The chronicle of Tours gives the same description, adding only one remarkable particular, confirmed by the abbé Fleury and the abbé de Vertot--that the holy viaticum was excepted, like the baptism of infants, from the privation of holy things. The kingdom was in this situation for nine months; it was some time before Innocent III. permitted the preaching of sermons and the sacrament of confirmation. The king was so much enraged that he drove the bishops and all the other ecclesiastics from their abodes, and confiscated their property. But it is singular that the bishops were sometimes solicited by sovereigns themselves to pronounce an interdict upon lands of their vassals. By letters dated February, 1356, confirming those of Guy, count of Nevers, and his wife Matilda, in favor of the citizens of Nevers, Charles V., regent of the kingdom, prays the archbishops of Lyons, Bourges, and Sens, and the bishops of Autun, Langres, Auxerre, and Nevers, to pronounce an excommunication against the count of Nevers, and an interdict upon his lands, if he does not fulfil the agreement he has made with the inhabitants. We also find in the collection of the ordinances of the third line of kings, many letters like that of King John, authorizing the bishops to put under interdict those places whose privileges their lords would seek to infringe. And to conclude, though it appears incredible, the Jesuit Daniel relates that, in the year 998, King Robert was excommunicated by Gregory V., for having married his kinswoman in the fourth degree. All the bishops who had assisted at this marriage were interdicted from the communion, until they had been to Rome, and rendered satisfaction to the holy see. The people, and even the court, separated from the king; he had only two domestics left, who purified by fire whatever he had touched. Cardinal Damien and Romualde also add, that Robert being gone one morning, as was his custom, to say his prayers at the door of St. Bartholomew's church, for he dared not enter it, Abbon, abbot of Fleury, followed by two women of the palace, carrying a large gilt dish covered with a napkin, accosted him, announced that Bertha was just brought to bed; and uncovering the dish, said: "Behold the effects of your disobedience to the decrees of the Church, and the seal of anathema on the fruit of your love!" Robert looked, and saw a monster with the head and neck of a duck! Bertha was repudiated; and the excommunication was at last taken off. Urban II., on the contrary, excommunicated Robert's grandson, Philip I., for having put away his kinswoman. This pope pronounced the sentence of excommunication in the king's own dominions, at Clermont, in Auvergne, where his holiness was come to seek an asylum, in the same council in which the crusade was preached, and in which, for the first time, the name of pope (papa) was given to the bishop of Rome, to the exclusion of the other bishops, who had formerly taken it.