Paul the First Pope, 757–767

While Stephen lay on his death-bed in the Lateran the impatient Romans were occupied in the election of his successor. The city was divided into two factions, one in favour of the Archdeacon Theophylactus, the other voting for the Deacon Paul, brother of the Pope. The former party was, it would seem, Byzantine, the latter Frankish in sympathies. The first wished to resume relations with the legitimate Imperial authority, the latter, which numbered the greater part of the Roman nobility, and to which the two brothers themselves belonged, desired to adhere to the Frankish policy of Stephen. The man of modern ideas triumphed over the conservative, and, after a short resistance, Paul was elected, and ascended the Papal throne on May 29, 757, brother thus succeeding brother in the pontificate. The dangers which threatened the democratic nature of the papal election in a succession such as this, although transient, were renewed at a later time, when the barons of the Campagna lorded it over Rome.

Paul was the first of Roman bishops to occupy the sacerdotal chair in the character of temporal prince. Together with the already founded ecclesiastical State, he also, however, inherited the hostility of the Romans, who, awakening as from a state of stupefaction, recognised their oppressor in their bishop, and regarded him with feelings of hatred and opposition.