Pepin III, after recovering Byzantine territories in Italy from the Lombards, hands control of the region to the pope in Rome. Rome turns towards the the Franks for protection.

The Donation of Pepin in 756 provided a legal basis for the creation of the Papal States, thus extending the temporal rule of the popes beyond the duchy of Rome. The treaty officially conferred upon the pope the territories belonging to Ravenna, even cities such as Forlì with their hinterlands, the Lombard conquests in the Romagna and in the Duchy of Spoleto and Benevento, and the Pentapolis (the "five cities" of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Senigallia and Ancona). Narni and Ceccano were former papal territories. The territories specified in the treaty of 756 had belonged to the Roman Empire. 

Envoys of the Empire met Pepin in Pavia and offered him a large sum of money to restore the lands to the Empire, but he refused, saying that they belonged to St Peter and the Roman church. This strip of territory extended diagonally across Italy from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic.