Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/236

i 9 6 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE each item; then he was scourged backwards out of the church; the next day he was made a public laughing-stock in the Hippodrome, seated on an ass with his face toward its tail; finally he was beheaded, his head exposed to public view, and his corpse dragged through the streets. Now the exarch tried to have Gregory II murdered, and Leo tried to carry off his successor to Constantinople. Failing in this, he took Illyricum, Sicily, and Calabria in southern Italy away from the pope and placed them under the Patriarch of Constantinople. In southern Italy, indeed, during the period from the sixth to the tenth century when it was under Byzantine control the immigration of Greeks considerably altered the complexion of the population. At this time the Lombards had an able king, Liutprand. He first took advantage of the revolt of the pope and the The Lom- Italians against the exarch to make a number of tnTto^umte conc l uests at the expense of the latter. But when Italy the exarch aided him against the independent Lombard dukes in central and southern Italy, he recipro- cated by forcing the pope to end the revolt against the emperor. The pope then adopted the policy of joining with the Lombard dukes against the king and in 739 refused to surrender to Liutprand the Duke of Spoleto who had taken refuge in Rome. When Liutprand advanced against Rome, the pope appealed to Charles M artel, vituperating the Lombards and seeking his aid against Liutprand. Since, however, Liutprand had just been helping Charles against the Arabs in southern Gaul, Charles politely refused and the Papacy had to abandon its policy of alliance with the Dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. The real situation was that Liutprand was a good ruler for those days and a good Catholic, considerate of the Papacy; but he aimed at mak- ing himself king of all Italy and the pope was determined that this should not happen. Nevertheless by 751 Liut- prand v s successor, Aistulf, had conquered Ravenna and put an end to the exarchate. The next year he appeared before the walls of Rome, demanding tribute and recognition of his sovereignty. Both the imperial envoys and the pope