schism. Nicholas was the greatest Pope between Gregory the Great (590–604) and Gregory VII (1073–1085). It was a very bad time in the West. After the death of Lewis the Pious (successor of Charles the Great, 814–840) the treaty of Verdun (843) divided his lands between his three sons, Lothar the Emperor, Lewis the German, and Charles the Bald. There were wars against Slavs and Normans, the Carling kings fought amongst themselves, other pretenders were set up; then came the Magyars. In all this time of violence and disorder one great figure stands out, that of Nicholas I. Like Gregory I, he was a Roman of one of the great houses, and like Gregory he showed the instinct of his Roman blood as a statesman and organizer. The claim of Photius was only one of many affairs he had to settle. At the same time he was bringing a rebellious Archbishop of his own Patriarchate, John of Ravenna, to his knees, he was standing out sternly for the sacredness of marriage in the affair of Lothar II's divorce, he was defending the suffragans of the province of Rheims against the tyranny of their Metropolitan,[1] and the freedom of the Church against Charles the Bald. In the century that followed Nicholas I, the Roman See sank to the lowest depth she ever reached; far worse than the Borgias and Medicis of the Renaissance were the horrible Stephens and Johns of the 10th century. A contemporary writer says of St. Nicholas I (he is a canonized Saint): "Since the time of Blessed Gregory (the Great) no one who has been raised to the Papal dignity can be compared to him. He commanded kings and tyrants as if he were the lord of the world. To good bishops and priests, to pious laymen, he was kind, humble, gentle and meek, to evil-doers he was terrible and stern. People say rightly that God raised up in him a second Elias."[2]
It was to this Pope that Photius appealed to get his place confirmed. He begins his letter: "To the most holy and venerable brother and fellow-bishop, Nicholas, Pope of Old
