Baring-Gould’s sources: Modem Roman Martyrology, inserted by Baronius. Authorities: — Life by Anastasius the Librarian and his own Letters.] Nicolas I., a Roman by birth, was brought up piously from early childhood by his father, Theodosius. He was ordained subdeacon by Sergius, and deacon by Leo. On the death of Pope Benedict, he committed the body to the tomb with many tears. The bishops *and clergy assembled in the church of S. Dionysius after long consultation elected him; Nicolas fled and hid in the Vatican, and was drawn from his place of concealment, and in spite of his remons trances and protests, was raised to the apostolic throne. The Emperor Louis was then in Rome. It is said that he was the nominee of the emperor, and not favoured by the clergy.1 “ At least three great events signalized the pontificate of Nicolas I.,” says Dean Milman: “the strife of Photius with Ignatius for the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople; the prohibition of the divorce of king Lothair from his queen Theutberga; and the humiliation of the great prelates on the Rhine, the successful assertion of the papal supremacy, even over Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims. In the first two of these momentous questions, the contest about the see of Constantinople, and that of Lothair, king of Lorraine, with his wife Theutberga, Nicolas took his stand on the great eternal principles of justice, humanity, and sound morals. These were no questions of abstruse and subtle theology, nor the assertion of dubious rights. In both cases the Pope was the protector of the feeble and the oppressed, the victims of calumny and of cruelty. The bishop of Constantinople, unjustly deposed, persecuted, exiled, treated with the worst inhumanity, implored the judgment of the head of Western Christendom. A queen, not only deserted by a weak and cruel husband, but wickedly and falsely criminated by a council of bishops, obtained a hearing at the Court of Rome; her innocence was vindicated, her accusers punished, the king himself compelled to bow before the majesty of justice made venerable by religion. If in both cases the language of Nicolas was haughty and imperious, it was justified to the ears of men by the goodness of his cause. The lofty supremacy which he asserted over the see of Byzantium awoke no jealousy, being exerted in behalf of a blameless and injured prelate. If he treated the royal dignity of France with contempt, it had already become contemptible in the eyes of mankind; if he annulled by his 1 Prudent. Trecens. ap. Pertz, i. 14a.

S. Nicolas /. own authority the decree of a national council, composed of the most distinguished prelates of Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium], that council had already been condemned by all who had natural sympathies with justice and with innocence.”1 But Nicolas I., if he did not promulgate, at least accepted and acted upon as authentic the Forged Decretals. He gave them the weight of papal sanction, and it was with their aid that he was able to crush Hincmar, who struggled to maintain the independence of the Teutonic Church.

These Decretals were a collection of forged letters and decrees of the twenty earliest popes, from Clement to Melchiades, and together with the genuine decrees of the popes and councils from Sylvester to Gregory II., were incorporated thirty-nine false decrees, and the acts of several unauthentic councils. In this vast repository of judgments the popes appear as the legislators, guardians, and fathers of the faith throughout the world. It was composed with the design of furnishing the popes with a weapon for crushing those who opposed their most ambitious claims, and a means for exalting them to the highest pinnacle of power in the Church. It was a long, continuous, unbroken series of letters, an accumulated mass of decrees of councils, of which the archives of Rome could show no vestige, which the most cursory investigation among them could demonstrate to be false. Nicolas certainly is guiltless of their fabrication, but he cannot be cleared of the charge of employing them, appealing to them as genuine, when he must, or ought to have known that they were a wicked invention. In his letters one year he showed no knowledge of their existence, in those of the following they are triumphantly claimed, and he thus gave his deliberate sanction to this gross historic fraud, the true character of which a few hours of study in the papal archives would have proved.

1 ** Latin Christianity,” book v. c. d. VOL. XIII. 2 1 Nicolas died in November, 867, and was buried before the gates of the basilica of S. Peter. A later writer thus gives his estimation of his character: “Since the days of Gregory I. to our time sat no high priest on the throne of S. Peter to be compared to Nicolas. He tamed tyrants and kings, and ruled the world like a sovereign; to holy bishops and clergy he was mild and gentle; to die wicked and unconverted a terror; so that we may truly say that a new Elias arose in him.” 1