From that memorable aera, two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time.

I._That_ the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome.II.But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff.
The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation of brother.

Perhaps in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother.

The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the West.

The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national hatred.