So far was this liability to the duel from being deemed a hardship by the turbulent spirits of the period, that clerks not infrequently disdained to sustain their rights by the intervention of a champion, and boldly entered the lists themselves. In 1080 the Synod of Lillebonne adopted a canon punishing by a fine such belligerent churchmen as indulged in the luxury of duels without having first obtained from their bishops a special license authorizing it.[468] About the same period, Geoffrey, Abbot of Vendôme, in a letter to the Bishop of Saintes, complains of one of his monks who had fought in a judicial duel with a clerk of Saintes.[469] The practice continued, and though forbidden by Pope Innocent II. in 1140,[470] Alexander III. and Clement III. found it necessary to repeat the prohibition before the close of the century.[471] Yet Alexander, when appealed to with respect to a priest of the Campagna who had lost a finger in a duel, decided that neither the offence nor the mutilation debarred him from the exercise of his sacerdotal functions, and only directed him to undergo due penance.[472] The progress of the age, however, was shown when, about thirty years afterwards, Celestin III. pronounced sentence of deposition in a similar case submitted to him;[473] and this was formally and peremptorily confirmed by Innocent III. at the great council of Lateran in 1215.[474] That the peaceful ministers of Christ should vindicate their rights with the sword, either personally or by proxy, was a sacrilege abhorrent to pious minds. As early as the middle of the ninth century, Nicholas I., who did so much to establish the supremacy of the church, endeavored to emancipate it from this necessity, and declared that the duel was not recognized by ecclesiastical law.[475] The utmost privilege which the secular law accorded the clergy, however, was the right of presenting a champion in the lists, which zealous churchmen naturally resented as an arbitrary injustice.[476] How thoroughly it was carried out in practice, notwithstanding all remonstrances, is shown by a charter granted in 1024 by St. Stephen of Hungary to the monastery of St. Adrian of Zala, by which, among other privileges, the pious king bound himself to supply a champion in all suits against the abbey, in order that the holy meditations of the monks might not be interrupted.[477] Not long after, in 1033, the celebrated abbey of St. Clement at Pescara was involved in a dispute concerning some lands which had been cut off from its possessions by a change in the course of the river Pescara, and had been seized by the lords of the contiguous territory. At an assembly of the magnates of the district it was adjudged that the matter must be settled by the duel. The night before the combat was to take place the holy abbot Guido, after enjoining earnest prayers by all the monks, sallied forth alone to the banks of the stream and stretching forth his staff adjured the