reflection, he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the
recent greatness of his ecclesiastical ally. The execution of
his own and his father's promises was respectfully eluded: the
king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the inalienable rights
of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna, ^66 as well
as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities.
The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the
popes; they found in the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and
domestic rival: ^67 the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a
priest; and in the disorders of the times, they could only retain
the memory of an ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age,
they have revived and realized.

[Footnote 62: Mosheim (Institution, Hist. Eccles. p. 263) weighs
this donation with fair and deliberate prudence. The original
act has never been produced; but the Liber Pontificalis
represents, (p. 171,) and the Codex Carolinus supposes, this
ample gift. Both are contemporary records and the latter is the
more authentic, since it has been preserved, not in the Papal,
but the Imperial, library.]

[Footnote 63: Between the exorbitant claims, and narrow
concessions, of interest and prejudice, from which even Muratori
(Antiquitat. tom. i. p. 63-68) is not exempt, I have been guided,
in the limits of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, by the Dissertatio
Chorographica Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. x. p. 160-180.]

[Footnote 64: Spoletini deprecati sunt, ut eos in servitio B.
Petri receperet et more Romanorum tonsurari faceret, (Anastasius,
p. 185.) Yet it may be a question whether they gave their own