' limn I SO^^Hi S (SaUcit.^ ^9^\90 THE LIVES OF THE POPES VOL. III. THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES BY THE REV. HORACE K. MANN " De gente Anglorum, qui maxime familiares Apostolicse Sedis semper existunt" (Gesta Abb. Fontanel. A.D. 747-752, ap. M.G. SS. II. 289). HEAD MASTER OF ST. CUTHBERT's GRAMMAR SCHOOL, NEWCASTI.E-ON-TYNE CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF HISTORY OF SPAIN THE POPES DURING THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE Leo III. to Formosus 795-891 VOL. III.—858-891 B. HERDER 17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST LOUIS, MO. KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO., LTD. DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1906 VW^o 6X / 900 Go HIS ALMA MATER ST cuthbert's college, ushaw THIS VOLUME 3s respectfully 2>eDicate& BY A GRATEFUL SON . A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS VOLUME Jaffe, or Regesta . = Regesta Pontificum Pomanorum, ed. Jaffe, 2nd ed., Lipsiae, 1885. Labbe = Sacrosanda Concilia, ed. Labbe and Cossart, Paris, 1671. L. P., Anastasius, or the = Liber Pontificalis, 2 vols., ed. L. ) Book of the Popes ) Duchesne, Paris, 1886. M. G. H, or Pertz . ,= Monumenta Germanics Historica, either Scriptores (M. G. SS.) or Epistolce (M. G. Epp.). P. G. ' = Patrologia Grceca, ed. Migne, Paris. P. L. = Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, Paris. R. I. S. = Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ed. Muratori, Milan, 1723 ff. The sign f placed before a date indicates that the date in question is the year of the death of the person after whose name the sign and the date are placed. TABLE OF CONTENTS. S. Nicholas I., The Great (858-867), ST. NICHOLAS I, THE GREAT. A.D. 858-867. C„ „ ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA. Page 3, last line of text, delete ' and.' ' 8, note 1, after p.' add ' 128 ff.' ' ' 1 r, line 6 from the bottom, for says ' read say.' 50, last line but one, for ' t?j' read 't??.' ' ' 1 12, line 27, for though ' read through.' ' ' 1 5, line %for sacrament ' read sacraments.' 1 168, line 12, delete 'V after 'metropolitan.' ' ' 269, note 1, for t. 53 ' read 1. 53.' ' 1 ' ' 2.' 274, line 20, for ' after him ' read 274, line 25, rtfc/^te ' 2 ' afteY ' hope.' " ' 292, line 1, -pat a/7<?r deal.' ST. NICHOLAS L, THE GREAT. A.D. 858-867. Sources. —The contemporary life in the Liber Pontificalis is dis- tinguished from those immediately preceding it by the fact that it devotes much less space to the enumeration of church re- storations, and that, though the usual excuse for turning to the Pope's church offerings is brought forward, viz., the inability of the writer to record all that Nicholas accomplished in other direc- tions, it gives much more space to his political and other actions. It is remarkable, too, by its frequent reference to the sources, viz., the pontifical archives, whence its materials were drawn. These distinguishing features were in all likelihood added by the famous cardinal librarian Anastasius ; so that this is perhaps the only life in the Liber Pontificalis which may be attributed to the man to whom for a very long period the whole of it used to be assigned. 1 Of the first importance for the biography of Nicholas are such of his numerous letters as the ravages of time have spared. Of these, inclusive of fragments, 159 have been published in the P. L., t. 119, 3 in t. 129, and 2 more in the Biblioth. Casinensis, iv.'p. 358 ff. In one of the last-named letters to the spatharius Michael there is an allusion to the Greek habit of tampering with documents so frequently denounced by Nicholas. 2 These 1 L. P., ii. p. v. 2 The spatharius is exhorted in God's name to give the letter into the emperor's hands, and to ask him " ut ad talem interpretem VOL. III. I 2 ST. NICHOLAS I., THE GREAT letters, for the most part rather long, but in the main lucid and replete with close argument, are of the greatest utility for the study not only of history, but also of Canon Law. To no inconsiderable extent has the latter borrowed its forms from them, as from the letters of S, Gregory I. For it was still largely resting " upon precedents rather than fixed constitutions, upon principles rather than codes." 1 It was not till the second half of the eleventh century that the great codes of Canon Law began to see the light. In connection with this influence of the letters of Nicholas upon Canon Law, it is important to bear in mind that, contrary to what is frequently stated, they were not inspired by the False Decretals. This has been absolutely demonstrated by Rocquain 2 and by Roy. These authors have, in the most detailed manner possible, tracked to their sources all the quotations of Nicholas, and have shown them to be derived for the most part from the genuine collection of canons made by Dionysius the Little, or from the authentic letters of his predecessors. In a few instances, indeed, he has cited spurious writings, as, for example, The Acts of Pope Sylvester. But in every case they were documents which centuries of existence had made venerable, and had caused to be generally accepted. The fact, then, that the letters of Nicholas did not owe their authority to any support from the False Decretals is one proof among many that the influence of this collection on the development of papal power is by no means as great as is popularly supposed. Writers on the diplomatics of the papal letters have shown that illam (epistolam) interpretandam tribuat qui non sit ausus ex ea quicquam aut minuere aut addere aut aliquid commutare." 1 Roy, Saint Nicholas (Eng. ed.), p. 196. 2 " II convient de remarquer que tous les fragments qu'il en (the False Decretals') cite ont un parfait caractere d'authenticite. II suffit, pour s'en convaincre, de rapprocher ces citations soit du Codex Canonum, soit des lettres authentiques qui nous ont ete conservees. Nous avons fait," he adds in a note, " nous-meme ce rapprochement pour tontes les decretales citees dans la correspondance de Nicolas. Non er seulment on ne peut etablir .... que Nicolas I ait fait usage .... des pieces falsifiees de la collection pseudoisidorienne, mais on ne peut pas meme affirmer qu'il ait eu cette collection entre les mains." La Papaute an moyen age, p. 45 ff. Cf. Roy, p. 178 ff., where a detailed list of the sources used by the Pope is given (Eng. ed.). ST. NICHOLAS I., THE GREAT those of Nicholas exercised no little influence oh their official form ; e.g., the custom adhered to by that Pope, of placing his name first in the superscriptions of his letters, has been followed ever since. 1 Then we have the works of Photius, ap. P. G., tt. 101-4, par- ticularly his letters (ib., t. 102), which have been twice edited in London—in 1651, in both Greek and Latin, by Bishop Montague, and in 1864, in Greek only, by J. N. Baletta. Many of the letters of this famous patriarch are both very interesting and very elegant. Of the various annals, the most important are the third part of the annals of Bertin, written by Hincmar of Rheims, and cited as his. A very curious work, already quoted, is the Libellus de imp. potest, in Urbe Roma, generally supposed to have been written in the middle of the tenth century, but which Lapotre (Jean VIII., c. 4), who has submitted it to a very critical examination, has, it would seem, proved to be the produc- tion of a Lombard, probably of Rieti, who wrote it in 897 or 898 in the interests of the imperial, royal, and ducal house of Spoleto. Ap. P. I., t. 129, under the name of Eutropius, and in t. 139. The manners and customs of the Slavs, who first came into contact with the Byzantine empire and the West in the sixth century, have been described by such writers of that age as Procopius, 2 Jornandes, 2 Menander, 3 etc., and in medieval times, by the Russian monk known as Nestor, i Adam 5 of Bremen, canon of Bremen in 1077, Helmold 5 of Biitzaw (C/iron. Slav., to 1171), and his continuator, Arnold of Lubeck 5 (to 1209), and Saxo Grammaticus (Hist. Dan.), f after 1208. The best edition of the last work is by Holder, Strasburg, 1886. Works. —For the series Les Saints, published by Lecoffre, which is being translated into English, Mons. J. Roy has 1 Rodolico, Note ftaleog. e diplomat, sul privil. pontif., p. 16. Cf. Nonv. traite de diplom., v. 2 3 Ap. R. I. S., i., pt. i. Ap. P. G., t. 88. 4 Ed. with French translation by Leger, Paris, 1884; written about the end of the eleventh century. 5 All these works have been separately edited, ap. M. G. SS., in usum schol. 4 ST. NICHOLAS L, THE GREAT written an excellent biography of this Pope, St. Nicholas I. Paris, 1899. The English version has been published by- Messrs. Duckworth, and is dated 1901. The first portion of Rocquain's La Papaute au moyen age, Paris, 1881, is a reprint of three good articles of his in the Journal des Savants for September flf. 1880. I have made considerable use of many of the Dissert, in Hist. Eccles. of Jungmann, vol. iii. ; e.g. the one on the divorce of King Lothaire. On the last-named topic, the fullest account I have met with is : Le P.