Personnages

The ‘purple tunic’ was the classic symbol of Roman emperorship, no less than the military mantle and the diadem which especially the emperors of the later Roman Empire had worn. Equally Roman was Clovis’s distribution of gold and silver coins in the context of a procession. This had been a characteristic ceremony which the Roman emperors had engaged in to emphasise their generosity and their care for their sub-jects. Clovis was here, as king of the Franks, behaving for all the world like a Roman emperor, and Gregory states that he was called ‘augustus’, which was actually the name of the first Roman emperor and which had come to be a title applied to all sub-sequent emperors. The use of the term ‘consul’ is admittedly a confusing element here, since consuls were officials of the senate rather than of the emperor, but the general gist of this passage was nevertheless that the king of the Franks behaved every bit as a Roman emperor should do. Indeed, Clovis’s entry into Tours was entirely in line with the Roman emperor’s victory ceremonies, the use of which can be detected amongst many other barbarian kings, and continued to be of importance to the Byzantine Empire, which was probably influencing western kings in this respect.

The most striking example of ideology of power deriving from Roman (or at any rate Byzantine) association is provided by the events following the deposition by the aristocracy of the city of Rome of Pope Leo III in 799. He fled north to Paderborn in Saxony, then the residence of the court of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, with whose help he was restored to the papal office. Later, Charlemagne came to Rome, and the pope crowned him emperor in the papal church of St Peter in the Vatican on Christmas day 800. We have various accounts of this coronation, but the most detailed is the following:

On the most holy day of Christmas, when the king rose from prayer in front of the shrine of the blessed apostle Peter, to take part in the mass, Pope Leo placed a crown upon his head, and he was hailed by the whole Roman people: To the august Charles, crowned by God, the great and peaceful emperor of the Romans, life and victory! After the acclamation the pope adored him in the manner of the old emperors.
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