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 God Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire"
(A.D. 800), the authority of the pope was placed upon unassailable
heights, and France had become the centre of a world-wide dominion.

[Illustration: Coronation of Charlemagne. From the painting by Levy.]

Little did pope or emperor dream of what was to happen; that after a
brief and dazzling interlude the imperial crown would never be worn in
France; and that the popes would for centuries be insulted and treated
as contumacious vassals by German emperors. And France--France, the
centre of this dream of a magnificent unity--in less than fifty years,
with her native incohesiveness, and in the irony of fate, would have
broken into fifty-nine fragments, loosely held together by a feeble
Carlovingian king.

The plan of a dual sovereignty of pope and emperor might have been wise