While the Lombards were pressing Rome and all its fortified places, Pipin replied to Stephen’s entreaty for succour by sending the Bishop of Metz and the Duke Autchar to accompany him in his journey to France. “Then the same most blessed Pope, trusting in the mercy of our almighty God, went out of this city of Rome to St. Peter’s on the 14th October, and many Romans followed him and people of the neighbouring cities, and weeping and crying, they would hardly let him go on. But he, trusting in the strength of God and the protection of the holy Mother of God and the chief apostles for the safety of all, weak as he was in body, began that laborious journey, commending all the Lord’s flock to Peter, our Lord, the good shepherd and blessed Prince of the Apostles.” As he drew near to Pavia that most wicked king Aistulf sent him messengers, ordering that he should on no account ask for the restoration of Ravenna and its exarchate or the other places of the commonwealth which Aistulf or his predecessors had invaded. The Pope replied that nothing should induce him not to ask it. When he reached Pavia and was received by the king he made him many presents, and ceased not with many tears to ask him for the restitution of what he had taken. He could obtain nothing. The Frank legates pressed that he might be allowed to go on to France. The king asked the Pope if he desired it. The Pope avowed it, and the king gnashed his teeth, and sent his satellites repeatedly in secret to turn him from it. The Frank legates at last succeeded in obtaining permission for him to go forward. On the 15th November, attended by the bishop of Ostia and a large train of clergy, he left Pavia, and continued his journey. He reached the valley of the Rhone by Aosta and the Mons Jovis, where about two hundred years later Bernard of Menthon founded the monastery which has given its new name to the mountain, and he rested at length at the abbey of St. Maurice, now one of the oldest existing monasteries.(188) Stephen II. was the first Pope who crossed the Alps. The few Popes who had up to that time travelled outside Italy had been banished, as St. Clement by Trajan to the Crimea, or St. Liberius confined by Constantius I. at Berea in Thrace, or St. Silverius banished by Belisarius to Patara; St. John I., St. Agapetus, and Vigilius had by royal orders gone to Constantinople. St. Martin had been taken thither a prisoner by Constans II., and Pope Constantine, ordered by Justinian II. to go thither, had been courteously received by him.