Lateran Councils, and Conclave). Its most important
immediate result was the revival of strained relations with the empire, due to the fact that the emperor’s traditional rights in the matter of papal elections had been completely ignored. Stephen, cardinal priest of S. Chrysogonus, was sent to the German court to attempt to allay the consequent ill-feeling, but was not received. Pope Nicholas, moreover, had offended the German bishops by what they regarded as arbitrary interference with their rights: he had refused to send the pallium of Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz; he had sent a sharp letter of admonition to Archbishop Anno of Cologne. The resulting opposition culminated in a synod of German bishops, perhaps early in 1061 (its date and place of meeting are unknown), at which the decrees of the pope, including the new electoral law, were annulled, while he himself was deposed and his name ordered to be expunged from the canon of the Mass. That these resolutions were not followed by any further action was due to the war of parties in Germany, which enabled the papacy to ignore a demonstration of opinion to which no effect could be given.
Nicholas II. died at Florence in July 1061. Personally he was one of the least important of the popes, and the great importance of the events of his pontificate is due to the fact that, as Peter Damian wrote (Epist. i. 7), he possessed in Hildebrand, Cardinal Humbert and Bishop Boniface of Albano acutissimi et perspicacis oculi.
His Diplomata, epistolae, decreta are in Migne, Patrolog. Lat. 143, pp. 1301-1366. See the article “Nikolaus II.” by C. Mirbt in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1904), with bibliography. Other lists of authorities are in Potthast, Biblioth. Hist. Med. Aev. (2nd ed., Berlin, 1896), p. 854; and Ulysse Chevalier, Répertoire des sources hist. biobibliogr. (Paris, 1905), vol. 3347, s.v. “Nicolas II.” (X.)
Nicholas III. (Giovanni Gaetano Orsini), pope from the 25th of November 1277 to the 22nd of August 1280, was a Roman nobleman who had served under eight popes, been made cardinal-deacon of St Nicola in carcere Tulliano by Innocent IV., protector of the Franciscans by Alexander IV., inquisitor-general by Urban IV., and succeeded John XXI., largely through family influence, after a six-months’ vacancy in the Holy See. His brief pontificate was marked by several important events. A born politician, he greatly strengthened the papal position in Italy. He concluded a concordat with Rudolph of Habsburg in May 1278, by which the Romagna and the exarchate of Ravenna were guaranteed to the pope; and in July he issued an epoch-making constitution for the government of Rome, which forbade foreigners taking civil office. Nicholas issued the bull Exiit on the 14th of August 1279 to settle the strife within the Franciscan order between the parties of strict and loose observance. He repaired the Lateran and the Vatican at enormous cost, and erected a beautiful country house at Soriano near Viterbo. Nicholas, though a man of learning and strength of character, brought just reproach on himself for his efforts to found principalities for his nephews and other relations. He died from a stroke of apoplexy and was succeeded by Martin IV.
See “Les Registres de Nicolas III.,” published by Jules Gay in Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome (Paris, 1898–1905); A. Potthast, Regesta pontif. Roman. vol. 2 (Berlin, 1875); A. Demski, “ Papst Nikolaus III.” in Kirchengeschichte Studien (Münster, 1903); F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. 5, trans. by Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900–1902); Fr. Wertsch, Die Beziehungen Rudolfs von Habsburg zur röm. Kurie bis zum Tode Nikolaus III. (Bochum, 1880); G. Palmieri, Introiti ed esiti di Papa Niccolò III. (Rome, 1889). (C. H. Ha.)
Nicholas IV. (Girolamo Masci), pope from the 22nd of February 1288 to the 4th of April 1292, a native of Ascoli and a Franciscan monk, had been legate to the Greeks under Gregory X. in 1272, succeeded St Bonaventura as general of his order in 1274, was made cardinal-priest of Sta Prassede and Latin patriarch of Constantinople by Nicholas III., cardinal-bishop of Palestrina by Martin IV., and succeeded Honorius IV. after a ten-months’ vacancy in the papacy. He was a pious, peace-loving monk with no ambition save for the church, the crusades and the extirpation of heresy. He steered a middle course between the factions at Rome, and sought a settlement of the Sicilian question. In May 1289 he crowned Charles II. king of Naples and Sicily after the latter had expressly recognized papal suzerainty, and in February 1291 concluded a treaty with Alphonso III. of Aragon and Philip IV. of France looking toward the expulsion of James of Aragon from Sicily. The loss of Ptolemais in 1291 stirred the pope to renewed enthusiasm for a crusade. He sent the celebrated Franciscan missionary, John of Monte Corvino, with some companions to labour among the Tatars and Chinese. He issued an important constitution on the 18th of July 1289, which granted to the cardinals one-half of all income accruing to the Roman see and a share in the financial management, and thereby paved the way for that independence of the college of cardinals which, in the following century, was to be of detriment to the papacy. Nicholas died in the palace which he had built beside Sta Maria Maggiore, and was succeeded by Celestine V.
See “Les Registres de Nicolas IV.,” ed. by Ernest Langlois in Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome (Paris, 1886–1893); A. Potthast, Regesta pontif. Roman. vol. 2 (Berlin, 1875); F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. 5, trans. by Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900–1902); O. Schiff, “Studien zur Geschichte Papst Nikolaus IV.” in Historische Studien (1897); W. Norden, Das Papsttum u. Byzanz (Berlin, 1903); R. Röhricht, Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem (Innsbruck, 1898); J. B. Sägmüller, Die Thätigkeit u. Stellung der Kardinäle bis Papst Bonifaz VIII. (Freiburg-i.-B., 1896); J. P. Kirsch, “Die Finanzverwaltung des Kardinalkollegiums im 13. u. 14. Jahrhunderte” in Kirchengeschichtliche Studien (1895). (C. H. Ha.)
Nicholas V. (Tomaso Parentucelli or Tomaso da Sarzana), pope from the 6th of March 1447 to the 24th of March 1455, was born at Sarzana, Where his father was a physician, in 1398. He early studied at Bologna, where the bishop, Nicholas Albergati, was so much struck with his ardour for learning that he gave him the chance to pursue his studies further, by sending him on a tour through Germany, France and England. He distinguished himself at the council of Ferrara-Florence, and in 1444 was made bishop of Bologna by Pope Eugenius IV., who soon afterwards named him as one of the legates charged to negotiate at the convention of Frankfort an understanding between the Holy See and the Empire with regard to the reforming decrees of the council of Basel. His successful diplomacy was rewarded, on his return to Rome, with the title of cardinal priest of Sta Susanna (December 1446). He was elected pope in succession to Eugenius IV. on the 6th of March of the following year, taking the name of Nicholas in honour of his early benefactor.
The eight years of his pontificate were important in the political, scientific and literary history of the world. With the German king, Frederick III., he made the Concordat of Vienna, or Aschaffenburg (February 17, 1448), by which the decrees of the council of Basel against papal annates and reservations were abrogated so far as Germany was concerned; and in the following year he secured a still greater triumph when the resignation of the anti-pope Felix V. (April 7), and his own recognition by the rump of the council of Basel, assembled at Lausanne, put an end to the papal schism. The next year, 1450, Nicholas held a jubilee at Rome; and the offerings of the numerous pilgrims who thronged to Rome gave him the means of furthering the cause of culture in Italy, which he had so much at heart. In March 1452 he crowned Frederick III. as emperor in St Peter’s, the last occasion of the coronation of an emperor at Rome.
Under the generous patronage of Nicholas humanism made rapid strides. He employed hundreds of copyists and scholars, giving as much as ten thousand gulden for a metrical translation of Homer, and founded a library of nine thousand volumes. Nicholas himself was a man of vast erudition, and his friend Aeneas Silvius (later Pope Pius II.) said of him that “what he does not know is outside the range of human knowledge.” He was compelled, however, to add that the lustre of his pontificate would be for ever dulled by the tragic fall of Constantinople, which the Turks took in 1453. The pope bitterly felt this catastrophe as a double blow to Christendom and to Greek letters. “It is a second death,” wrote Aeneas Silvius,
