Elected in the presence, and by the influence of Lothaires’s son, the Emperor Louis, he received from this prince a devotion unknown before: Louis seems to have thought he might honor without danger a creature of his own. The emperor then was seen to walk on foot before the pontiff act as his equery, lead his horse by the bridle, and thus realize, if not surpass, one of the directions of Constantine’s pretended ‘deed of gift,’ Such ceremonies could not remain without effect, and Nicholas delayed not to discover occasions of availing himself of them. The power of Charlemagne was at that time divided among his numerous descendants: there were sons of the Emperor Lothaire, to wit, Louis, the heir to the empire, Charles, King of Provence, and Lothaire, King of Lorraine. Their uncles Louis and Charles reigned, the one in Germany, the other in France; while the son of Pepin, king of Aquitaine, fallen from the throne of their father, resumed it but to descend from it once more. All these princes, almost equally deprived of information and of energy, weak in the first place by their numbers, became still more so by their discord: each of them employed against the other the principal part of his limited power; it remained for Nicholas only to declare himself their master, in order to become so, and he failed not to do it. An archbishop of Sens, named Venilon,. loaded with benefits by Charles the Bald, but stimulated to rebel against this monarch by Louis, King of Germany, had collected in the palace of Attichi some other disaffected prelates, and in conjunction with them pronounced the deposition of the King of France, loosing his subjects from their oaths, and declaring his crown to have devolved to his brother. This attempt had but one remarkable consequence; this was, the strange complaint made of it in 857 to a council held at Savonnieres,⁸⁴ “Venloon,” said he, “consecrated me in the Church of St. Croix in “Orleans; he promised never to depose me from “the royal dignity, without the concurrence of the “bishops who consecrated me with him: the bishops “are the thrones upon which God sits to promulgate “his decrees; I have always been, I am still in “clined to submit to their paternal corrections, but “only when they proceed regularly.” ⁸⁴ Libellas proclamationis adrersus Venilonem. Concil. vol. 8. p.79.