But this recognition of the rights of Rome did not prevent Charles from regarding himself as the director of the Frankish Church. He speaks openly of himself as “the pilot of the Church in his domains,” and when writing Leo III he explains his conception of the relation of the kingdom and the Papacy. “Our task it is, by the help of God, to protect by our arms outwardly the Holy Church of Christ from assaults of the heathen and from being wasted by the unbelievers and to establish it within by recognizing the Catholic faith. Your duty it is to support as Moses did, with uplifted arms our service in the battlefield, that the Christian people, being led through your petitions and prepared by God, may have constantly and everywhere victory over the enemies of His name.” While Charles assigned to the Pope a religious activity and nothing more, he regarded his own guardianship over the churches as extending beyond questions of their material welfare. In 789 in a message to the bishops he stated that he wished to coöperate with them, using his power as a ruler, and working through his subordinates to improve things where improvement was possible. These were the principles he used in his Church policy. Just as in secular matters he was not absolute, but followed the laws and customs of the people over whom he ruled, so in regard to the Church he observed its canonical system with a reverence for its minute details. But his capitularies, as we have seen, are filled with ecclesiastical legislation, and in Church matters the King acted as the supreme authority. Even synods laid their decrees before him for correction, and to secure his authoritative sanction. There was little place for a fully developed Papacy in an ecclesiastical system worked along these lines, and there are no examples during Charles’ reign of Papal interference in the administration of the Church in his own domains. The Pope, where and when he did act, did so in concert with Charles; even in cases of excommunication there was an understanding with the King; and often the extreme penalty was inflicted under his initiative. Even the exercise of discipline in connection with the episcopate was left in Charles’ hands without any protest on the part of the Pope.