higher character, was that of the new Carlovingian kingdom, a kingdom of Germanyt rather than of Gaul. This clergy, the ancestors of Pepin, and Pepin himself, had always treated with the utmost respect and deference." Boniface, in truth, as Papal Legate, or under the authority of Pepin, had early assumed the power of a primate of Gaul, consecrated three archbishops, of Rouen, and Sens, and Rheims. The last see was occupied by a soldier-prelate, named Milo, archbishop at once of Rheims and of Treves, who resisted for ten years all attempts to dispossess him; at the end of that time. he was killed by a wild boar.

King Pepin was himself an Austrasian, the vast estates of his family lay on the Rhine. The accession of his house Teutonised more completely, till the division among the sons of Charlemagne, the whole Frankish monarchy.

A.D. 752.

Pope Zacharias did not live to behold the fulfilment of his great designs. He died in the same year on which Pepin became king of France. The election fell on a certain presbyter, named March 14. Stephen; but the third day after, before his consecration, he was seized with a fit, and died the following day. He is not reckoned in the line of popes. March 26. Another Stephen, chosen immediately on his or II. death, is usually called the second of that name.

Stephen II.

The first act of Stephen's pontificate was to guard against the threatened aggressions of the Lombards. Already had Astolph, a prince as daring but less religious than Liutprand, entered the Exarchate, and seized Ravenna. The ambassadors of the Pope were received

* Compare Guizot, Essai iii.

prædicationis socii et adjutores esse u Pope Zacharias writes to Boniface: niterentur ex divina inspiratura.""Quod (Carlomanus et Pepinus) tuæ | Epist. Bonifac., 144.

June.

with courtesy, his gifts with avidity; a hollow truce for forty years was agreed on; but in four months (the terms of the treaty, and the pretext alleged by Astolph for its violation, are equally unknown) the Lombard was again in arms. In terms October of contumely and menace he demanded the instant submission of Rome, and the payment of a heavy personal tribute, a poll-tax on each citizen. Astolph now treated the ambassadors of the Pope with scorn.* A representative of the empire, which still clung to its barren rights in Italy, John the Silentiary, appeared at Rome. He was sent to Ravenna, to protest against the Lombard invasion, and to demand the restoration of the Roman territory to the republic. Astolph dismissed him with a civil but evasive answer, that he would send an ambassador to the Emperor. Stephen wrote to Constantinople, that without an army to back the imperial demands, all was lost.

October.

Astolph, exasperated, perhaps, at the demand of an army from the East, which might reach his ears, inflexibly pursued his advantages. He approached the Roman frontier; he approached Rome. Not all the litanies, not all the solemn processions to the most revered altars of the city, in which the Pope himself, with naked feet, bore the cross, and the whole people followed with ashes on their heads, and with a wild howl of agony implored the protection of God against the blaspheming Lombards, arrested for an instant his progress. The Pope appealed to heaven, by tying a copy of the treaty, violated by Astolph, to the holy

x

According to Anastasius, Astolph his diabolic ambition. This is a flower was required to surrender to their of ecclesiastical rhetoric, yet showing rightful lord all that he had usurped by the papal abhorrence of the Lombards.

cross. Yet, during the siege of Rome, Astolph was digging up the bodies of saints, not for insult, but as the most precious trophies, and carried them off as tutelar deities to Lombardy."

Oct. 14.

The only succour was beyond the Alps, from Pepin, the king, by papal sanction, of the Catholic Franks. Already the Pope had written to beseech the interference of the Transalpine; and now, as the danger became more imminent, he determined to Stephen leave his beloved flock, though in a feeble leaves Rome. state of health, to encounter the perils of a journey over the Alps, and so to visit the Barbarian monarch in person. He set forth amidst the tears and lamentations of the people. He was accompanied by some ecclesiastics, by the Frankish bishop Radigond, and the Duke Anscharis, already sent by Pepin to invite him to the court of France. Miracles, now the ordinary signs of a papal progress, were said to mark his course. Instead of endeavouring to pass without observation through the Lombard dominions, he boldly presented himself at the gate of Pavia. He was disappointed if he expected Astolph to be overawed by his presence, as Liutprand and Rachis had been by that of his saintly predecessor; but he was safe under the protection of the ambassador of Pepin.

Novemoer.

yu Alligans connectensque adorandæ | wished to plunder on his way the cruci Dei nostri, pactum illud, quod treasures of the church of Ravenna. nefandus Rex Longobardorum disrupit."-Anastas., in Vit. Steph. II.

"Ablata multa sanctorum corpora ex Romanis finibus, in Papiam construxit eorum oracula." He founded a nunnery, in which he placed his own daughters.-Chronic. Salernit.

The Ravennese priests (among them Leo, afterwards archbishop) designed to murder him. He escaped, taking only part of the treasures. Those who had plotted the death of the Pope were sent to Rome, and remained till most of them died. Among them, says the writer, "avus patris mei

Compare, on the other hand, the curious story in Agnelli. Stephen | fuit."-Apud Muratori.

VOL. III.

C

Nov. 15.

Jan. 6, 754.

Astolph received him not without courtesy, accepted his gifts, but paid no regard to his earnest tears and supplications; coldly rejected his exorbitant demands,—the immediate restoration of all the Lombard conquests— but respected his person, and tried only, by repeated persuasion, to divert him from his journey into France. Stephen, on leaving Pavia, anticipated any stronger measures to detain him by a rapid march to the foot of the Alps. In November he passed the French frontier, and reached the convent of St. Maurice. There he was met by another ecclesiastic, and another noble of the highest rank, with orders to conduct him to the court. At a distance of a hundred miles from the court appeared the Prince Charles, with some chosen nobles. Charles was thus to be early impressed with reverence for the Papal dignity. Three miles from the palace of Pontyon,b Pepin came forth with his wife, his family, and the rest of his feudatories. As the Pope approached, the king dismounted from his horse, and prostrated himself on the ground before him. He then walked by the side of the Pope's palfrey. The Pope and the ecclesiastics broke out at once into hymns of thanksgiving, and so chanting as they went, reached the royal residence. Stephen lost no time in adverting to the object of his visit. He implored the immediate interposition of Pepin to enforce the restoration of the domain of St. Peter. So relate the Italians. According to the French chroniclers, the Pope and his clergy, with ashes on their heads, and sackcloth on their bodies, prostrated themselves as suppliants at the feet of Pepin, and would not rise till he had promised his aid against the perfidious Lombard. Pepin

b Pontyon on the Perche, near Vitry-le-brulé.

swore at once to fulfil all the requests of the Pope; but as the winter rendered military operations impracticable, invited him to Paris, where he took up his residence in the abbey of St. Denys. Pepin and his two sons were again anointed by the Pope himself, their sovereignty thus more profoundly sanctified in the minds of their subjects. Stephen would secure the perpetuity of the dynasty under pain of interdict and excommunication. The nation was never to presume to choose a king in future ages, but of the race of Charles Martel. From fatigue and the severity of the climate, Stephen became dangerously ill in the monastery of St. Denys, but, after a hard struggle, recovered his health. His restoration was esteemed a miracle, wrought through the prayers of St. Denys, St. Peter, and St. Paul.

July.

Astolph, in the mean time, did not disdain the storm which was brooding beyond the Alps. He took an extraordinary measure to avert the danger. He persuaded Carloman, the brother of Pepin, who had abdicated his throne, and turned monk, to leave his monastery, to cross the Alps, and endeavour to break this close alliance between Pepin and the Pope. No wonder that the clergy should attribute the influence of Astolph over the mind of Carloman to diabolic arts, for Carloman appeared at least, whether seized by an access of reviving ambition, or incensed at Pepin's harsh treatment of his family, to enter with the utmost zeal into the cause of the Lombard. The humble slave of the Pope Zacharias presented himself in France as the resolute antagonist of Pope Stephen and of the Papal

"Tali omnes interdicto et excommunicationis lege constrinxit, ut nunquam de alterius lumbis regem in ævo præsumerent eligere."--Clausul. de Pippini Elect.