s had been turned out
of Germany, because they were not preachers but thieves, not lovers of
peace but heapers of money, not reformers of the world but insatiate
seekers of gold. Did Pope Sylvester, he asks, possess any temporal
lordship in Constantine's time? and did not the popes afterwards owe
all their temporal power to the generosity of that prince, and the
rest of Frederic's predecessors? In conclusion, he remarks that it was
because he saw the monster pride seated even in the chair of Peter,
that he felt moved to use the language he did.

This letter was well calculated to provoke Adrian's deepest
indignation; but, as he never allowed his passions to get the better
of his judgment, and always knew how to curb the liveliest movements
of personal wrath, when the interests of the Church were at stake,
heartily tired, moreover, of the petty rubs on which the dispute
between him and Frederic was by the latter ostensibly made to hinge,
he bestirred himself once more to effect a reconciliation compatible
with his duty and character. To this end, he sent an embassy of a more
stately description than had ever represented a Pope before, composed
of five cardinals, one of whom was a personal friend of Frederic, to
the emperor at Bologna; whither he had arrived soon after Easter (A.
D. 1159) to pass sentence on the Milanese, who, in the mean time, had
again sought to shake off the German yoke.

The terms which this embassy was instructed to demand as fair and
equitable, were as follows: That for the future no imperial agent
should exercise pretended imperial prerogatives in Rome, without the
foreknowledge of the Pope; that no levies on the domains of the Church
should be made by the Emperor, except when he was crowned; that the
Italian bishops should not take oaths of particular, but only of
general homage; that the possessions of the Roman church, and the
revenues of Ferrara, Massa, Fighernola, of the Matilda inheritance, of
the country between Acquapendente and Rome, of Spoleto, Sardinia, and
Corsica,--all acknowledged in the middle ages as indisputable feoffs
of the Holy See,--should be restored.

At first the emperor haughtily refused to grant these conditions;
then, on further reflection, offered to abide by the decision of a
committee of arbitration, to consist of six cardinals chosen by the
pope, and six bishops chosen by himself. But Adrian, as Frederic
foresaw and reckoned upon, at once rejected this offer, as de