The Transformation of the Papacy: From Spiritual to Temporal Power
In the year 476 of the Christian era the Western Roman Empire collapsed, succeeded by a series of independent Germanic kingdoms, as Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Angles and Saxons, Alemanni, Burgundians and Lombards created their own political units and founded the bases of future European nation-states.
In reality things were a bit more complex, as the Germanic kings were subject to the Church, which imposed the political model of Roman universalism upon them. Thus, with authority over the “national” kingdoms were the popes, established as the highest ecclesiastical authority and arbiters of civil authority as well, to such an extent that by the ninth century they were responsible for recovering the imperial title in the western sphere (pars occidentalis) of the former Roman Empire.Since the pontificate of Gregory I (590-604), Rome’s successive bishops had become the undisputed heads of the church, thereby initiating a trend towards unification that contrasted sharply with the political disintegration caused by the rise of the various Germanic kingdoms. To consolidate its spiritual preeminence, however, the popes had to fight a tough battle in the Italian Peninsula in the political arena, as they were at the mercy of the Lombard kings in the north and the Byzantine emperor in the south. The confrontation between the two powers, Germanic and imperial, would favor the papacy’s de facto independence.
6.1.1 The Popes vs. the Byzantines and Lombards
Beginning with Emperor Leo III the Isaurian’s (717-741), rise to the throne, Byzantium sought to strengthen its presence in Italy. From Ravenna, the imperial capital[191] it had to face the Lombards, the Pope and other local powers. The most effective resistance was put up by Pope Gregory II (715-731), as after the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Crisis[192] he was supported by the vast majority of the Peninsula (Feller 2001, 123) and, thus, able to face the Byzantines with some local militias and troops of the Dukes of Spoleto and Benevento in a war which has been termed the Rivoluzione Italiana (Salvatorelli 1982, 76).
The Lombards’ King Liutprand (712-744) sought to take advantage of the confrontation with the Byzantine Empire to unite the Italian Peninsula under his leadership (Feller 2001, 124). Having conquered the Exarchate and Pentapolis, he managed to lead his army to Rome itself, but failed to conquer it because of the strong resistance offered by Gregory II. Liutprand then chose to ally with the new Byzantine exarch Eutychius, affording him an army of imperial and Lombard soldiers which took Rome (Christie 1998, 102-103). The restoration of imperial authority over Rome, Ravenna and Venice did not prevent Gregory III (731-741), and his successor, Pope Zacharias (741-752), from defending the papacy’s ecclesiastical independence. In fact, the latter signed a 20-year truce with Liutprand to deal more effectively with the Byzantine exarch.[193]
6.1.2 The Alliance with the Frankish Monarchy and the Rise
of the Papal States
The arrival of Constantine V Copronymus (741-775), an emperor who took no interest in Italy, and the death of Liutprand in 744, created a political framework very favorable to the strengthening of papal power over Italy. To achieve this, the popes sought an alliance with the Frankish kings, the most powerful in the West after the disappearance of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in 711.
6.1.2.1 Pepin the Short and Pope Zacharias
Gregory III tried unsuccessfully to form an alliance with Charles Martel, who had seized power[194] after his victory over the Muslims in 732.[195] In the end, it was Pope Zacharias who managed to reach an agreement with Martel’s two sons: Carloman and Pepin the Short,[196] through the mediation of the Archbishop of Mainz, Boniface, a promoter of ecclesiastical reform in the Frankish kingdom. When Pepin became the sole heir it was he who requested papal support to legally legitimize his dynasty.[197] Zacharias was willing, and in 751 authorized Archbishop Boniface to anoint Pepin as the King of the Franks,[198] following a precedent taken from the Spanish Visigothic kings of Toledo (Riche 1993, 68).[199] The “revolution” of 751 was completely successful and no attempts were made to reinstate Childeric III, who died in 753, and whose son was never king (McKitterick 1983, 38).
6.1.2.2 The Popes as the Legitimate Arbiters of Divine Authority
By turning to the Pope to become the King of the Franks, Pepin accepted that it was the pontiff’s prerogative, as the highest representative of God on Earth, to legitimize him. Henceforth the popes would play a decisive role in international politics, as they could not only support the legitimate enthronement of kings, but were also able to bar them from the community of believers through “excommunication”, a procedure relieving a king’s subjects from the obligation to obey him.[200] By wielding this canonical instrument the popes maintained a powerful political role.
6.1.2.3 Stephen II and the Emergence of the Papal States
After his consecration as the legitimate king of the Franks Pepin intervened militarily in Italy to support Pope Stephen II, who was again threatened by a Lombardian offensive conducted by King Aistulf, who captured Ravenna in 751 and wanted to conquer Rome.[201] Stephen II reacted by visiting Pepin and negotiating an alliance (Feller 2001, 125-127) with him.
The terms of the Franks’ intervention were defined in 754 in a treatise called the Promissio carisiaca, for having been signed in Quierzy-sur-Oise, then the capital of the new Frankish monarchy. Pepin led two expeditions that allowed him to defeat the Lombards under King Aistulf in 756, and occupy their capital, Pavia. The king of the Lombards was further obliged to restore the Exarchate and Pentapolis to Pope Stephen II (Christie 1998,105), and the papacy became one of the major Peninsular powers.
The Promissio carisiaca had important political consequences: on the one hand it strengthened the French monarchy as the leading Western power and, on the other, it enabled the pope to become a temporal sovereign. The Frankish king pledged to aid the papacy and the Roman people in exchange for Stephen II’s anointing of Pepin and his two sons as King(s) of the Franks and “patrician(s) of the Romans”, a ritual designed to establish the authority and legitimacy of the new royal family on the throne and to create a dynasty (McKitterick 2011, 72).[202] In return,
Pepin recognized the pope as the head of the territorial Duchy of Rome, the Exarchate and Pentapolis, a title that led to the emergence of the “Papal States”.[203] At this point the popes, in addition to boasting spiritual supremacy over all Christendom as heads of the Church, became sovereigns of their own states as well.
6.2