During these two hundred years, from the first inroad of the Lombards, nothing could be more embarrassing than the civil position of the Popes. Beside the main body of the Lombards, occupying the great plain of North Italy, with their capital at Pavia, there were two duchies, one of Spoleto, immediately to the north of Rome and its territory, and another of Benevento, holding a considerable portion of Italian territory near Naples. This city, with other seaports, continued in possession of the empire. The Lombard kings were evermore trying to bring their outlying duchies into closer obedience to the royal power. Again the fortress and territory of Ravenna, the imperial metropolis, lay further to the north, touching the Lombard possessions. The Lombards, when they came into Italy, were so little advanced in political science of government, so little coherent among themselves, that at one time they were divided among thirty-six chiefs, so many heads of robbers and devastating bands, barbarous and un-Christian. There can be no doubt that the aim of the Lombard kings from the beginning had been to make themselves masters of Rome, and to rule the whole of Italy as a kingdom. The example and success of Theodorich was fresh before them. Justinian’s success under his generals Belisarius and Narses was even younger than the glory of the great Gothic king. Gregory the Great had laid a foundation for christianising the Lombard people in his friendship with the great and good Queen Theodelinda. In process of time they had become Catholic. Their king, Liutprand, had caused the relics of St. Augustine, which had been carried from Africa to Sardinia during the Vandal persecution, to be brought to his capital city, Pavia, where the shrine of the greatest of the fathers still abides in honour. Pope Zacharias, by his personal dignity, prevailed over both Liutprand and Rachis. But the contest for the dominion of Italy went on in spite of reverence for the Apostolic See. The people were Catholic, but tumultous and stubborn. After a long-continued struggle of various success, the king Liutprand seemed to be on the point of incorporating the Spolentine and Beneventan duchies, of closing upon Rome, and expelling the emperor from Ravenna. Upon his death, and the retirement of Rachis, Aistulf was uniting all the Lombard force for the attainment of their purpose from the beginning, to expel the emperor from Italy, and to make the Pope a Lombard subject. He went so far as to put a poll-tax on the Roman duchy, and to style himself king of Italy. There the Carlovingian hand arrested him: and the keys of the cities which the Lombard had won from the Byzantine, and Pipin from the Lombard, laid by the gift of Pipin on the tomb of the chief apostle, signified to all men that his successor had become a temporal prince, after forming Rome in the centre of a captive province from a heathen city into a spiritual capital during the unceasing calamity of three centuries.