Invective of the Bishop of Orleans against the Papacy of the time

The Papacy now seemed to have reached the utmost limit of its degradation. Not in Rome alone, but elsewhere, reverence for the Chair of Peter had been extinguished by the criminals who had filled it. The celebrated synod of Rheims, of the year 991, affords a striking proof of our assertion. Arnulf, Archbishop of this city, the first metropolis of France, had treacherously surrendered it into the power of his uncle Charles, Duke of Lorraine, and, at the instance of Hugh Capet, the usurper of the Carolingian throne, had been handed over for trial to an assembly of bishops. On the demand of a priest that the question should be referred to the supreme authority, the Pope, Arnulf, Bishop of Orleans, rose and spoke as follows:—‘O unfortunate Rome, in the silence of the past thou gavest our ancestors the light of the Fathers of the Church. Our times, however, thou hast darkened with a night so terrible as shall make them notorious even in the future. Once thou gavest us the renowned Leos, the great Gregories. What shall I say of Gelasius or of Innocent, who surpassed all the philosophers of the universe in wisdom and in learning?