The Donation of Pepin and the Papal States

When Stephen II became pope in 752 the Lombard king Aistulf held Ravenna, the centre of the emperor’s province in Italy, and was pressing on Rome. Stephen’s Roman biographer says that Aistulf demanded a yearly tax of one gold coin a head from the Romans. An envoy came from the emperor at Constantinople with orders for Aistulf, and nothing followed; Stephen wrote to the emperor again, asking him to come and free Italy. Seeing that no help would come from the empire, Stephen wrote in secret to Pepin, king of the Franks (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 441–444)).

In October 753 the pope left Rome, and on 6 January 754 Pepin met him near the royal estate of Ponthion. The king dismounted, bowed to the ground and walked beside the pope’s horse like a groom. Stephen begged him in tears to take up the cause of St Peter and of the Roman state, and Pepin swore to restore the exarchate of Ravenna and the rights and places of that state (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (Duchesne 1, pp. 447–448; English in Thatcher and McNeal, no. 44)). At Saint-Denis the pope anointed Pepin and his two sons as kings of the Franks, and at Quierzy the Frankish nobles agreed to the campaign (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 445–448)) (Royal Frankish Annals, years 754–755).

Pepin forced the Alpine passes and shut Aistulf up in Pavia. Aistulf swore to hand back Ravenna and other cities, then broke his word and besieged Rome for three months. Pepin came again in 756 (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 450–453)) (Royal Frankish Annals, year 756). An envoy of the emperor reached him near Pavia and asked that Ravenna and the cities of the exarchate be returned to imperial rule. Pepin refused. He had gone to war, he swore, for no man’s favour but for love of St Peter and the pardon of his sins (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 452–453)).

Aistulf yielded. Pepin issued a written donation of the cities to St Peter, the Roman church and all future popes, which the biographer says was still kept in the church’s archive (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, pp. 452–453)). Abbot Fulrad collected the keys of the cities and laid them with the deed at the tomb of Peter. The list runs from Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro and Fano to Urbino, Gubbio and Comacchio (Liber Pontificalis Stephen II (Duchesne 1, pp. 453–454; English in Thatcher and McNeal, no. 45)). The Frankish annals agree: Pepin took Ravenna with the Pentapolis and the whole exarchate and handed it over to St Peter (Royal Frankish Annals, year 756). Neither source gives the text of the deed. Charlemagne renewed his father’s promise at Rome in 774 (Liber Pontificalis Hadrian I (Duchesne 1, p. 498; English in Thatcher and McNeal, no. 46)).

With this grant the bishop of Rome became the ruler of a territory in central Italy, and the papacy looked to the Frankish kings, not to the emperors, for protection. It is a different thing from the “Donation of Constantine”, a text in which Constantine is made to give Pope Silvester “the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts and cities of Italy or of the western regions” (Donation of Constantine grant of Rome and the West). That document is a forgery made centuries after Constantine, as Lorenzo Valla showed in 1440 (Valla, On the Donation of Constantine pp. 84–85).