sent presents to Rome, but did not cross the Alps. He was abhorred by the clergy of his own country
as a sacrilegious spoiler of the property of the church and disposer of bishoprics to his counts and
dukes in the place of rightful incumbents.^233
The negotiations were interrupted by the death of Charles Martel Oct. 21, 741, followed by
that of Gregory III., Nov. 27 of the same year.
§ 55. Alliance of the Papacy with the New Monarchy of the Franks. Pepin and the Patrimony
of St. Peter. a.d. 741–755.
Pope Zacharias (741–752), a Greek, by the weight of his priestly authority, brought Liutprand
to terms of temporary submission. The Lombard king suddenly paused in the career of conquest,
and died after a reign of thirty years (743).
But his successor, Astolph, again threatened to incorporate Rome with his kingdom.
Zacharias sought the protection of Pepin the Short,^234 the Mayor of the Palace, son of Charles
Martel, and father of Charlemagne, and in return for this aid helped him to the crown of France.
This was the first step towards the creation of a Western empire and a new political system of
Europe with the pope and the German emperor at the head.
Hereditary succession was not yet invested with that religious sanctity among the Teutonic
races as in later ages. In the Jewish theocracy unworthy kings were deposed, and new dynasties
elevated by the interposition of God’s messengers. The pope claimed and exercised now for the
first time the same power. The Mayor, or high steward, of the royal household in France was the
prime minister of the sovereign and the chief of the official and territorial nobility. This dignity
became hereditary in the family of Pepin of Laudon, who died in 639, and was transmitted from
him through six descents to Pepin the Short, a gallant warrior and an experienced statesman. He
was on good terms with Boniface, the apostle of Germany and archbishop of Mayence, who,
according to the traditional view, acted as negotiator between him and the pope in this political
coup d’etat.^235
Childeric III., the last of the hopelessly degenerate Merovingian line, was the mere shadow
of a monarch, and forced to retire into a monastery. Pepin, the ruler in fact now assumed the name,
was elected at Soissons (March, 752) by the acclamation and clash of arms of the people, and
anointed, like the kings of Israel, with holy oil, by Boniface or some other bishop, and two years
after by the pope himself, who had decided that the lawful possessor of the royal power may also
lawfully assume the royal title. Since that time he called himself "by the grace of God king of the
Franks." The pope conferred on him the title of "Patrician of the Romans" (Patricius Romanorum),
which implies a sort of protectorate over the Roman church, and civil sovereignty, over her territory.
(^233) Milman (Book IV., ch. 9) says that Dante, the faithful recorder of popular Catholic tradition, adopts the condemnatory
legend which puts Charles "in the lowest pit of hell." But I can find no mention of him in Dante. The Charles Martel of Parad.
VIII. and IX. is a very, different person, a king of Hungary, who died 1301. See Witte’s Dante, p. 667, and Carey’s note on
Par. VIII. 53. On the relations of Charles Martel to Boniface see Rettberg,Kirchengesch. Deutschlands, I. 306 sqq.
(^234) Or Pipin, Pippin, Pippinus. The last is the spelling in his documents.
(^235) Rettberg, however (I. 385 sqq.), disconnects Boniface from all participation in the elevation and coronation of Pepin,
and represents him as being rather opposed to it. He argues from the silence of some annalists, and from the improbability that
the pope should have repeated the consecration if it had been previously performed by his legate.