and twenty-four years before had been ended by Odoacer, when he dethroned Romulus Augustulus and sent the royal vestments to Constantinople (sec. 560). We say this was what he actually effected; for the Greeks of the East, disregarding wholly what the Roman people and the i)ope had done, maintained their line of emperors just as though nothing had occurred in Italy. So now from this time on for centuries there were, most of the time, two emperors, one in the East and another in the West, each claiming to be the rightful successor of Cæsar Augustus.
This revival of the Empire in the West was one of the most important matters in European history. It gave to the following centuries "a great political ideal," which was the counterpart of the religious ideal of a universal Church embodied in the Papacy, and which was to determine the character of large sections of mediæval history.
Charlemagne reigned as emperor only fourteen years. He died A.D. 814, and his empire soon afterwards fell in pieces. It was renewed, however, by Otto the Great of Germany in the year 962 and came to be known as the Holy Roman Empire.
644. The Revival of the Empire as a Dividing Line in History.—As Pope Leo placed the imperial diadem upon the head of Charles in St. Peter's basilica he cried, "To Charles the Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific emperor, life and victory." The Roman populace within the church-repeated the cry, which was taken up by the Frankish warriors outside. "In that shout was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modern history begins."[1]
- ↑ Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, p. 40. Bryce here uses the phrase "modern history" as comprehending both the mediæval and the modern period. For the moment he conceives history as presenting only two phases, the ancient and the modern.
