The Historians' History of the World 07

It was on his return from this campaign that he received the news of his brother Grifo’s death. This restless and unhappy prince—whom the indelible notion of his right to a throne rendered incapable of enjoying the noble fortune allotted to him by his brother—had fled to Waifar, duke of Gascony, in the hope of inducing him to take up arms. But Waifar was not in a condition to protect him; and when the ambassadors of Pepin demanded that he should be given up, Grifo was obliged to seek another asylum. The fugitive then directed his course to King Aistulf, foreseeing, probably, that Pepin would be drawn into the feud between the pope and the Lombards, the subjects of Aistulf, and therefore thinking that he might already regard the latter as the enemy of his brother. As he was passing the Alps, however, with a small retinue, he was set upon, in the valley of St. Jean de Maurienne, by Count Theudes of Vienne and the Transjuran Count Friedrich. Grifo was slain, but not until after a desperate struggle, in which both the counts above mentioned also lost their lives.

Pepin now retired to his royal residence at Dietenhoven (Thionville, Villa Theudonis), on the Moselle, and spent the few months of peace that followed the Saxon war in ordering the affairs of the church, which he effected chiefly through the instrumentality of ecclesiastical synods.b

We may now profitably revert briefly to the affairs of the Lombards whom we left just at the moment of Liutprand’s death in 744.a

LOMBARD AFFAIRS

[744-751 A.D.]

The influence of Charles Martel with his ally and friend Liutprand, and the reverence which the latter entertained for the popes in their spiritual character, had caused a temporary lull in the affairs of Italy. But Liutprand died about two years after the accession of Pepin, and was succeeded, first by his grandson Hildebrand, who reigned seven months, and then by Ratchis, duke of Friuli, under whom the Lombards renewed the war against Rome. In this emergency, Zacharias, who, like many other popes, trusted greatly and with good reason to his personal influence over the rude kings and warriors of the age, went himself to Perugia (Perusia) to beg a peace from Ratchis. The result was favourable to a degree beyond his highest expectations. The Lombard monarch not only recalled his troops—which were already besieging the towns of the Pentapolis—and granted a peace of forty years, but was so deeply affected by the dignified demeanour and eloquent exhortations of the holy father, that, like another Carloman, he renounced his earthly crown, and sought a refuge from the cares of government in the quiet cloisters of Monte Cassino.b

This is the story as told in the Liber Pontificalis,i

but there are reasons for thinking that Ratchis lost the favour of his own Lombards by winning the smile of the pope, and that a revolution unseated him and he was fortunate enough to be immured in a convent instead of meeting the probable fate of his predecessor, Hildebrand, whose disappearance is unexplained. It is a strange fact that Ratchis went to the same convent where the ex-king Carloman lived.a

[749-753 A.D.]

Ratchis was succeeded in 749 by his brother Aistulf, a man by no means so sensible to spiritual influences, and remarkable for his energy and strength of purpose. In three years from his accession to the Lombard throne, he succeeded in driving out Eutychius, the last exarch of the Greek emperors, from the exarchate of Ravenna, and made himself master of the city. Having thus secured the possession of the southern portion of the Roman territory, he marched upon Rome itself; and when Pope Zacharias died, March 15th, 752, it must have been with the melancholy conviction that all his efforts to preserve the independence of Rome, and to further the lofty claims of the papacy, were about to prove fruitless. Once more was Hannibal at the gates; but, fortunately for the interest of the threatened city, the successor of Zacharias, Stephen II, was a man in every way equal to the situation. By a well-timed embassy and costly presents, he stayed the uplifted arm of the Lombard for the moment, and, as often happens in human affairs, by gaining time he gained everything.