Not only had Leo III., in his wrath at being foiled by the elements, confiscated the patrimonies of the Church in the southern provinces of Italy which he possessed, and in Sicily, and in his realm generally, but he interfered with the immemorial spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope as patriarch, and assigned to his own patriarch at Constantinople the privileges which by the appointment of St. Leo had been given to the great metropolis, Thessalonica. This jurisdiction the patriarchs of Constantinople had coveted for centuries. Theodosius II. had tried to give it them by an imperial decree: but it was rescinded. Anastasius, who had been substituted for Germanus in 730, received the ill-omened gift in 733. The giver’s son, Kopronymus, afterwards punished by blindness this unhappy man, but sent him back thus blinded to occupy his see during ten years; made him crown his son, and only in 753 Anastasius, becoming once more a servile persecutor of images, terminated the episcopate which he had so ingloriously received in 730. On the other hand, Pope Stephen II., successor of Zacharias, in spite of bodily weakness and continual danger, crossed the Alps, crowned Pipin, his wife and his sons, in the Abbey of St. Denys, in 754, and so consecrated the Carlovingian race. The rising monarchy of the Franks exulted in that very dignity of St. Peter’s successor, which the Byzantine monarch was striving to subject to his own will. But this contrast had a yet further and even more striking issue. Pope Stephen II., hard pressed by the resolute attempt of king Aistulf to make himself temporal king of Rome, applied for defence to the man he still recognised as sovereign, Constantine Kopronymus, and received for answer only the words that he might get it where he could. He beheld the Lombard destroying and trampling on every thing outside the walls of Rome. In the utmost bodily weakness he had taken the road to Pavia: he resisted every effort of Aistulf to detain him. He had been received by Pipin with joy and admiration. Protection against the Lombards was promised him. The Lombard king gave way to his fear of the Frankish kings, but presently broke through every engagement. On 1st January, 756, he had promised himself Rome, and all which it contained. By the end of the year he had surrendered the exarchate to St. Peter, and Rome had accepted her Pontiff Stephen as her king. And the name of Stephen II. is numbered with that of his three predecessors as the maker of pontifical liberty. Kopronymus ventured to ask Pipin to restore to him the cities which Pipin had conquered. He received for reply that not for earthly reward or wealth, but for the love of St. Peter, the king of the Franks had bestowed on the Pope, his successor, the cities which he had delivered from the Lombard, and restored Rome to him by delivering it from Lombard aggression.