Pippin III, the Short

PIPPIN III, the Short. - B. in 714, son of Charles Martel and considered the adoptive son of Liutprand as a sign of friendship between Lombards and Franks, with the title of maior domus dux et princeps Francorum he divided, together with his brothers Carloman and Grifo, the kingdoms over which their grandfather Pepin of Heristal had already ruled. To P. fell Burgundy, Neustria and Provence, until in 747, after Grifo and then Carloman withdrew, he reunited all power, although the royal dignity was still held by the legitimate king Childeric III.

Elected king by the Frankish Assembly at Soissons in Nov. 751, on the basis of the approval of Pope Zachary, P. found himself having to take a position in the struggle between Aistulf and the Papacy. Stephen II (v.), after having vainly sought an agreement with the Lombard king, forced by the latter's aggressive policy, solicited Frankish aid; and, faced with P.'s hesitations, for the first time in the history of the Church he went to France, in the winter of 753-54. In the meeting of Pontbion the destiny of the Church and of the temporal State took concrete form, while the supremacy of the Empire in Italy and the fortunes of the Lombard Kingdom declined. The claim of the "justices" of St. Peter, the defense of the Church, 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 (St-Denis, 28 July 754) were the conclusive manifestation of the alliance. A revolutionary act (Cagese) had been the passage of the royal dignity to the maior domus; a new political direction (Bertolini) was the pontifical claim over 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 of the Roman people, to which the universal mission of the Church was linked, in the face of the heresy that undermined the legitimacy of imperial power, could justify the one and the other. Thus, from the moment when it was attributed to the Frankish king, the title of patricius was no longer linked to the Sancta Respublica, that is, to the Empire: having become specific in that of patricius Romanorum, it came to indicate precisely the defender of the new Respublica Romanorum, that is, of the State of the Church. Its effectiveness was not slow to manifest itself: having defeated Aistulf, P. refused the restitution to the Empire of the lands that a Byzantine ambassador who had come to Pavia demanded of him in the name of the Emperor, and had the keys of the conquered cities given to the Pope: despite the exclusion of Bologna, Ferrara, Ancona and other lesser ones, the State of the Church may be considered from that moment constituted in its principal nucleus.

After the deaths of Stephen II and Aistulf, the cities of the Exarchate and of the Pentapolis still Lombard were promised, but not restored, by the new king Desiderius to Pope Paul I: an intervention of the Frankish king avoided more serious complications, permitting an agreement that eliminated the cession of the cities and resolved the minor questions. P. again divided the kingdom between his sons Charles and Carloman, which only in 771, with the death of the latter, could be reconstituted for a short time in its territorial unity under the aegis of Charlemagne. He died at St-Denis on 24 Sept. 768, leaving his fame linked above all to the alliance with the Roman Church and to the effects that derived from it: the beginning of the Papal State (v.) and of the Holy Roman Empire (v.).

1914, pp. 159-79; L. Lévillain, L'avènement de la dynastie carolingienne et les origines de l'Etat pontifical (749-57), in Bild. École des Chartes, 94 (1933), pp. 225-95; R. Cagese, L'otto medioevo, Turin 1937, pp. 189-250; M. Lintzel, Der Codex Carolinus und die Motive von Pippins Italienpolitik, in Histor. Zeitschr., 1940, p. 33 ff.; O. Bertolini, Il problema delle origini del potere temporale dei Papi, etc., in Misc. Pio Paschini, I, Rome 1948, pp. 103-71; F. Cognasso, Avviamento agli studi di storia medievale, Turin 1931, pp. 280-84, 288-91; Fliche-Martin-Fruta, VI, p. 18 ff.

Fulvio Crosara