Saint Nicholas was born to Defensor Theodore in Rome, sometime around 800 AD. His father was rich, and trained him in the Church ways. Because of this he entered the church prepared with piety and knowledge of theology. He quickly moved up to sub deacon through Pope Sergius II in 844 then became a Deacon in 855 through Leo IV. After the previous Pope's death, he was made pope on April 24th, 858. During his reign, Charlemagne had died and Christianity was attacked on all sides. Even anarchy threatened the theocracy currently going on in the church, and Nicholas went into his position fully knowing tensions were high. After all that though, he proved to be the best man for the job. He was a hard hitting man to anyone who defied the church law while claiming to be apart of it. One example would be Archbishop of Ravenna, John. This man oppressed his territory, beat his bishops, and imprisoned priests unfairly. He was promptly excommunicated after refusing to appear in front of Pope Nicholas 3 times, and fled Ravenna. Nicholas himself came in and and cleaned up, by\ investigating the charges, releasing the priests, and regulated trade in the town until another bishop came along to handle it. In another example, Hincmar of Reims was mad at being deposed because of his selfish actions with money. He tried to complain to the pope, who eventually talked him down from his stance and just appealed to the council after realizing he could not even talk to Nicholas. Nicholas had a very long run of desposing people like Photius who were constantly being made into bishops by excommunicated Catholics. Nicholas tried to enforce every rule of the church fairly to everyone in it. He was also a teacher, like when the ruler of Bulgaria converted, he sent 106 questions to the Pope about Catholicism, and he painstakingly answered each one. His entire Papal career was to fostering the Christian way of life, either by leaving behind a legacy of missionary work that converted many danes, swedes, and slavs, or punishing Catholics who strayed from what made the Church good, and he was one of the few men who could have turned around the Church in that dark time for it. The only real controversy he was ever personally staked in was accusations that he used forged papal decretals, but this was found to be false. He was regarded as a saint later by Pope Adrian the II and his feast day is November 13th.