addressed to the bishops and archbishops a letter enjoining them to excommunicate this impious man, if he refused to repent. Ivo then appeared as arbiter of the situation. "These pontifical letters," he writes to the king's seneschal, "ought to have been published already, but out of love for the king I have had them kept back, because I am determined, as far as is in my power, to prevent a rising of the kingdom against him."
He was fully informed of all that was said or done of any importance; in 1094 he knew that the king meant to deceive the Pope, and had sent messengers to Rome; he warned Urban II, putting him on his guard against the lies which they were charged to convey to him. Later on, in the time of Pope Paschal II, it was he who finally preached moderation with success, who arranged everything with the Pope for the "reconciliation" of the king. There is no ecclesiastical business in the kingdom of which he does not carefully keep abreast, ready, if it be useful, to intervene to support his candidate for a post, and to give advice to bishop or lord. Not only does he denounce to the Pope the impious audacity of Ralph (Ranulf) Flambard, Bishop of Durham, who in 1102 had seized on the bishopric of Lisieux in the name of one of his sons, but he calls on the Archbishop of Rouen and the other bishops of the province to put an end to these disorders. He does even more, he writes to the Count of Meulan to urge him to take representations without delay, on his behalf, to the King of England whose duty it is not to tolerate such a scandal.
At a period when religion, though ordinarily of a very rude type, was spreading in all directions, and when the gravest political questions which came up were those of Church policy, a prelate who, like Ivo of Chartres, knew how to speak out and to gain the ear of popes, kings, bishops and lords, certainly exercised in France a power of action stronger and more pregnant with results than the obscure ministers of a weak, discredited king.
