assumed the character of a divine ambassador: a German chieftain
was transformed into the Lord's anointed; and this Jewish rite
has been diffused and maintained by the superstition and vanity
of modern Europe. The Franks were absolved from their ancient
oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them and their
posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of
choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious
race of the Carlovingian princes. Without apprehending the
future danger, these princes gloried in their present security:
the secretary of Charlemagne affirms, that the French sceptre was
transferred by the authority of the popes; ^57 and in their
boldest enterprises, they insist, with confidence, on this signal
and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.

[Footnote 55: Besides the common historians, three French
critics, Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. l. vii. epist. 9, p.
477-487,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D. 751, No. 1-6, A.D. 752, No. 1-10,)
and Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Novi Testamenti, dissertat, ii. p.
96-107,) have treated this subject of the deposition of Childeric
with learning and attention, but with a strong bias to save the
independence of the crown. Yet they are hard pressed by the
texts which they produce of Eginhard, Theophanes, and the old
annals, Laureshamenses, Fuldenses, Loisielani]

[Footnote 56: Not absolutely for the first time. On a less
conspicuous theatre it had been used, in the vith and viith
centuries, by the provincial bishops of Britain and Spain. The
royal unction of Constantinople was borrowed from the Latins in
the last age of the empire. Constantine Manasses mentions that of
Charlemagne as a foreign, Jewish, incomprehensible ceremony. See