To this salutary admonition Beccatelli replied in a long epistle, in which he endeavoured to extenuate his fault, by quoting as precedents the occasional pruriences of composition of a long list of ancient poets and philosophers. He also attempted to vindicate himself by a few sophistical arguments.[308] His reasoning was easily confuted by Poggio, who in a second letter examined with laudable acuteness his precedents and arguments, and fully demonstrated their insufficiency to vindicate the licentiousness of imagery which disgusted every modest reader, whose eyes happened to glance upon the impure pages of the Hermaphroditus.[309] Whilst Eugenius was thus employed in subduing the heresy of the east, he laboured under the high displeasure of the synod of Basil. After a repetition of the various processes which had been issued against him when he first refused to acknowledge their authority, the rebellious fathers proceeded on the twenty-fifth of June, 1439, to depose him from his pontifical honours. In the act of deposition which they passed against him, they impeached him of contumacy and disobedience to the commands of the church—they declared that he was a violator of the canons, a disturber of unity, guilty of simony and perjury. They furthermore denounced him as an incorrigible schismatic and heretic, and a destroyer of the rights and possessions of the church.[310] On the fifth of November, 1439, they filled up the measure of their offences by electing Amedeus, duke of Savoy, to the pontifical chair.[311] Amedeus, wearied by the cares of government, had lately resigned the ducal sceptre to his eldest son, and had withdrawn to the hermitage of Ripaille, a tranquil spot delightfully situated on the southern side of the lake of Geneva, where he proposed to dedicate the remainder of his days to devout meditation and prayer. When the intelligence of his election to the pontificate was announced to him, he lamented the severity of his destiny, which summoned him again to mingle in the cares and temptations of a wicked world: but either seduced by the charms of pontifical authority, or regarding the voice of the representatives of the Christian community as the voice of God, he repaired to Basil, where the ceremony of his coronation was performed with studied magnificence, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1440.[312]