St. Gregory II. told Leo, the Isaurian, that his own imperial dignity was itself of divine institution, as the organ of human government: while the ecclesiastical dignity was of divine institution, in virtue of that divine intervention by which alone men become sons of God. The answer of the tyrant was five times to attempt the Pope’s life, as that of a rebellious vassal whom he was entitled to put under ban, and efface as a _natura ferina_. But the issue of this contest was that three Popes, St. Gregory II., St. Gregory III., St. Zacharias, equally great, wise, and prudent, maintained intact their Primacy: that their successor, Stephen II., was the first Pope who crossed the Alps; that he consecrated the Carlovingian dynasty, and was accepted in Rome triumphantly as her king. In this series of acts he had also broken the chains of Italy, and a Pope presently following, who had ceased to be an eastern vassal, was to create a counterpoise to the chalif of Mohammed in an emperor, not Byzantine, but Roman, not grasping illicit power in the spirit of Saracenic pride, but as a type of Christian monarchy placed at the head of lawful government, not a perversion of Constantine and Theodosius, but the loyal spirit of both embodied by a divine consecration. During the reigns of Leo III. and his son, Constantine Kopronymus, and the times of the Popes Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen II., certain events take place in the East and the West respectively, which, by their striking contrast with each other, while they coincide in the time of their happening, remarkably express and sum up the course taken by the three centuries which we are considering. Despotism matures in the East, and barbaric savagery triumphs: freedom, order, the majesty of nations growing into one faith, dawn upon the West.