In the disturbed state of Italy, and with Rome given over to his unscrupulous foes, the only resource left for the pope was in the protection of Charles; and to his court, or rather to his camp, for he was immersed in the Saxon war, Leo III. repaired in the summer of 799. It was now more than forty-five years since a pope (Stephen II.) had crossed the Alps on a similar errand. Much had happened in the interval. The monarchy of the “most unspeakable” Lombards had been overthrown; the successor of St. Peter had become one of the great princes of the earth; and yet, as Leo must with sadness have reflected, not even sovereignty had brought safety. “Wounded in the house of his friends,” the Bishop of Rome had received from the hands of his own courtiers and subjects treatment infinitely more cruel and contumelious than any that the much vituperated Lombard had ever inflicted on his predecessors. Musing on these things Pope Leo doubtless saw that the day-dream of a papal sovereignty extending over all Italy could not be realized. Rather must he make his Frankish friend and protector stronger in Italy. The Patrician of Rome must take some higher and more imposing title, and must be induced to give more assiduous attention to the affairs of the Italian peninsula. As in that earlier papal visit Charles, then a lad of twelve, had been sent to meet Stephen II., so now did Charles send his son Pippin (a young man of twenty-two and the crowned king of Italy) to meet Pope Leo. Pippin escorted the venerable guest into his father’s presence. Pope and king embraced and kissed with tears. The clergy in the papal train intoned the _Gloria in Excelsis_, and the nobles and courtiers round added their joyful acclamations. This meeting took place at Paderborn, where Charles had built a new and splendid church in the place of the edifice often destroyed by the Saxons. In this church Pope Leo hallowed an altar, which he enriched with relics of the protomartyr Stephen brought by him from Rome, and assured the king that by the powerful intercession of that saint the church would be preserved from future devastation. Leo remained probably for about two months, from July to September, at Paderborn, in constant intercourse with Charles. Much would doubtless be said in the conferences between the two potentates concerning the condition of the Church, the heresy of the Adoptians,[60] the Iconoclastic controversy, and above all concerning the charges brought against the pope’s character by his relentless enemies in Rome. Was there also something said about that great event towards which, as we know, the course of history was tending, the bestowal of the imperial title on Charles? Here we have only conjectures to guide us, but in these conjectures we must take account of one most powerful influence upon which I have hitherto been silent, the influence of the absent, but continually consulted Northumbrian, Alcuin.