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Rh superior to those of any other power whatever. To those Bishops and priests who, loyal to Louis the Pious, had pleaded his orders as a justification for not having hastened to present themselves when summoned by the Pope, Gregory does not hesitate to retort: "Why speak to me of the orders of the Emperor? Are not the orders of the Pope of equal weight? And is not the authority over souls which belongs to the Pope above the imperial rule which is of this world?"

This letter of Gregory IV touched the vital point, since the most formidable obstacle to the centralisation of the Church was the dependence of the body of the clergy in each kingdom upon the different princes among whom the secular rule over Christendom was divided. It was left for Nicholas I (858-867) to make energetic resistance to this danger, and to enable the Papacy to attain that position of supreme headship over the Church which his predecessors had often claimed with theories not hitherto wrought out in practice.

At the outset, a series of sensational events, involving nearly simultaneous struggles with the Carolingian sovereigns and with the Emperor of the East, forced upon Nicholas the choice between a humiliating submission and the offensive in circumstances which, if mishandled, might lead to the gravest consequences. Between these two courses a man of Nicholas I's type could not hesitate. He stood firmly on the rights of the Holy See, and shewed himself resolved on their triumphant vindication.

The first question to be decided was, whether in the important matter of the divorce of Lothar II, King of Lorraine, which has been already under discussion, the last word was to rest with the king, supported by a complaisant clergy ready to grant him a divorce, or with the Pope to whom Theutberga, the discarded wife, had appealed. Lothar and the Bishops of his party imagined that they could easily hoodwink the Pope. When Nicholas commissioned two Italian prelates as legates to examine into the matter, and instructed them to hold a council at Metz to which the Bishops of the German, French and Provençal kingdoms were to be convoked as well as the Bishops of Lorraine, Lothar bought over the legates, contrived to exclude the foreign Bishops from the Council, and easily secured the annulment of his first marriage, thanks to the connivance of Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne, and of Theutgaud, Archbishop of Trèves (June 863). Nicholas I replied with a bold stroke. When the two Archbishops reached Rome to announce to the Pope the decisions arrived at, he brought them to trial before a synod composed only of Italian prelates, and declared them deposed (October 863), at the same time quashing the decisions of "this new robber rout of Ephesus," as he called the synod held at Metz.