Every day it became more and more manifest, that there could be no solid peace for Rome, no sure foundation for the spiritual supremacy already achieved, but in the total overthrow both of the Greek and Lombard powers in Italy, and the appropriation of their spoils by the holy See. This was now the one grand object of the successors of St. Peter, and the battle they had to fight. But like the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite it must be possessed by fair means or foul. Jezebel plots, and the death of Naboth is accomplished. The history of the Lombard kings, and of the great Iconoclastic controversy, during the seventh and eighth centuries, throws much light on the means used to gain this end; but of these we can only say a word as we pass along, and must refer our readers to the general histories.
"There is abundant historical ground to believe," says Greenwood, "that this object had by this time shaped itself very distinctly in the mind of the papacy: the territory of its religious enemy, the Emperor, must be definitively annexed to the patrimony of St. Peter, together with as much more extensive a territorial estate as opportunity might bring within its grasp. But there remained the ardous and apparently hopeless task of wresting these prospective acquisitions from the hands of the Lombard enemy. And, in fact, the whole course of the papal policy was thenceforward directed to the accomplishment of this single object."