The effect of the Pipinian donation, confirmed in so splendid a manner by Charles, had two results at once of inestimable value: one to free the Popes and the inhabitants of Italy from the perpetual invasion, threats, and devastation of the Lombards. Thrice since the assault of the emperor Leo III., in 726, upon the faith and internal government of the Church, had Rome been in the utmost peril of subjugation, once by Liutprand, then by Aistulf, lastly by Desiderius. What would have been the condition of the Pope under such a king as Aistulf or Desiderius, seated at the Capitol? He could only expect a servitude far worse than had ever been suffered under the vice-cæsars of Ravenna, or the cæsars of Constantinople. The original Roman empire had been broken into a multitude of independent kingdoms. That changed condition of the Christian society of itself required that there should be lodged in its head a greater independence of the civil power. The hand of Charles, coming down upon the hand of Pipin, assured to Adrian the legal recognition of a sovereignty sufficiently large to secure him in the guardianship of the faith which was the chief work of St. Peter’s See in every age. And so the misery which the rudest barbarian horde began in 568 was stayed at last in 774: and if Gregory the Great, in his time, complained that he had been for thirty years keeping watch and ward against Lombard violence and intrigue, the four great pontiffs, Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen II., witnessed the last access of their attempt at domination, and the royal city of Ravenna acknowledged in Pope Adrian, not only its spiritual head, but its temporal sovereign.