“God has given “you the powers to judge us; but you cannot be “judged by any man. God has established you as “gods over us, and it becomes not men to be the “judges of gods. That can belong to him alone “of whom it is written, God has seated himself in “the temple of the gods and judges them.” Here, then, we certainly behold the question respecting the two powers more clearly laid down than ever it had been; for they could not be more decisively reduced to one only. While councils were giving Louis these lessons; while he was sending Judith into the bosom of a cloister, and was thinking of assuming himself the monastic gown; his sons and the abbot Vala strove to compel him to do so, and would have succeeded, if another monk, in sowing discord among the three brothers, had not restored to their father some moments of repose and vigour. He recalled Judith, exiled Vala, deprived Lothaire of the title of emperor, and, incapable of prudence, abandoned himself in such degree to the counsels of his ambitious and vindictive wife, that he disinherited Pepin in favor of Charles, and even alienated the minister Bernard. Immediately the revolt revived; and here commences the part which Gregory IV. played in these disgraceful scenes. The pope allied himself with the three princes: he entered France with Lo-thaire—entered it without the permission of his sovereign, what none of his predecessors had done. At the first report of the anathema he was about to thunder against the emperor, some French prelates had the courage to say, that if Gregory was come to excommunicate, he should return excommunicated himself;⁷⁸ but Agobard, bishop of Lyons, and many of his colleagues, said, that the pope must be obeyed. Gregory, on his part, addressed to the partisans of Louis a memorable letter, in which the secular power is, without any ambiguity, subjected to the Holy See.⁷⁹ “The term of brother savours “of equality,” said he to the prelates who had so addressed him; “it is the title of *father* which you “owe me: know that my chair is above Lewis’s “throne.” In the mean time Lothario and his two brothers collect their troops in Alsace; Gregory joins them, and quits them only to appear in Louis’s camp in quality of mediator. ⁷⁸ Si excoiwmunicaturua adveniret, excommunicatus abiret, cum aliter se haberet antiquorum canonum autoritas.—Vit. hud. Pii. in Coll. of Hist, of France, vol. 6. p. 113. ⁷⁹ Agobardi Oper. vol. p. p. 53.