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Pope Adrian protested against his deposition, but it was confirmed in 876 by Pope John VIII., and it was not until 878, at the council of Troyes, that the unfortunate prelate was reconciled with the Church.

John VIII. installed the 14th December 872, died Dec. 888 Charles the Bold crowned emperor in 875, and Charles the Fat in 880.

He wrote the king a letter so full of professions of regard, of praises, and of promises, that it contained the request to keep it very secret: but it became and remains public.97 Adrian died a short time after having written it, and John VIII. succeeded him in December, 872.

The excommunications so familiar to Gregory III. to Nicholas I. and to John VIII. menace, therefore, less frequently crowned heads.

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.