Who was Pepin the Short and what did he do?

A:

Pepin the Short was king of the Franks from 752 until 768. Son of Charles Martel and father of Charlemagne, he has been described as the son of a greater man and the father of a greater man. However Pepin's reign was historically important, since he embarked on an ambitious program to expand his power.

Intensely pious as a result of his ecclesiastical upbringing, he helped in evangelising the Saxons. When Pope Stephen II asked Pepin that lands now held by the Lombards be "restored" to the papacy because four centuries earlier Constantine had granted them to his predecessor, Sylvester, King Pepin accepted Stephen's Word that the document was genuine and ceded a great wedge of land along the Adriatic coast to Stephen. The document Pope Stephen used was actually a forgery and is now called the "Donation of Constantine." While Pepin certainly helped the pope and his successors, he arguably did not help the Church in this instance, as the papacy became a prize for the great families of Rome and its neighbourhood, resulting in centuries of clerical infighting, corruption and open warfare.