We must conclude that, however beneficent may have been the spiritual centralization which Nicholas so ably elaborated, and however impersonal and religious his aim may have been, he proceeded at times on principles which no cause can sanctify: principles which it was dangerous to bequeath to less spiritual successors. He died in 867, after nine and a half years of heroic work for his ideal: a type of ecclesiastical statesman that it needs a peculiarly balanced judgment to appreciate. The pleasures and thrills of the world he despised, and it would be a deep injustice to conceive him as other than entirely indifferent to the personal prestige of his position. His personality was entirely merged in his office: he was, indeed, not a personality, but the vicar of a greater personality. The phrase which too often in Hadrian's letters is a mere artifice for obtaining wealth and power--"the Blessed Peter"--was to him the expression of a living and awful reality. If the Papacy did not tower above all the other thrones in Christendom, the intention of Christ was made void. Nicholas would have it realized. In that spirit he added strength to the frame of the Papal system. The historian must do justice to his aim and to the salutary tendency of his moral control of Europe; he must be no less candid in denouncing the sentiment that the end justifies the means. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 140: _Ep._, lxxxiii., xcii., and cviii.] [Footnote 141: _Ep._, lxv.] [Footnote 142: _Ep._, lxxix.] [Footnote 143: _Ep._, vi.] [Footnote 144: _Ep._, xii.] [Footnote 145: _Ep._, cxxxv.] [Footnote 146: _Ep._, cxv.] [Footnote 147: An excellent analysis of his ideas is given in Dr. A. Greinacher's _Die Anschaungen des Papstes Nikolaus I. über das Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche_ (1909).] [Footnote 148: _Ep._, iv.] [Footnote 149: _Ep._, xii. and xiii.] [Footnote 150: _Ep._, xlvi.] [Footnote 151: _Ep._, lxxxvi.] [Footnote 152: _Ep._, ii.] [Footnote 153: The best account is in the _Annals of St. Berlin_, in the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_, vol. i.] [Footnote 154: _Ep._, lxxxiii.] [Footnote 155: It is, at least, generally believed that Hincmar wrote this part of the _Bertinian Annals_.] [Footnote 156: _Bertinian Annals_, year 865.] [Footnote 157: _Ep._, xxxiii.] [Footnote 158: _Ep._, xxxiv.] [Footnote 159: XLI., xlii., and xliii.] [Footnote 160: CVIII.] [Footnote 161: CVII.] [Footnote 162: _Ep._, cxv.] [Footnote 163: _Ep._, cxxxv.] [Footnote 164: _Ep._, cxxvii.] [Footnote 165: _Ep._, xxxix.]