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: ^56 the successor of St. Peter