Pope Adrian IV Part 4

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 lordship 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.

At first the emperor haughtily refused to grant these conditions; then, on further reflection, offered to abide by the decision of a committee of arbitration, to consist of six cardinals chosen by the pope, and six bishops chosen by himself. But Adrian, as Frederic foresaw and reckoned upon, at once rejected this offer, as derogatory to the dignity of a supreme Pontiff, which, regarded by christendom as superior to every temporal jurisdiction, could not therefore bow to one. At the same time, he reminded the Emperor of his concordat with Pope Eugenius, and called on him to stand to it. Frederic rejoined, that he considered himself exonerated from it, as Adrian had been the first to break it by his treaty of peace with the king of Sicily. That this charge was a false one, has already been shown. The Emperor persisted in his proposition for a committee of arbitration. As both parties continued inflexible, all prospect of a reconciliation vanished. Indeed, measures of a hostile character seemed on the point of being resorted to on both sides. For while Frederic gave audience to a republican emba.s.sy from Rome, and appeared to listen favourably to the overtures made; Adrian openly exhorted the Lombards to persevere in their resistance to the emperor, and formed fresh relations with the king of Sicily. He also addressed a brief to the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves, in which he gives his feelings full vent, and a.s.serts the superiority of his dignity over the emperor's, in the true spirit of the hierarchy of that age.

"Praised be G.o.d in the highest," writes he, "that ye remain faithful; while the flies of Pharao, sprung from the abyss of h.e.l.l, and driven about by the whirlwind, are turned to dust, instead of darkening the sun according to their wish. Thanks be to G.o.d, who doubtless hath enabled you to perceive that betwixt us and the king there can be no more fellowship. This schism caused by him will yet rebound upon his head. Yes! he is like the dragon that would needs fly through the midst of heaven, and draw after him by his tail the third part of the stars; but toppled into the abyss, and left to his successors nothing but the warning, that he who exalts himself will be humbled. Thus does this fox--who is your hammer too--think to lay waste the Lord's vineyard; thus does this wicked son forget all grat.i.tude and G.o.dly fear. Not one of his promises has he kept; everywhere has he deceived us; and deserves, therefore, our ban, as a rebel against G.o.d, and as a true heathen. And not only he, but also--we say it for your warning--every one who seconds him, yea, every one who either in word or thought agrees with him. He sets up his power as equal to ours, as though this last were confined to a mere corner like Germany--to Germany, which, till the Popes exalted it, pa.s.sed only for the smallest of states: did not the German kings travel about in an oxen-drawn chariot, like any poor philosopher, till Pope Zacharias consecrated Charles? do they not still hold their court in a forest at Aix, whereas we reside at Rome? Even as Rome is above Aix, so are we above that king, who boasts of his world-wide sway; while he can hardly keep in check one of his refractory princes, or even subdue the rude and foolish race of the Frieslanders. In short, he possesses the empire through us; and that which we gave him,--on the supposition of grat.i.tude alone,--we can resume. Do ye admonish him after this manner, and reclaim him to the right path,--to peace with us; for it will plunge you also into ruin, if there be schism between church and state."

It may easily be supposed, that words like these would be ill calculated to arrest Frederic's unprincipled career; nor, of course, did Adrian expect they would. He rather acted now under the persuasion that conciliation had reached its limits, inasmuch as further concessions would dishonour his dignity, and be a dereliction of his duty as chief pastor of the Christian Church;--the unconditional subjection of which under the brutal sway of the civil sword, Frederic plainly proved that it was his great aim to effect. Adrian therefore resolved, now that every advance and self-sacrifice on his side, consistent with reason and justice, had been made in vain, to arm himself with those thunders which the arm of a pope only can launch, and which the feelings of Christendom rendered so dreadful even to the most potent and hardened offenders.

To this course he was impelled all the more as Frederic, in further proof of his contempt of the most sacred obligations, when they stood in the way of his ambition, shortly added to his crimes against the Church another against public morals, by wantonly repudiating, out of motives of state policy, his lawful empress, to marry in her stead Beatrix of Burgundy. Any remnants of hesitation to adopt extreme measures which Adrian might still cherish, were completely eradicated in his mind by this crying scandal; and he at once prepared a ban of excommunication against the emperor; but in the moment of fulminating it, death paralysed his arm. This happened Sept. 1st, 1159, near Anagnia, in the Campagna, and according to William of Tyre, in consequence of a quinsy. Pagi relates that the partisans of Frederic told a story to this effect--that Pope Adrian died by a judgment of G.o.d, who permitted him while drinking at a well, a few days after denouncing excommunication against the emperor, to swallow a fly, which stuck in his throat, and could not be extracted by the surgeons, till the patient had expired through the inflammation produced by the accident. Adrian, however, did not excommunicate the emperor at all, but died on the eve of doing so. His body was carried to Rome, and entombed in a costly sarcophagus of marble, beside that of Eugenius III., in the nave of the old basilica of St. Peter.

In the year 1607, on the demolition of this church, the body was exhumed and found entire, as well as the pontificals in which it was arrayed. It was re-interred under the pavement of the new basilica.

According to Pagi, Pope Adrian IV. composed Catechisms of Christian Doctrine for the Swedes and Norwegians, a Memoir of his Mission to those nations--_de Legatione sua_--various Homilies, and a Treatise on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin,--performances which appear to have perished. The work, describing his mission to the north, must have been of great interest for the light which it no doubt threw on the history and manners of those countries. Munter, the church historian of Denmark, mentions that he sought to discover it at Rome, but without success; it being supposed, if still extant, to lie buried beneath the impracticable h.o.a.rds of the Vatican.

Cardinal Boso, an Englishman, and Pope Adrian's private secretary, whom he sent out on a mission to Portugal, wrote a life of his patron, but so invaluable a work is also unavailable, as no trace of it now exists. From an anecdote preserved in William of Newbridge, Adrian IV.

would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes who afterwards practised nepotism. For it is related of him, that rather than award a pittance towards the relief of his aged and dest.i.tute mother out of those ample revenues, which as pope he had at his disposal, but which he did not feel himself justified in diverting to private uses, he allowed her to subsist as best she could on the alms of the Chapter of Canterbury. Notwithstanding the incessant conflicts of his short career, he yet found time to do something towards the improvement and decoration of Rome. To this end he projected and carried out various new buildings and restorations, consisting in churches within and without the city, in castles for the protection of the Campagna, and in additions to the Lateran Palace.

The duration of his pontificate comprised four years and eight months.

The End.