Episode 33 — The Demise of the Exarchate

The events around the demise of the Exarchate of Ravenna only marginally involved the Venetians. It is nevertheless important to the history of Venice. Without the Exarchate, the empire was more distant, and Venetia was therefore less protected, but also less constrained.

Links

Past episodes in the “Early Venice” series.

• Episode 3 — The Roman and Byzantine period
• Episode 27 — Cassiodorus
• Episode 28 — The early sources
• Episode 29 — The Lombard Invasion
• Episode 30 — Venetia Maritima
• Episode 31 — The world of Venetia
• Episode 32 — The first doges of Venice
• Episode 33 — The Demise of the Exarchate

Translated sources

• Iconoclasm — Paul the Deacon
• Gregory II — Liber Pontificalis
• John VI — Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis

Transcript

Episode 33 — The Demise of the Exarchate

In the previous episode, I briefly discussed two external events, which influenced the path Venice, and the Venetians, ended up taking towards statehood.

One was the conflict between the empire and the papacy over iconoclasm, in which the Venetians participated. The other was a Lombard raid on Ravenna, where both the exarch and the pope asked the Venetians for help.

For much of the 700s, a complex game took place in Italy, between four different parties. The players were the Byzantine Empire through the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Papacy in Rome, the Kingdom of the Lombards, and in the endgame, also the Franks.

The Venetians weren’t really a player in this game, but they got entangled in it repeatedly anyway.

What the Venetians did on those occasions, probably wasn’t decisive for the overall outcome of the game, but the overall outcome was decisive for what the Venetians could do later, and for what Venice could become.

The Exarchate

The Exarchate of Ravenna had been established in 584 as an emergency response to the Lombard invasion.

After the initial wave of invasion and conquest, the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Kingdom of the Lombards established a kind of co-existence, albeit an uneasy and often conflictual co-existence.

By the mid-600s, the Byzantine parts of Italy were reduced to the islands and the south, the areas around Naples and Rome, most of the Adriatic coast, with the Pentapolis south of Ravenna, Ravenna itself and its surroundings up to the estuary of the river Po, and Venetia Maritima north of the estuary.

The Lombards had established themselves in most of the north, and in the centre and south in-land, mostly away from the coastal areas.

For much of the period, the Exarchate managed to maintain a land corridor across the Apennines, connecting Ravenna and Rome.

Consequently, the Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento — in the centre and south of the Italian peninsula — were detached from the rest of the Kingdom of the Lombards. The dukes of Spoleto and Benevento would often take advantage of this peculiarity to act more independently than the other Lombard duchies could get away with.

The two dominions — Lombard and Byzantine — were intertwined and not well delineated, so the borders were at times uncertain, porous and flexible. Very often, a Lombard duke or a Byzantine exarch or duke would opportunistically push at a part of the border, to see if it could be shifted.

The various chronicles are full of such skirmishes, and sometimes also major incursions, which might still have inconsequential outcomes.

Ravenna

Ravenna was the political centre of the Exarchate. It had been a capital city since the mid-400s, from the late Western Roman Empire, through Odoacer and the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths, to the Exarchate of Ravenna.

It was — and still is — full of magnificent churches and monuments, while the ancient palaces of government are mostly gone.

The importance of Ravenna was in part due to its geographical position. It was located on an island in a lagoon, not unlike later Venice, with effective natural lines of defence. On a lido nearby, the city of Classe was a major naval base since Roman times. The name Classe literally means navy.

In addition to being easily defensible, Ravenna also had good marine connections to the Eastern Empire, and was near the main Roman consular roads inland, in particular the Via Emilia towards Lombardy and Piedmont, but also north to Venetia and Histria.

From a Byzantine perspective, as an Italian capital, Ravenna was preferable to Rome.

Rome

Rome was, of course, special, despite being on the ‘wrong’ side of the peninsular, from a Byzantine point of view.

The Papacy was based in Rome, and the pope was the spiritual leader of Christianity in the Latin west. Together with the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, the pope was one of the undisputed leaders of Christianity.

Locally, however, the pope found himself in a difficult situation.

Formally a part of the Exarchate, but geographically almost detached, if not for that land corridor across the Apennine mountains, and for a narrow stretch of coastline towards Naples.

The territory of the Byzantine Duchy of Rome bordered on the Lombard duchies of Benevento to the south, Spoleto to the east, and Tuscia (Tuscany) to the north, which were some of the largest Lombard duchies, and some of the most independent.

The popes therefore had to come to terms with the neighbouring Lombard dukes, and, as the ability of the Byzantines to contain the Lombards waned, the popes also started to act more on their own.

A game of three

By the late 600s, the struggle for control of Italy had therefore become more and more a game of three players, with the opposing Lombards and Byzantines, and with the papacy in Rome acting ever more in his own interest, even if those interests didn’t coincide with the priorities of the empire.

Consequently, Constantinople tried in every way to contain and control the papacy, even to the extent of abducting, deposing and assassinating popes, and trying to interfere in the election of the popes.

The Lombards, who at the time of the invasion were pagans and Arians, had by the late 600s converted to orthodoxy, and recognised the pope as their ultimate spiritual leader.

That gave the papacy a leverage over the Lombard side, which it hadn’t had earlier.

Also, according to the Byzantine chronicler Theophánes, the Exarchate and the Lombards entered into a peace treaty around 680, which — if the story is true — lasted for over three decades. According to Theophanes, the treaty included a formal recognition by Byzantium of the Kingdom of the Lombards.

Theophanes is, however, our only source for that treaty.

Anti-Byzantine riots

If Constantinople managed to arrive at a modus vivendi with the Lombards, the relationship with the people of the Exarchate deteriorated.

By the late 600s, it became quite conflictual, and the empire much more heavy-handed with the papacy. The empire tried to interfere in the election of popes, coerce the pontiffs to do as Constantinople wanted, and there were several cases of anti-Byzantine riots in cities of the Exarchate.

Here are some examples from the period of Justinian II. He ruled initially from 685 to 695, was deposed, but came back, and ruled again 705 to 711.

In 692, he called a church council, called the Quinisext council or the Council in Trullo, which took place in a large domed hall (troúlos) in the imperial palace in Constantinople.

The Roman church wasn’t invited and therefore wasn’t represented.

Afterward the canons of the council were sent to Rome for the signature of pope Sergius I, but he rejected some of the canons and refused to sign, as several of the decisions went against the established traditions of the Roman church.

Justinian responded by sending an armed mission, led by the head of the imperial bodyguard, Zacharias the protospatharios, to coerce the pope to sign, or take him, by force if necessary, to Constantinople. Such an imperial abduction of a pope had already happened to pope Martin I, half a century earlier.

However, the people of Rome rose in defence of the pontiff, and the army of Ravenna joined in. According to the Liber Pontificalis, Zacharias ended up hiding in the pontiff’s bed chamber, under his bed.

Needless to say, pope Sergius didn’t sign, and he didn’t go to Constantinople.

Back in Constantinople, Justinian II had made himself so hated, that he was deposed in 695. He was captured in the imperial palace, dragged down to the hippodrome, where his nose and his ears were cut off. He was then sent into exile in Cherson in Crimea.

Around 701, emperor Tiberius III appointed Theophylactus as exarch of Ravenna, likely from a previous position of strategos in Sicily.

When Theophylactus arrived in Rome, the people rioted again, for reasons our sources don’t reveal. The troops of Ravenna also joined in, against the exarch, who had to seek the protection of pope John VI. Once things had calmed down, thanks to the intervention of the pontiff, the exarch could proceed to Ravenna to take up his command.

Despite the mutilations and political setbacks, Justinian II returned to the imperial throne in 705, and picked up where he had left. A wave of reprisals came down on Constantinople, where everybody, who in any way had assisted the preceding emperors, were arrested, tortured and often murdered, including the patriarch of Constantinople and numerous clerics.

To resolve the outstanding issue of Roman consent to the canons of the Quinisext council, Justinian invited pope Constantine to Byzantium, and the pope accepted.

Justinian also sent a new exarch to Italy, a John Rizocopus, of whom we know very little.

Their roads crossed in Naples, where John Rizocopus landed just as pope Constantine was about to embark on the sea journey to Constantinople.

After the impromptu meeting, each went their way, but once in Rome, John Rizocopus had the people, whom the pope had left in charge, summarily executed.

He then proceeded to Ravenna. Within a very short time, the people of Ravenna rioted, and he was killed.

Without mincing words, the Liber Pontificalis stated that:

Going to Ravenna, and for his most heinous deeds, by the judgment of God, he died there a most ignominious death.

Emperor Justinian was furious, and sent another strategos from Sicily, Theodore, to Ravenna. Here, he had many nobles tortured and murdered, others hauled in chains to Constantinople for a similar fate, including the archbishop Felix, who was blinded and exiled to Crimea.

In late 711, enough was enough, and Justinian was deposed and killed in Constantinople. His severed head was then sent to Italy, first to Ravenna and then to Rome.

In Ravenna, there were scenes of jubilation as the head of the dead emperor was paraded around the city.

The Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis — the Book of the bishops of Ravenna — for archbishop Felix recounts the following story of the sister of a scholar named Giovannicio, whom Justinian had ordered tortured to death a few years earlier:

The sister of the late Giovannicio, having heard what had happened, weeping, invoked the Lord of heaven that she might see Justinian’s severed head, as the rumour had spread, and then immediately die. While that head was being carried on a spear through all the squares, it happened that the aforementioned woman was informed that the head was being brought from there. Immediately she went up to the upper floor of the house and, observing from the window, prayed to the bearer to stop; after watching for a long time, she poured out tears from her chest, thanking God because she had seen what she desired. As she was about to lean out the window, she fell backward and died crushed.

A strained relationship

It would not be incorrect to say that the relationship between the people of the Exarchate and the empire was less than harmonious.

This story of the repressions, the brutality and the riots during the reigns of Justinian II is not unique.

The Liber Pontificalis for Gregory II has two successive exarchs trying repeatedly to assassinate the pope, and the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis for St Felix goes into great details of the repressions there.

An almost constant feature of these stories is that the local population — both in Rome, in Ravenna and in other Byzantine duchies — usually sided with the pope if there was contention between papacy and empire.

Even though the pontiff didn’t have much secular power in this period — that came later with the establishment of the Papal State — he was still the one, who people turned to, for leadership and protection.

That imperial troops in Ravenna did the same, was probably because most of them were recruited locally.

Attack on Ravenna in 717

While the authority of the empire was weakening within the Exarchate, the peace with the Lombards mostly held.

It held, until the Arabs in the Levant tipped the balance.

In Constantinople, the second deposition of Justinian II in 711 was followed by a period of instability with a succession of short-reigned emperors, until Leo III — called the Isaurian — rose to power in 717.

The Umayyad Caliphate had for some years been pushing on the borders of the empire, on several sides, and in 717–718, a large Arab army and navy besieged Constantinople itself.

The Eastern Empire was fighting for its very survival.

In the Kingdom of the Lombards, Liutprand had become king in 712.

In 717, realising the weakness of the empire — for all they knew, there might not even be an empire any more — the Lombards struck on several fronts. The Duchy of Benevento moved on Naples and took Cumae, the Duchy of Spoleto occupied Narni, severing the corridor between Rome and Ravenna, and king Liutprand himself attacked Ravenna.

From the Liber Pontificalis for Gregory II:

At that time, the castle of Narni was overrun by the Lombards. Indeed, the King of the Lombards Liutprand, advancing to Ravenna with a general movement, besieged it for days and, after taking the fortress of Classe, carried off many captives and took countless riches.

Now, things didn’t go as bad for the empire as they could have, and the Arabs had to lift the siege of Constantinople and retreat.

Neither did things go as well for the Lombards, as they had no doubt hoped. Liutprand failed to take Ravenna, but might have taken and sacked the harbour city of Classe, and the Byzantine duke of Naples retook control of Cumae.

Problems of sources

I say “might have taken and sacked Classe” because there are huge issues about the dating of many of the events of this period, and that specific event is sometimes placed around 724–725.

We only have a few sources for much of this.

On the side of the church, we have the Liber Pontificalis, which is often very biased and usually doesn’t give precise dates for events. There are numerous instances of “sometimes later this and that happened”, but that “sometimes later” could be a month or a decade, with no way of knowing.

Likewise, the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis, for the bishops of Ravenna, suffers from many of the same problems. In some cases, there are glaring omissions.

We have the occasional papal letter, usually quoted in some later text, and while they are sometimes dated precisely, very often they’re not. The date of the letter can then at best be limited to the intersection of the reigns of the sender and the recipient, but in cases like with Gregory II and Gregory III, where two successive popes used the same name, the possible time span can easily be a decade or more.

On the Lombard side, the Historia Langobardorum continued up to the death of king Liutprand in 744, but the last part is very inconsistent, and leaves the impression of an unfinished draft. Paul the Deacon was writing that towards the end of his life, and there can be many good reasons for such a drop in the quality of the editing of the work.

The Exarchate and the Lombards were on the periphery of the Byzantine world, so while there is the occasional mention of the area in Byzantine sources, it is generally rather marginal.

The Venetian sources are generally much later, at least a century and more often three, as in the case of John the Deacon and the Istoria Veneticorum from around the year 1000.

To make a long story short, many of the dates mentioned in the following are at best approximative.

To return shortly to the siege of Ravenna and the sack of Classe, the Liber Pontificalis seems to place it early in the reign of Gregory II, who became pontiff in 715, while the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis has it at the start of the reign of bishop John VI, around 726. The Historia Langobardorum doesn’t mention it at all.

Taxes and assassinations

Continuing the eulogy of the Exarchate, we find taxes and murder.

Emperor Leo III, after the expensive war with the Caliphate, raised taxes throughout the empire, and also in the Exarchate in Italy.

However, most of the population in Byzantine Italy refused to pay, led by pope Gregory II.

The emperor sent a part of his bodyguard to assassinate the pontiff, but they failed, and once discovered, they fled.

Around 723, the emperor appointed a Paulus as exarch of Ravenna, with the order to get rid of the pope. He, too, tried to have the pope assassinated, but the plot was again discovered, and several of the would-be assassins were killed by the crowds.

From the Liber Pontificalis:

In those days, by order of the emperors, the patrician Paulus, who had been exarch, tried to kill the same pontiff because he hindered the imposition of taxes in the province and stripped churches of their resources, as had been done in other places, and to appoint another in his place.

Finally, the Lombards from the Duchy of Spoleto came in defence of the pope, and blocked the road from Ravenna near the Ponte Salario, just north of Rome.

Here we clearly have the game of three on display. In this case, the Lombards tipped the scales in a conflict between empire and papacy.

Iconoclasm

Then emperor Leo III issued the iconoclast edict, around 726, and demanded that Gregory II backed his policies, as discussed briefly in the previous episode on the first doges of Venice.

The pope again refused, and called the people of the Exarchate to arms against the heresy.

Therefore, all the armies of the Pentapolis and of the Venetians moved, and resisted the command of the emperor, never agreeing to the death of the same pontiff, but rather engaging bravely for his greater defence, so that they subjected Paul the exarch, or whoever had directed him, and their accomplices to anathema; rejecting the order of the exarch, they all chose dukes for themselves throughout Italy; and thus they all sought the pontiff’s and their own immunity.

This was open rebellion against Constantinople.

The emperor sent reinforcements to Ravenna — probably because they had realised that the local troops weren’t reliable — but the Byzantines were defeated in a battle outside Ravenna, and Paul the Exarch was killed around the same time.

The Lombards used the occasion to grab a bunch of border fortresses and some minor towns in the Emilia region, and the in the Pentapolis.

They also occupied the fortress of Sutri, not distant from Rome. The pontiff convinced king Liutprand to return it “to the Romans”, but he returned it to the papacy, not to the exarchate. This donation was one of the first steps towards an independent Papal state.

According to the Liber Pontificalis, the Venetians participated in the rebellion, and the phrase “they all chose dukes for themselves throughout Italy” has been interpreted to mean that Venice too got a new duke, chosen locally in opposition to the empire.

In the narrative of John the Deacon, that doge was Marcellus, while in the Chronica extensa by Andrea Dandolo, it was Ursus Hypatos, who, a wee bit contradictory, sported the Byzantine title of hypatos.

The only other source to mention the Venetians in this context, is Paul the Deacon, who, however, clearly based the story on the Liber Pontificalis.

Hildeprand in Ravenna

Next we have the other event mentioned in the previous episode.

Hildeprand, nephew of king Liutprand, and Peredeo, the Lombard duke of Vicenza, attacked Ravenna, and took it. Eutychius, the exarch who had succeeded Paulus, was forced to flee the city, and went to Venetia.

Here he asked the Venetians for help, and they quickly gathered a fleet, sailed down to Ravenna, which they took in a surprise attack, capturing Hildeprand and killing Peredeo.

We have this story from Paul the Deacon, who is very terse, and from the later John the Deacon, who added a copy of a papal letter, in which a pope Gregory — and we don’t know if it was Gregory II, who ruled until 731 or Gregory III, until 741 — asked the Patriarch of Grado to get the Venetians to help the exarch.

This papal letter is traditionally dated to sometimes between 726 and 735, but John the Deacon conflated the event with a later Byzantine-Lombard conflict in the early 740s, while Andrea Dandolo — writing in the 1340s — made it contemporary with the iconoclasm rebellion in the late 720s.

The confusion over the dating of events goes way back.

No sources tell us of the fate of Hildeprand, but he was likely held for ransom and returned to the Lombards safe and sound.

In 737, during a severe illness of king Liutprand, Hildeprand was acclaimed king of the Lombards in Pavia, but Liutprand recovered. To defuse the potentially explosive situation, he made Hildeprand co-ruler.

The ephemeral Lombard conquest of Ravenna almost certainly took place before this, as the capture of a king of the Lombards by the Venetians would have received wider coverage in the various sources, and, in particular, in the Venetian chronicles.

What we can take away from this story is, that the Exarchate was much weakened at this time.

That a secondary Lombard force could take the capital in a surprise attack, is not a testament to Byzantine strength and preparation. The fact that it was a secondary force, and not the main Lombard army, which was elsewhere, was probably also the reason why the Venetians could reverse the course of events.

The exarch had to appeal to the pope for help. That would either be the same pontiff, whom he had previously tried to have assassinated, and who in turn had anathematised him, or his immediate successor, as they were both named Gregory.

Liutprand’s last attempt

In late 741 or early 742 — and for once, we have a fairly precise date — Liutprand was at it again.

The main Lombard army was harrying the territories of the Exarchate, in Emilia, in the Pentapolis and in Romagna, the heartland around Ravenna. Unable to stop it, the exarch Eutychius and archbishop John VI of Ravenna pleaded for help with the newly elected pontiff Zachary.

Zachary left Rome, travelled to the Pentapolis, where he met with the exarch and the archbishop, and then onwards through war-torn lands to the river Po, and by boat to Pavia, the capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards. Here, he succeeded in convincing Liutprand to stop the war and return the forts and towns he had taken.

Pope Zachary literally risked his own life to help the Exarchate. The rulers of Ravenna, the exarch and the archbishop, were little more than supplicants.

The fall of Ravenna

King Liutprand died in 744, before the agreement with pope Zachary was fully implemented. Hildeprand succeeded him, but he was deposed within the year in favour of king Ratchis. He, in turn, ruled from 744 to 749, when he retired to a monastery and left the kingdom to his brother, Aistulf.

Hildeprand and Ratchis didn’t do much to upset the fragile peace, but when Aistulf became king of the Lombards in 749, he immediately embarked on a campaign to eliminate the Exarchate in northern Italy.

The Exarchate didn’t have sufficient forces to withstand the onslaught, and nobody came to help. In 750, Aistulf took Comacchio and Ferrara at the mouth of the Po river, and in 751, he took the Istrian peninsula and then the capital of Ravenna, and the following year, he occupied the entire Pentapolis.

He did not take Venetia, and he didn’t even try.

In an official charter — which we only know through the later Pactum Lotharii from 840 — he confirmed the borders between the Duchy of the Venetians and the Kingdom of the Lombards, as they had been established in the first years of the reign of Liutprand, around 712–713.

That was in effect a recognition of the Duchy of the Venetians as an entity separate and distinct from the Exarchate.

Some sources even seem to indicate that the Venetians helped the Lombards against the Exarchate. For example, in the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis for archbishop Sergius (744-769) the entire conquest of the Exarchate by Aistulf is covered by just one enigmatic sentence:

This city was harassed by the Lombards and the Venetians.

There is no further explanation, no follow-up, just those few words.

We don’t know what happened to the last exarch Eutychius, the one who had fled to Venetia earlier. He might have been captured, or he might have been killed. We have no information either way, but he never appears again in the surviving record.

With King Aistulf on the throne in the palace of the exarch in Ravenna, the Exarchate was all but gone.

After the Exarchate

The reaction of the empire was meek and inconsequential. There were no resources for any kind of push-back, and besides a few attempts by diplomacy — which all failed — the empire did nothing.

With one player effectively out of the game, only the papacy in Rome was left to counter the Lombards, but Aistulf, having occupied Ravenna and the surrounding duchies, immediately set his eyes on the Byzantine duchy of Rome.

Unfortunately, pope Zachary — who had proven to be a skilled and courageous diplomat confronted with Liutprand — died in March 752. He was succeeded by Stephen II, of a local Roman aristocratic family.

Also, Aistulf wasn’t Liutprand. When Liutprand had struck a deal with Zachary, he had mostly kept it. Aistulf, on the other hand, made deals to placate his enemies, and broke them immediately afterwards.

The Liber Pontificalis is scathing.

Indeed, at that time, while a great persecution by the Lombard king Aistulf had arisen in this Roman city, and in the cities subject to it, and the violent cruelty of the same king was imminent, immediately the most blessed pope, … sending [emissaries] … with many gifts to the same Lombard king Aistulf to arrange peace and confirm treaties.

But indeed the same arrogant king of the Lombards, an old enemy, having invaded by cunning, tore apart the very treaties of peace after almost four months; falling into the crime of perjury, he broke them; inflicting many insults already upon the most holy man as well as upon the entire Roman people, directing various threats at him. For certainly, desiring, contrary to God, to invade this whole province, he was attempting to impose a burdensome tribute upon the inhabitants of this Roman city; specifically, for each head, he began to exact a single solidus of gold from each and indignantly claimed to subjugate this Roman city, and the fortresses subject to it, under his jurisdiction.

Faced with such a dire situation, Stephen II did what Constantinople had done many times before: he sought help from the Franks.

One of the last acts of pope Zachary had been to sanction the deposition of the last Merovingian king of the Franks, by Pepin the Short, then Master of the Palace, that is, head of the royal household.

In late 753, Pope Stephen II travelled to Francia looking for help. Here, in January 754, he officially crowned Pepin king of France, made him a patrician of the duchy of Rome, and, in return, asked for Pepin’s help against Aistulf and the Lombards.

Pepin kept his word, took his army into Italy, defeated Aistulf, and made him promise to cede the territories of the Exarchate.

Once the Frankish army had left, Aistulf acted as if no such promise had been made, and continued to harry the borderlands of the Duchy of Rome.

Pepin therefore returned to Italy in 756, defeated Aistulf a second time, and forced him to pay reparations and hand over the territories of the Exarchate to Pepin himself.

Pepin then, in an act called the Donation of Pepin, ceded to the papacy all the territories, which Aistulf had taken from the Exarchate. They included the Romagna with Ravenna, the Pentapolis and several other cities and fortresses in the Apennines.

At a ceremony in Rome, Pepin symbolically placed the document upon the sepulchre of St Peter.

Constantinople objected, but had no power to intervene.

These events were a pivotal point in the history of the papacy. This is where the Papal State appears, based on the territories donated by Pepin, and henceforth, the papacy relied on the Franks for protection.

The Byzantine papacy had become the Frankish papacy.

The end of the Lombards

Pepin did not depose Aistulf after the second defeat, but the Lombard king died shortly after.

Initially, his brother Ratchis returned from his monastery to be king again, but then the Lombard aristocracy chose Desiderius as their king.

In Francia, Pepin died in 768 and was succeeded by his son Charles, later Charles the Great, Charlemagne.

The relations between the Papacy and the Franks on one side, and the Kingdom of the Lombards on the other, kept creaking, and in 773, Charlemagne invaded the Lombard kingdom, and besieged the capital Pavia, which he took the following year.

He then deposed the captured king Desiderius, and made himself king of the Lombards. Later, he renamed it the Kingdom of Italy.

Consequently, from 774, there were only two players left in the northern half of the Italian peninsula.

The Papacy of Rome was now a state — the Papal State — with a territory stretching across the peninsula, coast to coast, from Rome to Ravenna, until the Po estuary.

The papacy needed the Franks for protection, and the Carolingian dynasty needed the papacy, for legitimacy and because Charlemagne wanted to be emperor.

Everything north of the Papal State was the Frankish Kingdom of Italy, ruled by Charlemagne, and later by his son Pepin.

Everything, except the lagoons of Venetia Maritima, from Grado to Cavarzere. The Duchy of the Venetians — the dogado — was formally still Byzantine, but in practice there was rarely anybody at the other end to hold the leash.