Italy 752-875

Charlemagne and the Franks
The Franks were the most powerful military force of the time, and they had always been a major threat to the Lombard kingdom. As early as the reign of Authari they had very nearly succeeded in invading, only failing to do so by sheer chance. The Lombards in turn had usually attempted to placate them, King Liutprand, for example, helping them against the Arabs in Francia. What turned the threat into reality in the middle of the eighth century was the growing ambitions of the Lombards to eat into papal and Byzantine territory, coupled with a new relationship between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty in Francia.

The Lombards' gnawing desire for territorial expansion was to a large extent dictated by geographical imperatives: it was illogical for the two areas of Lombard dominion in Italy to be separated by the strip of land between Ravenna and Rome. The military power of the Lombards had increased during the reign of Liutprand, who had in fact managed to conquer much of the Exarchate and who had also placed his own supporters in control of the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. In 752 King Aistulf, having completed the absorption of the two duchies into the Lombard kingdom, took Ravenna and set his sights on Rome. At this point Pope Stephen II appealed to the Franks for help. After the death of Charles Martel in 741, the popes had courted the Carolingian dynasty, realising the need for external help against the Lombards in the face of a declining willingness and ability on the part of the Byzantines to intervene in Italy. The Franks seized the and responded to the papal plea. Pepin III invaded in 755, defeated Aistulf, and handed the Exarchate over to the papacy before retreating back to Francia. When the Lombard king Desiderius again threatened Rome in 772, the new Frankish king Charlemagne invaded again and proceeded to conquer much of the peninsula in 773-4. Unlike his father Pepin, Charlemagne pressed home his advantage and, having confirmed the restoration of the Exarchate to the popes, himself took the Lombard crown.

The Lombard kingdom of Italy had ended and the Carolingian kingdom now took its place. In political terms, the century or so of Frankish dominance in northern and central Italy is mainly noteworthy for the re-creation of the Western Empire in the form of the Holy Roman Empire, and for the consolidation of the Papal States. The Church's control over the latter had been established by Pepin and Charlemagne, but now it was legitimised by the sudden and rather convenient discovery of a document which has come to be known as the Donation of Constantine, by which the former Emperor of the East had supposedly made a gift of Italy to Pope Sylvester and his successors. The Holy Roman Empire was created on Christmas Day 800, when Pope Leo III (795-816) conferred the honorary title of Emperor on Charlemagne during one of the latter's few visits to Italy.

The Empire, which can be regarded as a kind of union of Christian west Europe, with the Emperor holding political power and the Pope enjoying spiritual leadership, was to last for a thousand years, and its creation marks a critical point in Italian history, for it firmly tied the fate of the country to that of northern Europe. Carolingian rule, however, had remarkably little effect either on daily life in Italy or on the political geography of the peninsula. This is hardly surprising when one considers that the Franks regarded Italy as a relatively insignificant comer of their empire, and never really took the task of governing it particularly seriously. Charlemagne even appointed a four-year-old, his son Pepin, as king in 781, and other minors, for example Bernard (812-17) and Lothar (817-55), were subsequently given the position. Even when the Frankish kings of Italy were adults, the position was regarded as very much the short straw of the Carolingian empire, and the kings invariably spent very little time in Italy. As a result the administration of the kingdom remained largely as it had been in Lombard times, with a central government in Pavia and a system of local officials centred around the dukes, gastalds and bishops in the major cities. It is true that the Lombard dukes were gradually replaced by Frankish and Aleman counts, but the only significant administrative development under the Franks was the use of missi, or king's messengers, who presided over local courts.

This article is based on material taken from A Traveller's History of Italy (© Valerio Lintner), published by The Windrush Press, and is by kind permission of its author Valerio Lintner.