Pepin the Short's Eldest Boy: The Tape Recorder Trilogy - S3E08

(~740 – 756 CE · Spain, France, and Italy) 

The Narrator remembers his time living among the Franks, and especially one frigid morning where he acted as a translator between a little boy and a Pope who fled Italy in the depths of winter to borrow an army on the strength of one of history's most important and breathtaking bald-faced lies.

Based on the first half of Chapter 8 of End by Geoff Micks.

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Credits: 

Voice Acting - Geoff Micks

Editing - Geoff Micks

Music - Dimitri Kovalchuk (MokuseiNoMaguro) through Pixabay

Additional Music - Aleksey Voronin (Amaksi) through Pixabay 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In 2015, a man who has been alive since the last ice age bought a tape recorder, and over the course of three days he dictated his life story as fast as he could while waiting for a woman to visit who he believes will finally be the death of him. Hello again, everyone. My name is Jeff Mix, and you are listening to season three, episode eight of the tape recorder trilogy podcast. Enjoy that. Thank you for your patience, dear listeners. With the Franks, the Papacy, the Romans, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, and Abdul Rahman all now covered, I can return to my own small part in all this without needing to stop every few minutes to start a long side story from the very beginning for the sake of context. As I have said, when I first came to the court of Pepin the Short, I was fleeing the Berbers and Arabs killing one another in Al Andalus. As neither a Berber nor an Arab, but with sympathies for both sides, I found myself in the awkward position of having no allies at all in the faith I had called my own for more than a century. Where then should I flee? The Berbers were in rebellion in both Al Andalus and Al Maghreb. The house of Umaya was putting down the first rumblings of the Abbasids in the east. I am not saying I knew most of the Umayyads would die in the next five years, but for the first time in a long time the idea of making a new life for myself among Muslims to the east screamed of danger to me. Well, what about the Romans of Constantinople? Constantine V, Constantine whose name means shit, was doubling down on his father's iconoclasm. That whole struggle over icons has always looked insane to me, and as I was at the time more than a century removed from the kind of nuanced Christian debate the Greeks loved so much, I knew I would end up putting a foot wrong there sooner or later. As for Italy? Well, I suppose I've not said it yet, but the parts of Italy that were not still ruled by Constantinople were now swarming with the Germanic people called the Lombards. I'm not going to give them the same long, rambling introduction as the Franks, but they were also a group that sometimes had one king and always had a lot of warlords, and when they were not killing Italians and Greeks and any barbarians who thought about sticking their nose into Italy, they were killing each other to see who should be king and how much allegiance the other warlords should give whoever was currently wearing the iron crown of the Lombards. No, Italy was out. If I wanted to get murdered by rival factions on a long suffering peninsula, I could do that in Spain. In the entire Mediterranean world that left the Franks of Francia, a people who were exceedingly good at killing Muslims who crossed over the Pyrenees when they were not killing other people who offended them, including each other. At least that violence was controlled by a strong leader. Mayor of the palace Pepin the Short was less likely to kill me than the Berbers, or the Arabs, or the Lombards, or the crazy Greek speaking Romans of Constantinople. Pepin was also a lot closer and more secure on not technically his throne yet, than the last of the Umayyad Caliphs. I decided to travel to Pepin's court, which in theory he was running for a Merovingian king. I have made myself at home in any number of royal and imperial courts over the years. How bad could Pepins be? I assumed a new identity and began a new life as a Spanish Christian. It was quite an adjustment not praying five times a day, but it did have one huge plus that I have never had a chance to tell anyone before, dear listeners, and I think with a few glasses of Ryan it is worth preserving for posterity. Ready? I could piss in front of any man and sleep with any woman without worry for the first time in a very, very long time. Let me explain. I did not think it appropriate to mention what I did not like about the faith while talking about the early days of Islam, but now that I am again going to be a Christian for a while, can I ask you to imagine for one moment how unpleasant adult circumcision is for an immortal being whose foreskin grows back? In every one of my Muslim lives, sooner or later someone points out I had not made my covenant with God official. Oh, they were sure I had said the sacred words there is no God but God and Muhammad peace be upon him is his messenger. That was all well and good, but it did not cut any flesh off my penis, did it? Well, many times I protested that there is no mention of circumcision in the Holy Quran, but they would reply that the practice is well established in Hadiths, and there is precedent as well with the Jewish faith, who are also people of the book. Circumcision to acknowledge the covenant between God and his chosen people goes back thousands of years. Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, all circumcised, who was I to say no? Now I will say in my life I have done all sorts of things for religion that I would not do for fun, including body modification. When I was an expert at smoking hibernating bears out of their caves, a priest in a bear skin used to honor every bear I killed by slashing my face with a bear claw and rubbing soot and bear bile in the open wound. Thank God those scars and tattoos faded, right? Anyway, circumcision. It hurts, but it honestly is not as painful as some things I have endured with less religious convictions backing up their necessity. So yes, sooner or later a well meaning imam would insist, and then he would conduct a short ceremony after which I would be very, very uncomfortable. Of course, that was not the worst of it. Within a few months my foreskin would start to grow back, an itching nuisance that lasted a long while, and then I was whole again. Trimming that down by myself is not something I ever contemplated seriously, and explaining that it grew back was an absolute non starter. So what could I do? I lived with a foreskin around men who knew I could not possibly have one because they remembered when it was removed, and so I was careful that none of them ever saw my genitals again under any circumstances. No public swimming or bathing, or even answering a call of nature within line of sight of another man for the rest of that particular life. As for women, never assume women do not talk about every intimate little thing among themselves. If there is even a possibility my would be romantic partner knew what a foreskin was, I needed total confidence in her discretion before she ever got to see what I was working with. To be honest, I was celibate for long stretches of my first several lives as a Muslim, and this issue was a primary cause. Anyway, you can imagine the swagger and strut the new Spanish Christian version of me had, walking through life knowing I had the freedom to show my penis to whoever I liked. Without saying I made a spectacle of myself, I am sure more than a few travelling companions wondered why I did not seek more privacy when taking a piss or changing my clothes. I have spoken of hosting wandering hippies here at my cottage. Well, they have an expression that sums up my feelings about this. Sometimes you just want to let your freak flag fly. Okay, okay, enough of that. Let me add that my confident walk was not entirely related to my newfound peace of mind when it came to my penis. I was still a wealthy man, and with the bloody civil war over Al Andalus raging behind me, I had converted as much of my wealth as possible into a collection of pretty pebbles that hung inside my clothes in little bundles of solid confidence. I walked over the Pyrenees into Francia, with the weight of my worldly worth clinging to me, hoping the Franks would make a home for someone who offered them shiny, sparkly things. Begrudgingly, they did. I say begrudgingly, because in my naivete, I thought I would be able to sell my treasures to the royal jeweler at Peppen's not yet quite a court, in return for the coins of the realm. That is a simple request that had been within the power of just about every sovereign since my days building up Carthage fifteen hundred years earlier. The trouble was, while in theory Peppen the Short and his puppet king did have silver pennies, in practice there was so little silver in the kingdom that almost no coins were ever issued, and those that were did not circulate among the general population. Instead, I was offered payment in terms of room and board within the mayor of the palace's sprawling quasi nomadic household, which is not exactly a thing I could save up for a rainy day, is it? I mean I was offering my worldly wealth a piece at a time for food and rent, without ever having the opportunity to restore or increase my stored wealth. That only goes one way in the long term, and by necessity I live my life by looking at the long term. Besides, even in the short term, what is the exchange rate of a jewel for room and board at a royal court that moves from place to place? How many days of a full belly under one or more roofs is a garnet worth, or a pearl, or a piece of amber? In short, the answer is it is worth whatever the man in charge of offering you the shelter and food says it's worth. What is worse, once you hand over your valuable bauble up front, all you can do is hope the royal jeweler is a man of his word, because he has francs and helmets and mail with swords and axes and spears at his beck and call. And if the royal jeweler decided to rob me, who could I go to for justice? Peppen, who would end up with all my jewels whether his man bought them from me or not? No, it was very hard going doing business with the Franks. But eventually I did win a place at court one stone at a time, combined with the privileges my other skills could secure me, not that they cared much for most of them. I offered my services as a translator, but Peppen had priests a plenty for most of his translation needs. I offered my services as a bard, but the Franks did not understand most of my poems and songs, and those they did were frowned upon by the churchmen at court. The Franks also knew nothing of the sea, so all my sailors' stories went right over their heads. Eventually they learned that I was a decent smith, and though I was never allowed to work on their Frankish swords that by law could not be touched by a foreigner, in a nation under perpetual arms there was an inexhaustible demand for chain mail, and so I found work at a smithy turning iron wire into links, and then banging those links together. I was capable of other, more complicated jobs, but they were not interested in that. The Franks wanted all the mail they could get with the same passion the first Muslims in my life had hungered for copies of the Holy Koran. Working with small iron rings day in and day out was boring work, but it did see me eat and drink and sleep better than a mere Spanish jewel merchant could manage. I still was not being paid as I expected to be paid, but every evening there was meat and bread and ale and a place by a roaring fire, followed by a good straw mattress to sleep on, often with a beautiful woman to keep me warm, for my room and board was also her room and board as long as we were enjoying each other's company. Sawed the churchmen who scalded us for living together out of wedlock. They could scowl all they liked. We were having a good time. Yes, Smiths lived well in Francia, and I settled in for a long stay as the Berber rebellion sputtered, and the Abbasids massacred the Umaids, and the Greeks who called themselves Romans killed each other over religious imagery, and the Lombards terrorized Italy. As I have said, Pepin the Short became king at last by asking the Pope in Rome for an explanation of how he could rule with God's grace without being God's anointed. The Pope agreed very quickly to give Pepin what he wanted, in large part out of terror of what the Lombards might do to Rome, were it not for the Lombards' fear of the Franks. Pepin the Short became the true king of the Franks with the Pope's permission about ten years into my stay at the Frankish court. A high ranking churchman officiated a coronation, and many of the jewels in my horde made their way into the Royal Regalia at that time. I thought that was as close to Peppen as I would ever come, and I was okay with that. He was the supreme ruler of a dangerous people. I was very happy not to be a major player in his world. With all that said, there is one episode where I did get to be of some small importance to Peppen the Short, King of the Franks. I have said Peppen had more than enough translators among his priests, but what happens when the Pope comes to visit, Pope hat in hand, to beg for Peppen's help? Could Peppen expect his churchmen to have only the king's best interests at heart when they acted as translators for their pope's words? This is where I come in. It was still an hour before dawn in the dead of a long, cold winter, when at least a dozen big, burly franks started banging on the door of my cottage with their fists and the butts of their axes and the pommels of their swords, roaring Up, up, up, get up, open up, we are on the king's business. My bedmate at the time did not even think to panic. She was up and pulling a shift on over her head as she walked across the room, without any sign of worry at all. What are you doing? I hissed, groping around by the light of the dying embers of our fire for my unclothes. It's the king's business. They would not be here if it was not important, she said, without looking back at me. She lifted the door bar and let in our uninvited, heavily armed guests before I was even out of bed. I have called the Franks crazy before. Add this to my illustrations of that statement. I dressed in a hurry as the warriors took it and turned to bark at me. I was sleepfogged, disoriented, and so I remember it as a barrage of words. The Pope is coming, the biggest one shouted. The Pope, the Pope is coming here, his fellows repeated happily. The Holy Father, one at the back added, as if I might not know who they were talking about. He arrives this morning, the biggest shouted again. Soon, soon, soon, his chorus emphasized. I remember the snow on their cloaks and armor was melting now, dripping all over my floor as I looked around for my boots. The Pope is in Rome, I protested. No, no, the big one roared, thumping me on the shoulder with each denial for emphasis. The Lombards are in Ravenna. I made a face, protesting both the blows and the non sequitur. What? I asked. Lombards, one of the other Franks said it slowly, as if I might not know who they were. Lombards are in Ravenna. He said Ravenna in a way that I was sure meant he did not know Ravenna from Malaga or Alexandria or Mecca. What does that have to do with the Pope? I asked. Rome is next, the biggest one roared. This spring, the Lombards will march on Rome this spring, his fellows added, happy to repeat something they must have heard earlier from someone else who actually knew what the hell was going on. The big one thumped me again as I was tightening my belt. The Pope has crossed the Alps and half of Francia in winter to speak with our king. Now my bedmate chimed in helpfully. Peppen. I know who the king is, I snapped. What does any of this have to do with me? The king needs a translator who is not a priest, the biggest one boomed. He said there are five hundred men wintering with me at this court. Does no one speak Latin or Italian except the churchman? And we all tried to think of someone. Several of the Franks aped quizzical expressions, as if they were thinking very hard. That's when I remembered you, one of the Franks now raised a mitten paw in triumph. Me? I asked in dismay. I'm just a blacksmith and sometimes a jewel merchant. The biggest Frank grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. I'm a big man myself, but in this fellow's hands I was like a ragdoll. But when you first came to us, you said you spoke many languages. You did, we heard you, the other Franks confirmed. Now Peppen orders you to come with us, the biggest one said, shaking me again in a way I'm sure he meant to be friendly, but I just felt manhandled. Our king sends his son out this morning to greet the Pope and escort him back to court. You ride with us. With the king's son? I asked, knocking the man's hands away from me. Yes, the biggest Frank boomed happily, oblivious to my protesting blows. We are all going. We are Carl's men. How old is Carl? I asked, for Peppen had no adult son. Twelve, everyone, including my bedmate, said in unison. Apparently everyone knew this except me. Well, I have long accepted the Franks were an odd bunch, but I still wanted to double check that I understood the situation correctly despite the rude awakening at an early hour. Peppen is sending his twelve year old son out to meet the Pope this morning, and I am supposed to go along and translate. That is what is happening, yes, I was told. I moved my head to try to see through the massive bodies standing between me and the open door. How cold is it outside? I could not quite get a clear line of sight, but I was sure it was a frozen, uncomfortable, dark nightmare of an early morning. My straw bed behind me was warm, warmer still with someone to share it with me, and a fire smoldering nearby. Apparently my question was very disappointing. There was a general murmur of discontent at my lack of enthusiasm in doing exactly what King Peppen commanded. One by one the warriors started offering me their cloaks, their scarves, their mittens, and all the while my bedmate was interrupting to make half hearted excuses for her lover's lack of manly fortitude. I give them grief, but God bless the Franks when they are trying to obey their king. When they were done shaming me with their generosity, I refused their kind offers. My own winter gear was excellent. A man who has spent a few thousand years living through an ice age makes a point of investing in good cold weather clothing when he is living where snow and ice are on the menu. The Frankish warriors watched me bundle up in blessed silence now that they were getting their way, and they even had the good manners to look a little bashful when I took a moment to kiss my bedmate goodbye. When I was ready, and not a moment before, I left my cozy home, surrounded on all sides by bluff franks eager to chivy me along. Hurry, hurry, Carl is waiting, Carl is waiting. Let the boy wait, I said. He's twelve, that's a good age to start learning patience. This, apparently, was a more shocking thing to say than when I did not immediately leap to obedience upon learning of King Peppen's command. They fell into an embarrassed silence around me, but we still trudged through the wet falling snow at a quick time march. We arrived at the royal stables to find young Karl already sitting on his horse surrounded by a score of mounted warriors. There you are, he said. We've been waiting for you. The biggest of the Franks who had roared and bellowed and laid hands upon me was meek as a kitten at Karl's mild displeasure. I am sorry, Carl. He looked down to show his contrition, and all the snow piled up on his helmet fell off with a plop. I smiled, which caught young Karl's eye. His head snapped over at me. Is something funny? Er no, I said, not sure if I should call the boy Lord or Sire or Highness. The big Frank had called him Carl. Could I get away with that as a non Frank? Well, your horses are ready. Let's go, the boy said. His Franks leapt to his command, running this way and that to grab reins from waiting groom's hands and haul themselves up into saddles. Someone brought me a fine horse, and I gave its nose a rub to get acquainted before mounting. Carl watched me with impatience. You are my translator? I am, Prince Carl, I said, deciding on a form of address the young royal should not be able to condemn. The boy spoke next in slow, deliberate Latin. Welcome, Pope, with great pleasure, in the name of my Pope. No, in the name of my father, King Pepin, the King of the Franks. Good, I said, and I meant it. The boy was a credit to whichever churchman was teaching him. You don't even need me, I joked, making as if to walk away from the horse. Get in your saddle, the boy ordered. You ride with us. Now Carl waved his hand forward over his head with a natural aura of command. The Franks around him responded as one. By the time I was mounted, my horse was ready to go along with its fellows without my really needing to do anything. Once we were clear of the royal compound, it was slow going in the pre dawn light. The snow was still coming down, and the road itself was rudded and icy under a white blanket. We had to let our horses go at their own pace. I thought I might strike up a conversation with the young prince to pass the time. Would you like to learn how to say your greeting in Italian? The Pope probably only speaks Latin when discussing holy matters. Then Latin is good. He has come to discuss holy matters, Carl said with a confidence I was not used to hearing from a boy so young. I really felt he knew what he was talking about, and so I decided that was the direction our conversation should go. Has a pope ever crossed the Alps before, let alone in winter? These holy matters must be very important. Young Carl looked over at me with a very serious expression on his face. He will ask us to save the church. We will ask him to make us kings. I looked around at the men riding with us, remembering how much the Franks enjoyed having many kings. Were any of these men eligible to become kings? It was so hard to tell who was of royal blood now that the Merovingians were no more. Peppen's relations all shaved and trimmed their hair normally. What? All of us? Carl thought that was funny, and for a moment the serious boy became just a child again whose laughter was sincere, high pitched, and contagious. You are a funny man, translated. Later, he said. My father is king of the Franks because the church said it was so. If the Pope is here to ask him for a favour, the Pope can make him king again by his own hands, and me and my brother too while he's at it. Which brother? I asked, feeling dense. I might work at the Frankish court smithy, but the royal family was not really part of my world. Carloman, Carl said. And why isn't Carloman riding with us too this morning, if you are both going to be a king along with your father? I asked. Now all the Franks laughed at this, with young Carl's boyish squeals mixing in with the great guffaws of the guardsmen. Oh, we were a very merry group riding together in the snow. It was all at my expense, of course. The biggest Frank explained Carlaman is three. The Pope will make him a king at three? I asked, incredulous. If he knows what's good for him, Carl said. Again, it was as if the boy knew exactly what was going on and was in control of events. We met the first of the Pope's outriders by the time the sun was clear of the horizon. He told us the Holy Father had spent the night at a Frankish lord's farm a few miles further down the road, but that his holiness should be moving towards us by now. Carl straightened up in his saddle and removed his hat and mittens, handing them to one of his guardsmen. Let's go, he said, waving us forward into a trot despite the horse's reluctance. I am sure the cold was biting, but Carl never asked for his woollens back. I guess he did not want to fumble with taking them off in the Holy Father's presence. The Pope was seated in a little covered wagon when we met him. His entourage was bigger than ours, but only just, and they were not nearly so formidable looking as Carl's Frank's. The young prince jumped down from his horse, crossed the distance to the side of the Pope's wagon, made a neat bow, and then reached up to kiss the papal signet ring. Welcome, Pope, Carl said in Latin, with great pleasure, in the name of my father, King Pepin, the King of the Franks. Thank you, young man. You do your father great honor this day, the Pope said, putting his mittens back on now that he no longer needed the ring exposed. I have heard much of you and your father from your uncle. He rides with me. Carl froze for just a moment before slowly turning to look at me, one eyebrow arched as soon as he was facing away from the Holy Father. The big Frank leaned over and thumped me on the shoulder. Oh, I said, and then I translated. Carl looked around and spotted a Benedictine monk mounted on a donkey further back. Hello, uncle, he waved. God be with you, Carl, the monk replied in Frankish. Carl turned back to the Pope. You will ride with us, your holiness. My father is eager to welcome you at his fire. I did not wait to be prompted this time. I translated the young prince's words. A fire would be most welcome. It is a foul day for such a happy meeting, the Pope said. You must forgive us for the poor weather. Francia is beautiful most of the year, Carl said, remounting his horse. Italy is beautiful all year long, the Pope said wistfully, looking around at the snow. If you can look past all those Lombards, Carl said. The Pope looked at me to silently ask if I had translated that correctly. I nodded. The Pope decided to take it as a jest. Yes, uh very true. We will escort you back to my father now, Carl said, and he waved his hand around his head in a circle before pointing back the way we had come. His Franks obeyed at once, and I directed my own horse to fall in beside the prince. He looked over at me and said quietly, find my hat and mittens. I've done the niceties. His hands are warm now, I'd like the same. It took me half the ride back to find which rider had the prince's woolens. By the time I returned them to him, his uncle the monk had taken over the translating duties in my absence. I was quite unnecessary until we arrived back at King Peppen's winter court. Carl waved me over. His holiness has brought my uncle to try to influence my father, but my uncle renounced all claims to Francia when he entered the monastery at Monte Cassino. He is the Pope's creature now, not a loyal Frank. You will sit by my father's side all day and night. Not my uncle, nor any other priest or monk is to translate what is said between the Holy Father and the King of the Franks. Do you understand me? The twelve year old looked at me square in the eye. I understand, I said. And I did. I had clued into the fact people took Carl's word as law. I should pause here a moment to say, although I have been calling him Carl all this time, the Pope used the Latin equivalent of his name Carolus. Both Frankish and Latin were evolving in a way that would eventually birth French and Dutch and German and Italian, and there were people even in young Carl's day who picked a middle path when pronouncing his name to produce a slurred version a forgiving ear could mistake for Charles, as indeed he would one day be remembered in both French and English. Young Carolus was not yet Magnus, not yet great, but the twelve year old boy who bade me translate for his father was indeed Charlemagne. I did promise you we would get back to him. So to pick up the pace a little, Peppen and the Pope met for several days and nights of intense discussion. It was probably nothing like what you are imagining. Peppen's court was held in a drafty wooden hall that doubled as a barn. The furniture was all benches and stools, many with bearskins thrown over them for both padding and warmth. There were roaring fires right in the middle of the floor every ten paces, dogs fought over bones and scraps of food. The gist of the negotiation was the Pope did not have an army, and Pepin did. Every spring Pepin gathered tens of thousands of Frankish warriors and went to war against someone. He had planned a war against Abdal Rahman in Spain for that summer. In fact, he had begun talks with the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. If Peppen found success this year, the Abbasids would open up a second front next year, and the two powers, the Franks and the Abbasids, would destroy the last bastion of Lumayad power. It was not the sort of plan to be set aside on a whim. Well, the Pope had not crossed the Alps in winter on a whim. He wanted Peppen to go to war against the Lombards instead. Pepin pointed out the Lombards were Christian Germans like his own Franks. If the Church in Rome wanted the Franks to fight for it, why not make war on either the Muslims to the southwest or the pagan Saxons to the northeast instead? The Pope said the Lombards were bent on ruling all of Italy, and now were making ready to attack the Holy Church in Rome itself, which was a worse threat to Christianity right now than anything an Arab or a Berber or a Saxon could do. If Peppen was a true king by the grace of God, he would protect the Church's territory. The Church's territory, Peppen laughed. The Church doesn't have territory. Rome belongs to Constantinople. Let them defend her. Rome is mine, and so is Ravenna, and so is all of Italy. So is Francia for that matter. The Pope said the obvious falsehood with such confidence that for a moment I was not sure I was translating accurately. The Pope saw my hesitation and made an impatient gesture for me to get on with it. What do you mean? Peppen asked. And rightly so. And that is when the Pope produced the most breathtaking forgery in the history of the world, the donation of Constantine. Even as the Pope was unrolling the scroll, he was making eye contact with me, pleading with me in the name of God as a good Christian not to call him out on his shenanigans. And oh, there were some shenanigans. It was old parchment. I give the Pope credit for that at least. Someone in the Vatican archives had dug up old records, scraped off all the original text with a razor blade, and written new words on old skin. The new words were the most brazen lie I can imagine, and for a pope to present it to the King of the Franks while asking him to save the Holy Church in Rome? Well I still stand in quiet awe of the audacity of it. I do not believe this particular pope was ever canonized, but if that had happened, he was a shoe in for patron saint of having enormous balls. Anyway, I translated exactly what the Pope said as a dozen churchmen, including Peppen's own brother, leaned forward and listened to every word, ready to leap up from their chairs to roar their outrage if I expressed my doubts. I can understand their baited breath. I doubt Roman Catholicism would exist today if I had called out the Pope's bullshit. So what exactly was the donation of Constantine? The Pope claimed, with forged evidence to document his claims, that more than four centuries ago when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian and moved the capital of the Empire to Constantinople, he gifted the bishopric of Rome with secular authority over all of Italy, Gaul, and many of the other islands and provinces that make up Western and Central Europe. Yes, a pope in the eighth century trusted that a Frankish king would not know enough Roman history to remember there were still emperors in Rome for a hundred years after Christianity became the official religion of the Empire. They were junior partners to the emperors in Constantinople, but they existed. Well, that was not how the Pope hoped the Franks would remember it. The Pope was saying Constantine gave the western half of the empire to the papacy, which made the Franks, by Roman law, and in the eye of the Church, squatters on church land. So were the Lombards, and now the Lombards were coming for the Church in Rome itself, which moved the Pope to make a bold proposal. I will forever cede to you and your descendants all legal claims to the lands that now make up Francia, and I will make you a patrician of Rome besides. I will even allow the Lombards to keep the lands that they have also won by the sword, except for Ravenna and Rome, and the lands around and between the two. Those you and the Lombards will agree are mine in perpetuity, as this document clearly shows. And the Pope ran his fingers along certain lines of text that certainly did suggest he was right. The fact that the Pope and I both knew it was a forgery was not mentioned to Peppen. So what was the king's reaction? Peppen was at a loss. Who could he ask to examine this document's legality? All his literate subjects were Christians who would support the Pope's claims. In the end, if every Christian said the donation of Constantine was real, did it matter whether it was true or not? The church was claiming a thing was true, and there was no one except me to call out the lie. I kept my opinions to myself. Meanwhile, I am sure Peppen was struggling with a dilemma on his Christian conscience. The Franks and the Lombards all knew they stole the lands now called Francia and Lombardy, but they thought they had stolen it from Romans who were all long dead. Now it turned out they were really church lands? The immortal and eternal holy church, the same church that controlled the gates of heaven and saved souls from everlasting damnation in the next life to come? If the Franks had wronged the church in Rome, they must make that right or face hellfire for all eternity. Meanwhile, the Franks could save their souls and also win their lands legally in the eyes of the Church and God in exchange for one summer's campaigning in Italy and a promise to protect papal territory in the future. It seemed a very fair trade to Peppen, but he had always known the Pope was coming to ask him to fight the Lombards, and he had decided on a price even before the Pope's arrival. The donation of Constantine was a powerful motivator to do what he probably would have done anyway, but that did not mean Peppen did not expect to be paid on his own terms as well. Your predecessor made me a king, Peppen said. One of his priests crowned me after my people chose me to rule them. I will have you crown me again and my two sons at the same time, and in the spring I will march over the Alps with thirty thousand francs, and the Lombards will piss themselves and do whatever I say. The Pope made the sign of the cross. God blesses this plan, he promised us all. Believe it or not, that is exactly what happened. The king's winter court moved to Paris, and the Pope crowned Peppen and young Carl and Little Carloman all together in a coronation ceremony that would be mimicked word for word and gesture for gesture by every king of France right up until the French Revolution. I remember shivering in the church when young Carl swore I vow always to use my royal power to protect Christianity and to spread the divine faith. He said it in a way that, even as a boy, I knew he knew it meant people were going to die. A lot of people. Peppen the short did storm over the Alps that spring, and the Lombards did indeed piss themselves. I speak euphemistically, of course, but I can also speak as an eyewitness to this particular war. I packed up as much Smith and Kid as could fit into two wagons, and I joined the camp followers supporting the Frankish army. Who would not want to support an invincible fighting force marching into Italy in spring and early summer, where they could be expected to be greeted as liberators? Well, not by the Lombards, of course, but the people living under Lombard rule waved cheerily and draped us in flower garlands wherever we went. The Franks were there on the Pope's business, set and right what the Lombards had put wrong. Yes, it was a very pleasant little campaign, at least from my perspective, in the rear with the gear and in no danger of any actual violence coming to my person. Again, that was not the Lombards experience. Peppen had judged them well. As much as they might have in common with the Franks in theory, in practice they never came together and fought a common foe with anything like the tenacity of the Franks. Do not mistake me, the Franks loved killing each other, but not half as much as they loved killing an enemy of the Franks. The Lombards were equal opportunity killers, and when the Franks came at them, they did not rally to the man calling himself King of the Lombards with the numbers or the will necessary to win the day. Pepin put the Pope back in Rome, gave him Ravenna and the lands in between in perpetuity. Worth adding this is the origin of the papal states, and the Pope was careful to document this very real donation of Pepin on good fresh parchment in case a future pope might ever need it as he had relied upon the fraudulent donation of Constantine. And then Peppen returned to Francia as the legal ruler of his lands, a twice crowned king, chosen by God and anointed by the Bishop of Rome himself, and with a papal bull surrendering all the church's possible claims to the territory he ruled. As for the Lombards, Peppen left them to their own devices. They fell into a new civil war amongst themselves in his absence. I did not follow the Franks back to Francia. I had lived among them for fifteen years and more at that point, which was about the right time for me to change identities. I also felt I was not living my life to its fullest there. I wanted to spend my time with people who were not always either coming from a war or going to a war. I wanted to enjoy nice things with nice folks. I wanted my wealth to increase, not decrease. Yes, I was ready for a change. I think I'm also ready to take a quick break and turn this tape over. Let me get into my next story in a moment. It's a good one. First, if you are enjoying it, please tell someone about it. Audio dramas live and die on word of mouth, so please help spread the word. This may be the third and final season, but I plan to leave the series up as long as people continue to take an interest in it. Second, please like it, review it, and subscribe to it wherever you find your podcasts. We want to teach the algorithm that this show is worth people's time. 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With that said, thank you so much for your time and attention, and I look forward to you enjoying the next episode soon.