³⁵ Reipublica Romanorum, com pages S. Reipublicæ corpus Christo delectum exercitûs Romani. Apud Anast.
They always avoided the positive declarations which would have irritated the Court of Constantinople; in case of necessity they even acknowledged the supremacy of the Emperor, solicited his assistance, and received his officers: and the homage paid to the imperial authority, is the ground of the opinion of those authors who deny the existence of this republic.— Without doubt, it was but a shadow of a republic; but they loved to present themselves under this title to the sovereigns of the west of Europe:³⁶ it was a mode of ranking themselves secretly in the number of independent states, and of weakening still more the ties which held them to the Byzantine empire. Generally, the pope did not fill in person the office of first magistrate of this republic; he left the insignia of its power to a prefect, a duke, or a patrician; and prepared to substitute, in a short time, for these unstable forms, a definite and pontifical government.
³⁶ Gregory III. sent two ambassadors to the Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, to invite him to declare himself in favour of the Roman Republic against the Emperor of the East.
Baronius ascribes the embassy of one of these to Gregory II.an important mistake, which Bossuet has removed.—Def. Cler. Gall, p. 2. b. 6. ch. 18.
Another cause tended to, and even justified, the revolution which was going to take place in Italy against the authority of the Greek Emperors; this was, the almost absolute state of abandonment in which, for nearly two centuries, they left the provinces they possessed in this country. They kept no garrison in Rome, and this city, continually menaced by the Lombards, solicited more than once, through the organ of its dukes or its pontiffs, but in vain, the protection of the Exarch and the power of the Emperor. The Byzantine historians of this period scarcely ever speak of Italy: one of them, Theophylactus Simosatta, wrote the history of the empire from the year 582 to 802, without once naming Italy, Rome, or the Lombards. Deserted by their master, the Romans of necessity attached themselves to their pontiffs, who were generally Romans, and meriting such attachment. Fathers and defenders of the people, mediators between the great, and heads of the religion of the empire, the popes united in themselves the various sources of authority and influence which are conferred by riches, benefactions, virtue, and the high priesthood. They reconciled, or set at variance around them, the princes of the earth; and that temporal power, which as yet they possessed not, they could at pleasure strengthen or weaken in the hands of others.
