§ 30. THE PEACE OF VENICE. 117
"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder : The young lion and the serpent shalt thou trample under feet." 1
There is as much difference between the scenes of Venice and Canossa as there is between the characters of Barbarossa and Henry IV. Barbarossa was far superior, morally as well as intellectually, to his Saliaii predecessor, and commanded the respect of his enemies, even in his defeat. He maintained his dignity and honorably kept his word.
Delegates and letters were sent to all parts of Christendom with the glad tidings of peace. The emperor left Venice toward the end of September for Germany by a roundabout way, and the pope for Anagni on the 15th of October. After an exile of ten years, Alexander made a triumphal entry into Rome, March 12, 1178.
He convened, according to previous agreement with the emperor, a synod to ratify the pacification of Christendom, and to remove certain evils which had multiplied during the schism. The Third Lateran or the Eleventh (Ecumenical Council was held in the Constantinian Basilica at Rome during Lent, 1179. It numbered about three hundred bish ops, besides many abbots and other dignitaries,2 and exhibited the Roman hierarchy in its glory, though it was eclipsed afterwards by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The details of the transactions are unknown, except twentyseven chapters which were adopted in the third and last session.
The council, in order to prevent rival elections, placed
1 " Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis," etc. This and other stories of the fourteenth century are irreconcilable with contemporary records and are given up by nearly all modern historians. They may have partly origi nated in the fresco paintings of Spinello described by Lord Lindsay, History of Christian Art, II. 315. Milman, IV. 435 (Am. ed.), says, " As poetry has so often become, here painting for once became history." Comp. Reuter, III. 758.
2 The lists are defective, and the contemporary records vary between 287, 300, 396 bishops, and 1000 members in all. See Mansi, XXII. 213 sqq. ; Hefele, V. 711; Reuter, III. 418 sqq.
118 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1123-1198.
the election of popes exclusively in the hands of cardinals, to be decided by a majority of two-thirds, and threatened with excommunication and deposition any one who should dare to accept an election by a smaller number of votes.1 The ordinations of the anti-popes (Octavian, Guido, and John of Struma) were declared invalid. No one was to be elected bishop who was not at least thirty years of age and of legiti mate birth. To check the extravagance of prelates on their visitation journeys, the archbishops were limited to forty or fifty horses on those occasions, the cardinals to twenty-five, the bishops to twenty or thirty, the archdeacons to five or seven. Ordained clergymen must dismiss their concubines, or forfeit their benefices. Unnatural licentiousness was to be punished by expulsion from the priesthood and confinement in a convent. The council prepared the way for a crusade against the heretics in the South of France, and promised to those who should engage in it the same plenary indulgence for two years as had been granted to the crusaders against the Moslems.
Soon after the synod, Alexander was again driven into exile by the Roman republic. He died at Civita Castellana, Aug. 30, 1181, having reigned longer than any pope before or after him, except Sylvester I., 314-335, Adrian I., 772- 795, Pius VII., 1800-1823, Pius IX., 1846-1878, and Leo XIII. , 1878-1903. When Alexander's remains were being carried to Rome for burial, the populace insulted his memory by pelting the coffin with stones and mud.2 Alexander had with signal constancy and devotion to the Gregorian prin-
1 " Ille Romanus Pontifexhabeatur, qui a duabus partibus fuerit electus et receptus. Si quisautem de tertice partis nominations confisus . . . sibinomen Episcopi usurpaverit : tarn ipse, quam qui eum recepuerint, excommunicationi subjaceant et totius sacri ordinis privatione mulctentur," etc. Mansi, XXII. 217.
2 Renter, III. 495-499. A similar insult was offered by the Roman popu lace to Pius IX. when his coffin was transported in the night from the Vatican to its last resting-place in the basilica of S. Lorenzo. He, too, spent some time in exile after the proclamation of the Roman republic in 1849.