In 855 the Council of Valence, nothing dismayed at having to deal with a foe who was acquainted with Greek, examined his writings, declared certain propositions extracted from his treatise on Predestination to be the invention of the devil, and everywhere interdicted them from being read. Nevertheless, Erigena was not removed from his post at court; nor was it until ten years later, in 865, that he found himself obliged to retire, in consequence of the remonstrances addressed to the king by Pope Nicholas I., who required his removal from the Palatine academy, “where he was giving poison instead of bread, and mingling his tares with the wheat.” All authorities agree in regarding him as intellectually superior to any man of his age, though it is possible that his heterodox principles have had some share in winning him the extraordinary favour which he has found at the hands of Hallam and Guizot, who are willing, naturally enough, to make the most of one who in the Dark Ages set at nought the claims of authority, and raised the standard of independent reason. In spite, however, of the prominent position which he holds among men of letters, and the noisy eulogiums which have been heaped on him at the expense of his more orthodox contemporaries, I shall say no more of him in this place than that he withdrew from Gaul,[90] and was succeeded in his office as Palatine scholasticus by the monk Mannon, who, after teaching with success for some years, returned to his monastery at Condat; after which we hear no more of the Palatine school till its revival, at the beginning of the tenth century, under the famous Remigius of Auxerre.