PIPIN III, the Short. — Born in 714, son of Charles Martel and considered the adopted son of Liutprand as a sign of friendship between the Lombards and the Franks, with the title of *maior domus*, *dux* and *princeps Francorum*, he divided, together with his brothers Carloman and Grifo, the kingdoms which had already been governed by his grandfather Pippin of Herstal. Pippin received Burgundy, Neustria and Provence, until in 747, after Grifo and then Carloman had withdrawn, he reunited all power, although the royal dignity still belonged to the legitimate king Childeric III.
Elected king by the Frankish Assembly at Soissons in November 751, with the approval of Pope Zachary, Pippin found himself having to take a position in the struggle between Aistulf and the Papacy. Stephen II (q.v.), after having vainly sought an agreement with the Lombard king, forced by the aggressive policy of the latter, sought Frankish aid; and, faced with Pippin’s hesitations, for the first time in the history of the Church, he went to France in the winter of 753–754. At the meeting of Ponthion, the fate of the Church and of the temporal state was decided, while the supremacy of the Empire in Italy and the fortunes of the Lombard kingdom declined. The claim to the rights of St Peter, the defence of the Church, and the restitution of the Exarchate and of the other territories occupied by Aistulf constituted the promises of the Frankish king, while the coronation and the title of *patricius Romanorum* granted to him (Saint-Denis, 28 July 754) were the final manifestation of the alliance. A revolutionary act (Cage), it rendered the transfer of royal dignity from the *maior domus* a fait accompli; a new political direction (Bertolini) was the papal claim to the lands of Byzantine Italy occupied by the Lombards and the substitution of the Pope for the Exarch; only superior motives such as the salvation of Rome and the Roman people, to which was linked the universal mission of the Church, in the face of the heresy that undermined the legitimacy of imperial power, could justify both. Thus, from the moment when the title of *patricius* was attributed to the Frankish king, it was no longer linked to the *Sancta Respublica*, i.e. to the Empire: specified as that of *patricius Romanorum*, it came to indicate precisely the defender of the new *Respublica Romanorum*, i.e. of the State of the Church. Its efficacy was not long in manifesting itself: having defeated Aistulf, Pippin refused to return to the Empire the lands which a Byzantine ambassador, come to Pavia on behalf of the Emperor, demanded of him, and had the keys of the conquered cities given to the Pope. Despite the exclusion of Bologna, Ferrara, Ancona and other smaller cities, the State of the Church may be considered as having been constituted at that moment in its principal nucleus.
After the deaths of Stephen II and Aistulf, the cities of the Exarchate and of the Pentapolis still under Lombard control were promised, but not returned, by the new king Desiderius to Pope Paul I; an intervention by the Frankish king avoided more serious complications, allowing an agreement that eliminated the cession of the cities and resolved minor issues. Pippin again divided the kingdom between his sons Charles and Carloman, which was only reunited in 771, after the death of the latter, for a short time under the aegis of Charlemagne. He died at Saint-Denis on 24 September 768, leaving his fame chiefly linked to his alliance with the Roman Church and to the effects that derived from it: the beginning of the Papal State (q.v.) and of the Holy Roman Empire (q.v.).