In the course of a few years a new State, the State of the Church, had been founded.(193) For a new State it was, even if its connection with the empire was not dissolved. Its geographical position in the centre of the Peninsula and touching both seas, enhanced its importance. The moment was great and decisive. The times of the Roman empire were fulfilled. East and West had more and more decidedly parted, as well especially on the field of theological science as on the field of political formations. Agreement had become impossible unless the West was willing to give up its civilising mission. Italy’s political formation was closely bound up with that mission. The Gothic domination had fallen inasmuch as it had been powerless to assimilate land and people. The Lombard people, inferior in energy and in warlike qualities to the Goths, in its late attempt to unite Italy under one sceptre, had failed less through the weak resistance of the last remains of the Roman empire than through the deep-lying failures of its political and military constitution. These showed themselves soon after its permanent occupation to the south of the Alps by its parting into numerous military fiefs, with slight internal connection. Moreover, the instability of relation between the two nationalities from the beginning made almost impossible the task which Liutprand and Aistulf had set themselves. Attempts to assimilate in life, custom, and law had followed a long period of barbarous oppression, when the hand of the Church had already enfolded conquerors and conquered. These attempts had there produced a reaction which threatened to undo what had been accomplished. After two hundred years of settlement the Lombards were still held to be strangers. Not to mention numerous other tokens of this, it has a deep meaning when under the successor of Pope Stephen “the whole Senate and all the people of the God-protected city of Rome” write to king Pipin concerning the extension of this province “rescued by you out of the hand of the heathen”.(194) The national Italian elements made their complete effect sensible in the State of the Church, and secured its establishment in opposition to that temper of aliens represented by the Lombards. The new temper was not one-sided and exclusive, but assimilating, and therefore certain of development and progress. Never has a State arisen under circumstances so remarkable, in the midst of a violent shock, yet with so general a concurrence. It was due to the consistently-pursued management of a series of distinguished men as the result of their moralising influence. This did not limit itself to the populations immediately participating in it, which had found steady advocates and actual protectors in the Popes, notwithstanding the extreme need and oppression suffered by them. It embraced the whole Christian world. The Church absolutely required secular independence in order to