  We use one of the deepest spectroscopic samples of broad line active galactic
nuclei (AGN) currently available, extracted from the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey
(VVDS), to compute MgII and CIV virial masses estimate of 120 super-massive
black holes in the redshift range 1.0<z<1.9 and 2.6<z<4.3. We find that the
mass-luminosity relation shows considerably enhanced dispersion towards low AGN
luminosities (log L_bol ~ 45). At these luminosities, there is a substantial
fraction of black holes accreting far below their Eddington limit (L_bol/L_Edd
< 0.1), in marked contrast to what is generally found for AGN of higher
luminosities. We speculate that these may be AGN on the decaying branch of
their light-curves, well past their peak activity. This would agree with recent
theoretical predictions of AGN evolution.
  In the electronic Appendix of this paper we publish an update of the VVDS
type-1 AGN sample, including the first and most of the second epoch
observations. This sample contains 298 objects of which 168 are new.
