It was most likely on occasion of this embassy, that John of
Salisbury,--although he mentions other visits paid by him to
Adrian,--held the interesting conversation with the English pope, which
he reports at length, in his Polycraticus. [1] In that work, he says, he
well remembers how, during a sojourn at the papal court in Beneventum,
he was treated on the most familiar footing by his Holiness; whose
habit it was to gather round him a few select friends, with whom he
would freely discuss a variety of topics; and how, among others, he
once asked John to state candidly what he knew of the people's
opinion, touching the Roman Church and her head. Whereupon, the envoy
of Henry, using the liberty of the spirit, told without disguise, all
that he had heard in various parts on the subject. For example: that
the Roman Church, the mother of all others, showed herself according
to many not so much a mother as a step-mother to her daughters. That
scribes and pharisees sat in her, who loaded other mens' shoulders
with burdens, which they would not touch even with their fingers. That
these said scribes and pharisees played the tyrant over the clergy,
and bore no palpable resemblance to such shepherds as tread the true
path of life; but that they heaped up rich furniture, ornamented their
tables with gold and silver plate, distracted the Church with
controversies and by setting the pastors and the people by the ears.
That they, in no manner, commiserated the sorrows of the unfortunate;
but made merry over the plunder of churches, and administered justice,
not according to the truth, but the price. Then, that other people
said the Roman Pontiff himself was a tyrant; and that, while the
churches, which their ancestors had built, were falling to ruin, and
the altars stood desolate, he appeared abroad arrayed in gold and
purple. But that the divine wrath would eventually overtake such
priests as lived in pride and luxury, and levied taxes on the
provinces like men, who meant to equal the wealth of Croesus: "for the
Lord had said, that as they measured out to others, so would he
measure out to them: and the Ancient of Days could not lie." Upon
hearing this, and much more to the same effect, the pope asked John of
Salisbury what he himself thought? Who replied, that the question very
much perplexed him, as, on the one hand, he feared to pass for a
flatterer, if he went contrary to public opinion, and on the other, to
give offence, if he spoke the truth. Nevertheless, as cardinal Guido
Clement had bore witness in favour of the people, he, John of
Salisbury, dared not contradict him. For the cardinal had said that
the Church of Rome contained a world of avarice and deceit, from which
every evil sprung. This he had not said in a corner, but before all
his brethren, in presence of Pope Eugenius; and yet he, John of
Salisbury, would not hesitate to declare that, as far as his
experience went, he had never seen anywhere clergymen of greater
virtue, or more opposed to avarice, than those of Rome. Such was the
gravity and modesty of many of them, that in those respects they
equalled Fabricius, while, in possessing the true faith, they had the
advantage over him. Then, with regard to the pope himself,--as his
Holiness insisted on being plainly spoken to,--he would say, that,
inasmuch as the Holy Ghost could not err, so whatever his Holiness
might teach, must be followed; though, what his Holiness might do, was
not always to be imitated. His Holiness was styled Father and Lord of
all: but why, if he was the Father, did he require presents from his
children? and why, if he was the Lord, did he not strike awe into the
Romans, curb their insolence, and reclaim them to their duty? At all
this the pope laughed heartily, and expressed himself well pleased at
having found a man so honest and plain spoken; adding, that if ever he
should hear anything further to the same purpose, by no means to omit
reporting it. Adrian then proceeded to pass his own conduct in review,
said many things for and against himself, and made reflections on the
arduousness of the papal office, affirming that no other was so full
of cares, and that no man was more wretched than a Roman Pontiff: "for
his throne was set with thorns, his mantle pierced with sharp points,
and so heavy as to weigh the strongest shoulders to the ground." Much
sooner would he prefer never to have left his native English soil, or
to have remained for ever hidden in his cell at St. Rums, than to have
entered such straits; but the divine dispensation had called him, and
he dared not disobey. He further said, that it had always been the
Lord's pleasure, that he should grow between the hammer and the anvil;
that now he prayed the Lord would be pleased to put his hand under the
burden, as it was become insupportable. The pope then concluded his
observations, by relating to the company, the fable of the Belly and
the Members,--which the charges laid at his door suggested to him, and
which John of Salisbury gives at length in Adrian's words; a fable, by
the way, which assuredly has lost none of its point since those times,
but remains as pregnant with wisdom for the nineteenth, as for the
twelfth century.
Pope Anastasius IV. had conferred on the Knights Hospitallers of
Jerusalem the privilege of exemption from tithes on their property, in
consideration of its exclusive destination to the relief of pilgrims
and of the poor. This privilege soon gave rise to a quarrel between
the knights and the clergy of Jerusalem,---who naturally took it ill,
that so important a source of revenue, as the tithes on the
possessions of the order of St. John no doubt constituted, should thus
be stopped. The patriarch reproached the grand master with abusing his
privilege, and, at last, grew so embittered, that he drew up a charge
against him, of acts of aggression on the rights of the oriental
church,--for example: "That the Hospitallers allowed all such persons
to attend their church as were excommunicated by the bishops, and did
not even refuse such outcasts the holy sacrament and extreme unction
when dying, as well as Christian burial when dead; that when, for some
great crime, silence was imposed on the churches of a town or
district, the knights were always the first to ring their bells, and
call the people, on whom the interdict was laid, to Mass, for no other
purpose, than to get the offerings and fees, which otherwise would
accrue to the parish church; that the priests of St. John did not, on
their ordination, present themselves, according to ancient custom,
before the bishop of the diocese, to ask his permission to do duty
therein; that the bishop was never advised of the lawful or unlawful
suspension of a priest; lastly, that the knights of St. John
absolutely refused to pay tithes on their property." From these
general charges the patriarch next descended to particular ones of
affronts to himself,--for instance: "That, as the hospital of St. John
stood opposite the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the knights had
erected their buildings on a scale of magnificence superior to the
latter church, purely out of a feeling to insult the patriarch;
moreover, that, when the patriarch ascended according to traditional
usage, the place of our Saviour's passion, to absolve the people from
their sins and preach to them, the Hospitallers invariably set all
their bells a-ringing with such violence, as plainly proved that they
meant to drown his voice and interrupt him in the performance of his
duty; that when he had often complained to the citizens of this
misconduct, and these had expostulated with the perpetrators, the
latter only replied, that they would yet play him worse turns; that
they had, in fact, kept their word; for they had shot arrows at him in
the church itself, while celebrating there the divine offices. These
arrows he (the patriarch) had caused to be picked up, and exposed in a
bundle on Mount Calvary as a memorial." [2]
With these charges the patriarch, attended by other oriental prelates,
set out for Italy, to lay his case before the pope. After running many
perils by reason of the war, then going on between the pope and the
king of Sicily, the party at last reached Beneventum. The trial that
took place lasted several days; when the result of the pleadings for
and against was, that Adrian became convinced of the hollowness of the
accusations, laid by the patriarch against the knights of St. John,
and, therefore, refused to grant the redress sought for,--namely, to
annul the patent of privileges conferred by Anastasius. William of
Tyre,--who describes the transaction as a partisan of the
patriarch,--plainly says that the pope took bribes to decide as he
did. But Pagi [3] denies this flatly, and affirms that Adrian
proceeded in this, as well as in every other act of his authority,
conscientiously and disinterestedly. Indeed, it is rather unfortunate
for William of Tyre, that of the three cardinals, whom he alone
excepts from the charge of bribery, two, namely, Octavian, and John
of St. Martin,--afterwards figured as principal actors in the
scandalous schism which rent the Church after Adrian's death: the
first as Frederic Barbarossa's anti-pope, under the name of Victor
IV. in opposition to Alexander III. the lawful pope; the second as
Victor's legate, and as chief supporter, after his death, of
Anacletus III., whom the emperor next started against Alexander.
Peter of Blois, too, in his letter [4] to cardinal Papiensis,
describes Octavian as having passed his whole life in amassing
riches wherewith to disturb the Church, and as having been but
too successful in corrupting a powerful party in the Roman curia
to his views.
It had always been a leading concern of the popes to heal the schism
between Constantinople and Rome. Adrian did his part, though
fruitlessly, towards so great a work. Shortly after his accession, he
sent to the Emperor Constantine legates on the subject, who also
carried a letter from the pope to Basilius, bishop of
Thessalonica,--one of the most influential and well disposed prelates,
at that day, in the east. This letter was to request his co-operation
in bringing about the re-union of the severed Churches. Basilius made
answer, that unity might easily be restored, as no essential
difference of belief existed between the two communions; in both of
which one and the same doctrine was taught, and one and the same Lamb,
namely Christ, offered up for the sins of the world; though without
doubt, some minor discrepancies existed between the two, whose removal
however belonged wholly to the pope: who, as he had the will had also
the power, no less than our Saviour himself, to unite into _one_ what
stood now so widely separated. Basilius would thus seem, to have been
of opinion that he was in no wise cut off from the Catholic Church,
notwithstanding the oriental might differ in certain rites from the
western Church. [5]
It was an old and gross abuse of the age, that the nobles asserted the
right to seize the effects of a bishop on his death. This abuse did
not escape severe censure, from several synods. But Pope Adrian, it
was, who condemned it the most effectually, by his bull to
Berengarius, archbishop of Narbonne, (A. D. 1156,) on occasion of
Ermengarda, Viscountess of Narbonne, renouncing the abuse in favour of
that prelate, which renunciation, the papal bull was issued to
confirm. In the year 1150, Raymond, count of Barcelona, made a similar
renunciation by charter, when about to go on a distant and perilous
journey. In it he says: "I hereby promise to God, to abolish the
detestable custom which has hitherto prevailed in my states,--to wit,
the custom whereby my bailiffs plundered the goods of a bishop when he
died:--a proceeding which I own to be contrary to divine and human
laws; wherefore, I renounce the said custom, and order that for the
future, if any thing be found in the house or grounds of a bishop
deceased, it shall be reserved for his successor." [6]
[1] Polycraticus, &c. lib. 6, cap, 24, and lib. 8, cap. 23.
[2] William of Tyre, lib. 18. cap. 3 & 7.
[3] Brev. Pontif. Rom. Annus 1154.
[4] No. 48.
[5] Pagi, ibid.
[6] Fleury, Livre 76.