rance, and of patrician of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal monarchy of
St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on the
banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their
fate. The Franks were perplexed between the name and substance of their
government. All the powers of royalty were exercised by Pepin, mayor
of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title, was wanting to
his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his valor; his friends
were multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the savior of
Christendom; and the claims of personal merit were repeated and ennobled
in a descent of four generations. The name and image of royalty was
still preserved in the last descendant of Clovis, the feeble Childeric;
but his obsolete right could only be used as an instrument of sedition:
the nation was desirous of restoring the simplicity of the constitution;
and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to ascertain his own
rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor and the nobles were bound,
by an oath of fidelity, to the royal phantom: the blood of Clovis was
pure and sacred in their eyes; and their common ambassadors addressed
the Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples, or to absolve their
promise. The interest of Pope Zachary, the successor of the two
Gregories, prompted him to decide, and to decide in their favor: he
pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite in the same person
the title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a
victim of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined
in a monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable to
their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the
sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race
disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the
suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march
under his standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the
sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third,
who, in the monastery of St. Denys placed the diadem on the head of his
benefactor. The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously
applied: the successor of St. Peter assumed the character of a divine
ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord's
anointed; and this Jewish rite has