The reasons for this extraordinary act, which Charlemagne afterward persistently asserted took him completely by surprise, are given in one of the Frankish histories, the _Chronicles of Lorsch_, as follows: "The name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were enduring the reign of a woman [Irene], wherefore it seemed good both to Leo, the apostolic pope, and to the holy fathers [the bishops] who were in council with him, and to all Christian men, that they should name Charles, king of the Franks, as Emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Cæsars had always dwelt, in addition to all his other possessions in Italy, Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions, it seemed just to all that he should take the title of Emperor, too, when it was offered to him at the wish of all Christendom." Charlemagne appears to have accepted gracefully the honor thus thrust upon him. Even if he had no right to the imperial title, there was an obvious propriety and expediency in granting it to him under the circumstances. Before his coronation by the pope he was only king of the Franks and the Lombards; but his conquests seemed to entitle him to a more comprehensive designation which should include his outlying dependencies. Then the imperial power at Constantinople had been in the hands of heretics, from the standpoint of the Western Church, ever since Emperor Leo issued his edict against the veneration of images. What was still worse, the throne had been usurped, shortly before the coronation of Charlemagne, by the wicked Irene, who had deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI. The coronation of Charlemagne was, therefore, only a recognition of the real political conditions in the West.[46] [Sidenote: Continuity of the Roman Empire.] The empire now reëstablished in the West was considered to be a continuation of the Roman Empire founded by Augustus. Charlemagne was reckoned the immediate successor of Constantine VI, whom Irene had deposed. Yet, in spite of this fancied continuity, it is hardly necessary to say that the position of the new emperor had little in common with that of Marcus Aurelius or Constantine. In the first place, the eastern emperors continued to reign in Constantinople for centuries, quite regardless of Charlemagne and his successors. In the second place, the German kings who wore the imperial crown after Charlemagne were generally too weak really to rule over Germany and northern Italy, to say nothing of the rest of western Europe. Nevertheless, the Western Empire, which in the twelfth century came to be called the Holy Roman Empire, endured for over a thousand years. It came to an end only in 1806, when the last of the emperors, wearied of his empty if venerable title, laid down the crown. [Sidenote: The title of emperor a source of trouble to the German rulers.]