would not receive, but despise and reject, such men.a He commands the king, without subterfuge or evasion, to receive back his wife; even if Theutberga should prefer the state of separation, she is to be compelled to return to her husband's bed. "But if Lothair, whom, to prevent war and bloodshed, we have still treated with some leniency, shall lift up his horn, and disobey your admonitions and ours, the affair must take its course."

The letter of the Pope to the bishops advances still higher pretensions; the object, indeed, is noble and Christian. He commands them to maintain that peace which had been sworn by the three royal brethren, to prevent the shedding of Christian blood. But he asserts the coronation of the Emperor to be a grant of the Imperial power by the Roman See. The sword was given to the Emperor by the Vicar of St. Peter, yet to be employed against infidels, not against his fellow Christians. The empire descended to Louis by hereditary right, but was confirmed by the authority of the Apostolic See.

Papal

The Legate "from the side" of the Pope began now to appear as a Dictator to the Northern kings. Arsenius was not the first who bore this title ; legates. but he asserted its pride and power with yet almost unprecedented vigour. The legate first appeared at Frankfort, and delivered his message to the Emperor Louis; thence he passed to the court of Lothair. He threatened the king with immediate excommunica

tion if he did not dismiss the concubine Waldrada, and receive his repudiated queen. He then betook himself to Attigny, the residence of Charles the Bald. He peremptorily commanded the restoration of the Bishop Rothrad, who had been canonically, as it was asserted, deposed by Hincmar his metropolitan, and was now irregularly, without inquiry or examination, replaced by the arbitrary mandate of the A.D. 865. Pope. Hincmar murmured and obeyed; the king acquiesced in the papal decree, trembling at the menaced anathema.

Arsenius crowns

Lothair and

A.D. 865.

From Attigny, Arsenius conducted Theutberga to the court of her husband. A solemn oath was dictated by the legate, and sworn on the Theutberga. Gospels by six counts and six vassals, in the name of Lothair, that he would receive Theutberga as his lawful wife, and restore her fully to her conjugal rights. Four archbishops and four bishops, besides the legate, were present at the ceremony. She was then publicly delivered to her husband, under the most awful denunciations of excommunication and condemnation to everlasting fire, if he did not fulfil the solemn compact. Lothair and Theutberga were then crowned King and Queen of Lorraine.

Arsenius found the papal fulminations weapons too useful and effective to be confined to royal offenders. A terrible excommunication of unusual violence was

8 The Annales Bertin. are supposed | verit, non solum in præsente vitâ sed to express the sentiments of Hincmar. etiam in æterno Dei terribili judicio, "Et Rothradum canonice a quinque provinciarum episcopis dejectum, et a Nicolao papâ non regulariter, sed potentialiter restitutum."-P. 89.

eum B. Petro principi Apostolorum redditurum rationem et ab ipso æternaliter in eodem judicio damnandum, et igni perpetuo concremandum."Ann. Bertin. p. 90.

launched against certain plunderers who, some years before, had robbed him of a large sum of money, unless they made immediate restitution. Another was issued against Ingeltruda, the wife of Count Boso, who had left her husband, and was leading a wandering and disreputable life.

k

Waldrada had been delivered up to Arsenius to be conducted to Rome, that she might undergo the proper penance; but Arsenius was persuaded by some powerful influence, not impossibly by bribery (for he was a man of notorious rapacity), to allow her, after she had reached Parma, to return to France. Two years afterwards the two excommunicated archbishops, beguiled with false hopes of restoration, were persuaded to go to Rome; though on a former journey they had been sternly repelled by the Pope. The aged Archbishop of Treves died there; Gunther of Cologne hardly escaped with his life. Nicolas persisted to the end in his resistance to the intercession of the Emperor Louis, and of many German bishops. He treated these men as open favourers of adultery; as the authors and contrivers of all this foul and revolting iniquity." The inexorable Pope saw one die, the other on the brink of the grave, without relaxing his unforgiving severity.

Rumours soon reached the vigilant Pontiff that the reconciliation of Lothair with his wife was but false and seeming. He was suspected of continuing secret intercourse with Waldrada; although Adventius, the

i The Ann. Bertin. mention this: "Epistolam Nicolai Papæ plenam terribilibus et a modestiâ sedis Apostolicæ hactenus inauditis maledic-| tionibus."

Nicolas wrote to the bishops to treat Waldrada as an excommunicated

person, for her contumacy in refusing to go to Rome, and her suspicious intrigues against the queen.-Epist. xxviii., Bouquet, 419.

m Compare his later letters, where he speaks of the "fœtida gesta." His usual name for Waldrada is macha.

Bishop of Metz, protested that all the king's conversation with Waldrada (Waldrada, now under public sentence of excommunication)" was pure, and that he treated his wife with the utmost respect, that he appeared with her in church, and was reported to admit her to his bed. But this was soon belied by an earnest supplication to the Pope from the unhappy queen to be released from her miserable marriage. She asserted the previous wedlock of Lothair with Waldrada, her own unfitness, from some secret malady, for the conjugal state. She entreated to be permitted to come to Rome, that she might communicate with the Pope. Nicolas replied in a tone of stern commiseration. He refused to receive a confession extorted manifestly by force. Even were she to die, the Church would never permit Lothair to marry the adulteress Waidrada. The guilty king, by the example of his adultery, had plunged thousands into the chaos of perdition; what wonder if he should force others to commit perjury? He positively forbade her journey to Rome, and exhorted her to endure glorious martyrdom in the cause of righteousness. The wretched Theutberga was, in the mean time, exposed to every insult and contumely. Lothair had at one time accused her of adultery, and proposed that she should vindicate her honour by wager of battle. Nicolas prohibited this appeal to arms; and in a letter to Lothair himself, contempt,

Oct. 30, 867.

Waldrada was excommunicated Senior ad præsens ita tractare cernitur, Feb. 2, 866.

sicut rex conjunctam sibi debet tractare • Thus writes Adventius: "Et nos reginam, videlicet ad divinum officium veriore experientiâ investigare volu- pariter honorificè comitantem, et in mus, in nullo prorsus colloquio per mensâ regiâ simul convivantem, atque, tactum, vel visum illâ (Waldradâ) ut relatio innuit, conjugalis habitus fieri voluit." debitum solvere hilariter prætendit." P❝Theutbergam Reginam noster -Apud Bouquet, p. 595.

Nicolas I.

pre- His cha

most profound and well-deserved, mingles with his indignant expostulations. Lothair was at length Jan. 867. driven, by the steadfast severity of the Pope, from every subterfuge. He was preparing to send his wife to Rome, to appear himself before the judgement-seat, and even to yield up his beloved Waldrada to the penitential discipline of the Church. Before his descent into Italy he endeavoured, by the intercession of his uncle, Louis the Germanic, to obtain for his son by Waldrada the promise of Alsace. For this end he still Death of lingered in France; but Nicolas did not live Nov. A.D. 867. to enjoy his perfect triumph; he died in November, A.D. 867—a Pontiff who, if he advanced no absolutely unexampled pretensions to supremacy in behalf of the Roman See, yet by the favourable juncture and auspicious circumstances which he seized to assert and maintain that authority, did more than all his decessors to strengthen and confirm it. During all his conflicts in the West with the royal and with the episcopal power, the moral and religious sympathies of mankind could not but be on his side. If his language was occasionally more violent, even contemptuous, than became the moderation which, up to this time, had mitigated the papal decrees, he might plead lofty and righteous indignation: if he interfered with domestic relations, it was in defence of the innocent and defenceless, and in vindication of the sanctity of marriage: if he treated kings with scorn, it was because they had become contemptible for their weakness or their vices: if he interfered with episcopal or metropolitan jurisdiction, the inferior clergy, even bishops, would be pleased to have a remote and possibly disinterested tribunal, to which they might appeal from prelates, chosen only from aristocratic connexions, barbarians in occupation

racter.