The cities that with their contadi and dependencies thus formed the temporal dominion of the pope were, according to the papal biographer, twenty-three in number; Ravenna first and foremost, then Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia (but not Ancona) that had formed the old Pentapolis.  To them was added La Cattolica.  The whole of the inland Pentapolis—­though Fossombrone is not mentioned—­Urbino, Jesi, Cagli, Gubbio—­passed to the pope as well as the following places:  Cesena and the Mons Lucatium, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Castro, Caro, S. Leo, Arcevia, Serra dei Conti, the Republic of S. Marino, Sarsina, and Cantiano together with Comacchio and Narni.  A few months after all this was accomplished, in December 756, Aistulf, “that follower of the devil,” as the pope called him, died.

Every state that is nearing dissolution is the prey of civil discord.  So it was with the Lombards.  Ratchis, who had more than seven years before become a monk, claimed the throne; so did Desiderius, “mildest of men.”  Pope Stephen supported the latter on condition that Ancona, that last city of the Pentapolis, Osimo which dominated it, and Umana, together with Faenza, Imola, and Ferrara, were “restored” to the papacy.  Desiderius agreed and became king, but failed, as the Lombards always failed, to keep his promise, for though he handed over Faenza, Bagnacavallo, and Gavello, he withheld Imola, Bologna, Ancona, Osimo, and Umana; this was in 757, the year of Stephen’s death.

In the same year Pope Paul I. seems to have visited the chief city of his new state, Ravenna, mainly perhaps on ecclesiastical business, for the archbishop Sergius was by no means a loyal subject and had only been brought to heel when nothing but submission was left open to him.  He had then, according to Agnellus, promised to deliver to the pope all the “gold, silver, vessels of price, hoards of money,” and so forth stored up in Ravenna.  Agnellus tells a long and incoherent tale of the way the pope obtained this treasure and of certain plots to murder him therefor.  All that seems fairly certain is that in the first year of his reign pope Paul I. visited Ravenna.  Indeed the chief difficulty of the papacy at this time must have been the occupation of the state it had won so consummately.  How were the popes to make good their somewhat shadowy hold upon Ravenna, and the Pentapolis, and those other strongholds in central Italy and Aemilia?

That they were not to hold them easily was soon evident.  The empire was plotting to win Pepin to its side, and when that failed again, rumours of an imperial invasion reached Rome.  Politically all relations ceased between Constantinople and Rome about this time; for though the pope in reality had long ceased to be a subject of the emperor, when he had possessed himself of the exarchate even theory had to give way to fact.  Nor was the papacy more fortunate in its relations with Desiderius.  The pope’s object was doubtless to keep the Lombard kingdom weak,