Within the next few years men learned that a new type of Pontiff ruled the Church, or the world. Nicholas I. conceived himself, in deepest sincerity, to be the representative of God on earth: fancied himself sitting on a throne so elevated that from its level all men—kings and beggars, patriarchs and monks—were of the same size. He believed that he was responsible to God for every immoral or irreligious movement in "every part of the world," as he often said. He was convinced that his words were "divinely inspired,"[140] and that disobedience to him was disobedience to God. He was, by divine appointment, "prince over all the earth."[141] Kings received their swords from him,[142] and were as humbly subject as their serfs were to his moral and religious authority. The most powerful prelates must obey his orders at once or be deposed.[143] Not a council must be held in Europe without his approval[144]: not a church must be built "without the commands of the Pope"[145]: not a book of any importance must be published without his authorization.[146] Nicholas was conscientious in small duties: he kept lists of the blind and ailing poor to whom food had to be sent. But his great feature was his treatment of the mighty. He lived on a cloud-wrapt height, sending out the thunders of excommunication, on gentle and simple, as no Pope had ever dared to do before. He left to Louis the petty position of "emperor of men's bodies": he occupied the position of Jupiter. Europe was cowed by the impersonal arrogance of his language. He was the greatest maker of the mediæval Papacy.[147]
Nicholas did a greater work than Hildebrand because the times permitted him. He had to deal with the degenerate descendants of Charlemagne, not with a powerful ruler. On the other hand, court-favour and prosperity had made the leading prelates a feudal aristocracy, often arrogant and avaricious; and the monks they threatened and the priests they oppressed turned eagerly from them to the Roman court of appeal. Princes chafed at the independence of their spiritual vassals, and would depose them: bishops chafed at the interference of their suzerains, and would assert the independence of the Church. A thousand voices appealed to Rome. The fact that the Forged Decretals were not made at Rome or in the interest of Rome, but by the provincial clergy in their own interest, gives us the measure of the age. And the fact that such forgeries were at once received reminds us of another favourable circumstance: the dense ignorance of the time. There was culture in places, as the contemporary work of Scotus Erigena reminds us, but to check these Papal claims one needed a knowledge of history, and the true story of the development of the Church and the Papacy, as we know it, was buried under a dense growth of legends and forgeries. Hence the dogmatic Papal conception, partly based on such documents as the Donation of Constantine and the Forged Decretals, sank almost unchallenged into the mind of Europe, and the Pope was now enabled to dispense with the swords of princes and rely on religious threats. The letters of Nicholas splutter anathemas from beginning to end.
His first extant letter gives the Archbishop of Sens and his colleagues a stern lesson on the prestige of the Papacy, as understood by Nicholas I. The sixth letter peremptorily orders the great Hincmar of Rheims and his colleagues, in language of the simplest arrogance, to excommunicate at once, as he had directed, the Countess Ingeltrude. But within a few years Nicholas was involved in such a mesh of correspondence with offending princes and prelates that we must consider the chief causes in succession.
The Eastern Empire was then ruled by Michael the Drunkard, his mistress Eudocia, and the Emperor's tutor in vice, his uncle Bardas. This pretty trio deposed the saintly Ignatius from the See of Constantinople, and put in his place the imperial secretary Photius, one of the most accomplished scholars and least scrupulous courtiers of the East. The better clergy protested, and the court sought the support of the Pope. A glittering captain of the guards presented himself at Rome with a set of jewelled altar-vessels and, no doubt, a diplomatic account of the situation. But Nicholas at once rebuked the Emperor for his "presumptuous temerity" in deposing Ignatius without the assent of Rome, and sent legates to inquire into the matter; and he took prompt occasion to demand the restoration of Papal rights and patrimonies in the East.[148] The Eastern court must have gasped at this language. However, the Pope's legates were suborned, and a Council held at Constantinople (May, 861) confirmed the election of Photius. Nicholas was not satisfied,[149] and at length he heard the truth from Ignatius. He called a Council at Rome, ordered Michael to restore Ignatius,[150] and threatened Photius with all the anathemas in the Papal arsenal if he did not retire.
Photius kept his place, and in 865 Michael wrote an abusive and threatening letter to the Pope. We gather from the Pope's reply that it expressed the greatest contempt and threatened that Greek troops would come and make an end of them all. The lengthy reply of Nicholas has some fine passages, but it argues too much where silence would have been more dignified, and is at times petty and petulant in hurling back the Emperor's foolish insults.[151] It received no answer, and in November, 866, Nicholas wrote again. He was, he said, sending legates to judge the case at Constantinople and would remind Michael of the terrible things in store for those who disobeyed him; as to that abusive letter, he says, if Michael does not take it back, he will "commit it to eternal perdition, in a great fire, and so bring the Emperor into contempt with all nations." He also sent a very threatening letter to Photius. But the letters never reached Constantinople. The legates were turned back at the frontier, and Photius went on to publish a virulent tirade on the errors and heresies of the Latins. This seems to have been beyond the resources of the Lateran, and the scholars of France were entrusted with the defence of the West. Ignatius was eventually restored, but Nicholas did not live to see the issue, and the Eastern Church again drifted far away from the Western.
The anathema had proved ineffectual in the East, but Nicholas had meantime begun to employ it with happier results in Europe. In spite of the Puritanism of Louis I., the loose tradition of Charlemagne's court lingered in France and Nicholas soon found it necessary to rebuke aristocratic sinners. I have mentioned that in 860 he threatened the Countess Ingeltrude with excommunication if she did not abandon her gay vagabondage and return to her husband, the Count of Burgundy. Her son Hucbert had claimed the attention of Benedict III., who tells us that this high-born young abbot went about France with a lively troop of actresses and courtesans, corrupted the most venerable nunneries, and filled monasteries with his hawks and dogs and licentious ladies.[152] Hucbert's sister, Theutberga, was wedded to Lothair of Lorraine, brother of the Emperor Louis, who accused her of incest with Hucbert before her marriage and proposed to divorce her and marry his fascinating mistress Waldrada. Whether she was guilty or not we cannot tell, as no proper trial was ever held. She claimed the hot-water ordeal, and her champion was unscathed. Then Lothair won the support of the chief prelates of his kingdom, and they obtained or extorted from her a confession of guilt. They committed her to a nunnery and, in 862, granted Lothair a divorce.
Theutberga appealed to Rome, and Nicholas ordered that a general synod should meet at Metz. In his most lordly manner the Pope directed Charles the Bald and Louis of Germany (uncles of Lothair) to send bishops to this synod, but they left the field to their nephew and, as he bribed the Pope's legates, he secured a confirmation of the divorce (June, 863). Nicholas set his lips with more than their usual sternness when the archbishops of Cologne and Trèves arrived with this decision. Summoning his own bishops to a council, he bluntly described the Metz synod as "a brothel," annulled its decision, and excommunicated the two archbishops. In language more imperious than any that had yet issued from the Lateran, he declared that this was the decision of the Vicar of Christ, and any man—he seems to refer pointedly to the royal families—who ventured to dissent from this or any other Papal pronouncement would incur the direst anathemas.
Günther, the Archbishop of Cologne, fled in anger to the court of the Emperor, and before long Louis was marching on Rome at the head of his troops.[153] It was a critical moment for the Papal conception. Nicholas ordered fasts and processions, and one of these processions, headed by the large gold crucifix which was believed to contain a part of the true cross, went out to St. Peter's, near which the imperial troops were encamped. To the horror of the Romans, the soldiers fell on the procession with their swords, and flung the precious cross into the mud. Nicholas crossed the river secretly and remained in prayer in St. Peter's, for forty-eight hours, without food. This was the world's reply to his first tremendous assertion of authority, and the history of Europe might have been altered if the imperial sword had on that occasion prevailed over his spiritual threats. But the Papacy was saved by one of those accidents which so deeply impressed the mediæval imagination. The man who had insulted the cross died suddenly, and Louis himself became seriously ill. The Empress hurried to the Pope, and in a short time the troops were marching northward. From that day anathema becomes a mighty weapon in the hands of the Popes.
Archbishop Günther was not so easily intimidated. He wrote a fierce diatribe against Nicholas—this new "emperor of the whole world,"—had a copy flung upon the tomb of the apostle, and departed for Lorraine. But Nicholas now knew his power. He scolded Charles and Louis like lackeys for not sending bishops to Metz; they held their swords from St. Peter, and they must listen to a Pope who speaks from direct divine revelation.[154] The two kings persuaded Lothair to disown Günther and submit, and the legate Arsenius was sent to France. This legate Arsenius, an arrogant and worldly Bishop, whose career ended in grave scandal, delivered the Pope's orders at the courts of Charles, Louis, and Lothair with a haughtiness even greater and less respectable than that of Nicholas. He was obeyed at once, says Hincmar, who shudders at the facile scattering of anathemas.[155] He then conducted Theutberga to her husband and made the prince and his nobles swear on the most sacred relics to respect her; and, after a final shower of "unheard-of maledictions" (says Hincmar), he set out for Rome with the siren Waldrada.