Easter of 787 was spent by King Charles in Rome, and this visit, like that of five years before was followed by a further development of the contest between him and Duke Tassilo. Doubtless the hollow reconciliation of 782 had been followed by mutual suspicion and estrangement: and the Bavarian duke must have felt that, with the Saxon rebellion now apparently quelled, his turn for subjugation would come next. While the king was still in Rome, there appeared in that city two Bavarian envoys, Arno Bishop of Salzburg, and Huneric Abbot of Mond See, who besought the pope to mediate between Charles and their master. The pope, as before, expressed his hearty goodwill towards Tassilo, and an interview between king and envoys followed in his presence. But when Charles called upon the bishop and the abbot to state what guarantee their master had empowered them to give for the fulfilment, this time, of his often violated promises, they could only answer that they had no instructions on this head, being not plenipotentiaries on Tassilo’s behalf, only messengers whose duty it was to carry back to their master the propositions of the king and pontiff. Apparently, then, the duke had reverted to that old position of all but equality with the Frankish king which he took up twenty-four years before at the time of the great _harisliz_, and the solemnly plighted oaths sworn at Worms were to go for nothing. Hadrian was not less indignant than Charles at this exhibition of fickleness and bad faith, and appears to have visited his displeasure on the two churchmen-ambassadors themselves, telling them that they and their master were all liars together, and that they should all be visited by the papal anathema unless Tassilo kept the oaths which he had sworn to Charles and to Pippin. We have here one of the earliest instances of that use of ecclesiastical censures to enforce political claims which was so characteristic a feature of the Middle Ages.