"
The Pope, whom St. Boniface, the great missionary of Germany, had
prepared for the question, answered that "it was better to give the
title of king to him who exercised the sovereign power "; and next year,
in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the general
assembly of "leudes" and bishops gathered together at Soissons, Pepin
was proclaimed king of the Franks, and received from the hand of St.
Boniface the sacred anointment. They cut off the hair of the last
Merovingian phantom, Childeric III, and put him away in the monastery of
St. Sithiu, at St. Omer. Two years later, July 28, 754, Pope Stephen II,
having come to France to claim Pepin's support against the Lombards,
after receiving from him assurance of it, "anointed him afresh with the
holy oil in the church of St. Denis, to do honor in his person to the
dignity of royalty," and conferred the same honor on the king's two
sons, Charles and Carloman. The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and the
papacy, in the name of their common faith and common interests, thus
contracted an intimate alliance.
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