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 followed—conceived as a single, coherent story, or is it based on a number of separate stories, popular ballads akin to the Eddas, which the original author of the Nibelungenlied merely collected and strung together? The answer to these questions has been sought by a succession of scholars in a critical comparison of the medieval MSS. of the poem still surviving. Of these 33 are now known, of which 10 are complete, the rest being more or less fragmentary. The most important are those first discovered, viz. the MSS. lettered C (Hohenems, 1755). B (Schloss Werdenberg, 1769), A (Hohenems, 1779); and round these the others more or less group themselves. They exhibit many differences: put briefly, C is the most perfectly finished in language and rhythm; A is rough, in places barbarous; B stands half-way between the two. Which is nearest to the original? Karl Lachmann (Zu den Nibelungen und zur Klage, Anmerkungen, 1836) decided in favour of A. He applied to the Nibelungenlied the method which Friedrich August Wolf had used to resolve the Iliad and Odyssey into their elements. The poem, according to Lachmann, was based on some twenty popular ballads, originally handed down orally, but written down about 1190 or 1200. This original is lost, and A—as its roughness of form shows—is nearest to it; all other MSS., including B and C, are expansions of A. The great authority of Lachmann made this opinion the prevalent one, and it still has its champions. It was first seriously assailed by Adolf Holtzmann (Untersuchungen über das Nib., Stuttgart, 1854), who argued that the original could not have been strophic in form—the fourth lines of the strophes are certainly often of the nature of “padding” that it was written by Konrad (Kuonrât of the Klage), writer to Bishop Pilgrim of Passau about 970–984, and that of existing MSS. C is nearest to this original, B the copy of a MS. closely akin to C, and A an abbreviated, corrupt copy of B. This view was adopted by Friedrich Zarncke, who made C the basis of his edition of the Nibelungenlied (Leipzig, 1856). A new hypothesis was developed by Karl Bartsch in his Untersuchungen über das Nibelungenlied (Leipzig, 1865). According to this the original was an assonance poem of the 12th century, which was changed between 1190 and 1200 by two separate poets into two versions, in which pure rhymes were substituted for the earlier assonances: the originals of the Nibelungenlied and Der Nibelunge Nôt respectively. Bartsch’s subsequent edition of the Nibelunge Nôt (1st ed., Leipzig, 1870) was founded on B, as the nearest to the original. To this view Zarncke was so far converted that in the 1887 edition of his Nibelungenlied he admitted that C shows signs of recension and that the B group is purer in certain details.

As a result of all this critical study Herr Abeling comes to the following conclusions. The poem was first written down by a wandering minstrel about 971 to 991, was remodelled about 1140 by Konrad, who introduced interpolations in the spirit of chivalry and was perhaps responsible for the metre; during the wars and miseries of the next fifty years manners and taste became barbarized and the fine traditions of the old popular poetry were obscured, and it was under this influence that, about 1190, a jongleur (Spielmann) revised the poem, this recension being represented by group B. After 1190, during the Golden Age of the art poetry (Kunstdichtung) of the (q.v.), a professional poet (Rudolf von Ems?) again remodelled the poem, introducing further interpolations, and changing the title from Der Nibelunge Nôt into Das Nibelungenliet, this version being the basis of the group C. The MS. A, as proved by its partial excellence, is based directly on Konrad’s work, with additions borrowed from B.

NICAEA, or [mod. Isnick, i.e.  ] an ancient town of Asia Minor, in Bithynia, on the Lake Ascania. Antigonus built the city (316 ?) on an old deserted site, and soon afterwards Lysimachus changed its name from Antigonia to Nicaea, calling it after his wife. Under the Roman empire Nicaea and Nicomedia disputed the title of metropolis of Bithynia. Strabo describes the ancient Nicaea as built regularly, in the form of a square, with a gate in the middle of each side. From a monument in the centre of the city all the four gates were visible at the extremities of great cross-streets. After Constantinople became the capital of the empire Nicaea grew in importance, and after the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders became the temporary seat of the Byzantine emperor; the double line of walls with the Roman gates is still well preserved. The possession of the city was long disputed between the Greeks and the Turks. It remained an important city for some time after its final incorporation in the Ottoman empire; but became subsequently an insignificant village.

NICAEA, COUNCIL OF. The Council of Nicaea ( 325) is an event of the highest importance in the history of Christianity. Its convocation and its course illustrate the radical revolution which the position of this religion, within the confines of the Roman empire, had undergone in consequence of the Edict of Milan. Further, it was the first oecumenical council, and this fact invested it with a peculiar halo in the eyes of subsequent ages; while among its resolutions may be found a series of decisions which acquired a lasting significance for the Christian Church. This applies more especially to the reception of the doctrine of the Trinity; for though, immediately after the close of the synod, it was exposed to a powerful opposition, it gained the day, and, in the form which it received at Nicaea and at the council of Constantinople (381), still enjoys official validity in the principal churches of Christendom. Finally, the council marks an epoch in the history of the conception of the Christian religion, in that it was the first attempt to fix the criteria of Christian orthodoxy by means of definitely formulated pronouncements on the content of Christian belief—the acceptance of these criteria being made a sine qua non of membership of the Church. Moreover, it admitted the principle that the state might employ the secular arm to bring the Christian subjects of the Roman world-empire under the newly codified faith. Thus the Nicene Council is an important stage in the development of the state-church, though the completion of that edifice was delayed till the reign of Theodosius the Great. The relation of the emperor Constantine to the assembly was in itself a step in the direction of that independent treatment of ecclesiastical affairs, which, in the following centuries, created the peculiar type of the Byzantine state-church. From his accession Constantine had shown himself the friend of the Christians; and, when his victory over Licinius ( 323) gave him undisputed possession of the crown, he adhered to this religious policy, distinguishing and fortifying the Christian cause by gratuities and grants of privilege. This propitiatory attitude originated in the fact that he recognized Christianity—which had successfully braved so many persecutions—as the most vital and vigorous of religions, and as the power of the future. Consequently he directed his energies toward the establishment of a positive relationship between it and the Roman state. But the Church could only maintain its great value for the politician by remaining the same compact organism which it had proved itself to be under the stormy reign of Diocletian. Scarcely, however, did it find itself in the enjoyment of external peace, when violent feuds broke out in its midst, whose extent, and the virulence with which they were waged, threatened to dismember the whole religious body. Donatism in the West was followed by the Arian struggle in the East. The former movement had been successfully arrested, though it survived in North Africa till the 5th century. The conflict kindled by the