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Naturally and excusably he claimed, over his vast Italian estates, the powers of jurisdiction which every landowner was assuming as a measure of self-defence against oppression or unbridled anarchy. In the time of Pepin the Short a further step was taken.

That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity.

You will conclude, doubtless, that this curious document can be nothing but a papal allocution. But you will be somewhat mistaken. It is hardly an epistle from the successor of St. Peter. It professes to be an epistle from St. Peter himself, and sent by him through the hands of Pope Stephen III. to Pepin the king of the Franks, in the year 755.

Astolphus beaten, and, before long, shut up in Pavia, promised all that was demanded of him; and Pepin and his warriors, laden with booty, returned to France, leaving at Rome the Pope, who conjured them to remain a while in Italy, for to a certainty, he said, king Astolphus would not keep his promises. The Pope was right.

Throughout Aquitaine there was but one cry of indignation against Pepin, and the popularity of Charles was increased in proportion to all the horror inspired by the ineffable misdeed of his adversary.

Both brothers employed Boniface to reorganise and reform the clergy of their dominions; Pepin allowed the saint to take from all the Frankish bishops an oath of subjection to the Holy See; and accepted him as Archbishop of Mainz and primate of the German church.

Several insurrections burst out in the empire; the first among the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where Bernard, son of Pépin, having, after his father's death, become king in 812, with the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne, could not quietly see his kingdom pass into the hands of his cousin Lothair at the orders of his uncle Louis.

One day he went with a few of his nobles to a circus to see a fight between a lion and a bull. Soon after the fight began, it looked as though the bull was getting the worst of it. Pepin cried out to his companions: "Will one of you separate the beasts?" But there was no answer. None of them had the courage to make the attempt.

This sail of three hundred miles consumed forty-eight hours. The river banks recede and advance in lake-like expanses along its winding course, and their richly wooded heights, crowned with red sandstone, resemble the ruined Rhine castles. The sail through Lake Pepin, and between the States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, was varied by frequent and thriving towns and villages.

In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pépin, whom in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by the Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms, and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure that so long as he lived the unity of his different dominions would not be imperilled.