Stephen III

Stephen III (died 757), pope (752-757), first sovereign of the Papal States. He was born in Rome. At the start of his pontificate, he was confronted by the possibility that the Lombards would overrun all Italy. Stephen enlisted the aid of Pepin the Short, who had seized (751) the Frankish throne, by crowning him in 754. Pepin defeated the Lombards and forced them to cede parts of the exarchate of Ravenna and other territory to the papacy. This territorial grant (756), known in history as the Donation of Pepin, established the temporal power of the papacy, which was thus freed from dependence on the Byzantine Empire.