In 751, Pippin III deposed the last Merovingian king, Childeric III (743–51), assumed the kingship of the Franks and, three years later, along with his wife and two sons Charlemagne and Carloman, was anointed with holy oil when he received the sacrament of confirmation from Pope Stephen. Few historians now believe that the accession of the Carolingian dynasty abruptly transformed the ideological basis of Frankish kingship, replacing a formerly pagan, Germanic sacrality with a Christian one. Merovingian kings, as their Carolingian successors, considered themselves responsible for protecting and patronizing the church, and spreading the faith. It recently has been argued that Pippin likely never was constituted king by anointing, and that the confirming of Pippin's family developed into a king-making ceremony only later. Whatever the precise circumstances surrounding Pippin's accession, the anointing of the royal family by means of a sacramental ritual imported from Rome and Pippin's special relationship to the vicar of St Peter were perceived to be propitious for the new dynasty, marking the culmination of a process that dated from the previous century when a new aristocratic consciousness emerged in the wake of Irish missions. As powerful Frankish families legitimized themselves through the foundation, patronage and staffing of monasteries, the kingship, perhaps inevitably, was adapted to the piety of the elite. In contrast to the Merovingians, the Carolingians infused the kingship with monastic spirituality and presided over an empire regulated by common assemblies of lay and ecclesiastical lords.