his adherents, were condemned in 853 at the Council of Soissons, and the decisions of that council were confirmed in 855 by Pope Benedict III. This conflict, however, bred an antagonism of which Hincmar was later to feel the effects. During the next thirty years the archbishop of Reims played a very prominent part in church and state. His authoritative and energetic will inspired, and in great measure directed, the policy of the West Frankish kingdom until his death. As a participant in government and court ceremony and an aggressive advocate of ecclesiastical privilege, Hincmar took an active part in all the great political and religious affairs of his time, and was especially energetic in defending and extending the rights of the church and of the metropolitans in general, and of his own metropolitan of the church of Reims in particular. In the resulting conflicts, in which his personal interest was in question, he displayed great activity and a wide knowledge of canon law, but was not so scrupulous that he would not resort to disingenuous interpretation of texts. Gottschalk and predestinarianism His first encounter was with Gottschalk, whose predestinarian doctrines claimed to be modelled on those of St Augustine. Hincmar placed himself at the head of the party that regarded Gottschalk's doctrines as heretical, and succeeded in procuring the arrest and imprisonment of his adversary (849). For a part at least of his doctrines Gottschalk found ardent defenders, such as Lupus of Ferrières, Prudentius of Troyes, the deacon Florus, and Amolo of Lyons. Through the energy and activity of Hincmar the theories of Gottschalk were condemned at the second council of Quierzy (853) and Valence (855), and the decisions of these two synods were confirmed at the synods of Langres and Savonnières, near Toul (859). To refute the predestinarian heresy, Hincmar composed his De praedestinatione Dei et libero arbitrio, and against certain propositions advanced by Gottschalk on the Trinity he wrote a treatise called De una et non trina deitate. Gottschalk died in prison in 868. Lothar II of Lorraine The question of the divorce of Lothair II, king of Lorraine (r. 855–869), who had repudiated his wife Theutberga to marry his concubine Waldrada, engaged Hincmar's literary activities in another direction. At the request of a number of great personages in Lorraine he composed in 860 his De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, in which he vigorously attacked,