CHARLEMAGNE
615
CHARLEMAGNE
cent of the charges brought against him (see Jaff(?,
Bibl. Her. Ger., IV, 378). Leo requested that bis ac-
cusers, now themselves condemned to death, should be
punished only with banishment (C. Bayet, "LeonUI
et la revolte des Romains" in "Ann. de la Fac. des
lettresde Lyon- ". 1883, 173 97).
Two days later (Christinas Day, S00) took place the principal event in the life of Charles. During the Pontifical Mass celebrated by the pope, as the king knelt in prayer before the high altar beneath which lay the bodies of Sts. Peter and Paul, the pope ap- proached him, placed upon his head the imperial crown, did him formal reverence after the ancient manner, saluted him as Emperor and Augustus and anointed him, while the Romans present burst out with the acclamation, thrice repeated: "To Carolus Augustus crowned by God, mighty and pacific em- peror, be life and victory" iCarolo, piisimo Augusto a Deo coronato, magno et pacifico Imperatori, vita et victoria). These details are gathered from contem- porary accounts ( Life of Leo III in " Lib. Pont.", ed. Duchesne, II, 1—18 ; "Annates Laurissensesmajores"; Einhard's "Vita Caroli"; Theophanes). Though not all are found in any one narrative, there is no good reason for doubting their general accuracy. Einhard's statement (op. cit., c. xxviii! that Charles had no sus- picion of what was about to happen, and if pre- informed would not have accepted the imperial crown, is much discussed, some seeing in it an un- willingness to found imperial authority on an ecclesi- astical basis (Hodgkin, in bibliography, VIII, 202), others more justly a natural hesitation before a mo- mentous step overcome by the positive action of friends and admirers, and culminating in the scene just described (Funk, "Kirchengeschichte", 3d ed., Freiburg, 1902, 27.5). On the other hand there seems no reason to doubt that for some time previous the elevation of Charles had been discussed, both at home and at Rome, especially in view of two facts: the- scandalous condition of the imperial government at Constantinople (J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire, 395-800, London, 1892) and the acknowledged grandeur and solidity of the Carolingian house. He owed his elevation not to the conquest of Rome, nor to any act of the Roman Senate (then a mere munic- ipal body), much less to the local citizenship of Home, but to the pope, who exercised in a supreme juncture the moral supremacy in Western Christen- dom which the age widely recognized in him, and to which, indeed, Charles even then owed the royal title that the popes had transferred to his father Pepin. It is certain that Charles constantly attrib- uted his imperial dignity to an act of God, made known of e nirse through the agency of the Vicar of Christ (divino nutu coronatu . <i Deo coronatus, in "Capitularia", ed. Baluze, 1.247, 341, 345); also that after the ceremony he made very rich gifts to the Basilica of St. Peter, and that on the same day the pope anointed (as King of the Franks) the younger Charles, sonof the emperor and at that time probably de-iine, 1 to succeed in the imperial dignity. The Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum), since 476 practically extinguished in the West, save fur a brief interval in the sixth century, was restored by this
papal act, which became the historical basis of the
future relations between the popes and the successors
of Charlemagne throughout the Middle Ages no
Western Emperor was considered legitimate unless
he had been crowned ami anointed :it Home by the
lOrof -t. I'eter). Despite the earlier good-will
and help of the papacy, the Emperor of Constanti- nople, legitimate heir of the imperial title (he still
called himself Roman Emperor, and his capital was officially New- Rome) had long proved incapable of
preserving his authority in the Italian peninsula. Palace revolutions and heresy, not to speak of fiscal oppression, racial antipathy, and impotent but
vicious intrigues, made him odious to the Romans
and Italians generally (C. Diehl, "Administration
Byzantine dans l'Exarchat dc Ravenne", 568-752;
Paris, 1888). In any ease, since the Donation of Pepin
(752) the pope was formally sovereign of the duehy
of Rome and the Exarchate; hence, apart from its
effect on his shadowy claim to the sovereignty of all
Italy, the Byzantine ruler had nothing to lose by the
elevation of Charles. However, the event of Christ-
mas Day, 800, was long resented at Constantinople
(Hergenrother, "Photius", II, 170 sqq.; A. Gasquet,
" De translatione imperii ab imperatoribus Byzantinis
ad reges Francorum", Paris, 1879), where eventually
the successor of Charles was occasionally called
"Emperor", or "Emperor of the Franks", but never
" Roman Emperor". (Otto Harnack, " Das Karoling.
u. das Byz. Reich in ihren wechselz. polit. Beziehun-
gen ", Gottingen, 1880.) For a more specific account
of the new Western Empire; its nature, scope, and
other important points, see Holy Roman Empire;
Temporal Power. Suffice it to add here that while
the imperial consecration made him in theory, what
he was already in fact, the principal ruler of the West,
and impropriated, as it were, in the Carolingian line
the majesty of ancient Rome, it also lifted Charles at
once to the dignity of supreme temporal protector
of Western Christendom and in particular of its head,
the Roman Church. Nor did this mean only the
local welfare of the papacy, the good order and peace
of the Patrimony of Peter. It meant also, in face of
the yet vast pagan world (barbarce nationes) of the
North and the Southeast, a religious responsibility,
encouragement and protection of missions, advance-
ment of Christian culture, organization of dioceses,
enforcement of a Christian discipline of life, improve-
ment of the clergy, in a word, all the forms of govern-
mental co-operation with the Church that we meet
with in the life and the legislation of Charles. Long
before this event Pope Adrian I had conferred (774)
on Charles his father's dignity of Patricius h'lmiu-
nus, which implied primarily the protection of the
Roman Church in all its rights and privileges, above
all in the temporal authority which it had gradually
acquired (notably in the former Byzantine Duchy of
Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna) by just titles in
the course of the two preceding centuries, i For proofs
of this see Cenni, "Monum. dominat. pontif.", Rome,
1760, II, 50-52, 60, 02, 72, 75; Theiner, "Codex diplo-
matics dominii temporalis Sanctse Sedis", Rome,
1861-62; Duchesne, "Les premiers temps de l'ea'at
pontifical", Paris. 1898, tr. 1908; Schnurer, "Die Ent-
stehung des Kirchenstaates", Cologne, 1894; Bru-
nengo, " Leoriginidella so vranit a temporal e de' papi ",
Rome, 1862.) See Temporal Power. Charles, it is
true, after his imperial consecration exercised practi-
cally at Rome his authority as Patricius, or pro-
tector of the Roman Church. But he did this with
all due recognition of the papal sovereignty and
principally to prevent the quasi-anarchy which local
intrigues and passions, family interests and ambi-
tions, and adverse Byzantine agencies were promot-
ing. It would be unhistorieal to maintain that as
emperor he ignored at once the civil sovereignty of
the pope in the Patrimony of Piter. This (the
Duehy of Home and the Exarchate) he significantly
omitted from the partition of the Prankish state made at the Diet of Thionville, in 8()ii. It is to be
noted that in this public division of his estate he made HO provision for the imperial title, also that he
committed to all three sons "the defence and protec- tion of the Roman Church". In 817 Louis the Pious, by a famous charter whose substantial authenticity (Hergenrother-Kirsch, op. cit. II, 102) there is no good reason to doubt, continued to Pope Paschal and his successors forever "the city of Horn.- with its
dllehy and dependencies, as tie- same have been held
to this day by your predecessors, under their author-
