The example of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, who were seen as "godly emperors (...) serving the church and crushing its enemies," has been cited repeatedly by Christian authors who endorsed an idea of religious persecution.[130] According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen, a council of bishops at Toledo in 681 called on civil authorities to seize and behead all those guilty of non-Christian practices of any sort.[131] Medieval Emperor Charlemagne ruled in September 774 that the Saxons (Westfali, Ostfali, and Angrarii) must be presented with the alternative of baptism or death[132] and had 4,500 pagan Saxons beheaded in the Massacre of Verden.