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to Rome. The frightened city opened its gates only after he had promised it security. There followed a day of rejoicing. He was welcomed with all the banners of the militia and the city organizations. Young people swarmed about him, carrying palms and olive branches. On the steps of St. Peter's Church, Pope and King met and embraced. The singing of Benedicts qui venit in nomine Domini filled the nave as they entered. A few days later the "Donation of Pepin" was re- affirmed in the basilica, and the deed incorporating it was signed by Charlemagne and laid at the grave of Peter. It gave the Pope no new advantage other than security, and even this took the form of con- firmation from the hand of him who was the master of what had been given. Though both parted good friends, this first expression of German romantic feeling for Rome implied as little concerning Charle- magne's relations to the Papacy as did his later visits and meetings with the Pope.
Everyone knows how he cleared a path for the Cross with his sword during the years that followed. This conqueror was a missionary and an educator. As a king he added steadily to the dominions of the Church, which seemed to this passionate friend of progress the supreme thought and the primal force behind everything done to strengthen either the Empire or the activities of the human mind. In the spirit of the ancient Prophets, he unearthed the ethical element in religion and therewith imbued the Romanism, of which he himself had so deep an experience, with German seriousness on German soil. On the other hand he bound the strong moral treasure of his Germans to the world of ecclesiastical symbols and laws, stemming the dangers of the trend ad intra (which Schiller terms a German trait) by es- tablishing religious dogma as the barrier to endless roaming amid the infinite.
Men's feelings had been dominated by the Christian message long before his time; and even in times of Merovingian worldliness men had wanted to feel the breath of the Church upon them in difficult hours. The dying had put on penitential robes after their final con- fessions, had asked to lie on beds of ashes, and had received the Eu- charist before "joining the wild army' 1 or riding "to the old company." But the kind of religion which Charlemagne spread in the wake of Willibrord and Wynnfrith was a greater moral force, was of a more
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