NICHOLAS II., a Burgundian, whose Christian name was Gerard, was archbishop of Florence when he was chosen (December 28, 1058) at that place to succeed Stephen IX. in the papal chair. Some time previously the old Roman feudatory barons had caused to be consecrated, under the name of Benedict X., John, cardinal bishop of Velletri, who, however, was speedily deposed. The election of Nicholas had been brought about by Hildebrand (afterwards Gregory VII.), and his whole pontificate derived its character from that master-spirit. Its first act of historical importance was the framing by the second Lateran council (April 1059) of the decree which vested the election of popes in the cardinal bishops in the first instance, the assent of the cardinal priests and deacons being next required, then that of the laity, and finally that of the emperor. It was at the same council that Berengarius of Tours was temporarily induced to admit the doctrine of the corporeal presence in the sacrament. In the following June Nicholas visited Apulia, accepted the submission of the Normans, and removed the ban of excommunication, investing Richard in the principality of Capua and Robert Guiscard in the dukedom of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. He died at Florence in June 1061, and was succeeded by Alexander II.

NICHOLAS III. (Giovanni Gaetano), a member of the noble house of Orsini, succeeded John XXL as pope on November 25, 1277. Though his election was doubtless largely due to family influence, he was also personally a man of good endowments, and the record of his brief pontificate has more than one touch fitted to recall the grander manner of some of the greatest popes. In 1278 he extorted from the newly-elected and insecurely seated Rudolph of Hapsburg an absolute cession of the Romagna and of the exarchate of Ravenna, and in the same year he deprived Charles of Anjou of his vicariate of Tuscany; in the following year he compelled Charles to renounce his dignity of senator of Rome also, declaring himself perpetual senator, and his nephew Orso his vicar. He was understood to be planning with Rudolph an entirely new distribution of the thrones of the empire, by which the royal dignity was to be conferred on more than one member of the house of Orsini, when a stroke of apoplexy brought his career to a sudden close on August 22, 1280. Towards the beginning of his reign he repaired and strengthened the Lateran palace, and greatly enlarged the Vatican. For his simoniacal nepotism he has been placed by Dante in the third “bolgia” of the eighth circle of hell (Inf., xix. 31 sqf. The successor of Nicholas III. was Martin IV.