General Notes

Originally the Mayor of the Palace for King Childeric III. IN 751 an
assembly of nobles in Soissons elected him king of the Franks. In 754 Pope
Stephan II crowned Pepin, King of France at the abbey of St. Denis,
outside of Paris. He supported the Church and rescued the papacy from the
Lombard Kings giving the Pope central Italy in the Donation of Pepin in
756.

27. Pepin (Pippin) II., the Short, King of France from 752 to 768, born in
714, died in 768. He had much to do; the Saxons, Bavarians, and Arabs were
all menacing or revolting, and he had to rush from one part of the kingdom
to the other, defending its frontiers, and getting no help from the
"stupid sluggard king," at Paris. At last, impatient of the farce, he sent
this question to the Pope: "Who is king, he who governs or he who wears
the crown?" "He who governs, of course," answered the Pope. "That is
myself," said the little man with a great will; "so the sluggards shall go
to sleep forever," and he sent the last of them, Childeric III., the last
of the Merovingians, into a monastery. Then the nobles put their shields
together, and the little man was seated on a chair, on their shields, and
with him thus, "shouting and raising their shields as high as they could,
they marched three times, round the parliament, and then, by St. Boniface,
he was anointed Archbishop of Metz, A.D. 752. Pepin did not forget that he
owed a debt of gratitude to the Pope for the answer he had given to his
question, and when, shortly after, the Pope sent to complain of the
trouble occasioned by the Lombards, Pepin crossed the Alps, punished the
Lombards, took from them all the territory about Rome and gave it to the
Pope "to belong to him and to the bishops of Rome forever. That was the
beginning of the Papal sovereignty. The States of the Church, as they were
called, remained under the sovereignty of the Popes until 1871." Pepin le
Bref, King of France, died in 768. He married Bertha (Bertrada) of Laon.
She died in 783. They had two sons as follows: