Now, among all the Teutonic chiefs of Western Christendom, there was none who could dispute the claims to the honor with the king of the Franks, the representative of a most illustrious house, and the strongest champion of the young Christianity of the West against her pagan foes. Accordingly, as Charlemagne was participating in the festivities of Christmas Day in the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, the Pope approached the kneeling king,-- who declared afterwards that he was wholly ignorant of the designs of his friend,--and placing a crown of gold upon his head, proclaimed him emperor of the Romans, and the rightful and consecrated successor of Cæsar Augustus and Constantine (800). The intention of Pope Leo was, by a sort of reversal of the act of Constantine, to bring back from the East the seat of the Imperial court; but what he really accomplished was a restoration of the line of emperors in the West, which 324 years before had been ended by Odoacer, when he dethroned Romulus Augustus and sent the royal vestments to Constantinople (see p. 348). We say this was what he actually effected; for the Greeks of the East, disregarding wholly what the Roman people and the Pope had done, maintained their line of emperors just as though nothing had occurred in Italy. So now from this time on for centuries there were two emperors, one in the East, and another in the West, each claiming to be the rightful successor of Cæsar Augustus. [Footnote: From this time on it will be proper for us to use the terms _Western_ Empire and _Eastern_ Empire. These names should not, however, be employed before this time, for the two parts of the old Roman Empire were simply administrative divisions of a single empire; we may though, properly enough, speak of the Roman empire _in_ the West, and the Roman empire _in_ the East, or of the Western and Eastern emperors. See Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_. The Eastern Empire was destroyed by the Turks in 1453; the line of Western Teutonic emperors was maintained until the present century, when it was ended by the act of Napoleon in the dismemberment of Germany (1806).] CHARLEMAGNE'S DEATH; HIS WORK.--Charlemagne enjoyed the Imperial dignity only fourteen years, dying in 814. Within the cathedral at Aachen, in a tomb which he himself had built, the dead monarch was placed upon a throne, with his royal robes around him, his good sword by his side, and the Bible open on his lap. It seemed as though men could not believe that his reign was over; and it was not. By the almost universal verdict of students of the mediæval period, Charles the Great has been pronounced the most imposing personage that appears between the fall of Rome and the fifteenth century. His greatness has erected an enduring monument for itself in his name, the one by which he is best known--Charlemagne.