spiritual and
Christian empire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Lombards, Arabs, came
under his compelling grasp; these antagonistic races all held together
by the force of one terrible will, in unnatural combination with
France. No political liberties, no popular assemblies discussing
public measures; it is Charlemagne alone who fills the picture; it is
absolutism--marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur, but still,
absolutism.

The pope looked approvingly upon this son of the Church, by whose order
4,500 pagan heads could be cut off in one day, and a whole army
compelled to baptism in an afternoon. Here was a champion to be
propitiated. Charlemagne, on the other hand, saw in the Church the
most compliant and effective means to empire.

His fertile mind was conceiving a vast design by which he might reign
over a resuscitated Roman Empire. In the dual sovereignty of his
dream, the pope was to be the spiritual and he the temporal head.
Mutually dependent upon each other, the election of the pope would not
be valid without his consent. Nor would the emperor be emperor until
crowned by the pope. The Church might use him as a sword, but he would
wear the Church as a precious jewel in his crown.

It was a splendid dream, splendidly realized; the most imposing of
human successes, and the most impressive of human failures. It seems
designed as a lesson for the human race in the transitory nature of
power applied from without.

A pyramid of such colossal proportions could only be kept from falling
in pieces by another Colossus like himself. The vast fabric resting
upon one human will, passed with its creator; was gone like a shadow
when he was gone.

It will be remembered that the Roman Empire in its decay fell into two
parts, a Western and an Eastern empire. The dying embers of the
Western empire, which had been fanned into a feeble flame in the sixth
century by Justinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened with
complete extinguishment by the Lombards in the eighth; from which
calamity they were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin. So when the
Franks were again appealed to, Charlemagne saw his opportunity. With
plans fully matured he responded, and with the consent and acquiescence
of the pope he took formal possession of the whole of Italy, annexing
to his own dominions the crumbling wreck of a magnificent past. And
when Leo III. placed upon his head the crown, and pronounced
"Carolus-Magnus, by the grace of