Pepin the Short became king by asking the Pope one pointed question
Pepin already held real power over the Franks while a powerless Merovingian wore the crown. So he asked Pope Zachary whether it was proper for kings to lack royal power. The Pope said no, and in 751 Pepin became the first Carolingian king, laying groundwork for his son Charlemagne and for the Papal States.
Born around 714 to Charles Martel and his wife Rotrude, Pepin was schooled by monks of the Abbey of St Denis near Paris. When his father died in 741, Pepin and his elder brother Carloman shared authority as mayors of the palace, first shutting their half-brother Grifo, who wanted a share, in a monastery. In 743 they installed Childeric III as a figurehead king. Carloman, deeply pious, withdrew to religious life in 747, leaving Pepin in sole command.
Pope Zachary, under pressure from the Lombards, welcomed a strong Frankish ally and ruled that whoever wielded actual power should bear the title. Childeric, the last Merovingian, was sent to a monastery, and an assembly of nobles, with much of Pepin's army conveniently present, elected Pepin king. An Irish monk, Vergilius of Salzburg, may have advised him to seek anointing, and he was anointed at Soissons in 751. In 754 Pope Stephen II travelled north and anointed him again at St Denis, along with his sons Charles, aged 12, and Carloman, aged 3, and named him Patrician of the Romans. It was the first recorded papal crowning of a secular ruler, and the Pope forbade the Franks to choose kings from any other line.
The debt was repaid in Italy. Pepin forced the Lombard king Aistulf to hand back seized Church property and guaranteed that Ravenna and the Pentapolis would belong to the popes. This Donation of Pepin became the legal basis for the Papal States. In the south he drove Muslim forces out of Septimania, taking Narbonne in 759, and spent most of the 760s in a grinding, destructive war against Duke Waiofar of Aquitaine, conquering Bordeaux in 767.
Pepin died on campaign in 768, aged 54, and was buried at St Denis; the kingdom was split between his two sons under Salic law. For all his achievements, his reign is largely overshadowed by that of Charlemagne.
Source: Pepin the Short
