A remarkable extension of this authority is attempted in a letter which Nicholas addressed to King Charles in 867. The dispute about predestination which then agitated clerical Europe, and gave some fallacious promise of a revival of intellect, had been submitted to Nicholas in the early days of his Pontificate. Nicholas was, like all the great Popes, a statesman and canonist, not a theologian. He prudently remained silent, and let Franks and Germans belabour each other with theological epithets. When, however, he heard that Charles had invited the famous John Scotus Erigena, the subtlest thinker of the early Middle Ages, to translate a supposed work of Denis the Areopagite (_De Divinis Nominibus_), he reproved the King for issuing so important a book without having submitted it to Rome.[162] We do not find that Charles took any notice of his claim of censorship, or sent him a copy of the book. It is a good illustration of the attitude of Rome that a thinker like Scotus Erigena, in whose works we plainly recognize the most advanced heresy that arose in Europe before the eighteenth century, incurred so little censure. Nicholas merely complains that the learned Irishman is rumoured to be not entirely sound in theology.
Still bolder is the claim made in a letter in which Nicholas sought to control the conversion of the Danes. No new national Church must be founded without his authority, he says, since "according to the sacred decrees even a new _basilica_ cannot be built without the command of the Pope."[163] In this he outran not only the genuine, but the forged, Decretals. He had in mind, no doubt, a decree of Gelasius on the subject of church-building, but this merely forbade the erection of a church, without authority, in the Roman diocese itself. At the other extremity of Europe Nicholas made elaborate efforts to bring the Bulgarians under his authority. He sent legates to King Boris, and wrote a very long and curious reply to a large number of questions--ranging from the most exalted points of faith to the wearing of trousers by women--which the Bulgarians submitted to him. He did not live to see the relapse of the deceitful and ambitious Slavs.
These are the outstanding features of the voluminous correspondence of Nicholas the Great. They bring before us the portrait of a man who is raised above the disorder of his time, not so much by strength of personality as by the exaltation of his sacerdotal creed. In a more orderly Christendom Nicholas might have seemed an exemplary and not greatly distinguished bishop, but chaos has ever been the native element of such creative genius as he possessed. Since all men now bowed in theory to the Christian ideal, their very disorders lent authority to the Pope's anathemas. He hears that a set of young bishops are devoted to hunting and even to less reputable pastimes, and his scorn is irresistible.[164] He hears that the sons of Charles the Bald have quarrelled with their royal father, and, though they are now reconciled, "we direct that you present yourselves humbly at a synod to be held in a place appointed by us, to which we will send legates of the apostolic authority."[165] He has little time or inclination for the material decoration of Rome. He restores St. Peter's and the Trajan aqueduct; he organizes the distribution of charity; but his life-work is the consolidation of the spiritual supremacy of the Popes. He is, pre-eminently, the smiter of the powerful; and, in smiting them, he strengthens the Papal arm. Fortunately for him and the Papacy, he has to deal with a degenerate, ignorant, and superstitious generation: the night of the Dark Age is drawing in--a night which is not disproved by showing, as Maitland does, that there was a little lamp here and there. And when we contemplate that world of murder, incest, rape, spoliation, and monastic and priestly corruption which is reflected in the Pope's letters, we feel that it was well for Europe to have such a master.