³⁸ Id cum’ipsius imperio pemiciosum, tom nomine quoque apud posteros fore turpissimum.—Sigoniut Hist. rtgn. liai. 1.3, p. 197.
³⁹ Joannes Silentiarius à Constantino cum legatis pontificiis rediit, narrans imperatori placere ut ipse ad regem proficiscens, quantum precibus atque auctoritate “profiscere posset, experi-retur,—Sigm.ibii.p. 199.
Ambitious, however, to derive some advantage from his title of patrician, he passed the Alps in 754, besieged Pavia, and compelled Astolphus to promise that he would restore the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, not to the Emperor of Constantinople, but to St. Peter—to the Roman Church and Roman Republic. Vain promise! no sooner is King Pepin returned into France, than the Lombard king forgets his oaths, lays waste the environs of Rome, and labours to become master of the city. It was at this time, in 755, the pope wrote to the French monarch many letters, of which the one written in St. Peter’s name, gives us to perceive, says Fleury,⁴⁰ “the genius of the age, and to what extent the most grave of mankind may carry fiction when they consider it useful.”:
“Peter, called to the apostolat by Jesus Christ, “the Son of the living God, &c........As by me the “Roman Church, of which Stephen is bishop, is “founded upon the stone........I adjure you, O ex− “cellent Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, three kings, “and with you the bishops, abbes, priests, and “monks, and also the dukes, counts, and people.... “I adjure you, and with me the Virgin Mary, the “angels, the martyrs, and all the other saints adjure “you, not to suffer that my city of Rome, and my “people, be any longer left a prey to the Lom− “bards........If you obey me quickly, you shall in “this life receive an abundant recompense for it; “you shall overcome your enemies, you shall live “long, you shall eat the fat of the land, and you “shall, besides, receive eternal life. If you obey “me not, know that by the authority of the Holy “Trinity and of my apostolat, you shall be deprived “of the kingdom of God.”
It is most important here to remark, that this letter makes no mention either of the donation of Constantine, or that which Pepin-le-Bref has the credit of having made in 703, and renewed in 754. It is not the most feeble argument of those who dismiss to the rank of chimeras, the second as well as the-first of these donations. They add, that the original title of Pepin’s grant exists no where in the world—that no authentic copy of it can be produced —and that its directions, omitted by contemporary historians, are only known to us through Anastasius, who compiled his History of the Popes at the end of the ninth century, one hundred and thirty years after the death of Stephen II. The supporters of this grant confine themselves to asserting, that Anastasius declares his having seen the original of it, and cites besides the remains of an inscription preserved at Ravenna, without very scrupulously inquiring the era in which so mutilated a monument might have been erected.⁴¹