The spirit of the age is likewise manifested in an appeal to Heaven which terminated a quarrel in the early part of the twelfth century between St. Gerald, Archbishop of Braga, and a magnate of his diocese, concerning the patronage of a church. Neither being inclined to yield, at length the noble prayed that God would decide the cause by not permitting the one who was in the wrong to live beyond the year, to which St. Gerald assented; and in six months the death of the unhappy noble showed how dangerous it was to undertake such experiments with a saint.[1197] This, indeed, may be held to have warrant of high authority, for when, in 336, Alexander Bishop of Constantinople was about to engage in disputation with the arch-heretic Arius, he underwent a long fast, and shut himself up for many days and nights alone in his church praying to God, and finally supplicating that if his faith were wrong he might not live to see the day of contest, while if Arius were in error he likewise might be taken off in advance; and the orthodoxy of the Nicene creed was confirmed miraculously by the sudden and terrible death of Arius within a few days.[1198] The error of the Arian doctrine of the Trinity was demonstrated by another volunteer miracle about the year 510, when Deuterius the Arian Bishop of Constantinople undertook to baptize a convert in the name of the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost, and was rebuked for using this heretical formula by the sudden disappearance of all the water in the font.[1199] With these examples may be classed a trial of faith proposed by Herigarius, one of the earliest Christian converts of Sweden, as conclusive, though not so dangerous as that of Bishop Poppo. After frequent disputes with his Pagan neighbors, he one day suggested, when a storm was approaching, that they should stand on one side and he on the other, and see which of them would get wet. The rain came down in torrents and nearly drowned the heathen scoffers, while Herigarius and a boy in his company serenely looked on, untouched by a single drop.[1200]