Pope Paul I to the Lords and kings Charles and Carloman (c. 761-766):
I ask you, most excellent sons, to
imitate your most Christian father and follow in his footsteps pleasing to
God, so that, as he revealed to all peoples through his works, you may complete
the good works that he began, to strive manfully with him to secure the most complete
raising up of God’s holy church, when through your help the blessed Peter
recovers his rights. The result will be that, through the intercession of the
same blessed Peter prince of the apostles and in the presence of God and his
angels, you will receive the well-deserved recompense of a heavenly reward, and
the memory of your name with a laudable reputation will spread widely and abide
for ever. (Codex Epistolaris Carolinus: Letters from the Popes to the
Frankish Rulers, 739-791 [trans. Richard Price; Translated Texts for
Historians 77; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021], 275)
Pope
Hadrian I to Lord King Charles (c. May-October 783):
We therefore entreat your
God-protected royal authority through the blessed Peter prince of the apostles,
to whom the Lord gave power to bind and to loose sins in heaven and on earth,
and through the holy baptism that we share through the Holy Spirit, that your
radiant face withhold welcome from their insolence, and that you give these
criminals no honorable reception. Instead, we ask that they, as enemies both of
the blessed Peter and of yourself, renounce their haughty boasts and are led to
us in disgrace by your most faithful envoys, so that we may prove in their
presence everything we have said, in order that they may punish those who commit
such heinous and malevolent acts, and so that the unstained offering that was
made by your father of holy memory, lord Pippin, the great king, and confession
of the blessed Peter, key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, may remain
entire and secure forever. For then your protector the blessed Peter the
apostle will appear before the judgment seat of Christ to win for you a worthy
reward, and just as in this earthly kingdom he guards and protects you, mighty
in triumph, together with your most eminent progeny and all the faithful
Franks, so in the heights of heaven he will make you reign without end with all
the saints (Codex Epistolaris Carolinus: Letters from the Popes to the
Frankish Rulers, 739-791 [trans. Richard Price; Translated Texts for
Historians 77; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021], 355)
