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595] When he became pope the royal power of the Merovingians was at its height: in a few years it would totter to its fall, but now the clergy were submissive and the bishops for the most part the creatures of the court. When he died the claims of Rome to supremacy were established, even if they were not fully admitted. With Gaul throughout his pontificate he maintained close relations. Gregory of Tours tells with what joy his namesake's election was received by the Franks, and from the first sets himself to tell his doings and sayings with an unusual minuteness. Within a year of his accession the new pope was called upon to judge the bishops of Arles and Marseilles, whom Jewish merchants accused to him of endeavouring forcibly to convert them: Gregory reproved and urged the bishops rather to preach and persuade than to coerce. Again, he reproved Vergilius of Arles and the bishop of Autun for allowing the marriage of a nun, commanding them to bring the woman to penitence, and exhorting them with all authority. He intervened in the affairs of monasteries, granting privileges and exemptions in a manner which shews the nature of the authority he claimed. By his advice the difficult questions raised by the insanity of a bishop in the province of Lyons were settled. He claimed to judge a Frankish bishop and restore him to his see, though here he felt it necessary to explain and justify his conduct to the masterful Brunhild. He is found reproving the iconoclastic tendencies of Serenus of Marseilles, and ordering him to replace the images which he has thrown down. He gave directions as to the holding of church councils, he advised bishops as to the administration of their dioceses and the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline. His correspondence with bishops and monks was constant, the requests to him to intervene in the affairs of the Gallican Church were frequent. Thus he prepared himself to inaugurate in Gaul a decisive and necessary reform.

Here he came into direct relations with the kings. In 595 Childebert of Austrasia applied to him for a recognition of the powers, as papal representative, of the bishop of Arles — evidence of the survival of the traditional idea of dependence on the Roman Church. In granting the request Gregory took occasion to develop his scheme of ecclesiastical discipline. Simony, interference with the election of bishops, the nomination of laymen to the episcopate, were crying evils: and the kings were responsible for them. He believed that the Frankish monarchy, the purity of whose faith shone by comparison with the dark treachery of other peoples, would rejoice to carry out his wishes; and in the notorious Brunhild he strangely found a deep religious sense and good dispositions which should bear fruit in the salvation of men: to her he repeated the desires which he had expressed to Childebert and urged her to see that they were carried out. He applied to her to put down crime, idolatry, paganism, to prevent the possession by Jews of Christian slaves — with what success we do not know. Unsuccessful certainly he was when he