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 1087, and where the foundations were laid of a new basilica in his honour. This was the origin of a famous and still popular pilgrimage. There are nearly 400 churches in England dedicated to St Nicholas. He is the patron saint of Russia; the special protector of children, scholars, merchants and sailors; and is invoked by travellers against robbers. In art St Nicholas is represented with various attributes, being most commonly depicted with three children standing in a tub by his side. Of the various interpretations of this, none is absolutely certain. One explanation has been sought in the legend of St Nicholas miraculously restoring to life three rich youths, who had been murdered, cut up and concealed in a salting tub by a thievish innkeeper or butcher, in whose house they had taken lodging.

A legend of his surreptitious bestowal of dowries upon the three daughters of an impoverished citizen, who, unable to procure fit marriages for them, was on the point of giving them up to a life of shame, is said to have originated the old custom of giving presents in secret on the Eve of St Nicholas, subsequently transferred to Christmas Day. Hence the association of Christmas with “Santa Claus,” an American corruption of the Dutch form “San Nicolaas,” the custom being brought to America by the early Dutch colonists. (For the ceremony of the boy-bishop elected on St Nicholas’s Day see .)

NICHOLAS, the name of five popes, and one anti-pope.

I., sometimes called The Great, and certainly the most commanding figure in the series of popes between Gregory I. and Gregory VII., succeeded Benedict III. in April 858. According to the annalist Prudentius of Troyes, “he owed his election less to the choice of the clergy than to the presence and favour of the emperor Louis II. and his nobles”—who can hardly have foreseen with what ability and persistency the rights of the Holy See as supreme arbiter of Christendom were to be asserted even against themselves by the man of their choice. Of the previous history of Nicholas nothing is recorded. His pontificate of nine years and a half was marked by at least three memorable contests which have left their mark in history. The first was that in which he supported the claims of the unjustly degraded patriarch of Constantinople, Ignatius; the history of the conflict cannot be related here, but two of its incidents, the excommunication of Photius, the rival of Ignatius, by the pope in 863, and the counter-deposition of Nicholas by Photius in 867, were steps of serious moment towards the permanent separation between the Eastern and the Western Church. The second great struggle was that with Lothair, the king of Lorraine (second son of the emperor Lothair I., and brother of the emperor Louis II.), about the divorce of his wife Theutberga or Thietberga. The king, who desired to marry his mistress Waldrada, had brought a grave charge against the life of his queen before her marriage; with the help of Archbishops Gunther of Cologne and Thietgaud of Treves, a confession of guilt had been extorted from Thietberga, and, after the matter had been discussed at more than one synod, that of Aix-la-Chapelle finally authorized Lothair, on the strength of this confession, to marry again. Nicholas ordered a fresh synod to try the cause over again at Metz in 863; but Lothair, who was present with his nobles, anew secured a judgment favourable to himself, whereupon the pope not only quashed the whole proceedings, but excommunicated and deposed Gunther and Thietgaud, who had been audacious enough to bring to Rome in person the “libellus” of the synod. The archbishops appealed to Louis II., then at Benevento, to obtain the withdrawal of their sentence by force; but, although he actually occupied the Leonine city (864), he was unsuccessful in obtaining any concession, and had to withdraw to Ravenna. Thietberga herself was now induced to write to the pope a letter in which she declared the invalidity of her own marriage, and urged the cause of Lothair, but Nicholas, not without reason, refused to accept statements which had too plainly been extorted, and wrote urging her to maintain the truth steadfastly, even to the death if need were, "for, since Christ is the truth, whosoever dies for the truth assuredly dies for Christ.” The imminent humiliation of Lothair was prevented only by the death of Nicholas. The third great ecclesiastical cause which marks this pontificate was that in which the indefeasible right of bishops to appeal to Rome against their metropolitans was successfully maintained in the case of Rothad of Soissons, who had been deposed by Hincmar of Reims. It was in the course of the controversy with the great and powerful Neustrian archbishop that papal recognition was first given (in 865) to the False Decretals, which had probably been brought by Rothad to Rome in the preceding year (see ). At an early period in his reign it also became necessary for Nicholas to administer discipline to John of Ravenna, who seems to have relied not only on the prestige of his famous see but also on the support of Louis II. After lying under excommunication for some time he made a full submission. Nicholas was the pope to whom Boris, the newly converted king of Bulgaria, addressed himself for practical instruction in some of the difficult moral and social problems which naturally arise during a transition from heathenism to Christianity. The pope’s letter in reply to the hundred and six questions and petitions of the barbarian king is perhaps the most interesting literary relic of Nicholas I. now extant. He died on the 13th of November 867, and was succeeded by Adrian II.

The epistolae of Nicholas I. are printed in Migne, Patrologia Lat. vol. 119, p. 769 seq. See F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. iii. (Eng. trans., London, 1900–1902); H. Lammer, Nikolaus I. und die byzantinische Staatskirche seiner Zeit (Berlin, 1857); J. Roy, Saint-Nicolas I. (Paris, 1900); J. Richterich, Papst Nikolaus I. (Bern, 1903); A. Greinacher, Die Anschauungen des Papstes Nikotaus I. über das Verhdltnis von Staat und Kirche (1909).

II., pope from December 1058 to July 1061, was a Burgundian named Gerard, who at the time of his election was bishop of Florence. He was set up by Hildebrand, with the support of the empress-regent Agnes and of the powerful Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, against Benedict X., the nominee of the Roman nobles, and was crowned at Rome, after the expulsion of Benedict, on the 24th of January 1059; His pontificate was signalized by the continuance of the policy of ecclesiastical reform associated with the name of Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII.). To secure his position he at once entered into relation with the Normans, now firmly established in southern Italy, and later in the year the new alliance was cemented at Melfi, where Nicholas II., accompanied by Hildebrand, Cardinal Humbert and the abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino, solemnly invested Robert Guiscard with the duchies of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, and Richard of Aversa with the principality of Capua, in return for oaths of fealty and the promise of assistance in guarding the rights of the Church. The first fruits of this arrangement, which was based on no firmer foundation than the forged “” (q.v.), but destined to give to the papacy a position of independence towards both the Eastern and Western Empires, was the reduction in the autumn, with Norman aid, of Galera, where the anti-pope had taken refuge, and the end of the subordination of the papacy to the Roman nobles.

Meanwhile, Peter Damian and Bishop Anselm of Lucca had been sent by Pope Nicholas to Milan to adjust the difference between the Patarenes and the archbishop and clergy. The result was a fresh triumph for the papacy, Archbishop Wido, in face of the ruinous conflict in the Church of Milan, being forced to submit to the terms proposed by the legates, which involved the principle of the subordination of Milan to Rome; the new relation was advertised by the unwilling attendance of Wido and the other Milanese bishops at the council summoned to the Lateran palace in April 1059. This council not only continued the Hildebrandine reforms by sharpening the discipline of the clergy, but marks an epoch in the history of the papacy by its famous regulation of future elections to the Holy See (see