Before long this religious and monastic zeal burnt so fiercely in Florence, that when its bishop, Pietro da Pavia, was accused of simony, all the people rose against him. The friars declared that he owed his high office to the favour of the emperor, and of Duke Goffredo and Beatrice his wife, and that he had bought their protection at a very heavy price. The multitude sided with the friars, and the quarrel was carried on for five years (1063-68), and with so much heat as to lead to bloodshed. The bishop, enraged by these accusations, and emboldened by the duke's favour, caused an armed attack to be made on the monastery of San Salvi near Florence. The first promoter of the religious movement, St. Giovanni Gualberto, was, fortunately for him, elsewhere at the time; but his altars were pillaged and several of his monks injured. This incident naturally added fuel to the fire, and St. Giovanni Gualberto, who had already inflamed men's minds by preaching in the city streets, now cast aside all reserve, and openly declared that no priests consecrated by a simoniacal bishop were real members of the clergy. The popular excitement rose to so high a pitch, that it is asserted that about a thousand persons preferred to die unassoiled, rather than receive the sacrament from priests ordained by a bishop guilty of simony.[75] Strange though it seem, this was by no means incredible in times of earnest religious faith! Pope Alexander II. vainly endeavoured to pacify the people; vainly sent the pious, learned, and eloquent St. Pier Damiano to achieve that end. The holy man came with the words of peace, afterwards repeated in his letters addressed to _Dilectis in Christo civibus florentinis_. He censured simony, but likewise blamed too easy credence of the charge. It were better, he said, for the Florentines to send representatives to the Synod in Rome, whose authority would decide the quarrel; meanwhile they must remain quiet, without yielding to the blind and heinous illusion that had left so many to die without the "sacraments" to their souls' peril. Woe to those who seek to be juster than the just, wiser than the wise. Through too great zeal, they end by joining the foes of the Church. Croaking even as frogs (_velut ranae in paludibus_), they throw everything into confusion, and may be likened to the plague of locusts in Egypt, since they bring equal destruction on the Church.[76]