NICHOLAS I. AND THE FALSE DECRETALS
The coronation of Charlemagne by the Pope in the year 800 was also the
crowning of the new Papal system. The ambition for temporal power had
already disclosed the grave dangers which it brought. Soon after the
death of Hadrian I. the horrible spectacle was witnessed at Rome of
high Papal officials--one a nephew of the late Pope--attempting, on the
floor of a church, to cut out the eyes of their Pontiff; and the record
tells us that the Romans were so little moved by the charges brought
against him that they left it to a provincial noble to rescue Leo III.
Grave charges were also made against his successor, Stephen V., and
Charlemagne came to Rome to judge him. He politely acquitted Stephen,
and, on that historic Christmas morning of the year 800, he was
surprised and disconcerted by the Pope suddenly producing an imperial
crown and placing it on his head.
It is well known that Charlemagne regarded this coronation with
distrust. The gifts of the Blessed Peter had a way of conferring more
power on the giver than on the receiver. In point of fact, when the
strong hand of the first Emperor was removed, and a brood of weaker men
came to squabble over the imperial heritage, Rome gained considerably.
The kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy were carved out of the
Empire, but the spiritual realm was not exposed to any hereditary
division. It merely awaited the coming of another strong man to make
clear its power, and this revelation was reserved for Nicholas I. Of
the eight Popes who preceded him, only one, Leo IV., made a reputable
mark on history, and that rather as a strong and honest than as a
spiritual personality. Most of them were, like most of the Popes,
men of mediocre but respectable character. There is, however, some
degeneration in the Papal calendar--which is, until the end of the
ninth century, a more edifying record than many imagine--since two out
of the eight remain under suspicion of grave misconduct, and one was
a gouty _gourmand_; while occasional outbreaks of a violence not far
removed from barbarism betray that the new prosperity is not elevating
the character of the Romans.
Nicholas, whose life in the _Liber Pontificalis_ was probably written
by his accomplished librarian Anastasius, was the son of a cultivated
Roman notary, and was carefully trained in letters. These official
panegyrics will not, however, impress the serious historian. The
Pope's letters show that the extent of his profane culture was merely
a stricter observance of the elementary rules of grammar than some of
his predecessors had displayed. In 853, a few years before Nicholas
began his Pontificate, Leo IV. had ordered the opening of schools in
each of the twenty parishes of Rome, but he complained that teachers
of the liberal arts were rare. The instruction given was mainly
religious, and it seems that on the ecclesiastical side the Pope's
culture was considerable. He had grown up in the devout service of the
Church, and successive Popes had promoted and loved him; so that, when
Benedict III. died, Nicholas was unanimously chosen to succeed him.
In the presence of the Emperor, Louis II., Nicholas, who had to be
dragged from a hiding-place in St. Peter's, was, on Sunday, April 24th,
consecrated and conducted by joyous crowds along the laurel-crowned
streets to the Lateran. Two days afterwards the Emperor entertained him
at dinner, and they were very cordial. When Louis set out for France,
Nicholas followed and had another festive dinner with him at his first
camp. Then the Pope, after kissing and embracing the Emperor, returned
to the Lateran and gravely mounted the Papal throne.
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.
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.
Still bolder is the claim made in a letter in which Nicholas sought
to control the conversion of the Danes. No new national Church must
be founded without his authority, he says, since "according to the
sacred decrees even a new _basilica_ cannot be built without the
command of the Pope."[163] In this he outran not only the genuine,
but the forged, Decretals. He had in mind, no doubt, a decree of
Gelasius on the subject of church-building, but this merely forbade the
erection of a church, without authority, in the Roman diocese itself.
At the other extremity of Europe Nicholas made elaborate efforts to
bring the Bulgarians under his authority. He sent legates to King
Boris, and wrote a very long and curious reply to a large number of
questions--ranging from the most exalted points of faith to the wearing
of trousers by women--which the Bulgarians submitted to him. He did not
live to see the relapse of the deceitful and ambitious Slavs.
These are the outstanding features of the voluminous correspondence
of Nicholas the Great. They bring before us the portrait of a man who
is raised above the disorder of his time, not so much by strength of
personality as by the exaltation of his sacerdotal creed. In a more
orderly Christendom Nicholas might have seemed an exemplary and not
greatly distinguished bishop, but chaos has ever been the native
element of such creative genius as he possessed. Since all men now
bowed in theory to the Christian ideal, their very disorders lent
authority to the Pope's anathemas. He hears that a set of young bishops
are devoted to hunting and even to less reputable pastimes, and his
scorn is irresistible.[164] He hears that the sons of Charles the Bald
have quarrelled with their royal father, and, though they are now
reconciled, "we direct that you present yourselves humbly at a synod to
be held in a place appointed by us, to which we will send legates of
the apostolic authority."[165] He has little time or inclination for
the material decoration of Rome. He restores St. Peter's and the Trajan
aqueduct; he organizes the distribution of charity; but his life-work
is the consolidation of the spiritual supremacy of the Popes. He is,
pre-eminently, the smiter of the powerful; and, in smiting them, he
strengthens the Papal arm. Fortunately for him and the Papacy, he has
to deal with a degenerate, ignorant, and superstitious generation: the
night of the Dark Age is drawing in--a night which is not disproved by
showing, as Maitland does, that there was a little lamp here and there.
And when we contemplate that world of murder, incest, rape, spoliation,
and monastic and priestly corruption which is reflected in the Pope's
letters, we feel that it was well for Europe to have such a master.
On the other hand, we do assuredly find Nicholas, and each succeeding
great Pope, yielding to that most natural temptation of the moralist
and priest in face of grave disorder--acting on the unformulated
principle that the end sanctifies the means. The question whether
Nicholas relied on the _Forged Decretals_ has now been so fully
discussed that it is possible to give a precise answer; at least when
we consider certain passages in his letters which have been overlooked.
On the origin and spread of the Decretals I need only summarize
accepted results.[166] The collection originated in France about the
year 850, though it is still disputed whether it was composed in the
diocese of Tours or (as seems more probable) that of Rheims. It follows
from this origin that the forgery was perpetrated, not in the interest
of the Papacy, but of the bishops and lower clergy, to whom it gave
the right of appeal to a central authority against the (often unjust)
sentences of higher prelates and the aggression of lay nobles. The
book, however, is not merely concerned with questions of jurisdiction
and appeal. It is further agreed that, though the successor of
Nicholas, Hadrian II., certainly used the _Forged Decretals_, they were
little used by the Popes before the middle of the eleventh century; but
it is equally agreed that they were of immense service to the Papacy in
spreading a conviction of the antiquity of its most advanced claims and
in promoting the practice of appeal to it.
The chief point in dispute is whether Nicholas knew and employed the
forgery, and with this I may deal more fully. The first letter in the
Pope's Register is a reply to Wenilo, Archbishop of Sens, in regard
to the deposition of a bishop. Servatus Lupus, the learned abbot of
Ferrières, had written on behalf of Wenilo--the letter is fortunately
preserved--to say that men were quoting a certain Decretal of Pope
Melchiades which reserved to the Papacy the deposition of bishops.[167]
This was evidently a quotation from the _Forged Decretals_, yet in
his reply Nicholas completely ignores the supposed Decretal on which
his opinion was expressly asked. Whether or no we may infer from this
silence that Nicholas was ignorant of the source of the quotation,
we may surely conclude that so industrious a canonist would make
immediate inquiries about this remarkable document, if he were not
already acquainted with it. Since, however, he made no reply to the
question whether the deposition of a bishop was reserved to the Papacy,
I infer that he was unaware of the existence of the Decretals; and this
is strongly confirmed by a letter which he wrote in 862. He tells King
Solomon of Brittany that a bishop may be deposed by twelve bishops, on
the evidence of seventy-two witnesses, and he refers to Pope Silvester
as the authority for this mythical ordinance.[168] In this he relies on
a spurious document, but a document _not_ contained in the Isidorean
collection. The main point is that he allows the local deposition of
bishops, and enjoins recourse to Rome only in case of dispute. He does
not yet seem to know the _Decretals_, but, as Hincmar had used them in
857 (possibly in 853), we can hardly imagine such a Pope as Nicholas
remaining long unaware of the existence in France of this strong
foundation of his authority; especially when, as I said, his attention
had been plainly drawn to it by Servatus Lupus.
Then came the case of Rothrad,[169] and Nicholas, as we saw, wrote
to Hincmar that the case ought to have been remitted to Rome whether
Rothrad had appealed or no[170]; but it is clear that he is speaking
of a vague duty imposed by general respect for the Apostolic See, not
of a duty enforced by canonical obligation. If, he says, Hincmar were
"not disposed" to send the case to Rome (_si id agere noluisses_), he
ought at least to have respected Rothrad's actual appeal. But when we
come to 865, and the famous letter (lxxv.) which the Pope wrote to
Hincmar and his colleagues, Nicholas is quite clear. "Even if," he
says, "he [Rothrad] had not appealed to the Apostolic See, you had no
right to run counter to so many and such important decretal statutes
and depose a bishop without consulting us."[171] The French prelates
had complained that such Decretals were not found in their collection:
the Dionysian collection given to Charlemagne by Hadrian in 774. It
does not matter, Nicholas replies, whether they have them or not;
all Decretals approved at Rome are to be respected. And he makes it
perfectly clear that he is referring, not to genuine Decretals which
may not be in the Dionysian collection, but to the Isidorean. They
make use of these Decretals themselves, he says, when it suits their
purpose; we know that Hincmar had done so, and possibly Nicholas had
learned this from Rothrad. But he makes it still plainer that he is
not referring to Decretals in the Roman archives, but to the Isidorean
forgeries, when he says that he is thinking of the Decretals of
"ancient" (_prisci_) Pontiffs, not merely those of Gregory and Leo; and
he leaves no room whatever for doubt when he includes letters written
by the Popes in "the times of the pagan persecutions."
We must not, however, exaggerate the Pope's reliance on this imposture.
M. Roy has made a careful analysis of the letters of Nicholas, and he
maintains that only four of his quotations are from spurious Decretals:
that three of these are not in the Isidorean collection: and that the
one which is common to Nicholas and pseudo-Isidore had already been in
circulation before the imposture was published.[172]
Father de Smedt further points out that Nicholas made no use of
Isidorean Decretals which would, especially in his conflict with
Photius, have been useful to him, and that, when he does use documents
which are in the Isidorean collection, he gives their genuine words
or assigns them to their real authors. These are generally valid
claims, but they do not conflict with my conclusion. Nicholas plainly
endeavoured to use the _Forged Decretals_, but he had a learned and
acute antagonist in Hincmar and he dare not quote them individually or
in their crude Isidorean form. One is almost reminded of the smiles
of Roman augurs when one considers these two great ecclesiastical
statesmen, using a forged document or watching with complacency the use
of it, yet checking each other when it affects their own interests.
There is no answer to Milman's sober charge that Nicholas saw the
spread of the work and did not protest. He knew well the contents of
the Roman archives--he had a number of scribes studying them--and he
must have known as well as we do that there were no genuine Decretals
before the time of Gelasius.
The analysis made by M. Roy must be supplemented by that of J.
Richterich,[173] from which it appears beyond question that Nicholas
made a very extensive use of spurious documents; as we have found Roman
officials doing from the fourth century. Father de Smedt[174] "does
not altogether deny" that, as Hinschius says, Nicholas sometimes, in
quoting genuine Decretals, alters their meaning in accordance with the
Isidorean. Roy himself has to admit that Nicholas goes far beyond the
words and meaning of Gelasius in saying that no church may be built
without the Pope's permission.[175] He goes equally beyond genuine
precedent in claiming that no bishop can be deposed without his
authority; hitherto there had been only the vague understanding that
"grave cases" were reserved to the Pope. He advances equally beyond
precedent in claiming that no council can be held without his sanction.
Roy[176] calls this "a pseudo-Isidorean principle," and says that
Nicholas nowhere asserted it. But Nicholas plainly asserts it in _Ep._,
xii., and is just as plainly straining a vague early claim of Pope
Gelasius.[177]
We must conclude that, however beneficent may have been the spiritual
centralization which Nicholas so ably elaborated, and however
impersonal and religious his aim may have been, he proceeded at times
on principles which no cause can sanctify: principles which it was
dangerous to bequeath to less spiritual successors. He died in 867,
after nine and a half years of heroic work for his ideal: a type of
ecclesiastical statesman that it needs a peculiarly balanced judgment
to appreciate. The pleasures and thrills of the world he despised, and
it would be a deep injustice to conceive him as other than entirely
indifferent to the personal prestige of his position. His personality
was entirely merged in his office: he was, indeed, not a personality,
but the vicar of a greater personality. The phrase which too often
in Hadrian's letters is a mere artifice for obtaining wealth and
power--"the Blessed Peter"--was to him the expression of a living and
awful reality. If the Papacy did not tower above all the other thrones
in Christendom, the intention of Christ was made void. Nicholas would
have it realized. In that spirit he added strength to the frame of
the Papal system. The historian must do justice to his aim and to the
salutary tendency of his moral control of Europe; he must be no less
candid in denouncing the sentiment that the end justifies the means.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 140: _Ep._, lxxxiii., xcii., and cviii.]
[Footnote 141: _Ep._, lxv.]
[Footnote 142: _Ep._, lxxix.]
[Footnote 143: _Ep._, vi.]
[Footnote 144: _Ep._, xii.]
[Footnote 145: _Ep._, cxxxv.]
[Footnote 146: _Ep._, cxv.]
[Footnote 147: An excellent analysis of his ideas is given in Dr.
A. Greinacher's _Die Anschaungen des Papstes Nikolaus I. über das
Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche_ (1909).]
[Footnote 148: _Ep._, iv.]
[Footnote 149: _Ep._, xii. and xiii.]
[Footnote 150: _Ep._, xlvi.]
[Footnote 151: _Ep._, lxxxvi.]
[Footnote 152: _Ep._, ii.]
[Footnote 153: The best account is in the _Annals of St. Berlin_, in
the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_, vol. i.]
[Footnote 154: _Ep._, lxxxiii.]
[Footnote 155: It is, at least, generally believed that Hincmar wrote
this part of the _Bertinian Annals_.]
[Footnote 156: _Bertinian Annals_, year 865.]
[Footnote 157: _Ep._, xxxiii.]
[Footnote 158: _Ep._, xxxiv.]
[Footnote 159: XLI., xlii., and xliii.]
[Footnote 160: CVIII.]
[Footnote 161: CVII.]
[Footnote 162: _Ep._, cxv.]
[Footnote 163: _Ep._, cxxxv.]
[Footnote 164: _Ep._, cxxvii.]
[Footnote 165: _Ep._, xxxix.]
[Footnote 166: The famous collection which bears the name of Isidorus
Mercator contains about sixty spurious Decretals in the first part,
covering the first three centuries, and about thirty in the third
part; the second part contains the canons of councils. The author
makes an adroit use of older documents, and his work is largely a
mosaic of genuine fragments (of Papal letters, chronicles, etc.) so
pieced together and ante-dated as to father later developments of
Papal authority on the earlier Popes. The best edition is that of P.
Hinschius (1863), and the best survey of recent study is the article
"Pseudoisidor" in Herzog's _Real-Encyclopädie für Protestantische
Theologie_. There is a useful chapter in _The Age of Charlemagne_
(1898), by C.L. Wells. The ablest Catholic study of the relation of
Nicholas to the collection is Jules Roy's _Saint Nicholas_ (1901). See
also _Les Fausses Décrétales_ (1879), of Father Ch. de Smedt. On the
general question of the Pope's use of spurious documents see the able
Old Catholic work of J. Richterich, _Papst Nikolaus I._ (1903).]
[Footnote 167: See _Ep._, cxxx., of Servatus Lupus.]
[Footnote 168: _Ep._, xxv.]
[Footnote 169: It is not easy to regard Rothrad as the author of the
forgery, as he was not deposed until 862. A more probable source
of origin is the group of clerics ordained by Ebbo and suspended
by Hincmar in 853. Even this seems too late, however, as such a
compilation was not the work of a day. But it is very probable that
Rothrad took the book to Rome, if it were not already there.]
[Footnote 170: _Ep._, xxxiii.]
[Footnote 171: The modern writers who have contended that these _tot et
talia decretalia statuta_ are not the Isidorean Decretals seem not to
have read the whole letter.]
[Footnote 172: _Saint Nicholas_, Appendix II. (followed by Dr. Mann,
vol. iii.). See also F. Rocquain's _La Papauté au Moyen Âge_ (1881).
Hefele (bd. iv., p. 292) admits that Nicholas relied on the forgery.]
[Footnote 173: _Papst Nikolaus I._ (1903).]
[Footnote 174: P. 116.]
[Footnote 175: _Epp._, lxxxii. and cxxxv.]
[Footnote 176: P. 131.]
[Footnote 177: _Ep._, lxv.]