The councils sought to put an end to this superstition. The sixteenth canon of the Council of Vannes, held in 465, forbade clerks, under pain of excommunication, to consult these _sortes sacræ_, as they were called. This prohibition was extended to the laity by the Council of Agde in 506, and by that of Orleans in 511. It was renewed repeatedly, as, for instance, in the Council of Auxerre in 595, by a capitulary of Charlemagne in 789, and by the Council of Selingstadt in 1022, but always in vain. If inquirers might not seek for answers in the churches, at the tombs of the Saints, they would seek them in the dens of necromancers. In spite of this condemnation, consultation of the divine oracles even formed a portion of the liturgy; and at the consecration of a bishop, at the moment when the Book of the Gospels was placed on his head, the volume was opened, and the first verse at the head of the page was regarded as a prognostication of the character of his episcopate. There are numerous accounts of such presages in the chronicles. Guibert of Nogent relates, for instance, that when Landric, elected Bishop of Noyon, was receiving episcopal unction, the text of the Gospel foreshadowed evil--"A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also." After having committed several crimes, he was assassinated. He had, as his successor, the Dean of Orleans; the new bishop on being presented for consecration, there was sought, in the Gospel, for a prognostication concerning him, but the page proved a blank. It was as though God had said, "With regard to this man I have nothing to say." And in fact he died a few months later.