³⁷ It was a reply simply of opinion: and Bellarmine vainly endeavoured to convert it into an absolute decree which deposed Childerick III. Pepin owed his throne to his talents and his good fortune: he obtained it by the consent of the French, and not by the authority of the pope. See Natal. Alex. Dissert. 2. in Century 8. ’ Dupin. Treatise on the Ecclesiastical power, pa. 245. Bossuet. Def. Cler. Gall. p. 2. book 6. ch. 34.—Eginhard says, Missiserat Burchardus et Foldea-dus ut consulerent pontificem de causà regum, &c. against this Roman republic, in which the head of the empire still preserved some shadow of sovereignty. The Pope, Stephen II. supplicated Constantine Copronymus to relieve the city of Rome, by dispatching an army which might put the Lombards to flight and maintain in Italy the integrity of the empire and the honor of the imperial authority.³⁸ It is evidently as the sovereign of Rome that Stephen addresses Constantine. But Constantine, occupied in making war against images,³⁹ directs Stephen to negociate with Astolphus, and, if Astolphus was intractable, with Pepin king of the French. The pontiff proceeds into France; there, as minister of the Greek emperor, he gives, in 753, to Pepin and to his sons, the title of Roman Patricians, which Charles Martel had before borne: and received, they assert, in exchange, the gift of the provinces which Astolphus usurped, and which this same emperor claimed, in whose name Stephen negociated. Pepin hesitated the less in bestowing them, as he was neither their possessor nor sovereign. ³⁸ Id cum’ipsius imperio pemiciosum, tom nomine quoque apud posteros fore turpissimum.—Sigoniut Hist. rtgn. liai. 1.3, p. 197. ³⁹ Joannes Silentiarius à Constantino cum legatis pontificiis rediit, narrans imperatori placere ut ipse ad regem proficiscens, quantum precibus atque auctoritate “profiscere posset, experi-retur,—Sigm.ibii.p. 199. Ambitious, however, to derive some advantage from his title of patrician, he passed the Alps in 754, besieged Pavia, and compelled Astolphus to promise that he would restore the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, not to the Emperor of Constantinople, but to St. Peter—to the Roman Church and Roman Republic. Vain promise! no sooner is King Pepin returned into France, than the Lombard king forgets his oaths, lays waste the environs of Rome, and labours to become master of the city. It was at this time, in 755, the pope wrote to the French monarch many letters, of which the one written in St. Peter’s name, gives us to perceive, says Fleury,⁴⁰ “the genius of the age, and to what extent the most grave of mankind may carry fiction when they consider it useful.”: