Ii Imperial Period

A prefect of Rome is not mentioned between 599 and 772, and then again there is silence until the time of the Ottos. It is im possible to say whether the office was discontinued. In the later days the prefect was an official of the pope, who had taken over the care of the aqueducts and the preservation of the city walls. There is also much doubt about the existence of a senate. We know that many senators had lost their lives in the long war. The pragmatic sanction of 554 did mention the senate, but this was the last formal recognition of it as a governing body ; and, if we may trust a despairing cry of Gregory the Great, it had dis appeared, or at least was reduced to a shadow.

The popes now make common cause with the people against the Lombards on the one hand and the emperor on the other. This alliance was cemented by the religious disputes of the East and the West ; for Pope Gregory II. (715-731) opposed the celebrated edict of the iconoclastic emperor Leo the Isaurian, and Venice, Ravenna, the Pentapolis and Rome took up arms against the emperor and elected dukes of their own.

Duchy of Rome.

In the midst of these warlike tumults a new constitution was being set up in Rome. In 711 the Liber Ponti ficalis makes the first mention of the duchy of Rome, and we find the people struggling to elect a duke of their own. In the early days of the Byzantine rule the territory appertaining to the city was no greater than under the Roman empire; but, partly through the weakness of the government of Constantinople, and above all through the decomposition of the provinces under the Lombards, this dukedom was widely extended ; its limits were always changing in accordance with the course of events. At the beginning of the 8th century it had almost the same extent, ex cept on the north, that the papal states had in 186o-7o.

In the provinces, the administrators of church lands were im portant personages, and exercised both judicial and political functions. It was very natural that the heads of this vast admin istration resident in Rome should have a still higher standing and, in fact, from the 6th century, their power increased to such an extent that in the times of the Franks they already formed a species of papal cabinet with a share and sometimes a predomi nance in the affairs of the republic. The pope was thus at the head of a large administrative body and, in addition, was possessed of enormous revenues. He considered himself the real representa tive of the Roman republic. Gregory II. (715-731) accepted in the name of the republic the submission of other cities and pro tested against the conquest by the Lombards of those already be longing to Rome. The empire was now powerless in Italy, while the advance of the Lombards was becoming more and more threat ening; they seized Ravenna in 751, thus putting an end to the exarchate, and next marched towards Rome, which had only its own forces and the aid of neighbouring cities to rely upon. To

avoid being conquered Stephen II. (752-757) appealed to Pippin, king of the Franks, and concluded an alliance with him. The pope consecrated Pippin king of the Franks and named him atricius Romanorum. This title was given to Pippin as defender of the Church, for the pope styled him at the same time defensor or protector ecclesiae. And the king pledged himself not only to de fend the Church but also to wrest the exarchate and the Pentapolis from the Lombards and give them to the pope. Pippin brought an army and fulfilled his promise. The pope accepted the donation in the name of St. Peter and as the visible head of the Church. Thus in 755 central Italy broke its connection with the empire; thus was inaugurated the temporal power of the papacy.

Charles the Great.

In the years immediately succeeding the popes vacillated in their policy but it was soon apparent that their hopes must be placed on renewed aid from the Franks in order to check the constantly threatened danger from the Lombards, who were seeking to recover the territory which they had lost and also to seize Rome. Adrian I. (772-795) besought the assistance of Charlemagne, who made a descent into Italy in 773, destroyed the Lombard kingdom, and seized the iron crown. Entering Rome in 774, he confirmed the donation of Pippin. The pope was now regarded and regarded himself as master of Rome; he always spoke of Rome and the Romans as "our city," "our republic," "our people." It is true that Charlemagne held the supreme power, but this power was only occasionally exercised in Rome. The pope was most tenacious of his own authority, made vigorous protest whenever rebels fled to Charlemagne or appealed to that monarch's arbitration, and contested the supremacy of the im perial officials in Rome. Yet the pope was no absolute sovereign, nor, in the modern sense of the term, did any then exist. The Roman nobles were different from other aristocratic bodies else where. Their power was chiefly derived from the high offices and large grants of money and land conferred on them by the popes. Every pope aggrandized his own kindred and friends, and these were the natural and often open adversaries of the next pontiff and his favourities. Thus the Roman nobility was power ful, divided, restless, and turbulent; the pope needed the support of an effective force for his own preservation ; hence the necessity of creating an empire of the West.