Things being so disposed, it was inevitable but that occasions must have occurred, favorable to the ambition of the Roman Pontiffs; or, rather, they had now need only of a more active ambition. While Zachary continued to pay homage to the sovereignty of the emperors, Liutprand made himself master of the exarchate, and his successor, Rachis, immediately after stipulated with the Romans for a peace of twenty years. Under the same pope, Pepin dethroned in France the Merovingian dynasty, submitted to the Holy See a famous case of conscience, and obtained from it a reply, which, absolving in the eyes of the people his audacious enterprise, placed in his hands a sceptre which he alone could wield. A short time after this wise reply,³⁷ Astolphus, the successor of Rachis, broke the truce of twenty years, conquered Istria, repossessed himself of Ravenna, which the Greek officers had re-entered, and drove them from it for ever. Eutychius, the last of the exarchs, took flight and retired to Naples; and every thing announced that the power of the emperors was about to be extinguished in Middle as it had been in Upper Italy.
³⁷ It was a reply simply of opinion: and Bellarmine vainly endeavoured to convert it into an absolute decree which deposed Childerick III. Pepin owed his throne to his talents and his good fortune: he obtained it by the consent of the French, and not by the authority of the pope. See Natal. Alex. Dissert. 2. in Century 8. ’ Dupin. Treatise on the Ecclesiastical power, pa. 245. Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. p. 2. book 6. ch. 34.—Eginhard says, Missiserat Burchardus et Foldea-dus ut consulerent pontificem de causà regum, &c. against this Roman republic, in which the head of the empire still preserved some shadow of sovereignty.
The Pope, Stephen II. supplicated Constantine Copronymus to relieve the city of Rome, by dispatching an army which might put the Lombards to flight and maintain in Italy the integrity of the empire and the honor of the imperial authority.³⁸ It is evidently as the sovereign of Rome that Stephen addresses Constantine. But Constantine, occupied in making war against images,³⁹ directs Stephen to negociate with Astolphus, and, if Astolphus was intractable, with Pepin king of the French. The pontiff proceeds into France; there, as minister of the Greek emperor, he gives, in 753, to Pepin and to his sons, the title of Roman Patricians, which Charles Martel had before borne: and received, they assert, in exchange, the gift of the provinces which Astolphus usurped, and which this same emperor claimed, in whose name Stephen negociated. Pepin hesitated the less in bestowing them, as he was neither their possessor nor sovereign.