The bishop of Rome, protected and enriched as he was, was always in subjection to the emperors, like the bishop of Constantinople, and of Nicomedia, and every other, not making even the slightest pretension to the shadow of sovereign authority. Fatality, which guides the affairs of the universe, finally established the power of the ecclesiastical Roman court, by the hands of the barbarians who destroyed the empire. The ancient religion, under which the Romans had been victorious for such a series of ages, existed still in the hearts of the population, notwithstanding all the efforts of persecution, when, in the four hundred and eighth year of our era, Alaric invaded Italy and beseiged Rome. Pope Innocent I. indeed did not think proper to forbid the inhabitants of that city sacrificing to the gods in the capitol, and in the other temples, in order to obtain the assistance of heaven against the Goths. But this same Pope Innocent, if we may credit Zosimus and Orosius, was one of the deputation sent to treat with Alaric, a circumstance which shows that the pope was at that time regarded as a person of considerable consequence. When Attila came to ravage Italy in 452, by the same right which the Romans themselves had exercised over so many and such powerful nations; by the right of Clovis, of the Goths, of the Vandals, and the Heruli, the emperor sent Pope Leo I., assisted by two personages of consular dignity, to negotiate with that conqueror. I have no doubt, that agreeably to what we are positively told, St. Leo was accompanied by an angel, armed with a flaming sword, which made the king of the Huns tremble, although he had no faith in angels, and a single sword was not exceedingly likely to inspire him with fear. This miracle is very finely painted in the Vatican, and nothing can be clearer than that it never would have been painted unless it had actually been true. What particularly vexes and perplexes me is this angel's suffering Aquileia, and the whole of Illyria, to be sacked and ravaged, and also his not preventing Genseric, at a later period, from giving up Rome to his soldiers for fourteen days of plunder. It was evidently not the angel of extermination. Under the exarchs, the credit and influence of the popes augmented, but even then they had not the smallest degree of civil power. The Roman bishop, elected by the people, craved protection for the bishop, of the exarch of Ravenna, who had the power of confirming or of cancelling the election. After the exarchate was destroyed by the Lombards, the Lombard kings were desirous of becoming masters also of the city of Rome; nothing could certainly be more natural. Pepin, the usurper of France, would not suffer the Lombards to usurp that capital, and so become too powerful against himself; nothing again can be more natural than this.