conception.  It was tantamount to a demonstration that the belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away.  By breaking the old rules of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world.  When asked whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza, he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to have crowns running after him.  He trampled no less on that still more venerable religio loci which attached imperial rights to Rome.  Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into the dust-heap of archaic curiosities.  By declaring his will to be crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of L’etat, c’est moi, and prepared the way for a Pope’s closing of a General Council by the word L’Eglise, c’est moi.  Charles had sufficient reasons for acting as he did.  The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first event of Charles the Great’s coronation, when it justified itself as a diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed more or less as a shadow.  Charles violated the duties which alone gave the semblance of a substance to that shadow.  As King of Italy, he had desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title.  As Emperor elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City.  As suitor to the Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed.  No Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles V., the last who took his crowns in Italy.  It was significant that he man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach Lombardy from the Empire, was by his own will invested at Bologna.  The citizens of Monza were accordingly bidden to send the iron crown to Bologna.  It arrived on February 20, and on the 22nd Charles received it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace.  The Cardinal who performed the ceremony of unction was a Fleming, William Hencheneor, who in the Sack of Rome had bought his freedom for the large sum of 40,000 crowns.  On this auspicious occasion he cut off half the beard which he still wore in sign of mourning!

The Duke and Duchess of Urbino made their entrance into Bologna on the same day.  Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Prefect of Rome, and Captain General of the armies of the Church, was one of the most noted warriors of that time.  Yet victory had rarely crowned his brows with laurels.  Imitating the cautious tactics of Braccio, and emulating the fame of Fabius Cunctator, he reduced the art of war to a system of manoeuvres, and rarely risked his fortune in the field.  It was chiefly due to his dilatory movements that the disaster of the Sack of Rome was not averted.  He had been expelled by Leo X. from his duchy to make room for Lorenzo de’Medici, and report ran that a secret desire to witness the