Part 4 (1/2)

This reconciliation lasted but a short time: for, as Adrian was not a character to tamely submit to any invasion of his rights, he could not long keep on terms with a man like Frederic Barbarossa.

Towards the end of 1158, Frederic, after reducing Milan, held a great Diet on the Roncalian Plains, between Cremona and Placentia; at which, not only his German princes and prelates, but many Italian bishops, and nearly all the consuls of the cities of Lombardy, were present. A papal legate also appeared. At this Diet, Frederic caused certain doctors of Roman law from Bologna to p.r.o.nounce what were, and what were not, his legal rights in Italy. After due investigation, they awarded to their formidable client such a monopoly of fisheries, mines, customs, taxes, and other dues, under the name of regalities, that hardly anything in the entire country remained over, to which the emperor could not lay claim under that t.i.tle. The consequence was, that the various towns, dioceses, convents, and chapters saw themselves deprived, at a blow, of rights and property which they had long possessed, and fairly acquired. It was impossible for Adrian not to look with the liveliest displeasure at such wholesale spoliation on the part of his imperial son; whose victims formally submitted to their fate out of sheer terror and impotence of resistance.

But when, in the face of former oaths and pledges to uphold and make good all the rights and property of the Holy See, Frederic began, with reckless effrontery, to wrong that see by investing his uncle, Duke Guelph VI., with Tuscany and Sardinia,--in fact, with the entire inheritance of the Countess Matilda, who, as is well known, had bequeathed it to Gregory VII. and his successors for ever,--the pope's right thereto having been formally acknowledged by the Emperor Lothair;--when, moreover, Frederic began to levy tribute on other possessions of the Church, and did so under pretence of his imperial prerogatives in Rome; when from these temporal, he pa.s.sed to spiritual usurpations, and intruded, firstly, his chancellor, Raynald, into the vacant see of Cologne,--contrary to the provisions of the treaty of Worms to which he has sworn; and, secondly, his favourite, Guido of Blandrate, into the see of Ravenna,--in direct opposition to the pope's wishes, to whose episcopal jurisdiction, Guido, as subdeacon in the Roman church, was exclusively subject, and by whom he was destined for other and more suitable preferment; then, at last, Adrian's indignation could contain itself no longer, and he addressed to the emperor a brief, in which, under a forced calmness and moderation of style, his soreness at the outrages committed against him is yet plainly perceptible.

This brief was carried to the emperor by a messenger of inferior rank; who, moreover, did not wait for an answer, but disappeared as soon as he had delivered it. This is a.s.serted by some to have been meant as an insult to Frederic, who, at any rate, took care to view it as such.

Adrian, however, was surely of too lofty a character to descend to such a petty act of spleen; and it is far more likely that the messenger, aware of what sort of letter he was carrying, and to what sort of person, did not care, under the circ.u.mstances, to do more than his bare errand; but, that done, to save himself, hastened from the very possible consequences to his poor limbs of the first ebullitions of the imperial wrath. Be that as it may, Frederic determined to let the pope see that he too could act as meanly and spitefully as it was pretended his Holiness had acted; and, accordingly, he gave his secretary orders to set in his reply the name of the emperor before that of the pope, who, at the same time, was to be addressed in the second person singular; contrary to etiquette, which, even in that age, required the plural number to be used towards persons of high rank. To this insolence of Frederic, Adrian rejoined shortly and pithily, rating him for his irreverence to the Holy See and to St.

Peter, demonstrating to him how his present conduct belied his former oaths, and warning him lest, in seizing that which had not been given to him, he should lose that which had. Frederic, conscious of the grave nature of his crimes against the Holy See, but so long as fortune favoured him, obstinate in his pride and deaf to religious reproach, retorted Adrian's reproof more audaciously than ever.

The imperial bully now bid the pope, in plain terms, stick to those things which,--as he said,--Christ was the first to perform and teach.

The law of justice, said he, has restored to every one his own; and he (Frederic) will not fail to pay the full honor due to his predecessors, by preserving intact the dignity and crown which they had transmitted to him. Why he was not to require feudal oaths and service from bishops, who professed to belong simply to G.o.d, is all the more incomprehensible to him, as Christ, the great teacher of all men, freely paid taxes to Caesar for himself and Peter. By so doing, proceeds Frederic, he gave thee (Adrian) an example to follow, and a lesson of the last importance in those words: ”Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” From this sacrilegious irony he pa.s.ses to vulgar abuse; and tells the pope that his legates had been turned out of Germany, because they were not preachers but thieves, not lovers of peace but heapers of money, not reformers of the world but insatiate seekers of gold. Did Pope Sylvester, he asks, possess any temporal lords.h.i.+p in Constantine's time? and did not the popes afterwards owe all their temporal power to the generosity of that prince, and the rest of Frederic's predecessors? In conclusion, he remarks that it was because he saw the monster pride seated even in the chair of Peter, that he felt moved to use the language he did.

This letter was well calculated to provoke Adrian's deepest indignation; but, as he never allowed his pa.s.sions to get the better of his judgment, and always knew how to curb the liveliest movements of personal wrath, when the interests of the Church were at stake, heartily tired, moreover, of the petty rubs on which the dispute between him and Frederic was by the latter ostensibly made to hinge, he bestirred himself once more to effect a reconciliation compatible with his duty and character. To this end, he sent an emba.s.sy of a more stately description than had ever represented a Pope before, composed of five cardinals, one of whom was a personal friend of Frederic, to the emperor at Bologna; whither he had arrived soon after Easter (A.

D. 1159) to pa.s.s sentence on the Milanese, who, in the mean time, had again sought to shake off the German yoke.

The terms which this emba.s.sy was instructed to demand as fair and equitable, were as follows: That for the future no imperial agent should exercise pretended imperial prerogatives in Rome, without the foreknowledge of the Pope; that no levies on the domains of the Church should be made by the Emperor, except when he was crowned; that the Italian bishops should not take oaths of particular, but only of general homage; that the possessions of the Roman church, and the revenues of Ferrara, Ma.s.sa, Fighernola, of the Matilda inheritance, of the country between Acquapendente and Rome, of Spoleto, Sardinia, and Corsica,--all acknowledged in the middle ages as indisputable feoffs of the Holy See,--should be restored.