cities and territories of Imola, Bologna, Osimo, Ancona, and Umana were in question. In the next year, 758, Desiderius ravaged with fire and sword the Pentapolis. Then he attacked the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which had put themselves under the protection of the Pope and the king of the Franks. At another time the Greek emperor Kopronymus was bent upon recovering Ravenna and the Pentapolis, and upon attacking Rome itself. Desiderius met his agent and wrote to the emperor, exhorting him to send an army into Italy, and promising that he with all his Lombards would help him to recover Ravenna, and whatever else he desired.(225) Through the whole ten years of Paul’s pontificate, this king Pipin discharged with fidelity his office of Roman Patricius, that is, the sworn defender of the Holy See. It was this protection alone which enabled the Pope to maintain his newly founded State against the perpetual wiles of the Lombard, as well as against the Greek enmity. As to Kopronymus, the Iconoclastic heresy was the furious passion of his whole life. Pope Paul wrote to King Pipin:(226) “You know well how those most nefarious Greeks pursue us only to destroy and tread under foot the orthodox faith and the tradition of the fathers”. When Pope Paul I. died, in 767, his pontificate of ten years had been throughout agitated by the perpetual oscillations of king Desiderius, alternating acts of devotion with acts of hostility, promises with violations of them, restitution of rights with fresh acts of plundering.(227) Scarcely had Paul I. closed his eyes when the duke Toto, a very powerful baron of the Roman Tuscany, conspired with his three brothers, Constantine, Passivus, and Paschalis, to get possession of Rome and the papacy.(228) Toto and his party, while preparation was being made for the solemn obsequies of Paul I. and the due election of his successor, broke into Rome, suddenly elected his brother Constantine, a layman, introduced him by violence into the Lateran palace. He seized upon George, bishop of Palestrina, and compelled him to confer minor orders upon Constantine. The next day he was made deacon by the same bishop, and on the following Sunday Toto, attended by a large body of armed men, carried the intruded Constantine to St. Peter’s, where the three suburbican bishops, the said George of Palestrina, and the bishops of Albano and Porto, gave him episcopal consecration. In such fashion Constantine seated himself in the chair of Peter; he forced the people to make oath of fidelity to him. Thus the layman of a week before, thrust upon the clergy and people of Rome by the rudest violence, held possession of the Apostolic See for thirteen months. He wrote lying letters to King Pipin, who was not deceived by them. But Rome was filled with conspiracy and unrule.