Then follows another letter from the Pope, which might have been drawn up by a modern conveyancer.  It recites the whole of the previous correspondence, and, referring to Joannitz’s request for a crown, his Holiness says he has had the registers carefully searched, and finds that it is true many kings were crowned, and, moreover, that in the time of his predecessor, Pope Nicolas, the King of the Bulgarians, who had often sought his advice, had been baptized with his whole nation.  Afterwards, he says, at the request of Michael of Bulgaria, Pope Adrian sent a subdeacon and some priests, but, in consequence of the bribes and promises of the Greeks, the Bulgarians cast them out and took Greek priests in their stead.  In consequence of this ‘light behaviour,’ therefore, he could not see his way clear to send any of his brothers the cardinals.  Still he had decided to send his chaplain Johannes as a nuncio of the Apostolic chair, and, commending him to his good offices (in the usual terms), he wished him to understand that he was fully empowered to improve everything of a spiritual character in the realm.  He also sent by him a robe (pallium) for the archbishop of his country, and a bull announcing the form and nature of the investiture.  In fact this nuncio was authorised to ordain bishops and priests, and generally to substitute the Roman Catholic for the Greek faith.  As to the crown there seems still to have been a hitch.  The nuncio was to look up the older books and documents and learn all about the ancient manner of proceeding, so that ’we [the Pope] may with greater celerity make the needful arrangements.’  And he bids him warn his ‘nobles’ also to treat the nuncio with proper deference.

Joannitz did his utmost to comply with the Papal behest.  An archbishopric and two bishoprics were founded, and the ‘Golden Bull’ was promulgated, in which it was announced that Joannitz intended to receive his crown and investiture at the hands of the Universal Priest, Innocent III., and that certain ecclesiastical functionaries (naming them) had been established by the Church of Rome, and thereby received his (Joannitz’s) sanction, which had previously been accorded to them by his ancestors.[127] He also sent presents to the Pope as a token of submission; and all these matters having been duly weighed and considered by his Holiness, he at length nominated Joannitz King of the Wallachs and Bulgarians, and sent him the much-coveted crown and sceptre by the hands of Leo, a cardinal of the Order of the Holy Cross, &c., who was commissioned on his behalf to perform the ceremony of coronation.  Lauriani concludes the correspondence and narrative by saying that ’this Empire of the Roumanians flourished from the year of our Lord 1186, in which it was restored by the brothers Peter and Asan, under the best and bravest kings of the family of Asanidae, until the year 1285, when it was disturbed, but not destroyed, by the inroads of the Tartars.  After the Turks had begun to make irruptions into the European provinces, in the fourteenth century, it was brought under the yoke by the Sultan Bajazet towards the close of that century, and wholly annihilated in the year 1392.’