“chant”—was singled out for preservation in written form had nothing to do with musical primacy, or
even with musical quality. The privilege came about, as already implied, for reasons having nothing to do
with music at all. It will not be the last time such “extramusical” factors will play a decisive role in our
account of musical history. That history, like the history of any art, is the story of a complex and
fascinating interaction of internal and external influences.
THE ROMANS AND THE FRANKS
Late in the year 753, Pope Stephen II, accompanied by a large retinue of cardinals and bishops, did
something no previous Roman pope had done. He crossed the Alps and paid a visit to Pepin III, known as
Pepin the Short, the king of the Franks. They met on 6 January 754 at Pepin’s royal estate, located at
Ponthion, near the present-day city of Vitry-le-François on the river Marne, some 95 miles from Paris in
what is now northeastern France. (France, then the western part of the Frankish kingdom, went in those
days by the Roman name of Gaul; the country’s modern name is derived from that of the people Pepin
ruled.)
The pope was coming as a supplicant. The Lombards, a Germanic tribe whose territories reached
from what is now Hungary into northern Italy, had conquered Ravenna, the capital of the Western
Byzantine (Greek Christian) Empire, and were threatening Rome. Stephen asked Pepin, who three years
earlier had concluded a mutual assistance pact with his predecessor Zacharias, to intercede on his behalf.
When Pepin agreed to honor his earlier commitment, Stephen went with him to the cathedral city of Saint-
Denis, just north of Paris, and cemented their covenant by officially declaring Pepin and his heirs to be
honorary “Roman patricians” and recognizing them as the legitimate hereditary rulers of the united
kingdom of the Franks, which encompassed (in addition to France) most of present-day Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria, in addition to smaller territories now belonging to Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and
the Czech Republic. This ceremony inaugurated the Carolingian dynasty, which for the next two centuries
would remain the most powerful ruling house in Europe.
Pepin duly invaded Italy. He not only successfully defended Rome but also wrested Ravenna and its
surrounding territories back from Aistulf, the Lombard king. Ignoring the claims of the Byzantine emperor,
Pepin made a gift of these territories to the pope; they became the so-called “Papal States,” which were
administered by the Roman see as an independent country, with the pope as temporal ruler, until the
unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. (The immediate territory around St. Peter’s Church in Rome
—a few city blocks known as Vatican City—is still recognized internationally as a temporal state, the
world’s smallest.) The Carolingian king and the Roman pope thus became political and military allies,
pledged to mutual long-term support.