henceforth confined to Calabria in the south and Venetia and Istria in the north. The Pope succeeded the Eastern Emperor by right of gift from Pippin; and Pippin would, no doubt, claim that the provinces were his to give by right of the sword. In point of fact, however, the Papacy had claimed the exarchate on some previous title, and that title is unsound. We may now pass speedily to the Pontificate of Hadrian. Aistulph died in 756; Stephen III. in 757. The ten years' Pontificate of Paul I. was absorbed in a tiresome effort to wring the new rights of Rome from the new Lombard King, Didier, and the struggle led to the severance of the Romans into Frank and Lombard factions: one of the gravest and most enduring results of the secular policy of the Papacy. When Paul died, the Lombard faction, under two high Papal officials named Christopher and Sergius, led Lombard troops upon the opposing faction (who had elected a Pope), crushed them in a brutal and bloody struggle, and elected Stephen IV. Stephen was, however, not the Lombard King's candidate, and Didier intrigued at Rome against the power of Christopher and Sergius. He bribed the Papal chamberlain, Paul Afiarta, and it is enough to say that before long Christopher and Sergius were put in prison and deprived of their eyes. This was done at the Pope's command; it was the price of the restoration by Didier of the cities he still withheld.[118] Rome was still under the shadow of this brutal quarrel when, in the year 772, Hadrian became Pope. He came of a noble Roman family, and, having been left an orphan in tender years, he had been reared by a pious uncle. Culture at Rome in the eighth century had sunk to its lowest depth, and the letters of Hadrian, like all documents of the time, are full of the grossest grammatical errors. In the school of virtue and asceticism, however, he was a willing pupil. His fasts and his hair-shirt attracted attention in his youth, and he was so favourably known to all at the time of Stephen's death that he was at once and unanimously elected.