His royal proselyte withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St.Peter; declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West.
This fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects.

The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his lawful inheritance.

The popes were delivered from their debt of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state.

The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of St.Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and prerogatives of the Caesars.

So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law.