the king of the Franks, and proceeded lawfully to make this
appointment, seeing that the imperial throne, at the time
occupied by a woman--the empress Irene--was actually
vacant. He granted the imperial crown, which had fallen
into escheat, to a Frankish prince; by the same act he trans-
ferred the seat of the empire to Aix-la-Chapelle from
Constantinople, and did nothing more. The empire which
Charlemagne governed was not an empire of the Franks;
it was a Roman empire, the destinies of which were com-
mitted to the Franks, and the seat of which had therefore
been transferred to the banks of the Rhine.

This explanation is only a fiction, and its artificial
character is quite manifest, for in 800 the empire of
Constantinople, far from falling into escheat, still preserved
all its institutions. Yet the fiction was not altogether untrue.
What was true was that the empire of Constantinople, which
for many years had been incapable of defending Rome, after
the year 800 ceased to exist for the latter. It is furthermore
true that the new empire had as its mission to defend Rome,
pontifical Rome, and to this it owes the title of Roman empire.
This reveals to us the object aimed at by the Pope when he
crowned Charlemagne. What Leo III. then wished was to
finish the work begun by Stephen II., to sever the last bond
which still attached Rome to Constantinople, and to give
the protector of the papacy the reward which was his due.

After the conquest of Italy by Justinian, that is to say,
after 535, the popes were the subjects of the emperor of
Constantinople. They respected their "lord," even as they
appealed to him. They carried out his orders, except when
the integrity of dogma seemed to be at stake. In return, they
demanded of the emperor safety for themselves and for the
vast domain of which they were the owners. Yet after several
generations these domains were pillaged by the Lombards;
and the emperor, who, moreover, had made many conquests
in Sicily and southern Italy to the detriment of the papacy,
declared that he was powerless to repress the barbarians.
Having nothing to expect from the region of the Bosphorus,
the popes Gregory III. and Stephen II. addressed themselves to

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