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PEPUZIANS

reign jointly but not without strong opposition, for Griffon, the son of Charles Martel and the Bavarian Sonnichilde, demanded a share in the government. Moreover, the Duke of the Aquitanians and the Duke of the Alamannians thought this a favourable oppor- tunity to throw off the Frankish supremacy. The young kings were repeatedly involved in war, but all their opponents, including the Bavarians and Saxons, were defeated and the unity of the kingdom re-estab- lished. As early as 741 Carloman had entered upon his epoch-making relations with St. Boniface, to whom was now opened a new field of labour, the reformation of the Frankish Church. On 21 April, 742, Boniface was present at a Frankish synod presided over by Carloman at which important reforms were decreed. As in the Frankish realm the unity of the kingdom was essentially connected with the person of the king, Carloman to secure this unity raised the Merovingian Childeric to the throne (743). In 747 he resolved to enter a monastery. The danger, which up to this time had threatened the unity of the kingdom from the division of power between the two brothers, was removed, and at the same time the way was prepared for deposing the last Merovingian and for the crowning of Pepin. The latter put down the renewed revolt led by his step-brother Griffon and succeeded in com- pletely restoring the boundaries of the kingdom. Pepin now addressed to the pope the suggestive ques- tion: In regard to the kings of the Franks who no longer possess the royal power, is this state of things proper? Hard pressed by the Lombards, Pope Zacha- rias welcomed this advance of the Franks which aimed at ending an intolerable condition of things, and at laying the constitutional foundations for the exercise of the royal power. The pope replied that such a state of things was not proper. After this decision the place Pepin desired to occupy was declared vacant. The crown was given him not by the pope but by the Franks. According to ancient custom Pepin was then elected king by the nation at Soissons in 751, and soon after this was anointed by Boniface. This consecra- tion of the new kingdom by the head of the Church was intended to remove any doubt as to its legitimacy. On the contrary, the consciousness of having saved the Christian world from the Saracens produced, among the Franks, the feeling that their kingdom owed its authority directly to God. Still this external co- operation of the pope in the transfer of the kingdom to the Carolingians would necessarily enhance the importance of the Church. The relations between the two controlling powers of Christendom now rapidly developed. It was soon evident to what extent the alliance between Church and State was to check the decline of ecclesiastical and civil life; it made possible the conversion of the still heathen German tribes, and when that was accomplished provided an opportunity for both Church and State to recruit strength and to grow.

Ecclesiastical, political, and economic developments had made the popes lords of the ducnluf: Rnmanua. They laid before Pepin their claims to the central provinces of Italy, which had belonged to them before Liutprand's conquest. When Stephen II had a con- ference with King Pepin at Ponthion in January, 754, the pope implored his assistance against his oppressor the Lombard King Aistulf, and begged for the same protection for the prerogatives of St. Peter which the Byzantine exarchs had extended to them, to which the king agreed, and in the charter establishing the States of the Church, soon after given at Quiercy, he prom- ised to restore these prerogatives. The Frankish king received the title of the former representative of the Byzantine Empire in Italy, i. e. "Patricius", and was also assigned the duty of protecting the privileges of the Holy See.

When Stephen II performed the ceremony of an- ointing Pepin and his son at St. Denis, it was St.

Peter who was regardetl as the mystical giver of the secular power, but the emphasis thus laid upon the religious character of political law left vague the legal relations between pope and king. After the acknowl- edgement of his territorial claims the pope was in reality a ruling sovereign, but he had placed himself under the protection of the Frankish ruler and had sworn that he and his people would be true to the king. Thus his sovereignty was limited from the very start as regards what was external to his domain. The con- nexion between Rome and the Frankish kingdom in- volved Pepin during the years 754-56 in war with the Lombard King Aistulf, who was forced to return to the Church the territory he had illegally held. Pepin's commanding position in the world of his time was permanently secured when he took Septimania from the Arabs. Another particularly important act was his renewed overthrow of the rebellion in Aqui- taine which was once more made a part of the king- dom. He was not so fortunate in his campaigns against the Saxons and Bavarians. He could do no more than repeatedly attempt to protect the boun- daries of the kingdom against the incessantly restless Saxons. Bavaria remained an entirely independent State and advanced in civilization under Duke Tas- silo. Pepin's activity in war was accompanied by a widely extended activity in the internal affairs of the Frankish kingdom, his main object being the reform of legislation and internal affairs, especially of eccle- siastical conditions. He continued the ecclesiastical reforms commenced by St. Boniface. In doing this Pepin demanded an unlimited authority over the Church. He himself wished to be the leader of the reforms. However, although St. Boniface changed nothing by his reformatory labours in the ecclesiastico- political relations that had developed in the Frankish kingdom upon the basis of the Germanic conception of the State, nevertheless he had placed the purified and unified Frankish Church more definitely under the control of the papal see than had hitherto been the case. From the time of St. Boniface the Church was more generally acknowledged by the Franks to be the mystical power appointed by God. When he deposed the last of the Merovingians Pepin was also obliged to acknowledge the increased authority of the Church by calling upon it for moral support. Consequently the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Frankish king over the Church of his country remained externally imdimin- ished. Nevertheless by his life-work Pepin had power- fully aided the authority of the Church and with it the conception of ecclesiastical unity. He was buried at St. Denis where he died. He preserved the empire created by Clovis from the destruction that menaced it; he was able to overcome the great danger arising from social conditions that threatened the Frankish kingdom, by opposing to the unruly lay nobility the ecclesiastical aristocracy that had been strengthened by the general reform. When he died the means had been created by which his greater son could solve the prob- lems of the empire. Pepin's policy marked out the tasks to which Charlemagne devoted himself: quiet- ing the Saxons, the subjection of the duchies, and lastly the regulation of the ecclesiastical question and with'it that of Italy.

Hahn-. Jahrhdcher des frUnkUchen Reiches 741-762 (Berlin, 1S63) ; Oelsner, Jahrbiicher des frankischen Reiches unter Konig Pippin (Leipzig, 1871); Muhlbacher, Deutsche Oeschichte unter der KaTolingern (Stuttgart, 1896) ; Paris, La legende de PSpin le Bre/inMelariges (Havre, 1895): Hampers, Kar! der Gmise (Mainz, 1910). — Of the large bibliography concerning the question of the Donation of Pepin ma.v be mentioned: Scheffer-Boichorst, Pepins und Karls d. Gr. Schenkungsversprechen in Milteilungen des Osterr. Instituts fiir Geschichts/orschung, V; Martens, Die drei undchten Kapilel der Vita Hadrians 1 in Theolog. Quartalschrift, LXVIII: ScHNTJRER, Die Entstehung des Kirchenstaats (Cologne, 1894): Martens, Beleuchtung der neuerten Kontroversen iiber die rdmische Frage unter Pippin und Karl d, Gr. (Miinster, 1898); Crivellucci, Delle Origim'dello Stato Ponteficio in Studi storici,

X, XI, XII. Franz Kampers.

Pepuziaxis. See Montanists.