We have not much information as to the developement of the rite during the seventh and eighth centuries. The following description is given by Theophanes of the coronation of Constantine VI by his father Leo IV in 780[17]. On Good Friday an oath of allegiance was taken to the new Emperor by all classes in writing. On the Saturday the imperial procession went down to St Sophia. There the Emperor, according to custom, arrayed himself in the imperial vestments, and accompanied by his son and the Patriarch ascended into the Ambo, the written oaths of allegiance being deposited on the Holy Table. The Emperor informed the people that he had acceded to their request, and had associated his son with himself in the Empire. ‘Lo, ye receive him from the Church and from the hand of Christ.’ The people respond, ‘Answer us, Son of God; for from thy hand we receive the Lord Constantine as Emperor, to guard him and to die for him.’ On Easter Day the Emperor proceeds to the Hippodrome, where an antiminsion (a portable altar) having been set up, in the sight of all the people the Patriarch recites a prayer, and the Emperor sets the crown on the head of his son. Thereupon the procession returns to the Great Church. In the tenth century we have from the pen of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[18] a full description of the ceremonial of the coronation of an Emperor, except for the actual prayers used. These however can be found elsewhere, for there are extant two patriarchal Euchologia belonging to this same period, one of the end of the eighth century, the famous Barberini uncial codex, and the other the Grotta Ferrata codex of the twelfth century[19]. These both contain the rite, and it is noticeable that it is the same in both books, except for the fact that the second includes the coronation of an Empress. The rite therefore had remained unchanged from at least the end of the eighth century until the twelfth. The description given by Constantine is as follows.