reason to fear that they also would be conquered by these vigorous barbarians. They saved
themselves by an alliance with the Franks, who, under Charlemagne, conquered Italy and
Germany. This alliance produced the Holy Roman Empire, which had a constitution that assumed
harmony between Pope and Emperor. The power of the Carolingian dynasty, however, decayed
rapidly. At first, the Pope reaped the advantage of this decay, and in the latter half of the ninth
century Nicholas I raised the papal power to hitherto unexampled heights. The general anarchy,
however, led to the practical independence of the Roman aristocracy, which, in the tenth century,
controlled the papacy, with disastrous results. The way in which, by a great movement of reform,
the papacy, and the Church generally, was saved from subordination to the feudal aristocracy, will
be the subject of a later chapter.
In the seventh century, Rome was still subject to the military power of the emperors, and popes
had to obey or suffer. Some, e.g., Honorius, obeyed, even to the point of heresy; others, e.g.,
Martin I, resisted, and were imprisoned by the Emperor. From 685 to 752, most of the popes were
Syrians or Greeks. Gradually, however, as the Lombards acquired more and more of Italy,
Byzantine power declined. The Emperor Leo the Isaurian, in 726, issued his iconoclast decree,
which was regarded as heretical, not only throughout the West, but by a large party in the East.
This the popes resisted vigorously and successfully; at last, in 787, under the Empress Irene (at
first as regent), the East abandoned the iconoclast heresy. Meanwhile, however, events in the West
had put an end forever to the control of Byzantium over the papacy.
In about the year 751, the Lombards captured Ravenna, the capital of Byzantine Italy. This event,
while it exposed the popes to great danger from the Lombards, freed them from all dependence on
the Greek emperors. The popes had preferred the Greeks to the Lombards for several reasons.
First, the authority of the emperors was legitimate, whereas barbarian kings, unless recognized by
the emperors, were regarded as usurpers. Second, the Greeks were civilized. Third, the Lombards
were nationalists, whereas the Church retained Roman internationalism. Fourth, the Lombards had
been Arians, and some odium still clung to them after their conversion.
The Lombards, under King Liutprand, attempted to conquer Rome