"The ideal of Napoleon was the Empire of Constantine, and of Theodosius. He inherited this tradition as did all the Italian Ghibellines, from his ancestors... Instead of assisting the liberation of the individual conscience, he always postulated a Pope, of whom he would be the Emperor and master. It is a conception which takes its origins from the idea of the Ghibellines and the medieval commentators. When he dreams of the future it is always of the submissive world of a Justinian or a Theodosius, as imagined by the medieval imperialist thinkers. In the midst of such concepts modern freedom seemed an anachronism; worse, to him it could appear only as the people's whim, as a snare for his power."