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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III. THE CARLOVINGIAN KACE. -[Years after Christ 741—814.] CHARLEMAGNE. textit{From a mosaic, now destroyed, made by the order of Pope Leo III. ' The division of the kingdom, which Charles had made between his two sons, did not last long. Car- Ionian, in 747, entered a cloister, and Pepin thus became sole monarch. Pepin, being fearful lest the people should be averse to the total exclusion of the Merovingian family from the throne, gave the title of king to a prince of that race, who is known by the name ofChilderic III. But the nominal sovereignty of Childeric was of short duration, for Pepin, finding his own power sufficiently established, obliged him to retire into a monastery, and caused himself to be proclaimed king before an assembly of the nation, which was held at Soissons. In order to render his person sacred and inviolable, he first introduced at his coronation the ceremony of anointing, and this was done with oil from a phial which it was pretended had been sent from heaven for Clevis's baptism. This phial was ever afterwards preserved at Rheims as a sacred relic, and was always used at the coronation of the French kings. Pepin was a man of great activity of mind and body, and was much respected by his people, although, from the smallness of his stature, they gave him the surname of Pepin le Bref. About this time there was a religious war in Italy on the subject of introducing images into churches. The early Christians had permitted them as a means to conciliate their pagan proselytes. At first they were regarded as a help to devotion, but at length they became objects of adoration themselves. A part, however, of the Christian world held this worship of images in abhorrence: they refused to suffer them in their churches; and because of their zeal in destroying t...