The Life of Charlemagne (Charles the Great)Hodgkin, Thomas
History
The Life of Charlemagne (Charles the Great)
Hodgkin, Thomas
Charlemagne, Emperor, 742-814
The cities now handed over to the see of Rome were twenty-two in
number, and stretched along the Adriatic coast from the mouths of the
Po to within a few miles of Ancona and inland as far as the Apennines.
The plenipotentiary of the Frankish king, Fulrad, Abbot of St. Denis,
travelled through the Pentapolis, and the exarchate, together with
Aistulf’s commissioner, entered each city, received its keys and was
introduced to the chief magistrates, who journeyed onward in his
train. All these arrived at Rome. The local magistrates were doubtless
presented to their new sovereign. The keys of Ravenna and all the other
cities were laid on St. Peter’s tomb along with the donation by which
King Pippin granted them for ever to St. Peter and the pope. This done
Abbot Fulrad returned to Paris having accomplished his world-historical
mission. Stephen II., 94th Bishop of Rome, was now in fact not only
pope but king, and a beginning was made of those “States of the Church”
which with one brief interval have down to our own day intersected the
map of Italy.
I have dwelt at considerable length on Pippin’s relations with the
papacy, because they are inseparably connected with the most important
event in the history of his son. His other achievements, though
remarkable, and though they were evidently much nearer to his heart
(for his intervention in Italian affairs was done grudgingly and almost
against his will), must be dismissed in a few words.
In the first place, in the year 759 a Frankish army besieged Narbonne.
A solemn oath was sworn to the Goths, that if they would surrender the
city to Pippin they should be allowed to keep their own separate laws,
and on this the Goths rose, slew the Saracens who held the city for the
Caliph of Cordova, and handed it over to the Frankish generals. With
this capture ended the Moslem domination in Southern Gaul, though it
was not the last time that the turbans of the Moors were to be seen
north of the Pyrenees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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