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.
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