Anacletus and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, involved him in
a course which was not precisely favourable to the imperial
rights. Innocent II. was the virtual master of this
monarch, whose championship of the papacy brought
not the smallest advantage, not even that of being
crowned emperor with the habitual Innocent II., 1130–1143.ceremonial at the place
consecrated by tradition. It may even be maintained that his
elevation was due solely to his personal claims. This was a
victory for Rome, and it was repeated in the case of the first
Hohenstaufen, Conrad III., who owed his elevation (1138)
mainly to the princes of the Church and the legate of Innocent
II., by whom he was crowned. He also had to submit to the
consequences of his origin on the occasion of a double election
not foreseen by the Concordat of Worms, when he was forced
to admit the necessity of appeal to Rome and to acknowledge
the supremacy of the papal decision. The situation changed
Eugenius in 1152, under Eugenius III., when Frederick
Barbarossa was elected German king. He notified
Eugenius III., 1145–1153.his election to the pope, but did not seek the pope’s
approval. None the less, Eugenius III. felicitated the new sovereign
on his election, and even signed the treaty of
Constance with him (1153). The pope had need of Frederick
to defend him against the revolted Romans and to help him to
recover his temporal power, which had been gravely compromised.
Anastasius IV. pursued the same policy, and
summoned the German to Rome (1154). Frederick,
however, was determined to keep the seat of the
Empire for himself, to dispute Italy with theAnastasius IV., 1153–1154.
Adrian IV., 1154–1159.
Alexander III., 1159–1181.
pope, and to oppose the divine right of kings to the divine
right of priests. When he had taken Lombardy (1158) and
had had the principles of the imperial supremacy proclaimed
by his jurists at the diet of Roncaglia, the court
of Rome realized that war was inevitable, and two energetic
popes, Adrian IV. and Alexander III., resolutely
sustained the struggle, the latter for nearly
twenty years. Victims of the communal claims
at Rome, they constituted themselves the champions of similar
claims in northern Italy, and their alliance with the Lombard
communes ultimately led to success. In his duel with Barbarossa,
Alexander III., one of the greatest of medieval
popes, displayed extraordinary courage, address and
perseverance. Although it must be admitted that
the tenacity of the Lombard republics contributed powerfully
to the pope’s victory, and that the triumph of the Milanese at
Legnano (1176) was the determining cause of Frederick’s
submission at Venice, yet we must not exaggerate the importance
of the solemn act by which Barbarossa, kneeling before his
conqueror, recognized the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See,
and swore fidelity and respect to it. In its final form, the truce
of Venice was not only not unfavourable secularly to the Empire,
but even granted it very extensive advantages. Nor must it be
forgotten that, in the eyes of contemporaries, the scene at
Venice had none of that humiliating character which later
historians have attributed to it.
This was not the only success gained by Alexander III. over lay sovereigns. The conflict of the priesthood with the kingdoms and nations that were tending to aggrandize themselves by transcending the religious limits of the medieval theocracy took place on another theatre. The affair of Thomas Becket (q.v.) involved the Alexander III. and Henry II. of England. papacy in a quarrel with the powerful monarchy of the Angevins, whose representative, Henry II., was master of England and of the half of France. Alexander’s diplomatic skill and moral authority, reinforced by the Capetian alliance and the revulsion of feeling caused by the murder of Becket, enabled him to force the despotic Henry to yield, and even to do penance at the tomb of the martyr. The Plantagenet abjured the Constitutions of Clarendon, recognized the rights of the pope over the Church of England, and augmented the privileges and domains of the archbishopric of Canterbury. Although Becket was a man of narrow sympathies and by no means of liberal views, he had died for the liberties of his caste, and the aureole that surrounded him enhanced the prestige and ascendancy of the papacy.
Unfortunately for the papacy, the successors of Alexander III. lacked vigour, and their pontificates were too brief to allow them to pursue a strong policy against the Germanic the Papacy imperialism. Never were the leaders of the Church and the in such jeopardy as during the reign of Barbarossa’s son, Henry VI. This vigorous despot, whose ambitionsThe Papacy and the Emperor Henry VI. were not all chimerical, had succeeded where his predecessors, including Frederick, had failed. His marriage with the heiress of the old Norman kings had made him master of Sicily and the duchy of Apulia and Calabria, and he succeeded in conquering and retaining almost all the remainder of the peninsula. Under Celestine III. the papal state was surrounded on every side by German soldiers, and but for the premature death of the emperor, whom Abbot Joachim of Floris called the “hammer of the world,” the temporal power of the popes might perhaps have been annihilated.
The Norman kingdom, which had conquered Sicily and southern Italy at the end of the 11th century, was almost as grave a source of anxiety to the popes of this period. Not only was its very existence an obstacle to the spread of their temporal power in the peninsula, but it frequently acted in concert with the pope’sThe Papacy and the Norman Kingdom in South Italy. enemies and thwarted the papal policy. The attempts of Honorius II. (1128) and Innocent II. (1139) to wrest Apuha and Calabria from King Roger II., and Adrian IV.’s war with William I. (1156), were one and all unsuccessful; and the papacy had to content itself with the vassalage and tribute of the Normans, and allowed them to organize the ecclesiastical government of their domains in their own fashion, to limit the right of appeal to Rome, and to curtail the power of the Roman legates. At this period, moreover, the “Norman Question” was intimately connected with the “Eastern Question.” The Norman adventurers in possession of Palermo and Naples perpetually tended to look for their aggrandizement to the Byzantine Empire. In the interests of their temporal dominion, the 12th-century popes could not suffer an Italian power to dominate on the other side of the Adriatic and instal itself at Constantinople. This contingency explains the vacillating and illogical character of the papal diplomacy with regard to the Byzantine problem, and, inter alia, the opposition of Eugenius III. in 1150 to Roger II.’s projected crusade, which was directed towards the conquest of the Greek state. The popes were under the constant sway of two contrary influences—on the one hand, the seducing prospect of subduing the Eastern Church and triumphing over the schism, and, on the other, the apprehension of seeing the Normans of Sicily, their competitors in Italy, increasing their already formidable power by successful expeditions into the Balkan Peninsula. Dread of the Normans, too, explains the singular attitude of the Curia towards the Comneni, of whom it was alternately the enemy and the protector or ally.
But, as regards its temporal aims on Italy, the most inconvenient
and tenacious, if not the most dangerous, adversary of
the 12th-century papacy was the Roman commune.
Since the middle of the 12th century the party of
municipal autonomy and, indeed, the whole of the
European middle classes, who wished to shake offThe Papacy and the Commune of Rome.
Arnold of Brescia.
the feudal yoke and secure independence, had been
ranged against the successor of St Peter. The first symptoms
of resistance were exhibited under Innocent II. (1142), who was
unable to stem the growing revolution or prevent the establishment
of a Roman senate sitting in the Capitol. The strength
of classical reminiscence and the instinct of liberty were reinforced
by the support given to communal aspirations by the
popular agitator and dangerous tribune, Arnold of Brescia
(q.v.), whose theories arrived at an opportune
moment to encourage the revolted commons. He
denied the power of clerks to possess fiefs, and allowed them only
religious authority and tithes. The successors of Innocent II.
were even less successful in maintaining their supremacy in
