The Historians' History of the World 08

But here a new cause of contention arose. Frederick had too high a sense of his imperial dignity to manifest any servile complaisance for papal pride. Instead, therefore, of hastening, as some other princes had done, to perform the part of an esquire to the pontiff, he quietly awaited him in his pavilion; which so offended Adrian, that he positively refused to grant him the kiss of peace, till he should perform the humiliating ceremonies to which the pride of churchmen and the pusillanimity of princes had given a species of legitimacy. A whole day was expended in disputing whether the emperor should continue the practice or not. But Adrian was inflexible; and the following morning the haughty Frederick in the presence of his army, purchased the kiss of peace by standing like a menial at the side of the pope’s horse, till he descended and freed him from his degrading situation.

A powerful faction at Rome hailed with joy the approach of Frederick. The desire of limiting the despotism of the pope, and the expectation of drawing large sums as a largess from the imperial treasury, appear to have exercised an almost equal influence on their minds at this time. In their address to Frederick the deputies of this party assumed the station of men who had an unconquered country to present as a free-will offering to the valour and noble qualities of the prince they sought. They had, however, greatly mistaken the ideas of the emperor on the state of Italy. Frederick told them, and with a sternness which presaged a coming storm, that their country had been long and often conquered; that he was truly and lawfully their master. He took possession forthwith of the church of St. Peter (1155), and Adrian placed the imperial crown on the head of the sovereign with far greater willingness than he would have done, had he not seen that his agreement with the prince was now essential to his safety and to the preservation of the church. The populace, finding themselves set at nought by both the pope and the emperor, rose in a mass, and several of the German soldiers fell slaughtered in the aisles of St. Peter. But their death was amply revenged; the emperor attacked the Romans on all sides, and near one thousand citizens paid with their lives the forfeit of their licentiousness or their indiscretion.

Restless and ambitious minds, like those of Adrian and Frederick Barbarossa, could not remain long at peace, when the power and privileges they possessed in their dependence upon each other were so ill defined. The first cause of dispute, after the pacification above related, was a letter which Adrian wrote to the emperor, accusing him of ingratitude for the benefits he had enjoyed through his ministration.

Adrian found it necessary to appease the anger which both Frederick and his subjects expressed at these instances of assumption, and tranquillity was for a brief space restored. But scarcely had the angry feelings generated in the late dispute subsided, when the pontiff again manifested his inclination to oppose the views of the emperor by refusing to confirm the archbishop of Ravenna, whom Frederick had elevated to that station, in his appointment. The fierceness with which the pontiff spoke and wrote on this occasion, threatened Christendom with a rupture as injurious to its peace as that between the unfortunate Henry and Gregory VII. But Frederick’s firmness was unshaken; and a barrier was thus erected against the attempts of the pope, which, intended only as a protection to particular rights, did, in reality, afford support to the universal principles of civil government. To Adrian’s threat that he would deprive him of his crown, he replied that he held his crown, not from him but from his own royal predecessors. “In the days of Constantine,” he asked, “had St. Silvester anything to do with the royal dignity? Yet this was the prince to whom the church was indebted for its peace and its liberty: and all that you enjoy as pope, whence comes it but from the emperors? Render unto God that which is God’s, and to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. Our churches and our cities are shut against your cardinals; because they are not preachers but robbers, they are not peacemakers but plunderers; we see that instead of coming to preach the Gospel and promote peace, their whole desire and endeavour is to amass gold and silver. When we find that they are what the church would have them, we will refuse them nothing good for their support. It is horrible that pride, that monster so detestable, should be able to steal even into the chair of St. Peter.”c

ADRIAN’S FIRMNESS

A Bishop of the Twelfth Century

[1158 A.D.]