Aistulf (also Ahistulf, Aistulfus, Haistulfus, Astolf etc.; Italian : Astolfo; died December 756) was the Duke of Friuli from 744, King of the Lombards from 749, and Duke of Spoleto from 751. His reign was characterized by ruthless and ambitious efforts to conquer Roman territory to the extent that in the Liber Pontificalis , he is described as a "shameless" Lombard given to "pernicious savagery" and cruelty. [1]
Aistulf was born as the son of Duke Pemmo of Friuli and his wife Ratperga. [2]
After his brother Ratchis became king, Aistulf succeeded him as Duke of Friuli and later succeeded him as king, when Ratchis was forced to abdicate the throne. [3] Ratchis entered a monastery thereafter. While Ratchis had been more tolerant with the Roman element of the Italian population, Aistulf followed a more aggressive policy of expansion and raids against the Papal States and the Eastern Roman exarchate of Ravenna. [3] In 750, Aistulf captured Ravenna and all the provinces subject to the Exarchate, even declaring himself king of the Romans. [3] He also held court in the former palace of the Exarch, where historian Peter Brown asserts, that as a good western Catholic, Aistulf likely offered gifts "on the altar of San Vitale." [4] With the Lombard king close, Rome was under threat and if the city and its Patriarch were to survive, Brown adds, "they had to look for new protectors." [4] Recognizing the religious authority of Pope Stephen II, Aistulf offered peace to the pontiff but under Lombard hegemony. [5] [lower-alpha 1] In the late spring or summer 751, Aistulf placed Spoleto under his direct control without naming a replacement duke. [5] [7]
Having declared himself the new king of the Romans, Aistulf believed that the empire's former supremacy in Italy was now extinct; as a result, the Roman Pope Stephen was unable to exercise the same pastoral diplomacy that his predecessor, Pope Zachary, had over both Luitprand and Ratchis. [5] [lower-alpha 2] At Ravenna, Aistulf demanded tribute from the Roman duchy itself, straining papal coffers and greatly worrying Pope Stephen enough that he began negotiations with the Franks. [8]
Aistulf's demands were causing consternation in Rome. In 753, Pope Stephen II crossed the Alps and wintered with the Franks, again petitioning them for assistance against Aistulf's Lombards. [9] Returning from a summer campaign against the Saxons, the Frankish leader, Pepin the Short, learned that the pontiff—accompanied by a large following and bearing gifts—was traveling north to meet with him. [10] While Pope Stephen's arrival in Francia was noteworthy, it was near concomitant with that of Pepin's brother, Carloman, who had incidentally come to Francia under pressure from the Lombard king, Aistulf, to explicitly dissuade Pepin from entering Italy. [11]
Carloman's effort to deter his brother from pursuing Aistulf proved unsuccessful and Pepin, who was accompanied by Pope Stephen, left Francia for Italy during the summer of 754; the ailing Carloman joined them on their journey but died on the way. [11] Pope Stephen had further ingratiated Pepin to his cause by bestowing the title "Patrician of the Romans" onto him and his son, which proved sufficient to elicit Frankish aide and opposition to Aistulf's claims of sovereignty over the Roman empire. [5] Pepin then sent demands to Aistulf for him submit to the patrimony of St. Peter, which meant relinquishing his gains; the Lombard king refused Pepin's demands, thus beginning a Frankish military incursion into Italy. [12]
In the spring of 755, the newly anointed Pepin crossed the Alps at the head of his army, putting the Lombards to flight and forcing Aistulf's hand in returning papal lands and those belonging to the wider Roman res publica that he had occupied. [13] While a treaty was signed between Aistulf and Pepin after the Franks laid siege to Pavia, which included the return of Roman lands and a lasting peace, Aistulf was not long in breaking the treaty once Pepin left Italy. [12] After the Frankish army was back across the Alps, Aistulf besieged Rome again in 756, engendering another plea from the papacy. It read:
I, the Apostle Peter...who adopted you as my sons...and who chose you Franks above all other peoples...I hereby urge and exhort you...to protect my flock...defend Rome, and your brothers the Romans, from the heinous Lombards!...Come, come, in the name of the one living and true God, I beseech you, come and help before the spring of life from which you drink and in which you are reborn dries up, before the last spark of the sacred flame which illuminates you dies out, and before your spiritual mother, God’s holy Church...is desecrated." [14] [lower-alpha 3]
Once he heard the anxious pleas from the pope, Pepin marched his Frankish army back into Italy, again defeated the Lombards and forced Aistulf to surrender, but this time the Franks directly supervised the land returns. [15] In the midst of these negotiations, a Byzantine ambassador was sent to Pepin with imperial claims over the liberated provinces—part of an attempt to substitute Lombard suzerainty for Byzantine domination—but Pepin refused such offers, allowing the Roman West to retain some autonomy as the Frankish king thought only of the Papacy. [16] Meanwhile, Pepin imposed an annual tribute be paid by the Lombards to the Franks, which historian Paolo Delogu labels nothing less than "political subjection." [15] Despite this blow to Aistulf's prestige, the Lombard kingdom remained more or less intact and as Delogu observes, "the political and military alliance between the Franks and the papacy was not solid enough to allow the latter to act very effectively against the Lombards." [15] When Aistulf died in 756—killed during a hunting accident [17] —his succession was not without controversy when the ex-king Ratchis emerged from his monastery with the intention to reascend to the throne, but the ambitious Desiderius (duke of Tuscany), gained both Frankish and papal support and replaced Aistulf as king of the Lombards in March 757. [16]
Aistulf was buried in the church of San Marino in Pavia, which he founded. [18]
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor from 800, all until his death. Charlemagne succeeded in uniting the majority of Western and Central Europe, and he was the first recognized emperor to rule Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's rule saw a program of political and societal changes that had a lasting impact on Europe in the Middle Ages.
Pope Adrian I was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 1 February 772 to his death. He was the son of Theodore, a Roman nobleman.
Pope Stephen II was born a Roman aristocrat and member of the Orsini family. Stephen was the bishop of Rome from 26 March 752 to his death. Stephen II marks the historical delineation between the Byzantine Papacy and the Frankish Papacy. During Stephen's pontificate, Rome was facing invasion by the Lombards when Stephen II went to Paris to seek assistance from Pepin the Short. Pepin defeated the Lombards and made a gift of land to the pope, eventually leading to the establishment of the Papal States.
Pope Stephen III was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 7 August 768 to his death. Stephen was a Benedictine monk who worked in the Lateran Palace during the reign of Pope Zachary. In the midst of a tumultuous contest by rival factions to name a successor to Pope Paul I, Stephen was elected with the support of the Roman officials. He summoned the Lateran Council of 769, which sought to limit the influence of the nobles in papal elections. The Council also opposed iconoclasm.
Pope Zachary was the bishop of Rome from 28 November 741 to his death. He was the last pope of the Byzantine Papacy. Zachary built the original church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, forbade the traffic of slaves in Rome, negotiated peace with the Lombards, and sanctioned Pepin the Short's usurpation of the Frankish throne from Childeric III. Zachary is regarded as a capable administrator and a skillful and subtle diplomat in a dangerous time.
Carloman was the eldest son of Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and duke of the Franks, and his wife Chrotrud of Treves. On Charles's death (741), Carloman and his brother Pepin the Short succeeded to their father's legal positions, Carloman in Austrasia, and Pepin in Neustria. He was a member of the family later called the Carolingians and it can be argued that he was instrumental in consolidating their power at the expense of the ruling Merovingian kings of the Franks. He withdrew from public life in 747 to take up the monastic habit, "the first of a new type of saintly king", according to Norman Cantor, "more interested in religious devotion than royal power, who frequently appeared in the following three centuries and who was an indication of the growing impact of Christian piety on Germanic society".
Carloman I, also Karlmann, was king of the Franks from 768 until he died in 771. He was the second surviving son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon and was a younger brother of Charlemagne. His death allowed Charlemagne to take all of Francia and begin his expansion into other kingdoms.
Desiderius, also known as Daufer or Dauferius, was king of the Lombards in northern Italy, ruling from 756 to 774. The Frankish king of renown, Charlemagne, married Desiderius's daughter and subsequently conquered his realm. Desiderius is remembered for this connection to Charlemagne and for being the last Lombard ruler to exercise regional kingship.
The Donation of Pepin in 756 provided a legal basis for the creation of the Papal States, thus extending the temporal rule of the popes beyond the duchy of Rome.
Pepin the Short, was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768. He was the first Carolingian to become king.
Ratchis was the Duke of Friuli (739–744) and then King of the Lombards (744–749).
Adalgis or Adelchis was an associate king of the Lombards from August 759, reigning with his father, Desiderius, until their deposition in June 774. He is also remembered today as the hero of the play Adelchi (1822) by Alessandro Manzoni.
The Donation of Sutri was an agreement reached at Sutri by Liutprand, King of the Lombards and Pope Gregory II in 728. At Sutri, the two reached an agreement by which the city and some hill towns in Latium were given to the Papacy, "as a gift to the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul" according to the Liber Pontificalis. The pact formed the first extension of papal territory beyond the confines of the Duchy of Rome and was the first of two land transfers from Liutprand to the Church of Rome.
The Patrimony of Saint Peter originally designated the landed possessions and revenues of various kinds that belonged to the apostolic Holy See i.e. the "Church of Saint Peter" in Rome, by virtue of the apostolic see status as founded by Saint Peter, according to Catholic tradition. Until the middle of the 8th century this consisted wholly of private property, later, its meaning corresponded to the territories under Papal sovereignty, more particularly to the Duchy of Rome, but from the early 13th century the term was applied to one of the four provinces of the States of the Church.
The Duchy of Rome was a state within the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna. Like other Byzantine states in Italy, it was ruled by an imperial functionary with the title of dux. The duchy often came into conflict with the Papacy over supremacy within Rome. After the founding of the Papal States in 756, the Duchy of Rome ceased being an administrative unit and 'dukes of Rome', appointed by the popes rather than emperors, are only rarely attested.
The Kingdom of the Lombards, also known as the Lombard Kingdom and later as the Kingdom of all Italy, was an early medieval state established by the Lombards, a Germanic people, on the Italian Peninsula in the latter part of the 6th century. The king was traditionally elected by the very highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, as several attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was subdivided into a varying number of duchies, ruled by semi-autonomous dukes, which were in turn subdivided into gastaldates at the municipal level. The capital of the kingdom and the center of its political life was Pavia in the modern northern Italian region of Lombardy.
Gerberga was the wife of Carloman I, King of the Franks, and sister-in-law of Charlemagne. Her flight to the Lombard kingdom of Desiderius following Carloman's death precipitated the last Franco-Lombard war, and the end of the independent kingdom of the Lombards in 774.
In the Byzantine Empire, the Duchy of the Pentapolis was a duchy, a territory ruled by a duke (dux) appointed by and under the Exarch of Ravenna. The Pentapolis consisted of the cities of Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, Rimini and Sinigaglia. It lay along the Adriatic coast between the rivers Marecchia and Misco immediately south of the core territory of the exarchate ruled directly by the exarch, east of the Duchy of Perugia, another Byzantine territory, and north of the Duchy of Spoleto, which was part of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. The duchy probably extended inland as far as the Apennine Mountains, perhaps beyond, and its southernmost town was Humana (Numera) on the northern bank of the Misco. The capital of the Pentapolis was Rimini and the duke was both the civil and military authority in the duchy.
From 756 to 857, the papacy shifted from the influence of the Byzantine Empire to that of the kings of the Franks. Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious had considerable influence in the selection and administration of popes. The "Donation of Pepin" (756) ratified a new period of papal rule in central Italy, which became known as the Papal States.
The Byzantine–Lombard wars were a protracted series of conflicts which occurred from AD 568 to 750 between the Byzantine Empire and a Germanic tribe known as the Lombards. The wars began primarily because of the imperialistic inclinations of the Lombard king Alboin, as he sought to take possession of Northern Italy. The conflicts ended in a Byzantine defeat, as the Lombards were able to secure large parts of Northern Italy at first, eventually conquering the Exarchate of Ravenna in 750.
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