A test of this principle came in the case of Hincmar, the able and powerful Archbishop of Rheims. In 861 he summarily suspended Rathod, Bishop of Soissons, for disobeying the sentence of a provincial synod in reinstating a priest whom he had unjustly expelled. Rathod at once appealed to the Pope and asked permission of Hincmar to go to Rome to present his suit. Hincmar refused the request and called Rathod before a second synod for contempt, when he was degraded from his office and imprisoned in a monastery. Once more Rathod made a touching appeal to Nicholas I.[342:1] who forthwith rebuked Hincmar and ordered him to restore Rathod to his see, and to send him to Rome. King Charles the Bald was ordered, "by his love to God and his duty to the Holy See," to see that the order was enforced. Both Hincmar and Charles refused and Rathod remained a prisoner for two years. Papal power was on trial, but Nicholas I. was equal to the situation. At last Charles was persuaded to intervene. Rathod was released and sent to Rome, but was not reinstated in his bishopric. The Pope reinstated him to office. To prove his authority he quoted the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which the Frankish clergy had framed to insure their own independence.[342:2] Hincmar remonstrated, but in the end was forced to apologise and obey. "Thus," complained Hincmar, "was a criminal, solemnly deposed by the unanimous judgment of five ecclesiastical provinces of this realm, reinstated by the Pope, not by ordinary canonical rule, but by an arbitrary act of power, in a summary way, without inquiry, and against the consent of his natural judges." Metropolitan independence was crushed, the royal power was forced to obey by the awful threat of excommunication, and papal supremacy was triumphant. Truly a new epoch had appeared in the rise of the mediæval Church, when the Pope could proudly declare that "the privileges of the Holy See are the panoply of the Church and title-deeds of him who is the supreme lord of the priesthood for the government of all in authority under him and for the comfort of every one that shall suffer wrong or injury from subordinate powers"[343:1]; that "the action of synods, general or provincial, might be peremptorily arrested by a simple appeal to Rome . . . at any stage of the proceeding"; that every bishop must give lawful obedience to the "King of Bishops"; and that "any one, without exception of person, who shall disobey the doctrine, mandates, interdicts, or decretals, published by the Apostolic Bishop on behalf of the Catholic faith, the discipline of the Church, the correction of the faithful, the reformation of evil-doers, and the discouragement of vice, let him be accursed."[343:2]