Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/238

220 obtained the imperial crown; how, in other words, the empire was transferred from the Greeks to the Franks. That this Translation was a reality no one thought of doubting, t The empire of Charles was no mere resuscitation of the extinct and forgotten empire of the west; it was the continuation of that universal empire, whose seat Constantine had established at Byzantium, but whose existence there was now held to have terminated by the succession of a woman, the empress Irene: the throne of her predecessor, Constantine the Sixth, remained unoccupied. The empire therefore went back to its rightful seat, and its title devolved upon Charles. His Lombard kingdom, added to the greatness of his Frankish domain, qualified him, without a competitor, for a supremacy to which he was called by the will of the Roman people, expressed through their spokesman, pope Leo the Third. Such was the conception admitted without dispute for centuries after the decisive event of the middle ages had taken place. The only differences in its statement concern the relative shares of the emperor, the pope, and the Roman people in the transaction. It was well understood to be a sudden prompting of divine inspiration, the vehicle of which was necessarily the pope; but all accounts alike recognise the confirmation of the Roman people, and the Frankish records narrate that the pope completed the ceremony of coronation by adoring the emperor; thus recognising the sanctity of his person in a manner which is highly significant when we remember the ideas held of the relative positions of pope and emperor in later ages.

It is plain that any view which did not attribute the whole validity of the Translation to the official act of Leo the Third could not find favour with the new school of ecclesiastical politicians. In the contest concerning