tions. Zachary approved for Pepin's benefit the deposition of the first race of Frankic kings. In return, the new king delivered Rome from the attacks of the Lombards, became its lord paramount, and gave it in appanage to the Pope. Thus the relations ceased between the Popes and the Eastern emperors, whom they no longer recognized as sovereigns. The separation became complete when the son of Pepin, Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne, was proclaimed at Rome Emperor of the West.
This political rupture made way for the religious schism between the East and the West. Rome was rising again from her ruins at the same moment that Constantinople was foiling into decay. The Popes, become more rich and powerful than ever, crowned with the diadem of temporal power, could not but meditate revenge for the humiliations to which in their pride they imagined they had been subjected.
While the West was quite escaping him forever, Constantine Copronymus, the son of Leo, assembled councils and caused the condemnation of images in an assembly of bishops bereft of conscience, who endeavoured to dislionour the memory of the Patriarch St. Germanus and the learned John Damascene. Pope Stephen II. (756) prevailed upon Pepin, King of France, to take the cause of the Church in hand. Constantine Copronymus had sent to this prince an embassy which troubled the Pope. Stephen feared lest politics should hinder his plans, and the Emperor of the East should resume some influence in the affairs of the West. He therefore wrote thus to Pepin:[1] "We earnestly entreat you to act toward the Greeks in such manner that the Catholic faith maybe for ever preserved, that the Church may he delivered from their malice, and may recover all her patrimony." The Church of Rome had had consider-
- ↑ Steph. II. Epist. In Cod. Carol.
