With the death of Charlemagne, the Papacy, deprived of its protector, was compelled to rely for the enforcement of its edicts upon the celestial power from which its traditions derived both their origin and their authority. Its divine claims to the obedience and reverence of mankind had, however, little weight with the fierce nobles of the age, when those pretensions were not sustained by armed force. At that time the princes of Beneventum, descendants of the Lombards, ruled the greater portion of Southern Italy. The little republics of Naples, Gaeta, Sorrento, and Amalfi, whose independence was a political anomaly in an era of feudal servitude, presented an unexpected and formidable barrier to the ambitious designs of the Lombard barons. Aware of the ultimate result of the struggle if fought unaided, and seeing no opportunity of obtaining assistance from the monarchs of Christendom, the despairing citizens of Naples applied to the Sicilian Moslems. The alliance then concluded endured for fifty years, in defiance of the proclamations of crusades, of the anathemas of the Church, and of the campaigns inaugurated under its auspices, and on more than one memorable occasion seriously menaced the perpetuity of the conditions which prevailed in the political and religious society of Europe. The Emir, Abu-al-Aghlab, lost no time in despatching a fleet to assist the Neapolitans, already besieged by the Lombard prince, Sicardus. The city was relieved, and the besiegers so taken at a disadvantage that they were compelled to negotiate a truce with the republic, and to release without ransom the prisoners whom they had captured. Scarcely a year elapsed before the Neapolitans were called upon to enlist their services in an enterprise of not inferior importance. A Moslem squadron descended without warning upon Messina. Naples responded with alacrity to the summons of her new allies; and while the attention of the garrison was distracted by a furious attack by the combined fleets, a picked detachment scaled the walls from the rear, and almost without bloodshed another of the great Sicilian capitals was added to the rapidly increasing Moorish empire. Encouraged by their victory, the Saracens redoubled their efforts to extend and consolidate their dominion. Their annals have preserved for us the names and the memory of many flourishing cities, among them, Alimena, Lentini, and Butera, whose prosperity had survived the pernicious effects of Roman oppression and Byzantine neglect, whose capture was an important factor in the conquest, but whose history and location are now more or less involved in obscurity.