It is decreed by one of the canons of this council, that the bishops shall be treated with respect by the secular authorities, and that none must be so bold as to be seated before them without their invitation.⁹⁹ One of the projects of John VIII. was to exercise over the affairs of France a more immediate and habitual influence, through the medium of a legate of the Holy See; already even he had clothed with this title Angesius, archbishop of Sens: but this novelty was not pleasing to the other prelates, nor too much so to the monarch. Hincmair, especially, opposed it earnestly: he wrote a treatise to shew how pernicious it must be; and his brethren, instructed by his lessons and animated by his example, persevered in repelling this undertaking. The pope was indeed willing to relinquish it: in truth, he had much preferred obtaining military and pecuniary succours against the Saracens; but these were more abundantly promised than granted. Sergius, duke of the Neapolitans, continued to favour the Saracens, notwithstanding the anathemas of Rome, and in despite of the remonstrances of his brother Athanasius, bishop of Naples. Athanasius took the resolution to tear out Sergius’s eyes, and proclaim himself duke in his place. It is painful to relate, that the pope highly approved this crime, or as Fleury has it, ‘this proceeding:’¹⁰⁰ ⁹⁹ Concilior. vol. 9. p. 208. ¹⁰⁰ Eccles. Hist. b. 52, n. 47.4 But the letters are preserved which John wrote on this occasion,¹⁰¹ and in which he applauds Athanasius for having preferred God to his brother, and having, according to the precept of the gospel, ‘plucked out the eye’ that scandalized him. This barbarous, and almost ludicrous, application of a sacred text, opens to our view the character of John VIII. whose three hundred and twenty letters speak so perpetually of excommunication, that this menace presents itself as an ordinary and, as we may say, an indispensable formula. In 880, John disposed of the imperial crown; he gave it on Christmas-day to the son of Louis the Gorman, Charles-le-Gros, who in 884 became king of France, by the death of Louis III. and of Carlo-man, son of Louis the Stammerer. The names of these princes suffice to remind us of the decline of the Carlovingian race. A bishop of France wrote one day to Louis III.¹⁰² “It was not you who chose “me to govern the church; but it was I, with my “colleagues, who chose you to govern the kingdom, “on condition of observing its laws.” ¹⁰¹ Joannis Epist ob.67. ¹⁰² Millofs Elem. of Hist, of France, vol. 1. p. 194. And the bishop who held such language to his king, was the same Hincmar of Rheims, who had so energetically repelled the daring enterprizes of Adrian II. It seemed decreed that the monarch should have for his master, either the national clergy or the bishop of Rome; and already insecure against one of these powers, he inevitably sunk when they united.