104 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
But on the question of supremacy of power, the Hohenstaufen were always in secret or open war with the popes, and in the end were defeated. The conflict broke out under Frederick Barbarossa, who after long years of contention died at peace with the Church. It was continued by his grandson Frederick II. who died excommunicated and deposed from his throne by the papacy. The dynasty went out in tragic weakness in Conradin, the last male representative, who was beheaded on the charge of high treason, 1268. This conflict of the imperial house of the Hohenstauf en was more imposing than the conflict waged by Henry IV. with Gregory and his successors because of the higher plane on which it was fought and the greater ability of the secular antagonists engaged. Lasting more than one hundred years, it forms one of the most august spectacles of the Middle Ages, and furnishes some of the most dramatic scenes in which kings have ever figured. The historian Gregorovius has felt justified in saying that " this Titanic war of the Middle Ages filled and connected the centuries and formed the greatest spectacle of all ages."
After the fall of the Hohenstaufen, the German Empire maintained, till its death in 1806, a nominal connection with the papacy, but ceased to be the central political power of Europe, except in the period of the Reformation under Charles V., 1519 — 1558, when it was connected with the crowns of Austria, the Low Countries, and Spain, and the newly dis covered lands of America, and when that mighty monarch, true to his Austrian and Spanish descent, retarded the Prot estant movement for national independence and religious free dom. The new German Empire, founded on the ruins of the old and the defeat of France (1870), is ruled by a hereditary Protestant emperor.
§ 28. ADRIAN IV. AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. 105 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
A.D.
POPES.
THE HOHEN8TAUFEN.
A.D.
1130-1143
Innocent II.
Conrad III.
1138-1152
1143-1144
Ccelestine II.
Crowned emperor at Aix la Chapelle
1144-1145
Lucius II.
by the papal legates.
1145-1153
Eugene III.
Frederick I. (Barbarossa) .
1152-1190
1153-1154
Anastasius IV.
(Nephew of Conrad.)
1154-1159
Adrian IV.
Crowned emperor by Adrian IV.
1159-1181
Alexander III.
1181-1185
Lucius III.
1185-1187
Urban III.
Gregory VIII.
1187-1191
Clement III.
Henry VI.
1190-1197
1191-1198
Ccelestine III.
(Son of Barbarossa.)
Crowned emperor by Coelestine III.
King of Sicily.
1198-1216
Innocent III.
Otto IV.
1209-1215
Crowned by Innocent III.
Deposed by the Lateran Council.
1216-1227
Honorius III.
Frederick II.
1227-1241
Gregory IX.
(Son of Henry VI. and Constance of
Coelestine IV.
Sicily.)
Crowned emperor by Honorius III.
1241-1254
Innocent IV.
Conrad IV.
1250-1254
(Second son of Frederick II.)
Crowned king of the Romans.
Excommunicated, 1252, and again,
1254.
1254-1261
Alexander IV.
Interregnum.
1254-1273
1261-1264
Urban IV.
Conradin.
1265-1268
Clement IV.
(Son of Conrad, the last of the Ho-
henstaufen, b. 1252.)
Beheaded.
§ 28. Adrian IV. and Frederick Barbarossa.
Lives of Hadrian in MURATORI, Script. Eer. Ital. I. III. — MIGNE, vol. 188. — OTTO OF FREISING. — WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH, 2 vols. London, 1856. — R. RABY : Pope Hadrian IV. London, 1849. — TARLETON: Nicolas Breakspear, Englishman and Pope, 1896. — L. GINNELL : The Doubtful Grant of Ireland of Pope Adrian IV. to Henry II. , 1899. — 0. J. THATCHER: Studies cone. Adrian IV. Chicago, 1903. pp. 88. — REU- TER: Alex. ///., vol. I. 1-48, 479-487.
106 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 112.3-1108.
Eugene III. was followed by Anastasius IV., whose rule lasted only sixteen months.
His successor was Nicolas Breakspear, the first and the only Englishman that has (thus far) worn the tiara. He was the son of a poor priest of St. Albans. He went to France in pursuit of bread and learning, became a monk, prior, and abbot of the convent of St. Ruf us, between Aries and Avignon. He studied theology and canon law. Eu gene III. made him cardinal-bishop of Albano, and sent him as legate to Norway and Sweden, where he organized the Church and brought it into closer contact with Rome.
He occupied the papal chair as Adrian IV., from 1154 to 1159, with great ability and energy. A beggar raised to the highest dignity in Christendom ! The extremes of fortune met in this Englishman. Yet he felt happier in his poverty than in his power. He declared soon after his consecration that " the papal chair was full of thorns and the papal mantle full of holes and so heavy as to load down the strongest man." And after some experience in that high office, he said : " Is there a man in the world so miserable as a pope ? I have found so much trouble in St. Peter's chair that all the bitterness of my former life appears sweet in com parison." l
The Romans, under the lead of Arnold, requested him to resign all claim to temporal rule ; but he refused, and after a bloody attack made by an Arnoldist upon one of the cardi nals in the open street, he laid — for the first time in history — the interdict on the city. By this unbloody, yet awful and most effective, weapon, he enforced the submission of the people. He abolished the republican government, expelled Arnold and his adherents, and took possession of the Lateran.
At this time, Frederick I., called Barbarossa (Redbeard) by the Italians from the color of his beard, one of the bravest, strongest, and most despotic of German emperors, — the 1 John of Salisbury, Folycraticus, VIII. 23 ; Migne, 199, 814.