Other historians see the baptism of Carloman as a repudiation of Pepin, and trace the systematic rejection of Pepin's claims to the throne in the subsequent actions of Charlemagne and his court. Walter Goffart argues that the "Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium", written by Paul the Deacon in the mid 780s before Pepin's revolt, reveals the "succession plan" of Charlemagne and his court—a plan that left no room for a hunchbacked king. According to Goffart, Paul uses his history of the ancestry of Charlemagne as an allegory for the current succession by depicting the Frankish kingship as a "birthright" handed down from a father to only one son, like those passed down among Biblical patriarchs. Like Esau, Pepin was rejected in favor of his younger brothers: Charlemagne, "like Isaac in the Bible, had no more than one blessing to bestow." Goffart and like-minded historians even speculate that Charlemagne and his court offered Pepin a sort of "quid pro quo": in return for surrendering his claim to the throne, "the Hunchback may have been promised that he would become bishop of Metz."