Pepin III

(714–68)

   Monarch.

   Pepin was the son of Charles Martel and, with his brother Carloman, succeeded his father as Mayor of the Palace of the Kingdom of the Franks in 741. After Carloman retired to a monastery, Pepin was elected King in 751 and he was anointed to the office by St boniface. Then, in 754, he was anointed by Pope Stephen III. Pepin’s son, charlemagne, was to become the first Holy Roman Emperor, but Pepin had already established the interdependence of Western political power and the authority of the Western Church. In the ‘Donation of Pepin’ of 754, he had promised to restore to the Pope the Exarchate of Ravenna and the territories of the Roman Republic. This he succeeded in doing in 756, thus laying the foundation for the temporal power of the Pope. He also closely involved himself with the ecclesiastical reforms instituted by St Boniface.

   P. Laski, The Kingdom of the Franks (1971);

   L. Levillain, ‘L’avènement de la dynastie carolingienne et les origines de l’état pontifical’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole de Chartres, xciv (1933) [no English translation].