him to his benefice, excommunicated and imprisoned the clerk whom Rothad had put into it, and persecuted the bishop himself for his share in the affair." Even by this account, it would seem that Rothad had ventured to invade the rights of his metropolitan by holding a synod independently of him. But in addition to this, Hincmar, while disclaiming all personal malice against the bishop of Soissons, charges him with long insubordination, with notorious laxity of life, and with dilapidating, selling, or pledging the property of his sce. However their disagreement may have arisen, Hincmar in 861 suspended Rothad from his office until he should become obedient, and threatened him with deposition; whereupon the bishop appealed to Rome.

A.D. 862.

In the following year, Rothad appeared at a synod held at Pistres,' as if no censure had been passed against him. His presence was objected to, on which he again appealed to the pope, and asked leave to go to Rome, which Charles the Bald at first granted. But the case was afterwards, with the concurrence of Charles, examined by a synod at Soissons, in the end of the same year, when Rothad, who had been imprisoned for his contumacy in refusing to appear, was sentenced to deposition, while an abbey was assigned to him for his maintenance, and another person was appointed to his see. According to Hincmar, he was content with this arrangement, until some Lotharingian bishops, wishing to use him as a tool against the great opponent of their sovereign's divorce, persuaded him to resume his appeal to the pope. Rothad's own statement is, that Hincmar, having got possession of a letter in which he requested a continuance of support from some bishops who had befriended him at Pistres, wrongly represented this as an abandonment of his appeal, and a reference of his cause to those Frankish bishops."

Hincmar and the prelates who had met at Soissons, by way of obviating the pope's objections to their proceedings, requested Nicolas to confirm their acts, while, in excuse for their disregard of Rothad's appeal, they alleged that the old imperial laws forbade such cases to be carried out of the kingdom. But Nicolas had

"Rothad. ap. Hard. v. 581; Nic. Ep. pose the sentence to have been passed 29, ib. 249.

Gfrörer, i. 464.

P Opera, ii. 248, 251-3.

by a synod at Senlis, in 863; but this arises from a mistake of Silvanectensis for Suessioniensis in the heading of Nic.

a Schröckh, xxii. 144; Planck, fii. Ep. 32. Hefele, iv. 247. 103.

Near Pont de l'Arche, on the Seine, Hincm. Annal. 862-3, Opera, ii. 249. Gfrörer (ii, 465) and others sup

Opera, ii. 249.

Rothad. Libellus, ap. Hard. v. 580. See Planck, iii. 104.

received representations of the affair from the bishops of Lotharingia, and replied by censuring the synod very strongly for the insult which it had offered to St. Peter by presuming to judge a matter in which an appeal had been made to Rome. In consequence of that appeal, he declared its judgment to be null. Temporal laws, he said, are good against heretics and tyrants, but are of no force when they clash with the rights of the church." He tells the members of the assembly that they must either restore Rothad to his see, or within thirty days send deputies to assert their cause against him before the apostolical tribunal. With his usual skill, he assumes the character of a general guardian of the church by remarking that the same evil which had happened to Rothad might befall any one of themselves, and he points out the chair of St. Peter as the refuge for bishops oppressed by their metropolitans.a At the same time Nicolas wrote to Hincmar in terms of severe censure. He tells him that, if Rothad had not appealed, he must himself have inquired into the matter-a claim of right to interfere which had not before been advanced by Rome. He asked with what consistency Hincmar could apply for a confirmation of his privileges as metropolitan to the Roman see, or how he could attach any value to privileges derived from Rome, while he did all that he could to lessen its authority; and, as the first letter received no answer, the pope wrote again, telling the archbishop that within thirty days he must either reinstate Rothad or send him and some representatives of his accusers to Rome, on pain of being interdicted from the celebration of the Eucharist until he should comply. He also wrote to Rothad, encouraging him to persevere in his appeal unless he were conscious of having a bad cause; and, notwithstanding the importunities of Charles and his queen, who entreated him to let the matter rest, he desired the king to send Rothad to Rome. The second letter to Hincmar, and two which followed it, remained unanswered; and Nicolas then wrote a fifth, but in a milder tone, as he was afraid to drive the archbishop to extremities, lest he should join the party of Gunther."

In the beginning of 864, Rothad obtained permission to go to Rome. Hincmar also sent two envoys-not, he said, as accusers, but in order to justify his own proceedings. They carried with them a

letter of great length, in which, with profuse expressions of humility and reverence towards the apostolic see, he admits the right of appeal as sanctioned by the Sardican canon, but says that, according to the African canons and to Gregory the Great, Rothad, by referring the case to judges of his own choosing, had foregone the right of carrying it to any other tribunal. He tells the pope that Rothad had for many years been unruly and had treated all remonstrances with contempt, so that he himself had incurred much obloquy for allowing a man so notoriously unfit and incorrigible to retain the episcopal office." He dwells much on the necessity that bishops should obey their metropolitans, and endeavours very earnestly to obtain the pope's confirmation of his past proceedings, assuring him that Rothad shall be well provided for."

Hincmar's envoys were detained on the way by the emperor Louis, but the letter was sent onwards and reached the pope.° Rothad was allowed to proceed to Rome, and, six months after his arrival, presented a statement of his case. On Christmas-eve, three months later, Nicolas ascended the pulpit of St. Mary Major, and made a speech on the subject. Even if Hincmar's story were true, he said, it was no longer in the power of Rothad, after he had appealed to the apostolic see, to transfer his cause to an inferior tribunal; since Rothad professed himself willing to meet all charges, and since no accuser had appeared against him, the pope declared him to be worthy of restoration; and, 865. after having waited until the feast of St. Agnes, he publicly invested the bishop with pontifical robes, and desired him to officiate at mass before him."

Jan. 21,

As Rothad maintained that he had never abandoned his appeal, and as his accusers had suffered judgment to go by default, the proceedings of Nicolas thus far might have been justified by the Sardican canon, which suspended the execution of sentence against a bishop until the pope should have submitted the cause to a fresh examination; and Hincmar had failed in the observance of that canon by appointing another bishop to Soissons. But, in letters which he wrote on the occasion, the pope gave vent to some startling novelties that the decretals of his predecessors had been Hincm. Annal. 864, ap. Pertz. i.

i Opera, ii. 244, seqq. Hincmar says that the pope appears to be troubled by his multiloquium; but he goes on to allege St. Augustine on behalf of it (247), and he certainly does not correct it.

Ib. 248, 251.

m Ib. 248.

n Ib. 258-9; Planck, iii. 117-120.

465.

violated; that the deposition of Rothad was invalid, because the council which had pronounced it was held without the apostolic permission, and, further, because the deposition of a bishop was one of those "greater judgments" which belong to the apostolic chair alone. He required Hincmar, on pain of perpetual deposition, either at once to restore Rothad unconditionally, or to reinstate him for the time, and to appear at Rome for the further trial of the question."

b

Nicolas had originally stood on the Sardican canon, but he now took very different ground; and the change was the more striking, because the new principles which he advanced were really unnecessary to his cause. These principles were derived from the pretended decretals of Isidore, which are for the first time mentioned as being known at Rome in the letter of Nicolas to the French bishops. In 860, Lupus of Ferrières, at the instigation of Wenilo, archbishop of Sens," had written a letter in which he hinted a reference to them by saying that pope Melchiades, the contemporary of Constantine, was reported to have laid down that no bishop could be deposed without the pope's consent; and the abbot had requested that Nicolas would send a copy of the decretal as preserved at Rome. From the pope's silence as to this point in his answer, it is inferred that he then knew nothing of the forged collection; and the same was the case in 863, when he spoke of the decretals of Siricius as the oldest that were known. But now-only one year later he is found citing those of the Isidorian collection: and when some of the French bishops expressed a doubt respecting them, on the ground that they were not in the code of Dionysius Exiguus, he answered that on the same ground they might suspect the decretals of Gregory and other popes later than Dionysius, and even the canonical Scriptures; that there were genuine decretals preserved elsewhere; that, as Innocent had ordered all the canonical books to be received, so had Leo ordered the reception of all papal decretals; that they themselves were in the habit of using these epistles when favourable to their own interest, and questioned them only when the object was to

Ad Cler. et Pleb. Eccl. Rom. ap. Hard. v. 584; ad Carol. Calv. ib. 585; ad Hincmar. ib. 588; ad Universos Episcopos Galliæ, ib. 590, 593; Planck, iii. 127-8.

" Hard. v. 588-590. Planck, iii. 130.

y Schröckh, xxii. 152-4; Gfrörer, i. 478-9. Baronius (865. 7), against all

injure the rights of the apos

tolical see. It would seem, therefore, that Nicolas had been made acquainted with the forged decretals during Rothad's stay at Rome-most probably by Rothad himself. That the bishop of Soissons was privy to the forgery, appears likely from the facts that he was already a bishop when it was executed, and that he was connected with the party from which it emanated. But we need not suppose that Nicolas knowingly adopted an imposture. The principles of the decretals had been floating in the mind of the age; on receiving the forgeries, the pope recognised in them his own ideal of ecclesiastical polity, and he welcomed them as affording a historical foundation for it. We may therefore, in charity, at least, acquit him of conscious fraud in this matter, although something of criminality will still attach to the care with which he seems to have avoided all examination of their genuineness, and to the eagerness with which he welcomed these pretended antiquities, coming from a foreign country, in disregard of the obvious consideration that, if genuine, they must have all along been known in his own city.

Hincmar made no further active opposition, but acquiesced in the restitution of Rothad, although in his chronicle of the time he speaks of it as effected by might in defiance of rule, and argues that it was inconsistent with the Sardican canon. The act was performed by Arsenius, during the mission which has been mentioned in connexion with the history of Lothair's marriages,1 and Rothad appears to have died soon after, in the beginning of Adrian's pontificate.i

IV. If even Nicolas had found Hincmar a dangerous antagonist, Adrian was altogether unequal to contend with him.

On the death of Lothair in 869, Charles the Bald immediately seized his dominions. Adrian felt that, after the part which his predecessor and he himself had taken to make the world regard the papal see as the general vindicator of justice, he was bound to interfere in behalf of the nearer heirs-the emperor Louis, and his uncle the king of Germany. He therefore wrote in terms

d Hard. v. 592-3; Planck, iii. 132-4; by French bishops, or even that he never Gfrörer, i. 479-480.

e Gfrörer, i. 483-5.

f See Planck, iii. 135-7; Giesel. II. i. 185; Gfrörer, i. 483-4; and Dean Milman, ii. 308, who seems to think the pope's share in the matter even worse than that of the forger. I do not see that Walter (187) improves the case by saying that Nicolas knew the decretals only through extracts presented to him

of himself referred to them; and Denzinger's attempt to vindicate the pope (Patrol. cxxx., Praef. xii.) seems also a failure.

"Non regulariter sed potentialiter." Hincm. Annal. 865, p. 468. h P. 327.

i Anast. 259; Gfrörer, i. 485. Schröckh, xxii. 169; Planck, iii.

153.