§ 28. ADRIAN IV. AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. 109
proudly retorted that instead of owing fealty to the pope, the popes owed fealty to the emperor, inasmuch as it was by the gift of the emperor Constantine that Pope Sylvester secured possession of Rome. A war of letters followed. Adrian was intending to punish his imperial foe with excommunica tion when he was struck down by death at Anagni. He was buried in St. Peter's in an antique sarcophagus of red gran ite which is still shown. So ended the career of a man who by his moral character and personal attractions had lifted himself up from the condition of a child of a poor cleric to the supreme dignity of Christendom, and ventured to face the proudest monarch as his superior and to call the imperial crown a papal beneficium.1
This English pope, who laid the city of Rome under the interdict, which no Italian or German pope had dared to do, presented Ireland to the crown of England, on the ground that all the islands of the Christian world belong to the pope by virtue of Constantino's donation. The curious bull Laudabiliter, encouraging Henry II. to invade and subjugate the land and giving it to him and to his heirs for a possession, may not be genuine, but the authorization was certainly made by Adrian as John of Salisbury, writing about 1159, attests, and it was renewed by Alexander III. and carried out, 1171. 2
1 Gregorovius, IV. 560, after praising his merits, says of Adrian, " He was shrewd, practical, and unyielding as Anglo-Saxons are wont to be." His " nature was as firm and strong as the granite of his tomb."
2 The subject has been thoroughly discussed by Professors Thatcher and Scheffer-Boichorst before him. John of Salisbury, Polycr. VI. 24 ; Migne, 199, 623, distinctly says that Adrian, "listening to his petitions, conceded and gave " Ireland to Henry and his heirs on the ground that all islands u by ancient law and Constantino's donation, are said to belong to the Church." The pope sent to the king through John a ring of gold set with a precious stone to be a seal of investiture. There is no good reason to doubt this statement. And we know from Roger de Wendover, Rolls Series, I. 11, that an English embassy was sent to Adrian to secure this permission. The bull Laudabiliter (Mansi, XXI. 788), which formally confers the island upon the English crown and demands from it the payment of Peter's Pence, is found also in Roger de Wendover (Giles, Trans., I. 529) and Giraldus. Upon internal grounds its genuineness is considered doubtful or flatly denied,
110 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
The loyal sons of Ireland will hardly want to have a second trial of an English pope.
§ 29. Alexander III. m Conflict with Barbarossa.
See the literature in § 27, especially RBUTEK'S Alex. III. — Vita Alexandri auctore Bosom Card., in WATTEJUCII, II. 377 sqq. — MIGNE, Tom.
200. The Eeyesta of Alexander III. in JAFFE-WATTKNBACH'S Keg.
Pont. Rom., pp. 145-418 ; and of the anti-popes, Victor IV., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III., ibid., pp. 418-430. — MILMAN, bk. VIII. chs. VIII. and IX. —GREENWOOD, bk. XII. chs. III.-VIL — GREGOROvics, IV. 525 sqq. ; HEFELE-KXOPFLER, V. 570-720. — MORITZ MEYER: Die Wahl Alex. III. und Victors IV. Gottingen, 1871. — EDW. A. FREEMAN : Frederick the First, King of Italy, in his "Historical Essays," London, 1871, pp. 252-282. — P. SCHEFFER-BOICHORST ; Friedrich I. letzte Streit mit der Kurie, I860. — WATTENBACH, 167 sqq.; HAUCK, IV. 227-311. — GIETL : Die Sentenzen Rolands, nachmals Alexander III. Freib., 1891.
With Alexander III. (1159-1181) the conflict between Ccesarism and sacerdotalism, which had begun under Adrian, assumed a more serious character. It was not a war for destruction, but for supremacy on the one hand and sub mission on the other. " Who shall be the greater ? " that was the question. It was the old contention between Church and State under a new phase. Cresar and pope were alike Catholic Christians as far as they had any religion at all. They were indispensable to each other. The emperor or king needed a pope, as a kind of chief chaplain and father confessor for the control of the consciences of his subjects ; the pope needed the secular arm of an emperor for the protection of the property and rights of the Church and the prosecution of heretics. The emperors elected anti-popes, and the popes supported rival emperors. It was the ambition of the Hohenstaufen to keep Germany and Italy united ; it
as by Thatcher. This author gives, p. 4, a list of review articles on the subject. Scholarship and patriotism have made it possible for Irish writers to use much argument to show that the bull is a forgery and the alleged fact a fancy, whether of a prophetic enemy of Ireland or by a historical bungler is not known. The Protestant has an easier way out of the difficulty in affirming that the pope may make mistakes.