buckler against your enemies, if, in so far as it depends on you, you allow that power to be in any degree weakened to which your fathers had recourse, finding in it all the increase of their dignities and all their glory?" Kings should accordingly shew themselves docile to the admonitions of the Pope, as well in the matter of general policy, that is, in the maintenance of concord among princes, as in the concerns of religion, otherwise the Pope will find himself constrained to launch his thunderbolts against them. He does not even admit of any discussion of his orders; in 865 Charles and his brother Louis the German having put forward various pretexts for not sending Bishops from their dominions to the council about to pronounce at Rome upon the incidents arising out of Lothar's divorce, Nicholas wrote them a stinging rebuke, expressing, in particular, his astonishment that they should have dared to question the necessity of sending Bishops when he, the Pope, had demanded their presence. And when, on one occasion, Charles the Bald who, be it said, was docility personified, shewed himself offended by certain rather ungentle reproofs, the Pope sharply replied that, even if his reprimands were undeserved, the king must needs bow to them as Job bowed beneath the chastening of the Most High.
Yet all was not accomplished when kings were restricted in their initiative and were turned into the agents of the Papal will: the clergy, over whom they were deprived of control, had still to be made, in their turn, a docile instrument in his hands. In this way would the work of uniting Christendom be completed.
It is at first sight surprising that it was in this quarter that Nicholas I met with the most vigorous resistance. It came in the main, from the archbishops, at whose expense the work of ecclesiastical consolidation must necessarily be carried out. Yet even they were forced to yield to the iron will of the Pope. The case of Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims is the most conclusive proof of this. In 861, at a synod held at Soissons he had caused his suffragan Rothad, Bishop of that city, whom he accused of insubordination, to be "cut off from the communion of the Bishops." Threatened with deposition when another synod met at Pitres next year (1 June 862) Rothad had lost no time in lodging an appeal to Rome, and, in spite of menaces, had refused to appear before the assembled Bishops. Hincmar, proceeding, nevertheless, with the case, had procured sentence of deposition, and consigned Rothad to a monastery. At once the Pope intervenes with a high hand, insisting before anything else that Hincmar and his suffragans shall reinstate the bishop within thirty days, whatever may be the merits of the controversy, and this under penalty of an interdict. Further, he declares that the cause is to be laid before his own court, and charges the archbishop to dispatch to Rome, also within thirty days, two accredited agents who, together with Rothad, shall submit themselves to the judgment of the Holy See. For month after month,
