Again when the bishopric of Hamburg was destroyed by the Normans, King Louis of Germany translated the dispossessed Bishop Anschar to Bremen. Now the Archbishop of Cologne claimed jurisdiction over Bremen and declared that the temporal power could not dismember an ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Both parties agreed to refer the case to Rome. Nicholas I. confirmed the separation and ratified the transference of Anschar. Charles the Great would have settled the case himself. Another victory was thus won in the name of Pseudo-Isidore. The policy of breaking down all interposition between the successor of Peter and the episcopacy had been clearly set forth.

A test of this principle came in the case of Hincmar, the able and powerful Archbishop of Rheims. In 861 he summarily suspended Rathod, Bishop of Soissons, for disobeying the sentence of a provincial synod in reinstating a priest whom he had unjustly expelled. Rathod at once appealed to the Pope and asked permission of Hincmar to go to Rome to present his suit. Hincmar refused the request and called Rathod before a second synod for contempt, when he was degraded

from his office and imprisoned in a monastery. Once more Rathod made a touching appeal to Nicholas I.[342:1] who forthwith rebuked Hincmar and ordered him to restore Rathod to his see, and to send him to Rome. King Charles the Bald was ordered, "by his love to God and his duty to the Holy See," to see that the order was enforced. Both Hincmar and Charles refused and Rathod remained a prisoner for two years. Papal power was on trial, but Nicholas I. was equal to the situation. At last Charles was persuaded to intervene. Rathod was released and sent to Rome, but was not reinstated in his bishopric. The Pope reinstated him to office. To prove his authority he quoted the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which the Frankish clergy had framed to insure their own independence.[342:2] Hincmar remonstrated, but in the end was forced to apologise and obey. "Thus," complained Hincmar, "was a criminal, solemnly deposed by the unanimous judgment of five ecclesiastical provinces of this realm, reinstated by the Pope, not by ordinary canonical rule, but by an arbitrary act of power, in a summary way, without inquiry, and against the consent of his natural judges." Metropolitan independence was crushed, the royal power was forced to obey by the awful threat of excommunication, and papal supremacy was triumphant. Truly a new epoch had appeared in the rise of the mediæval Church, when the Pope could proudly declare that "the privileges of the Holy See are the panoply of the Church and title-deeds of him who is the supreme lord of the priesthood for the government of all in authority under him and for the comfort of every one that shall suffer wrong or injury from

subordinate powers"[343:1]; that "the action of synods, general or provincial, might be peremptorily arrested by a simple appeal to Rome . . . at any stage of the proceeding"; that every bishop must give lawful obedience to the "King of Bishops"; and that "any one, without exception of person, who shall disobey the doctrine, mandates, interdicts, or decretals, published by the Apostolic Bishop on behalf of the Catholic faith, the discipline of the Church, the correction of the faithful, the reformation of evil-doers, and the discouragement of vice, let him be accursed."[343:2]

In dealing with the schismatic, heretical Eastern Church, however, all careful reserve vanished and without fear or caution the Roman Pontiffs assert their prerogatives in a clear, decisive, and peremptory tone. In the Photian schism at Constantinople, Nicholas I. assumed the right to decide which of the two claimants to the patriarchate was legitimate. To Photius, who had secured the office by imperial aid, the Roman pontiff wrote a letter which up to that time was unsurpassed for supreme papal arrogance:

Our Lord and Saviour . . . established the foundations of his church upon the Rock Peter. . . . Now upon this foundation the appointed builders have from time to time heaped many precious stones, till by this unwearied diligence the whole building has been perfected into indissoluble solidity. . . . Since this church of Peter is the head of all churches, it is imperative upon all to adopt her as their model in every matter of ecclesiastical expediency and institution. . . . From her all synods and all councils derive their power to bind and to loose.[343:3]

The pontificate of Nicholas I., who died in 867, marks the acme of papal power during this period. The history of the Western Church, controlled by Rome, during the latter part of the ninth and the tenth century, covers a period of unparalleled corruption and debility—"a death-sleep of moral and spiritual exhaustion." The Papacy as a constructive spiritual force almost disappears from view. The lofty ideas of Leo I., Gregory I., and Nicholas I.—their magnificent ambitions for the Church, their imperial rule, and their commanding, aggressive spirit—all disappeared. The causes may be found in weak, wicked, worldly Popes, in anarchy and political confusion in Italy, and in feudalism. The Church was reaping the reward of a close alliance with the state. All the gains made by the Church during this epoch were of a secular character. The moral and spiritual powers of Latin Christianity lay dormant beneath a mass of corruption, self-seeking, and worldly passions which covered them and nearly extinguished them. The marvellous vitality of the organisation of the Church alone saved her from disintegration in that period of decentralisation. The spirit of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, from this standpoint, had become the saviour of the Church. The next force that appeared in western Europe to rescue the Church from the low state of spiritual degeneration to which she had fallen was, strange to say, the Holy Roman Empire under the guidance of another mighty German ruler.

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