occasionally seemed to acquire form, if not substance, still lurked beneath the Teutonic, as in later times beneath the Papal sovereignty. The great undefined, undefinable point was the conflicting right of the Em peror, the clergy, and the people, in the election and ratification of the election to the Popedom; as well as that which was hereafter to be the source of such long and internecine strife, the boundary of the two sovereignties, the temporal and the spiritual. This was the fatal feud which for centuries distracted Latin Christendom.

It was perhaps in its vagueness that chiefly dwelt its majesty and power, both as regards the Pope who bestowed and the Frank who received the Empire. In some unknown, undefined manner, the Empire of the West flowed from the Pope; the successor of St. Peter named, or sanctioned the naming of, the successor of Augustus and of Nero. The enormous power of Charlemagne, as contrasted with that of the Pope, disguised or ennobled the bold fiction, quelled at least all present inquiry, silenced any insolent doubt. If Charlemagne acknowledged the right of the Pope to bestow the Empire by accepting it at his hands, who should presume to question the right of the Pope to define the limits of the Imperial authority thus bestowed and thus received? And Charlemagne's elevation to the Empire invested his protection of the Pope in the more sacred character of a duty belonging to his office, ratified all his grants, which were now those not only of a conqueror

Cycniferumque Padum, Romuleumque Tibrim."

Pauli Gesta Episc. Met., Pertz, i. 266.

but of a successor to all the rights of the Cæsars. On one side the Teuton became a Roman, the King of the Franks was merged in the Western Emperor; on the other, Rome created the sovereign of the West, the sovereign of Latin Christendom.

BOOK V.

Empire of

CHAPTER I.

Charlemagne.

а

THE empire of Charlemagne was almost commensurate with Latin Christendom; England was the Charlemagne. only large territory, which acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome, not in subjection to the Empire. Two powers held sway in Latin Christendom, the Emperor and the Pope: of these incomparably the greatest at this time was the Emperor. Charlemagne, with the appellation, assumed the full sovereignty of the Cæsars, united with the commanding vigour of a great Teutonic conqueror. Beyond the Alps he was a German sovereign, assembling in his Diet the whole nobility of the Romanised Teutonic nations, and bringing the still barbarous races by force under his yoke. In Italy he was a northern conqueror, though the ally of the Pope and of Rome. But he was likewise an Emperor attempting to organise his vast dominions with the com prehensive policy of Roman administration, though not without respect for Teutonic freedom. He was the sole legislator in ecclesiastical as well as civil affairs; the Carolinian institutions embrace the Church as well as

• Compare limits of the empire of Charles-Eginhard, Vit. Car. xv. Hẹ includes within it the whole of Italy, from Aosta to Lower Calabria,