In its ecclesiastical relations the revived Empire differed from the old. The Pope had become a factor in the political evolution of the West in a way unknown to the age of Athaulf, Theodoric, or Odoacer. Gregory the Great had turned to the East as a subject of the Roman Empire, to ask aid of his legitimate Emperor; the bishops of Rome, in the eighth century, as equals, turned to the Franks, and of this alliance the ceremony of Christmas Day, 800, was the logical sequence. For the Germanic peoples the coronation of Charles did not mean absorption into a unified system of absolutism, such as prevailed in the East; but it did mean that the predominant factor in their future was to be their relation in the logical sense to the Italian peninsula, and it is just this relationship in its various phases which was worked out in the Middle Ages, and so it may justly be called the distinguishing mark of the medieval period. Charles’ assumption of the imperial title did not imply that he ceased to regard himself as the head of a Germanic people, nor was there manifest on his part any intention to shift the existing Teutonic basis of his rule towards a Latin center. For several months after the coronation ceremony he remained in Italy, but the Alps were recrossed in the summer of 801, and during the rest of his life he never again set foot on Italian soil. With the Eastern Empire, which might have been stirred to active hostility by the introduction of a rival claimant to the imperial throne, relations continued to be good. Embassies passed from one court to another, and it is reported by a Greek chronicler that Charles transmitted officially to the Empress Irene a proposal that the two empires should be united by their marriage. In 803 the Empress Irene died, after her deposition had been brought about by a palace revolution by which Nicephorus, the Grand Treasurer, was placed on the throne. In 806, for a short time, these peaceful relations were broken by a contention over the possession of Venice, whose commercial importance was beginning to be recognized. A Byzantine fleet appeared off the lagunes, but was unable to prevent the coveted islands from being taken by Pippin, Charles’ representative in Italy, who brought the contest to a close in 810 by a combined attack on sea and land. In 812, as a compensation for acknowledging Charles as Roman Emperor, the Adriatic territories, Venetia, Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were restored to Byzantine rule. VI CLOSING YEARS