274 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
in the service of justice and virtue. So long as the usurpation of divine power was used against oppression and vice, it com manded veneration and obedience, and did more good than harm. It was only the pope who in those days could claim a superior authority in dealing with haughty and oppressive metropolitans, synods, kings and emperors.
Nicolas I. is the greatest pope, we may say the only great pope- between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. He stands between them as one of three peaks of a lofty mountain, separated from the lower peak by a plane, and from the higher peak by a deep valley. He appeared to his younger contemporaries as a " new Elijah/7 who ruled the world like a sovereign of divine appoint ment, terrible to the evil-doer whether prince or priest, yet mild to the good and obedient. He was elected less by the influence of the clergy than of the emperor Louis II., and consecrated in his presence ; he lived with him on terms of friendship, and was treated in turn with great deference to his papal dignity. He anticipated Hildebrand in the lofty conception of his office ; and his energy and boldness of character corresponded with it. The pope was in his view the divinely appointed superintendent of the whole church for the maintenance of order, discipline and righteousness, and the punishment of wrong and vice, with the aid of the bishops as his executive organs. He assumed an im perious tone towards the Carolingians. He regarded the impe rial crown a grant of the vicar of St. Peter for the protection of Christians against infidels. The empire descended to Louis by hereditary right, but was confirmed by the authority of the apostolic see.
The pontificate of Nicolas was marked by three important events: the controversy with Photius, the prohibition of the divorce of King Lothair, and the humiliation of archbishop Hincmar. In the first he failed, in the second and third he achieved a moral triumph.
§ 01. NICOLAS I., APRIL, 858-NOV. 13, 867. 2 t 5
NICOLAS AND P1IOTIUS.
Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, of imperial descent and of austere ascetic virtue, was unjustly deposed and banished by the emperor Michael III. for rebuking the immorality of Caesar Burdas, but he refused to resign. Photius, the greatest scholar of his age, at home in almost every branch of knowledge and letters, was elected his successor, though merely a layman, and in six days passed through the inferior orders to the patriarchal dignity (858). The two parties engaged in an unrelenting war fare, and excommunicated each other. Photius was the first to appeal to the Roman pontilf. Nicolas, instead of acting as mediator, assumed the air of judge, and sent delegates to Con stantinople to investigate the case on the spot. They were im prisoned and bribed to declare for Photius; but the pope annulled their action at a synod in Rome, and decided in favor of Igna tius (863). Photius in turn pronounced sentence of condemna tion on the pope and, in his Encyclical Letter, gave classical expression to the objections of the Greek church against the Latin (807). The controversy resulted in the permanent aliena tion of the two churches. It was the last instance of an official interference of a pope in the affairs of the Eastern church.
NICOLAS AND LOTHAIR.
Lothair II., king of Lorraine and the second son of the emperor Lothair, maltreated and at last divorced his wife, Teutberga of Burgundy, and married his mistress, Walrada, who appeared publicly in all the array and splendor of a queen. Nicolas, being appealed to by the injured lady, defended fear lessly the sacredness of matrimony ; he annulled the decisions of synods, and deposed the archbishops of Cologne and Treves for conniving at the immorality of their sovereign. He threatened the king with immediate excommunication if he did not dismiss the concubine and receive the lawful wife. He even refused to yield when Teutberga, probably under compulsion, asked him to