The events described at the end of the last chapter happened in August 797. In the autumn of the following year, when Charles was resting at Aachen from the fatigues of a Saxon campaign on the banks of the Elbe, there appeared before him two Byzantine ambassadors, Michael, aforetime Patrician of Phrygia, and Theophilus, a priest of Blachernæ, who, on behalf of the Empress Irene, sought for and obtained the restoration of friendly relations between the empire and the kingdom. The covenant of peace was ratified by the return of an illustrious Greek captive, Sisinnius, brother of the Patriarch Tarasius, who had been taken prisoner probably in the Apulian war of 788. But a far more distinguished visitor than either Michael or Theophilus was to visit Charles’s court in the following year, and to plead in lowlier fashion for his help. To understand the nature of this visit we must go back for a few years and glance at the events which had been happening not in the New but in the Old Rome. On the day after Christmas Day, 795, died Pope Hadrian I. after a long and eventful pontificate. The relations between him and Charles had not been always friendly, for Hadrian had found that no more than the Lombard king would the Frank grant the exorbitant demands for towns and lordships which were unceasingly urged in the name of St. Peter. Still there had been a certain similarity of spirit and temper which had drawn these two strong men together, and, as we have already seen, Charles mourned for the death of Hadrian as if he had been the dearest of his sons. On the death of Hadrian, Leo III. was immediately elected to the papal throne. He was a Roman by birth, an inmate from his childhood of the Lateran palace, and had gone through the regular gradation of ecclesiastical offices till he had reached the high position of papal _vestararius_. It would seem probable that he was the candidate most acceptable to the clerics of the Roman Church, though the result showed that there was a large party among the great lay-officers of the papal court to whom his elevation was by no means welcome. He was, at a crisis of his fortunes, accused by bitter enemies of adultery and forgery, but no proof was offered of these charges, and there seems no reason to believe that his moral character was not stainless. There are some indications, however, that he was not loved by the people of Rome. Possibly his temper may have been harsh: possibly too they were beginning to chafe under the yoke of the dignitary who but lately was their spiritual pastor, sometimes their champion, but who now asserted himself as their sovereign.