always been a symbolic ceremony rather than a rite which ratified
genuine Imperial authority. Still the ceremony connoted many mediaeval
aspirations. It was the outward sign of theories that had once exerted
an ideal influence. To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and
from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a
mystical conception. It was tantamount to a demonstration that the
belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away. By breaking the old rules
of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval
order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world. When asked
whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza,
he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to
have crowns running after him. He trampled no less on that still more
venerable _religio loci_ which attached imperial rights to Rome.
Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into
the dust-heap of archaic curiosities. By declaring his will to be
crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of _L'état,
c'est moi_, and prepared the way for a Pope's closing of a General
Council by the word _L'Eglise, c'est moi_. Charles had sufficient
reasons for acting as he did. The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first
event of Charles the Great's coronation, when it justified itself as a
diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed
more or less as a shadow. Charles violated the duties which alone gave
the semblance of a substance to that shadow. As King of Italy, he had
desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title. As Emperor
elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City. As suitor to the
Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the
multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed. No
Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles
V., the last who took his crowns in Italy. It was significant that he
man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach