NICHOLAS II

born Lorraine died Aug. 27, 1061, Florence original name Gerard of Burgundy, French Grard de Bourgogne pope from 1058 to 1061, a major figure in the Gregorian reform. He was bishop of Florence when he was elected, c. December 1058 at Siena, Italy, to succeed Pope Stephen X (IX), in opposition to Antipope Benedict X, who had been chosen by the anti-reformist Roman aristocracy. In January 1059 Benedict was expelled from the papacy. At the Lateran Council of April 1059, a milestone in papal history, Nicholas promulgated his famous bull on papal elections (April 13); he did so in reaction to the disorders that interrupted his own election. He assigned the leading part in elections to the seven cardinal bishops (i.e., those who had the predominant position among the higher clergy), who were to choose a suitable candidate and then summon the other cardinals. The remaining clergy and the people were to acclaim the choice, and the imperial role was dismissed. Nicholas' legate, sent to notify the German court of the election decree, was refused an audience, and an imperialist version of the decree was circulated. At a synod of 1061, the German bishops declared Nicholas' decree void and quashed all his acts, signifying the ruptured alliance between Germany and Rome and launching the contest between empire and papacy. Nicholas' relations with the Normans, firmly entrenched in southern Italy, were friendly, however. By the Treaty of Melfi (Aug. 23, 1059) he invested Robert Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily (with papal suzerainty over these lands) and Richard of Aversa as prince of Capua, in return for allegiance. born May 6 [May 18, New Style], 1868, Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia died July 16/17, 1918, Yekaterinburg Russian in full Nikolay Aleksandrovich the last Russian emperor (18951917), generally judged an inept and autocratic ruler, who, with his wife, Alexandra, and their children, was executed by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. Additional reading Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (1967, reissued 1985), is a popular study of life at the imperial court. Reliable general surveys of Nicholas' reign are given by Richard Dennis Charques, The Twilight of Imperial Russia (1958, reprinted 1974); and Virginia Cowles, The Last Tsar (also published as The Last Tsar & Tsarina, 1977). On the last years, Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (1939; reissued 1988); and George Katkov, Russia, 1917: The February Revolution (1967, reprinted 1979), offer differing interpretations; the latter is more favourable to Nicholas.