Pope Adrian I
The pope, whose expectations had been aroused, had to content himself with some additions to the Duchy of Rome, the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Pentapolis in the Marches,[2] which consisted of the "five cities" on the Adriatic coast from Rimini to Ancona with the coastal plain as far as the mountains.
He celebrated the occasion by striking the earliest papal coin,[3] and in a mark of the direction the mediaeval papacy was to take, no longer dated his documents by the Emperor in the east, but by the reign of Charles, king of the Franks.
A mark of such newly settled conditions in the Duchy of Rome is the Domusculta Capracorum, the central Roman villa that Adrian assembled from a nucleus of his inherited estates and acquisitions from neighbors in the countryside north of Veii.
That same year, Charlemagne concluded a treaty with Duke Tassilo, and married Liutperga's sister, Desiderata, to surround Carloman with his own allies.
[7] With Desiderata's return to her father's court at Pavia, Desiderius was grievously insulted, and appears to have made an alliance with Carloman against Charlemagne and the Papacy, which looked to the Franks for protection against Lombard incursions into Papal territory.
Desiderius made overtures to Pope Adrian, requesting that he acknowledge Carloman's sons' right to succeed their father, and crown them as Kings of the Franks.
Desiderius's support of the claims of Carloman's sons posed a potential challenge to the legitimacy of Charlemagne's possession of his brother's lands.
In 794, a synod held at Frankfurt discussed the issue but refused to receive the Libri and contented itself with condemning extreme forms of veneration of icons.
At the time of his death at the age of 95, his was the longest pontificate since Saint Peter (the first pope) until it was surpassed by the 24-year papacy of Pius VI in the late 18th century.
Adrian's epitaph was originally located in his burial chapel in St. Peter's Basilica, which was demolished in the mid-15th century as reconstruction works were initiated by Pope Nicholas V; since 1619 it has been preserved in the portico as rebuilt by Carlo Maderno.
[19]: 347–351 Alcuin's text,[20][21] in which Charlemagne speaks affectionately of Adrian as his lost (spiritual) father, was carved in Roman square capitals on black limestone from Sclayn in the Meuse valley, now in Belgium.
[22][23] The contemporaneous Annals of Lorsch refer to Adrian's epitaph being made in Francia and transported to Rome on Charlemagne's orders, and describe it as "written in gold letters on marble.
