Nor would the emperor be emperor until crowned by the pope.

The Church might use him as a sword, but he would wear the Church as a precious jewel in his crown.
It was a splendid dream, splendidly realized; the most imposing of human successes, and the most impressive of human failures.

It seems designed as a lesson for the human race in the transitory nature of power applied from without.
A pyramid of such colossal proportions could only be kept from falling in pieces by another Colossus like himself.

The vast fabric resting upon one human will, passed with its creator; was gone like a shadow when he was gone.
It will be remembered that the Roman Empire in its decay fell into two parts, a Western and an Eastern empire.

The dying embers of the Western empire, which had been fanned into a feeble flame in the sixth century by Justinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened with complete extinguishment by the Lombards in the eighth; from which calamity they were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin.