Pope Stephen II
714 CE–757 CE · Rome
A Roman aristocrat raised in the Lateran clergy, Stephen II reigned at a pivotal hinge of medieval history. Facing Lombard king Aistulf's threat to Rome after Byzantine power collapsed, Stephen made an unprecedented journey across the Alps to seek Frankish protection—the first pope to cross into Frankish lands. There he anointed Pippin III as king. Pippin's subsequent campaigns and the resulting 'Donation of Pippin' handed conquered territories to the papacy, founding the Papal States as a temporal dominion. Stephen thus decisively reoriented the papacy from Byzantium toward the Franks, shaping European politics for centuries.
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RomeרומאItaly
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Rome in this era
Between the 8th and 15th centuries Rome was the seat of the popes and capital of the Papal States, which grew from the Frankish king Pepin's grant of 756; Charlemagne was crowned emperor in St Peter's in 800. The city shrank far below its ancient size, and from 1309 to 1377 the popes resided at Avignon before returning to Rome.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Pope St. Gregory II, Pope St. Zachary, Pope Adrian I, Pope St. Paul I, Pope St. Leo III, Pope St. Gregory III
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Stephen II’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Pope St. Gregory II, Pope St. Zachary, Pope Adrian I, Pope St. Paul I, Pope St. Leo III, Pope St. Gregory III, Pope Constantine
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Stephen II’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.