This imperial idea, with the passage of time and the growth of Papal power, became even more established and took on sharper contours. For the Bishop of Rome understood himself to be not only the successor and representative of St Peter, and, in consequence, the primus inter pares, but also the person to whom, in the light of that succession, the Lord entrusted apostolic power over all of Christianity, being the defender of the Saviour’s flock. These attempts at obtaining sovereignty and dominion, at first only in the spiritual realm, were propped up in every possible way by the see of the Bishop of Rome and the city of Rome itself, with which the imperium orbis was identified in the eyes of the world. Since the Frankish kings more than once protected the Bishop of Rome from dangers that t
