Although the nations and the laws of Europe ceased to be pagan, and became Christianised, the Church, with its haughty claims and well-learned rulers, sought for autonomy. Had not the Apostle Paul said that they should judge angels,[294] and that the saints some day should judge, the world?[295] After such a text it was easy to claim that the Emperor Constantine had declared at the great Council of Nicaea[296] (in A.D. 325) that priests could be judged by God, but not by men. The clergy wanted to be tried by their peers, and looked askance at the other Courts; the times were given over to violence, the punishments were always sanguinary, and the lay lords and judges were exceedingly rapacious.[297] If there were no more open pagans in high places, there came along various heretics certain to be abhorred at least equally. So the Church started on a long contention, in which there were many struggles, with local victories and defeats in different countries. In the earlier period the State was the stronger; a law of Gratian[298] (fourth century) reserved to the Secular Court all but the slight offences of the clergy. It was laid down at the Council of Agde in 506,[299] and again at the Council of Epaone in 517,[300] that while the clergy should not appeal to the civil power as plaintiffs,[301] they were to attend if summoned to the Secular Courts. At a Council of Macon in 581[302] it is implied that criminal cases were to be conceded to them. At the same time the clergy were forbidden to accuse one another before civil magistrates.[303] The fear and jealousy of the Secular Courts persisted; by a Canon of the Third Council of Orleans (A.D. 538),[304] the bishop’s permission was to be given before a cleric could attend as plaintiff or defendant. By the fourth Canon of the Fifth Council of Paris (A.D. 615),[305] no judge was to try any ecclesiastic without first giving notice to his ordinary; this order is repeated in a Capitulary of Charlemagne of A.D. 769. Pope Gregory the Great (540–604)[306] had contended for the principle that a clerical defendant was entitled to be tried by his own Court, and this was established by Welsh Canons of the seventh century.[307] A Capitulary of Charlemagne gave the bishops criminal jurisdiction over the clergy,[308] though the emperor reserved to himself the right of final decision in all cases.[309] By the year 853 his grandson, the superstitious Charles the Bald, was appealing to the bishops at Soissons against the person of a humble clerk who was accused of forging the royal signature.[310] In A.D. 866[311] Pope Nicholas I., in his advice to the Bulgarians, declared that laymen had no right to scrutinise or condemn any priests, who were to be left to the control of their prelates. The Council of Ravenna in 877[312] ordered that none who were under the bishops’ guardianship should be seized by the seculars.