setting up one, Pavia, as their capital. Recalling emperors like Constantine and
Justinian, the kings built churches and monasteries at Pavia, maintained city walls,
and minted coins. Revenues from tolls, sales taxes, port duties, and court fines filled
their coffers.
Emboldened by their attainments in the north, the Lombard kings tried to make
some headway against the independent dukes of southern Italy. But that threatened
to surround Rome with a unified Lombard kingdom. The pope, fearing for his own
position, called on the Franks for help.
The Pope: A Man in the Middle
By the end of the sixth century, the pope’s position was ambiguous. As bishop of
Rome, he wielded real secular power within the city as well as a measure of spiritual
leadership farther afield. Yet in other ways he was just a subordinate of Byzantium.
Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), whom we have already met a number of times,
laid the foundations for the papacy’s later spiritual and temporal ascendancy. (See
Popes and Antipopes to 1500 on pp. 338–341.) During Gregory’s tenure, the pope
became the greatest landowner in Italy; he organized Rome’s defense and paid for its
army; he heard court cases, made treaties, and provided welfare services. The
missionary expedition he sent to England was only a small part of his involvement in
the rest of Europe. A prolific author of spiritual works, Gregory digested and
simplified the ideas of Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine, making them
accessible to a wider audience. In his Moralia in Job, he set forth a model of biblical
exegesis that was widely imitated for centuries. His handbook for clerics, Pastoral
Care, went hand-in-hand with his practical church reforms in Italy, where he tried to
impose regular episcopal elections and enforce clerical celibacy.
At the same time, even Gregory was only one of many bishops in the former
Roman Empire, now ruled from Constantinople. For a long time the emperor’s views
on dogma, discipline, and church administration prevailed at Rome. However, this
authority began to unravel in the seventh century. In 692, Emperor Justinian II
convened a council that determined 102 rules for the church. When he sent the rules
to Rome for papal endorsement, Pope Sergius I (687–701) found most of them
acceptable, but he was unwilling to agree to the whole because it permitted priestly
marriages (which the Roman church did not want to allow), and it prohibited fasting
on Saturdays in Lent (which the Roman church required). Outraged by Sergius’s
refusal, Justinian tried to arrest the pope, but the imperial army in Italy (theoretically
under the emperor’s command) came to the pontiff’s aid instead. Justinian’s arresting
