The pope’s solemn oath of self-exculpation was sworn on the 23d of December. Two days later was transacted that yet more solemn ceremony by which the Patriarch of the Western Church, thus purged from the stains which his assailants had sought to cast upon his character, bestowed upon his royal champion that title which set him highest among the rulers of the Christian world. The scene was again laid in the great basilica of St. Peter, a building, of course, utterly unlike to the vast Renaissance temple of Bramante and Michael Angelo. There, on Christmas morning, Charles the Frank was worshipping before the _Confessio_ or tomb of St. Peter. The stately Roman _chlamys_ hung around his shoulders; the crowd that filled the basilica could see with satisfaction the dainty Roman buskins of the kneeling monarch. When he rose from prayer Pope Leo approached him, placed upon his head a costly golden crown, and clothed him in the purple mantle of empire. “Then,” says the papal biographer, “all the faithful Romans, beholding so great a champion given them, and knowing the love which he bare to the Holy Roman Church and its vicar, in obedience to the will of God and of St. Peter, the key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, cried out with deep accordant voices: ‘To Charles, most pious and august, crowned by God, the great and peace-bringing emperor, be life and victory!’” Thereupon the people sang their jubilant _laudes_, and the pope performed that lowly adoration wherewith his predecessors had been wont to greet a Valentinian or a Theodosius.[64]