States of the Church were the lands owned by the papacy, as an independent sovereignty. This included a large chunk of central Italy, lands held as a result of a fraudulent Donation of Constantine , but more legitimately as a result of a grant from the Frankish King Pepin, plus odds and ends of real estate in other areas, such as Avignon. In general the medieval popes were pretty poor rulers. The spiritually well-connected ones were usually too disinterested in temporal affairs to worry about ruling their lands, thus leaving them prey to a host of petty bureaucrats. The politically ambitious ones were too often fueding with the Holy Roman Emperor or some other temporal lords, with the same results for the papal estates. And even popes with some administrative ability found their vassals an often extraordinarily rambunctious lot. It was this last which caused the popes to flee from Rome to Avignon in 1304, initiating the "Babylonian Captivity" of the papacy.