There is grave reason to believe that the arrogant Bishop was bribed, or otherwise corrupted, by Waldrada. She "escaped" in northern Italy and returned to Lorraine; and the unhappy Theutberga now appealed to Nicholas to release her and let Lothair marry Waldrada. To this noble appeal Nicholas could have but one answer; for the claims of the human heart he had no ear. She must remain in her husband's bed if it means martyrdom. Lothair shall never marry that "whore" even if Theutberga dies. There death compelled Nicholas to leave the romantic situation of Lothair; and one reads, almost with a smile, that his successor, Hadrian II., accepted Lothair's sworn declaration (supported by many presents) that he had had no relations with Waldrada since the prohibition, and admitted him and the Archbishop of Cologne to the holy table. One must respect the great Pope's insistence on what he believed to be a divine ordination, but the historians who represent him as the champion of the human rights of an injured woman forget the final martyrdom of Theutberga.
One seems at first to find a more human note in the Pope's indulgence toward Baldwin of Flanders. Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, had been put under restraint by her father for misconduct, and in 860 she eloped with the young Count of Flanders. Baldwin asked the Pope's mediation, and he won from Charles forgiveness for the erring couple. If, however, one reads his letter (xxii.) carefully, one finds no ground for the claim that he was "tender toward the penitent." He plainly says that Baldwin had threatened to throw in his lot with the Norman pirates if Charles persists in his threat of vengeance. There is a nearer approach to sentiment in the Pope's effort to secure the property of the widowed Helletrude, which had been seized by Lothair; but we do not know the issue of his intervention in that case.
If the new language of the Papacy fell with uncertain effect upon the ears of kings and sinners, it did at least win a triumph among the great prelates of Europe and raised the Roman See immeasurably above them. The conflict with Hincmar of Rheims was the most notable and successful struggle in which Nicholas engaged. Hincmar was the most distinguished and one of the more worthy of the prelate-nobles who had risen to wealth and power with the settlement of Europe. He was a man of imperious temper and great ability, yet of sincere religious feeling and concern for the prestige of the Gallic Church. One of his suffragans, Rothrad of Soissons, incurred his dislike, and, when this Bishop suspended one of his priests, who had been caught in adultery and ignominiously mutilated by his parishioners, Hincmar reinstated the man. When Rothrad not unnaturally remonstrated, he was deposed by Hincmar and a jury of five bishops,[156] and he appealed to Rome. In order to frustrate this appeal, Hincmar took a weak and improper advantage of a letter written by Rothrad, saying that in this letter the Bishop abandoned his appeal, and induced the King to forbid him to go to Rome. Then, in a synod which met at Soissons, he had the deposition confirmed and Rothrad sentenced to live in a monastery.
Nicholas at once, in 863, wrote a severe letter to Hincmar, harshly rebuking him for his want of respect for the Roman See and claiming that the case ought to have been remitted to Rome whether Rothrad had appealed or no.[157] In a second letter written shortly afterwards, he threatened to depose Hincmar if he did not obey, or come to justify his conduct at Rome, within thirty days.[158] He wrote in the same harshly autocratic language to the King and to the other French prelates; if his orders were not at once obeyed, he would punish everybody severely. The greatest prelate-noble in Europe and the King himself submitted almost without a struggle, and Rothrad went to Rome. Hincmar, it is true, disdained to send witnesses and attempted in his letter to defend his action, but the Pope went on his way as calmly and inexorably as if he were dealing with a few refractory monks. On Christmas Eve, 864, he preached a sermon on the case and announced that he had reinstated Rothrad. The legate Arsenius was then about to set out for France on the mission I have already described, and he took Rothrad with him to the court of Charles. He took also a letter to Hincmar which began: "If thou hadst any respect for the canons of the Fathers or the Apostolic See, thou wouldst not have attempted to depose Rothrad without our knowledge." I will consider later this covert reference to the Forged Decretals. Rothrad was reinstated; and the language in which the Bertinian Annals describe the Pope's procedure shows the bitter resentment it provoked in France.
An incident that occurred in the course of the dispute shows—if proof were necessary—that Nicholas acted on a sincere conviction of right. In 863 Lothair appointed Archbishop Günther's brother, Hildwin, to the See of Cambrai, and Hincmar rightly protested that the man was unworthy. He appealed to Nicholas, and, although his appeal reached the Pope at a time when he was threatening to depose Hincmar, and that prelate still evaded his orders, Nicholas at once discharged a shower of his menacing letters[159] in support of Hincmar and did not rest until Lothair abandoned Hildwin. Warped as it was, at times, by a too exalted conception of the authority of his See, Nicholas had, nevertheless, a rigid sentiment of justice, and it was his supreme aim to make that anarchic world bow to moral no less than ecclesiastical law.
He had not yet reached the end of his conflict with the great representative of the prelate-nobles. Hincmar's predecessor, Ebbo, had conferred orders after he had been deposed, and a council held at Soissons in 853 had suspended these clerics from the exercise of their functions. Benedict III. and Nicholas himself had expressed a qualified approval of this council, but the Forged Decretals were now circulating in France, and one of the suspended clerics, Wulfad,—possibly encouraged by the success of Rothrad,—appealed to Rome. Once more Nicholas curtly ordered Hincmar either to reinstate the clerics or to summon a new council, to which the Pope would send legates, at Soissons. The council was held, and the French bishops endeavoured by means of a compromise to save their own dignity yet avoid a quarrel: they decided to reinstate the clerics as an act of grace. This evasion drew from the Pope some of the sorriest letters in his register. Not only in a most harsh and offensive letter to the Archbishop,[160] but even in a letter to the bishops,[161] he accused Hincmar of fraud, insisted that the acta of the earlier Soissons council had been submitted in a dishonest form to his "divinely inspired" predecessor and himself, and, on the pretext that Hincmar was wearing his pallium on improper occasions, threatened to punish his "pride" and "vainglory" by a withdrawal of that distinction. He ordered them to hold a new council. Nicholas died before the report of this council reached Rome, and his indulgent successor exculpated Hincmar. But the meekness with which those terrible letters were received is a measure of the advance of the Papacy.
A story that is told at length in the Liber Pontificalis affords another instance of this assertion of spiritual autocracy and its encouragement by appeals from the provinces. The Pope was informed that John of Ravenna abused his power; bishops complained that he quartered himself and his expensive retinue on them for unreasonable periods and made other exacting demands. When John received letters of remonstrance and legates from Rome, he forbade his subjects to appeal to the Pope, and strengthened his authority by falsifying the documents in his archives: a crime at which the Roman Anastasius expresses the most naïve surprise and indignation. When Nicholas summoned him to appear before a Roman synod, John "boasted" that he was not subject to the Bishop of Rome, and, when the synod excommunicated him, he appealed to the Emperor. He then went, with the support of imperial legates, to beard Nicholas in the Lateran, but the Pope astutely detached the legates from him and he returned in concern to Ravenna. In this case the prelate was unpopular and unjust, so that Nicholas had a good local base for his authority. He went in person to Ravenna, and before long men pointed the finger of scorn or of horror at their proud Archbishop as he rode through the streets. The Emperor abandoned him, and in a few months we find John at Rome, humbly submitting to the rod, placing the written record of his penitence on the holy sandals of the Saviour.
A remarkable extension of this authority is attempted in a letter which Nicholas addressed to King Charles in 867. The dispute about predestination which then agitated clerical Europe, and gave some fallacious promise of a revival of intellect, had been submitted to Nicholas in the early days of his Pontificate. Nicholas was, like all the great Popes, a statesman and canonist, not a theologian. He prudently remained silent, and let Franks and Germans belabour each other with theological epithets. When, however, he heard that Charles had invited the famous John Scotus Erigena, the subtlest thinker of the early Middle Ages, to translate a supposed work of Denis the Areopagite (De Divinis Nominibus), he reproved the King for issuing so important a book without having submitted it to Rome.[162] We do not find that Charles took any notice of his claim of censorship, or sent him a copy of the book. It is a good illustration of the attitude of Rome that a thinker like Scotus Erigena, in whose works we plainly recognize the most advanced heresy that arose in Europe before the eighteenth century, incurred so little censure. Nicholas merely complains that the learned Irishman is rumoured to be not entirely sound in theology.