greatest and noblest warrior the world had seen since the days of the

great Caesar, and it seemed fitting that he should be given the honor

which was his due, and that in him and his kingdom the great empire of

Rome should be restored.



Augustulus, the last emperor of the west, had ceased to reign in 476.

The Eastern Empire was still alive, or rather half-alive, for it was a

life without spirit or energy. The empire of the west had vanished under

the flood of barbarism, and for more than three centuries there had been

no claimant of the imperial crown. But here was a strong man, a noble

man, the lord and master of a mighty realm which included the old

imperial city; it seemed fitting that he should take the title of

emperor and rule over the western world as the successor of the famous

line of the Caesars.



So thought the pope, Leo III., and so thought his cardinals. He had

already sent to Charlemagne the keys of the prison of St. Peter and the

banner of the city of Rome. In 799 he had a private interview with the

king, whose purpose no one knew. In August of the year 800, having

settled the affairs of his wide-spread kingdom, Charlemagne suddenly

announced in the general assembly of the Franks that he was about to

make a journey to Rome. Why he went he did not say. The secret was not

yet ready to be revealed.



On the 23d of November the king of the Franks arrived at the gates of

Rome, a city which he was to leave with the time-honored title of

Emperor of the West. "The pope received him as he was dismounting; then,

on the next day, standing on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter and

amidst general hallelujahs, he introduced the king into the sanctuary of

the blessed apostle, glorifying and thanking the Lord for this happy

event."



In the days that followed, Charlemagne examined the grievances of the

Church and took measures to protect the pope against his enemies. And

while he was there two monks came from Jerusalem, bearing with them the

keys of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, and the sacred standard of the

holy city, which the patriarch had intrusted to their care to present to

the great king of the Franks. Charlemagne was thus virtually

commissioned as the defender of the Church of Christ and the true

successor of the Christian emperors of Rome.



Meanwhile, Leo had called a synod of the Church to consider whether the

title of emperor should not be conferred on Charles the Great. At

present, he said, the Roman world had no sovereign. The throne of

Constantinople was occupied by a woman, the Empress Irene, who had

usurped the title and made it her own by murder. It was intolerable that

Charles should be looked on as a mere patrician, an implied subordinate

to this unworthy sovereign of the Eastern Empire. He was the master of

Italy, Gaul, and Germany, said Leo. Who was there besides him to act as

Defender of the Faith? On whom besides could the Church rest, in its

great conflict with paganism and unbelief?



The synod agreed with him. It was fitting that the great king should be

crowned emperor, and restore in his person the ancient glory of the

realm. A petition was sent to Charles. He answered that, however

unworthy the honor, he could not resist the desire of that august body.

And thus was formally completed what probably had been the secret

understanding of the pope and the king months before. Charles, king of

the Franks, was to be given the title and dignity of Charles, Emperor of

the West.



The season of the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas-day of the year 800,

duly came. It was destined to be a great day in the annals of the Roman

city. The chimes of bells which announced the dawning of that holy day

fell on the ears of great multitudes assembled in the streets of Rome,

all full of the grand event that day to be consummated, and rumors of

which had spread far and wide. The great basilica of St. Peter was to be

the scene of the imposing ceremony, and at the hour fixed its aisles

were crowded with the greatest and the most devoted and enthusiastic

assemblage it had ever held, all eager to behold and to lend their

support to the glorious act of coronation, as they deemed it, fixed for

that day, an act which, as they hoped, would restore Rome to the

imperial position which that great city had so many centuries held.



It was a noble pile, that great cathedral of the early church. It had

been recently enriched by costly gifts set aside by Charles from the

spoils of the Avars, and converted into the most beautiful of ornaments

consecrated to the worship of Christ. Before the altar stood the golden

censers, containing seventeen pounds weight of solid gold. Above gleamed

three grand coronas of solid silver, of three hundred and seven pounds

in weight, ablaze with a glory of wax-lights, whose beams softly

illuminated the whole great edifice. The shrine of St. Peter dazzled the

eyes by its glittering "rufas," made of forty-nine pounds of the purest

gold, and enriched by brilliant jewels till they sparkled like single

great gems. There also hung superb curtains of white silk, embroidered

with roses, and with rich and intricate borders, while in the centre was

a splendid cross worked in gold and purple. Suspended from the keystone

of the dome hung the most attractive of the many fine pictures which

adorned the church, a peerless painting of the Saviour, whose beauty

drew all eyes and aroused in all souls fervent aspirations of devoted

faith. Never had Christian church presented a grander spectacle; never

had one held so immense and enthusiastic an audience; for one of the

greatest ceremonies the Christian world had known was that day to be

performed.



Through the wide doors of the great church filed a procession of bronzed

veterans of the Frankish army; the nobility and the leading people of

Rome; the nobles, generals, and courtiers who had followed Charlemagne

thither; warriors from all parts of the empire, with their corslets and

winged helmets of steel and their uniforms of divers colors; civic

functionaries in their gorgeous robes of office; dignitaries of the

church in their rich vestments; a long array of priests in their white

dalmatics, until all Christendom seemed present in its noblest and most

showy representatives. Heathendom may have been represented also, for it

may be that messengers from the great caliph of Bagdad, the renowned

Haroun al Raschid, the hero of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments,"

were present in the church. Many members of the royal family of

Charlemagne were present to lend dignity to the scene, and towering

above them all was the great Charles himself, probably clad in Roman

costume, his garb as a patrician of the imperial city, which dignity had

been conferred upon him. Loud plaudits welcomed him as he rose into

view. There were many present who had seen him at the head of his army,

driving before him hosts of flying Saracens, Saxons, Lombards, and

Avars, and to them he was the embodiment of earthly power, the mighty

patron of the church, and the scourge of pagans and infidels; and as

they gazed on his noble form and dignified face it seemed to some of

them as if they looked with human eyes on the face and form of a

representative of the Deity.



A solemn mass was sung, with all the impressive ceremony suitable to the

occasion. As the king rose to his feet, or while he still kneeled before

the altar and the "confession,"--the tomb of St. Peter,--the pope, as if

moved by a sudden impulse, took up a splendid crown which lay upon the

altar, and placed it on his brow, saying, in a loud voice,--



"Long life and victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by

God the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!"



At once, as if this were a signal for the breaking of the constrained

silence, a mighty shout rose from the whole vast assembly. Again and

again it was repeated, and then broke out the solemn chant of the

litany, sung by hundreds of voices, while Charlemagne stood in dignified

and patient silence. Whether or not this act of the pope was a surprise

to him we have no assurance. Eginhard tells us that he declared that he

would not have entered the church that day if he had foreseen the pope's

intentions; yet it is not easy to believe that he was ignorant of or

non-consenting to the coming event. At the close of the chant Leo

prostrated himself at the feet of Charlemagne, and paid him adoration,

as had been the custom in the days of the old emperors. He then anointed

him with holy oil. And from that day forward Charles, "giving up the

title of patrician, bore that of emperor and Augustus."



The ceremonies ended in the presentation from the emperor to the church

of a great silver table, and, in conjunction with his son Charles and

his daughters, of golden vessels belonging to the table of five hundred

pounds' weight. This great gift was followed, on the Feast of the

Circumcision, with a superb golden corona to be suspended over the

altar. It was ornamented with gems, and contained fifty pounds of gold.

On the Feast of the Epiphany he added three golden chalices, weighing

forty-two pounds, and a golden paten of twenty-two pounds' weight. To

the other churches also, and to the pope, he made magnificent gifts, and

added three thousand pounds of silver to be distributed among the poor.



Thus, after more than three centuries, the title of Augustus was

restored to the western world. It was destined to be held many centuries

thereafter by the descendants of Charlemagne. After the division of his

empire into France and Germany, the imperial title was preserved in the

latter realm, the fiction--for it was little more--that an emperor of

the west existed being maintained down to the present century.



As to the influence exerted by the power and dominion of Charlemagne on

the minds of his contemporaries and successors, many interesting stories

might be told. Fable surrounded him, legend attached to his deeds, and

at a later date he shared the honor given to the legendary King Arthur

of England, of being made a hero of romance, a leading character in many

of those interminable romances of chivalry which formed the favorite

reading of the mediaeval age.



But we need not go beyond his own century to find him a hero of romance.

The monk of the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, whose story of the

defences of the land of the Avars we have already quoted, has left us a

chronicle full of surprising tales of the life and doings of Charles the

Great. One of these may be of interest, as an example of the kind of

history with which our ancestors of a thousand years ago were satisfied.



Charlemagne was approaching with his army Pavia, the capital of the

Lombards. Didier, the king, was greatly disquieted at his approach. With

him was Ogier the Dane (Ogger the monk calls him), one of the most

famous captains of Charlemagne, and a prominent hero of romance. He had

quarrelled with the king and had taken refuge with the king of the

Lombards. Thus goes on the chronicler of St. Gall:



"When Didier and Ogger heard that the dread monarch was coming, they

ascended a tower of vast height, where they could watch his arrival from

afar off and from every quarter. They saw, first of all, engines of war

such as must have been necessary for the armies of Darius or Julius

Caesar.



"'Is not Charles,' asked Didier of Ogger, 'with this great army?'



"But the other answered, 'No.' The Lombard, seeing afterwards an immense

body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast empire, said to

Ogger, 'Certainly, Charles advances in triumph in the midst of this

throng.'



"'No, not yet; he will not appear so soon,' was the answer.



"'What should we do, then,' rejoined Didier, who began to be perturbed,

'should he come accompanied by a larger band of warriors?'



"'You will see what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger; 'but as to what

will become of us I know nothing.'



"As they were thus parleying, appeared the body of guards that knew no

repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This

time it is surely Charles.'



"'No," answered Ogger, 'not yet.'



"In their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the

chapels royal, and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear

the light of day or to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us

descend and hide ourselves in the bowels of the earth, far from the face

and the fury of so terrible a foe.'



"Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power

and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude

in better days, then said, 'When you shall behold the crops shaking for

fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the

walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel, then may you

think that Charles is coming.'



"He had not ended these words when there began to be seen in the west,

as it were a black cloud raised by the north-west wind or by Boreas,

which turned the brightest day into awful shadows. But as the emperor

drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of arms caused to shine on the people

shut up within the city a day more gloomy than any kind of night. And

then appeared Charles himself, that man of steel, with his head encased

in a helmet of steel, his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his

heart of steel and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of

steel, and his left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft

in the air, for as to his right hand, he kept that continually on the

hilt of his invincible sword. The outside of his thighs, which the rest,

for their greater ease in mounting on horseback, were wont to leave

unshackled even by straps, he wore encircled by plates of steel. What

shall I say concerning his boots? All the army were wont to have them

invariably of steel; on his buckler there was naught to be seen but

steel; his horse was of the color and the strength of steel.



"All those who went before the monarch, all those who marched by his

side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of the army,

had armor of the like sort, so far as the means of each permitted. The

fields and the highways were covered with steel; the points of steel

reflected the rays of the sun; and this steel, so hard, was borne by

people with hearts still harder. The flash of steel spread terror

throughout the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!'

Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of

manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel

paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller,

mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description,

Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what

you so anxiously sought,' and whilst uttering these words he fell down

almost lifeless."



If our sober chronicler of the ninth century could thus let his

imagination wander in speaking of the great king, what wonder that the

romancers of a later age took Charlemagne and his Paladins as fruitful

subjects for their wildly fanciful themes!