the beast was indeed wounded unto death; but not so:  to the surprise of all, he survived under the form of the seventh head.  At this point the question is sure to be asked, How could the beast continue to live if its seventh head was to continue but “a short space”?  This is accounted for by the fact that there was what might be appropriately called an eighth head, but which was in reality of the seven.  “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven.”  Verse 11.

The identification of the seventh head will now make the matter complete.  The facts all meet in the Carlovingian empire, or the empire of Charlemagne.  In the year 774 Charlemagne completed the work begun by Pepin twenty years before and overthrew the kingdom of the Lombards in Italy, which was the last of the three horns plucked up before the little horn of Daniel.  By this victory he became complete master of Italy, and he received the title Patrician of Rome.  This was not merely an honorary title, such as had for ages been conferred upon certain individuals; but it was a distinct form of civil government and supreme, taking the same rank with that of the Consular, the Decemvirate, the Triumvirate, etc., in the earlier history of the nation.  It lasted, however, only “a short space,” or twenty-six years, when Charlemagne, having extended his conquests over all the western part of Europe, assumed the Imperial title and thus revived the empire of Rome in the West under its Gothic form.  In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon says:  “In the twenty-six years that elapsed between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation, Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the scepter, of Charlemagne.  The people swore allegiance to his person and family; in his name, money was coined, and justice was administered, and the election of Popes was examined and confirmed by his authority—­except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignity, there was not any prerogative remaining which the title of emperor could add to the Patrician of Rome.”  This decisive testimony by the highest authority on the subject shows conclusively that all the power of sovereignty resided in Charlemagne as the Patrician of Rome, and that this, therefore, is a proper head to be ranked with the other six that preceded it.[14]

[Footnote 14:  Commentators frequently identify the seventh head with the Exarchate of Ravenna.  After the overthrow of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy by Belisarius, the general of Justinian, about the middle of the sixth century, the territory became subject to the emperor of the Eastern empire and was ruled by him through an Exarch whose place of residence was Ravenna.  This Exarchate (sometimes called Patriciate) continued until about the middle of the eighth century, when it was terminated by Astolphus, king of the Lombards, who made Ravenna the capital of the Lombardic kingdom in 752.  Three years later