Erigena ordered to be burnt. At a subsequent council held at
Amalfi, the pope came to terms with Richard and Robert Guiscard,
the Norman lords of Sicily and Apulia. He died in 1061.
Nicholas III. (Gætano Orsini) succeeded John XXI. in
1277. He was the first pope who obtained the full rights of
sovereignty over the Roman states through the cession by Rudolf
of Hapsburg of all such rights heretofore claimed or exercised
over them by the German emperors. In the great struggle for
Sicily between the houses of Arragon and Anjou, this pope sided
strongly with the former. Dante places him in hell, as guilty
of excessive simony; and he is said, though upon slight grounds,
to have been bribed by John of Procida to favour the pretensions
of the house of Arragon. He died in 1285.
Nicholas IV. (Geronimo d'Ascoli), who had been general
of the Friars Minors, was elected pope, though much against his
will, on the death of Honorius IV. in 1288. His endeavours
to restore Sicily to the house of Anjou were all fruitless; nor
were his exertions in favour of the christians in the East more
successful, for Acre, their last stronghold, was lost during his
pontificate. This pope confirmed the privileges of the university
of Coimbra founded by King Dionysius, and sent many
missionaries to the Slavonians and other tribes in the east of
Europe. Walsingham charges him with undue partiality to the
Franciscans, his own order. He died in 1292.
Nicholas V. (Tommaso di Sarzana) succeeded Eugenius
IV. in 1447. He is said to have been of humble origin. His mild
and tolerant behaviour disarmed the opposition which the council
of Basle in its later sessions had organized against the papacy,
and Amadeus, the antipope appointed by the council, resigned his
mock dignity in 1449. In the previous year Nicholas had concluded
a treaty with the German princes, securing to the holy
see an extensive, perhaps inordinate influence, over the German
church. But the chief glory of this pontiff lay in the encouragement
which he extended to the rising study of the arts and
literature of antiquity. He gathered round him the most learned
men of the day—Poggio of Florence, George of Trebizond, Leonardo
Aretino, and many others—whose studies he aided and
applauded; and he caused translations to be made of all the
Greek fathers and classical authors, which, being deposited in
the papal palace, formed the foundation of the far-famed Vatican
library. The honour of placing the imperial crown for the last
time on the head of a German emperor at Rome, fell to Nicholas
in 1452, on the occasion of the coronation of Frederic III. He
died in 1453.—T. A.
NICHOLAS of Cusa, Cardinal, Bishop of Brixen, so called from his birthplace, a small town near Trèves, was born in 1401. After various alternations of occupation he entered the church, and in 1430 was deacon of the college of St. Florian at Coblentz, and archdeacon of Liege. The Cardinal Julian Cæsarini, whom the pope, Eugenius IV, had sent to preside over the council at Basle, invited Nicholas of Cusa in 1431 to assist him, by his learning and zeal, in reforming ecclesiastical abuses. To satisfy the expectations of the council, Nicholas compiled his celebrated work, "De Concordantiâ Catholicâ," in which he proved that, according to the doctrine admitted by the church, its unity did not so much consist in an external submission to one pope, as in the one truth pervading all its members, since a heretical pope himself could be deposed by a general council or synod. On this work rests the claim of Nicholas of Cusa to be considered one of the reformers before the Reformation. When the advancing power of the Turks threatened Christendom, he was sent in the year 1437, as legate of Eugenius IV., to Constantinople to try whether a reconciliation of the Greek christians with the Roman catholics could be effected. Pope Nicholas V. made him a cardinal in 1448, and in 1450 bishop of Brixen, sending him back as legate to Germany to reform ecclesiastical abuses, and to reconcile the Hussites in Bohemia with the church. Nicholas of Cusa died in 1464. He is the author of various works, one of them, the Ironies, having for its object to reconcile the Hussites and the Greek christians with the Roman catholic church. Among the episodes of his career was his quarrel with Duke Sigismund of Austria, who, as count of the Tyrol, supported the resistance of the benedictine nuns of Sonnenburg in his diocese of Brixen to his efforts to make them observe the rules of their order. On this conflict a work has recently appeared, Der Streit des Cardinals Nicholas von Cusa mit dem Herzoge Sigmund von Oesterreich als Grafen von Tirol; von Dr. Albert Jager, Innsbruck, 1861.—F. B—y.
NICHOLAS of Lyra, so called from his birthplace near Evreux in Normandy, was born about 1270, and entering a monastery of Franciscan friars at Verneuil, became a member of that order. Continuing his studies in the Franciscan convent at Paris, he became doctor and professor of divinity. From his familiarity with rabbinical authors it has been supposed that he was of Jewish extraction. In allusion to his polemical writings against the Jews, his epitaph contains the following distich—
" Extat in Hebræos firmissima condita turris,
Nostrum opus, haud ullis comminuenda petris."
But his celebrity rests more on his "Biblia sacra cum interpretatione et postillis," Romæ, 1471-72, 5 vols., folio, being the first biblical commentary ever printed, and of which, with and without the text, there have been several editions. Its influence upon the reformers has been expressed in the monkish rhyme:—
" Si Lyra non lyrasset,
Lutherus non saltasset."
Nicholas of Lyra died at Paris in 1340.—F. B—y.
NICHOLAS, Eymericus, a Spanish inquisitor-general, was born in 1320, and entered the dominican order. In 1356 he was appointed inquisitor-general of the kingdom of Arragon. He was afterwards chaplain to Gregory VI. and judge in cases of heresy. He died in 1393. He wrote a "Directorium Inquisitorium," which was published at Rome in 1578.—F. M. W.
NICHOLAS, Henry, a German mystic of the sixteenth century, was the founder of the extravagant sect known as the "Family of Love." He was a native of Munster in Westphalia; but the dates of his birth and death are not recorded. About the year 1540 he gave out that he had a commission from heaven to teach mankind in what the essence of religion consisted. Moses, he said, had taught the human race to hope; Christ had taught them to believe; but he, Nicholas, was greater than either, for he came to teach men to love. The blasphemous and licentious applications of this doctrine which were made by his followers, caused the "Family of Love" to meet with little toleration from the civil magistrate, wherever the sect made its appearance. It made considerable noise in England under Elizabeth, and spread to New England soon after its colonization in the following reign.—T. A.
NICHOLLS, Sir George, K.C.B., an ex-administrator of the new poor law, and the historian of the poor laws of the United Kingdom, was born in 1781 of an old Cornish family. At fifteen he entered the naval service of the East India Company, resigning his commission in 1815, two years after his marriage to a lady of Southwell in Nottinghamshire, where he settled. He immediately interested himself in the condition of the rural population of the district, introducing savings banks, benefit societies, &c. The parish of Southwell was one in which, under the old poor law, the rates bore very heavily on the rental, and in accepting the office of overseer, Mr. Nicholls had ample scope for the study of the working of the old system. He wrote and published "Eight Letters" on the subject, which attracted much attention, and after having superintended the branch bank of England at Birmingham from 1827 to August, 1834, he was appointed a poor law commissioner under the act of 1834. He was afterwards deputed to inquire into the condition of the Irish poor, and to him was intrusted the introduction and working of the Irish poor law of 1838, which was mainly based on his reports. When the original poor law commission was dissolved in 1847, he became secretary to the new commission, resigning from ill health in 1851, when he was made K.C.B. To him is to be ascribed the establishment of the "workhouse test." Sir George Nicholls published three able and elaborate contributions to the history of our social economy, the "History of the English Poor Law," 1854; of the Scotch and of the Irish Poor Law, 1856; tracing in each case the annals of legislation for the poor from the earliest period. He was also the author of a useful little work on the cultivation of flax, "The Flax Grower," 1848; and of a pamphlet, 1847, prepared for the Royal Agricultural Society, "On the condition of the agricultural labourer, with suggestions for its improvement." He died in 1865.—F. E.
NICHOLLS, Sir Jasper, commander-in-chief of the forces in India, 1839-43, entered the army in 1793 as an ensign in the 45th foot, and served with distinction in Europe and in the East and West Indies. A lieutenant-general in 1837, he was appointed in 1839 commander-in-chief of all the forces in the East Indies, and retained the command until 1843, when he
