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Rh concerns committed to their care. They had gradually accustomed themselves to the idea that the Empire ought to be the realisation upon earth of the "City of God," the ideal city, planned by St Augustine. The study of St Augustine had been the mental food of Bishops, learned clerks and princes themselves, and in their complaints the clergy had always a source of inspiration in the complaints echoed four centuries earlier by St Augustine and his followers. The Empire was hastening to its ruin because religion was no longer honoured, because every man was concerned only for his own interests and was careless of the higher interests of the Church, because instead of brotherliness and concord only cupidity and selfishness reigned unchecked. If the Empire were to be saved, the first thing to be done was to recall every man to Christian sentiments and to the fear of God.

Whatever work of the period we open, whether we go to the letters written at the time by the clergy, or whether we examine the considerations on which the demands made by their synods to the king are based, we shall find the same arguments upon the necessity of reverting to the Christian principles which had constituted the strength of the Empire and had been the condition of its existence. For the deacon Florus, the decadence of the Empire is merely one aspect of the decadence of the Church at the period when the Empire flourished "the clergy used to meet frequently in councils, to give holy laws to the people"; to-day, he goes on, there is nothing but conciliabula of men greedy of lands and benefices, "the general interest is not regarded, everyone is concerned about his own affairs, all things command attention except God." The conclusion of the whole matter is, he says, that "all is over with the honour of the Church" and that "the majesty of the State is a prey to the worst of furies." The same reflections may be found in Paschasius Radbertus, biographer of the Abbot Wala; the whole of the disorder in the State arises from the disappearance of religion, the imperial power has made shipwreck at the same time as the authority of the Church. Wala's comment, as he made his appearance amidst the partisans of Lothar on the morrow of the penance at St Medard's, is well known: "It is all perfect, save that you have left naught to God of all that was due to Him."

To restore to the "Church of God" and to its ministers the honour that is their due, such is the sheet-anchor which the Episcopate offers to sovereigns. Over and over again during the years that followed the death of Louis the Pious and the partition of Verdun, the Bishops press upon rulers the necessity of acting "with charity," and in cases where any error has been committed, of doing penance, and, as a document of 841 expresses it, "asking the forgiveness of the Lord according to the exhortation and counsel of the priests." And these exhortations bear fruit; in April 845, while a synod was sitting at Beauvais, the King of France, Charles the Bald, after swearing on the hilt of his sword in the