historians. In 1652 the patriarch Joseph died, and the friendly czar appointed Nicon to the vacant chair. In this new office this remarkable man found full scope for all his energies. The Russian clergy were at that time notorious for sloth, for brutal manners, and irregularity of life, and it needed all the weight of the patriarch's character, and of his commanding personal presence (he was seven feet high) to intimidate offenders, sustain the well-disposed, and work out the various reforms required. These reforms were, it must be understood, purely ritual and disciplinary; in all points of doctrine Nicon held fast to the creed of the orthodox Greek church, of which the Russian was an offshoot; and the ideal ever present to his heart was the assimilation of the Russian church, not to any pattern approved at Rome or Canterbury, but to that offered by the oppressed but ancient churches of Constantinople and Antioch. In the course of years Nicon became largely engaged in the conduct of state affairs. But a Swedish campaign, which he had recommended, turned out disastrously; and this, together with other causes trivial in themselves, gradually wrought an alienation of feeling between him and the czar. The Russian nobles, who had long chafed under the patriarch's somewhat overbearing behaviour, did their best to widen the breach. Feeling that his usefulness was at an end, Nicon resigned the patriarchate in 1658, and retired to a monastery, where he occupied himself in writing a history of Russia in his native tongue. He was tried and deposed by a synod held in 1667, at which Alexis presided. The czar, when on his death-bed in 1670, repented of his harsh usage of his old friend, and sent to implore Nicon's forgiveness, but he was dead before he could receive a reply. Permission was at length granted to the ex-patriarch in the time of the young czar, Theodore, to return to Moscow; but, while on his way thither, he died at Jaroslav in 1681. He was buried with patriarchal honours, the czar himself attending the funeral, at his convent called New Jerusalem.—(Stanley's Lectures on the Eastern Church.)—T. A.
NICON (Saint), an Armenian monk, flourished in the tenth century. Fabricius places his death in the year 998. He was named Metanoeite (meaning, "Repent ye") from his frequent use of the word in his sermons. He is the author of a tract entitled "De impiâ pessimorum Armeniorum religione." He is said to have preached with great fruit in Armenia, Crete, and the Peloponnesus.—T. A.
NICOT, Jean, of Villemain, a learned French diplomatist, was born at Nimes in 1530, and died at Paris 5th May, 1600. His early education was conducted in his native town, and he afterwards went to Paris to prosecute his studies. By his talent and abilities he raised himself to eminence, and he became attached to the court of Henry II. In 1560 he was charged with an embassy to the king of Portugal. He introduced the tobacco plant into France. The plant has received the generic name of nicotiana after him. The plant was cultivated extensively in France in 1626. Nicot published some literary works, one of which is entitled "Trésor de la Langue Française, tant ancienne que moderne."—J. H. B.
NIDER, NIEDER, or NYDER, Johannes, a German ecclesiastic, born at the end of the fourteenth century; died in 1438-40. He became a dominican monk at Colmar, and after taking priest's orders attended the council of Constance, and afterwards that of Basle. By the latter assembly he was commissioned to attempt the conversion of the Hussites. He tried persuasion first, but when that failed he proclaimed a crusade in which thousands perished. Among his works is a curious treatise entitled "Formicarium, seu Dialogus ad vitam Christianam exemplo conditionum formicæ incitativus," 1517.
NIEBUHR, Barthold Georg, the eminent historian and philologist, was the only son of Carsten Niebuhr (q.v.), and was born at Copenhagen on the 27th of August, 1776. Before he was two years old his father exchanged the military for the civil service of Denmark, and a residence at Copenhagen for one at Meldorf, a town of Ditmarsh in Holstein, a German region contiguous to that in which the elder Niebuhr had himself been reared. Repeated attacks of ague in that marshy district enfeebled a constitution naturally strong, and with little other society than that of his parents he was early an eager learner, and before he went to school had acquired from his father the elements of Latin, French, English, and mathematics. His progress at school and in private study was rapid and remarkable, and he is described as at seven a juvenile prodigy. The eminent scholar and translator Johann Heinrich Voss, then head-master at Eutin, sometimes visited his brother-in-law the landvogt of Meldorf, who appreciated Niebuhr, and Voss gave the young scholar the benefit of his friendly advice. Early in 1794 Niebuhr proceeded to the university of Kiel, where he remained for about two years. Here he formed an intimacy with the family of Professor Hensler, and was betrothed to the sister of the professor's son's widow, Amalie Behrens. In 1796 he accepted the invitation of the Danish minister of finances. Count Schimmelmann, to become his private secretary, and removed to Copenhagen. Niebuhr lived in the minister's house, and the constant contact with society thus forced on him not suiting his studious and retiring disposition, he resigned the post and became secretary to the public library of Copenhagen. After a year or so he paid a visit to Great Britain, where he resided for nearly a twelvemonth in Edinburgh attending the university, and receiving there as in London from scholars and men of science a friendly reception, mainly due to the celebrity of his father. After a residence of a year and a half in Great Britain he returned home, and in 1800 settled at Copenhagen and married Amalie Behrens, having been appointed secretary to the bank, and also to the directors of African affairs. He had distinguished himself in the Danish service, and been promoted to the directorship of the bank and of Indian affairs, when either the Danish national policy or the promotion over his head of a young nobleman led him to resign his offices and to enter the service of the Prussian government. He had excited attention by a politico-literary enterprise—the translation of the first Philippic of Demosthenes, with a dedication to the Emperor Alexander, and with notes indicating that their writer was a man who sympathized with the aims of the great Prussian minister, Stein. Niebuhr arrived at Berlin at an unfortunate moment, just before the battle of Jena, and with the court and officials had to fly from the Prussian capital. In 1803 he was sent by Stein to Holland to negotiate a Prussian loan, and by 1809 had become a councillor of state with an office in the ministry of finance. His opposition to the financial policy of the government led to his temporary withdrawal from official life, and he succeeded the historian Johannes Müller as historiographer to the king. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, and cultivated the society of such men as Buttmann, Savigny, and Spalding, who induced him to deliver, in 1810, a course of lectures on Roman history at the then recently opened university of Berlin. They were very successful, were continued during three years, and were published as "Römische Geschichte" in two volumes, 1811-12, establishing his reputation as a scholar throughout Europe. This was the happiest period of Niebuhr's life. He became conscious of his own power of interpreting the past by reconstructing it in the presence of an appreciating and admiring audience. During the war of liberation he was busy officially and with his pen. In October, 1814, he returned from Holland, where he had been sent by the Prussian government on a diplomatic mission, and published among other political disquisitions, "Preussen's Recht gegen den Sächsischen Hof," justifying the annexation of a considerable portion of Saxony to Prussia. He also gave instruction in political and financial economy to the crown prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick William IV. In 1815 he lost both his father and his first wife. Of the former he published a biography in 1816. His wife's sister, Frau Hensler, the friend of his early days, came to Berlin with a niece to accompany him to Rome, where he had been appointed resident minister of Prussia. Niebuhr married the niece, the aunt returning to Kiel, and he entered on his official duties at Rome in October, 1816. On his journey to Rome he discovered at Verona the MS. identified by Savigny as the Institutes of Gaius. The chief object of Niebuhr's mission was to negotiate a concordat with the see of Rome, which, through the delays interposed by the home government, was not effected until 1821. He then applied for his recall, and after farewell visits to Naples and other Italian localities, he reached Berlin in July, 1824, where he was very graciously received by the king, who continued to him his salary as Prussian minister at Rome until he should receive some equivalent appointment. Settling at Bonn as an adjunct professor of the new university there, he delivered lectures on Roman antiquities and history, and bestowed on his "Römische Geschichte" a severe and laborious revision, which nearly amounted to a complete reconstruction of the work. The first volume of the new edition of this famous book was published in 1827, the second in 1830. Niebuhr's mind was deeply shaken
