Donation of Pepin establishes the Papal States
- Date
- 754 to 756 CE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Central Italy
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
In 754 Pope Stephen II travelled to Francia and anointed Pepin the Short as king, sanctioning the Carolingian usurpation of the Merovingian throne, while Pepin in return pledged to defend Rome against the Lombards.
Pepin invaded Italy, defeated the Lombard king Aistulf, and in 756 formally granted the recovered central Italian territories, including the former Exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, to the papacy rather than returning them to the Byzantine emperor. This 'Donation of Pepin' gave the pope temporal sovereignty over a band of territory stretching across central Italy, creating the nucleus of the Papal States that would endure until 1870. The agreement cemented the Frankish-papal alliance that defined early medieval Western politics, freed the popes from dependence on Constantinople, and set a precedent for the secular authority of the Roman Church. It also prefigured Charlemagne's later interventions in Italy and his imperial coronation in 800.
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Empires active in 754 to 756 CE
- Tang Dynasty618 CE to 907 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE to 1453 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE to 1258 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE to 1900 CE
- Tibetan Empire618 CE to 842 CE
- Uyghur Khaganate744 CE to 840 CE
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Further reading
The wider story
Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
Vivid, thematic popular history by a top Byzantinist.
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