A story that is told at length in the _Liber Pontificalis_ affords another instance of this assertion of spiritual autocracy and its encouragement by appeals from the provinces. The Pope was informed that John of Ravenna abused his power; bishops complained that he quartered himself and his expensive retinue on them for unreasonable periods and made other exacting demands. When John received letters of remonstrance and legates from Rome, he forbade his subjects to appeal to the Pope, and strengthened his authority by falsifying the documents in his archives: a crime at which the Roman Anastasius expresses the most naïve surprise and indignation. When Nicholas summoned him to appear before a Roman synod, John "boasted" that he was not subject to the Bishop of Rome, and, when the synod excommunicated him, he appealed to the Emperor. He then went, with the support of imperial legates, to beard Nicholas in the Lateran, but the Pope astutely detached the legates from him and he returned in concern to Ravenna. In this case the prelate was unpopular and unjust, so that Nicholas had a good local base for his authority. He went in person to Ravenna, and before long men pointed the finger of scorn or of horror at their proud Archbishop as he rode through the streets. The Emperor abandoned him, and in a few months we find John at Rome, humbly submitting to the rod, placing the written record of his penitence on the holy sandals of the Saviour. A remarkable extension of this authority is attempted in a letter which Nicholas addressed to King Charles in 867. The dispute about predestination which then agitated clerical Europe, and gave some fallacious promise of a revival of intellect, had been submitted to Nicholas in the early days of his Pontificate. Nicholas was, like all the great Popes, a statesman and canonist, not a theologian. He prudently remained silent, and let Franks and Germans belabour each other with theological epithets. When, however, he heard that Charles had invited the famous John Scotus Erigena, the subtlest thinker of the early Middle Ages, to translate a supposed work of Denis the Areopagite (_De Divinis Nominibus_), he reproved the King for issuing so important a book without having submitted it to Rome.[162] We do not find that Charles took any notice of his claim of censorship, or sent him a copy of the book. It is a good illustration of the attitude of Rome that a thinker like Scotus Erigena, in whose works we plainly recognize the most advanced heresy that arose in Europe before the eighteenth century, incurred so little censure. Nicholas merely complains that the learned Irishman is rumoured to be not entirely sound in theology.