Here the expression ‘materialiter exhibetur’ is hardly compatible with figurative language. But if St Gregory is thinking of unction in a coronation rite, what is the rite which he has in his mind? Is he thinking of the rite as used in the Spanish Visigothic kingdom[160], in which in all probability unction already found a place? Or is he thinking of the imperial rite of Constantinople? It seems hardly likely that he should speak in such general terms with only the Spanish practice in his mind; but on the other hand there is not a vestige of any other evidence in favour of any Constantinopolitan use of unction. It is true that the ‘Prayer over the Chlamys’ would quite cover the use of an anointing, including as it does such an expression as χρίσαι καταξίωσον τῷ ἐλαίῳ ἀγαλλιάσεως, but it is equally true that these words might quite naturally bear a merely metaphorical significance. It is not until the ninth century that we seem to get upon more solid ground, when Photius, in a letter written during his exile to the Emperor Basil the Macedonian (867-886), speaks of the χρίσμα καὶ χειροθεσίαν βασιλείας[161]. These words, taken in connection with a sentence at the end of the same letter in which he speaks of himself as ‘he at whose hands both he (Basil) and the Empress were anointed with the Chrism of the Empire (αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ βασιλὶς τὸ χρίσμα τῆς βασιλείας ἐχρίσθη),’ make it very difficult to believe that Photius is here using simply figurative language[162]. It is much more natural to take his words literally and to conclude from them that in the ninth century unction was already included in the rite of Constantinople. The references of Eastern writers to the unction of Charlemagne have already been mentioned. But since they all lay stress on the manner of that anointing no conclusion can safely be drawn from their language that unction was unknown at that time in the Eastern rite. There remains the consideration of the Abyssinian use. Abyssinia was cut off by the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century from all communication with Constantinople, and there is no evidence of the use of unction in coronations at Constantinople at that time. It is on the whole, as has been suggested in a preceding chapter, more probable that the Abyssinian unction was an independent Abyssinian developement, more especially as at one time there were strong Jewish influences at work in that country, the effect of which remains to this day clearly stamped on the face of Abyssinian Christianity.