Paul I

Pope Paul I (c. 700–767) served as Bishop of Rome and ruler of the emerging Papal States from 29 May 757 until his death on 28 June 767. Born into the Roman Orsini family, he and his brother Stephen were educated together at the Lateran Palace. Paul first served as a Roman deacon and acted as a trusted diplomat for Stephen II in negotiations with the Lombard kings before succeeding his brother after Stephen's death on 26 April 757. His pontificate turned on the unstable triangle of relations between the papacy, the Frankish monarchy, and the Lombard kingdom. Paul wrote to Pepin the Short urging that their alliance be maintained, acutely aware that the Lombard king Desiderius threatened territories the papacy claimed — including Imola, Osimo, Bologna, and Ancona. In 758 Desiderius seized the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento; returning from suppressing a revolt there, he pressured Paul to write to Pepin asking him to concede Lombard claims, a request Paul apparently complied with before Pepin ultimately sided with the papacy. The maneuvering yielded limited results, though Pepin eventually acted as arbiter and provided some support. The eastern horizon was equally threatening. In 759 Paul feared the Byzantine Emperor Constantine V would send an army against Rome, and the emperor did in fact attempt to win Pepin away from the papal alliance toward the Lombard side. Pepin held his original course, but Paul lived under persistent anxiety about Byzantine ambitions in Italy. By 765, papal privileges were restored in the duchies of Benevento and Tuscany and partially in Spoleto — a partial, hard-won stabilization rather than a decisive victory. Paul was also a defender of image veneration during the Byzantine iconoclast controversy. He gave refuge to Greek monks fleeing persecution under Constantine V and converted his family home in Rome into a monastery to shelter them. He also built the church of San Silvestro in Capite to house relics transferred from threatened cemeteries. Paul I died in Rome on 28 June 767.