There were more reasons than that of policy for this alliance. Practically abandoned by the Roman Emperors in the east, Italy had been the prey of tribe after tribe of northern savages, and the Papacy was the only centre of order and authority. In spite of this the Popes still shrank from severing themselves wholly from the imperial centre, but the iconoclastic controversy had resulted in what was both heresy and schism on the part of the patriarchate of Constantinople, and communion was no longer possible. Moreover, all the other northern tribes that had accepted Christianity--Goths, Vandals, Lombards--had adopted the Arian heresy and were therefore even more distasteful to Rome than unconverted heathen. This condition of things justified the Papacy in its attitude of intolerance, and when Pepin came to the throne, it was almost at the last gasp, through persecution, spoliation, and outrage at the hands of the Teutonic Arians. The Frankish kingdom alone was Catholic, and enthusiastically Catholic, and it is small wonder that to the Pope the rise of a great and powerful and Catholic nation under the dominating Carolings came as a special mercy from heaven--as, indeed, it was. With the death of Pepin and the accession of his son Charles--known now for all time as Charlemagne--the curtain rose on one of the most brilliant dramas of history. The Lombards had again revolted; Pope Hadrian called on the Franks in despair; King Charles hurled his armies into Italy like an avalanche, captured and deposed Desiderius, last of the Lombard kings, proclaimed himself King of Lombardy, pressed on to Rome, and was welcomed there by the Supreme Pontiff as the saviour of Christendom. He would, however, accept no formal honours save that of patrician, and returned to the north to continue the work of his father in consolidating and extending the kingdom. For twenty-four years he was engaged in innumerable wars, in eager efforts to restore education, political order, ecclesiastical righteousness, and even some small measure of genuine culture, with results that seem miraculous in the light of what had been before for so many centuries. Finally, in the year 799, he went again to Rome, where Leo III now sat in the chair of Peter, and at mass on Christmas Day, A. D. 800, the Pope came suddenly behind him as he was kneeling before the altar in St. Peter’s and, placing a crown on his head, cried in a loud voice: “Life and victory to Charles, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans, crowned by the hand of God!” and after three centuries and more of anarchy, barbarism, and hopeless degeneration, the empire was restored as the Holy Roman Empire, in the person of a Frankish warrior of the lands of the Belgæ, and destined to endure for another thousand years.