chapter 4._

"It is reported, also, … that, jealous of the honor of endowing the Holy See in his own name, he [Charlemagne] amplified the gifts of Pippin by annexing to them the island of Corsica, with the provinces of Parma, Mantua, Venice, and Istria, and the duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum. … This rests wholly upon the assertion of Anastasius; but Karl could not give away what he did not possess, and we know that Corsica, Venice and Beneventum were not held by the Franks till several years later. … Of the nature and extent of these gifts nothing is determined: that they did not carry the right of eminent domain is clear from the subsequent exercise of acts of sovereignty within them by the Frankish monarchs; and the probability is, according to the habits of the times, that the properties were granted only under some form of feudal vassalage."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 4, chapter 16._

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,