



Produced by Michael Gray




POPE ADRIAN IV.

AN
HISTORICAL SKETCH.



BY RICHARD RABY.



LONDON:
THOMAS RICHARDSON AND SON,
172, FLEET STREET; 9, CAPEL STREET, DUBLIN; AND DERBY.
1849.



I. PREFACE.

The following sketch was written to supply what its author felt
persuaded could not fail to interest his fellow Catholics in England;
namely, some account of the only English Pope who ever reigned.

In it he does not pretend to any novelty of research; but simply to
present a connected narrative of such events in the history of Pope
Adrian IV. as have hitherto lain broken and concealed in old
chronicles, or been slightly touched for the most part in an
incidental way by modern writers.

In the course of his sketch, the author has ventured to take part with
Pope Adrian in some acts of his, which it is commonly the mode to
condemn. Should his opinions in so doing not be deemed sound, he yet
hopes that at least the spirit which inspired them--in other words,
the spirit to promote the cause of practical rather than theoretical
policy, as also of public order and legitimate authority, will deserve
commendation.

For the rest, the striking similarity between the difficulties which
Pius IX. in our day has to contend with, and those which Pope Adrian
had to encounter in the twelfth century, should only lend the more
interest to his story.

R. R.

_Munich, May, 1849._



POPE ADRIAN IV.
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
I.

THE information, which has come down to us respecting the early life
of the only Englishman, who ever sat on the papal throne, is so
defective and scanty, as easily to be comprised in a few paragraphs.

Nicholas Breakspere was born near St. Albans, most probably about the
close of the 11th century. His father was a clergyman, who became a
monk in the monastery of that city, while his son was yet a boy. Owing
to extreme poverty, Nicholas could not pay for his education, and was
obliged to attend the school of the monks on charity. [1] This
circumstance would seem to have put his father so painfully to the
blush, that he took an unnatural dislike to his son; whom he shortly
compelled by his threats and reproaches to flee the neighbourhood in a
state of utter destitution.

Thus cruelly cast on the world, Nicholas to settle the church in those
remote countries, where it had been planted about 150 years. The
circumstances which led to this legation were as follows:[2]--originally
the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were
spiritually subject to the archbishop of Hamburg, whose province was
then the most extensive in Christendom. In the year 1102, Denmark
succeeded, after much protracted agitation of the question, in
obtaining from Pope Paschal II., a metropolitan see of its own, which
was founded at Lund; and to whose authority Sweden and Norway were
transferred. The same feeling of national independence, which had
procured this boon for Denmark, was not long before it began to work
in those kingdoms also; and the more so as the Danish supremacy was
asserted over them with much greater rigour than had formerly been
that of Hamburg, and was otherwise repugnant to them, as emanating
from a power with which they stood in far closer political relations,
and more constant rivalry than with Germany. After some indirect
preliminary steps in the business,--which do not seem to have
forwarded it,--the kings of Sweden and Norway sent ambassadors to Pope
Eugenius III., to request for their states the same privilege which
his predecessor had granted to Denmark; and which he himself had just
extended to Ireland, in the erection of the four archbishoprics of
that country. The arrival of these ambassadors at Rome happened a year
before the elevation of the abbot of St. Rufus to the see of Albano.
The pope promised to accede to their request. It was in fulfilment of
this promise that Nicholas Breakspere was sent into the north.
Doubtless, the circumstance of his being an Englishman had weight in
his selection; as, in consequence of that circumstance, he would be
viewed as far more likely to possess a correct knowledge of the
character and government peculiar to northern nations than an Italian.

Taking England in his way, the Cardinal legate passed thence into
Norway; where he landed in June of the year above-mentioned. The
country was then governed by three brothers, named Sigurd, Inge, and
Eystein, sons of the late King Harrold Gille. Between the first two, a
serious quarrel happened to rage. For a Norwegian nobleman having
murdered the brother of Sigurd's favourite concubine, and then entered
the service of Inge, the latter shielded his client against the
punishment which Sigurd sought to inflict.

Before entering on the affairs of the Church, the Cardinal Legate saw
that this quarrel must first be settled. Of the three brothers, Inge
seems to have stood the highest in the esteem of all classes in the
state, by reason of his benevolence, and other virtues. With him the
cardinal took part, and compelled Sigurd, together with Eystein,--who
seems also to have meddled in the dispute against Inge,--to agree to a
reconciliation. At the same time, he visited with ecclesiastical
censures the former two, for various crimes, of which they had been
guilty in other respects.

On the settlement of this quarrel, he proceeded at once to the special
business of his legation,--the erection of an archbishopric for the
kingdom. This he decided to fix at Nidrosia, or Nidaros, the capital
of the province, over which Sigurd in those days ruled, and
corresponding to the city and district of Drontheim now. The selection
of Nidrosia was made chiefly out of honor to St. Olaff, whose relics
reposed in its church.

Here, he invested John, Bishop of Stavanger, with the Pallium; and
subjected to his jurisdiction the sees of Apsloe, Bergen, and
Stavanger, those of the small Norwegian colonies, of the Orcades,
Hebrides, and Furo Isles, and that of Gaard in Greenland. The Shetland
and western isles of Scotland, with the Isle of Man, and a new
bishopric which the cardinal founded at Hammer in Norway,--and in
which he installed Arnold, at that time expelled the see of Gaard,--were
also included in the province of Nidrosia. The bishop of Sodor
and Man, as well as the bishops of the Shetland and western isles, had
till this time been suffragans of the see of York, but obeyed the
authority of Nidrosia for the next 200 years; after which, the
Norwegian primate lost his rights over those islands, which returned
under their first jurisdiction. The greater part of the other sees had
already, directly, or indirectly, acknowledged the authority of the
bishops of Nidrosia, while the rest had bowed to the supremacy of
Hamburg. [3]

The possession of a metropolitan see of their own spread such
satisfaction among the people of Norway, that no mark of respect
seemed too great for the immediate dispenser of the boon; and under
this feeling, they allowed the Cardinal Legate to introduce various
regulations into the country beyond what his powers entitled him to
do, and even to reform their civil institutions. Thus there is every
reason to assume,--though positive historical evidence is wanting,--that
he bound the Norwegian Church to the payment of Peter's pence to
the Holy See. He also effected extensive reforms as regards the
celibacy of the clergy; but, in spite of his great influence, does not
seem to have been able to carry them so far as he could have wished.
Various rites and ceremonies of religion, into which abuses had crept,
were purged by him. Moreover, he placed the public peace on a surer
footing than it was before, by means of a law which he procured to be
passed, forbidding all private persons to appear armed in the streets;
while to the king alone was reserved the right of a body guard of
twelve men. [4] Snorrow relates, that no foreigner ever came to
Norway, who gained so much public honor and deference among the people
as Nicholas Breakspere. On his departure he was loaded with presents,
and promised perpetual friendship to the country. When he became pope,
he kept his promise, and invariably treated all Norwegians who visited
Rome during his reign with extraordinary attention. He also sent into
Norway, architects and other artists from England, to build the
cathedral and convent of the new see of Hammer. On his death the
nation honored his memory as that of a saint.

Having finished the business of his legation to Norway, Nicholas
Breakspere next passed into Sweden. His first proceeding in this
kingdom was to hold a synod at Lingkopin; to fix on a see for the new
archbishopric about to be created. But the members, consisting of the
heads of the clergy of Sweden and Gothland, could not agree on the
point, as, out of a spirit of provincial rivalry, the one party
claimed the honor for Upsala, and the other for Skara. Finding that
the dispute was too hot to be soon settled, the Cardinal Legate
consecrated St. Henry of Upsala bishop of that city, introduced
various new regulations respecting the celibacy of the clergy and the
payment of Peter's pence to the pope; and then took his departure for
Denmark on his way to Rome. The pallium which was destined for the new
primate of Sweden, he deposited, until the difficulties in the way of
the election of that dignitary should be removed, with Eskill,
Archbishop of Lund, who received him in the most honorable and cordial
manner, notwithstanding that by his agency the authority of the Danish
Church was so seriously curtailed. The Cardinal Legate would seem to
have sought by this act of confidence to soothe the soreness, which
Eskill must naturally have felt at seeing his honors so shorn. The
primate of Lund was also informed that he should still continue to
preserve the title of Primate of Sweden, with the right of
consecrating and investing with the pallium the future archbishops of
that kingdom. Farther, he was promised, as some compensation for what
he had lost, the grant of a right from the Holy See of annexing to his
archiepiscopal dignity the style of "Legati nati Apostolicis Sedis" in
the three kingdoms. [5] During the stay of Nicholas Breakspere in
Denmark, it happened that John, a younger son of Swercus, King of
Sweden and Gothland, and a prince whose radically bad character had
been totally ruined by a neglected education, carried off by violence,
and dishonored the wife of his eldest brother Charles, together with
her widowed sister,--princesses of unsullied fame, and nearly related
to Sweno III., at that time, king of Denmark. This atrocity naturally
excited a deep resentment against its author, at home and abroad: and
roused Sweno to resolve on invading Sweden and Gothland with all his
forces, in revenge of so insulting an outrage; a resolution in which
he grew all the more fixed, by the recollection that Swercus himself
had formerly injured Nicholas, a predecessor of Sweno on the throne,
by perfidiously seducing, and marrying his intended bride--an injury
all the bitterer, as Nicholas never could retaliate it, by reason of
domestic broils with his own people.

The Cardinal Legate no sooner became aware of this gathering storm,
than he sought to avert its outbreak; and repaired to King Sweno, with
whom he remonstrated against the projected war, not only on religious,
but prudential grounds; depicting to him the many serious obstacles by
sea and land which must be surmounted before any advantage could be
won; and reminding him, "that if the spider, by disembowelling
herself, as least, caught the flies she gave chace to, yet the Danes
could only expect to run the certain peril of their lives in their
proposed campaign." [6] The cardinal's interference in this instance
in behalf of peace, seems not to have been crowned with the same
success, as in Norway. King Sweno, a proud and obstinate man, lent a
respectful, but callous ear to his arguments; and was equally
impervious to the efforts of the ambassadors, whom Swercus also sent
to prevent hostilities.

The events of the war which followed brought condign punishment to
each party: for Prince John, on being directed by his father to levy
troops for the defence of the state, was massacred in a popular riot
as the odious cause of the public dangers; and Sweno, on his invasion
of Sweden, having been inveigled by the wily tactics of Swercus--who
feigned to retire before him--to push his expedition beyond its
original destination as far as Finland, was there surprised by a
rising of the natives, who destroyed the flower of his army; while he
himself escaped with difficulty into Denmark, covered with shame, at
so ignoble and fatal a defeat. Not long afterwards, Sweno was murdered
in his bed by two of his chief nobles, who had long cherished disloyal
feelings towards their king; and, at last, entered into a treasonable
correspondence with Swercus. The end of the latter proved eventually
not less tragical. In the mean time, Nicholas Breakspere had quitted
the country, and returned to Rome. On his arrival he found Pope
Eugenius dead, and succeeded by Anastasius IV., an old man of ninety.
Anastasius, who reigned little more than a year, among other acts,
confirmed, by a bull addressed to John, Archbishop of Nidrosia, all
that the English legate had done in Norway, with the exception,
however, of that concession to the primate of Lund, by which the
latter was to enjoy the right of investing the new archbishops of
Norway and Sweden with the pallium. This right, Anastasius reserved to
the Holy See. The venerable pontiff died shortly afterwards, December
2nd, 1154.

On the following day the conclave met in St. Peter's church, and
elected the cardinal bishop of Albano to the vacant throne; in which
he was solemnly installed on the morrow, and took the name of Adrian
IV.--thus giving not the least striking among many examples in the
dynasty of the popes, of an exaltation from the meanest station in
society to one the sublimest in dignity, and most awful in
responsibility that exists under heaven.

[1] Guillelmus Neubrigensis, de rebus Anglicis, lib. 2. cap. 6. 8.

[2] Munter, Kirchengeschichte V. Danemark und Norwegen. Buch 2. tom.
2.

[3] Munter, ibid.

[4] Torfaeus, Hist. Rer. Norweg. pars. 3. lib. 9. cap. 12.

[5] Munter, &c., ibid.

[6] Joannes Magnus, Hist. Gott. lib. 18. cap. 17.



II.

At the moment, Adrian IV. took his seat behind the helm of Peter's
bark, the winds and waves raged furiously against her, nor ceased to
do so, during the whole time that he steered her course. That time,
though short, was yet long enough to prove him a skilful and fearless
pilot,--as much so as the very foremost of his predecessors or
successors, who have acquired greater fame than he, simply because a
more protracted term of office enabled them to carry out to completer
results than he could do, designs in no wise loftier than Adrian's;
and, in so doing, to unveil before the world more fully than was
permitted to him, characters not, therefore, nobler or more richly
endowed than his.

The first difficulty with which the English pope had to grapple, on
his accession to power, was the refractory spirit of the citizens of
Rome, among whom Arnold of Brescia had, some time before, stirred up
the republican mania.

Arnold was a native of the city, indicated by his surname, and was
born there most likely about the year 1105. His was one of those proud
and ambitious natures, in which imagination and enthusiasm are mixed
up in far greater proportions, than judgment and sobriety. From his
childhood he developed shining parts and an ardor for study,
calculated to elicit their full force. To pursue his studies with as
little interruption as possible, he adopted, while yet a boy, the
clerical habit, and not long afterwards obtained minor orders. [1]

In those days, events were passing, at home and abroad, well adapted
to excite all that extravagance, which was to be expected from a
character like his. In Italy, it was the era of the spread of those
republican principles, which were at last fought out so heroically and
through such perils by the cities of Lombardy, against local barons
and transalpine emperors; in Europe, at large, it was the era of the
bloom of intellectual chivalry, whose seat was Paris, whose foremost
champion, Abailard. But it was also the era of a wide-spread
demoralization of the clergy, among whom simony and concubinage were
the order of the day; and, consequently, every other disorder which
naturally follows in the wake of those two capital vices. In the midst
of such a complicated state of things, requiring so much steadiness of
eye to view it properly, so as not to be misled,--on the one hand by a
false admiration, and on the other by a false disgust,--the youth
Arnold devoured the pages of Livy; and imbibed from him, as well as
from other Roman classics, those principles of heathen republicanism,
which he subsequently sought to restore to practice, in the metropolis
of Christendom, with such fatal results to society and himself.

On the completion of his studies at home, he repaired, thirsting for
deeper draughts of knowledge, to Paris; and became one of the most
devoted scholars of Abailard; whose rationalist invasions of the
domain of theological doctrine,--by which the supreme authority of the
Church in matters of faith was threatened,--accorded with Arnold's
tone of mind. In fact, he soon arrived, by the line of argument which
the lessons of his master and his own feelings led him to adopt, at
the firm persuasion that he alone had hit upon the true plan for
reforming, not only the political, but the religious abuses of the
age; and, moreover, that none but he could carry that plan out. Under
this hallucination, which the fumes of pagan principles of
statesmanship and rationalist principles of Christianity, fermenting
together, had hatched in his brain, he returned, after a few years'
stay at Paris, to Brescia; not failing to visit, at his passage of the
Alps, the Waldenses, and other sects, with whose tenets he secretly
sympathized.

On his arrival at Brescia, he opened his career by a series of pulpit
philippics against the temporal government of the Prince Bishop, and
the immoral lives of the clergy. With fiery eloquence, that told all
the more by reason of the sanctity of the preacher's exterior--a
precaution which he took so well that even St. Bernard admitted its
success--Arnold opposed the doctrines and practice of Holy Writ to the
vices and luxuries which he denounced; affirming that the corruption
of the Church was caused by her having overstepped the boundaries of
her domain. That she had done so, was proved, he said, by the wealth
and political power which she had acquired, contrary to the spirit and
example of apostolic times; to whose simplicity she must return if she
was to be reformed as she ought to be, and as, for the good of
society, it was indispensable she should be. Of course, this line of
argument received all that applause which it never fails to do
whenever urged. For the reformation of the Church, by reducing her to
the poverty of the apostolic ages, involves,--besides such purely
spiritual advantages as are set forth at large in the plan,--others of
a material kind, which, if not usually paraded with the first, are not
the less kept steadily in view. For instance, that those who carry out
the reforms in question will be sure to get well paid for their pains;
seeing that the transaction necessarily passes so much money and goods
through their fingers, as well to private, as public profit. And,
then, there is the secret satisfaction naturally felt above all by the
rich and lax, at seeing the clergy, by means of this very reformation,
deprived of much formidable influence--such as wealth always bestows
on its possessors--and which is surely as necessary to the Church as
to any other public corporation, to the end that she may carry out
efficiently the affairs of her vast mission; keep up her dignity amid
an irreverent world; shield her oppressed; relieve her poor members,
and strike respect into powerful sinners, who would not only scorn but
trample on her too, if she had nothing but words to oppose to blows.

In consequence of Arnold's sermons--preached not only at Brescia, but
also in other towns of Lombardy,--and which, besides their virulent
censure of the existing abuses in Church and State, broached opinions
contrary to orthodox faith, especially in regard to infant baptism,
and the sacrament of the Eucharist,--an insurrection broke out against
the Prince Bishop Manfred, in the year 1138, and lasted through the
next.

Manfred made a vigorous stand to begin with; then seemed on the point
of giving way, when an unexpected event turned the scales in his
favour. This was the calling by Pope Innocent II., in the year 1139,
of all the bishops and abbots of the Church to an oecumenical council
at Rome, to condemn the memory of his late rival, the anti-pope
Anacletus II. Among the rest, the Bishop Manfred and the abbots of
Brescia appeared; and did not fail to seize the opportunity of
denouncing the actions and opinions of Arnold to the pope and the
curia. The proper course was forthwith taken; the proceedings of so
pernicious a disturber of the public peace were condemned; himself
warned to hold his tongue in future, and banished out of Italy under
an oath not to return thither, without an express papal permission.

Arnold now betook himself again into France; and smarting with wounded
pride and ambition, vindictively espoused the party of his old master
Abailard, just then embroiled in his famous dispute with St. Bernard.
For the abbot of Clairvaux had found out that it would never do to
allow that honest, but mistaken man to go on spreading his views any
longer unopposed, if the orthodox faith was to be preserved intact in
Christendom; and so, after more than once privately warning him of his
errors to no purpose, accepted a challenge which Abailard at last
vauntingly sent him to a public disputation. This disputation came off
at the Synod of Sens, A. D. 1140, and resulted in the total defeat of
the philosopher by the monk. But Abailard appealed from the synod to
the pope; whereupon the synod suspended its farther measures, and
advised the Holy See through St. Bernard of what had transpired. In
doing so, the latter took care to expose the fatal consequences to
revealed religion involved in Abailard's opinions, and, in one of his
letters on this subject, stated the case thus: "That inasmuch as
Abailard is prepared to explain everything by means of reason, he
combats as well Faith as Reason: for, what is so contrary to Reason,
as to wish to go beyond the limits of Reason by means of Reason? and,
what more contrary to Faith, than to be unwilling to believe that
which one is unable to reach by means of Reason?"

Abailard fared no better at Rome than at Sens. His defeat was ratified
by that authority from which there is no appeal. Moreover, he was
commanded to desist from holding any more lectures; and all persons
who should obstinately maintain his errors were excommunicated.
Foremost among these was Arnold of Brescia, who scorned to imitate
Abailard's submission to the authority of the Church, and blamed his
penitential retreat at Clugny, where he shortly died an edifying
death.

St. Bernard,--who had previously formed an ill opinion of Arnold from
the reports which preceded him out of Italy,--no sooner saw him at
Sens actively interested for Abailard, than he penetrated the entire
duplicity of his character; at the same time that he felt fully alive
to the damage, which the victory just won over error might yet suffer
from a man so able and resolute. Wherefore, as it was not his custom
to serve the cause of truth by halves, the saint resolved to include
the scholar with the master in his denunciations to the pope; who, at
his instance, ordered that Arnold too, as well as Abailard, should be
incarcerated in a convent. But the crafty Italian managed to elude his
doom by a timely flight; and after running many dangers by reason of
the keen chace which St. Bernard gave him, found a safe retreat at
Zurich.

In that age Zurich, by reason of the trade of Germany and Italy
passing through it, was the most flourishing town of Switzerland.
Trading communities are commonly as fond of novelty in opinion as in
wares. Zurich verified this assertion in many ways; for, owing to its
free government, its proximity to the republics of Lombardy, and to
the settlements of the Waldenses in the Alps, the place swarmed with
that motley tribe of political and religious dreamers which Liberty is
ever doomed to tolerate in her train. Of course, Arnold had his clique
among the rest. His reception by the citizens was enthusiastic; a
public situation was given to him; and he resided in the city for the
next six years. During that interval, he confined his activity to
Zurich and the cantons bordering it. In these he propagated his
doctrines with success, and seems to have been forgotten by the public
of France and Italy. No doubt, he may be viewed as having helped to
pave the way for Zwingli in the 16th, and Strauss in the 19th,--both
of whom, like Arnold, spread the poison of their ideas from Zurich.

In the meantime, events were transpiring at Rome which were destined
to call Arnold from his retreat, and produce him again on the great
stage of the world in a part more important than ever. These were the
attempts of the Romans to restore their ancient republic on the ruins
of the papal government. These attempts were not peculiar to the 12th
century, but had been made in preceding ages, invariably to no other
purpose than anarchy to the city, and scandal to the world. Indeed,
there seems always to have been a party at Rome whose adherents, more
pagan than Christian in their hearts, perversely mistook the destiny
of the city; and far from viewing its new spiritual empire as nobler
than its old material one, held the former as something meanly
inferior to the latter; wholly blind to the fact that the senate and
emperors had been merely types of the hierarchy and the popes, and
that in these, and not in those, God had decreed, from the time of
Romulus himself, the true power and majesty of Rome should eventually
reside. This party then,--who viewed the pope as the Jews viewed our
Saviour, whom they would not accept as their Messias, but reviled him
as an impostor because he possessed no worldly-power; this party it
was that, at the end of the 8th century, treated Leo III. with such
impious cruelty in their first recorded attempt to overthrow the papal
government; that in the 10th century not only dethroned, but
imprisoned and murdered, by the hands of the consul Crescentius,
Benedict VI., and plunged the state into such disorders as to render
necessary the bloody but just intervention of Otho III. Emperor of
Germany, who delivered the Holy See from the oppression and
indignities which overwhelmed it. About the middle of the 12th
century, the example of the cities of Lombardy, roused to their
struggle for freedom to a great degree by the eloquence of Arnold of
Brescia, again awoke the republican faction at Rome; where other
elements of lawlessness unhappily existed in the papal schism which
then raged, and in which the anti-pope Anacletus drove from the Holy
See Innocent II., the lawful pope. On the death of Anacletus and the
return of Innocent, the sentence of the council, above mentioned,
against Arnold of Brescia, still more embittered the revolutionary
spirits of the city, worked up to wild enthusiasm by the temporary
presence of that arch-demagogue on the spot to defend his cause. At
last the pope's conduct to the citizens of Tivoli burst the storm of
rebellion over his head.

During the late schism, Tivoli had sided with Anacletus, and on his
death still refused to acknowledge Innocent. A Roman army was
accordingly marched out to reduce the place to obedience, but was
defeated by a sudden sally of the besieged. A fresh army which was
shortly raised behaved better, and Tivoli was reduced. Burning with
shame at the disgraceful failure of their first attempt, the Romans
clamoured for the total destruction of a hated rival and the
dispersion of its inhabitants. But the pope, satisfied with the
triumph of his authority, would lend no countenance to so guilty a
severity, and concluded with his chastised children a fatherly peace.
For thus checking the bad passions of his subjects, he incurred their
displeasure; whereupon, the republican leaders, perceiving their
opportunity seized it at once, and, by their virulent denunciations to
the mob of the pretended tyranny of priests, soon stirred up an
insurrection; and got the citizens to hold a congress in the Capitol,
at which the papal government was declared at an end, and the ancient
republic restored. Innocent strove to counteract this revolution, and
called a synod at the Lateran; before which he protested against any
right of the laity to interfere with his government, much less to
alter it. But his efforts were vain; and he took his ill-fortune so
much to heart that he sickened and died of grief.

Celestine II., his successor, had, as papal legate in France, formerly
befriended Arnold of Brescia: a circumstance that could not fail to
make him popular, and conduce to give effect to his efforts at
conciliation; so that he completely succeeded in allaying the
revolutionary storm during his short reign, which his death terminated
in the spring of the following year.

Under Lucius II., who was next elected to the papal throne, the public
disorders burst forth again in an aggravated degree. Lucius deeply
offended the Romans by seeking to secure himself against their fickle
loyalty in an alliance with Roger, the Norman king of Sicily. In
resentment of this proceeding, the newly elected senate first caused
the strongholds of the Frangipani, and of other adherents of the papal
party within the city, to be demolished, and then sent an embassy to
Conrad III. of Germany to invite him to come and assume the imperial
crown under their auspices, and act as counter-check to the king of
Sicily. But Conrad, mistrusting the high-flown letter containing the
invitation, and feeling moreover little sympathy with rebels against
the pope, declined it.

Hereupon, Lucius thought it the proper time to strike a blow towards
recovering his authority. To this end he marshalled his cardinals and
other dignitaries in all their pomp; put himself at their head, and,
escorted by an armed array of lay partisans, set out for Rome with the
intention of besieging the Capitol.

At first the people, awed by so solemn and resolute an appearance of
the Supreme Pontiff, showed signs if not of helping, at least, of not
resisting his attempt. But the agents of the senate, actively at work
among the crowd, succeeded in dissipating this fatal apathy, and in
rousing, in its stead, so furious a spirit of hostility, that the
result announced itself in a sacr