§ 28. ADRIAN IV. AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. 107
sleeper in Kyffhauser,1 — made, with a powerful army, his first expedition to Italy to receive the iron crown of royalty from the Lombards and the golden crown of empire from the pope (1154).
The pope demanded, as the first condition of his coronation, the surrender of Arnold. With this Barbarossa willingly complied and ordered the execution of the popular agitator. In his first interview with Adrian, he kissed the pope's toe, but neglected the ceremony of holding the stirrup on descend ing from his palfrey. Adrian felt indignant and refused to give him the kiss of peace. When informed that this was an old custom, Barbarossa on the following day complied with it, but in an ambiguous way by holding the left stirrup in stead of the right. He took forcible possession of Trastevere, and was solemnly invested, anointed, and crowned, according to the prescribed ritual, in St. Peter's, amid the acclamations of the curia, the clergy, and the army (June 13, 1155). An insurrection of the Roman people was speedily suppressed, the emperor leading the charge into the rebel ranks. But on the next morning he retired with the pope to the Tiburtine hills. He was reluctantly compelled by the want of sup plies and by rumors of rebellion in Lombardy to return with his army. The pope, shut out from Rome, without foreign or domestic ally, retired to Benevento, was besieged there by King William of Sicily (son and successor of Roger II.) and forced by desertion and famine to submit to the terms of the conqueror by investing him with the kingdom of Sicily, the duchy of Apulia, and the principality of Capua. This involved him in a controversy with the emperor, who regarded
1 See vol. IV. 258, and Riickert's poem there quoted. Era. Geibel also wrote a beautiful poem on the German dream of sleep and revival of Bar barossa : —
" Tiefim Schoosse des Kyffhdusers
Bel der Ampel rothem Schein Sitzt der alte Kaiser Friedrlch A/idem Tisch von Marmorstein," etc.
108 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
Apulia and Capua as parts of the empire. He protested against the divorce from his first, and the marriage to his second, wife, 1156.
To these occasions of offence Adrian added another which Frederick would not bear. It was evoked by the ill-treat ment done by robbers to the archbishop of Lund on his way from Rome through Germany to his Scandinavian diocese.1 Adrian spoke of Frederick's empire as a benefice, beneficium, a word which meant either a fief or a gift. In either case the implication was offensive to the Germans, and they chose to interpret it as a claim that the emperor held his empire as a fief of the apostolic see. Two legates, sent by Adrian, attempted to soften down the meaning of the imprudent expression.
The pope was too much of a hierarch and Frederick too much of an emperor to live in peace. In 1158 Frederick led his army across the Alps to reduce Milan and other refractory Lombard cities to submission. Having accom plished this, he assembled a diet on the plain of Roncaglia, near Piacenza, which is memorable for the decision rendered by Bo logna jurists, that the emperor held his empire by independent divine right and not by the will of the pope. This was the most decisive triumph the empire had won since the opening of the conflict with Henry IV. But the decision of profes sors of law did not change the policy of the papacy.
Adrian again gave offence by denying the emperor's right to levy a tax for military purposes, fodrum, on estates claimed by the papacy and demanded that he should recognize the papal claim of feudal rights over the Matilda grant, Sardinia, Corsica, Ferrara, and the duchy of Spoleto. Frederick
1 Eskill of Lund seems to have had the loftiest ideas of prelatical preroga tive, and boasted that he was accustomed to command kings, not obey them. It is quite possible the emperor took inward satisfaction at his custody. Hauck, IV. 210. Adrian's letter, Mirbt, Quellen, 119 sq., speaks of the treatment of the archbishop as "that fearful and execrable deed and sacrile gious crime," illud horrendum et execrabile f acinus et piaculare Jlagitium.