besides, his situation, independent of both sides and therefore alternately feared and courted by both, was the best possible for facilitating the execution of his ambitious and far-reaching projects.

In September of the year 727 till September 728 he addressed himself to a neighbourhood quite dangerously in the vicinity of Rome, seizing the town of Sutrium (Sutri), which, like the strip of country between the dukedoms of Spoleto and Tuscany was not yet incorporated with the Lombard kingdom. By dint of much persuasion and still more gold, he consented 140 days later to return this piece of territory, and leave the pope in possession, “the first presentation of a town to the church”—“the first germ of the pontifical state outside the walls of Rome.”

The following year after the subjection already mentioned, of Spoleto and Benevento, he followed Eutychius against Rome, and encamped on the Neronian meadows to the great dismay of the inhabitants. Nevertheless the matter was conducted to a peaceable issue. After a touching conference with Gregory II the Lombard king not only commenced no hostilities, but showed all possible respect to the papal throne, at the same time cautioning the pope to place himself on a better footing with Eutychius, and his (Liutprand’s) other allies. For this reason the idea of a serious alliance having existed between Liutprand and the emperor cannot be entertained.

Not long after, on the 11th of February, 731, Gregory II died. Under the rule of his successor, Gregory III, an enthusiastic image-worshipper, whose life in the Liber Pontificalisz is very scantily and unsatisfactorily told, “the Roman district was brought under the control of the accursed Lombards, under the king Liutprand himself,” a sentence which must not, of course, be taken literally, and which unfortunately stands without further explanation.

Probably the decade in which Gregory III sat on the stool of St. Peter, was the period during which these events took place which are only related by Paulus Diaconus.p To give an even moderately correct chronology of the sequence of events would be a hopeless endeavour. The battles against the East Romans which are here mentioned, are confined to those in the exarchate of Ravenna. Wherever the king himself led the fight, he always came off victor (according to Paulus), whilst in his absence the Lombards sustained many rebuffs. In the last year of Gregory III the complications between Rome and Liutprand assumed a very serious aspect, the intervention of the pope in Lombard affairs, which were purely secular, costing him dear.