[Sidenote: Alliance of Adrian IV. and the Normans.]
Ever since Frederick’s sudden withdrawal from Rome, his relations with Adrian IV. had been exceedingly strained. Both claimed to be lord of the world, and neither could agree as to the respective limits of their power. For a moment the common fear of the Italian communes and alarm at the revolutionary heresy of Arnold might unite them in a temporary truce. The pressing danger once over, they fell back into their natural relations of watchful hostility. When Frederick withdrew from Italy, he had neither reduced Rome to the obedience of the Pope, nor had chastised the forays of the new King William of Sicily. Adrian soon found that he would have to fight for his own hand. He cleverly formed a league with the feudal barons of Apulia, who were ripe for revolt against their overpowerful sovereign. He negotiated with the Greek Emperor, Manuel I., who was willing to fight William, if the Pope would grant him three Neapolitan seaports. Alarmed at such a formidable coalition, William became the Pope’s vassal, and received in return the investiture of Apulia and Sicily. Adrian IV. thus renewed the policy of Leo IX. and Innocent II., and now further strengthened himself by an agreement with the Romans. By accepting the Roman Commune, he was allowed again to take up his residence in the City. Without the least help from Frederick, Adrian had turned the chief enemies of the Holy See into allies.
[Sidenote: Quarrel of Frederick and Adrian.]
Frederick bitterly resented the Pope’s alliances with William and the Romans, which he regarded as breaches of faith. Adrian feared the increased power of Frederick, and had a more tangible grievance in Frederick’s imprisonment of the Swedish Archbishop of Lund, an old friend of Adrian’s in the days of his northern mission. He accordingly sent the most trusted of his advisers, Roland Bandinelli of Siena, Cardinal and Chancellor of the Roman Church, to state his grievances to the Emperor at the Diet of Besançon. [Sidenote: The Cardinal Roland at Besançon.] Roland’s first salutation of the Emperor was threatening. ‘The Pope,’ he said, ‘greets you as a father and the cardinals greet you as brothers.’ Frederick was irritated at the new and unheard-of claim of the cardinals to rank as the equals of Cæsar. But he was still more annoyed at the recitation of a papal letter, which boasted that the Pope had conferred many benefits on the Emperor.[20] The Latin phrase (_conferre beneficia_) used by Adrian might bear the technical sense of granting a feudal benefice from a lord to a vassal, and Rainald the Chancellor took care to translate it in that sense to the illiterate magnates. The fiercest indignation burst out, which rose to fever heat when Cardinal Roland answered the objectors by inquiring, ‘From whom then does the Emperor hold the Empire if not from the Pope?’ In answer to the Pope’s implied claim of feudal supremacy, the Emperor circulated a declaration of his rights throughout the Empire. ‘The Empire is held by us,’ he declared, ‘through the election of the princes from God alone, who gave the world to be ruled by the two necessary swords, and taught through St. Peter that men should fear God and honour the king. Whosoever says that we received the imperial crown from the lord Pope as a benefice goes against the Divine command and the teaching of Peter, and is guilty of falsehood.’ Early next year Adrian was forced to explain that he had used ‘beneficium’ in its general sense of ‘benefit’ and not in its feudal sense of ‘fief.’ A complete breach was thus prevented, but the ill-will still smouldered on and soon found a chance of bursting out again into flame.