Leo was received by Karl with great honour, and was sent back to Rome to resume his high office. Karl followed him[174] towards the end of the next year, 800, and was received by him at the twelfth milestone from Rome “with the greatest humility and the greatest honour”. This was on November 23. The next day Leo with great pomp received Karl on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter, made an oration to him, and led him into the church. Seven days later, on December 1, Karl convoked an assembly, and expounded to them his reasons for coming to Rome, the first and most difficult being the need of a judicial inquiry into the charges against the Pope. It turned out that no witness appeared to substantiate the charges; but that seems to have been regarded as insufficient, and a formal abjuration was made by Leo. The Pope, Eginhart[175] says, in the presence of all the people, in the basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle, carrying in his hands the Gospel, ascended the ambo, and invoking the name of the Holy Trinity, purged himself by oath from the crimes laid against him[176]. On the most sacred day of the Nativity of the Lord, Karl attended Mass at St. Peter’s. As he rose from prayer before the Confessio[177] of the Apostle, Leo placed on his head a crown, the whole Roman people acclaiming—“To Charles Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans, life and victory!” After which the Pope adored him, that is, prostrated himself before the emperor and kissed his feet, as had been the custom with the former emperors. The title of Patrician was abandoned, and Charlemagne became Imperator and Augustus. This is not the occasion for discussing the debated question whether the Pope acted on an impulse of gratitude, or was guided by a desire to interpose the most powerful personage in the West between Rome and the Emperor of the East; or the equally debated question whether Karl was an active and understanding receiver of the new burden of honour and responsibility; or the question what sort of right the Pope had to take such a step. To my mind the most pointed question is whether the Pope skilfully forestalled Charles by suddenly crowning him, in order to prevent his making himself emperor and crowning himself. But we cannot pass by without a word of comment the remarkable fact that the Pope performed the barbaric, Byzantine, humiliating, ceremony of prostration before the emperor and kissing his feet in adoration, as earlier Popes had had to do to earlier emperors. It is this same barbaric custom of what is technically called adoration, that the Popes, who used to perform it to their imperial superiors, have now for some centuries expected others to perform to them—the kissing of the Pope’s toe as it is called by some, of the Pope’s foot by others. The state of the foot of the great bronze figure of St. Peter in his church at Rome certainly renders the former the more accurate phrase.