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Great was the joy of Pope Adrian to hear of this unexpected visit of Charles, and his rapid approach. He made the utmost preparation to receive so great a king, who had likewise the special dignity of Rome's Patricius, that is, her sworn defender. He sent out all the judges of Rome to a spot thirty miles away near the lake of Bracciano, where they awaited him with banners displayed. At a mile from Rome, near Monte Mario, by order of the Pope the soldiers under their respective leaders, and the children who were learning letters, were drawn up to meet him, and bearing in their hands branches of palm and olive sang welcome to him. The standards of crosses were carried, as in the reception of an exarch or a Patricius. When the king of the Franks, Patricius of the Romans, met these crosses, he descended from horseback with his officers, and walked the rest of the way on foot to St. Peter's. There, Pope Adrian, rising early with all the clergy and people of Rome waited, to receive the king of the Franks at the top of the steps leading into the court of the Basilica.

At that time there were thirty-five steps in five series of seven each. When Charles reached these steps, he threw himself on his knees, and so ascended, kissing separately each one of the thirty-five in the fashion of a pilgrim. At the top he found Pope Adrian; they embraced each other, and the king holding the Pope's right hand they entered the church together, all the clergy and the monks singing, “Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord”. When the king with the bishops, abbots, judges, and all the Franks of his train, came to the Confession, they prostrated themselves to our almighty God, and rendered their vows to the Prince of the Apostles, glorifying the divine power in him, who had given them by his intercession such a victory.

After their prayer the king turned to the Pope and earnestly requested of him permission to enter Rome, in order to venerate the other churches of the city, and therein pay his vows. Whereupon the Pope and the king, together with Roman and Frank judges, descending to the body of St. Peter, bound themselves by oath to mutual protection. This permission to enter Rome was granted in after times by the Popes to Roman emperors themselves, as often as they approached the gates of Rome with armed force. After this permission received Charles and the Pope rode in solemn pomp from St. Peter's to the Lateran, through the whole of Rome. And Charles, in the Lateran church, witnessed the Pope's celebration of the baptismal rite to the catechumens as usual on that day.

So the Romans on that day first beheld the flower of the greatest western nation passing in the pomp of armed men by their palaces, porticoes, Capitol, forum, and colosseum, with the greatest champion of Christendom then in the glory of his manhood at the age of thirty-two years. His secretary, Eginhard, attests his stature to have been seven of his own feet, and his whole aspect was full of majesty. When he ascended on his knees the thirty-five steps leading to St. Peter's, separately kissing each, he manifested in his own person the truth of the reply which nearly fifty years before Pope St. Gregory II. had made to the eastern emperor, Leo III. Leo threatened that he would tear down the statue of St. Peter. St. Gregory said that all the nations of the West regarded him as a God upon earth.

After this Charles returned to the meadows of Nero by St. Peter's wherein foreign armies usually encamped. At the following dawn of Easter day the Pope sent his chief officers and soldiers to conduct Charles in great pomp to Santa Maria Maggiore, where, with all his Franks, he heard the Pope sing Mass. After Mass the Pope received him to a banquet at the patriarchal palace of the Lateran. On the two following feasts the Pope, according to usage, celebrated Mass on the Monday at St. Peter's, on the Tuesday at St. Paul's, in presence of the king. At the Mass in St. Peter's Anastasius mentions that the Pope caused the ceremony called Lauds to be inserted before the Epistle. It was sung before Popes and emperors at their accession. It consisted of the clergy dividing themselves in two bands before the altar, when the archdeacon on one side intoned with loud voice, “O Christ, hear us!” the other side responded, “Long life to our Lord decreed by God, Roman Pontiff and universal Pope!” This was repeated three times; a short litany followed, in which to each invocation made by the archdeacon, the other side replied, “Give him help”: and it ended with a triple Kyrie Eleison. With this rite on that Easter Monday of 774 Charles was solemnly acclaimed as Patricius of the Romans. Eginhard in his “Life” says that Charlemagne would never put on a foreign dress, however splendid: and that he broke this rule twice only, both times at Rome, the first at the request of Pope Adrian: the second at the request of his successor, Pope Leo III., when he wore the long tunic and cloak, and was shod also in Roman fashion. Now twenty years before, that is, in 754, Pope Stephen II. had crowned Pipin and his two sons Charles and Carloman kings of the Franks, and created them also Patricii of the Romans. Charles would seem to have considered this ceremony a solemn inauguration of this dignity. It was from this time, 774, that in his public acts he styled himself king of the Franks and of the Lombards, and Patricius of the Romans.

In that same week before Charles left Rome he transacted affairs of the utmost importance with the Pope.

The ecclesiastical hierarchy in France, the rights of metropolitans, and the other churches had fallen in the last eighty years under great usurpations, which all the zeal of Pipin had not been able to remedy. Adrian prevailed on Charles to work a restoration of the ancient state. He also drew from the archives of the Roman See two authentic codes, one containing the old order of the ecclesiastical provinces and dioceses in France; the other, the councils and canons of the Greek and Latin church. These were of the greatest service to Charles in the synods and capitulars and wise regulations which he made for the restoration of the Church in France.

But further, the Pope addressed himself to obtain from Charles the renewal and confirmation of the promise made in April, 754, by king Pipin and Charles himself to Pope Stephen II. The king promised not only to reconquer for the Holy See the exarchate and Pentapolis, then occupied by Aistulf, but to add to them likewise all the provinces of nearly all Italy from the Po. That promise was grounded upon the design then entertained by the Pope and the king to put an end altogether to the Lombard rule. But at the siege of Pavia, in 754, the Pope and Pipin were so far moved by the supplications and promises of Aistulf, that they left him the Lombard kingdom. Giving up that first design, they made with him the treaty of Pavia, that compact between the Franks, the Lombards, and the Romans, which during eighteen years was appealed to as the basis of their political relations. But in this interval the incorrigible perfidy and ambition of Desiderius, and his obstinate refusal of all terms of agreement, had last led Adrian and Charles to resume the original intention of Stephen and Pipin. Charles after forcing the pass above Susa resolved to pluck up by the roots the Lombard power. Thus the conditions of 754, having returned in 774, would bring back the first promise of Pipin, and the compact of Pavia in 756 having been trodden under foot by Desiderius, and torn at the sword's point, the compact of Quiersy was restored to force. It had not been annulled but suspended. Adrian therefore took the excellent opportunity of Charles's presence in Rome to complete the work so well begun by Stephen II. The fresh inauguration of Charles as Patricius helped to obtain from him a solemn confirmation of the former compact. His piety and devotion to St. Peter were not less marked than his father's, and he assented to the Pope's desire.

On Easter Wednesday, the 6th April, 774, the solemn act was completed which Anastasius has left carefully registered in the Liber Pontificalis. The Pope with all the judges of the clergy and army, that is, all the ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries of Rome, went to St. Peter's, where he was met by Charles with all his train. Here Adrian in a public speech recorded the acts of kindness and attachment which for so long had joined together France and the Holy See. He reminded Charles of the promise which, in April, 754, his father Pipin of sacred memory and he himself with his brother Carloman and all the Frank judges had made and sworn solemnly to St. Peter and Pope Stephen II. in the assembly of Quiersy. That was to assure to St. Peter and all his successors in perpetuity the possession of various cities and territories of Italy. He then earnestly exhorted and prayed the king to give entire accomplishment to that promise. Charles asked that the whole tenor of the promise of Quiersy should be read before him. Having heard it read, and greatly approved of it, with his judges, he most willingly accorded the request of the Pope, he immediately ordered his chaplain and notary Etherius to draw out another deed of promise and donation exactly similar to the first. In this he granted to St. Peter the same cities and lands and promised to give them over to Pope Adrian, marking out the limits. These are, says Anastasius, as we now read them in the text of donation, from Luni and the isle of Corsica, by Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and Monselice, embracing the whole exarchate of Ravenna as it was of old, the province of Venetia and Istria, the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. This Charles subscribed with his own hand, and caused it to be subscribed by all his bishops, abbots, dukes, and counts. After this the king and his nobles, having placed the deed, first upon the altar of St. Peter, and then within the Confession, took a terrible oath to St. Peter and Pope Adrian, to maintain every syllable of its contents, and they placed the deed in the hands of the Pope. Further, Charles made Etherius write another copy of the same donation, placed it with his own hand on the inner altar of the Confession, under the gospels which were wont to be kissed there by the faithful, that it might remain in most secure guarantee and eternal memorial of the devotion of Charles and the Franks to the Prince of the Apostles. Other copies were afterwards made in authentic form by the proper officer of the Roman Church, which Charles carried with him into France.

Thus the original compact of Quiersy resumed its legal force, and became the foundation of political right in Italy. It is true that various reasons prevented the compact from ever receiving its entire effect, but it became, nevertheless, the standard which the Popes and the kings of the Franks kept before them, the archetype on which the public deeds and covenants renewed afterwards so often in the middle ages between the emperors and the Holy See were all framed. Adrian in thus claiming and securing the sovereign rights already acquired by the Roman Church may be called the second founder, after Stephen II., of the temporal monarchy of the Popes. Charles in crowning the work of Pipin showed himself not only worthy of the Roman Patriciate, but of that further dignity to which he was afterwards exalted by Leo III. In the twenty following years the union and cordial friendship which bound Adrian and Charles together, maintained and increased prosperity in the Church, and made closer still the old alliance of France with the Papacy. Adrian ordered a prayer for king Charles to be entered in the Roman liturgy, which thenceforward was made for the Roman emperors, who succeeded him in his office of Protector of the Church.

The Pope, in taking leave of Charles, predicted to him, in the names of St. Peter and St. Paul, a quick and complete triumph over their common enemies, and the total conquest of the Lombard kingdom: “after which,” he said, “you will render to St. Peter the gift which you have promised him, and will receive in reward greater and more signal victories”.

And Adrian ordered that in all the monasteries, and the twenty-eight titular churches, and the seven deaconries of Rome, every day perpetual prayers should be offered for victory to the Franks.

Thus Charles left Rome, and returned to his camp before Pavia. By the first days of June, Verona had fallen, notwithstanding all the valour of the prince Adelchis, and Pavia had yielded. With the submission of the capital, the few remaining cities, and Lombard lords, accepted Charles for their king. Thus, in the course of ten months, from September, 773, to June, 774, Charles effected, with great good fortune and little effusion of blood, the most brilliant of his conquests. He placed a strong Frank garrison in Pavia, he sent his counts to govern the various cities and provinces: in which, however, the chief Lombard dukes were comprised. Charles did not change the constitution of the kingdom: he did not make it a province of France. He left its integrity and autonomy. He became himself king of the Lombards, as before he had been king of the Franks.

One of his first deeds was to restore to the Holy See all the cities and territories which, in his last years, Desiderius had invaded in the exarchate, the Pentapolis, or the duchy of Rome. He thus gave back to Pope Adrian full and pacific possession of the whole State of St. Peter, such as it was after the donation of Pipin. This was the chief, if not the sole, occasion of the war. It would be the first fruit of the victory. That he performed what he had promised is attested by his secretary, Eginhard: “Charles did not rest from the war which he had begun until he had restored to the Romans all which had been taken away from them. ‘The end of this war was the subjection of Italy: and the restitution to Adrian, ruler of the Roman Church, of the things which had been seized by the Lombard kings.’ ” Other contemporary annals of the year 774 say: “This year Pavia was surrendered to the Franks: and Desiderius was carried into France, and the lord king Charles sent his counts through all Italy: he joyfully restored to St. Peter the cities owed to him, and having arranged everything, came speedily into France”. His return filled France with triumph.

“The Lombards had been governed by their kings with good laws and exact justice, but they afterwards received better treatment under Charlemagne, a monarch who, in loftiness of mind, in power and rectitude of judgment, surpassed all Frank and Lombard kings.” But this encomium on the good laws and exact justice of the Lombards belongs only to their treatment of themselves, for the Romans looked with horror upon the ignominious servitude with which Aistulf and Desiderius threatened them. These kings sought to crown that semi-barbarous occupation of North Italy during two centuries by throning themselves in Rome, and making the Pope their vassal. Aistulf sank before Pipin, and Desiderius before Charles. The oppressors of the Pope were swept away: his champion and protector, Charles, went on henceforth from victory to victory.

That the transition of the lands secured to the Pope into the relation of vassals to a sovereign was a matter of time is explained by the insufficient material force at the command of the Pope, the love of independence in the population, their power to resist, and the general conditions of the time. Thus, from a letter of Adrian to Charles, in 787 or 788, we learn that he announced to the king how he had received the cities of Toscanella. Bagnorea, and Viterbo, and requested from him the tradition of Populania, and Rosella, near Piombino. Later, he shows him that he had not yet received them, though two messengers of Charles had been charged with their delivery. Thus it required fresh efforts on the part of the Franks, and fresh reminders on the part of the Pope, to obtain the complete execution of the gift. This does not show that Charles was unwilling to keep his word: but it does show the difficulty of the matter. It was a great undertaking to pacify the population in a number of cities, and to subject the great and the small proprietors in them to the papal lordship. Adrian had reason sometimes to express the wish to the king that it might be accomplished in their life-time. Sometimes Charles's own Commissioners were not trustworthy, were disinclined to the Pope, were liable to be corrupted or deceived, or made mistakes in executing their commission. In March, 781, Charles came again to Italy, celebrated Easter on the 15th of April at Rome, treated with the Pope, had his little son, Pipin, four years old, baptised, and made him, after the Pope had anointed him, king of the Lombards. The duchies of Spoleto and Benevento were to be vassal lands of the Pope. The distance of the latter from the Franks, the connection of the Duke Arichis with Desiderius, and the nearness to the Greeks, who occupied Gaicta, and other parts of Campania, caused special difficulties here. This gradual acquisition of the territories promised by Charles in 774 occupied a number of years; but in them Adrian had every reason to praise the good faith of Charles and the Franks.

From the time that all dependence on Constantinople was broken off, the sovereign authority of the Pope appears entire. In all dealings with Pipin and the Franks, in the compact of alliance at Quiersy, in the two peaces of Pavia, in 754 and 756, between the Franks, the Romans, and the Lombards, the Pope appears as the sole actor and supreme arbiter of Rome's fortunes. He alone confers on Pipin and his sons the dignity of Patriciate of the Romans, thereby binding him to an armed defence of Rome and its State. To the Pope alone Fulrad consigns at St. Peter's the keys and the hostages of the cities of the exarchate. The Pope covenants with Desiderius the conditions for his elevation to the Lombard throne; demands of him the surrender of the cities not yet restored: guards against the schemes of the Lombards and the Greeks to take away the sovereignty of the Holy See; treats with the king of the Franks to frustrate them. He continually sends his ambassadors into France, usually prelates, sometimes dukes and Roman magnates. The kings of France send to him their messengers; treat with him of all public affairs of Italy. The people of Spoleto, Reate, and elsewhere, when at the fall of Desiderius they voluntarily became subjects of the Roman State, swear fealty to St. Peter and the Pope. In a word, in all political acts, in all concerning the government and defence of the State, the Pope alone speaks and acts in his own name with supreme and independent authority. No representative of the Senate or Roman people is seen at his side, clothed with proper and distinct authority. On the contrary, in the very gravest questions of State, no decree of the Senate, no plebiscite, no form of citizen suffrage is so much as hinted at. This is inexplicable had Rome been governed as a republic, or if its citizens had had any part of sovereign authority.

With this the language of the Pope himself exactly agrees. He speaks as a king of the cities and provinces of the Roman State. “The territories of our cities, and the patrimonies of St. Peter;” “our city of Sinigallia;” “our castle of Valens;” “this our city of Rome,” “our city of Civita Vecchia;” “our city of Castle Felaty;” “our territories of the exarchate;” “this our province;” “they are attempting to withdraw from our dominion our cities of Campania, from the power and dominion of St. Peter and ours;” “we have resolved to send thither our main army;” “in all the parts which lie under the dominion of the holy Roman Church;” these and such like expressions occur everywhere in the letters of the Popes to the Frank kings. These also are no less frequent and significative. “The holy Church of God and its peculiar people;” “the Roman Church and all the people subject to it;” “our people;” “the people entrusted to us;” “all our people of the Romans of that province;” “our people of the commonwealth of the Romans”. These expressions the Popes used without doubt or reserve in public letters to the Frank kings and nation. Adrian, in a letter to Charlemagne, declares his will to maintain and exercise in the exarchate and Pentapolis exactly the same power which Stephen II. had received. “Our predecessor distributed all appointments in the exarchate, and all who ruled received their orders from this city of Rome. He sent judges to right all who suffered wrong, to reside in that city of Ravenna.”

The interests of the Romans and the Franks, of the Papacy and the Frankish kingdom, of Adrian and Charles, became in this period blent together. An indivisible unity and sincere alliance existed between them. They were the result of that great visit of Charles to Rome in 774. When that visit took place, Charles was almost at the beginning of that wonderful career which has placed him at the head of modern history. By the death of his brother Carloman two years before, the whole Frank inheritance came into his hands. In the three years since 768, when Charles and Carloman had been crowned on the same day as kings of the Franks, but in different cities, there had been dissension between them, and had Carloman lived, it was to be feared that the young strength of the greatest western monarchy would have been turned against itself, instead of being gathered up together against the Saracen enemy who was bent on the conquest of the world. But now the single hand of Charles wrought it to a unity of power, moderation and wisdom, which first became conspicuous on this visit to Rome. By this act of spontaneous devotion he may be said to have inaugurated the unequalled success which afterwards attended on him. From that time, forty-two years of reign were appointed to him, in which he became greater and greater. The root may have been that first visit which he made to Rome, shortly after that Pontificate of Adrian began, in answer to his appeal. They became from this time fast personal friends. It is to be observed with what magnificent loyalty Charles took up, repeated, and ratified in his own person, the act of his father, Pipin, made twenty years before. That act of Pipin is almost unique in history. When Stephen II. came to him at Pontigny in 754, Pipin promised him for the love of St. Peter to defend the city and duchy of Rome from the intruding Lombard king, Aistulf, and so not to give, but to preserve its sovereignty to St. Peter, as throned in his successors, alike from Lombard robbery and Byzantine neglect and impotence. He promised also to recover the exarchate of Ravenna, and the province on the Adriatic called the Pentapolis, already taken by Aistulf from the Byzantine, and in his occupation, and to give them an inheritance to St. Peter. Also, he received the title of Patricius of the Romans, then bestowed upon him by Stephen II., with the engagement and the right of protection carried by it. His sons Charles and Carloman, then children, were associated with him in these promises, and in the dignity of Patricius. The nobles of the Franks assembled in diet gave their sanction to these things: Pipin accomplished them. He would not take to himself a palm of ground in that rich territory which he partly preserved for St. Peter alone, and partly bestowed upon him. Rome and its duchy he preserved; the exarchate and Pentapolis he bestowed. Stephen II. reigned, when he returned to Rome, in 756, and his brother, Paul I., after him. The Lombard kingdom, from the taking of Pavia in 756, continued by Pipin's permission. The last Lombard king, Desiderius, repaid all this by perpetual encroachment upon the cities given to St. Peter. The Lombard faithlessness is repeatedly dwelt upon in the contemporary writings of the Popes Stephen II., Paul I., Stephen III., and especially Adrian I. Charles had listened to the solemn appeal of Adrian to right him. He came to Rome, and the greatest warrior of the West ascended as a pilgrim on his knees the thirty-five steps which led to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. He was welcomed at St. Peter's Confession as Patricius, in the way that Popes and emperors alone, upon their accession, were welcomed. And before he left Rome, at the request of the Pope, he ordered his father's deed to be read before him; in the midst of his princes, and with their consent, he re-affirmed it: and he guarded the throne of Adrian as Patricius during that pontificate, which, until seventeen hundred years from St. Peter had elapsed, had no equal in length. In all this Charles equalled and repeated the generosity of his father.

How greatly the Popes esteemed the deeds of Pipin and of Charlemagne is witnessed perpetually by the letters of the day contained in the Codex Carolinus. In them the Frank king is constantly likened to Moses and to David, who delivered the people of Israel from Egyptian bondage and heathen oppression. He is called perpetually, “our helper and defender after God,” “the guardian of holy Church,” “the liberator of the Christian people,” “the ransomer of the Roman Church, and all the people subject to it”. To him is attributed the prosperity and security of Rome and the whole province of Roman Italy, which is said to be redeemed by him. No tongue can express or praise sufficiently his benefits. God alone can reward him. All nations must acknowledge his defence of the Church of God, and magnify him for it over all the kings of the earth.

The effect of the Pipinian donation, confirmed in so splendid a manner by Charles, had two results at once of inestimable value: one to free the Popes and the inhabitants of Italy from the perpetual invasion, threats, and devastation of the Lombards. Thrice since the assault of the emperor Leo III., in 726, upon the faith and internal government of the Church, had Rome been in the utmost peril of subjugation, once by Liutprand, then by Aistulf, lastly by Desiderius. What would have been the condition of the Pope under such a king as Aistulf or Desiderius, seated at the Capitol? He could only expect a servitude far worse than had ever been suffered under the vice-cæsars of Ravenna, or the cæsars of Constantinople. The original Roman empire had been broken into a multitude of independent kingdoms. That changed condition of the Christian society of itself required that there should be lodged in its head a greater independence of the civil power. The hand of Charles, coming down upon the hand of Pipin, assured to Adrian the legal recognition of a sovereignty sufficiently large to secure him in the guardianship of the faith which was the chief work of St. Peter's See in every age. And so the misery which the rudest barbarian horde began in 568 was stayed at last in 774: and if Gregory the Great, in his time, complained that he had been for thirty years keeping watch and ward against Lombard violence and intrigue, the four great pontiffs, Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen II., witnessed the last access of their attempt at domination, and the royal city of Ravenna acknowledged in Pope Adrian, not only its spiritual head, but its temporal sovereign.

At the same time the second inestimable benefit of deliverance from the eastern despotism, fastened upon Italy since the time of Narses, took place. Some slight sketch of what the exarchate had been to Italy has been attempted. At last those two hundred years of misery were closed: the universal consent of the peoples of central Italy accepted with delight the Papal sovereignty. From the time of Justinian to Stephen II. – perhaps it should rather be said from the time of Leo the Great, the Popes alone had cared for Italy. They alone had possessed the power, the wisdom, and the charity to meet, in some degree at least, the calamities which rained down upon that land, reduced to the condition of a “servile province”. Forty years after St. Gregory the Great, in the middle of the seventh century, a Pope had been torn from his sick bed, laid before the altar in the Lateran Basilica, carried to Byzantium, judged by the senate as a traitor for the exercise of his spiritual rights, and left to die of famine in the Crimea. In the middle of the eighth century if we plant ourselves, and look through the events of two or three centuries, a certain fact comes out clearly. No one can assign the precise point of its completion, but it is seen attested by a multitude of indications. The Popes in gradually taking an acknowledged sovereignty, only yielded to the long and ardent desire of the peoples at whose head they stood, no less than to the stringent demand of public necessity. The feeling of the subject here answered to the fact in the prince: that is, as the Popes were princes by actual necessity so long before they had the name and solemn right to it, so the Romans, and the Italians of the exarchate and the Pentapolis were spontaneous subjects of the Popes long before they bore the legal title. A mutual attraction joined the two together. The Popes through charity for the public good began to exercise in behalf of an ill-treated or a deserted population the part of provident civil governors; the people from gratitude and affection clung more and more to the Popes. The ever increasing calamities and the common trials which pressed on the Popes and the Italians in those miserable times, partly caused by the Byzantine emperors, partly by the barbarous Lombards, drew them more closely together, until the Popes found themselves sovereigns, and the people found themselves subjects, in a complete civil society. But the character of that society was indeed paternal: and as the civil bond sprung from a spiritual fathership, Pipin and Charlemagne named with the name of St. Peter himself the State which their love and reverence for him had partly preserved and partly created.