In 847 Archbishop Otgar died, and Ludwig the German elevated his friend Rabanus to the see of Mainz, the metropolitan see of Germany. Since Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon “Apostle of Germany,” who had succeeded to this dignity a century earlier, there had been no man of such eminence at the head of the German Church, nor have any of his successors surpassed him. His first care was the restoration of the discipline, which had decayed under the confusions of those dark days of civil war. A great synod met at Mainz in October, Rabanus having been consecrated in June. Besides the prelates, abbots and monks of all orders attended, and the canons adopted had reference to stricter life as the obligation of the clergy. The year was not over before news of fresh trouble reached him. One of his own pupils at Fulda, the monk Gottschalk, a man of restless intellect, was reported as spreading an exaggerated version of Augustine’s doctrine of absolute predestination, and one which threatened to overturn the very idea of human responsibility. Gottschalk evidently was one of the people who love to walk on the fence rather than in the road—to carry every principle with ruthless logic to its remotest conclusion. The first news of his extravagances reached Rabanus in a letter from Italy setting forth the doctrines his former pupil was teaching. He at once responded in a letter (or rather a treatise) taking the same ground as the semi-Pelagians had done in the controversy with the school of Augustine, ground sanctioned by Gregory the Great, Beda, and Alcuin, although thought unsafe when first defended by Gennadius and John Cassian. Gottschalk seems to have accepted the reply as a sort of challenge. The next year, 848, he made his way to Mainz, and when Rabanus called together an assembly of churchmen and laymen—not a regular synod—he appeared before it with a confession of his faith in which he replied to the arguments of Rabanus. The assembly failed to convince him of his being in error, and at the king’s suggestion a pledge was exacted of him that he would never return to Germany. Hincmar of Rheims, the metropolitan of the Church of France, made sure of his keeping this pledge. As Gottschalk was handed over to him by King Ludwig, with a letter of explanation from Rabanus, he had him condemned by the Synod of Quiercy (853) to deposition from the priesthood, corporal chastisement until he should burn his confession with his own hands, and lifelong imprisonment. So ended, in 867, this Calvinist of the ninth century, without much credit to anybody who had a hand in his fate, but with least of discredit to Rabanus.