The Power Of The Popes Part 10

? Baron. Ann. ecdes. ann. 1154.-Pagi. Act. ann. 1154, n. 4.

? Lib. 18. c. 2. et segg.

? Ann.eccles. ann 1166.-Concilior vol. 10. pa. 1151.

From the commencement of his pontificate Adrian had been relieved of Amauld of Brescia. An interdict launched for the first time against the churches of Rome, terrified the people, and compeled the senators to exile Arnauld, who scarcely out of the city, was delivered to the sovereign pontiff by Frederick Barbarossa, and buried alive at the break of day, without the knowledge of the people. His ashes were thrown into the Tiber, for fear, says Fleury?4 that the people should collect them as those of a martyr. But this service rendered by Frederick to Adrian did not prevent their becoming enemies. From the year 1155, when Frederick came to Rome to receive the imperial crown, the first germs of their discord were perceptible.?5 Frederick, after having refused to hold the stirrup for the pope, acquitted himself of it with a very bad grace. He observed in the palace of the Lateran a picture, in which the Emperor Lothaire was represented on his knees before the pontif with the well known inscription:

Rex venit ante fores, jurans prim urbis honores; Post h.o.m.o, fit paps, sumit, quo dante, coronam:-

that is to say, "the king presents himself at the gates; and after having recognised the rights of the city, becomes the va.s.sal of the pope, who bestows on him the crown." Frederick complained of these two verses, as well as of the emblems they explained, and obtained but the vague promise of their future suppression. They still subsisted when, in the month of April, 1157, the pope's legates presented themselves before the emperor, who held a court at Besancon?6 and placed in his hands a letter from Adrian. It had for its purport an attack committed in the emperor's states on the person of the Bishop of Lunden.:

"How, said the pope, can "the impunity of such a crime be explained? Is it "negligence? Can it be indifference? Can the "emperor have forgotten the benefits conferred on "him by the Holy See? Has not the sovereign "pontiff willingly conferred on him the imperial "crown? Are there not other favours still which "he may be disposed to confer?"

This language highly displeased the princes by whom Frederick was surrounded; they murmured, they menaced; and when one of the legates replied to them, "of whom then does the emperor hold the crown, if he holds it not from the pope?" one of the princes no longer restrained his indignation; he drew his sword, and he had infallibly cut off the legate's head, if Frederick had not hastened to oppose his imperial authority to this violence, and to have the envoys of the Holy See conducted to their residences, directing them to depart very early the following morning, and to return to Rome by the shortest road, without resting at the houses of either bishops or abbots.?7

?4 Hist, eccles. 1. 70, n. 4.-Otho Frising. de Gert. Frider. An.o.borb.

1. 2, c. 21.-Vit. Adrioni ed a card. Arrag.

?5 Otho Frising. de Oert. Frid. 1.2, c. 14,15,20.-Radev. de Gert.

Frid. 1.1, c. 11.-Bossnet's Def. Gull Church. 1.3, e 18.

?6 Radevic. 1. 1, c. 8, 9, 10.

?7 Concilior. vol. x. p. 1144.

Adrian took the step of addressing the bishops of Germany; he exhorted them to neglect no means of bringing Frederick back to more humble sentiments.?8 We have the reply of these prelates;?? it is judicious and firm:

"Your "words, they say to the holy fathers, have shocked "the whole court, and we cannot approve them.- "The emperor can never suppose, that he holds "from you his dignity: he swears that when the "Church wishes to subject thrones, such ambition "comes not from G.o.d; he speaks of figures and "inscriptions which you possess, and which outrage "his authority; he will not suffer, he says, such "gross attempts. We invite you to destroy these "movements of hostility between the empire and "the priesthood; we adjure you to pacify a chris- "tian sovereign, in addressing to him henceforth a "language more conformable to the Gospel."

At the same time that the bishops wrote this epistle, Frederick prepared to pa.s.s into Italy.! Adrian called to mind William of Sicily and perceived that it was time to shew some deference to the emperor.

Legates more skilful and more complying, came to Augsburgh, and presented Frederick with another epistle from Adrian The pope explained in it the terms of his first letter, and the explanation amounted to a retraction. "By the word 'beneffcium,' he says, we understand not a benefice or a fief, but a benefit or a service. In speaking of your crown, we do not pretend having conferred it on you; we refer only to the honour we have had of placing it on your august head; 'contulimus' that is to say, imposuimus." This commentary, which by no means pleases Baronius, satisfied the emperor, and produced between this prince and the pope a reconciliation which was not of long duration.

In the month of October 1150, Frederick held at Roncaille, between Parma and Placentia, an a.s.sembly, in which the bishops and abbots acknowledged that they held from him their royal privileges.

Dissatisfied with this declaration, and with the asperity with which the officers of the emperor a.s.serted the right of forage over the lands of the Roman Church, Adrian wrote an epistle to Frederick which has not been preserved; but Radevic, who gives us a relation of it,4 says, that it concealed, under humble and gentle terms, much bitterness and hauteur. In replying to it, Frederick affected to place, in the inscription, his own name before that of the sovereign pontiff.5 It was to revert to an ancient custom, to which were subst.i.tuted for some time past forms supposed to be more respectful. This bagatelle nettled the holy, father; and history relates, that letters were intercepted which he wrote to the Milanese, and other subjects of Frederick, to invite them to revolt. We do not possess those letters; but the reply of Adrian to the emperor has been transmitted to us.6

"To place your name before ours, says the servant "of the servants of Christ, is arrogance, is insolence; "and to cause bishops to render homage to you, "those whom the Scriptures call G.o.ds, sons of the "Most High, is to want that faith which you "have sworn to St. Peter, and to us. Hasten then "to amend, lest that in taking to yourself that which "does not belong to you, you lose the crown with "which we have gratified you."

This epistle7 did not remain unreplied to; the minds of both became inflamed, and in despite of the negociations attempted in an a.s.sembly at Bologna in 1159, war was going to break out, had not the pope died the first of September of the same year, at the very moment, says an historian8 at which he p.r.o.nounced the excommunication of Frederick.

?8 Concilior, vol. 10, p. 1145.

?? Radev. Gest. Frider. 1.1, c. 16.

Radev. 1. 17, c. 23.

Concilior. vol. 10, p. 1147.

Ana. eccles. ann. 1158. 76.-According to Bossuet, this letter of Adrian IV. alone, is requisite to annihilate all the conclusions which the Ultramontanes pretend to deduce from the ceremony of the coronation of kings.

Radev.l. 2. c. 1-15.

4 Lib. 2. c. 18*

5 App. p. 562.

6 Concilior vol. 10.

7 Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes Ps. 81. r. 6.

8 Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 221.

Alexander III. elected pope after Adrian IV. did not die until 1181. His pontificate is the longest of the twelfth century. But four anti-popes, who succeeded each other in the lapse of these twenty-eight years, under the names of Victor III., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III., disputed and weakened the authority of the head of the church. Alexander who had been at Besancon as one of the envoys of Adrian, found in Frederick Barbarossa a formidable enemy. This emperor seeing that they had at the same moment elected two successors of Adrian, Alexander and Victor, summoned them to appear at Pavia, where he would decide between them in a council convoked by him. Victor appeared there and was p.r.o.nounced the true pontiff. Alexander excommunicated by this council, in return excommunicated Frederick and Victor, loosed from their oaths the subjects of the former, and took refuge in France, then the usual common asylum of the popes expelled from Rome. Returned to this city in 1165, after the decease of Victor, he left it again in 1167, and behold in what way. The Romans besieged by the Germans, conjured him to sacrifice to their safety the t.i.tle disputed with him,:

"No! he replied, a sovereign "pontiff is not subject, to the judgment of any mor- "tal, neither of kings nor of people, nor yet of the "church; let them know that no power on earth "shall make me descend from the rank to which G.o.d "has elevated me;"

and, while the cardinals carried to the citizens of Rome this pontifical reply, the holy father stole away without noise.? Frederick at this time supported a famous war against almost all Italy, confederated under the name of the League of Lombardy. Alexander III. became the head of the Lombards, who gave the name of Alexandria, to a city built by them in 1168, at the confluence of the Tanaro and the Bormida. The pope excited the Greek emperor Manuel to arm against the emperor of the West, and attempted to reconcile the two churches, separated since the pontificate of Leo IX. But when Manuel required that the Holy See should be established at Constantinople, this condition caused the failure of both projects. To occupy a secondary rank in a capital inhabited, possessed, and ruled by a secular sovereign, this subordinate situation, which for five centuries had suited the successors of St. Peter, was not to be listened to by the successors of Gregory VII.

? Vit Alex. III. edit, a card. Arrag. p. 468.-Acerbug Rfp-rena, p.

1151.--Baron. Ann. eccles. Anji. 1167, s. 11.

As France, so England likewise, acknowledged Alexander III.

notwithstanding the protection he seemed to grant to Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate elevated by the king, Henry II., to the most eminent dignities, dared to oppose himself to the punishment of a priest convicted of a.s.sa.s.sination, and to determine that the sole punishment should be, deprivation of his benefice.

The king wished that the common law should be applied, by the regular tribunals, to the frequent crimes of the members of the church; he desired that no bishop should without his permission go to Rome or appeal to the Holy See, nor excommunicate or suspend a va.s.sal or officer of the crown. A parliament at Clarendon adopted these articles: Becket after having at first rejected them without examination, next adopted them without reserve, lastly accused himself to the pope of having betrayed the rights of the clergy, did penance for it, and renounced the exercise of his ministry until the sovereign pontiff had absolved him.

Treated as a rebel by all the peers of Great Britain, as well ecclesiastical as secular, he took refuge in France, threatened the king with the fate of Nebuchadnezzar, and p.r.o.nounced anathemas against the most faithful ministers and subjects of Henry. This prince attempted to recal Becket to reason and his duty: he exhausted every way for the purpose, even that of taking for arbiter his rival Louis the Young, king of France. Let the archbishop, said he, conduct himself towards me, as the most holy of his predecessors did with the least ill.u.s.trious of mine, and I shall be satisfied. An apparent reconciliation led Becket back to England; but if he returned it was to excommunicate anew all the clerks, curates, canons and bishops, who had declared against him. Henry lost all patience; even to that degree that he exclaimed: will none of my servants avenge me of the most meddling and ungrateful of men? Four a.s.sa.s.sins went, in effect, to seek the arch-bishop, and dispatched him in his church of Canterbury. Alexander, who had condemned the Articles of Clarendon, placed Thomas a Becket in the number of the holy martyrs; and the king, whose imprudent words had rendered him guilty both of the murder and the canonization, finished, by tarnis.h.i.+ng with the most ignominious penance the rights and dignity of his throne. This quarrel has given place to a mult.i.tude of letters, as well of Alexander III. as of many English and French prelates: a deplorable correspondence, in which we behold with what rapidity were propagated the unsocial maxims preserved in the decree of Gratian.

Matth. Paris. Hist. mag. p. 82, 83, 101, 104.-Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, s. 12.-Concil. Magnse Britann.

vol. 1. p. 434.-Epistolae et Vita Thomae Cantuar. &c. Brux. 1682, vol. 2. in 4to.-Natalis Alex. sec. 12, diss. 10, p. 833.-Telly's Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 181, 198.

Nevertheless, Alexander III. thought of establis.h.i.+ng himself, and dreaded the consequences of too long a war with the emperor. He detached himself from

Some English writers say that the four a.s.sa.s.sins, Fitzurse, Tracy, Britton and Morville, were so far from having an order to kill Becket, that they dared not re-appear at Court after the commission of the crime. Hume adds, that the king suspecting the intention of these gentlemen from some words which had escaped them, dispatched a messenger after them, prohibiting their attacking the person of the prelate, but that the messenger arrived too late.

the Lombard League, and came to Venice in 1177, to offer Frederick a peace, which the reverses of this prince were to render useful and glorious to the church. The pope reaped the fruits of the labours and combats of Italy. Frederick acknowledged Alexander, kissed his feet, held the stirrup of his horse, and restored the ecclesiastical goods, without, however, including herein the inheritance of Matilda, and signed a truce for six years For ten years past, Alexander had invariably resided at Anagni; he seldom resorted to Rome, where the seeds of sedition had not ceased to ferment. He returned to it in 1178; his entry was solemn; he received the homage of the people and the oaths of the n.o.bles, and held in 1179 the third general council of the Lateran. A crown being sent by him to the king of Portugal, Alphonso Henriquez, in order that this conqueror should not reign without the approbation of the Holy See, he was repaid by an annual tribute of two marks of gold. Such have been the princ.i.p.al events of the pontificate of Alexander III. to whom the college of cardinals is indebted for the exclusive privilege of electing the popes; he ruled that this election should be effected by the union of two thirds of the suffrages in favour of one candidate. The memory of this pope has remained dear to the Italians, who were pleased at beholding in him the defender of their liberties; but he evinced still more zeal for the aggrandizement of the ecclesiastical power. They owe greater praise to his address and constancy than to his patriotism. He knew how to triumph over obstacles, support long reverses, weary out the prosperity of Frederick Barbarossa, and subject to the pontifical authority, the enemy of the Italian republics.

Maratori's Antiquit Ital. med. aevi. vol. 4, p. 249.- Orig. Guelph, vol. 2, p. 479.

Velly's Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 327.

Lucius III. the first elected in the the forms established by Alexander, displeased the Romans on this very account, who compelled him to retire to Verona. Urban III. and Gregory VIII. proposed a third crusade, which was not undertaken until under Clement III. in 1189. To draw France and England towards the Holy Land, it was requisite to deaden the ardour of the quarrels which, from the divorce of Louis VII., divided the two kingdoms. A legate of Clement III. threatened France with a general interdict, if Philip Augustus did not hasten to reconcile himself to the English.

"What do I care for "your interdict, replied Philip: does it belong "to Rome to threaten or disturb my States, "when I think proper to bring back to duty my "rebel va.s.sals? we may plainly see you have got "a relish for the sterling money of the English."

Philip a.s.sumed the cross, nevertheless, as well as Richard, who had succeeded his father, Henry, on the throne of England. Frederick Barbarossa also took the cross and died in Armenia, in 1100, leaving the empire to his son Henry, VI. Clement III. had need to occupy the peoples minds with this remote expedition. The papal authority had been weakened anew under the short and feeble pontificates of his two predecessors.

The Romans who had obtained royal privileges, restored them to the Holy See, only on condition that the cities of Tusculum and of Tivoli should be given up to their vengeance. Tusculum sacked and reduced to cinders under Celestin III. took the name of Frescati, when branches of trees4 served to form asylums for those that remained of the inhabitants.

Celestine III. elected in 1191, is the last pope of the 12th centuiy.

Innocent III. who reigned from 1198 to 1216 ought to be considered belonging to the XII. Baronius relates5 that in consecrating Heniy VI. celestine pushed with his foot the imperial crown. Muratori disputes the fact,6 which proves, according to Baronius, the popes right to depose the emperor: in fine there can no finer reason be given for such a privilege. However it may be, Celestine excommunicated Heniy VI.