An answer so agreeable to their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march under his standard.

His coronation was twice performed, with the sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St.Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third, who, in the monastery of St.Denys placed the diadem on the head of his benefactor.

The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously applied: [56] the successor of St.Peter assumed the character of a divine ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord's anointed; and this Jewish rite has been diffused and maintained by the superstition and vanity of modern Europe.

The Franks were absolved from their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them and their posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious race of the Carlovingian princes.

Without apprehending the future danger, these princes gloried in their present security: the secretary of Charlemagne affirms, that the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of the popes; [57] and in their boldest enterprises, they insist, with confidence, on this signal and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.
[Footnote 55: Besides the common historians, three French critics, Launoy, (Opera, tom.v.pars ii.l.vii.epist.9, p.