Secondly: as to the bestowal on Pippin of the title “Patrician of the Romans.” Long ago, before the series of Western emperors came to an end, the word patrician had ceased to denote an aristocratic class, and had been used of a single powerful individual, otherwise called “the Father of the Emperor,” who in fact bore to the sovereign a relation not unlike that which the Frankish mayor of the palace bore to the Merovingian king. Thus, in the fifth century, Aetius and Ricimer had successively borne the dignity of patrician, and in the sixth, the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, speaking by the mouth of his minister Cassiodorus, had said, “The great distinction of the patriciate is that it is a rank held for life, like that of the priesthood from which it sprang. The patrician takes precedence of all other dignities save one, the consulship, and that is one which we ourselves sometimes assume.” Since then, the imperial lieutenant in Italy had apparently always assumed the title of patrician at Rome, in addition to that of exarch by which he was best known at Ravenna. Now that the exarchs were gone, the sonorous and imposing title might perhaps be said to be nobody’s property. If any one had a right to bestow it the emperor at Constantinople was the man: but he was far off and unpopular. There was an obvious temptation to the Bishop of Rome to pick the shining bauble out of the dust and present it to his powerful friend on the other side of the Alps. It is not likely that it included any definite functions of government, but it probably carried with it, in a somewhat ill-defined and shadowy form, the right and the duty of defending from external attacks the people and city of Rome. Thirdly: the pope included in his coronation-service the two boyish sons of Pippin, Charles and Carloman, and at the same time (if we may trust a curious memorandum, the _Clausula de Pippino_, which professes to have been written in 767 and which is now generally considered authentic) the pope “blessed the Queen Bertrada and the nobles of the Frankish nation, and while confirming them in the grace of the Holy Spirit, he bound them under penalty of interdict and excommunication never to presume to elect a king who should come forth from the loins of any other than these persons whom Divine Providence had raised to the throne, and who through the intercession of the holy Apostles had been consecrated and confirmed by the hands of their vicar, the pope.” Even so: that which had been done in the case of the last Merovingian was never to be repeated in the case of any Arnulfing however inefficient. The ruler who four years ago was only king _de facto_ must now claim to the uttermost all the rights of a king _de jure_ descended from a long line of regal ancestors.