Who's in charge in Western Christendom?
Who's in charge in Western Christendom? We can see this tension in a number of different ways. We see the coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800 on Christmas Day. He was crowned by the Pope. He wasn't very happy about being crowned by the Pope because he didn't want to leave the impression that he had received the empire from the hands of the Pope. But that was exactly the impression that the Pope wanted to give. The pope was already operating on the basis of the document, known to history as “The Donation of Constantine.” The Donation of Constantine, a document supposedly prepared by Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century in which Constantine said “I have this vast empire that the Lord has given to me and it's difficult to rule this whole empire and therefore I give the western half of my empire to the Pope.” What a guy that Constantine was. What a generous fellow. Now it's still a little bit awkward from the Pope's point of view because