Much more might be said; but this may suffice to illustrate the interest and importance which belong to sacraments and liturgical rites in the ages of which we speak. [1] Edmund Bishop, "The Genesis of the Roman Rite," in _Essays on Ceremonial_, 1904. {191} CHAPTER XVII THE END OF THE DARK AGE [Sidenote: The end of the age.] As we draw to the close of the long period which, through the conversion of the barbarian races and the growth of a central power in the Church at Rome, so profoundly influenced the future of the world, we are met by some outstanding facts which mark an epoch of crisis and of reformation. They are--the widening breach in matters religious, as earlier in matters political, between East and West; the influences which served to strengthen the theory of the papal monarchy even at the time of its greatest practical weakness; and the strength of the Empire under the Saxon Ottos as a power to unite Western Europe and to reform the Western Church. [Sidenote: The papacy of Nicolas I., 858-67.] Nicolas, who was elected in 858, was a great pope. He asserted the moral force of Christianity in a way in which his predecessors very frequently followed him, by vindicating the indissolubility of the marriage tie. Chlothochar, King of Lotharingia, separated from his wife Theudberga, bringing against her foul charges, which a council of clergy at Aachen accepted. Nicolas intervened: again and again he endeavoured to control the Frankish clergy and rescind the divorce; but it was {192} only in 863 by a council at Rome, where the archbishops of Cologne and Trier were present, that he was able to proceed to extremities. He excommunicated those two prelates, and deposed them with all those who had assisted them: he warned Hincmar of Rheims of what he had done. The emperor Louis, Chlothochar's brother, marched on Rome and captured the city; but there, through illness it appears, he completely submitted to the pope. Nicolas enforced his decision on the Frankish king, the Frankish bishops, on Hincmar, the great archbishop of Rheims himself. In a letter he developed the theory that the Empire owed its confirmation to the authority of the Apostolic See, and that the sword was conferred on the emperor by the pope, the vicar of S. Peter. Truly it was said of this pope by one who wrote a century after his death, "Since the days of Gregory to our own sat no prelate on the throne of S. Peter to be compared to Nicolas. He tamed kings and tyrants and ruled the world like a monarch: to holy bishops he was mild and gentle: to the wicked and unconverted a terror; so that truly may we say that in him arose a new Elijah." Of equal though different importance was the action of the papacy in regard to the East. What is known as the Photian schism is the divergence between the churches of Constantinople and Rome, which became critical during the pontificate of Nicolas I. [Sidenote: The Photian schism.]