Theutgaud, whom the latter of these councils had thought proper to depute to him. These prelates condemned in plain terms the Pope’s sentence; they asserted, that Nicholas wished to make himself monarch of the world.⁸⁵ The Emperor Louis seemed to believe so in part; he came to Rome resolved to support his brother Lothaire again at Nicholas. But a fast and processions ordained by the pope, a tumult which he did not prevent, profanations about which he made a great noise, the sudden death of a soldier accused of having mutilated a miraculous cross; so many unlucky omens terrified Louis to that degree that it threw him into a fever. Furthermore, while Louis had been endeavouring to protect Lothaire, Charles the Bald, having declared against the latter, had received Theutberga. Hincmar himself composed a treatise respecting this divorce, which occupied all Europe, far from favourable to the interests of Valdiade.⁸⁶
It was then enjoined by Nicholas, that Lothaire should give up the idea of a second marriage under pain of excommunication. A legate named Arsena came to compel the King of Lorraine to take back his first wife;⁸⁷ and to detach him more certainly from Valdrade, this courtezan, so she was styled by the Holy See, was borne off by the legate, who would have taken her to Rome if she had not made her escape by the way.
⁸⁶ De Dirortio Lotharii, vol. 1. Operum Hincmari.
⁸⁷ Annal. Meteits. ad ann. 866. Annal. Fold. ad. ann. 365, 886.—Concil. Gall. toi. iii. p. 879.
The holy father who wished to convert, could therefore do no more than excommunicate her. But he received from Lothaire an humble epistle, in which this prince having declared that he had not seen Valdrade since she left Arsena, conjures the court of Rome not to give the kingdom of Lorraine to one of his rivals: a supplication that may seem to us in the present day as the excess, if not delirium, of weakness, but which was dictated to this king by the apprehension of being stripped of his states to enrich Charles the Bald, who in fact did hope to obtain them from the Holy See.
Divers letters, written by Nicholas on this subject, contain a precious developement of his ideas of the royal powers, and of his own authority,: