“The bishops carried out, with as much dignity as benevolence, their sublime mission of sympathizing with the people and those who were oppressed; having a paternal solicitude for their flock, they placed themselves face to face with conquerors, whom they knew how to pacify and to conciliate. The veneration with which they were surrounded and the holiness of their lives earned them the respect even of Attila and Genseric. They were entrusted with the embassies, and they administered in the room of magistrates, whose power had been crushed. Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia, was sent to the Burgundian kings Gundibald and Godegesil, to procure the release of a number of Italian prisoners, whom he brought back with him in triumph. When the Ligurians were ravaged by the incursions of the Transalpines, the king remitted, at the prayer of the bishop, one-third of the indemnity. St. Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles, sold the patens and chalices to ransom the prisoners. Euspicius, Bishop of Sergiopolis, upon the Euphrates, paid Chosroës for the ransom of twelve thousand prisoners. St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, gave away even his own tunic by way of charity; ‘so that,’ to use the language of an artless chronicler, ‘he was often shivering with cold, while those upon whom he had bestowed his favours were warm.’” The bishops were sometimes obliged to exercise the duties of royalty. Honorius, of Novara, when Theodoric and Odoacer were at war, fortified, in order to give shelter to his flock, a certain number of places similar to those in which the military were garrisoned. Nicetius, Bishop of Trèves, “an apostolic man, in his progress through the country, constructed, like a good shepherd that he was, a fold to protect his flock; he surrounded the hill with thirty towers, which shut it in on all sides, and an edifice rose where hitherto a forest had cast its shadow.”