The pope at the end of Louis-le-Deboimaire’s reign, in 840, was not yet a sovereign; and taking the word in its literal sense, that is, as expressing supreme authority, independent and undelegated, we may maintain with certain authors, that he did not begin to be such until 1355, when the Emperor Charles IV, receiving the imperial crown at Rome, renounced in the most express terms every sort of authority over the Holy See. But without sovereignty a power may yet be effective. Such was that of the popes long before 1355, and even from the time of Charlemagne. An actual temporal power, though subordinate, delegated or borrowed, rested from that period, in the hands of the pontiffs; and, from this time, the perpetual quarrels between the priesthood and the empire, had no other object, than to emancipate and extend their power. It was necessary in the first place, to render it independent; and from the time it was or asserted itself so to be, to amplify its prerogatives, its rights, its limits, finally to transform itself into a universal monarchy. Behold the common origin, of all the anathemas, all the quarrels, all the wars of which we are about to sketch the picture! Here is the secret of the eternal contentions of the Court of Rome with the greater number of the European powers, especially those which obtained an ascendancy in Italy. CHAPTER II. ENTERPRIZES OF THE POPES OF THE NINTH CENTURY CHARLEMAGNE had condemned gifts made to the church, to the prejudice of the children or near relatives of the donor. In 816, a capitulary of Louis I. declared all donations of this kind void. But, far from continuing to limit by such restraints the sacerdotal ambition, Louis was destined to become one of the first victims, and, by the same circumstance, one of the first founders of the clerical power. Pascal succeeding Stephen IV. in 817, did not wait for the consent of the prince to instal himself: he confined himself to sending him legates, and an apologetical letter, in which he pretended that he had been compelled hastily to accept the dignity. Some years after, Pascal crowned Lothaire, whom Louis, his father, had associated in the empire: the pope, say the ecclesiastical historians of the ninth century, gave to the young prince the power which the ancient emperors had enjoyed; they add, that with the consent and good will of Louis, Lothaire received from the sovereign pontiff the benediction, the dignity, and the title of emperor; expressions truly remarkable, and of which they have since availed themselves, in order to erect the pope into the disposer of the imperial crown; as if Charles and Louis had not previously borne it, without being indebted for it to the bishops of Rome!—as if it were not, above all, contradictory, to pretend at once that these two princes founded, the temporal power of the popes, and yet received from these same popes the dignity of Emperors of the West.