The troubles of the papacy continued, and at one time there were no fewer than three popes, each of whom had one of the three chief churches of Rome, and gave himself out for the only true pope. But this state of things was such a scandal that the emperor, Henry III., was invited from Germany to put an end to it, and for this purpose he held a council at Sutri, not far from Rome, in 1046. Two of the popes were set aside, and the third, Gregory VI., who was the best of the three, was drawn to confess that he had given money to get his office, because he wished to use the power of the papacy to bring about some kind of reform. But on this he was told that he had been guilty of simony--a sin which takes its name from Simon the sorcerer, in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. viii.), and which means the buying of spiritual things with money. This had never struck Gregory before; but when told of it by the council he had no choice but to lay aside his papal robes, and the emperor put one of his own German bishops into the papacy. CHAPTER VII. MISSIONS OF THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES. It will be pleasanter to tell you something about the missions of those times; for a great deal of missionary work was then carried on. (1.) The Bulgarians, who had come from Asia in the end of the seventh century, and had settled in the country which still takes its name from them, were converted by missionaries of the Greek Church. It is said that, when some beginning of the work had been made, and the king himself had been baptized by the patriarch of Constantinople (A.D. 861), the king asked the Greek emperor to send him a painter to adorn the walls of his palace; and that a monk named Methodius was sent accordingly, for in those times monks were the only persons who practised such arts as painting. The king desired him to paint a hall in the palace with subjects of a terrible kind, by which he meant that the pictures should be taken from the perils of hunting. But, instead of such subjects, Methodius painted the last judgment, as being the most terrible of all things; and the king, on seeing the picture of hell with its torments, and being told that such would be the future place of the heathen, was so terrified that he gave up the idols which he had kept until then, and that many of his subjects were also moved to seek admission into the Church. Although the conversion of Bulgaria had been the work of Greek missionaries, the popes afterwards sent some of their clergy into the country, and claimed it as belonging to them; and this was one of the chief causes why the Greek and the Latin churches separated from each other, so that they have never since been really reconciled.