756 · Rome, Italy
Establishment of the Papal States
The pope became a king. In the 750s, the Frankish ruler Pepin the Short gave the papacy a strip of territory across central Italy, creating a political state that the popes would rule — and fight over — for the next eleven hundred years.
In the mid-700s, Pope Stephen II was in a desperate spot. The Lombards were closing in on Rome, and the Byzantine emperor, who was supposed to protect Italy, was too weak and too far away to help. Stephen did something no pope had done before: he crossed the Alps to ask the Frankish king, Pepin the Short, for military aid. Pepin had his own reasons to help. He had recently deposed the last Merovingian king and needed papal legitimacy for his new dynasty. The pope anointed Pepin as king, and in return, Pepin invaded Italy twice, defeated the Lombards, and handed over a broad swath of territory across central Italy to the pope. This gift, formalized in the Donation of Pepin in 756, created the Papal States — a political entity ruled by the pope as a sovereign monarch. The Papal States would expand and contract over the centuries, but they endured in some form until 1870, when the Italian army seized Rome and unified Italy. For eleven centuries, the pope was not just a spiritual leader but a head of state with armies, taxes, prisons, and all the compromises that come with governing. Catholics debate whether the Papal States were a necessary protection for the pope's independence or a corrupting distraction from his spiritual mission. The honest answer is probably both. The temporal power gave the pope real independence from kings and emperors, but it also dragged the papacy into wars, alliances, and political calculations that had nothing to do with the gospel.
Why it matters
Created the Papal States, making the pope a temporal sovereign and shaping the relationship between spiritual authority and political power for over a millennium.
What Happened
Threatened by the Lombards and abandoned by Byzantium, Pope Stephen II traveled to Francia in 753 to seek help from King Pepin the Short. Stephen anointed Pepin as king, giving him papal legitimacy. In return, Pepin led two military campaigns into Italy, defeated the Lombards, and donated the conquered territories to the papacy. The Donation of Pepin in 756 established the Papal States, a band of territory across central Italy stretching from Rome to Ravenna, ruled by the pope as a secular sovereign.
Why It Still Matters
The Papal States shaped the papacy for over a thousand years. They guaranteed the pope's political independence but entangled him in Italian and European power politics. The loss of the Papal States in 1870 was seen as a catastrophe at the time, but many Catholics now view it as a liberation. The tiny Vatican City State created by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 preserved the pope's sovereignty without the burdens of ruling a country. The episode illustrates how the Church's relationship with political power is always a trade-off.