deferred for another generation. After Constantinus was dead, more friendly relations reigned for a space, for his son Constantine v. was impeccably orthodox. He held the Council of Constantinople in 681 with the high approval of pope Agatho, whose representatives duly appeared at it, to join in the final crushing of the Monothelite heretics. Constantine, in the fulness of his friendship to the papacy, even granted to the Roman see the dangerous privilege that when at papal elections the suffrages of the clergy, the people, and the soldiery, -the garrison of Rome-were unanimously fixed on any one person, that individual might be at once consecrated bishop of Rome, without having to wait for an imperial mandate of approval from Constantinople. As a matter of fact, however, unanimous elections were very rare, and the exarchs of Ravenna are still found interfering to decide between the claims of rival candidates.

Signs of a breach became evident once again in the days of the tyrant Justinian II. When pope Sergius refused obedience to his behests, the emperor bade the exarch seize him and send him to Constantinople. But not only the Roman mob, but the soldiers of the imperial garrison took up arms to resist Justinian's officials when they tried to lay hands on Sergius: the ties of military obedience had already come to be weaker than those of spiritual respect, and the Pope triumphed, for Justinian was deposed, mutilated, and sent to Cherson by his rebellious subjects, ere he had time to punish the Romans.

The twenty-two years of anarchy and dissolution at Constantinople which followed the deposition of Justinian (695717) were fraught with important consequences in Italy. The ephemeral emperors of those days were unable to assert their authority over the West, and we once more find the popes assuming secular functions, after the fashion of Gregory the Great in the preceding century. John vi. levied taxes in Rome, made treaties with the Lombard duke of Benevento, and even protected and restored the exarch Theophylactus

when he had been expelled from Ravenna by a military revolt. Gregory II. went so far in his independence as to refuse to acknowledge the usurping emperor Quarrel of Philippicus; by his advice the Roman people and PhilipGregory II. determined that state-documents should not bear picus. the name of a heretical Caesar, nor the money be struck with his effigy. So the portrait of Philippicus was not set up in the Church, nor his name introduced in the prayers at Mass.' Gregory only consented to recognise Philippicus' successor Anastasius II. when he heard that the new emperor was a man of unimpeachable orthodoxy. The independent position of the popes had now grown so marked that the next quarrel with Constantinople was destined to lead to the final rupture of relations between the papacy and the empire. It was impossible that things should remain as they were: the breach was inevitable. Its cause was to be the accession of the stern Iconoclast, Leo the Isaurian, and his attempt to enforce his own religious views on the western, no less than the eastern provinces of his empire. The protagonists in the final struggle are Leo, pope Gregory II., and the Lombard king Liutprand, whose position and power we must now proceed to explain.

When king Cunibert died in the year 700, he left his throne to his young son Liutbert, a mere boy, whose realm was to be administered by a regent-guardian, count Ansprand, the wisest of the Lombards. A minority was always fatal to one of the early Teutonic kingdoms. Only eight months after Liutbert had been proclaimed king, his nearest adult kinsmen rose in arms against him, to claim the Rebellion of crown. These were Reginbert, duke of Turin, Reginbert of and his son Aribert, the child and grandchild of king Godebert, and the cousins of the boy-king's father.

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Turin.

Reginbert was followed by all the Neustrian Lombards, and was able to defeat the regent Ansprand at Novara. He died immediately after his victory, but his son Aribert followed up the success by winning a second battle in front of Pavia,

Civil wars of the Lombards.

and taking prisoner the boy Liutbert. The victor seized the capital, and was hailed as king by his followers, under the name of Aribert II. The regent Ansprand, who had escaped from Pavia, tried to keep up the civil war in the name of his ward: but the new king put an end to this attempt by ordering the boy Liutbert to be strangled in his bath. Ansprand then fled over the Alps and took refuge with the duke of Bavaria.

Aribert II. reigned over the Lombards for ten troubled years (701-11), fully occupied by the tasks of putting down rebellious dukes, driving back raids of the Carinthian Slavs from Venetia, and endeavouring to assert his power over Spoleto and Benevento. The time was opportune for attacking the imperial possessions in Italy, but Aribert refrained from making the attempt. He was friendly to the papacy, and made over to pope John vi. a great gift of estates in the Cottian Alps: nor did he assist his vassal Faroald, duke of Spoleto, when the latter in 703 made an attempt on the Exarchate. Aribert preferred to live in peace both with the Pope and the Emperor.

Aribert II. had gained his kingdom by the sword, and by the sword he was destined to lose it. In 711 the exile Ansprand, once the regent for the boy Liutbert, invaded Italy at the head of a Bavarian army, lent to him by duke Teutbert. Many of the Lombards still loved the house of Berthari and hated Aribert as a murderer and usurper. The army of Ansprand was ere long increased by many thousands of the 'Austrian' Lombards, and he was soon able to face the king in the open field near Pavia. The battle was indecisive, but when it was over Aribert retired within the walls of the city. His retreat discouraged his army, which began to fall away from him thereupon Aribert determined to take with him the royal treasure, and flee to Gaul to buy aid of the Franks. While endeavouring to cross the Ticino by night with all his hoard, he was accidentally drowned, and left the throne vacant for his rival Ansprand (712).

The ex-regent was now proclaimed king, but only survived his triumph a few months: on his deathbed he prevailed on the Lombards to elect as his colleague his son Liutprand, who therefore became sole ruler when his father died a few days later.

Lombards,

Liutprand was the most able and energetic king who ever ruled the Lombard realm, and his long reign of thirty-one years (712-43) saw the completion of the long- Liutprand, delayed process of the eviction of the East king of the Romans from Central Italy, and the rise of the 712-43. Lombards to the highest pitch of success which they ever knew—a rise which was to be closely followed by the extinction of their kingdom.

When Leo the Isaurian commenced his crusade against image-worship, Liutprand had been on the throne for fourteen

years. In these earlier years of his reign he was occupied in strengthening his position, and made no attack on the Imperial dominions in Italy, though he is found making war on the Bavarians, and capturing some of their castles on the upper Adige.

Gregory II.

But in 726 things came to a head, when Leo issued his famous edict against images, forbidding all worship of statues and paintings. Pope Gregory II. was not in a mood to listen to such a command from Constantinople. Quarrel of He was already in great disfavour with the em- and Leo the peror for having advised the Italians to resist Isaurian. some extraordinary taxation which Leo had imposed to maintain the Saracen war. When he received Leo's rescript, and a letter addressed to himself requesting him to carry out the imperial orders, and destroy the images of Rome, he burst out into open contumacy, and the Romans, with all the other Italians, followed his lead. Exhilaratus, duke of Naples, who tried to carry out the edict in his duchy, was slain by a mob, and many other imperial officials were maltreated or driven off by those whom they governed. The cities elected new rulers over themselves, and would have chosen and

Exarchate,

727.

proclaimed an Emperor of the West, if Gregory 11. had not kept them from this final step. Meanwhile, all the imperial proLiutprand vinces of Italy being in open sedition, and quite conquers the cut off from Constantinople, king Liutprand thought the moment had at last come for round ing off the Lombard dominions by seizing the long-coveted Exarchate. He crossed the Po, took Bologna, with most of the other cities of Emilia, and then conquered Osimo, Rimini, Ancona, and all the Pentapolis. Classis, the seaport of Ravenna, fell before him, but the exarch Paul succeeded in preserving the great City of the Marshes for a short time longer, till he was murdered by rioters (727). The Lombard king's conquests were made with astonishing ease, for in each city the anti-imperialist faction betrayed the gates to him without fighting.

Gregory II.

Soon after, the triumph of Liutprand was completed by the surrender of Ravenna itself: the exarch Eutychius fled to Venice, already a semi-independent city, but one which still preserved a nominal allegiance to the empire. Meanwhile, pope Gregory II. was occupied in writing lengthy manifestos setting forth the atrocious conduct of Leo, and rebels against the intrinsic rationality of reverencing images. Leo II. His letters to the emperor were couched in language of studied insolence. 'I must use coarse and rude arguments,' he wrote, 'to suit a coarse and rude mind such as yours,' and then proceeded to say that 'if you were to go into a boys' school and announce yourself as a destroyer of images, the smallest children would throw their writing tablets at your head, for even babes and sucklings might teach you, though you refuse to listen to the wise.' After completely confusing king Uzziah with king Hezekiah in an argument drawn from the Old Testament, Gregory then proceeded to quote apocryphal anecdotes from early church history. He wound up by asserting that in virtue of the power that he inherited from St. Peter, he might consign the emperor to eternal damnation, but that Leo was so thoroughly damned