[Sidenote: 'Emperor' not assumed till the Roman coronation.]
[Sidenote: Origin and results of this practice.]
In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours were blent and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the German king to assume it till actually crowned at Rome by the Pope[229]. Matters of phrase and title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and superstitiously antiquarian: and this restriction had the most important consequences. The first barbarian kings had been tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion which was universal, yet in a sense territorial, they could not separate their title from the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose name they ruled. 'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth[230].' The crown was therefore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital. Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for instance, or Otto's, this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each successive transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic, strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free discussion. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII[231], which prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so favourable to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy; Hadrian IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and through the efforts of the clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till the Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to depend on his will, enabled him to exact conditions from every candidate, and gave a colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine commission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232] authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party: first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,--