The episcopal chair, which at an earlier period had been filled by the votes of the people, and which subsequently came under the control of the Papacy, was at this time a gift in the hands of the untamed Merovingians, who carelessly bestowed it on him who could most lavishly fill the royal coffers, or who had earned it by courtly subservience or warlike prowess. The supple Roman or the turbulent Frank, who perchance could not recite a line of the Mass, thus leaped at once from the laity through all the grades;[248] and as he was most probably married, there can be no room for surprise if the rule of continence, thus suddenly assumed from the most worldly motives, should often prove unendurable. Even in the early days of the Frankish conquest we see a cultured noble, like Genebaldus, married to the niece of St. Remy, when placed in the see of Laon ostensibly putting his wife away and visiting her only under pretext of religious instruction, until the successive births of a son and a daughter—whom he named Latro and Vulpecula in token of his sin—and we may not unreasonably doubt the chronicler’s veracity when he informs us that the remorse of Genebaldus led him to submit to seven years’ imprisonment as an expiatory penance.[249] Equally instructive is the story of Felix of Nantes, whose wife, banished from his bed on his elevation to the episcopate, rebelled against the separation, and, finding him obdurate to her allurements, was filled with jealousy, believing that only another attachment could account for his coldness. Hoping to detect and expose his infidelity, she stole into the chamber where he was sleeping and saw on his breast a lamb, shining with heavenly light, indicative of the peaceful repose which had replaced all earthly passions in his heart.[250] A virtue which was regarded as worthy of so miraculous a manifestation must have been rare indeed among the illiterate and untutored nominees of a licentious court, and that it was so in fact is indicated by the frequent injunctions of the councils that bishops must regard their wives as sisters; while a canon promulgated by the council of Macon, in 581, ordering that no woman should enter the chamber of a bishop without two priests, or at least two deacons, in her company, shows how little hesitation there was in publishing to the world the suspicions that were generally entertained.[251] How the rule was sometimes obeyed by the wild prelates of the age, while trampling upon other equally well-known canons, is exemplified by the story of Macliaus of Britanny. Chanao, Count of Britanny, had made way with three of his brothers; the fourth, Macliaus, after an unsuccessful conspiracy, sought safety in flight, entered the church, and was created Bishop of Vannes. On the death of Chanao, he promptly seized the vacant throne, left the church, threw off his episcopal robes, and took back to himself the wife whom he had quitted on obtaining the see of Vannes—for all of which he was