The Historians' History of the World 07

After remaining quiet for a few months, Aistulf again resumed his threatening attitude towards the Romans, and demanded a palpable proof of their subjection to himself, in the shape of a poll-tax of a gold solidus per head. A fresh embassy from the pope, which the Lombard king received at Nepi (near Sutri, north of Rome), met with no success, and the holy abbots of St. Vincent and St. Benedict, who composed it, returned to their monasteries in despair. Nor was any greater effect produced by the arrival of Joannes, the imperial Silentiarius, who was sent by the Greek emperor from Constantinople. This pompous messenger brought letters for the pope and King Aistulf, in which the latter was called upon to desist from his present undertaking and to restore the whole of the territory of which he had unjustly robbed the Grecian Empire. The high-sounding language and haughty requirements of the Byzantines, unsupported as they were by any material power, could make no impression upon such a man as Aistulf, and he dismissed the imperial envoy with an unmeaning answer.

The danger of Rome had now reached its highest point, and no deliverance seemed nigh. “King Aistulf,” in the language of the papal biographer,i “was inflamed with rage, and, like a roaring lion, never ceased to utter the most dreadful threats against the Romans, declaring that he would slay them all with the sword, if they did not submit themselves to his rule.” An appeal which the pope had made to the Byzantine emperors for protection was entirely fruitless, and the Romans were utterly unequal to sustain unaided a contest with the warlike Lombards. It was in this extremity that Stephen determined to test once more the value of that close relation which it had been the object of so many popes to form with the Frankish people, and more especially with the Carlovingian family. He knew that it would be no easy matter to induce King Pepin or his Franks to undertake an expedition into Italy with a force sufficient for the object in view. He felt, too, that a mere letter from Pepin, such as Charles Martel had sent to his good friend Liutprand, would be of no avail to turn the ambitious Aistulf from his purpose. He therefore adopted the resolution of crossing the Alps, throwing himself at the feet of the Frankish monarch and thus giving him a convincing proof that the very existence of the papacy was at stake.

THE POPE VISITS PEPIN

[753-754 A.D.]

With this view the holy father, seeing that all his entreaties “for the fold which had been entrusted to him (Rome), and the lost sheep” (Istria and the exarchate of Ravenna), were fruitless, started from Rome on the 14th of October, 753, in company with the abbot Droctigang and Duke Autchar, whom Pepin had previously sent to Stephen with general promises of support. He was also followed by a considerable number of the Roman clergy and nobility. On his journey northwards he passed through the city of Pavia, where Aistulf then was; and though the latter had forbidden him to say a word about restoration of territory, he once more endeavoured, by rich presents and earnest entreaties, to induce the king to give up his conquests and forego his hostile purposes. He was warmly seconded by Pepin’s envoys, and another epistle from the Greek emperor; but the mind of the fierce Lombard remained unchanged. It is evident, indeed, that he would have prevented Stephen by force from continuing his journey but for the threats of the Frankish ambassadors. As it was he endeavoured to intimidate the pope in the presence of Droctigang into a denial of his wish to proceed to the court of Pepin; and only then dismissed him when he saw that Stephen would yield to nothing but actual violence.

Pepin

(From a French print of 1830)