Donation of Pepin

edict · 756 · Quierzy

Aistulf, beaten a second time, gave back the cities he had promised and never surrendered, and Pippin issued a grant of them in writing to Saint Peter, to the Roman church and to the pontiffs of the apostolic see in perpetuity. To take possession the king sent his counsellor Fulrad, abbot and priest, who went through the cities of the Pentapolis and Aemilia with Aistulf's envoys, took hostages and the leading men out of each, and carried the keys of their gates to Rome; there he laid the keys of Ravenna and of the cities of its exarchate on the confession of Saint Peter, together with the deed. The Life adds that the document was still kept in the church's archive when the life was written.

The Donation of Pepin, or Donation of Pippin, was the transfer of Frankish territory in Central Italy to Pope Stephen II made by Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, in 756. Credited with "effectively establishing the temporal authority of the papacy," the Donation took place amid the Byzantine Empire's decline in Italy and marked both "an important moment in the papal–Carolingian alliance" and an "important step" in the formation of the Papal States. With the fall of Ravenna, the imperial capital in Italy, to Aistulf, King of the Lombards in 751, "any semblance of imperial protection for Rome" had vanished and the pope, who had technically been a Byzantine subject to this point, turned to Pepin for assistance. Pepin invaded Italy and, following an initial victory in 755, he decisively "defeated Aistulf and imposed a peace on him" in 756.

Wikipedia