This solemn coronation of Pippin took place, we are told, on the 28th of July, 754. We naturally ask what had so long delayed the intended expedition into Italy. There had been a dangerous illness of the pope, the result of the hardships of his journey and of the unaccustomed rigors of a Gaulish winter. There had also been more embassies: apparently Pippin would exhaust all the resources of negotiation before he proceeded to war. And lastly there had appeared at the royal villa of Carisiacum an unexpected advocate to plead for the Lombard king. This was none other than Pippin’s brother Carloman, lately ruler of Austrasia, and the senior partner in the semi-royal firm, now a tonsured monk, humbly though earnestly advocating the cause of peace. The papal biographer sees in him only a dupe tempted forth from his monastery by the “devilish persuasions of the unspeakable tyrant, Aistulf,” and “striving vehemently with all his might to subvert the cause of God’s Holy Church.” Certainly this intervention of the newly-made monk against the great Head and Patron of all monks, is one of the strangest incidents in his strange career: but it may be permitted us to conjecture that during his seven years’ residence in Italy he had acquired somewhat of an Italian heart and had learnt to dread the ravages of “the arméd torrent poured Down the steep Alps.” Possibly too in the silence of his convent he had learned to estimate at their true value the papal claims to wealth and wide dominion, and with prophetic soul foresaw that the armed interference of the Franks in the quarrels of pope and Lombard king would in the end bring good neither to the Church nor to his father’s house. But whatever Carloman’s motives might be, his interposition on behalf of Aistulf was firmly, perhaps ungraciously, repelled. He was not allowed to return to Italy, but was confined in a monastery in France, “where after certain days,” says the biographer, “at the call of God he migrated from the light of day.” He died on the 17th of August, 754. There is no suggestion of foul play, and indeed Pippin’s character, as far as we know it, is too noble to warrant any such suggestion. It seems probable that Carloman died broken-hearted at the discovery that he had renounced the honest worldliness of the palace for the baser and more hypocritical worldliness of the cloister and the cathedral. After this episode of the intervention of Carloman, his sons were shorn and sent to a convent. Grifo also, as we have seen, perished a little before this time. There now remained only Pippin and his sons visibly before the world as representatives of the great Arnulfing House.