Rex venit ante fores, jurans prim urbis honores; Post homo, fit paps, sumit, quo dante, coronam:—
that is to say, “the king presents himself at the gates; and after having recognised the rights of the city, becomes the vassal of the pope, who bestows on him the crown.” Frederick complained of these two verses, as well as of the emblems they explained, and obtained but the vague promise of their future suppression. They still subsisted when, in the month of April, 1157, the pope’s legates presented themselves before the emperor, who held a court at Besancon¹⁹⁶ and placed in his hands a letter from Adrian. It had for its purport an attack committed in the emperor’s states on the person of the Bishop of Lunden.:
“How, said the pope, can “the impunity of such a crime be explained? Is it “negligence? Can it be indifference? Can the “emperor have forgotten the benefits conferred on “him by the Holy See? Has not the sovereign “pontiff willingly conferred on him the imperial “crown? Are there not other favours still which “he may be disposed to confer?”
This language highly displeased the princes by whom Frederick was surrounded; they murmured, they menaced; and when one of the legates replied to them, “of whom then does the emperor hold the crown, if he holds it not from the pope?” one of the princes no longer restrained his indignation; he drew his sword, and he had infallibly cut off the legate’s head, if Frederick had not hastened to oppose his imperial authority to this violence, and to have the envoys of the Holy See conducted to their residences, directing them to depart very early the following morning, and to return to Rome by the shortest road, without resting at the houses of either bishops or abbots.¹⁹⁷
¹⁹⁴ Hist, eccles. 1. 70, n. 4.—Otho Frising. de Gert. Frider. Anoborb. 1. 2, c. 21.—Vit. Adrioni ed à card. Arrag.
¹⁹⁵ Otho Frising. de Oert. Frid. 1.2, c. 14,15,20.—Radev. de Gert. Frid. 1.1, c. 11.—Bossnet’s Def. Gull Church. 1.3, e« 18.
Adrian took the step of addressing the bishops of Germany; he exhorted them to neglect no means of bringing Frederick back to more humble sentiments.¹⁹⁸ We have the reply of these prelates;¹⁹⁹ it is judicious and firm:
“Your “words, they say to the holy fathers, have shocked “the whole court, and we cannot approve them.— “The emperor can never suppose, that he holds “from you his dignity: he swears that when the “Church wishes to subject thrones, such ambition “comes not from God; he speaks of figures and “inscriptions which you possess, and which outrage “his authority; he will not suffer, he says, such “gross attempts. We invite you to destroy these “movements of hostility between the empire and “the priesthood; we adjure you to pacify a chris− “tian sovereign, in addressing to him henceforth a “language more conformable to the Gospel.”