THE WEST: FROM CLOVIS TO CHARLEMAGNE 147 vinces in Central Italy as a donation to the Church. The papacy thus for the first time acquired a domain of its own, which later it chose to attribute to the gift of Constantine the Great, basing that claim on a notorious forgery j while a precedent had also been created which it subsequently urged as a proof that the pope has authority to depose and appoint secular princes. The power of the Franks culminated under Pepin's son and successor Karl or Charles, best known as Charlemagne. At Pepin's death Charles was associated on the throne with his brother Carloman; but three years later, in 771, 6 charle- Carloman died, and Charles became sole ruler, magne, 771- His predecessors for three generations had been 814, consolidating the Frankish kingdom. Charles extended it into the widest empire that has been seen in Western Europe except that of Napoleon. In the south-west he set the seal to his grand- father's work by forcing the Saracens once for all behind the line of the river Ebro. Almost throughout his reign he was waging wars and consolidating his dominions, extending his rule over Saxony and Bavaria, and humbling the Mongol kingdom of the Avars in Hungary. At the beginning of his reign he completed his father's conquest of the Lombards in Italy. The Lombard kingdom ceased to exist, and the northern half of Italy became a province of the dominion of the Frankish king. But the moment had come for making a change in the European system. Hitherto the west had professed to recognise a very shadowy supremacy attaching to the empire which had never ceased to call itself Roman. Real authority it had none beyond the Grecian peninsula, save in Southern Italy and The Empire Sicily ; yet the kings of the conquering Teutons had Revived, 800. chosen to claim a legal authority for their position by representing themselves as having derived it from the emperor. But while Charles was palpably and obviously the Lord of Western Europe, Irene, the widow of the Emperor Leo iv., had put out her son's eyes and claimed herself to rule as empress at Byzantium. The pretext that a woman could not be emperor was seized. On Christmas day in the year 800 Pope Leo in. crowned Charles emperor and successor of the Caesars, and the Holy Roman Empire came into being. Thus was Europe decisively
