campaign in Lombardy. Catholic tradition asserts that then and there Pepin executed in writing a promise to give to the Church certain territories that were to be wrested from the Lombards, and which would be referred to later as the Papal States. Known as the Donation of Pepin, no actual document has been preserved, but later 8th century sources quote from it. Stephen anointed Pepin as king of the Franks at Saint-Denis in a memorable ceremony that was evoked in the coronation rites of French kings until the end of the ancien régime in 1789. In return, in 756, Pepin and his Frankish army forced the Lombard king to surrender his conquests, and Pepin officially conferred upon the pope the territories belonging to Ravenna, even cities such as Forlì with their hinterlands, laying the Donation of Pepin upon the tomb of Saint Peter, according to traditional later accounts. The gift included Lombard conquests in the Romagna and in the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, and the Pentapolis in the Marche (the "five cities" of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona). For the first time, the Donation made the pope a temporal ruler over a strip of territory that extended diagonally across Italy from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic. Over these extensive and mountainous territories the medieval popes were unable to exercise effective sovereignty, given the pressures of the times, and the new Papal States preserved the old Lombard heritage of many small counties and marquisates, each centered upon a fortified rocca. Pepin confirmed his Donation in Rome in 756, and in 774 Charlemagne confirmed the donation of his father. Stephen II died on 26 April 757 and was succeeded by his brother Paul I. See also Annales laureshamenses List of Catholic saints List of popes References Sources . External links Catholic Encyclopedia: Papal States, section 3: Collapse of the Byzantine Power in Central Italy Medieval Sourcebook: 757 deaths Popes Sicilian popes 8th-century archbishops Foreign relations of the Holy See Papal States 714 births 8th-century popes Burials at St. Peter's Basilica