NICHOLAS II. (1868–), emperor of Russia, eldest son and successor of Alexander III., was born at St Petersburg on the 18th of May 1868. He received the ordinary education of Russian grand-dukes, under the direction of General Danilovitch, assisted by M. Pobêdonostsev and other eminent professors. Among these was an Englishman, Mr Charles Heath, for whom he had great respect and affection. By the death of his grandfather, Alexander II., in 1881, he became heir-apparent (cesarevich). Though he received, like all the heirs-apparent to the Russian throne, a certain amount of military training, his personal tastes did not lie in that direction, nor did he show any inclination for the boisterous amusements of the jeunesse dorée of St Petersburg. Like his father, he was nowhere happier than in the family circle, and he was particularly attached to his sister, the grand-duchess Xenia, who was seven years younger than himself. In 1890–1891 he made a tour in Greece, Egypt, India, Ceylon and Japan, where he narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a Japanese fanatic. On the return journey by Siberia, at Vladivostok, he turned the first sod of the eastern section of the Siberian railway, and two years afterwards (1893) he was appointed president of the imperial committee for that great undertaking. By the death of his father on the 1st of November 1894 he became emperor, and on the 26th of that month he married Princess Alix of Hesse (a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria), to whom he had been betrothed in the presence of his father during the latter’s last illness. Eighteen months later the coronation took place at Moscow with great pomp, but a gloom was thrown over the festivities by the unfortunate incident of the Khodinskoe Polye, a great open space near the city, where a popular fête had been prepared and where, from defective police arrangements, a large number of men, women and children, roughly estimated at 2000, were crushed and trampled to death. Nicholas II. followed in the footsteps of his father, seeking to preserve peace in foreign relations, and continuing in home affairs, though in a much milder form, the policy of centralization and Russification which had characterized the previous reign. His pacific tendencies were shown by his systematic opposition to all bellicose excitement, by his maintaining M. de Giers in the post of minister of foreign affairs, by his offering the post, on the death of that statesman, to M. de Staal, by his restraining France from dangerous adventures, and by initiating the Peace Conference at the Hague. To these ought perhaps to be added the transformation of the Franco-Russian entente cordiale into a formal alliance, since the alliance in question might be regarded as favourable to the preservation of the status quo in Europe. In the internal administration during the first years of his reign he introduced by his personal influence, and without any great change in the laws, a more humane spirit towards those of his subjects who did not belong by language and tradition to the dominant nationality, and who were not members of the Eastern Orthodox Church; but he disappointed the men of liberal views by giving it to be clearly understood soon after his accession that he had no intention of circumscribing and weakening the autocratic power by constitutional guarantees or parliamentary institutions. In spite, however, of his desire for peace he let his country drift into the disastrous war with Japan; and notwithstanding his sincere attachment to the principles of bureaucratic autocracy, it was he who granted the constitutional reforms which altered the whole political outlook in Russia (see Russia).
NICHOLAS OF BASEL (d. 1397), a prominent member of the
Beghard community, who travelled widely as a missionary
and propagated the teachings of his sect. Though vigorously
sought after by the Inquisition he eluded its agents for many
years until in 1397 he was seized in Vienna, and burned at
the stake as a heretic, together with two of his followers,
John and James. A considerable legend has attached itself to
Nicholas through the persistent but mistaken identification of
him with the mysterious “Friend of God from the Oberland,”
the “double” of Rulman Merswin, the Strassburg banker who
was one of the leaders of the 14th-century German mystics
known as the Friends of God. In Merswin’s Story of the First
Four Years of a New Life, he writes: “Of all the wonderful
works which God had wrought in me I was not allowed to tell
a single word to anybody until the time when it should please
God to reveal to a man in the Oberland to come to me. When
he came to me God gave me the power to tell him everything.”
The identity and personality of this “Friend of God,” who
bulks so largely in the great collection of mystical literature,
and is everywhere treated as a half supernatural character, is
one of the most difficult problems in the history of mysticism.
The tradition, dating from the 15th century and supported
by the weighty authority of the Strassburg historian Karl
Schmidt (Nicolaus von Basel, Vienna, 1866), identified him
with Nicholas, but is now discredited by all scholars. A. Jundt
(Les Amis de Dieu, 1879) shared Preger’s view that the Friend
was a great unknown who lived in or near Chur (Coire) in
Switzerland. But since Denifle’s researches (see especially
Der Gottesfreund im Oberlande und Nikolaus von Basel, 1870)
the belief has gained ground that the “Friend” is not a historical
personage at all. Apart from the collection of literature ascribed
to him and Merswin there is no historical evidence of his existence.
The accounts of his life say that about 1343 he was forbidden
to reveal his identity to anyone save Rulman Merswin. And
as all the writings bear the marks of a single authorship it has
been assumed, especially by Denifle, that “the Friend of God”
is a literary creation of Merswin and that the whole collection
of literature is the work of Merswin (and his school),
tendency-literature designed to set forth the ideals of the movement to
which he had given his life. Thus “the great unknown” from
the Oberland is the ideal character, “who illustrates how God
does his work for the world and for the church through a divinely
trained and spiritually illuminated layman,” just as William
Langland in England about the same time drew the figure of
Piers Plowman.
To rescue Merswin from the charge of deceit involved in this theory, Jundt puts forward the suggestion, more ingenious than convincing, that Merswin was a “double personality,” who in his primary state wrote the books ascribed to him, and in his secondary state became “the Friend of God from the Oberland,” writing the other treatises. A third hypothesis is that advanced by Karl Rieder (Der Gottesfreund von Oberland, Innsbruck, 1905), who thinks that not even Merswin himself wrote any of the literature, but that his secretary and associate Nicholas of Löwen, head of the House of St John at Grünenwörth, the retreat founded by Merswin for the circle, worked over all the writings which emanated from different members of the group but bore no author’s names, and to glorify the founder of the house attached Merswin’s name to some of them and out of his imagination created “the Friend of God from the Oberland,” whom he named as the writer of the others. As his design took shape he expanded the supernatural element and made the narratives autobiographical. There is much in this contention that is sound, but Rieder seems to go unnecessarily far in denying altogether that Merswin wrote any of the mystical books. The conclusion remains that the literature must be treated as tendency-writing and not as genuine biography and history.
See besides the works cited, Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, ch. xiii. (London, 1909). (A. J. G.)
NICHOLAS OF GUILDFORD (fl. 1250), English poet, the supposed author of The Owl and the Nightingale, an English poem of the 13th century. This work, which displays genuine poetical and imaginative qualities, is written in the south-western dialect, and is one of the few 13th-century English poems not devoted entirely to religious topics. The nightingale sitting on a branch covered with blossom sees the owl perched on a bough overgrown with ivy, and proceeds to abuse him for his general habits and appearance. The birds decide to refer the consequent dispute to Master Nicholas de Guildford, who is skilled in such questions, but they first of all engage in a regular débat in the French fashion. The owl is the best logician, but the nightingale has a fund of abuse that equalizes matters. Finally, when the argument threatens to become a fight, the wren
