Pippin, as a loyal churchman, followed the Pope’s counsel, but he seems to have done so with distinct reservations. The traditional Frankish policy had been the complete subordination of the Church to the State. It is no wonder then that many of the Frankish nobles disapproved of Pippin’s act, which reduced their monarchy to a gift from the hands of the Pope. Pippin did all he could during the rest of his lifetime to keep clear of further Italian complications. He never crossed the Alps again, and he was very careful not to depress the Lombard power in Northern Italy and so give Stephen an excuse for demanding additional territory. As a temporal ruler the Pope’s authority had been substantially increased by the cession of lands which he had claimed from him on the basis of the so-called Donation of Constantine--a fictitious instrument which Stephen appealed to when there arose the question of the disposition of the territory once belonging to the Exarchate of Ravenna. According to the legend, Pope Sylvester, the contemporary of Constantine, when the capital of the Empire had been removed to Constantinople, had received from the Emperor extensive donations of Italian territory, both on the Peninsula and on the adjacent islands, over which he was to rule with the power of a temporal sovereign. To Pippin, this legendary Donation, because of its presumed sanction at the hands of a revered Emperor and Pope, was sacred. He was willing to be an instrument in carrying out the terms of the sacrosanct compact, but he refused to go farther than this, and for the rest of his life he maintained an attitude of reserve in according additional favors to the Holy See. Pippin’s reign came to an end as calmly as though the line of descent had been unbroken. Even the evil traditions of the Frankish monarchy with respect to the inheritance of the crown were not cast aside. Just as Cromwell and Napoleon felt the weight of custom in their relations with the members of their families, when they were arranging to perpetuate the power of their own creation, so Pippin, the diplomat, the cautious statesman, could do, or at least did nothing to alter the bad and impracticable tribal custom of division of patrimony. This practice caused the downfall of the Merovingian line, and had started the revolution by which the fortunes of the House of Heristal had been assured. This is only one of many anomalies which followed the breaking up of the administration of the Roman Empire, and which testified to the absence of initiative on the part of the Germanic peoples when they were called upon to solve problems of government, for which they had had no preparation. Rulers who did not hesitate to show their individuality in other ways proved fearful of violating tribal customs on questions of divisions of property and family precedence.