LATERAN

COUNCILS  , and CONCLAVE) . ItS most important immediate result was the revival of strained relations with the empire, due to the fact that the emperor's traditional rights in the matter of papal elections had been completely ignored . Stephen, cardinal priest of S . Chrysogonus, was sent to the German court to attempt to allay the consequent ill-feeling, but was not received . Pope Nicholas, moreover, had offended the German bishops by what they regarded as arbitrary interference with their rights: he had refused to send the pallium of Arch-bishop Siegfried of Mainz; he had sent a sharp letter of admonition to Archbishop Anno of Cologne . The resulting opposition culminated in a synod of German bishops, perhaps early in 1()Or (its date and place of meeting are unknown), at which the decrees of the pope, including the new electoral law, were annulled, while he himself was deposed and his name ordered to be expunged from the canon of the Mass . That these resolutions were not followed by any further action was due to the war of parties in Germany, which enabled the papacy to ignore a demonstration of opinion to which no effect could be given . Nicholas II. died at Florence in July ro6r . Personally he was one of the least important of the popes, and the great importance of the events of his pontificate is due to the fact that, as Peter Damian wrote (Epist. i . 7), he possessed in Hildebrand, Cardinal Humbert and Bishop Boniface of Albano acutissimi et perspicacis oculi . His Diplomata, epistolae, decreta are in Migne, Patrolog . Lat .

143, pp . 1301-1366 . See the

article " Nikolaus II." by C . Mirbt in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1904), with bibliography . Other lists of authorities are in Potthast, Biblioth . Hist . Med . Aev . (2nd ed., Berlin, 1896), p . 854; and Ulysse Chevalier, Repertoire des sources hist. biobibliogr . (Paris, 1905), vol . 3347, S.V .