Otto of Freising•GESTA FRIDERICI IMPERATORIS
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V. The subsequent favor of the bishops and their response. VI. How he appointed individual judges over individual dioceses. VII. How he received his regalia from the Italians.
8. To whom he granted to have them again. 9. That the prince ought to ordain the magistrates of the cities and that he received hostages from all. 10. On the laws promulgated there.
11. On the controversy of the Cremonese and the Piacentines. 12. On messengers sent to Sardinia and Corsica and on the Genoese. 13. That the emperor, celebrating the Nativity of the Lord at Alba, sent messengers from all sides for collecting the fodrum, and about the land of Matilda.
14. On the death of Bishop Otto. 15. On the conflagration of the Freising Church. 16. What prodigies had preceded this disaster, and that Albert succeeded Otto.
17. On the burning of the church of Speyer and the death of other princes. 18. That the Roman pontiff again sought occasions against Frederick. 19. Rescript of the emperor to the pope for the confirmation of the Ravennate elect.
20. Likewise, a letter and the pope's response to him. 21. Likewise, about the quarrel arisen between the prince and the bishop of the city of Rome. 22. Letters about this sent by various persons.
23. On what occasion the Milanese began again to riot and to defect from the empire. 24. On the envoys of the Greeks and of the king of France and of the king of England, and of the king also of Hungary. 25. The complaint of Frederick concerning the Milanese.
26. The response of the princes and an invective oration. 27. The Milanese are put on trial, and their foolish response. 28. Frederick once more called in the Transmontanes.
29. How he, for the future war, prepared himself. 30. On the Islanders, into the federation, admitted. 31. How he entered Piacenza.
32. How he reviewed the army, and about the bishop of Bamberg. 33. That, by the sentence of the judges, the Milanese are pronounced enemies. 34. On the legates of the Roman Pontiff and the cause of the journey.
35. The prince’s response. 36. By whose counsel this contention had been to be decided, and the prince’s rescript about this. 37. How the Milanese stormed the castle of Trecium and utterly destroyed it.
38. How Frederick directed his mind to vindicating the injury of the kingdom. 39. How he, in various modes , afflicted them. 40. On the disaster of the Milanese.
41. Likewise concerning the same. 42. On the disaster of the Brescians. 43. How the Milanese entered into a plan with a certain man against the life of the prince.
44. How they set the new Lodi on fire at night through certain men. 45. On the ambush of a certain man by poison. 46. On the arrival of the empress and the duke of Bavaria into Italy, and also of Duke Welf.
47. By the urging of the Cremonese, the people of Crema are judged enemies. 48. Crema is encircled by a siege, and how fighting was conducted there. 49. On the envoys of the Senate and People of Rome, and on those who were sent to them.
50. On those things which they perpetrated there and around the City. 51. How the Milanese fought badly against the prince. 52. On the death of Pope Adrian and the schism of the Roman church.
53. That the emperor came in his own person to the siege of Crema, and that in various ways it was fought there. 54. Again, with the emperor absent, it was contested heavily. 55. Likewise concerning the same.
56. On the penalty which the prince inflicted upon their captives, and on the madness of the Cremonese. 57. Likewise on their various misery and [on] their miserable lamentation. 58. How the Milanese were driven from the siege of a certain castle.
59. That the Piacentines, for their perfidy, were pronounced enemies, and a recapitulation concerning the schism of the Roman church. 60. When this man or that was consecrated, and on this the epistle of one. 61. Likewise the epistle of the other for his part.
62. Epistle of the cardinals of one party. 63. Likewise, an epistle of the cardinals of the other party. 64. That for bringing the schism to an end, the prince invites both parties to himself.
65. Epistle of the emperor on this. 66. Likewise an epistle of the same to the transmontane bishops. 67. On the craftiness of the Cremonese against our men.
68. Likewise on the storming of Crema by machines. 69. On the final and most atrocious contest carried out there. 70. That the emperor, on account of the destruction of Crema, prolonged the day of the council, and by whose counsel the people of Crema negotiate about peace.
71. Exhortation of the Aquileian patriarch and the response of the people of Crema. 72. On the conditions of peace and the triumph of the prince. 73. Letter of the emperor on conquered Crema.
74. Concerning the council at Pavia and the exhortation of the prince to the bishops. 75. That the council gave sentence for Victor's side. 76. Letter of the canons of Saint Peter at Rome on behalf of Victor's side.
77. Likewise the proceedings of the council composed in simple words. 78. That Frederick by ratihabition confirmed the election of Victor and intronized him. 79. A letter of the emperor directed concerning these.
80. Epistle of those presiding at the council. 81. Epistle of the Bishop of Bamberg. 82. Likewise an epistle of a certain religious man.
83. On the Archbishop of Salzburg, why he received such frequent letters. 84. On the legates dispatched to Greece. 85. That the emperor again permitted the princes to return.
86. On the form and morals of Frederick, and on various edifices.
Iam dies placiti affuit, quae Romanum principem ad campestria Roncaliae, sicut fuerat condictum, invitabat. Veniens ergo cum multo comitatu super litus Eridani tentoria ponit, Mediolanensibus, Brixiensibus et compluribus aliis in altera parte fluminis e regione castra metantibus. Confluunt ex omnibus regni partibus cum magna frequentia archiepiscopi, episcopi multique alii aecclesiastici ordinis viri, duces, marchiones, comites et proceres, consules et civitatum iudices.
Now the day of the placitum arrived, which invited the Roman emperor to the plains of Roncaglia, as had been convoked. Coming therefore with a large retinue, he pitches his tents upon the shore of the Eridanus, while the Milanese, the Brescians, and several others on the other side of the river, opposite, lay out their camp. From all parts of the realm there converge in great multitude archbishops, bishops, and many other men of the ecclesiastical order, dukes, margraves, counts and grandees, consuls, and judges of the cities.
In which, how great was the diversity both of tongues and of nations, the variety of the tents demonstrated. The disposition of these, since not chance but the order of reason and the reason of order has been accustomed, although at all times, to designate, yet in this place we have not thought should be negligently passed over.
Nempe antiquam Romanae militiae consuetudinem Romani miles imperii adhuc [etiam] observare solet, ut videlicet, quotienscumque in hostilem terram intraverint, castrorum primo munitioni studeant. Quae quidem neque iniquo loco erigunt neque inordinate describunt, sed in plano et campestri, et, si quidem inequale solum fuerit, quoad fieri potest complanatur. Dimensio autem sepissime vel in orbem vel in quatuor angulos designatur.
Indeed the Roman soldier is still [also] accustomed to observe the ancient custom of the Roman military, namely that, whenever they enter hostile land, they first devote themselves to the fortification of the camp. This they neither raise in an unfavorable place nor lay out in an inordinate manner, but on a level and plain; and if indeed the ground be uneven, it is leveled as far as can be done. The laying-out, moreover, very often is designated either in a circle or in four angles.
For both a multitude of smiths and craftsmen and a plenty of merchants—which follows the army as much as need demands—together with their pavilions and workshops, make, by their outer circuit, present externally the face of a wall: of suburbs, if on a square plan, or, if on a circle. Inside, however, they divide the camp with vici aptly distinguished, and they fashion both thoroughfares and gates to match, as easy of access for beasts of burden as, if any emergency presses, sufficiently wide for the men themselves running in, so that, as it were, a sudden city comes into being. In the middle, moreover, the pavilion of the leader or prince, most like a temple, and around it those of the rulers and primates, as befits each in his own order; and the soldiers, hedged about with arms, by contubernia, conduct themselves in the tents with decorum and joy, and, in the leisure of peace, are exercised in the discipline of soldiery as though placed in the battle-line.
Porro qui principes et obtimates eidem curiae interfuisse a nobis visi sunt, ut meminimus, isti fuerunt: de cismontanis Fridericus Coloniensis archiepiscopus, Eberhardus Babenbergensis episcopus, Conradus Eistetensis episcopus, Daniel Bragensis, Gebehardus Erbipolensis, Herimannus Ferdensis, Conradus Augustudunensis; de ultramontanis Gwido Cremensis cardinalis diaconus, sedis apostolicae legatus, Piligrimus Aquilegiensis patriarcha, N. Mediolanensis archiepiscopus, episcopi Taurinensis, Albanensis, Eporegiensis, Hastensis, Novariensis, Vercellensis, Terdonensis, Papiensis, Cumanus, Laudensis, Cremonensis, Placentinus - Parmensem infirmitas mortalis domi tenebat -, Regensis, Mutinensis, Bononiensis, Mantuanus, Veronensis, Brixensis, Pergamensis, Concordiensis. Ravennas exarchatus eo tempore metropolitano carebat. His omnibus cum frequentia laicorum principum, ducum videlicet, marchionum, comitum, et universarum in Italia civitatum consulibus atque iudicibus Fridericum circumstantibus, solis episcopis cum paucis admodum principibus [secreto] consilii sui participibus iniungit, quatinus divini timoris consideratione de salubri consilio in Italiae rebus ordinandis ita secum deliberent, ut aecclesiae Dei pacis tranquillitate gaudeant et ius regale decusque imperii debito provehatur honore.
Moreover, those princes and magnates who seemed to us to have been present at the same curia, as we remember, were these: from this side of the mountains, Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, Conrad, bishop of Eichstätt, Daniel of Braga, Gebehard of Würzburg, Herimann of Verden, Conrad of Autun; from beyond the mountains, Guido of Cremona, cardinal deacon, legate of the Apostolic See, Pilgrim, patriarch of Aquileia, N., archbishop of Milan, the bishops of Turin, Albano, Ivrea, Asti, Novara, Vercelli, Tortona, Pavia, Como, Lodi, Cremona, Piacenza - the bishop of Parma a mortal infirmity kept at home -, Reggio, Modena, Bologna, Mantua, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Concordia. The Exarchate of Ravenna at that time lacked a metropolitan. With all these, together with a throng of lay princes, namely dukes, margraves, counts, and with the consuls and judges of all the cities in Italy, surrounding Frederick, he enjoins that only the bishops, with very few princes admitted [in secret] as sharers of his counsel, should deliberate with him, in consideration of the fear of God, about a healthful plan for ordering the affairs of Italy, so that the churches of God may rejoice in the tranquility of peace, and the royal right and the splendor of the empire may be advanced with due honor.
This consultation consumed a whole three days. On the fourth day at last the most serene emperor came into the assembly, and, sitting in a more eminent [place], whence he could be seen and heard by all, with a crown of the venerable heroes whom we have pre-named sitting around him, he spoke through an interpreter:
ÔCum placitum sit ordinationi divinae, ex qua omnis potestas in caelo et in terra, Romani nos imperii gubernacula tenere, non immerito quae ad statum eius dignitatis pertinere noscuntur, quantum Deo propitio valemus, prosequimur. Cumque imperialis maiestatis hoc esse non ignoremus officium, ut studio nostrae vigilantiae ac penarum metu improbi et inquieti coherceantur, boni subleventur atque in pacis tranquillitate foveantur, ita novimus, quid iuris, quid honoris tam divinarum quam humanarum legum sanctio culmini regalis excellentiae accommodaverit. Nos tamen regium nomen habentes, desideramus potius legittimum tenere imperium et pro conservanda cuique sua libertate et iure, quam, ut dicitur, omnia impune facere, hoc est regem esse, per licentiam insolescere et imperandi officium in superbiam dominationemque convertere.
Since it has been pleasing to the divine ordination, from which all power is in heaven and on earth, that we should hold the helm of the Roman empire, not without merit do we pursue, as far as we are able with God propitious, those things which are known to pertain to the state of its dignity. And since we do not ignore that this is the office of imperial majesty, that by the zeal of our vigilance and by the fear of penalties the wicked and the restless be restrained, the good be uplifted and cherished in the tranquillity of peace, thus we know what of right, what of honor, the sanction of both divine and human laws has accommodated to the summit of royal excellence. Yet we, having the royal name, desire rather to hold a lawful imperium and, for the safeguarding to each of his own liberty and right, than, as it is said, to do everything with impunity, that is, to be a king, to grow wanton through license and to convert the office of ruling into arrogance and domination.
Because therefore it is permitted to become illustrious either by war or by peace, and it does not matter whether it is better to protect the fatherland with arms or to govern it by laws—the one needing the aid of the other—once the agitations of wars have been soothed by propitious Divinity, let us transfer the affairs of peace to the laws. Moreover, you know that the civil laws, advanced to the summit by our benefactions, strengthened and approved by the mores of their users, have strength enough; the laws of the kingdoms, in which what formerly prevailed has afterwards been overshadowed by disuse, must needs be illuminated by imperial remedy and by your prudence. Whether therefore our law or yours is reduced into writing, in its constitution it must be considered that it be honorable, just, possible, necessary, useful, and fitting to place and time; and therefore, for us as well as for you, while we are enacting law, it must be more cautiously foreseen, because, when the laws shall have been instituted, it will not be free to judge about them, but it will be necessary to judge according to them.
His dictis, magnus favor omnium prosequitur admirantium et stupentium, quod, qui litteras non nosset quique parum adhuc supra adolescentem ageret aetatem, in oratione sua tantae prudentiae tantaeque facundiae gratiam accepisset. Surgentesque unus post unum, sicut eius gentis mos est, seu ut principi suum quisque manifestaret affectum et propensiorem circa eum devotionem, seu ut suam in dicendo peritiam, qua gloriari solent, declararet, primo episcopi, deinde proceres terrae, post consules et missi singularum civitatum totam diem illam facundissimis sermonibus in noctem usque produxerunt. Porro una omnium sententia haec erat, a Mediolanensi archiepiscopo prolata: ÔHaec est dies quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in ea! Vere dies haec dies gratiae, dies est laeticiae, qua victor inclitus, triumphator pacificus, non belli minas intentans, non crudele aliquid vel tyrannicum intonans, sed pacis leges disquirens in medio populi sui mitissimus residere dignatur.
With these things said, great favor from all follows, marveling and astounded that he who did not know letters and who was still of an age little beyond adolescence had received in his oration the grace of such great prudence and such great eloquence. And rising one after another, as is the custom of that nation—either that each might manifest to the prince his affection and a more inclined devotion toward him, or that he might declare his expertise in speaking, in which they are wont to glory—first the bishops, then the grandees of the land, after them the consuls and the envoys of the several cities, prolonged that whole day with most facund speeches even into the night. Moreover, the single sentiment of all was this, uttered by the Archbishop of Milan: ÔThis is the day which the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it! Truly this day is a day of grace, a day of gladness, on which the renowned victor, the peaceful triumphator—not aiming menaces of war, not thundering anything cruel or tyrannical, but searching out the laws of peace—deigns, most mild, to sit in the midst of his people.
Happy at last, Italy, after many ages found, you who have only now merited to find a prince who recognizes us as human beings, nay as neighbors and brothers! You indeed are he, O most illustrious prince and singular emperor of the world and of the City, who have recalled the license granted to the first man, and long since abrogated, back into use and into the custom of the true sense, where it was said: Grow and be multiplied and have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the heaven. By the exigencies of sins man dominates man; by divine institution man [dominates] the fishes of the sea and the birds of the heaven. How many kings—nay, tyrants—you have suffered, O Italy, who would interpret this mandate for you by contraposition, in reversed turn dominating human beings, nay oppressing each of the good and the wise and those desiring to use reason as rational beings, while they would fondle the fishes of the sea—slippery, to wit—rapacious and given to the mire of voluptuousness, and would soothe those “wise” who are lofty and void, and the unjust would coddle the unjust in their impieties against human and divine law.
We know what kinds of unjust, arrogant, cruel rules we have at times suffered. We know that, under iniquitous domination, the innocent no less than the guilty have been circumvented. We remember the proscriptions of the wealthy carried out without any manifest crime, magistracies and priesthoods exchanged by a nefarious and shameful compact, and many other things which the lust of those dominating would command, impiously perpetrated under our very eyes.
Let us rejoice therefore and let us exult and let us give glory to God, that after the storm of so troubled a time a serene day of peace has dawned for us, while it pleases you, our most serene lord, to preserve and to defend your imperium by innocence rather than to grow by crime and to be encrusted by the blood of your subjects. May you rule, O most august emperor, over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the sky; for divine judgment also resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Concerning us, your faithful ones, concerning your people, it has pleased your prudence to take counsel about the laws and justice and the honor of the empire. Know, therefore, that all the right of the people in enacting laws has been granted to you.
Your will is law, as it is said: What has pleased the prince has the force of law, since the people have granted to him and into him all their imperium and power. For whatever the emperor shall constitute by letter, or shall decree upon taking cognizance, or shall command by edict, is agreed to be law. Indeed, it is according to nature that the advantages of any matter follow him whom the disadvantages follow, so that, namely, you ought to rule over all, you who bear the burdens of the tutelage of us all. These things finished, on that day the curia, prolonged into the evening, was dismissed. There were also those who in that same place in public celebrated the deeds of the emperor with favorable songs.
Sequentibus diebus plena atque sollempni curia iudicio et iusticiae a mane usque ad vesperam intentus querimonias et proclamationes tam divitum quam pauperum diligenter audiebat; habensque quatuor iudices, videlicet Bulgarum, Martinum, Iacobum, Hugonem, viros disertos, religiosos et in lege doctissimos legumque in civitate Bononiensi doctores et multorum auditorum preceptores, cum his aliisque legis peritis, qui diversi ex diversis civitatibus aderant, audiebat, discutiebat et terminabat negotia. Videns autem multitudinem eorum, qui cruces baiolarent - is enim Italorum mos est, ut habentes querelas crucem manibus preferant -, misertus illorum, ait mirari se prudentiam Latinorum, qui, cum precipue de scientia legum glorientur, maxime legum invenirentur transgressores, quamque sint tenaces iusticiae sectatores, in tot esurientibus et sicientibus iusticiam evidenter apparere. Divino itaque usus consilio singulis diocesanis singulos iudices preposuit, non tamen de sua civitate, sed vel de curia vel de aliis civitatibus, hac eos commutans ratione, ne, si civis civibus preficeretur, aut gratia aut odio leviter a vero posset averti.
In the following days, with a full and solemn curia, intent upon judgment and justice from morning even to evening, he was carefully hearing the complaints and proclamations of both the rich and the poor; and having four judges—namely Bulgarus, Martinus, Jacobus, Hugo—men eloquent, religious, and most learned in law, and doctors of laws in the city of Bologna and preceptors of many auditors, together with these and other experts in law, who, diverse, had come from various cities, he was hearing, examining, and bringing matters to a close. But seeing the multitude of those who were bearing crosses - for this is the custom of the Italians, that those having complaints carry a cross before them in their hands -, pitying them, he said that he marveled at the prudence of the Latins, who, although they particularly glory in knowledge of the laws, are found especially to be transgressors of the laws, and how tenacious followers of justice they are appears plainly in so many hungering and thirsting for justice. Therefore, using divine counsel, he set a single judge over each diocese, not, however, from its own city, but either from the curia or from other cities, rotating them on this plan, lest, if a citizen were set over citizens, he might be lightly turned from the truth by favor or by hatred.
Deinde super iusticia regni et de regalibus, quae longo iam tempore seu temeritate pervadentium seu neglectu regum imperio deperierant, studiose disserens, cum nullam possent invenire defensionem excusationis, tam episcopi quam primates et civitates uno ore, uno assensu in manum principis regalia reddidere, primique resignantium Mediolanenses extitere; requisitique de hoc ipso iure, quid esset, adiudicaverunt ducatus, marchias, comitatus, consulatus, monetas, thelonea, fodrum, vectigalia, portus, pedatica, molendina, piscarias, pontes omnemque utilitatem ex decursu fluminum provenientem, nec de terra tantum, verum etiam de suis propriis capitibus census annui redditionem.
Then, discoursing diligently about the justice of the realm and about the regalia, which for a long time now had perished from the authority of kings, whether through the rashness of encroachers or through the neglect of kings, since they could find no defense of excuse, both the bishops and the primates and the cities, with one voice, with one assent, returned the regalia into the hand of the prince; and the Milanese stood forth as the first of the resigners; and, being asked about this very right, what it was, they adjudged duchies, marches, counties, consulates, mints, tolls (thelonea), fodrum, tributes (vectigalia), ports, pedages, mills, fisheries, bridges, and every profit arising from the course of rivers—nay, not from the land only, but also an annual render of capitation (census) from their own very heads.
Hisque omnibus in fiscum adnumeratis, tanta circa pristinos possessores usus est liberalitate, ut, quicumque donatione regum aliquid horum se possidere instrumentis legittimis edocere poterat, is etiam nunc imperiali beneficio et regni nomine id ipsum perpetuo possideret. Ex his tamen, qui nullo iure, sed sola presumptione de regalibus se intromiserant, XXX milia talentorum plus minusve redditibus publicis per singulos annos accessere.
And with all these reckoned into the fisc, he used such liberality toward the former possessors that whoever could show by legitimate instruments that he possessed any of these by the donation of kings, that one even now, by imperial beneficence and in the name of the kingdom, should possess that very thing in perpetuity. Of those, however, who had, with no right but by mere presumption, intruded themselves into the regalia, 30 thousand talents, more or less, accrued to the public revenues per each year.
Preterea et hoc sibi ab omnibus adiudicatum atque recognitum est, in singulis civitatibus potestates, consules caeterosve magistratus assensu populi per ipsum creari debere, qui fideles simul et prudentes et principi honorem et civibus patriaeque debitam iusticiam nossent conservare. De his autem omnibus fideliter et sine fraude recipiendis et observandis ab omnibus civitatibus et sacramenta prestita et vades pro libitu imperatoris exhibiti sunt. Consequenter pax in commune iuratur eo tenore, ut nec civitas civitatem nec homo hominem impugnaret, nisi a principe hoc sibi foret imperatum.
Moreover, this too was adjudged and recognized by all for himself: that in each city the governors, consuls, and the other magistrates ought, with the assent of the people, to be created by him, men who would be at once faithful and prudent and would know how to preserve honor for the prince and the justice owed to the citizens and to the fatherland. And concerning all these things being received and observed faithfully and without fraud by all the cities, both oaths were rendered and sureties, at the emperor’s pleasure, were produced. Consequently, peace in common is sworn on this tenor: that neither city against city nor man against man should attack, unless this should have been commanded to them by the prince.
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus. Imperialem decet sollertiam ita rei publicae curam gerere et subiectorum commoda investigare, ut regni utilitas incorrupta permaneat et singulorum status iugiter servetur illaesus. Quapropter, dum ex predecessorum more universali curiae Roncaliae pro tribunali sederemus, a principibus Italicis, tam rectoribus ecclesiarum quam aliis fidelibus regni, non modicas accepimus querelas, quod beneficia eorum et feuda, quae vassalli ab eis tenebant, sine dominorum licentia pignori obligaverant et quadam collusione nomine libelli vendiderant, unde debita servitia amittebant et honorem imperii nostraeque felicis expeditionis complementum minuebant.
Frederick, by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans and ever august. It befits imperial diligence so to bear care for the res publica and to investigate the conveniences of our subjects, that the utility of the realm may remain incorrupt and the status of individuals be continually preserved unharmed. Wherefore, while, after the custom of our predecessors, we were sitting for judgment at the universal curia of Roncaglia, we received no small complaints from the Italian princes, both the rulers of the churches and the other faithful of the realm, that their benefices and fiefs, which vassals held from them, had, without their lords’ license, been pledged in pledge, and by a certain collusion had been sold under the name of a libellus, whence they were losing the due services and were diminishing the honor of the Empire and the completion of our happy expedition.
Having therefore held counsel with the bishops, dukes, marquises, and counts, together also with the palatine judges and other nobles, by this edictal law, by God’s favor to be of perpetual force, we sanction that it be permitted to no one to sell a fief in whole or any part, or to pledge it, or to alienate it in any manner whatsoever, or to adjudge it pro anima (for the soul), without the permission of the greater lord to whom the fief is known to pertain. Wherefore Emperor Lothar promulgated only a provision guarding that this not be done in the future; but we, providing for the fuller utility of the realm, not only for the future, but also such prior illicit alienations perpetrated, by this present sanction quash and reduce to nullity; with no prescription of time hindering, let the buyer in good faith have an action for the price against the competent seller. Moreover, meeting the crafty machinations of certain men who, having received a price, as if under the color of investiture—which they say is permitted to them—sell fiefs and transfer them to others, lest such a figment or any other be further devised in fraud of this our constitution, we prohibit it in every way; establishing with our full authority that the seller and the buyer who shall be found to have contracted such unlawful things shall lose the fief, and it shall freely revert to the lord; but the scribe who knowingly shall have drawn up an instrument concerning this, after the loss of his office, shall lose his hand, with the peril (penalty) of infamy.
Moreover, if anyone infeoffed, older than 14 years, through his own carelessness or his own negligence has stood for a year and a day, in that he has not sought the investiture of the fief from the first lord, when this span has elapsed, let him lose the fief, and let it return to the lord. We firmly also establish both in Italy and in Germany, that whoever, when a public expedition has been proclaimed, having been called by his lord to the same expedition, has refrained from coming within a fitting period, or has scorned to send another acceptable to the lord in his stead, if he has not rendered to the lord half the revenues of the fief for one year, let him lose the fief which he holds from a bishop or from another lord, and let the lord of the fief have power by all means of reducing it into his own uses. Moreover, let a duchy, a march, a county henceforth not be divided; but another fief, if the co-partners (consorts) wish, may be divided, so that all who have a part of the fief, already divided or to be divided, shall do fealty to the lord, provided, however, that a vassal is not compelled to have several lords, nor may a lord transfer the fief to another without the will of the vassals; furthermore, if the son of a vassal offend the lord, the father, when required by the lord, shall bring the son to make satisfaction to the lord or shall separate the son from himself, otherwise let him be deprived of the fief; but if the father wishes to bring him, that he may make satisfaction, and the son scorns it, then, when the father is dead, let him not succeed to the fief unless he shall first have satisfied the lord; and in a like manner let the vassal act with respect to all his household dependents (domestics).
Illud quoque precipimus, ut, si vassallus de feudo alium vassallum habuerit et vassallus vassalli dominum domini sui offenderit, nisi pro servitio alterius domini sui hoc fecerit, quem sine fraude antea habuit, feudo privetur, et ad dominum suum, a quo ipse tenebat, revertatur, nisi requisitus ab eo paratus fuerit satisfacere maiori domino, quem offendit, et nisi vassallus idemque dominus, a suo domino requisitus, eum qui maiorem dominum offendit requisierit, ut satisfaciat, feudum amittat. Preterea si de feudo inter duos vassallos sit controversia, domini sit cognitio, et per eum controversia terminetur. Si vero inter dominum et vassallum lis oriatur, per pares curiae a domino sub debito fidelitatis coniuratos terminetur.
We also prescribe this: that, if a vassal from a fief shall have another vassal, and the vassal of the vassal shall offend the lord of his lord, unless he did this for the service of another of his lords, whom without fraud he previously had, let him be deprived of the fief, and let it return to his lord, from whom he himself held, unless, being required by him, he shall have been ready to make satisfaction to the greater lord whom he offended; and unless the vassal, and likewise lord, being required by his own lord, shall have required him who offended the greater lord to make satisfaction, let him lose the fief. Furthermore, if there be a controversy concerning a fief between two vassals, let the cognition be the lord’s, and through him let the controversy be terminated. But if a suit should arise between lord and vassal, let it be terminated by the peers of the court, sworn by the lord under the debt of fealty.
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus universis suo subiectis imperio hac edictali lege in perpetuum valitura iubemus, ut omnes nostro subiecti imperio veram et perpetuam pacem inter se observent, et ut inviolatum inter omnes perpetuo servetur. Duces, marchiones, comites, capitanei, vavassores et omnium locorum rectores cum omnium locorum primatibus et plebeis a decimo octavo anno usque ad septuagesimum iureiurando obstringantur, ut pacem teneant et rectores locorum adiuvent in pace tuenda atque vindicanda, et in fine uniuscuiusque quinquennii omnium sacramenta de predicta pace tenenda renoventur.
Frederick, by the grace of God, Emperor of the Romans and ever august: to all subject to our empire, by this edictal law to be valid in perpetuity, we command that all subject to our empire observe true and perpetual peace among themselves, and that it be kept inviolable perpetually among all. Dukes, margraves, counts, captains, vavasors, and the rectors of all places, together with the leading men and plebeians of all places, from the eighteenth year up to the seventieth, are to be bound by oath to keep the peace and to aid the rectors of the places in guarding and vindicating the peace; and at the end of each five-year period the oaths of all for keeping the aforesaid peace are to be renewed.
Si quis vero aliquod ius de quacumque causa vel facto contra aliquem se habere putaverit, iudicialem adeat potestatem et per eam sibi competens ius assequatur. Si quis vero temerario ausu predictam pacem violare presumpserit, si civitas est, pena C librarum auri camerae nostrae inferenda puniatur. Oppidum vero XX libris auri multetur.
If anyone, indeed, should think that he has some right from whatever cause or deed against anyone, let him approach the judicial authority and through it let him obtain the right competent to him. But if anyone with temerarious daring should presume to violate the aforesaid peace, if it is a city, let it be punished by a penalty of 100 pounds of gold to be paid into our chamber. A town, however, shall be fined 20 pounds of gold.
Iudices vero et locorum defensores vel quicumque magistratus ab imperatore vel eius potestate constituti seu confirmati, qui iusticiam facere neglexerint et pacem violatam vindicare legittime supersederint, dampnum omne et iniuriam passis resarcire compellantur, et insuper, si maior iudex est, sacro erario penam X libras auri prestet, minor autem pena trium librarum auri multetur. Qui vero ad predictam penam persolvendam inopia dinoscitur laborare, sui corporis cohercionem cum verberibus patiatur et procul ab eo loco quem inhabitat quinquaginta miliaria per quinquennium vitam agat.
Judges and defenders of places, or whatever magistrates constituted or confirmed by the emperor or by his authority, who shall have neglected to do justice and shall have forborne to vindicate the violated peace according to law, are to be compelled to make good all loss and injury to those who have suffered; and moreover, if he is a greater judge, let him pay to the sacred treasury a penalty of 10 pounds of gold, but a lesser be mulcted with a penalty of three pounds of gold. But he who is found to labor under poverty for paying the aforesaid penalty, let him endure coercion of his body with lashes, and let him live for five years fifty miles away from the place which he inhabits.
Conventicula quoque et omnes coniurationes in civitatibus et extra, etiam occasione parentelae, inter civitatem et civitatem et inter personam et personam sive inter civitatem et personam omnibus modis fieri prohibemus et in preteritum factas cassamus, singulis coniuratorum pena unius librae auri percellendis.
We prohibit conventicles as well, and all conspiracies, in the cities and outside, even on the pretext of kinship, between city and city and between person and person or between city and person, from being made in any manner; and we annul those made in the past, each of the conspirators to be struck with a penalty of one pound of gold.
Item sacramenta pupillorum sponte facta super contractibus rerum suarum non retractandis inviolabiliter custodiantur. Per vim autem vel iniustum metum, etiam a maioribus, maxime ne querimoniam maleficiorum commissorum faciant, extorta sacramenta nullius esse momenti iubemus.
Likewise, the oaths of wards, voluntarily made concerning the contracts of their own property, are to be kept inviolably, not to be retracted. But oaths extorted by force or unjust fear, even by superiors, especially so that they may not make a complaint of malefactions committed, we command to be of no moment.
Cremonenses et Placentini inter eos, qui sibi coram principe litem commovebant, acrius caeteris adversus sese experiebantur. Nam cum inter has duas civitates non longe a se positas, nisi quod Pado interfluente separantur, propter contubernium Mediolanensium antiquae ac diutinae manserint discordiae, accesserat tunc, quod Cremonenses cum imperatore ad curiam venientes, Placentinorum militia egressa eos ad certamen provocaverat, quod modo vulgo turnementum vocant. Ibique hinc inde aliqui sauciati, alii capti, quidam occisi sunt.
The Cremonese and the Piacentines, among those who were stirring up a lawsuit for themselves before the prince, were trying themselves against each other more sharply than the rest. For although between these two cities, not far from one another, save that they are separated by the Po flowing between, on account of the comradeship of the Milanese ancient and long-continued discords have remained, there had then been added this: that when the Cremonese were coming with the emperor to the curia, the soldiery of the Piacentines, having gone out, had challenged them to a contest, which nowadays commonly they call a tournament. And there, on this side and that, some were wounded, others captured, some killed.
On account of this matter, while they were bringing accusations against one another in turn: the Cremonese [alleged] that they, while they were in obedience and in the retinue of the prince, had been invaded in hostile fashion, and that not so much themselves as the royal majesty had been injured; that their injury ought to be a concern to the greatness of princes; that it was within the imperial authority that the Piacentines, as enemies of the commonwealth, should render heavy penalties for their impieties against them, and for perfidy and temerity against the emperor; but the Piacentines [alleged] that they had come not against the prince, but against their most hostile enemies, who, while within their borders, had done many unjust things and had thrown everything into confusion with rapines and burnings, and that they now complained calumniously that they had suffered injury. Frederick gave the parties opportunity to prosecute, and when what was said by both sides had been sufficiently heard, he observed that the Piacentines less suitably purged the charges, especially since in very many matters their deceit and perfidy against the realm had already before been detected. Therefore the sentence of the judges went forth against them, and at length they were received into favor under this mulct: that, besides a donation of no small sum of money, they should, by filling in, level the excellent rampart of the city, which in those same years they were accused to have made for defection from the emperor, and should destroy all the towers. And this was done; and a vengeance exacted upon Piacenza, the seditious city, worthy according to the measure of the offense, struck fear of rebellion into the other cities.
Aput Roncalias rebus bene gestis et utilitatibus imperii sapienter ordinatis, Fridericus conventum dimisit atque, proximioribus ordinatis, ad ulteriores terras et in insulas maris regium regiae procurationis animum protendit. Itaque electos nuncios, episcopum videlicet Conradum Eistetensem et comitem Emichonem, in Sardiniam et Corsicam dirigit, commendans eos Pisanis et Ianuensibus conducendos, pro eo quod hae duae civitates maximum in Tyrreno mari viderentur habere principatum. Verum quam ob rem eadem legatio sine efficatia remanserit, conicient hi, quibus notum est, in quantis emolumentis Pisanis atque Ianuensibus insula Sardinia prostituta sit.
At Roncaglia, with affairs well managed and the utilities of the empire wisely ordered, Frederick dismissed the assembly and, the nearer matters arranged, extended the kingly concern of his royal governance toward more remote lands and the islands of the sea. And so he dispatches chosen envoys—namely Bishop Conrad of Eichstätt and Count Emicho—into Sardinia and Corsica, commending them to the Pisans and Genoese to be conducted by them, because these two cities seemed to have the greatest principate in the Tyrrhenian Sea. But for what reason that same legation remained without efficacy will be conjectured by those to whom it is known for how great emoluments the island of Sardinia has been prostituted to the Pisans and the Genoese.
Whence it is not incongruously thought that by their astuteness and by false occasions the journey of the envoys was impeded. For also, being about to render recompense to the Genoese, the Augustus, threatening his arrival and approaching their borders, with wondrous celerity and facility deterred them and compelled them to take refuge in pacts of peace, which were of this kind: to pay one thousand marks of silver to the public treasury and to cease from the fabric of the wall which they had begun. Nor is it thought out of place that this terror and dread was struck into them from heaven, lest by their temerity they invite many to defection.
For the nature of the place could especially afford to the Genoese a sure hope of safety, and to those contravening them hesitation, in that it had ramparted the city on every side, so that either on account of the precipitous and pathless heights of the jutting Alps, or of the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea, by which the shore itself is washed, it was not easy to reach it. But the emperor, moved by none of these, did not even lack confidence to contend with nature, so that what she had made inexpugnable by the site of the place, he thought ought to be overcome by greatness of spirit and virtue.
His [ita] gestis, Fridericus pro recreando milite in opimis et nondum bello tactis Italiae locis hyemare statuit, proximumque natale Domini aput Albam civitatem celebrans nuncios pro colligendo fodro per totam Tusciam et maritima, atque Campaniam direxit. De principibus quoque ad ordinandos in civitatibus consules seu potestates alium alio dimittit, adiunctis eis cartulariis, qui de regalibus quae fisco accesserant certam summam et plenam noticiam reportarent. Reditus quoque imperiales, qui dicuntur domus Mehtildis, a duce Welfone seu ab aliis distractos et dispersos, congregavit, quos postmodum eidem nobilissimo principi adunatos et melioratos liberali restitutione noscitur reddidisse.
With these things [thus] done, Frederick, for the re-creating of the soldiery, decided to winter in the opulent places of Italy not yet touched by war, and, celebrating the next Nativity of the Lord at the city of Alba, he sent envoys through all Tuscany and the maritime regions, and Campania, for the collecting of the fodrum. Of the princes also he dispatches one here, another there, to ordain consuls or podestàs in the cities, with cartularii joined to them, who might bring back a fixed sum and full notice concerning the regalia which had accrued to the fisc. He likewise gathered together the imperial revenues, which are called the House of Matilda, torn apart and scattered by Duke Welf or by others, which afterward he is known to have returned, united and improved, to that same most noble prince by liberal restitution.
Romanus imperator, etsi in aliis omnibus secunda fortuna usus est, in morte tamen nonnullorum principum per idem tempus eius sevitiam expertus est, quorum ut aput posteros nulla celebretur memoria, nobilitas generis, mentis prudentia et egregiae tam animi quam corporis virtutes non permittunt. In numero quorum primus fuit Otto Frisingensis aecclesiae venerabilis presul, huius istius operis auctor et feliciori fine futurus consummator, nisi, ut quidam incusant, fata virtutibus invidissent. Et quia tam in huius preclari viri nece quam in conflagratione Frisingensis aecclesiae patria mea duplici contritione attrita est, nemo me accuset, si vel patriae miserias vel amantissimi domini et nutritoris mei flebilem interitum prolixiore narratione prosequar, sed dolori veniam tribuat, considerantibus nobis civitatem nostram ad tantum felicitatis gaudium processisse eandemque fere ad ultimos casus inclinatam.
The Roman emperor, although in all other matters he enjoyed favorable fortune, yet in the death of several princes about the same time his savagery was experienced—princes whose celebrated memory among posterity their nobility of lineage, prudence of mind, and outstanding virtues of both soul and body do not allow to be silenced. Among whom the first was Otto, venerable prelate of the church of Freising, the author of this very work and destined to be its finisher with a happier end, unless, as some accuse, the Fates begrudged the virtues. And because both in the killing of this illustrious man and in the conflagration of the church of Freising my fatherland has been worn down by a double crushing, let no one accuse me if I pursue with a more prolix narration either the miseries of my fatherland or the lamentable demise of my most beloved lord and nurturer, but grant pardon to grief, as we consider that our city had advanced to such a joy of felicity and the same had almost been inclined to the utmost catastrophes.
If anyone, however, as a certain man says, be a harsher judge of mercy, let him grant the facts to the history, but the laments to the writer. Therefore in the year 1159 from the Incarnation of the Lord, in indiction 7, with the most serene Emperor Frederick reigning, in the 3rd year of his empire, in the 5th of his reign, the aforesaid prelate departed from this light at God’s summons. He at first, as if from heaven and sent by God, when he had found that same church deprived of almost all goods, its faculties scattered, the palaces collapsed, the household worn down, with no or little memory of monastic religion, by divine help had at length led it back into such a state that, by the time he was withdrawn from this light, he had restored religion to the clergy, liberty to the household, abundance to the resources, and decor to the edifices; and his care, toil [and] merit concerning his seat and his people had been such, as if he had been not so much the restorer as the founder of it. Aid and assistance to this undertaking were supplied both by the man’s lineage, and by his probity, and by the esteem of his manner of life.
Namely, grandson of Emperor Henry IV, brother-in-law of Henry V, uterine brother of King Conrad, paternal uncle of Emperor Frederick, most august, this one who now reigns happily, from the most illustrious prince of the realm, Leopold the margrave, as father, and as mother Agnes, daughter of Emperor Henry IV, together with his full brothers, Conrad, bishop of Passau, Leopold, duke of Bavaria, and Henry, duke of Austria, and likewise with his sisters, Gertrude, duchess of Bohemia, and Bertha, duchess of the Poles, and Ita, marchioness of Montferrat, the mother of N., empress of Spain; from so great and so illustrious a kinship he himself, a most noble offspring, drew his origin. In literary science instructed not moderately nor vulgarly, he was held among the bishops of Germany either as the first or among the first, to such an extent that, besides knowledge of the sacred page, in the secrets of which and the hidden meanings of sentences he excelled, the subtlety of philosophical and Aristotelian books in the Topics, Analytics, and Elenchi he almost first imported into our borders. On account of these and many other privileges of favor, relying also on the confidence both of secular prudence and on eloquence, with a most fluent tongue, since he very often pleaded most steadfastly in the causes of the Church before kings and princes, and from this glory produced praise for himself, praise (as is wont) no small envy, he fearlessly avoided the snares of adversaries and, upright in very deed, escaped the mouths of detractors without injury.
Indeed, he had instituted a mode of living according to the religion of the Cistercian order, and there in the monastery of Morimond he was first abbot, found so approved and elected that it was deservedly said to him: Friend, ascend higher. Having been made bishop, with the fervor of youth run its course and the incentive of slippery age lulled to sleep, shunning the oil of the sinner and esteeming it a small thing to do his justice in the sight and favor of men, he strove rather to please God, whom consciences and hearts do not deceive, attending to that evangelical saying: Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Whence it came about that, if he had contracted any dustiness from worldly conversation, in the present it might be scraped and purified by the tongue of detractors, which, like a sharp sword, shaves. For when the aforesaid prince Frederick, his paternal uncle, was setting out on an Italian expedition, although he too, as necessary and most useful to the affairs of the empire, ought to have gone, by the divine nod it befell that he should draw back from that journey, so that, a religious man expiring rather among the hands of praying brothers than amid the din of those fighting, he might be able to say: Lord, receive me, that I may be with my brothers, with whom etc.. Kindly indeed dismissed by the emperor, with many groans he commended to his benignity the church committed to him, and, by a certain prophetic spirit foreknowing his end, he requested that after his death he in no way burden it and by no means deprive it of the liberty of election, as it was already said to have been done more than once in other churches. Having received, regarding this reasonable petition, a faithful assurance, he returned to his own.
At cum aliquibus de morte sua seu per visiones seu per somnia revelatum fuisse, referentibus et commonentibus quibusdam religiosis, cognovisset, salutatis fraterna caritate media quam intime fratribus et valedicto, occasione visitandi Cisterciense capitulum viam carpit et iam dudum languore ac debilitate corporis invalidus, laborioso itinere, nichil tamen adhuc suis qui secum erant metuentibus, ad prenominatum Morimundense monasterium pervenit. Ibi per aliquot dies lecto cubans et iam de obitu suo nequaquam dubius, dum sacro liquore olei, sicut moris est, perunctus fuisset et de pecunia sua laudabili testamento ordinasset, inter caetera, quae sollicitus de salute sua previdebat, etiam hunc codicem manibus suis offerri precepit eumque litteratis et religiosis viris tradidit, ut, si quid pro sententia magistri Gileberti, ut patet in prioribus, dixisse visus esset, quod quempiam posset offendere, ad ipsorum arbitrium corrigeretur, seque catholicae fidei assertorem iuxta sanctae Romanae, immo et universalis aecclesiae regulam professus est; deinde multa prius cordis contritione et humili confessione reatum suum recognoscens, sumptis sacrosanctis misteriis, in medio multitudinis sanctorum tam episcoporum quam abbatum Domino spiritum reddidit. Felix utique et pro meritis suis divino munere donatus, ut antea raptus sit, quam unicam suam, dilectam suam, aecclesiam videlicet, cui ipse spiritali et intimo amore connexus erat, in favillam et cinerem conversam vidisset et subversam.
But when he had learned—through certain religious men reporting and reminding—that to some persons his death had been revealed either by visions or by dreams, having greeted the brothers with fraternal charity most intimately in their midst and having bidden farewell, taking the occasion of visiting the Cistercian chapter he set out on the way; and already for a long time infirm through languor and debility of body, by a laborious journey—yet with those who were with him as yet fearing nothing—he came to the aforesaid Morimundense monastery. There, lying in bed for several days and now by no means doubtful of his decease, when he had been anointed with the sacred liquid of oil, as is the custom, and had ordered by a praiseworthy testament concerning his money, among the other things which, solicitous for his salvation, he foresaw, he also commanded that this codex be presented by his own hands and handed it over to lettered and religious men, that, if in favor of Master Gilbert’s opinion, as is evident in the prior parts, he seemed to have said anything which could offend anyone, it should be corrected at their judgment; and he professed himself a defender of the Catholic faith according to the rule of the Holy Roman—nay rather, of the universal—Church. Then, first with much contrition of heart and humble confession recognizing his guilt, having received the sacrosanct mysteries, in the midst of a multitude of saints, both bishops and abbots, he rendered his spirit to the Lord. Happy indeed, and endowed according to his merits with a divine gift, that he was snatched away before he might have seen his only one, his beloved—namely, his Church, to which he was bound by spiritual and intimate love—turned to ember and ash and overthrown.
But when, while still living, he had with his finger fore-pointed to the brothers the place of his sepulture outside the church in a lowly spot, where namely he ought to have been trodden by all the brothers, it was thought that this his last will should be gainsaid; and he was honorably entombed within the precincts of the church near the greater altar, and his sepulcher is held by all the brothers as worthy of honor and veneration. But I, who noted down from his mouth the beginning of this work and undertook by the prince’s command to have its end completed, and with my own hand closed his final lights (eyes), composed this epitaph and caused it to be inscribed upon his tomb:
Libram Phebus subiit cum falcitenente,
Luci nox prevaluit die decrescente,
Vita minus habuit morte prevalente,
Otto quando corruit raptus, heu! repente.
Hic, si gradum consulis: presul dignitate;
Formam: decens, habilis, iuvenis etate;
Genus: alta nobilis regum maiestate;
Mores: commendabilis mira probitate.
When Phoebus entered Libra with the sickle-holder,
Night prevailed over light, the day decreasing,
Life had the lesser, with death prevailing,
when Otto fell, snatched away, alas! suddenly.
Here, if you consult his grade: a prelate in dignity;
As to form: becoming, able, young in age;
As to lineage: noble with the high majesty of kings;
As to morals: commendable in wondrous probity.
Ydeas asseruit, si positionem.
Virgo, cuius meruit intercessionem,
Eius ad quem genuit agat mentionem!
Huius frequens otium in philosophia,
Maius exercitium in theologia,
Fedus sibi mutuum cum philologia;
Nunc sit ei speculum summa theoria!
He proved himself a monk, as regards religion,
Ideas he asserted, as regards position.
Virgin, whose intercession he merited,
Let her make mention of him to Him whom she bore!
His frequent leisure was in philosophy,
His greater exercise in theology,
A mutual covenant for himself with philology;
Now let supreme theory be to him a mirror!
Mathesis abstractio quid, dum contemplatur,
Quod nichil privatio, per hunc dum probatur,
Quid ambarum actio, morte sciri datur.
Huius necem patria iuste dedignata,
Clara dolens atria rectore privata,
De se bene meritum cernens in favilla,
Ivit in interitum pariter et illa.
Tantas ad exequias turba populorum
Pias fundat lacrimas, mestum ducens chorum!
What the compaction of things is, as the sagacious one pries,
what Mathesis’ abstraction is, as he contemplates,
that nothing is privation, as through him it is proved,
what the action of both is, is given to be known by death.
His fatherland, justly disdainful at his slaying,
its bright atria grieving, deprived of their rector,
seeing one well-deserving of itself in ash,
it too went into ruin along with him.
To such exequies let the throng of peoples
pour pious tears, leading a mournful chorus!
Quidquid in orbe beat preclaros et meliores,
Presulis Ottonis mire cumulavit honores.
Si proavi vel avi probitas, sacer ordo, potestas
Deberent mortis furias cohibere molestas,
Non moriturus erat preclare preditus illis.
Heu talem communibus accessisse favillis!
Whatever in the world blesses the most illustrious and the better,
has marvelously heaped up the honors of Prelate Otto.
If the uprightness of great-grandfather or of grandfather, the sacred order, the power
ought to restrain the troublesome furies of death,
he, splendidly endowed with those, was not going to die.
Alas that such a one has come to the common ashes!
Ottone episcopo X° Kal. Octobris, quod est circa solsticium brumale, defuncto, paucis post mensibus Non. Aprilis, quae tunc fuit dominica palmarum et est circa solsticium estivale, hora matutina civitas Frisingensis penitus et penitus incendio conflagravit, adeo quod, ut taceam de maioribus aecclesiis, quae cum ornamentis suis perierunt, sedeque ipsa et palatio, nec una quidem de minoribus capellis et oratoriis superfuit.
With Bishop Otto having died on the 10th day before the Kalends of October, which is around the brumal solstice, a few months later, on the Nones of April, which then was Palm Sunday and is around the estival solstice, at the morning hour the city of Freising utterly and utterly conflagrated with a fire, to such a degree that—not to speak of the greater churches, which perished with their ornaments, and of the see itself and the palace—not even a single one of the lesser chapels and oratories survived.
The houses and workshops of the canons, and the houses of the knights, except for very few, were burned. This church at that time was in such a condition that in resources, edifices, and riches it was either greater than or equal to almost all the collateral and neighboring bishoprics; so distinguished by the probity of its clergy that, in its honesty and discipline, in liberality, and in knowledge of letters, rare were its equals, and in the Roman world none were accounted better or superior.
Hanc Frisingensis civitatis multiplicem cladem et erumpnosi eventus casum nonnulla prodigiorum inditia precesserant. Quadam enim vice in die circumcisionis Domini, dum ad missam sollempnem presbiter altari maiori assisteret et iam sacri secreti ultimum resolvisset silentium, calix cum sanguine ita prorsus eversus et super altare in conspectu omnium effusus est, ut nec stilla superfuisset. Sed prudentissimus episcopus omine tali nil prosperum auguriatum esse presciens, ieiuniis et letaniis divinam animadversionem preveniri atque placari persuasit.
Certain indications of prodigies had preceded this multiple calamity of the city of Freising and the occurrence of a grievous downfall. For on a certain occasion, on the day of the Lord’s Circumcision, while at the solemn mass the presbyter was standing by the high altar and had already dissolved the final silence of the sacred secret, the chalice with the blood was utterly overturned and poured out upon the altar in the sight of all, so that not even a drop remained. But the most prudent bishop, foreknowing that by such an omen nothing prosperous was augured, urged that by fasts and litanies the divine animadversion be forestalled and appeased.
At about the same time certain quadruped monsters and other phantasms were seen by night, both by truthful clerics and by laymen, flying here and there. Wild beasts—such as foxes and hares—entered the pastophoria of the church and the offices of the canons, and, as though domesticated, did not refuse to have a snare of capture set upon themselves. Boys and little girls, more than once making a procession through the middle of the city and imitating true litanies, by their jests portended grave serious matters.
For in the following year as well, the very place where the greater church and the cathedral seat were to be constructed, struck by lightning, was consumed by celestial fire. Screech-owls, hoopoes, and eagle-owls, throughout the whole year on the rooftops, resounding funeral rites with a lugubrious voice, filled the ears of all. The Hairy Ones, whom they call satyrs, were for the most part heard in houses.
Eodem etiam anno insignis illa aecclesia et regium opus aput Spiram civitatem similiter igne consumpta est et desuper, continuitate muri rupta, ruina molesta plerosque involvit. Hisdem diebus Fridericus Coloniensis archiepiscopus, cuius superiore libro mentio habita est, tertio pontificatus sui anno cum multorum luctu diem clausit extremum, carnesque eius et viscera aput Papiam posita, ossa vero ad civitatem Coloniensem deportata sunt. Vir nobilis et litteratus, quique mansuetudine ac benignitate sua longe lateque multorum in se provocarat affectum.
In the same year as well that notable church and royal work at the city of Speyer was likewise consumed by fire, and from above, the continuity of the wall having been broken, a troublesome collapse enveloped many. In those same days Frederick, archbishop of Cologne, of whom mention was had in the preceding book, in the third year of his pontificate closed his last day, with the mourning of many; and his flesh and entrails were laid at Pavia, but his bones were transported to the city of Cologne. A noble and lettered man, and by his gentleness and benignity he had far and wide attracted to himself the affection of many.
The prelate of Würzburg, N., also, allured by the love of revisiting his fatherland, while he was being graciously dismissed by the Augustus, a little after the seventh day from his return to his city, seized by illness, died, teaching by his example that the long hands of death neither a more secure land nor more delicate living will cause to turn aside.
Tunc etiam Conradus Croatiae atque Dalmatiae dux, natione Noricus, de castro Dachowa oriundus, aput Pergamum finem vivendi fecit, eiusque corpus in terram suam deportatum, in monasterio Schiren sepultum est. Cuius liberalitas et in multis probata periculis animi magnitudo meruit, ut, subtractus ex hac luce, memoria illius longo tempore aput posteros non deleatur. Nobiles quoque complures et milites strennuissimos, quorum nomina mihi scribenti non occurrunt, aut varius belli eventus aut morborum vis per id tempus idem tempestatis turbo involvit.
Then also Conrad, duke of Croatia and Dalmatia, a Norican by nation, sprung from the castle of Dachowa, at Pergamum made an end of living, and his body, carried back into his own land, was buried in the monastery of Schiren. His liberality and, in many dangers, the approved greatness of spirit deserved that, withdrawn from this light, his memory should not be blotted out among posterity for a long time. Likewise many nobles and most strenuous soldiers, whose names do not occur to me as I write, either the various outcome of war or the force of diseases, in that period the same whirlwind of the tempest engulfed.
Friderico in hibernis agente, Adrianus Romanae urbis antistes quorumdam instinctu ea, quae iam inter ipsum et imperatorem aput Augustam sopita fuerant, refricare cepit et denuo meminisse, modo nunciorum suorum iniuriam, modo eorum, qui pro colligendo fodro directi fuerant, insolentiam et castellanorum suorum gravamen incusans: se pro bonis mala recepisse, imperatorem beneficiis suis ingratum existere. Proinde occasionem querens, cum audisset, quod regalia principi tam ab episcopis et abbatibus quam a civitatibus et proceribus recognita fuere, litteras in fronte quidem leniores, diligentius vero consideratae acriori commonitione plenas, super hoc negotio dirigit, easque quidam indignus et vilis nuncius presentans, antequam recitatae fuissent, disparuit. Qua de re commotus caloreque iuvenili ad vicem rependendam accensus, meditationem concipit, non quidem per abiectam, sed per honoratam illi respondere personam.
With Frederick in winter quarters, Adrian, prelate of the Roman city, at the instigation of certain persons, began to refashion those matters which between himself and the emperor at Augsburg had already been lulled to sleep, and to remember them anew, now accusing the injury done to his messengers, now the insolence of those who had been sent for collecting the fodrum, and the grievance upon his castellans: that he had received evils in return for goods, that the emperor showed himself ungrateful for his benefactions. Accordingly, seeking an occasion, when he had heard that the regalia had been recognized to the prince as much by bishops and abbots as by the cities and the nobles, he sends letters which, gentler indeed on the face, yet, when more carefully considered, full of a sharper admonition, concerning this business; and a certain unworthy and base messenger, presenting them, disappeared before they had been read. At this he was stirred and, by youthful heat, inflamed to repay in turn, and he conceives the plan to answer him, not indeed through an abject, but through an honored person.
Already before this the bishop of Vercelli had been sent to the Apostolic See, carrying a friendly petition, to the effect that he would there confirm and ordain Guido, a noble youth, the son of Count Guido of Blandrate, of whom we made mention above, whom the prince had caused to be subrogated in place of Anselm in the Ravennate church. For the same youth was still below the sacred orders, and, long since made a cleric of the Roman Church and consecrated as subdeacon by Pope Adrian, was thought transferable to another church only with his connivance and assent. But when this was refused by the Roman pontiff, wishing to revoke as null what had been done, Hermann, bishop of Verden, is sent anew for this very purpose, and his business likewise lacked effect.
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus Adriano Romanae aecclesiae venerabili pontifici. Dilecto et fideli nostro Anshelmo, bonae memoriae Ravennatis aecclesiae venerabili archiepiscopo, defuncto, ne curia nostra diutius tanto careret principe, operam dare curavimus, loco eius talem subrogari personam, quae pro tempore ad resarcienda aecclesiae illius dampna et ad nostrum peragendum servitium apta videretur. Ante omnia autem pre oculis mentis habentes et aure non surda audientes quod scriptum est: Honore invicem prevenientes, filium comitis Blanderatensis, quem vos in clericum Romanae aecclesiae et filium nostra petitione assumpsisse recordati sumus, vicissim ad honorem vestrum et sanctae Romanae aecclesiae altius sublimari intendimus, in ea presertim aecclesia, quam post sanctam Romanam aecclesiam aut maximam aut unam de maximis habemus, nostraeque voluntatis proposito, divina favente clementia, in electione illius personae concorditer et voluntarie universa Ravennas convenit aecclesia, presentibus viris honestissimis, legato nostro et vestro, hinc Iacincto cardinali, inde Herimanno Ferdensi episcopo.
Frederick, by the grace of God emperor of the Romans and ever august, to Adrian, venerable pontiff of the Roman Church. Since our beloved and faithful Anselm, of good memory, the venerable archbishop of the Church of Ravenna, has died, lest our court be any longer deprived of so great a prince, we took care to see that, in his place, such a person be substituted as might seem fit, for the time, to repair the losses of that church and to carry out our service. But before all things, having before the eyes of our mind and, with an ear not deaf, heeding what is written: Anticipating one another with honor, we intend that the son of the Count of Blandrate—whom we recall that you, at our petition, have received as a cleric of the Roman Church and as a son—be in turn raised higher to your honor and to that of the holy Roman Church, especially in that church which, after the holy Roman Church, we hold to be either the greatest or one of the greatest; and, with the plan of our will, divine clemency favoring, in the election of that person the whole Church of Ravenna assembled in concord and willingly, with most honorable men present, our legate and yours: on this side the cardinal Hyacinth, on that Hermann, bishop of Ferden.
However, with knowledge and morals suiting the person of the aforesaid elect together with his lineage, on account of the reverend testimony of your paternity, that same person has already been made to us more commendable and more acceptable, whom indeed we both rejoice and wish also to be loved [by you] and honored, yet in that manner and order in which fathers are wont to love their sons, whom in due time they also manumit and permit to provide for their own household. And indeed it is most fitting that the holy Roman Church, as the mother of all churches, should gather to herself the sons who are the fruit of the womb, and, once gathered, distribute them through houses and families to the adornment of the house of God, to whom also our empire, as they go forth from the womb and bosom of our mother, ought and wishes to impart fitting honor. Accordingly, let your discretion, upon higher consideration, weigh what in this matter befits the majesty and honor as much yours as ours.
Adrianus episcopus, servus servorum Dei, karissimo in Christo filio Friderico illustri Romanorum imperatori salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Qualiter superni Conditoris intuitu et tam excellentiae tuae quam dilecti filii nostri Gwidonis Blanderatensis comitis interventu dilectum filium Gwidonem, subdiaconum nostrum, eiusdem comitis filium, olim in familiaritatem et in nostrum consortium receperimus, qualiter etiam intuitu probitatis eiusdem atque pro honore et utilitate sacrosanctae Romanae aecclesiae, tamquam si in diaconum iam fuerit ordinatus, aecclesiam [ei] specialiter assignaverimus, et nos profecto memores et a serenitatis tuae memoria non credimus excidisse. Nunc autem honestatem ipsius considerantes et provectum scientiae, si ei vita comes fuerit, adtendentes, intelligentes etiam, quanta per eum et per nobiles ac potentes parentes ipsius sacrosanctae Romanae aecclesiae adhuc pofuerint commoda provenire, et ad quantum dignitatis apicem in eadem Romana aecclesia ipse valeat, vita generi concordante, conscendere, cum a sede apostolica in subdiaconatus officium sit promotus et ei, tamquam si iam diaconus esset, sicut superius dictum est, a nobis sit aecclesia specialiter assignata, communicato fratrum nostrorum consilio, a nostro latere tam preciosum pignus iuxta petitionem excellentiae tuae non potuimus removere, sed ipsum, oportunitate accepta, Deo auctore, in Romana aecclesia ad honorem eiusdem aecclesiae et imperii intendimus ordinare, ut vel in ea, prout divina gratia proposuerit, quandoque ad sublimiora conscendat vel exinde ad alterius aecclesiasticae fastigium dignitatis ipsum contingat auxiliante Domino pervenire.
Adrian the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dearest son in Christ Frederick, the illustrious emperor of the Romans, greeting and apostolic blessing. How, in the regard of the supernal Creator and by the intervention both of your Excellency and of our beloved son Guido, count of Blandratensis, we long since received our beloved son Guido, our subdeacon, the son of that same count, into familiarity and into our consortium; how also, in view of his probity and for the honor and utility of the most holy Roman ecclesia, as if he had already been ordained deacon, we specially assigned an ecclesia to him: both we truly remember, and we do not believe this has slipped from the memory of your Serenity. Now, however, considering his honesty and attending to the advancement of science, if life shall be his companion, understanding also how great advantages might still accrue to the sacrosanct Roman ecclesia through him and through his noble and powerful kinsmen, and to what pinnacle of dignity in that same Roman ecclesia he might be able, life agreeing with lineage, to ascend—since by the Apostolic See he has been promoted into the office of the subdiaconate, and to him, as if he were already a deacon, as said above, an ecclesia has been specially assigned by us—having taken counsel with our brethren, we were not able, according to the petition of your Excellency, to remove from our side so precious a pledge; but him, when opportunity is taken, with God as author, in the Roman ecclesia, for the honor of that same ecclesia and of the empire, we intend to ordain, so that either in it, as divine grace shall have proposed, he may in due time ascend to more sublime things, or from there, with the Lord aiding, he may attain to the fastigium of another ecclesiastical dignity.
It is indeed more fitting that he who is a son and cleric of the Roman Church should not withdraw from her bosom, and that she, by conferring upon him near herself a place of dignity, may from there provide him higher advancement. For she herself gladly calls to herself men adorned both in morals and in knowledge, endowed with honor and renowned by nobility of blood, and is accustomed to admit them from elsewhere, nor does she readily despoil herself of such men when she holds them in her own bosom. Since therefore we perceive this to be more decorous and judge it to be more honorable, being confident also that this ought rather to please the imperial majesty and be welcome and acceptable, we have not deemed your petition in this matter to be admitted, believing and hoping that, once you have learned our will on this, you yourself will commend our intention and purpose.
Princeps ergo, et ipse accepta occasione, suam hoc modo solatur indignationem. Iubet notario, ut in scribendis cartis nomen suum preferens Romani episcopi subsecundet et dictionibus singularis numeri ipsum alloquatur. Qui mos scribendi cum antiquitus in usu esset communi, a modernis ob quandam personarum reverentiam et honorem putatur immutatus.
Therefore the prince, he too having taken the occasion, in this way soothes his indignation. He orders the notary that, in writing the charters, putting his own name first, he should place next after it that of the Roman bishop, and address him in diction of the singular number. Which manner of writing, although in antiquity it was in common use, is thought by moderns to have been altered on account of a certain reverence and honor of persons.
Indeed, the emperor said either that the pope ought to preserve the custom of writing of his predecessors toward the imperial person, or that he himself ought to observe in his own epistles the manner of the ancient princes. This cause, therefore, of discourses and nuncios supplied greater fuel of dissension between them, to such an extent that certain letters, having been discovered, were said to have been directed by the Apostolic See, which encouraged the Milanese and certain other cities again to defection. The truth of this business the tenor of the epistles set below will declare, which were sent by various persons on this side and that:
Venerabili patri et fratri et amico karissimo Eberhardo, Dei gratia Babinbergensi episcopo, Heinricus, eadem gratia sanctae Romanae aecclesiae presbiter cardinalis tituli Sanctorum Nerei et Achillei, salutem in Domino. Sicut virtus imperatoria ex eorum, qui sibi assistunt, discretione monstratur, ita et ipsi, quorum munitur consilio, propriae conscientiae et honestati debent attendere, quia et ipsorum honor sic ad dominos spectare videtur, sicut et domini detrimentum in eos procul dubio refunditur et redundat. Eapropter, dilecte pater et venerande frater et amice karissime, vestram non tam docemus quam monemus prudentiam, ut imperialis dignitatis excellentiam, quantum in vobis est, in ea, quae ad pacem sunt et [ad] honestatem spectant, iugiter suadeatis.
To the venerable father and brother and dearest friend Eberhard, by the grace of God bishop of Bamberg, Henry, by the same grace presbyter cardinal of the holy Roman Church of the title of Saints Nereus and Achilleus, greeting in the Lord. Just as imperial virtue is shown by the discernment of those who stand by him, so those very men, by whose counsel he is fortified, ought to attend to their own conscience and honorableness, because their honor thus seems to pertain to their lords, just as the lord’s detriment is without doubt repaid and redounds upon them. Wherefore, beloved father and venerable brother and dearest friend, we do not so much teach as admonish your prudence, that, so far as is in you, you may continually recommend the excellence of the imperial dignity in those things which are for peace and [ad] honesty.
For more subtly and more sincerely, in those things that pertain to God and to the liberty of justice, your reason and discretion understand and know than do other princes, however noble they may be, if yet they have not known the sacred canons and those things which of old were disposed and ordained by the fathers. You yourself were present as one of us, a most faithful mediator, in regard to the things that with the lord emperor concerning the peace of the Church and of himself were arranged in Alemannia, and in regard to the things which on the next day we with him most faithfully—and he with us most benignly—treated concerning that same peace. Now, however, from those letters which it pleased my lord to send to his Highness after my return, which indeed possessed neither the style nor the ancient custom of imperial letters, we fear greatly lest he has been changed in a different direction, and that now there be for himself another face and a diverse sense.
This change has filled my heart with bitterness and my face with confusion; whatever of honor and jocundity and glory I had brought with me appears, from those letters, to have been buried and overclouded. Therefore, dearest brother and most beloved friend, let the episcopal dignity and the sacerdotal order, in which Divine Providence has set you, move and instruct your discretion, that you may stand for the honor of God and your own, for the honesty and liberty of the Church, that within the ancient limits the integrity of the Church may be preserved, lest in your times by new counsels the honesty, already till now disturbed, be further disturbed. It is sufficiently unsettled—whatever we thought to accomplish according to your counsel—and we tell you: so long as affairs are carried on by men ignorant of divine things, the peace that has been begun cannot be stabilized.
But if your presence and that of the lord provost of Magdeburg shall undertake the labor of consummating the peace, the zeal of God and the knowledge in which you both preeminent will, for the honor of God and of the church and for the glory of our emperor, through your industry and your devotion, be able most easily to obtain a pacific end. Otherwise, if in a time of wrath there shall not be found one who intends reconciliation and in whose words these scandals can be smoothed flat, the matter itself perhaps will require something else, and what today is whole a greater vehemence of necessity will tear asunder.
Eidem Heinrico Eberhardus Babenbergensis aecclesiae eadem gratia si quid est orationis et servicii omnimodam devotionem. Litteris vestrae paternitatis lectis et relectis, admirari satis non potui, quod esset illud verbum, immo quod esset illud ve, de quo scripseratis mihi, cum adhuc a me prorsus esset absconditum. Queritans autem inveni quod nolui et unde multum dolui, teste Deo, et multum doleo.
To the same Henry, Eberhard of the Babenberg Church, by the same grace, if there is anything of prayer and of service, devotion of every sort. Your Paternity’s letter having been read and reread, I could not sufficiently marvel what that “word” might be—nay, what that “woe” might be—about which you had written to me, since as yet it was entirely hidden from me. Seeking, however, I found what I did not wish, and on account of it I grieved much—God being my witness—and I grieve much.
Omnia mala a bonis principiis orta sunt. Sicut in sacro eloquio: Paravit Dominus vasa mortis et sagittas ardentes effecit, ita et in imperialibus gestis ac dictis simul ac scriptis pleraque repperiuntur, quae alios seducunt, alios edificant. Annales quandoque revolvuntur, apices imperiales recitantur forte in ea forma, quae illi aetati et tam bonitati quam simplicitati temporum illorum competebat, hominibus autem in directum loquentibus neque numerum numero commutantibus neque personas personis preposterantibus.
All evils have arisen from good beginnings. As in the sacred eloquence: The Lord prepared vessels of death and made burning arrows, so also in imperial deeds and sayings as well as in writings many things are found, which seduce some, edify others. The Annals are sometimes unrolled, imperial apices are recited perhaps in that form which suited that age and both the goodness and the simplicity of those times, with men speaking straight-on, neither exchanging number for number nor preposterously putting person for person.
But now indeed all things have been changed; yet let not the gold grow pale, nor let the best color be altered, nor let the stones of the sanctuary be scattered at the head of every street. If any deviation of modern custom has been made, it has been made by these examples and on this occasion, because a flame once quenched has been resuscitated again by a certain wind through the letters which the lord Pope lately directed to the lord Emperor on that question which is in dispute between the Brixeners and the Bergamese about the contention of two castles—letters which a certain ragged fellow, and as though an enemy and an insidious ambusher, disdainfully in a certain manner obtruded upon the lord Emperor, and thereafter did not appear; which seemed rather harsher and as though containing in themselves the force of an interdict, lest the lord Emperor should assume to himself the judgment of that cause. But this I write to you, not that I may seek to palliate things which are not to be palliated, but that you and others prudent and fearing God may the more easily bring aid to the sickness, the cause of the sickness having been known.
On this side and that we say and write daily: ÔCome, come; we will come, we will comeÕ. We sit — with much respect for your sanctity let it be said — we sit and yawn. We sit, I say, as someone said in the Roman republic, waiting for day by night, and by day for night, and now, though prudent and knowing, we perish. I speak of myself to you, that I may speak to safe ears: I do not wish to be the bearer of an evil message, nor will I come to hear or to report bitter histories.
Do not say to us any longer: 'Come'; but rather you, holding the keys of knowledge, go before us—come uninvited and teach your sons, not in bitterness of spirit, but in gentleness and much meekness. May God spare those who, adding oil as to a furnace, sow discords between father and son, between kingdom and priesthood. I have become foolish; you have compelled me. Let good nuncios come for God, bearing peace, as knowing and teaching us to press on, in season and out of season.
Let letters be written in the customary manner; with the Lord helping A tearful beginning, better fortune will follow, and sadness will be turned into joy. The lord emperor, upon the arrival of your messenger, on account of certain secret affairs, departed suddenly from the camp. Therefore neither could I, by my representations, elicit a definite answer from him, nor could you have his letters immediately.
Epistola eiusdem ad [papam]. Cum et tacendi et loquendi tempus sit, quando commune instat periculum, desperationis potius quam religionis est servare silentium, omnium est conclamare, in unum concurrere ac ferre presidium. Quando autem impetus hostilis aut incendium ingruerit civitati, presertim eorum interest, qui vigiles civitatis sunt, eos qui in arce sunt, ipsum quoque patrem familias expergefacere ad subveniendum in necessitatis articulo. Hac officii mei consideratione et specialis debiti, quo teneor multis rationibus sanctae Romanae aecclesiae, ego, licet minimus episcoporum, qui nec sum dignus vocari episcopus, tam impudenter quam imprudenter exclamo ad vos, reverentissime pater et domine, hoc in tempore, quo nobis infirmioribus videtur imminere, quod multum pertimescimus, periculum.
Epistle of the same to [the pope]. Since there is a time for being silent and a time for speaking, when a common peril is at hand, it is of desperation rather than of religion to preserve silence; it is everyone’s part to cry out together, to run together into one, and to bear aid. But when a hostile assault or a conflagration presses upon a city, it is especially the concern of those who are the watchmen of the city to rouse those who are in the citadel, and even the very paterfamilias, to come to help at the critical point of necessity. With this consideration of my office and of the special debt by which I am held in many respects to the holy Roman church, I, though the least of the bishops, who am not even worthy to be called a bishop, both as shamelessly as imprudently cry out to you, most reverend father and lord, at this time, when to us who are weaker there seems to be impending the peril which we greatly fear.
And indeed from that pot which the prophet once saw kindled from the north, a certain fire has begun to erupt through hidden scintillas, but it is still in smoke, and thanks be to God! it has not yet blazed into flame. Between you, lord, and your son, our lord the emperor, there is as yet some verbal disturbance.
It is greatly to be feared and dreaded, lest words meeting words should by their own collision at length strike out a flame, which may spread itself more widely in the priesthood and the kingdom; which may God avert! Your son himself, as you know, is our lord, but you, as Christ, are master and lord. None of us dares to say, on this side or on that, why you do this or say that.
We only desire and ask for the things that pertain to peace. But if it were permitted, saving reverence, to weigh individual words and to exact the reason of each, I say in folly, it would not, as I suppose, be expedient, because rather the fire must be quenched without delay than there should be dispute about the fire, from what side it has come. I know that the things I say are above me; but in the simplicity of my heart before Him who is above all and is conscious of secrets, I speak these things, and from the time when I once began, I will still speak to you confidently as to a father and lord.
Setting aside those things which can be received now in one way now in another according to the various minds of hearers and interpreters, may your Paternity deign anew to write placidly and benignly to your son, our lord the emperor, and to call him back to yourself with a fatherly affection, him ready to exhibit to you every reverence. Let Samuel embrace his David and not allow him to be separated from himself, so that no rending of the cloak be made, to the end that God may be honored and the Catholic Church may rejoice in tranquil devotion.
Interea cum de curia obtimatum ad singulas civitates bini vel plures pro constituendis potestatibus et consulibus a principe destinati fuissent, contigit Reinaldum cancellarium et Ottonem palatinum comitem de Baioaria, sepe iam memoratos, comitemque Gozwinum ad civitatem Mediolanensem devenisse, id negotium in ea civitate sicut et in caeteris iussos promovere. Populus ergo in seditionem conversus, ad domos, ubi legatos manere suspicabantur, mox procurrere, contumeliosa et superba perstrepere, lapidibus aliisque missilibus crepitare. Nec ab eo tumultu vel comes Blanderatensis, qui et ipse affuit, vel reliqui nobiles eos avertere poterant.
Meanwhile, since from the curia of the optimates two by two or more had been appointed by the prince to the several cities for establishing the authorities and the consuls, it happened that Reynald the chancellor and Otto the Palatine Count of Bavaria, often already mentioned, and Count Gozwin had come to the city of Milan, ordered to promote that business in that city as in the others. The people, therefore, having turned to sedition, at once ran to the houses where they suspected the legates to be staying, made a din with insulting and haughty outcries, and rattled with stones and other missiles. Nor from that tumult could either the Count of Blandrate, who was himself also present, or the rest of the nobles turn them away.
For both in that city and almost in the other cities of Italy, it is not the nobles’ but the common crowd’s motions that bring all these things in their train. That element, with a mobile disposition, was seditious and discordant, eager for new things, opposed to quiet and leisure. Also to a considerable part of the nobility, stirred by zeal for such things, the tumult itself and the innovations were quite pleasing.
Therefore the legates, some of whom were within the walls of the city, thrown into a panic by unforeseen fear, uncertain and ignorant what chiefly to do, were trembling, since they could neither resist the armed and the many—they themselves being few and unarmed—nor did the gates, closed beforehand, allow flight. However, the counts, whom these same men regarded as more hostile, being lodged outside, were less terrified by the affair; and they, without delay, the tumult discovered, withdrew unhurt and untouched. On the next day both the bishop and the chancellor, the business unfinished, follow them straightway.
Thus the Milanese, with peace violated, the oaths ruptured, the treaty contaminated—which even among barbarians the law of nations establishes for legates—do not fear, by this temerity, to lay bare the poison of repeated defection, which they had conceived in their heart, which they had concocted by hidden machinations.
Eodem tempore vel potius hisdem diebus legati Constantinopolitani imperatoris ad curiam venturi fidem publicam expetebant; namque pro morte Wibaldi abbatis Stabulensis, qui in Greciam missus ibi vita decesserat, sese suspectos haberi metuebant. Nuncii quoque Lodewici regis Francorum et Heinrici regis Angliae, cum post unos mox alii supervenissent, utrique Fridericum in partem ac favorem sui principis inclinare multis verborum delinimentis atque muneribus concertabant. Inter hos siquidem reges ex eo tempore, quo inter Lodewicum et thori sui sociam factum est divortium eaque prefato Anglorum principi superbis adhesit nuptiis, sive occasione dirimendorum inter se finium, sive quodam alio latentiore zelo, continuae simultates et dissensiones ortae sunt, magnumque sibi credidit auxilium accessisse, quisquis eorum sibi Romani principis conciliare potuisset auctoritatem.
At the same time, or rather on those same days, the legates of the emperor of Constantinople, who were about to come to the curia, were demanding the public faith; for on account of the death of Wibald, abbot of Stavelot, who, sent into Greece, had there departed this life, they feared that they would be held suspect. The nuncios also of Louis, king of the Franks, and of Henry, king of England—when, after the first, soon others followed—both parties were contending to incline Frederick into the party and favor of their own prince by many blandishments of words and by gifts. For between these kings, from the time when a divorce was made between Louis and the partner of his bed, and she with proud nuptials attached herself to the aforesaid prince of the English, whether on the pretext of settling the boundaries between themselves, or by some other more hidden zeal, continual animosities and dissensions arose; and each believed that great aid had accrued to himself, whoever of them could succeed in winning to himself the authority of the Roman prince (the Emperor).
The king of the Hungarians also, learning the temerity of the Milanese by rumor alone, dispatched to the court honorable and lettered envoys, Master Matheus and Master Primogenitus, promising to the prince, of his own accord, auxiliaries from his own men anew, more than before. The emperor sent these men off, each cheered by a prudent response and endowed with regal gifts, and permitted them to return to their princes.
Friderico in villa quae vocatur Autimiacum festivitatem luminum celebrante, cum multi ad eum Hesperiae proceres confluxissent, dolos atque crudam Mediolanensium superbiam omnibus notissimam in medium commemorat, exhibens vultum iusti doloris simul et regalis indignationis indicem. ÔExclamareÕ, inquit, Ôcogimur, o proceres, in auribus vestris contra crimen perduellionis, contra scelus lesae maiestatis, in quo civitas impia, gens nequam, populus sceleratus, Mediolanenses dico, iam non semel, sed sepenumero deprehensi inveniuntur. Factum ipsum vobis adhuc recens exponerem, si tamen non exinde non solum vestrae, verum etiam omnium, qui in orbe Romano sunt, aures tinnirent.
As Frederick was celebrating, in the villa which is called Autimiacum, the festivity of lights, when many nobles of Hesperia had flocked to him, he brings into the open the deceits and the cruel arrogance of the Milanese, most well-known to all, displaying a visage that was the index of just grief and at the same time of royal indignation. ÔTo cry outÕ, he says, Ôwe are compelled, O nobles, in your ears against the crime of treason (perduellion), against the wicked deed of lèse-majesty, in which the impious city, the vile clan, the criminal people—I say the Milanese—are found detected now not once, but many times. I would set forth the deed itself, still fresh, to you, if, however, not from it your ears were already ringing, and not only yours, but also those of all who are in the Roman world.
The injury which the pride and presumption of the most perverse men has unjustly inflicted upon us—nay, upon you and upon the Empire—by the hidden judgment of God seems to tend to this: that those who run riot to their own perdition and that of many others ought fittingly to be curbed by the condemnation of many, by imperial authority, and by the vigor of the laws. Where, I ask, is that faith which the Milanese have boasted they still held inviolate, and, among the other cities, unsullied with a certain virginal chastity? Where is the justice which they have hitherto vaunted that they especially possessed in conserving the laws?
For the moment let those meet them, not we, but broken faith; they will experience against themselves oaths made void, a treaty ruptured, the laws of legates, which are to be preserved with integrity owed and most holy reverence not only to us and to you, but even to barbarians. Wherefore, if truly I hear proclaimed of you faith, justice, fortitude, the abomination of desolation standing in the midst of your land, which hitherto by a certain larval terror used to shake you all, look, and with common forces rise up to trample the common enemy, not so much ours as yours! Have care for the Roman Empire, of which, although we are the head, you are the members; make use of us in this business, as it pleases, either as soldier or as emperor!
With God propitiating, their reiterated presumption will be pursued by reiterated vengeance to this point: that what they have committed to our [nay, to your] injury and against the glory of the Roman Empire shall be repressed by such coercion, lest hope grow for the depraved and seditious, and lest the crime of those remain unpunished who kept neither truth with you nor reverence and faith with us—having abused our clemency, having abused our patience—who, in place of penitence, did not blush to assume pertinacity, and, in place of simplicity, the confusion of duplicityÕ.
Talia perorantem omnes excipere, ac velut impetu quodam divino incitati, alius alium in respondendo antecapere cupiebat, hoc recti consilii arbitrantes, ne quis extremus remanere videretur. Erant ibi absque laicis obtimatibus episcopi Eberhardus Babinbergensis, Albertus Frisingensis, Conradus Eistetensis, Herimannus Ferdensis, Daniel Bragensis, de ultramontanis Papiensis, Vercellensis, Hastensis, Tertonensis, Placentinus, Cremonensis, Novariensis. Qui omnes, dum singuli in perorando singulari favoris studio diverso modo placere voluissent, hanc tamen sententiae unius identitatem per os et facundiam Placentini episcopi proferebant: ÔExcellentiae vestrae, princeps post Deum nobis karissime, super iniuria Mediolanensium qua decet gravitate et animi indignatione condolemus; sed quia scimus sinceritatem vestram et animam vestram in hac parte a culpa custoditam, omnipotenti Deo gratias agimus, qui de malis Mediolanensium multa vobis ad gloriam operari poterit et ex illorum superba crudelitate ac crudeli superbia vestram mansuetudinem, vestram dignissimam humilitatem amplius enitescere procurabit.
While he was perorating such things, all welcomed it, and as if incited by a certain divine impulse, each was eager to forestall the other in responding, judging this right counsel, lest anyone should seem to remain last. There were there, besides the lay optimates, the bishops Eberhard of Bamberg, Albert of Freising, Conrad of Eichstätt, Hermann of Verden, Daniel of Braga, among the ultramontanes the [bishops] of Pavia, of Vercelli, of Asti, of Tortona, of Piacenza, of Cremona, of Novara. All of whom, while each, in perorating, wished to please in a different way with a singular zeal of favor, nevertheless were bringing forth this identity of one judgment through the mouth and eloquence of the bishop of Piacenza: ÔTo Your Excellency, O prince, most dear to us after God, we grieve over the injury of the Milanese with such gravity and indignation of spirit as is fitting; but since we know your sincerity and your soul to have been kept from blame in this matter, we give thanks to almighty God, who from the evils of the Milanese will be able to work many things for your glory, and from their proud cruelty and cruel pride will take care that your mansuetude, your most worthy humility, shine forth the more.
O cruel pride, O ill‑fated arrogance, you have cast down an angel from heaven, a man from paradise! I fear that this pestilence may also prepare fatal ruin for the Milanese. He guarded himself too little against this vice of swelling, of which it is said: You, the seal of similitude, full of wisdom and perfect in comeliness; you were in the delights of the paradise of God. And too little likewise did he, to whom it was granted to eat from every tree of paradise.
You too no more than that one, to whom both these and many other things said about them can be assigned by a certain proportion of similitude. He among the angels was first and called Lucifer; you among the cities of Italy are first, among the world one of the first; he in the delights of paradise, you in the delights of this world were in need of nothing. He full of wisdom and perfect in comeliness; you, since you have many both wise men and philosophers, I fear lest it be aptly said of them: And all their wisdom is devoured. We know the greatest and ancient cities, Babylon, Nineveh, subdued by war, made at the last shrines of dragons, habitations of ostriches.
Surely for you tomorrow also the same will happen, that, unless you come to your senses, in your halls the owls may respond with a lugubrious voice, the shaggy ones may dance. Yet far be this; may God avert this from you! Indeed I, for my part, prefer in this matter to speak a lie rather than be found a true prophet.
To you, our most serene lord, we think it should be faithfully suggested, that on account of the injury against the Milanese you, as a good judge, should strive with good spirit to fulfill the offices of vengeance. For not in vain are instituted the power of the king, the arms of the soldier and the claw of the executioner, the discipline of the ruler and the severity of a good father. They have, as a certain one says, all these things their own modes, causes, reasons, utilities.
When these things are feared, the evil are coerced, and the good live quietly among the evil. The Milanese are deceived, if they think that what is said fails only in your case: Do you not know that kings have long hands? You came and you conquered. Nor is it any less easy for you to conquer those already conquered than to have overcome, at the first onset, those rebelling without difficulty. The same command is yours, the same strength of body and mind, the same military valor, the same devotion of the soldiery.
Only this remains for you: to inquire by what vengeance, by what penalty those are to be smitten who so often contradict the laws and the legitimate imperium. Although, moreover, by right they would be to be coerced by an extraordinary penalty, imperial [however] clemency will fittingly maintain this moderation, that you pursue the injury not [indeed] as they have deserved, but as befits you. Let not the crime of the Milanese avail with you more than your dignity, lest you seem to have consulted more for your anger than for your fame, than for justice.
For, if a worthy penalty is sought for their deeds, if the magnitude of the crime is ventilated, this [business] requires a new counsel and, to confess the truth, surpasses our talents. Wherefore I judge that one must use against them those things which have been furnished by the laws, and it will declare a good emperor and a just judge to contend with enemies by laws before by armsÕ. He had spoken, and both the Augustus himself and all the Optimates commend his opinion.
Itaque proponuntur edicta, iterumque Mediolanenses in ius per legittimas citantur inducias. Die statuta Friderico aput villam regiam quae vocatur Marinca commorante, per legatos suos Mediolanenses se presentant, videlicet per archiepiscopum suae civitatis et per alios quosdam multae quidem eloquentiae, parvae sapientiae. Unde et archiepiscopus, sive vera sive simulata infirmitate, societati illorum se subtraxit.
Therefore edicts are published, and again the Milanese are summoned into court under lawful continuances. On the appointed day, with Frederick staying at the royal villa which is called Marinca, the Milanese present themselves by their legates, namely by the archbishop of their city and by certain others of much eloquence indeed, of little wisdom. Whence also the archbishop, whether by true or feigned infirmity, withdrew himself from their society.
They, however, while they were more strictly being called to account concerning the oaths rendered and concerning other peace pactions, and concerning the treaty violated, since they could do nothing else, answered: ÔWe did indeed swear, but we did not promise to attend to the oathÕ. A worthy response, such that the speech might be consonant with the morals, and they who had been accustomed to live and to act crookedly and perfidiously could not speak otherwise than perfidiously and crookedly, so that an unwashed speech might accompany a flagitious life. And when they had uttered these and many other words by the vice of procacity, they depart with the business of peace undone, and another day is prefixed for them.
Inter haec videns imperator Mediolanensium superbiam nonnisi in manu gravi et forti posse compesci, cum, ut supra memoravimus, dimisso exercitu ipse cum paucis remansisset, auxilia ultramontanorum contra reprobam civitatem accienda reputavit. Itaque missis nunciis imperatricem advocat et ducem Baioariae Heinricum aliosque tam episcopos quam proceres imperii, commonens eos fidelitatis suae, ne desertores regni pro tanta temeritate de impunitate laetentur; velle se probare ipsorum, benivolentiam circa statum imperii conservandum impetumque inimicorum cohibendum. Illi, accepta legatione, alacri animo se ad novam in proximo vere accingunt expeditionem.
Meanwhile, seeing that the pride of the Milanese could be curbed only by a heavy and strong hand, since, as we have mentioned above, when the army had been dismissed he himself had remained with a few, he reckoned that the auxiliaries of the Ultramontanes must be called up against the reprobate city. Therefore, messengers having been sent, he summons the empress and Henry, duke of Bavaria, and others, both bishops and the magnates of the empire, admonishing them by their fealty, lest the deserters of the realm rejoice at impunity for so great a temerity; he wishes to prove their benevolence toward preserving the state of the empire and restraining the onslaught of enemies. They, the embassy received, with eager spirit gird themselves for a new expedition in the coming spring.
Inter haec Fridericus nichil aput se remissum, nichil aput hostes tutum pati. Inpigre prudenterque suorum et hostium res pariter adtendere, explorare, quid boni utrimque aut contra esset. Itaque, dimisso exercitu, cum paucis territoria provinciae circuit, militem novum et auxiliarios percensuit, castella et munitiones, utpote Verrucam, Serralonga et caetera, quae in terra illa magis inexpugnabilia nec aggressione facile capi videbantur, suscepta in discrimen hostium et ad suorum presidium sapienter providit.
Meanwhile Frederick allowed nothing slack on his own side, nothing secure among the enemies. Energetically and prudently he attended equally to the affairs of his own and of the foe, exploring what good there was on either side, or the contrary. And so, the army having been dismissed, with a few he traversed the territories of the province, reviewed the new soldiery and the auxiliaries, and for the castles and fortifications—namely the Verruca, Serralonga, and the rest—which in that land seemed more inexpugnable and not easily to be taken by assault, he wisely provided that they be employed to the hazard of the enemy and to the presidiary defense of his own.
He fortifies New Lauda during the whole time of Lent with the highest zeal, builds an immense rampart, arranges the gates and battlements; deeming it opportune for the business of the future war, if in so near a city, namely 20 miles distant from Milan, he could both suddenly station and find a great multitude of warriors. Then, advancing as far as Cuma, he is received with the highest honor, asks for and receives a treaty and aid.
Est autem in lacu Cumano insula divitiis habundans, hominibus bellicosis referta, quae nisi valde cruenta victoria a quoquam capi difficile putabatur. Erat autem amica Mediolanensibus et multo tempore per fedus coniuncta. Princeps propter commeatum venientium ad se ac redeuntium optimum ratus eo membro corpus insidiosae civitatis mutilare, concepta spe atque fiducia, insulam se vel sicut hostem infestum contra hostes vel, si hoc elegerint, tamquam benignum imperatorem ad socios et amicos intraturum comminatur.
Moreover, in the Cuman lake there is an island abounding in riches, packed with bellicose men, which was thought difficult for anyone to capture except by a very sanguinary victory. It was, however, friendly to the Milanese and for a long time conjoined by a foedus. The Prince, on account of the supply-line of those coming to him and returning, deeming it best to mutilate the body of the insidious city in that limb, with hope and confidence conceived, menaces that he will enter the island either, like a hostile enemy, against enemies; or, if they choose this, as a benign emperor to allies and friends.
No delay; having entered the ships with the few whom he had with him, he began to row back. The islanders, as soon as they had recognized both the spirit and the audacity of the prince, shaken by a certain divine fear, go to meet the vessel, seek peace, receive him as he comes with great applause and alacrity, swear fealty, and honor him with gifts. And that nation was found quite faithful to us thereafter.
And this was provided for by the prince’s singular counsel, that those islanders, wild and accustomed to piratical fury, in such narrow straits of the ways might be recovered to the use and opportunity of our men. What is more to be wondered at in this victory? The prince’s magnanimity, that he did not fear to attempt so great a matter in this way, or his felicity, that he vanquished a matter so perilous without peril?
Simili modo aput Placentiam factum est. Quae et ipsa Mediolanensibus confederata propter diversas causas invisa videbatur et defectionis opinionem dudum incurrerat. Unde etiam, ut supra memoravimus, iure possessionis iussi fuerant vallum replere turresque deponere, ut minitando magis quam puniendo reprimerentur perturbandae civitatis auctores.
In a similar way the same was done at Piacenza. That city too, confederated with the Milanese, seemed odious for diverse causes and had long since incurred the repute of defection. Whence also, as we have mentioned above, by the right of possession they had been ordered to fill in the rampart and to take down the towers, so that the authors of disturbing the city might be checked more by threatening than by punishing.
At that same time bandits had gone out from Piacenza and, from an ambush, surrounded the prince’s envoys, who were carrying from Genoa the promised money, about 500 talents, and they plundered the aforesaid amount of money. On account of these and other proofs of fraud, since the Augustus held them suspected as undoubtedly desirous of a revolution, nevertheless with a few men and without fear he entered the city, carried through Palm Sunday’s service with its due feast, appropriately arranged the other things that had to be done there, and, the plundered money—hardly entreated by the citizens—he accepted.
Anno dominicae incarnationis M°C°LVIIII° Fridericus pascha aput Mutinam celebravit, festoque terminato, in territorium Bononiense, ubi tunc manebat exercitus, demigrans adventu suo universos laetificavit. Nempe a die quo cinis super capita fidelium poni solet usque tunc semel tantum ad exercitum venerat, supradictis negotiis occupatus. Dimiserat tamen loco suo venerabilem virum Eberhardum Babinbergensem episcopum, qui venientes et negotia habentes audiret causasque eorum diligenti examinatione terminaret.
In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1159 Frederick celebrated Easter at Modena, and when the feast was concluded, moving down into the Bolognese territory, where the army was then staying, by his arrival he gladdened all. Indeed, from the day on which ash is wont to be placed upon the heads of the faithful up to that time he had come to the army only once, occupied with the aforesaid negotiations. Nevertheless he had sent in his place the venerable man Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, who would hear those coming and having business and would terminate their cases with diligent examination.
For that same bishop was endowed with religion and science and was instructed by the institutions of a purer life. And as he was known to have, before the rest, diligence for the fealty of the Empire and its honor, a most celebrated opinion about him was spread abroad through very many lands. And his zeal concerning the senses of Scripture and the discussion of questions was exercised so attentively that, abiding amid battles, he would solace the various cares that emerged by diligent meditation upon them.
Although the emperor cherished all bishops and men of whatever ecclesiastical order and deemed them worthy of ampler honor, yet he especially relied upon the counsel of the aforesaid man as most prudent, and esteemed him worthy, in whose arbitration and discretion he might place his efforts and with whom he might share both the burden and the honor.
Iam dies aderat, quae Mediolanensibus tercio vel quarto prefixa fuerat. Tum imperator, convocatis iudicibus et legis peritis, qui in ea civitate frequentes aderant, citari iubet Mediolanenses. Cum autem nemo compareret, qui absentiae illorum causam rationabilem ederet, tamquam contumaces rebelles et imperii desertores severitatis sententiam excipiunt, hostes pronunciantur, res eorum direptioni, personae servituti adiudicantur; eiusque rei occasione in audientia principis satis disputatum est luculenterque expressum, quae pena excipere debeat qui defectionis aut lesae maiestatis rei forent deprehensi.
Now the day was at hand which had been fixed for the Milanese for the third or even the fourth time. Then the emperor, the judges and law-experts convened—who were present in that city in great numbers—orders the Milanese to be summoned. But when no one appeared to set forth a reasonable cause for their absence, they, as contumacious rebels and deserters of the empire, incur a sentence of severity: they are pronounced enemies; their goods are adjudged to plunder, their persons to servitude; and on the occasion of this matter, in the prince’s audience, there was ample debate and it was clearly expressed what penalty ought to befall those who should be discovered guilty of defection or of lèse-majesté.
Preter alios principes, nobiles atque sapientes interfuere huic collationi et negotio sedis apostolicae legati, videlicet Octavianus tituli Sanctae Ceciliae presbiter cardinalis, Heinricus tituli Sanctorum Nerei et Achillei, Wilhelmus cardinalis diaconus, antea Papiensis archidiaconus, et Gwido Cremensis diaconus cardinalis, missi a papa Adriano. Quorum itineris causas simulque nunciorum senatus populique Romani [necnon et alia quedam] rescriptum litterarum venerabilis viri Eberhardi Babinbergensis episcopi subter annotatum continet; quod tale est:
Besides other princes, nobles and wise men were present at this conference and the business, the legates of the apostolic see, namely Octavian, presbyter cardinal of the title of Saint Cecilia, Heinrich of the title of Saints Nereus and Achilleus, William cardinal deacon, formerly archdeacon of Pavia, and Guido of Cremona, deacon cardinal, sent by Pope Adrian. The rescript of the letters of the venerable man Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, noted below, contains the causes of their journey and likewise of the envoys of the senate and people of Rome [and also certain other things]; which is as follows:
Reverentissimo patri et domino Eberhardo Salzburgensis aecclesiae archiepiscopo Eberhardus Babinbergensis gratia Dei si quid est cum oratione qualicumque servitium devotissimum. Scio, pater sanctissime, sacrae pietatis affectu vos meis compati laboribus et animae mihi salutem et corpori quietem concupiscere. Ut autem noveritis, quoad compati vos mihi oporteat, dico vobis, quod iam tedet animam meam vitae meae, duo ferens onera in animo meo mihi gravissima, quod et cinctus ducor quo nolo et, quamdiu durare debeat, ignoro, vestris et aliorum fidelium orationibus adiuvari desiderans, ut ab illis separer, quibus iuravit dominus in ira sua: Si introibunt in requiem meam.
To the most reverend father and lord Eberhard, archbishop of the church of Salzburg, Eberhard of Bamberg, by the grace of God, if he be anything, with whatever prayer, proffers most devoted service. I know, most holy father, that with the affection of sacred piety you sympathize with my labors and desire salvation for my soul and rest for my body. But that you may know how far it is fitting for you to sympathize with me, I tell you that my soul is weary of my life, bearing two burdens in my mind most grievous to me: both that, girded, I am led where I do not wish, and that I do not know how long it ought to last, desiring to be aided by your prayers and those of other faithful, that I may be separated from those to whom the Lord swore in his wrath: If they shall enter into my rest.
Over and above these things, perilous times seem to be pressing on, and it is near that discord be stirred between kingdom and priesthood. And indeed, with the cardinals sent by lord pope [Adrian] to the lord emperor—namely lord Octavian and lord William, formerly archdeacon of Pavia—after a gentle beginning and an entrance as it were pacific, most hard chapters were proposed. For example: that envoys to the City are not to be sent by the emperor with the Apostolic unaware, since every magistracy there is of blessed Peter together with all regalia.
Concerning the Apostolic’s dominicals, that the fodrum is not to be collected, except at the time of receiving the crown. That the bishops of Italy ought to make only the sacrament of fidelity without homage to the lord emperor, and that the emperor’s envoys are not to be received in the palaces of the bishops. Concerning the possessions of the Roman Church to be restored, of Tibur, of Ferrara, of Massa, of Ficorolium, of all the land of Countess Matilda, of all the land which is from Aquapendente as far as Rome, of the Duchy of Spoleto, of the islands of Sardinia, of Corsica.
But with the lord emperor constantly offering justice and counsel in regard to these matters, provided that they too were willing to do and to receive justice, while they for their part were willing only to receive and not to do, on this reasoning: that they could not subject the lord apostolic to [the case] and bring him to stand to judgment; and on the contrary, the lord emperor putting forward many points about the ruptured concord which had been pledged to him in the word of truth, about the Greeks, about the Sicilian, about the Romans not to be received without common consent, about the cardinals too freely passing through the kingdom without imperial permission and entering the regalia palaces of the bishops and burdening the churches of God, about unjust appeals and very many other things surpassing brevity—while the apostolic, having been admonished through a messenger and the letters of the aforesaid cardinals with the emperor’s consent, having been requested to summon other cardinals to smooth all these things, was unwilling to join to those who were present his own envoys and the princes of the court—the word of unity and concord long desired was, our sins demanding it, voided. And while these things were being transacted, envoys of the Romans arriving and asking for the things of peace were well received and dismissed. At the request, however, of the cardinals, the lord emperor is going to send envoys to the lord pope and to the City, so that with the apostolic, if he himself should be willing, peace may first be made; but if not, with the senate and the Roman people.
Imperator ad haec verba cardinalium tale dedit responsum: ÔQuamvis non ignorem ad tanta negotia non ex animi mei sententia, sed ex consilio principum me respondere debere, sine preiudicio tamen sapientum hoc absque consultatione respondeo. Episcoporum Italiae ego quidem non affecto hominium, si tamen et eos de nostris regalibus nichil delectat habere. Qui si gratanter audierint a Romano presule: Quid tibi et regi? consequenter quoque eos ab imperatore non pigeat audire: Quid tibi et possessioni?
The emperor to these words of the cardinals gave such a response: ÔAlthough I am not unaware that in matters so great I ought to respond not from the sentiment of my own mind, but from the counsel of the princes, yet, without prejudice to the wise, I answer this without consultation. As for the bishops of Italy, I indeed do not seek homage, provided that it also does not please them to have anything of our regalia. If they have gladly heard from the Roman prelate: What is it to you and the king? let it likewise not irk them to hear from the emperor: What is it to you and the possession?
He asserts that our envoys are not to be received in the palaces of the bishops. I concede it, if perchance any one of the bishops has a palace on his own proper soil and not on ours. But if the palaces of the bishops are on our soil and allod, since indeed everything that is built yields to the soil, the palaces are ours as well.
Therefore it would be an injustice if anyone were to prohibit our messengers from the royal palaces. He affirms that legates from the emperor are not to be sent to the City, since all magistracy there belongs to blessed Peter together with all the regalia. This matter, I confess, is great and weighty, and requires graver and more mature counsel.
Haec augusto et his similia prefatis capitulis argute respondente, consilium initur, ut ex parte summi pontificis cardinales sex et ex parte principis sex episcopi religiosi, prudentes et qui Deum timeant, eligantur, tantorum negotiorum hinc inde cognitionem accepturi tantamque litem congruo fine decisuri. Verum, ut supra taxatum est, ex parte Romanorum etiam hoc consilium dicitur fuisse evacuatum. Super hoc quoque capitulo audi epistolam imperatoris directam Eberhardo Salzburgensi archiepiscopo in hunc modum:
With the Augustus giving a shrewd reply to these and to similar matters in the aforesaid chapters, counsel is entered upon, that on the part of the Supreme Pontiff six cardinals and on the part of the prince six bishops—religious, prudent, and God-fearing—be elected, who are to take cognizance of such great affairs on both sides and to decide so great a lawsuit with a fitting end. But, as has been stated above, on the part of the Romans this plan also is said to have been made void. Concerning this chapter as well, hear the emperor’s epistle directed to Eberhard, archbishop of Salzburg, in this manner:
Quoniam quidem fidelitatis tuae constantiam, quam pro consuetudine exhibere soles imperio, frequenter experti sumus, quae aput nos sunt discretioni tuae significamus et prudentiae tuae consilium advocamus. Venerunt siquidem ad nos duo cardinales a papa missi ad hoc, ut inter nos et illum fieret concordia. Dixerunt igitur, quod papa illam requireret pacem atque concordiam, quae inter papam Eugenium et nos facta fuerat et scripta.
Since indeed we have frequently experienced the constancy of your fidelity, which by custom you are wont to exhibit to the Empire, we signify to your discretion the things that are with us and we summon the counsel of your prudence. For two cardinals came to us, sent by the pope for this purpose: that concord might be effected between us and him. They said, therefore, that the pope was requiring that peace and concord which had been made and written between Pope Eugene and us.
We responded that indeed we had held the peace inviolably up to this point, but hereafter neither would we hold it nor would we wish it to be held, since he had been the first to violate it in the case of the Sicilian, with whom he ought not to have been reconciled without us. We added, however, that we were prepared to give and to receive all justice, whether according to human things or according to the divine writings. But if justice should seem burdensome, to the counsel of the princes and of religious [men], for the love of God and of the Church, we would gladly submit ourselves.
Our word pleased the cardinals. They said, however, that unless the pope’s will on this matter were first known, they could neither do nor dare anything. Messengers having been sent, the pope learned our word and commanded that, as before, he would have no other concord than that which had been made between Pope Eugenius and us.
We, in the aforesaid manner, refused this, and in the presence and under the testimony of all the bishops of the Teutons and Longobards and of the lay princes and barons and vavassors we offered all justice and counsel, so that we too might receive justice. The envoys of the Roman citizens were present there, who with indignation were astonished at the things they heard. For the pope has commanded new and weighty matters, never before heard, which cannot be handled without your counsel and that of the other faithful of the empire.
At Mediolanenses novarum turbarum non iam in occulto, sed apertissime tale sumunt principium. Nondum finita sollempnitate paschali, omnibus copiis suis adunatis egressi sunt, oppidum Trecium, ubi Fridericum iam in priori adventu milites suos locasse memoravimus, vi capere properantes, quoniam pernitiosa videbatur obsidio principe intra provintiam existente. Iam enim intra civitatem cupidine castri potiundi machinas aliaque quae incepto usui forent preparaverant.
But the Milanese, of new tumults, not now in secret but most openly, take such a beginning. The Paschal solemnity not yet finished, having assembled all their forces they went out, hastening to take by force the town of Trecium, where we have already recorded that Frederick, at his earlier arrival, had stationed his soldiers, since a siege seemed pernicious with the prince being within the province. For already within the city, from a desire of getting possession of the castle, they had prepared machines and other things which would be of use for the undertaking.
Thus their attempts and their offenses were more concealed. After they arrange these things as intended, they unexpectedly surround the town with a great multitude, and some of them desire now to undermine the wall, now to attack with ladders, a part to fight from afar with sling-bullets or stones or javelins. The Roman soldiers, struck by the tumult—some to seize arms, a part to hearten the terrified, certain men to roll stones down upon those nearest, to send back the missiles hurled from afar—few among many would have been less thwarted, if the Ligurians had approached nearer.
All things were rough, all things foul with the atrocity of the combatants on both sides; the peril was two-edged, the victory at first was in uncertainty. Indeed, for a full three days there was fighting continuously. But in very truth the castellans, wearied day and night by vigils, fastings, and labor, could no longer withstand the enemies’ onset, whereas these, by turns and by successions, one succored another who was laboring; while of the defenders not one could have ceded from the position which he had taken up to defend.
Accordingly, with all wearied, drained, and languid, when they gave the enemy a place for entering, all the Ligurians burst in, and all the townspeople were either slain or captured. Moreover, upon their own proper kinsmen, whom they found in that same place, they raged more than against our men, nor was there any compassion in them for the Conlatini. Our men, however, out of reverence for, or fear of, the emperor, were preserved for captivity—about eighty soldiers of the royal clientele.
Haec audiens Fridericus paulisper mesius, iram cohibuit, indignationem dissimulavit, impetum militum continuit; curiam ante indictam aput Roncaliam gloriose celebravit et ibidem copiosam multitudinem bellatorum collegit. Deinde cum maxima cura ultum ire iniurias festinat et toto apparatu, toto exercitu in Liguriam irruit, agros inflammat, vastat, vineas demolitur, ficus exterminat omnesque fructiferas arbores aut succidi aut decorticari precepit totamque regionem depopulatur, statuens non ante obsidere civitatem, quam penuria necessariorum affligerentur. Aut enim tunc inopia victualium coactos ultro supplicaturos aut, si ad finem usque in eadem pertinatia duravissent, obsidione inclusos fame consumendos vel ad deditionem cogendos arbitrabatur, multoque faciliores ad affligendum fore, si post intervallum temporis iterum atque iterum anxiis incubuisset.
Hearing these things, Frederick, for a little while more downcast, restrained his wrath, dissimulated his indignation, contained the impetus of the soldiers; he gloriously celebrated the curia previously proclaimed at Roncaglia, and there he gathered a copious multitude of warriors. Then with the greatest care he hastens to go to avenge the injuries, and with his whole apparatus, with his whole army, he rushes into Liguria, sets the fields ablaze, lays waste, demolishes the vineyards, exterminates the fig trees, and ordered all the fruit-bearing trees either to be cut down or to be barked; and he depopulates the whole region, determining not to besiege the city before they were afflicted by a penury of necessities. For either then, constrained by a shortage of victuals, they would of their own accord supplicate; or, if to the end they had endured in the same pertinacity, he judged that, shut in by a siege, they must be consumed by hunger or compelled to surrender, and that they would be much easier to afflict if, after an interval of time, he should again and again press upon the anxious.
Itaque omnes eorum exitus asservari precepit, frumenti aliarumque rerum eis auferens commertium, edictumque proposuit, qua pena ferirentur transgressores, quove premio donari debuissent qui venditores harum rerum [et socios hostium] proderent. Mediolanenses autem [frumenti quidem aliarumque] omnium rerum tametsi copiam intus habebant, metu tamen futurae obsidionis vehementius afficiebantur, et cum iam cybaria ipsa ad modicam mensuram venderentur, ampliorem eis cupiditatem movebat, quod ius edendi liberum non haberent, ac, velut omnia [iam] defecissent, egre ferebant. Interdum quoque, assumptis secum bellatoribus, imperator usque ad civitatem profectus est, estimans eos aliquid ausuros, quo vel publico congressu eos protereret, si contra venissent, vel, si excurrere attemptarent, item a calamitate alieni non remanerent.
Therefore he ordered that all their exits be guarded, removing from them the commerce of grain and of other things, and he posted an edict, with what penalty the transgressors should be struck, and with what reward those who would betray the sellers of these things [and the allies of the enemy] ought to be endowed. The Milanese, however, although they had within an abundance of [grain indeed and of other] all things, were nevertheless more vehemently affected by fear of a future siege; and since now the provisions themselves were being sold by a modest measure, a greater desire was stirred in them, because they did not have the free right of eating, and, as if everything had [already] failed, they bore it ill. From time to time also, having taken warriors with him, the emperor advanced up to the city, supposing that they would dare something, whereby he might trample them in a public engagement, if they should have come out against him, or, if they attempted a sally, likewise they would not remain strangers to calamity.
Cumque super tali negotio imperator cum exercitu ultra Mediolanum processisset, Mediolanenses cum quingentis equitibus occulte ad Novam Laudam in die sancto pentecostes venientes predam pecorum abigere. Episcopo vero Mantuano Carsidonio et marchione Garnerio de Ancona cum sufficiente militia eos insecutis, cum audissent voces clamosas paucissimorum Alemannorum, Mediolanenses territi et in fugam versi quosdam occisos, XVI captos de suis melioribus ibidem perdiderunt. Iuste autem divina eos ultio persecuta est, ut, qui sanctissimo diei debitam reverentiam et honorem exhibere contempserunt, ipsi cum dispendio atque dedecore reverti cogerentur.
And when, over this matter, the emperor had advanced with the army beyond Milan, the Milanese, with five hundred horsemen, came secretly to Nova Lauda on the holy day of Pentecost to drive off booty of livestock. But when the bishop of Mantua, Carsidonius, and the marquess Garnerius of Ancona, with sufficient soldiery, pursued them, on hearing the clamorous voices of a very few Alemanni, the Milanese, terrified and turned to flight, there lost some slain and 16 captured, of their best men. And justly did divine vengeance pursue them, so that they who scorned to render the due reverence and honor of the most holy day were themselves compelled to return with loss and disgrace.
Quadraginta continuis diebus terram hostium vastatio tenuit, interque caeteras arces, turres et munitiones, quae vel opere vel natura munitae erant, quoddam castrum, quod Mons Sancti Iohannis dicebatur, usque ad id tempus inexpugnabile habitum, obsessum et brevi tempore captum est. Paulatim igitur reprobo capiti propria membra in tantum mutilata sunt et precisa, ut inter multa oppida et plurima castella vix duo tunc ipsis residua remanserint.
For forty continuous days devastation held the enemy’s land, and among the other citadels, towers, and fortifications, which were fortified either by workmanship or by nature, a certain castle, which was called the Mount of Saint John, held up to that time as impregnable, was besieged and in a short time taken. Gradually therefore the proper members of the reprobate head were so mutilated and cut away that, among many towns and very many castles, scarcely two then remained to them as remnants.
Hisdem diebus Brixienses, et ipsi quoque novis rebus studentes, comitatum Cremonensium depredationis et latrocinandi causa ingrediuntur. Erant quippe Mediolanensibus amicitia et societate coniuncti. Iam autem antea Cremonenses premoniti ab suis exploratoribus non inparati inveniuntur, sed ex insidiis erumpentes inprovisos invadunt, resistentes paulisper mox in fugam vertunt, predam eripiunt, equites LXVII, pedites fere CCC partim occidunt partim captivos abducunt.
In those same days the Brescians, they too being zealous for new affairs, enter the county of the Cremonese for the cause of depredation and latrociny. For they were joined to the Milanese by friendship and society. But the Cremonese, already beforehand forewarned by their own scouts, are found not unprepared; bursting forth from ambush they assail the unexpecting, those resisting for a little while they soon turn to flight, they snatch back the prey, and 67 horsemen, nearly 300 foot-soldiers, they partly kill and partly lead away as captives.
Et clades quidem Mediolanensium in peius cottidie procedebant, cum in facinus magis accenderentur adversis et populum in urbe fames iam acrior possideret. Non enim spe victoriae maior pars eorum, sed desperatione salutis ferocius movebantur, nec eos videntes tot mala coepti penitebat, sed ceci et amentes facti, etiam in personam christianissimi principis ausi sunt conspirare, obliti, quod iuxta legem eius facti pena animae amissionem sustinet et memoria rei post mortem dampnatur. Itaque quendam, qui se stultum et mente captum simularet, inveniunt eumque ad castra Friderici dirigunt, qui tunc aput Laudam morabatur, ut quovis modo violentas manus imperatori iniceret.
And indeed the disasters of the Milanese were proceeding daily for the worse, since by adversities they were the more inflamed to crime, and hunger now more keen possessed the people in the city. For not by hope of victory was the greater part of them moved, but more fiercely by desperation of safety; nor, seeing so many evils, did they repent of what they had undertaken, but, made blind and insane, they even dared to conspire against the person of the most Christian prince, forgetful that, according to the law, the penalty of such a deed sustains the loss of the soul, and the memory of the act is condemned after death. And so they find a certain man, who would feign himself a fool and mentally deranged, and they direct him to Frederick’s camp, who was then staying at Lauda, that he might by whatever means lay violent hands upon the emperor.
However, this man was so great in body and so mighty in strength that he seemed not without cause to have conceived such audacity. Therefore animated by many blandishments and many promises, he girds himself for a new deed, for the greatest crime. He proceeds to Lauda, enters the camp, and feigning stupidity or the fury of mania, as that kind of men is wont, he is celebrated rather with jests and amusements than excluded from the tents.
Moreover, Frederick’s tents were then nearby and almost set upon the shore of the Adda, and the aspect and situation of that place were such that one slipping would inevitably either be overwhelmed by the convex steep of the precipice, or would be caught by the whirlpool of the river gliding beneath. The aforesaid man, therefore, keeping a suitable day and hour when he might find the emperor alone, that he might bring the conceived crime to effect, at first daybreak on a certain morning sees him going out from the bedchamber of the tent, to discharge, according to his custom, before the relics of the saints the duties of his prayers to God; and thinking he had obtained the desired time, he runs up, lays his wicked hands upon him, and now by dragging, now by carrying, began to press toward the precipice, and he would perhaps have gained his nefarious purpose, had not divine mercy stretched forth a hand for the defense of the sacred prince. For while in this manner that one by dragging, this one by resisting, each was striving with all his strength, it happened that, entangled in the ropes by which the pavilions are suspended, both fell to the ground.
And now the clamour of the vociferating prince, being heard, had roused the chamberlains; who, running up, seize the wicked monster and, smitten with many blows, they plunge him, precipitated headlong, in that same place. Such then had been the opinion about him. We, however, have heard that the same man was truly frenzied and lost his life innocently.
Mediolanenses tantum se facinus frustra suscepisse dolentes subsequenter aliud intendunt. Octo de suis precio ad cremandam Laudam conducunt. Quorum unus dum nocte intempesta promissum implere vellet ac aedibus ignem iniecisset, invenerunt eum vigiles et comprehensum, dum propositum confessus fuisset, mane facto eum patibulo contra Mediolanum erecto suspenderunt.
The Milanese, lamenting that they had undertaken such a crime in vain, subsequently intend another. They hire eight of their own, for a price, to burn Lauda (Lodi). One of them, when at the dead of night he wished to fulfill the promise and had cast fire into the houses, was found by the watchmen; and, once apprehended, when he had confessed the plan, at daybreak they hanged him on a gallows erected over against Milan.
Non multo post a quodam divino monitore litteras imperatori allatas accepimus, quendam venisse in Italiam sive Hyspanum sive Arabum Sarracenum, aetate senem, facie deformem et luscum, discipulos vel socios pene XX habentem, malis consiliis et arte venefica prioribus multo potentiorem eumque mortis contemptorem, pariter cum suis sequacibus magnum se munus consecutos arbitrantes, si gloriam et nomen sibi perpetuum principis sanguine comparassent. Preciosa ipsum quasi munuscula laturum, medicinas, anulos, gemmas, frena, calcaria, venenatis furfuribus circumlita, adeo violenter et efficaciter toxicata, ut mortem non evaderet imperator, si vel manu nuda ea attigisset. Sicam quoque latentem iuxta femur gestare, ut, si quo impedimento veneni facinus non procederet, ea ad peragendum nefarium propositum uteretur.
Not long after, we received letters, brought to the emperor by a certain divine monitor, that a certain man had come into Italy, either a Spaniard or an Arab Saracen, old in age, deformed in face and one-eyed, having disciples or associates almost 20, far more powerful than the former in evil counsels and in venefic art, and a contemner of death, he together with his followers supposing that they would have obtained a great gift if they had procured for themselves glory and a perpetual name by the prince’s blood. He would bring, as though precious little gifts, medicines, rings, gems, bridles, spurs, smeared all around with venomous bran, so violently and efficaciously toxicated that the emperor would not escape death, if he even touched them with a bare hand. He also carried a hidden dagger next to his thigh, so that, if by some impediment the deed of poison did not advance, he might use it to carry through his nefarious purpose.
On receiving such things, with counsel shared with a very few, he orders the magus who was about to come to be kept under observation. Accordingly, when he came, and when by sure indications the emperor recognized that the things reported were true, he commanded the man to be kept in custody; and inquiring at whose instigation he had been precipitated to so great a crime, he promised that, to one speaking truth, he would remit all punishment, but if he should prefer to bring forth falsehoods, he would consume his body with torments. He, deriding both beatings and interrogations, moreover threatened that, if he himself suffered anything mortal, the emperor would straightway without doubt die along with him.
He was greatly deceived; for the emperor, contemning his threats, since he had been able to extort no evidence from him about the associates and authors of the crime, bestowed, as he had merited, upon such a pest and the fabricator of so great a crime the gibbet of the cross, and he rendered abundant thanks to God, the Conservator of salvation, because he had avoided the virus and the snares of so powerful a sorcerer.
Interea Beatrix imperatrix, dux Baioariae et Saxoniae Heinricus, Conradus Augustensis episcopus, uti decretum erat, milites scribere, propere commeatu, stipendio, armis aliisque utilibus iter incipere. Profectique cum magno exercitu paucis diebus in Italiam perveniunt suoque adventu nostris laeticiam, hostibus metum incutiunt. Erat enim isdem princeps filius, ut supra dictum est, Heinrici ducis et Gerdrudis, filiae Lotharii imperatoris.
Meanwhile Empress Beatrix, Henry duke of Bavaria and Saxony, and Conrad, bishop of Augsburg, as it had been decreed, set about enrolling soldiers and, promptly with convoy, stipend, arms, and other useful things, to begin the march. Having set out with a great army, in a few days they arrive in Italy and by their arrival inspire joy in our men and fear in the enemies. For that same prince was, as said above, the son of Duke Henry and Gertrude, daughter of Emperor Lothar.
He, bereft from his earliest cradle of father and mother, as soon as he grew up—powerful in strength, of comely face, but much more robust in intellect—did not give himself over to be corrupted by luxury or idleness, but, as the custom of the Saxons is, to ride, to cast the javelin, to contend in running with his equals, and, though he surpassed all in glory, nevertheless to be dear to all. His study, as is said of a certain man, was for modesty, decorum, but most of all severity; he contended with the strenuous in virtue, with the modest in pudor, with the innocent in abstinence; he preferred to be good rather than to seem. Thus, the less he sought glory, the more he attained it. In all glorious matters, to do very much, and he himself to speak the least about himself.
He, having received from the emperor, as said above, the duchy of Bavaria, where he learned the nature and customs of the people, with much care and much counsel had in a short time arrived at such renown that, a truce having been secured throughout all Bavaria, he was vehemently dear to the good and a greatest terror to the wicked, to such an extent that, fearing him absent as if present, no one would dare to infringe the laws of peace which he had sanctioned, on pain of capital punishment. And when he had joined his own soldiers to the royal troops, in a brief span the new and the old coalesced, and the valor of all was made equal. For also not much later the emperor’s uncle, Welf, prince of Sardinia, duke of Spoleto, margrave of Tuscany, he too bringing a new army, arrived with much apparatus, and by his arrival bestowed to our men the hope of triumph, to the adversaries the confidence of making terms.
Thus [these] two men most closely conjoined by blood—since one of them was the son of the other’s brother—vied with one another in differing virtues. Gwelfo, by giving, by relieving, by forgiving; Duke Henry, having attained glory by severity and by the ruin of the wicked. The affability of the former was praised, the constancy of the latter.
Welf, intent upon the business of friends, neglected his own, denied nothing that was worthy of a gift; he aspired to great powers, longed for an army, a new war, where virtue might shine forth. But Duke Henry, putting forward a zeal for modest decorum, not with riches with the rich nor with faction with the factious, but for the negotiations of peace, fought both absent and present. Thus within our memory, with immense virtue and diverse mores, there were these two men, Duke Henry and Duke Welf, whom, since the matter had presented itself, it was not my plan to pass by in silence, but to lay open the nature and manners of each, as far as I could by my ingenium; and it is very delightful that in these two most illustrious men our times have found in the one their own Cato, in the other their own Caesar.
Cremonensium cum Mediolano discordia perpetua utrosque adeo urgebat, ut hostiliter sibi invicem incubantes non ante manus ab armis reducendas putarent, quam vel una alteram prorsus absumeret vel superior saltem inventa superaret. Freti ergo tunc oportunitate temporis Fridericum ad destructionem Cremae civitatis hortantur, promissis XI milibus talentorum. Huius rei tali occasione sumunt exordium.
The perpetual discord of the Cremonese with Milan pressed both sides to such a degree that, pressing upon one another in hostile fashion, they did not think their hands ought to be withdrawn from arms before either the one utterly consumed the other, or at least, once superiority had been found, the stronger should overcome. Relying therefore at that time on the opportune moment, they exhort Frederick to the destruction of the city of Crema, with 11,000 talents promised. Of this matter they take the exordium from such an occasion.
Since Crema was of the county and diocese of the Cremonese and of their church, and ought to be governed at their arbitrium both in spirituals and in seculars, by spontaneous temerity it had torn itself from its head; and—what was nefarious—having associated itself with the enemies, together with the Milanese the daughter had begun to rebel against the mother. Summoned on account of this schism before the prince, it could be compelled neither by lawful citation nor by the sureties which it had formerly given to take care to be set for judgment before those making trial against it. Wherefore, for the contumacy of absence and contumacious absence, they incur a grievous sentence against themselves and are judged enemies.
Collecta ergo valida manu, augustus, ita quod exercitus eius eas copias, quas in obsidione Mediolani habuerat, superare videretur, partem unam cum Cremonensibus contra Cremam dirigit, ipse cum reliquis iterum ad depopulandos Ligures agrum Mediolanensium ingreditur et cum militia Alemannorum totam terram pervagatur hostilem, completumque est et ibi illud quod dicitur: Residuum locustae comedit brucus, et residuum bruci comedit eruca. At Cremonenses cum auxiliariis et magnis copiis ad oppugnandam Cremam venientes acriter civitatem obsidione vallant, summis viribus impugnant. Oppidani fortiter resistunt de muris, et ante muros equis et ad terram valide certatur. Ibi Garnherus marchio Anconae, magnam viri fortis in ea pugna gloriam consecutus, de nostris occiditur.
Therefore, a strong force having been collected, the Augustus, so that his army seemed to surpass those troops which he had had at the siege of Milan, directs one part with the Cremonese against Crema; he himself with the rest again enters to lay waste the Ligurian field of the Milanese, and with the soldiery of the Alemanni he ranges through all the hostile land; and there too was fulfilled that which is said: The remnant of the locust the grub devoured, and the remnant of the grub the canker-worm devoured. But the Cremonese, with auxiliaries and great forces, coming to oppugn Crema, sharply encircle the city with a siege, they assail it with utmost strength. The townsmen stoutly resist from the walls, and before the walls, both on horseback and on the ground, there is valiant fighting. There Garnherus, Margrave of Ancona, who had attained great glory as a brave man in that battle, from our side is slain.
Many others as well, both of ours and of theirs, there either are killed or are grievously wounded. Moreover, the site of Crema was in a flat and champaign place, by workmanship and human hand quite liberally and carefully furnished, defending itself by nature’s beneficence with a marshy circuit in a certain part of its extent. Furthermore, besides the huge and deep ditches, full of waters, being encircled by a double lofty wall, it was able easily to ward off all approaches and assaults.
The citizens of the city, warriors most audacious, and—because, together with their tent‑companions, namely the Milanese and the Brescians, they had more readily availed themselves of prosperous circumstances—were provoked into atrocity, insolence, and arrogance. Therefore, the city having been circumvallated, the excursions of the enemy were diligently watched, and machines and other things that would be useful for the assault are arranged with sedulous preparation.
Cum haec aput Cremam agerentur, nuncii de nobilioribus Romanae urbis ex parte senatus populique Romani ad curiam veniunt, omni devotione omnique reverentia suum promittentes obsequium. Rogare, ne pro iniquitate paucorum malorum et de plebe multos bonos et nobiles velit pessumdare; se esse, quorum occasione acceperit, ut imperator Urbis et orbis nominetur. Fridericus, pro eo quod in priori expeditione severius cum illis egerat, indulgentius eorum accepta legatione, benignum illis dedit responsum et per aliquot dies secum commoratos regaliter donavit et absolvit, mittens cum eis legatos Ottonem sepe iam dictum palatii comitem et magistrum Haribertum Aquensem prepositum, virum prudentem et in negotiis regni longa eruditione exercitatum, dans hoc in mandatis, ut et ea, quae cum populo Romano seu de stabiliendo senatu seu de recipiendo prefecto agenda forent, terminarent et cum Romano pontifice, si is hoc eligeret, de prenotatis capitulis finem facerent et concordiam stabilirent.
While these things were being transacted at Crema, nuncios from among the nobler men of the Roman city, on the part of the Senate and People of the Romans, come to the court, promising with all devotion and all reverence their obsequy. They ask that he not wish, for the iniquity of a few wicked men and of the plebs, to ruin many good and noble men; that they are those by whose occasion he had come to be named “Emperor of the City and of the world.” Frederick, because in the prior expedition he had dealt more severely with them, more indulgently, their embassy having been received, gave them a benign response and, after they had tarried with him for several days, royally gifted and dismissed them, sending with them as legates Otto, often already mentioned, count of the palace, and Master Haribert, provost of Aachen, a prudent man and exercised in the affairs of the realm by long erudition, giving this in mandates: that they also should bring to a term those things which with the Roman people were to be transacted, whether concerning the establishing of the senate or the receiving of the prefect, and that with the Roman pontiff, if he should choose this, they should make an end concerning the afore-noted chapters and should establish concord.
Qui venientes ad Urbem, cum honorifice tam a populo quam a senatu recepti essent interque ipsos et summum pontificem crebri nuncii mediatores dirigerentur, molientibus illis more suo antiquum Romanae urbis fastum, regales se in nullo passi sunt inferiores inveniri, immo et ad se sepius veniri, quam ut illis occurrerent, obtinuerunt.
Who, coming to the City, since they had been honorably received both by the people and by the senate, and as frequent messengers, mediators, were being sent between them and the supreme pontiff, they, endeavoring in their wonted way to restore the ancient pomp of the Roman city, the royal party suffered themselves to be found inferior in nothing; nay rather, they even obtained that men should more often come to them, than that they should go to meet them.
Fridericus interim in Liguria degens ordinabat, ut aliquam cladem Mediolanensibus, qui omnes ad civitatem confugerant seque intus communierant, inferret. Itaque cum Papiensium pugnacissimis consilium init, ut ad civitatem impetum faciant seque ab hostibus fugari patiantur, ipsum vero ex insidiis circumventurum persequentes. Nec multum tunc opinione deceptus est.
Meanwhile Frederick, dwelling in Liguria, was arranging to inflict some calamity upon the Milanese, who had all fled into the city and had fortified themselves within. And so, with the most pugnacious of the Pavians he entered into a counsel, that they should make an assault upon the city and allow themselves to be put to flight by the enemies, while he himself, from ambush, would surround the pursuers. Nor was he then much deceived in his expectation.
For the Milanese, when they had sensed their onrush - for they had already begun to drive off the prey -, strenuously pursue them and cut down more sharply those who resist. Now it was little short of a true flight for those who were about to give way with feigned fear; for they had turned aside a little from the place of ambush. Then Frederick, after exhorting his own, attacks the enemy from the rear and by surprise, now brisk and almost victors, and he arrives as the longed-for aid to his men, whom he had already perceived to be being driven back.
The Milanese, who already thought that they had nearly obtained victory, seeing themselves surrounded on all sides by the royal cavalry and that no safeguard for escape remained to them, unprepared against everything—for being killed, for being captured; horses and men overthrown. Then a horrible spectacle on the open plains, when, in the midst of the enemy, permitted neither to fight nor to enter upon flight, they were cut down without mercy. At last, everything as far as sight went was strewn with missiles, arms, and the corpses either of the dead or of the mortally wounded.
Preterea ad consolationem tuam de presenti statu nostro aliqua tibi scribimus, quia honorem imperii et nostram prosperitatem te diligere non dubitamus. Inter alia igitur magnificavit Dominus facere nobiscum et fecit, unde facti sumus laetantes et maximas Deo gratias agentes. Maximam enim multitudinem Mediolanensium tradidit Deus in manus nostras, ita quod in Idus Iulii, qua data divisio apostolorum celebrari solet, DC de fortioribus civitatis captivos in vinculis abduximus, centum et fere L per campos et itinera viarum interfecti sunt.
Moreover, for your consolation concerning our present state we write some things to you, since we do not doubt that you love the honor of the empire and our prosperity. Among other things, therefore, the Lord has magnified to act with us and has acted, wherefore we became rejoicing and giving the greatest thanks to God. For God has delivered a very great multitude of the Milanese into our hands, such that on the Ides of July, on which the “division of the apostles” is accustomed to be celebrated, we led away in chains 600 of the stronger men of the city as captives, and one hundred and almost 50 were killed across the fields and the routes of the roads.
in the church of blessed Peter, with the clergy, the senate, and the Roman people present, he was honorably interred, the royal envoys still being there. After whose death the cardinals, turned to sedition, by a double election rend the unity: some choosing Octavian, presbyter cardinal of the title of Saint Cecilia, to whom they gave the name Victor; others Roland, presbyter cardinal of the title of Saint Mark and chancellor of the Roman church, upon whom they imposed the name Alexander. But, that the handling of this business may run on in a perpetual or continuous oration, we shall for a little meanwhile prosecute other matters, intending, in view of the magnitude of the cause, in its place to dwell longer upon these.
Imperator aliam parans profectionem ad devastandos fines Mediolanensium, cum in partem processisset et pabulatores in toto territorio nec equis annonam invenire potuissent, reversus, cum toto exercitu ad obsidionem Cremae pergit. Tum demum, perituram civitatem metus invasit, magnaque tristicia habitatores eius occupavit. Erant autem et intus et foris universa plena tumultus, multaque bellica instrumenta et in oppido et contra oppidum fabricabantur.
The emperor, preparing another departure to devastate the borders of the Milanese, when he had advanced partway and the foragers throughout the whole territory had not been able to find provender for the horses, turned back, and with the whole army proceeds to the siege of Crema. Then at last fear seized the city doomed to perish, and great sadness took hold of its inhabitants. Moreover, both within and without, all things were full of tumult, and many warlike instruments were being fabricated both in the town and against the town.
And thereafter their quotidian duties were these: on the one hand, some to contrive excursions, on the other, those to contrive assaults; and with great force it was contended there on all those days. For at the gates, where each of the chiefs had charge, there they strove most keenly, and no one placed hope more in another than in himself; and equally the townsmen to do likewise, and to prepare, with varied ingenuity, all things useful for defending the walls, and to dissimulate their distrust of the situation; and at times favorable fortune, at times their grief drove their audacity to many deeds.
Quadam denique die, dum exploratum fuisset Fridericum pro visenda consorte regni imperatrice, quae in vicino castro nomine Sanbassan morabatur, e castris exisse, ad portam quam regalis familia servabat pene cum sexcentis erumpunt equitibus; magnoque prelio inito, cum diu Marte pari utrimque nil aliud quam occiderent, tellus cruore manavit, nostrique, quamvis tam pudore quam virtute summa vi resistere conarentur, illud tamen efficere non potuerunt, ut hostium manus ea die gradum retro dedisset. Graviter fortiterque illa die pugnatum est. Nam, si credere fas est, rivuli campestres peremptorum et sauciatorum vulneribus sanguine infecti ac provecti, imbre cruoris augmentum acceperunt.
Finally, on a certain day, while it had been reconnoitered that Frederick, for the purpose of visiting his consort of the realm, the empress, who was lingering in a neighboring castle by the name Sanbassan, had gone out from the camp, they erupted toward the gate which the royal household was guarding with almost 600 horsemen; and, a great battle having been engaged, since for a long time, with Mars equal on both sides, they did nothing other than kill, the earth ran with gore, and our men, although from both shame and virtue they tried to resist with the utmost force, nevertheless could not bring it about that the band of the enemy that day gave a step backward. Gravely and bravely it was fought that day. For, if it is lawful to believe, the little streams of the plain, stained and borne along with blood from the wounds of the slain and the wounded, received an increment by a shower of gore.
Rediens augustus, cum de pertinaci hostium audatia comperisset, indignatione simul et ira permotus est, ut, qui iam pene in supremis se potius humiles ac supplices exhibere deberent, incursiones facerent et victores suos ipsi turbare non metuerent erumpnosa obsidione inclusi. Iam enim sepenumero in eruptionibus suis aut machinis flammas inicere aut turres destruere aut letali vulnere aliquos de nostris sauciare moliti sunt, nullumque specimen audatiae aut ostentationis fuit, quod illi futurorum ignari pretermitterent; et dum iam inclinata putaretur eorum superbia, de patratis facinoribus tumidi gloriabantur. Erat autem videre miseriam, quando hi qui foris, occisorum amputatis capitibus, eis quasi pila ludebant et a dextra in levam reiectis crudeli ostentui et ludibrio habebant; qui vero in oppido, inhonestum arbitrantes, si quid minus auderent, captivos nostrorum sine misericordia super muros membratim discerpendo miserabile prebebant spectaculum.
Returning, the emperor, when he had learned of the pertinacious audacity of the enemies, was moved at once by indignation and by wrath, that those who now, being almost at their last extremities, ought rather to exhibit themselves humble and suppliant, were making incursions and, enclosed by a siege ever breaking out in sorties, did not fear to trouble their very victors. For already, repeatedly in their sorties, they attempted either to throw flames upon the machines, or to destroy the towers, or to wound with a lethal wound some of our men, and there was no specimen of audacity or ostentation which they, ignorant of what was to come, would omit; and while their pride was thought already to be inclining, puffed up, they boasted of the deeds perpetrated. It was, moreover, a misery to see, when those who were outside, after cutting off the heads of the slain, played with them as if with balls and, tossing them from right hand to left, held them for cruel display and mockery; but those in the town, deeming it dishonorable if they should dare anything less, by tearing limb from limb our captives above the walls without mercy, offered a pitiable spectacle.
Ea calamitas paulisper [quidem] Friderico tristiciam et dignam indignationem comparavit. Qui ubi impetum insanientium continere non poterat ac sevientium furorem reverentia principis non cohibebat, placuit in contumaces vindictae severitatem exercere, ut, quos non correxit lenitatis pacientia, saltem indubitati supplicii pena coherceret. Iubet ergo de captivis eorum vindictam accipere eosque pro muris patibulo iussit appendi.
That calamity for a little while [indeed] procured for Frederick sadness and a worthy indignation. Since he could not contain the impetus of the insane, and the reverence of the prince did not restrain the raging fury, it pleased him to exercise the severity of vengeance upon the contumacious, so that those whom the patience of lenity had not corrected he might at least coerce by the penalty of certain punishment. Therefore he orders revenge to be taken upon their captives, and he commanded them to be hung on a gibbet before the walls.
The contumacious people, too eager to contend on parity, even themselves dragged certain of ours, placed in chains, to punishment in the same way, and hung them on the cross. Then Frederick: “O even now, doomed to perish, has our very humanity stirred you up against us, and on our lenity have you nourished audacity? Indeed already, while you were fighting, we spared you for some time, we had pity on your captives, we kept faith with your sureties, we, unwilling, brought engines to your walls, we always restrained soldiers eager for your slaughter.”
You spurn all these things, and with nefarious temerity you provoke us to your own destruction, to the doom of your sons or your grandsons. Therefore I will henceforth use the laws of war; I will contend with your pertinacity, sparing not at all, you who were unwilling to spare even yourselvesÕ. Saying these things, being vehemently angered because men set in the lot of captives were setting for themselves terms equal with the victors, he ordered it to be declared by the voice of the herald that they should no longer flee to him nor hope for quarter; for no one was to be spared. Rather, let them fight with all their forces, and consult for their own safety as far as they could; for now he would do everything by the right of war.
Therefore he orders their hostages, to the number of 40, to be brought in, that they might be suspended (hanged). Then meanwhile there are led in certain captives from among the nobles of the Milanese—six knights—who had been apprehended when they were mixing perfidious colloquies with the Piacenzans. For, as was said above, Piacenza was adhering to the prince even then with feigned devotion and simulated obedience.
There was, however, one among the captives who were being led, the grandson of the prelate of Milan, a wealthy man and one on whose counsel all the Ligurians greatly relied. He orders these also, despite many promises of money being scorned, to be led to execution, and a like end of life befell these as also the earlier ones.
Iamque ad civitatis pernitiem machinae plurimae admovebantur, iam turres in altum exstructae adplicari coeperant. Tum illi summa vi atque [animi] pertinatia resistere atque a muris turres arcere suisque instrumentis validis saxorum ictibus nostras machinas impellere. Effrenatis vero animis princeps obsistendum putans obsides eorum machinis alligatos ad eorum tormenta, quae vulgo mangas vocant et intra civitatem novem habebantur, decrevit obiciendos.
And now to the city’s perdition very many machines were being brought up; already towers raised to a height had begun to be applied. Then they, with the utmost force and [spirit’s] pertinacity, began to resist and to keep the towers away from the walls, and with their own strong instruments, by blows of stones, to drive back our machines. But the prince, thinking that their unbridled spirits must be checked, decreed that their hostages, bound to the machines, should be exposed to their engines—those which they commonly call ‘mangas’ and of which nine were maintained within the city.
The seditious, a thing even among barbarians unknown and indeed horrible to say, but incredible to hear, were none the less with frequent blows driving the towers, nor did the communion of blood and the natural bond, nor pity for age, move them; and so several of the boys, struck by stones, perished miserably, others, more miserably still, alive yet surviving, hanging, were awaiting a most cruel death and the horror of dire calamity. O crime! You might have seen from there the children fastened to the machines imploring their parents, casting at them charges of cruelty and immanity (savagery) either by words or by nods, and conversely the unhappy fathers lamenting for their ill-fated progeny, crying out that they were most wretched, and yet not ceasing from the pushings.
But also one of them consoled them, saying thus: "O blessed, to whom it will befall to die well rather than to live badly! Do not fear to die, you who by death are going to escape great evils! If we were brave men contending for liberty, it would not behoove us either to hesitate about this or to await a monitor."
For death indeed provides liberty to souls, and most blessed are they who, having died for the fatherland, have already received the order of immortality. How many of our predecessors, by this law and such a condition, some tortured and excruciated as much by fire as by scourges, have died; others, half-eaten by beasts, were kept alive for their second feeding. More wretched than you are we, who still live, who, often desiring death, do not receive it.
For while each one of ours, reckoning with himself the cruel servitude either of the barbarians or of their own gentiles (kinsmen), sees wives led to turpitude, another, with his hands bound, will hear the voice of a son imploring his father, yet another will see unhappy old men sitting by the ashes of the fatherland; considering these things, I say, will any of ours endure to look upon the sun, even if he could live without danger? O would that we all had died before we saw our city cut down by the hands of the Cremonenses, before we beheld the holy fatherland of the Pavians by impiety utterly torn upÕ! While he was still wishing to pray, all interrupted him, and with a certain unbridled impulse were incited to cast themselves down, thinking this to be the appearance of fortitude and of right counsel, to leave to the enemies stupefaction of mind and admiration of audacity. A few indeed, yielding to reason, would have wished to look after their sons, but others a love of the slaughter of their children seized, having the thought of the evils which, subjected to the enemies, they would have been about to suffer, as a consolation of necessity toward slaughter.
At Mediolanenses arbitrantes Fridericum circa obsidionem Cremae sollicitum alias laborantibus non posse succurrere, egressi cum turmis suis pene XX milia hominum, oppidum quoddam versus lacum Cumanum Manerbe vocatum obsidione cingunt, aggeres instruunt, machinas admovent omnibusque modis eversionem castri accelerare nituntur. Verum comes Gozwinus, qui tunc comitatum Sefrensem et Martusanum iussus a principe satis provide administrabat, missos suos ad curiam dirigit hostiumque conamen denunciavit; quid facto sit opus, consulit; se quoque copias quantas possit collecturum, si ab exercitu aliquod sibi militiae supplementum destinetur. Imperator continuo quingentos equites armatos eo dirigere decernit.
But the Milanese, thinking that Frederick, concerned with the siege of Crema, could not succor others who were hard-pressed elsewhere, went out with their troops, nearly 20,000 men, and surround with a siege a certain town toward Lake Como called Manerbe; they build ramparts, bring up engines, and strive by all means to hasten the overthrow of the fortress. But Count Gozwin, who at that time, ordered by the prince, was administering quite prudently the county of Seprio and of Martesana, sends his envoys to the court and announced the enemy’s attempt; he consults what needs to be done; he too will gather as many forces as he can, if from the army some reinforcement of soldiery be assigned to him. The emperor immediately decides to direct 500 armored horsemen thither.
The count also, gathering auxiliaries from his own men, coadunated no small army. And now, with matters composed, to show himself to the Milanese, to menace, to make neither battle nor suffer leisure, merely to hold the enemy back from his undertaking, and not to afford the opportunity of fighting, until the soldiery that was expected from the camp should supervene. The Ligurians, reckoning that, as the business demanded, the emperor would come with aid to their men in distress and that an indubitable battle would ensue, abandon the siege, and, entering upon flight, hasten to escape to the city.
Iter haec Placentini multis argumentis detecti sunt studio rerum novandarum niti, cum Mediolanensibus crebra inire conciliabula, frumentum aliaque usui necessaria clanculo illis providere, quin etiam aliquos de suis Cremensibus in auxilium destinasse. Imperator satius existimans habere detectos inimicos quam fictos amicos, pro eo quod, ut dicitur, nulla pestis efficatior ad nocendum quam familiaris inimicus, eosdem pro perfidia sua, ut levissimos nec in hac nec in illa parte fidem debitam habentes, hostes pronunciat.
Meanwhile the Piacentines were discovered by many proofs to be striving with zeal for novelties, holding frequent conclaves with the Milanese, secretly providing them with grain and other things necessary for use, nay even having assigned some of their own Cremonese to their aid. The emperor, deeming it better to have enemies unmasked than friends feigned, because, as it is said, no pest is more effective for harming than a familiar enemy, for their perfidy declares these same men enemies, as being most fickle and having the due faith neither on this side nor on that.
Verum res exigit, ut ad scisma Romanae aecclesiae, unde digressi sumus, scribendo redeamus. Porro in hoc negotio lectorem ammonitum esse cupimus, ut non de nostro dicto vel scripto veritatem huius rei metiatur, sed, quid rectius sit, quisve, ut ita dicam, iustius induit arma, ex collatione omnium scriptorum, quae undique media discurrerunt, proprio disquirat iudicio. Nos enim, si alterutrius partis res vel attolleremus vel extenuaremus, a proposito decidere videremur; nec utique sanum esset corpus reliquum hystoriae, si hanc partem velut principale membrum domestici favoris morbus haberet.
But the matter requires that we return in writing to the schism of the Roman church, whence we have digressed. Furthermore, in this business we wish the reader to be admonished not to measure the truth of this affair by our saying or writing, but to investigate by his own judgment, from a collation of all the writings which on all sides have run through the channels, what is more correct, and who, so to speak, more justly dons arms. For we, if we were either to exalt or to extenuate the circumstances of either party, would seem to fall away from our purpose; nor, assuredly, would the remaining body of the history be sound, if this part, as the principal member, were to have the disease of domestic favor.
Divisis, ut supra dictum est, in electione Romani pontificis cardinalibus, clero ac populo Romano, cum a suis consentaneis et sequacibus alter, id est Octavianus, in prima dominica mensis Octobris, alter, id est Rolandus, in XVIII. die mensis Septembris in episcopum consecratus fuisset, uterque litteras, quarum tenor subiectus est, ad declarandam rem per mundi partes destinavit.
With the cardinals, the clergy, and the Roman people divided, as was said above, in the election of the Roman pontiff, since by their own partisans and followers the one, that is, Octavianus, had been consecrated as bishop on the first Sunday of the month of October, the other, that is, Rolandus, on the 18th day of the month of September, each dispatched letters, the tenor of which is set forth below, to make the matter known through the parts of the world.
Victor episcopus, servus servorum Dei, venerabilibus fratribus, patriarchis, archiepiscopis, episcopis, et karissimis filiis, abbatibus, ducibus, marchionibus, comitibus et caeteris principibus et egregiae familiae imperiali, in sacratissima curia domni Friderici serenissimi et invictissimi Romanorum imperatoris commorantibus, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Quam et in quantum et aecclesiastici status decorem et honorem Romani imperii et nobilitatem omnium bonorum hactenus sincere dilexerimus et quae mutuae karitatis sint invicem frequenter exhibita, nequaquam credimus a vestrae magnitudinis excidisse memoria. Nunc autem tanto propensioris dilectionis efficatiam vobis et imperio cupimus exhibere, quanto Deo auctore ad maiorem conscendimus dignitatem.
Victor, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to the venerable brothers, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and most dear sons, abbots, dukes, margraves, counts and the other princes, and to the distinguished imperial family, dwelling in the most sacrosanct court of lord Frederick, the most serene and most unconquered emperor of the Romans, greeting and apostolic blessing. Both how and to what extent we have hitherto sincerely loved the ornament of the ecclesiastical state and the honor of the Roman Empire and the nobility of all good men, and what things of mutual charity have been frequently exhibited in turn, we by no means believe have fallen from the memory of your greatness. Now, however, we desire to exhibit to you and to the Empire the efficacy of a more forward-leaning affection, in proportion as, with God as author, we have ascended to a greater dignity.
Wherefore we very greatly beseech your universitas, in which we fully confide, that, for the reverence of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, and the constancy of ancient affection which is recognized to persevere inviolably between us, you would, by admonishing, entreat our most unconquered lord the emperor, that he not delay to provide for and to succor the empire committed to him by divine clemency and the Church of God, the spouse of Jesus Christ, of which he has been constituted by divinity the advocate and defender, lest, in so great a discord, the malice of adversaries should wickedly prevail, the little ship of blessed Peter be shaken by squalls and tempests in our time, and the imperial honor be in some measure overclouded. Moreover, we have deemed it worthy to intimate to your universitas how, the Lord granting, we were called to the office of the apostolate. Pope Adrian of happy memory, our predecessor, having entered the way of all flesh and having been buried in the basilica of blessed Peter, we all assembled to treat concerning the election of the Supreme Pontiff.
After a long conference and a prolonged deliberation, with divine clemency at length inspiring, by the election of our venerable brothers the bishops, of the presbyters—the cardinals of the holy Roman church—also of the Roman clergy, by the petition of that same people, by the assent likewise of the senatorial dignity, and moreover of the honored captains, to the supreme pontificate, with God assenting, we were canonically elected and placed in the apostolic see; and thereafter on the first Sunday of the month of October we received the consecration of blessing and the plenitude of our office. Wherefore we humbly beseech your whole body, that you aid us with prayers before Him, from whom is all power and the honor of dignities. If, however, on the part of that Roland, once chancellor, bound to William the Sicilian by conspiracy and conjuration against the church of God and the empire, who on day 12.
Alexander episcopus, servus servorum Dei, venerabili fratri Gerardo episcopo et dilectis filiis canonicis Bononiensis aecclesiae et legis doctoribus caeterisque magistris Bononiae commorantibus salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Aeterna et incommutabilis providentia Conditoris sanctam et immaculatam aecclesiam a suae fundationis exordio ea ratione voluit et ordine gubernari, ut unus ei pastor et institutor existeret, cui universi aecclesiarum prelati absque repugnantia subiacerent, et membra tamquam suo capiti coherentia ei se mirabili quadam unitate coniungerent et ab ipso nullatenus dissiderent. Qui vero apostolis suis pro eorum fidei firmitate promisit dicens: Ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem seculi, ille procul dubio aecclesiam suam, cuius ipsi apostoli magisterium assumpserunt, sua promissione fraudari nullo modo patietur, sed eam in suo statu et ordine, licet ad instar naviculae Petri fluctuare aliquando videatur, perpetuo faciet permanere.
Alexander the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to the venerable brother Gerard the bishop and to the beloved sons, the canons of the Bolognese church and the doctors of law, and to the other masters dwelling at Bologna, greeting and apostolic benediction. The eternal and incommutable providence of the Creator willed that the holy and immaculate church from the beginning of its foundation be governed by this plan and order: that there should exist for it one shepherd and institutor, to whom all the prelates of the churches, without repugnance, should be subject, and that the members, as cohering to their own head, should join themselves to him with a certain wondrous unity and by no means disagree from him. But he who promised to his apostles, for the firmness of their faith, saying: Behold, I am with you all days even unto the consummation of the age, he, without doubt, will in no way allow his church—whose magisterium the apostles themselves assumed—to be defrauded of his promise, but will cause it to remain perpetually in its own state and order, although, after the likeness of Peter’s little ship, it may sometimes seem to be tossed by waves.
Whence also, although at this time three false brothers, who indeed went out from us but were not of us, transfiguring themselves into angels of light, whereas they are of Satan, strive to tear and rend the seamless tunic of Christ, which surely he himself, in the person of the psalmist, asks to be snatched from the lions and to be rescued from the spear, and prays and begs to be delivered from the hand of the dog, nevertheless Christ, the author and head of the Church, protects it by provident governance as his one and only bride, and does not permit the ship of the excellent fisherman, although it is often shaken, to suffer shipwreck from the waves. Moreover, when our predecessor of good memory, Pope Adrian, on the Kalends of September (September 1), while we were at Anagni, paid the debt of nature and migrated from earth to heaven, from the depths to the heights at the Lord calling him to things above, he having been brought to Rome, and on September 4,
in the church of blessed Peter, with almost all the brethren present, he having been buried quite honorably, as is the custom, the brethren [all] began, and we with them, according to the custom of the church, to think more earnestly about substituting a pontiff in the same church; and, discussing that election for three days, at length upon our person—insufficient for this burden and by no means congruent to the pinnacle of so great a dignity—all, as many as there were, with only three excepted, namely Octavian, John of Saint Martin, and Guido of Cremona, God being witness, since we do not contrive a mendacity but speak the mere truth as it is, agreed in concord and unanimity and, with the clergy and the people assenting, elected us as Roman Pontiff. But two, namely John and Guido, whom we have noted above, naming a third, Octavian, were stubbornly aiming at his election. Whence Octavian himself burst forth into such audacity and insanity that the mantle, with which Odo, prior of the deacons, had clothed us—reluctant and resisting, because we saw our insufficiency—according to the custom of the church, he, as if possessed, violently shook off from our neck with his own hands and carried it away with him amid tumultuous roarings.
Moreover, when certain of the senators had beheld so great a crime, one of them, kindled by the divine spirit, snatched the mantle itself from the hand of the raging man. But he, at once, turned his flaming eyes, roaring, upon a certain chaplain of his, who had come instructed and prepared for this, shouting and signaling that he should hastily bring the mantle which he had fraudulently carried with him. And when this had of course been delivered without delay, the same Octavian, with the cap removed and his head bowed, all the brothers either removed from that place or withdrawn by their own will, ambitiously took up the mantle by the hands of the same chaplain and of a certain cleric of his; and he himself, since there was no other, proved a coadjutor to the chaplain and the cleric in this work.
But we believe it befell by divine judgment that the part of the mantle which ought to have covered the front, while many looked on and laughed, was covering the back; and when he himself had most eagerly wished to amend this, because, carried outside himself, he could not find the mantle’s head-opening, he led the fringes around his neck, so that at least the mantle itself might seem in some way to be hanging upon him. And thus it came to pass that, just as his mind was twisted and his intention oblique, so crosswise and obliquely the mantle was donned as a testimony of his damnation. This done, the gates of the church, which had been made fast, are unbarred, and wedge-formations of armed men, whom, as the affair showed, he had hired by a largess of money, with swords unsheathed ran in with immense clamor, and that deadly pestilence, because he did not have cardinal bishops, was walled about by a troop of armed soldiers.
But the brothers, seeing so immense a crime and unheard-of from the ages, unexpectedly, and fearing lest they be hacked to pieces by the hired soldiers, withdrew together with us into the fortification of the church; and there, for nine continuous days, in order that we might not go out from there freely, he caused us, with the assent of certain senators whom the money proffered had corrupted, to be guarded day and night by an armed band with all diligence. Yet, with the people incessantly and continually acclaiming and raging against the senators for such impiety with great enormity, we were snatched from the custody of that fortification; but in a more narrow and safer place across the Tiber the same senators, money having been received, set us. And when we had made delay there for nearly three days, the whole people no longer at all enduring such treachery and malice, the senators with the nobles and the people, coming, escorted us and our brothers through the City magnificently and honorifically with immense praises and panegyrics, the bells also everywhere in our passage being struck; and so at length rescued from the violence of the pursuer and restored to our liberty, on the following Lord’s Day, our venerable brothers Gregory of Sabina, Hubaldus of Ostia, Bernard, Walther, Julius, and B., bishops, as well as cardinals, abbots, priors, judges, advocates, scriniaries, the primicerius and the school of singers, nobles also and a certain part of the people of the City having been gathered together at Nympha not far from the City, we received the gift of consecration and, as is the custom in the Roman church, there we were magnificently and solemnly crowned with the pontifical kingdom.
Moreover, the aforesaid Octavian, when, for his consecration—nay rather, his execration—both while he was in the City and after he secretly departed from the City, he had convoked many bishops, was able to have none at all, save one, namely the bishop of Ferentum, to confirm his temerity and madness. He wished, however, to allure some bishops by imperial threats, some by laical violence, and some indeed by monies and blandishments; but he advanced nothing, the Lord hindering. Whence he is not yet able to find, though he strives in every way, someone who would lay upon him the hand of execration and make himself the author of so great presumption and impiety.
But the aforesaid John and Guido, wrapped in the darkness of blindness, since it is written: ÔWhen the sinner shall have come into the depth [of evils], he will contemnÕ, do not even thus repent of their damnable presumption, but with obstinate perfidy they venerate that same Octavian, whom they have set up for themselves as a statue, and, forsaking the unity of the church, they presume even to this hour to adore him as though an idol or simulacrum. He himself, prefiguring the times of Antichrist, has been lifted up above himself to such a degree that he has even sat in the temple of God, showing himself as though he were God; and many have with bodily eyes beheld the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, not without a great outpouring of tears. For our part, recognizing our infirmity and our neediness of virtues, we cast our thought upon the Lord, hoping and trusting more fully in the mercy of Christ, that He will make His holy church—for which He Himself appeared in the substance of our mortality, that He might present it to Himself not having wrinkle or spot—rejoice with the tranquillity desired; and when the flood of all storms has been stilled, there will be nothing that can any longer withstand her, when her only Spouse shall will to drive away whatever is cloudy and noxious.
Now therefore, because we distrust the quality of our own merits and have full confidence in your honesty and religion, we ask that our infirmity be helped by your prayers and by those of the universal Church, earnestly beseeching and more attentively admonishing your charity through apostolic writings, that, as Catholic men, you set yourselves as unassailable walls for the house of the Lord, and, standing immovably in the devotion and fidelity of your mother, the sacrosanct Roman Church, you by no means withdraw from her unity. But if the aforesaid man of impiety should send to your parts any writings of his damnation, reject them as they are to be rejected, and strive to scorn and cast them away as vain and sacrilegious. Let your discernment know, moreover, that we have bound with the bond of anathema and excommunication the above-named Octavian, an apostate and schismatic, on the eighth day from our consecration—for then we fixed for him the term of coming back to his senses and of returning to the unity of Mother Church—as disobedient and contumacious; and likewise those who would presume to lay hands upon him—not, we say, hands of consecration, but of execration—and, by the common will and counsel of our brothers the bishops and cardinals, with candles lit and the assembly of clerics gathered in the church, we condemned them with their author the devil.
Venerabilibus in Christo fratribus, patriarchis, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, ducibus, principibus, prepositis, prioribus et caeteris aecclesiarum prelatis, ad quos litterae istae pervenerint, Ymarus Tusculanus episcopus prior episcoporum, Iohannes tituli Sanctorum Silvestri et Martini, Gwido Cremensis tituli Sancti Calixti, sanctae Romanae aecclesiae presbiteri cardinales, Reimundus diaconus cardinalis Sanctae Mariae in Via lata et Sy. Sanctae Mariae in Dompnica et Sublacus abbas perpetuam in Domino salutem. Ex quo contra honorem aecclesiae Dei et imperii amicitia inter domnum papam Adrianum et Wilhelmum Siculum apud Beneventum facta est, dissensio et discordia non modica inter cardinales sacrosanctae Romanae aecclesiae non sine causa oborta est, nobis scilicet, qui honorem et dignitatem sanctae Dei aecclesiae et imperii nullatenus diminui volebamus, amicitiae, quae facta fuerat in detrimentum aecclesiae et imperii, nequaquam consentientibus, aliis vero, qui, pecunia et multis promissionibus obcecati, iam dicto Siculo tenebantur astricti, conventionem ipsam taliter ut diximus fabricatam nequiter defendentibus et quam plures in partem sui erroris attrahentibus, nostro conatui et voluntati totis viribus pertinaciter resistentibus. Proinde procedente tempore, cum iam fama ferret imperatorem Italiam intrasse et plurimam eius partem suae potestati subiugasse, predicti fratres Siculo astricti domnum papam sollicitare ac circumvenire omni sagacitate coeperunt, qualiter aliqua occasione assumpta domnus imperator et omnes sequaces eius excommunicationi subderentur et nos ad id faciendum una cum eis iuramento astringeremur.
To the venerable in Christ brothers, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, princes, provosts, priors, and the other prelates of churches, to whom these letters shall have come, Ymarus, Tusculan bishop, prior of the bishops; John of the title of Saints Sylvester and Martin; Guido of Cremona of the title of Saint Callixtus, presbyter-cardinals of the holy Roman church; Raymond, cardinal deacon of Saint Mary in Via Lata; and Sy. of Saint Mary in Domnica, and abbot of Subiaco, perpetual salvation in the Lord. Since, against the honor of the church of God and of the empire, an amity between lord Pope Adrian and William the Sicilian was made at Benevento, no small dissension and discord arose, not without cause, among the cardinals of the sacrosanct Roman church—namely we, who were unwilling that the honor and dignity of the holy church of God and of the empire be diminished in any way, by no means consenting to the amity which had been made to the detriment of church and empire; but others, who, blinded by money and many promises, were held bound to the already-said Sicilian, wickedly defending the convention itself, forged in the manner we have said, and drawing very many into the party of their error, stubbornly resisting with all their forces our endeavor and will. Therefore, as time went on, when rumor already reported that the emperor had entered Italy and had subjected a very great part of it to his power, the aforesaid brothers bound to the Sicilian began to solicit and to circumvent the lord pope with all sagacity—how, a certain pretext having been assumed, the lord emperor and all his followers might be subjected to excommunication, and we, together with them, might be bound by oath to do this.
But we on the contrary said that rather the Sicilian was to be excommunicated, who had violently taken away all the rights of the Church, both spiritual and temporal, than the emperor, who was laboring faithfully to recover the rights of the Roman Church and of the Empire and to bring the Church back from servitude to liberty. Hearing this, the favorers of the Sicilian fell silent with blush. Therefore, that counsel having been thus quashed by our zeal and exact diligence, and thereafter, our venerable brother Octavian, then presbyter-cardinal of the holy Roman Church, now pontiff of the Apostolic See, together with brother William, presbyter-cardinal of Saint Peter in Chains, discharging a legation to the imperial celsitude, the lord pope, with those consenting to him and with the supporters of the aforesaid William, left the City and came to Anagni; where then at last, in a manifest conspiracy, all the aforesaid supporters of William confirmed by oath that the person of the emperor should be subjected to excommunication, and from that time onward immutably to gainsay his honor and will even unto death, and, if it should befall that the lord pope should depart this life, that they would elect no one to the pontificate except from those who had conspired.
Moreover, they likewise constrained the bishops round about by an oath, that they should not lay hands in consecration upon any elected person, unless upon one to whom the Sicilian sect consented. Afterwards, our already often-mentioned father Adrian, having died at Anagni on the Kalends of September, we all convened thither; and when no small contention arose about the body, whether to bury it there or to carry it to Rome, at length, the body having been conveyed to Rome, first in the word of truth we unanimously made such a pact and committed it to writing as now follows:
ÔIn nomine Domini amen. Convenerunt episcopi, presbiteri et diaconi cardinales sanctae Romanae aecclesiae et promiserunt sibi invicem in verbo veritatis, quod de electione futuri pontificis tractabunt secundum consuetudinem istius aecclesiae, scilicet quod segregentur aliquae personae de eisdem fratribus, qui audiant voluntatem singulorum et diligenter inquirant et fideliter describant, et, si Deus dederit, quod concorditer possint convenire de aliqua persona eorundem fratrum, fiat cum bono; sin autem, tractetur tunc de extranea persona, et si concorditer poterimus convenire, bene, sin autem, nullus procedat sine communi consensu; et hoc observetur sine fraude et malo ingenioÕ. Tali pacto in verbo veritatis firmato, post humatum corpus in aecclesia beati Petri ad eligendum pontificem convenimus et iuxta predictam consuetudinem personas, quae singulorum voluntates diligenter inquirerent et audirent ac describerent, segregavimus. Sed cum propter conspirationem adversae partis electio lente procederet, tertia die fere transacta, ad hoc tandem deventum est, quod XIIII cardinales ex adverso, qui sacramento constricti tenebantur, Rolandum cancellarium nominaverunt.
ÔIn the name of the Lord, amen. The bishops, presbyters, and deacons, cardinals of the holy Roman church, convened and promised one another on the word of truth that they would treat concerning the election of the future pontiff according to the custom of this church, namely, that certain persons be segregated from those same brothers, who should hear the will of individuals and diligently inquire and faithfully record; and, if God grants that they may be able harmoniously to agree upon some person of those same brothers, let it be done to good effect; but if not, then let it be treated concerning an outside person, and if we can harmoniously agree, well; but if not, let no one proceed without the common consent; and let this be observed without fraud and ill contrivanceÕ. Such a pact having been ratified on the word of truth, after the body had been interred in the church of blessed Peter, we assembled to elect a pontiff, and according to the aforesaid custom we segregated persons who would diligently inquire into and hear and record the wishes of individuals. But since, on account of the conspiracy of the opposing party, the election was proceeding slowly, with the third day almost elapsed, it finally came to this: that 14 cardinals on the opposing side, who were held bound by an oath, nominated Roland the chancellor.
But we, numbering 9, who were free from the nefarious oath, recognizing that our venerable brother Octavian, presbyter cardinal—a man indeed honorable and religious—was worthy and useful for the governance of the Apostolic See and for restoring and preserving the unity of concord and peace between Church and Empire, elected him. When the matter was being handled thus, and we perceived that the opposing party wished utterly to transgress the pact which had been ratified “in the word of truth,” recalling the aforesaid pact to their memory, by the authority of God Almighty and of all the saints and our own, we wholly interdicted them, that they should in no way, without the common consent of all, as the agreement contains, invest anyone with the mantle; and Roland the chancellor, by the same authority, we likewise forbade, that he should not accept it. But when they despised our words and admonitions and hastened to clothe Roland the chancellor with the mantle, although he was not yet vested, we—wishing rather to oppose their malice than to consent to it, and by no means permitting what they were attempting amiss—at the petition of the Roman people, by the election of the entire clergy, with the assent also of almost the whole senate and of all the captains, barons, and nobles, both dwelling within the City and outside the City, clothed our elect with the mantle and placed him, enthroned, on the seat of blessed Peter; from there, with the whole people acclaiming, the clergy chanting a hymn to God, and all things solemnly accomplished, we escorted him with honor to his palace.
But the cardinals of the opposing party, withdrawing, betook themselves into the castle of Saint Peter and there remained enclosed for eight days and more. Thence afterward, brought out by the senators, they withdrew outside the City, and on the 12. day thereafter—such as has not been heard of in the age—in the castle by the name Cisterna, between Aricia and Terracina, they mantled Roland the chancellor, and on the following Sunday they execrated; and immediately, sending messengers through all Italy, they utterly dissuaded the bishops from coming to the consecration of our elect, threatening them with excommunication and deposition in perpetuity.
Who nevertheless on the first Sunday of the month of October, by the authority of God, was honorably consecrated. How the matter was done we have intimated to your fraternity, adding nothing beyond the truth, with Him as witness who cannot be deceived; and if an angel from heaven were to evangelize otherwise, he would utterly stray from the truth. Nevertheless, omitting many things which were done, we signify these to you as briefly as we can, lest we burden your ears with a more prolix page.
Friderico Dei gratia glorioso, illustri, magnifico et sublimi Romanorum imperatori Gregorius Sabinensis, Hubaldus Ostiensis, Iulius Prenestinus, Bernhardus Portuensis, Waltherus Albanensis episcopi, Hubertus tituli Sanctae..., A. item Priscae, Iohannes tituli Sanctorum Iohannis et Pauli, Heinricus tituli Sanctorum Nerei et Achillei, Ildebertus tituli basilicae XII apostolorum, Iohannes tituli Sanctae Anastasiae, Bonadies tituli Sancti Crisogoni, Albertus tituli Sancti Laurentii in Lucina et Willelmus tituli Sancti Petri ad Vincula presbiteri, Oddo Sancti Georii ad Velum aureum, Ro. Sanctae Luciae in Septasolis, Iacinctus Sanctae Mariae in Cosmidin, Oddo Sancti Nicolai in Carcere Tullii, Ardenius Sancti Theodori, Bo. Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani, C. Sancti Adriani, Petrus Sancti Eustachii et I°. diaconi cardinales, voluntate et spiritu in Domino congregati, salutem et gloriosam de inimicis victoriam. Quanto excellentiae vestrae maior a Deo collata est et attributa potestas et quanto sublimiorem inter mortales dignitatis locum constat vos obtinere, tanto amplius imperialem convenit maiestatem, sacrosanctam Romanam aecclesiam specialem et unicam matrem vestram in omnibus honorare et ei semper et praesertim necessitatis tempore salubriter atque utiliter providere. Quid autem diebus istis in eadem aecclesia Romana contigerit et quam inauditum facinus ab his, quos filios reputabat, aliquantis diebus transactis fuerit perpetratum, dignum, immo dignissimum est, nos imperiali celsitudini nostris litteris aperire.
To Frederick, by the grace of God glorious, illustrious, magnificent, and sublime Emperor of the Romans, Gregory of Sabina, Hubaldus of Ostia, Julius of Praeneste, Bernhard of Porto, Walther of Albano, bishops, Hubert of the title of Saint..., A., likewise of Prisca, John of the title of the Saints John and Paul, Henry of the title of the Saints Nereus and Achilleus, Ildebert of the title of the basilica of the Twelve Apostles, John of the title of Saint Anastasia, Bonadies of the title of Saint Chrysogonus, Albert of the title of Saint Lawrence in Lucina, and William of the title of Saint Peter in Chains, presbyters, Oddo of Saint George at the Golden Veil, Ro. of Saint Lucy in Septasolis, Hyacinth of Saint Mary in Cosmidin, Oddo of Saint Nicholas in the Tullian Prison, Ardenius of Saint Theodore, Bo. of the Saints Cosmas and Damian, C. of Saint Adrian, Peter of Saint Eustace, and I°. cardinal deacons, gathered in will and in spirit in the Lord, greeting and glorious victory over enemies. The greater a power has been conferred and attributed by God to your Excellency, and the loftier a place of dignity it is agreed you hold among mortals, so much the more it befits the imperial majesty to honor in all things the sacrosanct Roman Church, your special and only mother, and to provide for her always, and especially in time of necessity, in a healthful and useful way. But what in these days has happened in that Roman Church, and what unheard-of crime was perpetrated, a few days having passed, by those whom she reckoned as sons, it is fitting—indeed most fitting—that we lay open to your imperial loftiness by our letters.
Recently indeed, when our lord Pope Adrian, of good memory, on the Kalends of September at Anagni, had paid the debt of nature and had migrated from earth to heaven, from the depths to the heights, the Lord calling him to the things above, three false brothers—namely Octavian, and John of Saint Martin, and Guy of Cremona—who indeed went out from us, but were not of us, transforming themselves into angels of light, since they are of Satan, et cetera. And below: To this let your sublime favor know that [Otto], the count palatine, taking occasion from the intrusion of Octavian, greatly harassed our aforesaid lord and us all, and strove to rend the Church of God and in many ways to disturb it without reasonable cause.
Indeed he violently entered Campania and the patrimony of the blessed Peter with the intruded and apostatic Octavian, and strove by whatever means he could to subjugate that land to him. Therefore we and the whole Church of God with us humbly beseech your majesty, that, such a violent intrusion being thus understood and diligently inspected, you diligently consider how, for the salvation of your soul and the honor of the empire, it is to be proceeded in so great a matter. Consider and take heed how you ought to conduct yourselves toward the sacrosanct Roman Church and toward her sole spouse, our lord Jesus Christ, without whom no one can obtain an earthly kingdom nor acquire an eternal one, and how you ought, by the office of imperial dignity, to protect her from assailants and especially from schismatics and heretics by every means, and to defend her.
Indeed we intend to honor you in all ways as the special defender and patron of the Roman Church, and we aspire, with God’s inspiration, to whatever we can for the increase of your glory. We ask, moreover, and more urgently supplicate, that you love and honor your mother, the holy Roman Church, and that you strive, in such ways as befit imperial excellence, for her peace and tranquility, and that you in no wise foster the so great iniquity of the aforesaid invader and schismatic.
Fridericus ancipiti malo novi scismatis permotus, consilio principum decrevit dare operam, ne quid exinde seu status aecclesiae seu res publica imperii detrimenti caperet. Audiens itaque utrumque electum in episcopatus ordinem consecratum, alterum ab altero excommunicationis sententia condempnatum, sine iudicio aecclesiae controversiam terminari posse non putavit. Auctoritatem autem congregandi concilii exemplo antiquorum imperatorum, verbi causa Iustiniani, Theodosii, Karoli, sibi congruere putans litisque decisionem legittimam esse non posse nisi partibus hinc inde congregatis considerans, ad citationem amborum venerabiles viros et prudentes Danielem Bragensem et Herimannum Ferdensem episcopos dirigit cum litteris, quarum exemplar hoc est:
Frederick, stirred by the twofold evil of the new schism, by the counsel of the princes resolved to apply his efforts, lest from it either the status of the church or the republic of the empire should suffer detriment. Hearing, therefore, that both the elected had been consecrated into the order of the episcopate, and that the one had been condemned by the other with a sentence of excommunication, he did not think the controversy could be terminated without the judgment of the church. But thinking that the authority of convening a council, by the example of the ancient emperors—by way of example, Justinian, Theodosius, Charles—befitted himself, and considering that a legitimate decision of the suit could not be had unless the parties on both sides were assembled, he dispatches for the citation of both the venerable and prudent men Daniel, bishop of Braga, and Hermann, bishop of Verden, with letters, the exemplar of which is this:
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus Rolando cancellario caeterisque cardinalibus, qui eum elegerunt Romanum pontificem, salutem et omne bonum. Quoniam divina preordinante clementia Romani imperii gubernacula suscepimus, oportet ut in omnibus viis nostris ipsius legem custodiamus, cuius munere, cuius voluntate dignitatis nostrae apicem adepti sumus. In hoc itaque sacratissimo proposito constituti, cum omnibus aecclesiis in imperio nostro constitutis debeamus patrocinari, sacrosanctae Romanae aecclesiae tanto propensius debemus providere, quanto ipsius cura et defensio a divina providentia creditur esse commissa nobis specialius.
Frederick, by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans and ever august, to Roland the chancellor and the other cardinals who elected him Roman pontiff, greeting and every good. Since, with divine clemency preordaining, we have taken up the helm of the Roman empire, it behooves us to keep in all our ways his law, by whose gift and by whose will we have attained the apex of our dignity. Established therefore in this most sacrosanct resolve, whereas we ought to be patrons to all the churches established in our empire, we ought so much the more earnestly to provide for the most holy Roman Church, inasmuch as its care and defense are believed by divine providence to have been entrusted to us more specially.
For this reason, concerning the discord which has arisen among you in appointing the Roman pontiff, we are very greatly grieved, fearing lest on the occasion of this schism the Church of Christ, redeemed by blood, should have to be torn asunder, especially since the strength of the Church seems to totter abroad, inasmuch as its unity is inwardly rent by a domestic scissure. But that we may exhibit to this pestilence a remedy fitting and pleasing to God, by the counsel of religious men we have convoked a general curia and assembly to be celebrated at Pavia on the Octave of Epiphany. To which we have summoned from our whole empire and from other kingdoms—namely England, France, Hungary, Denmark—archbishops, bishops, abbots, and religious and God‑fearing men, to the end that, with every secular judgment removed, this so great business of the Church may be quieted by the sentence of ecclesiastical persons alone, so that the honor owed to God may thereby be rendered, and the Roman Church may not be deprived by anyone of her integrity and justice, nor the condition of the City, which is the head of our empire, be disquieted.
Accordingly we commit to your erudition and, on behalf of God Almighty and of the whole Catholic Church, we expressly command that you come to the same curia or assembly, to hear and to receive the sentence of ecclesiastical persons. For God is our witness that in this court, neither out of love nor out of hatred for any person, do we seek anything other than the honor of God and the unity of his Church. But if you should be willing to come, for the sake of examination, to so renowned a convention of the Church, our most dear princes of the Catholic Church, Hermannus Ferdensis, Daniel Bragensis, venerable fathers and bishops, whom we have sent to you from our palace, together with the count palatine, our kinsman, and our other legates, will furnish you a secure safe-conduct.
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus Hartmanno Brixinensi episcopo salutem et omne bonum. Quod in passione sua Christus duobus gladiis contentus fuit, hoc in Romana aecclesia et in imperio Romano credimus mirabili providentia declarasse, cum per haec duo rerum capita et principia totus mundus tam in divinis quam in humanis ordinetur. Cumque unus Deus, unus papa, unus imperator sufficiat et una aecclesia Dei esse debeat, quod sine dolore cordis dicere non possumus, duos apostolicos in Romana aecclesia habere videmur.
Frederick, by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans and ever Augustus, to Hartmann, bishop of Brixen, greeting and every good. That in his Passion Christ was content with two swords, this we believe he, by marvelous providence, has declared in the Roman Church and in the Roman Empire, since through these two heads and principles of things the whole world is ordered both in divine and in human affairs. And since one God, one pope, one emperor suffices and there ought to be one Church of God, which we cannot say without pain of heart, we seem to have two apostolics in the Roman Church.
Accordingly, with Pope Adrian having died on the Kalends of September, the cardinals, who seemed to be immovable columns upon which the holy and universal Church might most firmly lean, seeking not the things of God but their own and rending the unity of the Church, chose two pontiffs and consecrated both. For on account of so great and so pernicious a loss to the Church, surely the whole Italian Church is thrown into turmoil, and the dissensions, with a schism arisen in the head, would already have flowed down into the lower members and defiled the whole body of the Church, had not we, by the counsel and aid of religious men who are led by the Spirit of God, opposed the rigor of justice to so shameless an iniquity. Therefore, lest in so great a crisis of discord the universal Church be endangered, the Roman Empire, which by divine clemency has been provided as a remedy for so pernicious a disease, ought diligently to provide for the salvation of all and, lest such great evils loom over the Church of God, skillfully forestall future contingencies.
Therefore, all the bishops, both Italian and Teutonic, and the other princes and religious men who seemed to have zeal for God and for the Church having been gathered together into one, we diligently investigated what deed was needed, truly taking from the decrees of the Roman pontiffs and the statutes of the Church that, a schism having arisen in the Roman Church from the dissension of two apostolics, we ought to summon both and to decide the lawsuit according to the sentence and counsel of the orthodox. Therefore, by the counsel of all the bishops and the other princes who were present, we proclaimed a solemn curia and a general convocation of all ecclesiastical men to be celebrated at Pavia on the Octave of Epiphany, to which we have summoned both who call themselves Roman pontiffs, and all the bishops of our empire and of the other realms, namely of France, England, Spain, and also Hungary, so that by a just examination in their presence, before us, it may be declared which of them ought by right to obtain the governance of the universal Church. But because for restoring the unity of the Church your wisdom is exceedingly necessary to us, so that we may in no way be without it, we most earnestly entreat you, and by entreating admonish you, that for the fidelity of the Church and the Empire, every pretext removed, you come to the aforesaid curia, that at your arrival the unity and peace and tranquility of the Church may be restored; meanwhile, however, may you incline your assent to neither party of the aforesaid fissure, nor in any way receive it as just and reasonable.
Iam vero ad ea, quae apud Cremam gesta sunt, res exigit ut revertamur. Cremenses, ut supra dictum est, tam in vadibus quam in captivis suis male affecti, cum ab excursibus et audatia temere paulolum quievissent, alio ingenio alioque commento nostros fallere cogitant et subvertere. Quedam enim instrumenta fabricant, muscipulis quidem simillima, sed pro qualitate humani corporis fortiora, eaque per vias circaque vallum dispergunt, quibus ignari multi herentes aut capi facile poterant aut occidi.
Now indeed the matter requires that we return to those things which were done at Crema. The people of Crema, as was said above, having been ill‑treated both in their pledges and in their captives, when from raids and rash audacity they had somewhat quieted, think by another ingenium and another commentum to deceive and overthrow our men. For they fabricate certain instruments, very similar indeed to mousetraps, but stronger, to suit the quality of the human body, and they scatter them along the roads and around the rampart, by which many, unaware, sticking fast, could easily either be taken or be killed.
Likewise they cover very many fosses here and there from above with a light covering, into which those who slipped were similarly either taken or killed. Such and many other latrocinal tricks, as much for rapines as for arsons of the machines, being continually perpetrated by those who were within the fortification, Frederick was all the more provoked both by their craftiness and their audacity. And because by penury he had despaired of taking the city—for they abounded in grain—again he turned his counsel to force and to arms, all the battle-lines desiring this most of all, who now, affected by the tedium of a long siege and worn down by various labors, were held by sorrow and wished that the war be ended in whatever way.
Itaque, admotis omnibus machinis, ad occupandam civitatem hortatur exercitum, turresque in excelsum erectas, ferro variaque materia undique tectas, ut et pondere stabiles essent neque ignibus expugnarentur, super aggeres collocat, iaculatoribus et sagittariis militumque fortissimis plenas, qui cum non conspicerentur, ipsi eos, qui vel super murum astarent vel in civitate deambularent, facillime cernerent telisque appeterent, cum illi neque a vertice venientes sagittas facile declinare neque ulcisci possent, quos non viderent. Quotiens autem ignito ferri pondere et adunco, quo levius hereret, machinas attemptabant, qui desuper erant aquis ignem restinguendo, uncos autem et hamos ferri contis proceris et sudibus dissolvendo conatus eorum in irritum revocabant. In his enim falces alligarant, ut, si quid de materia, quae contra ictus machinarum turribus alligata fuerat, ignis corripuisset, statim absciderent.
Therefore, with all the machines brought up, he urges the army to seize the city, and he places upon the ramparts towers raised to a great height, covered on all sides with iron and with various material, so that they might be stable by their weight and not be stormed by fires, filled with javelin-throwers and archers and the bravest of the soldiers, who, while they themselves were not seen, could most easily discern and assail with missiles those who either stood upon the wall or walked about in the city, since they could neither easily dodge the arrows coming from the summit nor avenge themselves upon men whom they did not see. Whenever, moreover, they attacked the machines with a heated mass of iron and hooked, so that it might cling the more readily, those who were above, by extinguishing the fire with waters, and by loosening the iron hooks and grapnels with long poles and stakes, rendered their efforts null. For to these they had fastened sickles, so that, if the fire had seized any of the material which had been bound to the towers against the blows of the machines, they might immediately cut it away.
Et quoniam ad finem huius obsidionis tendimus, ad alia properantes, ultimum prelium, quod et maximum, paulisper attingere libet, pro eo quod et atrox et vario eventu gestum est. Imperator cernens oppidanos neque se ipsos misereri neque civitati parcere velle, generalem aggressionem fieri statuit. Electis ergo de singulis agminibus viris fortissimis, intra machinas turrium eos collocat, variis quidem locis, alios superiores, alios inferiores, ut, dum inferiores civitatem per murum ingressuri pontes applicarent, superiores eos iaculis et sagittis, quo minus ab hostibus laederentur, defenderent.
And since we are tending to the end of this siege, hastening to other matters, it pleases me to touch for a little upon the last battle, which also was the greatest, because it was atrocious and was conducted with a varied outcome. The emperor, perceiving that the townsmen were willing neither to take pity on themselves nor to spare the city, decided that a general aggression should be made. Therefore, with the bravest men chosen from each column, he places them inside the engines of the towers, in various positions indeed, some higher, others lower, so that, while the lower men, about to enter the city across the wall, should apply the bridges, the upper men might defend them with javelins and arrows, to the end that they be less harmed by the enemies.
The towers themselves were marvelous for their excessive height, raised up more than 100 feet, capable of many men in each several story. He distributed the rest of the army around the circuit of the wall, giving orders that, when the bridges began to be brought up, they too, each man, should assault the spot opposite which he stood, and attempt either to transcend the wall or to irrupt. He himself indeed arranged matters thus on both sides.
But the people of the city, after they saw the town on every side surrounded and all things gleaming with arms, and the trumpeters also of all the battalions and the standard-bearers assembled, so that, the signal being given, they might assail them from all sides, themselves too not sluggishly fortify themselves, and with great audacity cover themselves both upon the walls and within their engines, which they call “cats,” so that, when the bridges were brought up, they might either seize them or cast them down, and in diverse ways deter those striving to climb the wall by ladders, then displaying great feats of spirit, lest even in extremest calamities they should seem inferior to our men. Already the bridges [albeit with very great difficulty] had been brought up, already the whole battle-line was setting foot upon the wall. Then the Cremonese, cleverly hiding themselves within their own engines, receive the foremost heavily with darts both from below and from above, but frighten the rear with blows of the artillery, they scatter the line of those fighting before the walls, and those who were striving to climb by ladders and other instruments, being pushed, were rolled down from the wall.
But neither did valor fail our men in adverse circumstances, nor savagery the Cremonese. Namely, one of our soldiers, by the name Bertolf of Arras, who among the first had descended by a leap from the bridge into the city, surrounded on all sides by enemies, while by fighting he had shown himself most brave and had alone pursued many as far as a great part of the city, was struck down from behind by a certain man with a long axe. For in the front, as he was rushing through the midst, all avoided him, fearing and at the same time admiring the man’s audacity.
Whom at length, when they had slain, one of them, cruelly raging against the dead, stripped off the skin of his head (the scalp), as it was said, and, previously most handsomely haired, affixed it to his helmet—he himself foul and most indecent, moved neither by the man’s fortitude nor pitying the lot of the human condition. Another also, with hands and feet cut off—a grievous mockery—they allowed to crawl through the streets. Moreover, those who tried to overpass the wall, although each one singly was worthy of memory, yet the bravest of all was shown to be Otto, Count of the Palace, of Bavaria, who, though often repulsed from the wall and as often, before others, returning to the undertaken work, by the virtue of his fortitude was an ornament to this whole calamity.
Yet the Cremonese did not rejoice with impunity nor for long, having availed themselves of this fortune. For from the prominence of our towers, by various missiles, so many townsmen were that day either killed or wounded that, driven from the anterior wall, they fled within the fortification, which was girded by a second wall, and then for the first time despaired of their affairs.
Imperator videns excidium civitatis vicinum esse - iam enim vires eorum et audatiam labor, metus et calamitas fregerant - concilium, quod in octava epiphaniae celebrandum fuerat, distulit animumque totum ad subversionem civitatis laxavit. Iam autem valida iuvenum manus collapsa fuerat, multique in dies singulos iaculis et sagittis occumbebant, cum, ut dictum est, ipsi contra nichil mali nostris facere possent. In tantis ergo rerum angustiis consilio necessitatis adhibito Peregrini Aquilegiensis aecclesiae patriarchae simulque Heinrici ducis Baioariae et Saxoniae colloquium expetunt, petentibusque locus et hora datur, quando sapientiores et maiores civitatis se dictorum heroum conspectui presentarent. Mane facto, designata statione cum pars utraque adesset, patriarcha, vir eruditus plurimisque [bonis] virtutibus adornatus, et cui preter officii auctoritatem magna facundiae gratia inerat, prior ad eos ita orsus memoratur:
The emperor, seeing the destruction of the city to be near at hand — for now their forces and daring had been broken by toil, fear, and calamity — postponed the council which had been due to be celebrated on the Octave of Epiphany, and gave free rein with his whole mind to the overthrow of the city. But already the strong band of the youths had collapsed, and many with each several day were falling to javelins and arrows, since, as has been said, they themselves could do nothing harmful in return against our men. Therefore, in such straits of affairs, the counsel of necessity being applied, they seek a colloquy with Peregrinus, patriarch of the church of Aquileia, and likewise with Henry, duke of Bavaria and Saxony; and to the petitioners a place and time are given, when the wiser and greater men of the city might present themselves to the presence of the aforesaid heroes. When morning had come, the station being designated and each party being present, the patriarch — a learned man and adorned with many [good] virtues, and in whom, besides the authority of his office, there resided a great grace of eloquence — is recorded to have begun first to them thus:
ÔSi quidem non viderem vos ad sentiendum quae pacis sunt esse incitatos, neque populi Cremensis puriorem sincerissimamque vos partem, numquam processissem ad vos neque consulere confisus essem. Supervacua enim, ut ait quidam, est de utilibus oratio, quando omnium habitatorum conspirat ad deteriora consensus. Quia vero aliquos quidem aetas malorum belli nescios facit, quosdam vero inconsiderata spes libertatis, nonnullos quoque avaritia succendit, paucorum bonorum consilio providendum est, quemadmodum ipsi ab hoc errore corrigantur. Quod si ab initio suscepti belli provisum non est, sera saltem penitentia corrigat excessum, ut qui in portu precavere tempestatem noluistis, vel inter medias procellas pro tempore rebus fractis consulatis.
If indeed I did not see you incited to perceive the things that belong to peace, nor that you are the purer and most sincere part of the people of Cremona, I would never have come forth to you, nor would I have trusted to offer counsel. Superfluous indeed, as a certain one says, is the speech about useful things, when the consensus of all the inhabitants conspires toward worse things. But since indeed age makes some unaware of the evils of war, thoughtless hope of liberty sways others, and avarice inflames not a few, provision must be made by the counsel of a few good men as to how they themselves may be corrected from this error. But if provision was not made from the beginning of the undertaken war, let late repentance at least correct the excess, so that you who were unwilling to ward off the tempest while in port may at least, amid the very gales, for the time being, take counsel for your shattered affairs.
Let there come over you, if not pity for your city already lost and now near to subversion, at least compassion for your sons still surviving and for your consorts. Spare the remnants of men, if you were unwilling to spare the dear approaches of your fathers’ ramparts! Having experienced the ferocity of the Germans, their virtue and the magnitudes of their bodies, do not doubt that they bear spirits greater than their bodies and have souls contemptuous of death.
Briefly I will set forth to you what I think. It is pleasing that you bow your necks to the victorious prince; it is expedient that you place your entire safety in surrender, not in arms. For if, scorning peace, you persist in defection, without doubt you will be subjected to greater dangers than those you have suffered.
His dictis, dolorem quem corde habebant paulisper supprimentes respondent: se non adversus principem, sed contra gentiles suos Cremonenses arma sumpsisse, olimque sibi decretum, neque his neque illis, sed soli Deo et imperatori servire voluisse, et in multis clarere, mortem eos indebitae servituti pretulisse, foedus cum Mediolanensibus pepigisse idque, donec Deo placuerit, inviolatum custodisse. Iram se divinam pro peccatis suis perferre; fortunam imperatoris prevalere. Nam habentes armorum habundantissimum apparatum et alimentorum nullam penuriam manifestissime Deo spem salutis auferente perdidisse.
With these things said, suppressing for a little while the grief which they had in their heart, they reply: that they had taken up arms not against the emperor, but against their kinsmen the Cremonese, and that long ago it had been decreed for them to wish to serve neither these nor those, but God alone and the emperor; and that they are illustrious in many respects, that they preferred death to unowed servitude; that they had struck a treaty with the Milanese and had kept it inviolate until it pleased God. That they are enduring divine wrath for their sins; that the fortune of the emperor prevails. For, though having a most abundant equipment of arms and no penury of aliments, with God most manifestly removing the hope of salvation, they had lost.
Cognito iam nominati principes, quod pacem cuperent bellique tedio affecti essent, verbum eorum curiae perferunt. Placuit; de condicionibus pacis agitur, diffinitur et sine contradictione ab oppidanis recipitur. Erat autem pactum tale, quod Cremenses civitatem dederent ipsique vita sibi indulta cum coniugibus ac liberis quovis eundi facultatem haberent, de rebus suis quantum quisque semel humeris efferre posset secum exportaret; Mediolanenses vero et Brixienses, qui ad presidium eiusdem civitatis intraverant, relictis ibidem armis et omnibus suis, vitam sibi pro lucro existimarent.
Once it was learned that the named princes, because they desired peace and were affected by the tedium of war, sent their word to the curia. It pleased; the conditions of peace are negotiated, are defined, and are received without contradiction by the townsmen. Now the pact was such: that the Cremonese would hand over the city, and that they themselves, life being granted to them, would have the faculty of going wherever with their wives and children, and of their goods, as much as each one could carry out at one time on his shoulders, he might export with him; but the Milanese and the Brescians, who had entered for the presidium/defense of the same city, leaving their arms and all their goods there, should reckon life itself for profit.
With the destruction accomplished, the divine Augustus, the whole army rejoicing, turned aside to Pavia to celebrate a joyful victory. But when it was announced that he was approaching, the whole multitude of the city, to meet him along the streets and squares, with old men and young, with wives and children, awaited him; and wherever, as he passed along, he turned in, they accompanied his majesty and the gentleness of his countenance with voices of every kind, calling him a well-deserving triumphator and giver of salvation and the only Roman prince worthy to be called such. The whole city, as if a temple, was adorned with various ornaments and, filled with diverse aromatic odors, was redolent.
But when he had scarcely been able to come to the church through the surrounding multitude, before he withdrew into the palace, to the omnipotent God, who gives salvation to kings, for the triumph obtained he paid his vows and celebrated gratulatory sacred rites. He also decreed that the convention which he had determined to be held on the Octave of Epiphany should be carried out in that same city of the Ticinians on the Purification of Saint Mary. Furthermore, concerning Crema subjugated—or rather overthrown—imperial letters are forthwith sent through the ambit of the kingdom in this manner:
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus. Scire credimus prudentiam vestram, quod tantum divinae gratiae donum ad laudem et gloriam nominis Christi honori nostro tam evidenter collatum occultari vel abscondi tamquam res privata non potest. Quod ideo dilectioni vestrae ac desiderio significamus, ut sicut karissimos et fideles vos participes honoris et gaudiorum habeamus.
Frederick, by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans and ever august. We believe your Prudence to know that so great a gift of divine grace, so manifestly bestowed for the praise and glory of the name of Christ and for our honor, cannot be hidden or concealed as though a private thing. Which for that reason we signify to your affection and desire, that we may have you, as most dear and faithful, participants in the honor and joys.
Indeed, on the very next day after the Conversion of Saint Paul, God bestowed upon us a full victory over Crema, and thus we triumphed gloriously over it, yet we granted life to the wretched people who were in it. For the laws, both divine and human, testify that the highest clemency ought always to be in a prince.
Tempus erat, quo concilium Papiae indictum celebrandum fuerat, idque de universis regni partibus, videlicet Cisalpinis et Transalpinis, in unum collecti archiepiscopi et episcopi aliique aecclesiarum prelati pendula expectatione operiebantur. Tum augustus commonens omnes ieiuniorum et orationum subsidiis aecclesiae katholicae causam Deo commendari, cum sacerdotibus et omni populo auxilium divinum fida sanctorum intercessione poscebat. Deinde convocato in unum concilio, cum resedisset, ait ad episcopos: ÔQuamvis noverim officio ac dignitate imperii penes nos esse potestatem congregandorum conciliorum, presertim in tantis aecclesiae periculis - hoc enim et Constantinus et Theodosius necnon Iustinianus seu recentioris memoriae Karolus Magnus et Otto imperatores fecisse memorantur -, auctoritatem tamen diffiniendi huius maximi et summi negotii vestrae prudentiae vestraeque potestati committo.
It was the time when the council at Pavia had been proclaimed to be held, and this the archbishops and bishops, gathered into one from all parts of the realm, namely the Cisalpine and the Transalpine, together with other prelates of the churches, were awaiting with pendulous expectation. Then the Augustus, admonishing all that by the helps of fasts and prayers the cause of the Catholic Church be commended to God, with the priests and all the people was asking divine aid by the faithful intercession of the saints. Then, the council having been convened into one, when he had taken his seat, he said to the bishops: "Although I know that by the office and dignity of the empire the power of assembling councils is with us, especially in such perils of the Church—for this both Constantine and Theodosius and likewise Justinian, and of more recent memory Charles the Great and Otto, emperors, are remembered to have done—nevertheless the authority of defining this greatest and highest undertaking I commit to your prudence and to your power."
For God has constituted you priests and has given to you the power of judging even concerning us. And because in those things which pertain to God it is not ours to judge concerning you, we exhort you to hold yourselves such and in such a manner in this cause as men expecting concerning you the judgment of God aloneÕ. When he had said these things, he withdrew himself from the council, committing the whole examination to the Church and to ecclesiastical persons, who were innumerable there. Now there were about 50 archbishops and bishops; of abbots and provosts there was no reckoning because of the multitude.
Residentibus itaque episcopis et clero universo, septem diebus causa ventilata est, tandemque domno Octaviano, qui cum presens advenisset et haberet qui partem suam defenderent, cessit litis victoria, et pro ipso concilium dedit sententiam, condempnato Rolando et reprobato, qui citatus legittime concilio se presentare contumaciter abnuisse dicebatur. Sepius autem lectorem admonitum esse cupimus, ut in hoc facto ad disquirendam rerum veritatem non nostra dicta consulat, sed litteris et scriptis, quae ad manus nostras venerunt et huic operi inserendae visae sunt, innitatur, suo servans arbitrio, quando de hac controversia et litis decisione et concilii iudicio sufficienter sibi fides facta videatur.
Accordingly, with the bishops and the whole clergy sitting, for seven days the case was ventilated, and at length lord Octavian—who had come in person and had those to defend his side—prevailed in the suit, and the council gave sentence for him, Roland being condemned and reprobated, who, though lawfully cited, was said to have contumaciously refused to present himself to the council. We wish, moreover, that the reader be admonished more than once, that in this matter, for the disquisition of the truth of things, he consult not our sayings, but rely on the letters and writings which have come into our hands and have seemed fit to be inserted into this work, preserving his own judgment as to when, concerning this controversy and the decision of the suit and the judgment of the council, sufficient credence appears to have been afforded him.
Invictissimo et gloriosissimo domino suo Friderico Romanorum imperatori et semper augusto et venerabilibus patribus in Christi nomine congregatis fratres, qui Romae sunt, basilicae beati Petri principis apostolorum canonici, angeli magni consilii presentiam et Spiritus sancti consolantem gratiam. Patres sanctissimi, quos Deus elegit ad consolationem merentium et delinquentium correctionem, sicut ait apostolus, corripite inquietos, consolamini pusillanimes, intendite precibus nostris et ad dolorem nostrum leniendum consolationis manum extendite. Tanta est enim tamque diffusa meroris nostri materia, ut, unde debeamus exordium sumere, difficulter possimus invenire.
To their most unconquered and most glorious lord Frederick, emperor of the Romans and ever august, and to the venerable fathers gathered in the name of Christ, the brothers who are at Rome, the canons of the basilica of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, the presence of the Angel of Great Counsel and the consoling grace of the Holy Spirit. Most holy fathers, whom God has chosen for the consolation of the deserving and the correction of delinquents, as the apostle says, rebuke the unruly, console the fainthearted, give heed to our prayers and stretch forth the hand of consolation to soften our grief. For so great and so diffused is the matter of our sorrow that we can scarcely find whence we ought to take our exordium.
Truly, because the matter is of pain and of sorrow, we have resolved to begin from lamentation and sorrow. Attend therefore and see, if there is pain like our pain, when we see our mother the Roman church, once shining, by her own sons, nay by strangers—for those whom she nourished and exalted have lied to her, and they themselves have spurned her—insolently eviscerated and in part mutilated in her members, lying in the mire, not even perceiving her contumely and loss. Wherefore, with Jeremiah weeping for the destruction of his Jerusalem, we weeping say: The kings of the earth and all the inhabitants of the world did not believe that the foe and the enemy would enter through the gates of Jerusalem.
Vere Hierusalem erat mater nostra Romana aecclesia, quae cunctis ad se venientibus et querentibus pacem dabat. Nunc autem et dolentes dicimus, ut olim illa: Peccatum peccavit nostra Hierusalem, propterea instabilis facta est. Nec immerito propter peccata prophetarum eius et iniquitates sacerdotum eius erraverunt ceci in plateis, facies Domini divisit eos.
Truly Jerusalem was our mother, the Roman church, which gave peace to all coming to her and seeking it. Now, however, we too, grieving, say, as once she did: Jerusalem has sinned a sin, our Jerusalem; therefore she has been made unstable. Nor undeservedly on account of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests the blind have wandered in the streets, the face of the Lord has divided them.
And truly. The face for of the Lord is over those doing evils, that he may destroy from the earth their memory. Whence we are suffused with very great shame. Truly our Jerusalem has sinned a sin at this time, by envy and hatred and many iniquities, which, since it is long to narrate in full, we will turn our purpose to showing the election of the Roman Pontiff and to declaring the cause of the discord.
Therefore, when Lord Pope Adrian, of happy memory, had entered upon the way of all flesh at the first vigil on the Kalends of September, a very great multitude assembled immediately, among whom the senators were also present; by their counsel the body was conveyed to Rome. But among the cardinals, as contention increased, it was finally agreed among them that they would return to Rome and make a concordant election of one of the cardinals.
After this, however, they immediately returned to Rome. Lord Octavian and certain others came to the obsequies of the deceased. But some others sent ahead the author of crimes, Boso, first-born of Satan, to seize the fortification of blessed Peter, whose guards, while Lord Pope Adrian was living, had sworn fealty to him; and, following him afterward, they ascended that same fortification.
But the Lord of Tusculum ascended to the palace. Lord Octavian and Lord Roland the chancellor came to our houses, and certain others as well. But these, having been called by those who were keeping watch over the fortification, answered that they would never ascend the fortification, fearing Boso, lest, as had been reported to them, they be seized by Boso’s sworn men.
And the lord chancellor: ÔI will goÕ, he said, Ôand I will make them come down to youÕ. The deacon of the Carcer went with him, and they did not return, and thus for two days they were unable to convene at the place where they were to make the election. At length, on Saturday, when they came down from the fortification, all went up behind the altar of blessed Peter and began to deliberate about the election. And when they could not agree, those who desired the concord and peace of the church said: ÔGive the election to us, and we will choose one of you, or have the election yourselves, and choose whichever one of us you wishÕ; but they would not.
At length Oddo, deacon of Saint George, rose up as if enraged, and Aldebaldus Crassus, cardinal of the Holy Apostles, and John the Neapolitan; and, the mantle having been taken, they wished to mantle Lord Roland the chancellor, but, the sounder and better part of the cardinals forbidding with the authority of God Almighty and of the blessed princes of the apostles Peter and Paul and of the whole church, they were not able. However, this prohibition having been made, again they attempted to mantle him, nor were they able, and in no way did they touch the chancellor with the mantle; yet it was not through any lack on their part that he was not mantled. Meanwhile the Roman clergy, who had convened in the church of blessed Peter for the election of the supreme pontiff, when the shout was heard, ran, surrounding Lord Oddo, who was with the cardinals near the altar of blessed Peter, and they all cried out saying: ÔChoose Lord Octavian, through whom alone the church can have peaceÕ! Then, by the petition of the Roman people and the election of the whole clergy, with the entire chapter of the basilica of blessed Peter consenting and desiring it, Lord Octavian the cardinal was elected by the sounder part of the cardinals and was clothed with the mantle and placed upon the seat of blessed Peter without any contradiction, while all sang ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ in jubilation.
Then, as is the custom, the lord cardinals and the whole Roman clergy, who were present and who had afterward flocked together, and the greatest part of the Roman people, kissed his feet. Seeing this, lord Roland the chancellor, and those who, as it was said, were bound to him by oath, neither protested nor in any way contradicted, but, with heads bowed, returning, they mounted the fortification as if disappointed of their hope. Then the lords cardinals, the clergy, the judges, the scrinarii, the senators, the Roman people, led the lord elect, with the ensigns of the standard going before, all the way to the palace with gladness, crying according to Roman custom: ÔPope Victor, Saint Peter chooses himÕ. On the morrow, however, certain of the Roman clergy ascended the fortification, and, having kissed the hand of the lord chancellor, began to entreat him and those who were with him, that he would provide for the peace of the church.
But a certain one of the deacons of the curia answered them as if indignant: ÔYesterday you kissed the feet of [lord] Octavian, who stripped his brother, the lord chancellor, of the mantle and clothed himself with it, and now you come to us?Õ And the lord chancellor: ÔDo not,Õ he said, Ôlord cardinal, say what is not true. Lord Octavian never stripped me [of the mantle], because I was never clothed.Õ And so, with the lord chancellor and his men staying in the church of blessed Peter through that whole hebdomad, on the ninth day they went down across the Tiber, lingering that day and the next; on the eleventh they went out and arrived at Nero’s cistern, in which Nero hid while fleeing the pursuing Romans. Rightly they went to the cistern, because they forsook the fount of living water and dug for themselves cisterns, shattered cisterns that are not able to hold waters.
And there on the next day, which was the twelfth from the election of Lord Victor, they invested the chancellor with the stole and the pallium of error, unto the destruction and confusion of the Church, and there for the first time they sang ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ. Which of you, O most holy fathers, has heard such things? So far as in them lies, the Roman church today has been made two‑headed. Now we must be silent, that Lord Otto the count palatine and Lord Guido, count of Blandera, and Lord Heribert the provost, most prudent men, legates of the imperial majesty, may take the turn of reporting what they have found in the lord chancellor and his men.
When the lord bishops, the lord emperor’s legates, shall have reported with a memorandum what, on this side and that, of humility and of truth they have recognized, they will be able to expound more fully. Likewise, in the City, when the Roman clergy gathered at the church of blessed Peter with them present, let them themselves report what they perceived about this deed, since we believe them to have been present; and to verify this we transmit to your Sanctity two of our brothers, Peter Christianus, dean of our church, and Peter, son of Guido, chamberlain, subdeacon of the holy Roman Church, so that they may bear testimony of the truth concerning all these things even viva voce. At the Supper of our Lord, in which he accomplished the sacraments of human redemption, the apostles professed that they had two swords, which you also have; what you ought to do in them and through them, none of you is ignorant.
There it was said by Christ: It is enough. And we, who ought to follow the footsteps of Christ, say to you, our lords, bringing this work to an end: ÔIt is enoughÕ. May the Wisdom of the Omnipotent Father, who knows and can unite the vows and wills of all, teach you all and unite you to destroy Babylonian confusion and to drive simony from the church and to restore in its integrity the peace desirable to the whole world!
Haec sunt capitula, quae in concilio Papiae super electione domni papae Victoris canonice probata sunt. Domnus Octavianus et nemo alius Romae in aecclesia beati Petri petitione populi et consensu ac desiderio cleri a cardinalibus manto sollempniter est indutus et presente cancellario et non contradicente in kathedra beati Petri collocatus est, et a cardinalibus et clero Romano ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ sollempniter ei cantatum est et nomen ei Victor impositum est. Ibi multitudo cleri et populi Romani venit ad pedes eius.
These are the chapters which at the council at Pavia concerning the election of lord Pope Victor were canonically approved. Lord Octavian—and no one else—at Rome in the church of blessed Peter, by the petition of the people and the consent and desire of the clergy, was solemnly invested with the mantle by the cardinals, and, with the chancellor present and not contradicting, was placed in the cathedra of blessed Peter; and by the cardinals and the Roman clergy “ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ” was solemnly sung to him, and the name Victor was imposed upon him. There a multitude of the Roman clergy and people came to his feet.
Then the scriniarius, ascending on high according to the ancient custom of the Romans, cried out to the people with a great voice, saying: ÔHear, Roman citizens and the assembly of the commonwealth! On the second feria our father Adrian died, and on the next following Saturday lord Octavian, cardinal of Saint Cecilia, was elected Roman pontiff and mantled, and was seated in the cathedra of blessed Peter, and he was named Pope Victor. Does it please you?Õ The clergy and the people replied with a great voice: ÔIt pleases.Õ A second and a third time the people, being asked whether it pleased, answered with a clear voice: ÔIt pleases.Õ Then, with banners and the other papal insignia, the lord pope, with praises, was led into the palace.
With these things therefore duly performed, the chapter of blessed Peter immediately came to the feet of that same Pope Victor and obeyed and exhibited to him the due reverence; the clergy and the people, a great multitude, likewise obeyed. But on the next day close at hand, the rectors of the Roman clergy, approaching the lord chancellor and the cardinals who were with him, wished to learn whether he had been in-mantled, as some were saying, and they did not find him in-mantled nor altered by any appearance of dignity; and, a colloquy having been held with him and with his cardinals, they learned from his own mouth and from that of his men that he had never been in-mantled and that this was being falsely imputed to him. When this had been heard and learned, the rectors came to the feet of the lord Pope Victor and exhibited obedience and reverence.
- Concerning all the aforesaid chapters the witnesses were Peter Christianus, dean of the basilica of blessed Peter, and all his brethren, and two rectors of the Roman clergy, namely Blasius presbyter and Manerius presbyter, and 7 archpresbyters of the city of Rome and 4 others, both deacons and subdeacons. Then the Lateran prior and his canons obeyed. The clerics of the patriarchate of Saint Mary Major obeyed.
And many other churches and monasteries obeyed, which we scarcely are able to enumerate. After the promotion of lord Victor, a canon of Blessed Peter, they sent to Roland the chancellor their canons, to see whether he was mantled, as some believed, or promoted in any way. Whence the inquisitors, sent twice, twice reported that he was not mantled nor altered by any species of promotion.
On the following day indeed, so that all doubt might be removed, the canons sent certain of their own, that they might be present at the table of the cardinals who were there, and might see whether at least at table he obtained a place more distinguished than usual, or even, in blessing the table, he was first, or in any way among the cardinals he was held more distinguished in place or dignity or dress. In all of which they in no way perceived him promoted or changed; and in this manner the canons examined the status of the chancellor through each of 8 consecutive days. Basso and John of Romano say: ÔAfter the chancellor, lord Victor sitting in the cathedra, withdrew into the fortification, John Phizutus, a cleric, and John of Bucca-Lata, a layman, wished to mantle the chancellor.
Who with injury repelled them, saying: ãYou will not make a ridicule of me; there is the pope; go to him and obey him!Ò - Presbyter Blasius and Presbyter Magnerius, rectors of the Roman clergy, say that, with three other rectors of the clergy, on the day following the promotion of lord Victor, they approached the chancellor and all the cardinals who were with him, and they did not see him mantled nor in any way promoted; and before they departed, they heard twice from the mouth of the chancellor that he neither was nor had been mantled; also in the presence of those same rectors and in the presence of those who were there, Otto, cardinal of Carcere, bore witness that lord Octavian inflicted no violence or injury upon the chancellor. Likewise Otto said: ÔThis injury is ascribed as nothing to the lord chancellor, because no one took a mantle from him, because he never had oneÕ. All these things thus done and known, these rectors went to lord Victor and rendered obedience to him and ordered the clergy to obey him. Which also was done.
Presbyter Barro and Presbyter John, chaplains of the cardinalate of the chancellor, said that on the following day after the promotion of lord Victor they had gone to the chancellor and had said to him thus: ÔHearing that you were mantled we rejoiced, and now, because we see otherwise, we grieveÕ. He said to them: ÔOn my account do not rejoice or grieve, for I neither was nor am mantled; go and obey him whom you see mantledÕ. Presbyter Barro and Presbyter John entrusted that these words had thus proceeded from the mouth of the chancellor to certain of our clerics who were present, that they should swear upon their souls that it is so true -. The clerics of the cardinalate of Saint Chrysogonus said that on the following day after the promotion of lord Victor they had gone to their cardinal, who was with the chancellor, and had questioned him, saying: ÔAll the clerics go to the feet of the lord pope; what shall we do, we tooÕ? He replied: ÔGo to him like the othersÕ. Many of ours say they saw the chancellor on the 11th day depart from the City without mantle, without stole, without a white horse and without any change of habit, with furs covered with a black cloak and with a black almuce, as far as Cisterna. - John de Romano says that he heard John the Neapolitan and Bonandius and certain other cardinals saying at Cisterna: ÔSince now we are without a shepherd and without a head, let us make a lord for ourselvesÕ, and afterward they mantled him and sang to him ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ at Cisterna. - John of Saint Stephen and Wolframmus say they heard that pope Hadrian said to them, when he was leaving the City: ÔOctavianÕ, he says, Ôwhom I sent into Lombardy, wishes to excommunicate the Milanese; but I instructed the Milanese not to care about him, but that both they and the Brixians should conduct themselves bravely against the emperor, and I arranged with them that the emperor, on account of their impediments, will not be able to come to RomeÕ. Likewise: ÔEven with the cardinals I have so arranged that Octavian will not be pope after my deathÕ. - Gimundus and Wolframmus say they heard from the mouth of the bishop of Sabina that he would gladly return to lord Victor, but he is so bound by adjuration that he cannot do so without perjury.
The bishop of Alatri, in the presence of lord Guy of Cremona, cardinal, and Gimundus and John Gaetanus, and many others, said: ÔI cannot come to lord Victor, because I made such a surety to the chancellor and his men at Anagni, that I cannot come to them until the Kalends; after the Kalends, however, I will come. Meanwhile, nevertheless, I hold him as my lord and pastorÕ. And so, once the Kalends had passed, when he was held by infirmity, he sent to lord Victor his obedience through a certain cleric, whom we have present.
De omnibus supradictis capitulis testimonium perhibuerunt predicti rectores cleri Romani et VII archipresbiteri supra memorati et alii multi honesti et religiosi clerici Romani et Petrus Urbis prefectus et Stephanus de Tebaldo et Stephanus ÔNortmannus et Iohannes de Sancto Stephano et Iohannes Gaietanus et Wolframmus de Gidocicca et Gimundus de domo Petri Leonis et multi alii illustres Romani et nobilissimi, qui omnibus his interfuerunt et omnia viderunt et tractaverunt.
On all the aforesaid chapters, the aforesaid rectors of the Roman clergy and the above-mentioned 7 archpresbyters, and many other honorable and religious Roman clerics, and Peter, Prefect of the City, and Stephen de Tebaldo, and Stephen ÔNortmannus, and John of Saint Stephen, and John Gaietanus, and Wolframmus de Gidocicca, and Gimundus of the house of Peter Leonis, and many other illustrious and most noble Romans bore testimony, who were present at all these things and saw and dealt with everything.
Confirmato et recepto taliter in papatu Victore, defertur ad principem sacerdotalis concilii sententia. Qua venerabiliter suscepta et approbata, Victor ad aecclesiam vocatur et magna sollempnitate et frequentia cleri ac populi suscipitur, ipsique ut summo pontifici et universali papae adclamatur. Divus quoque imperator consuetam ei reverentiam et stratoris officium sicut Constantinus beato Silvestro humiliter pro foribus aecclesiae exhibuit, et manu eius accepta usque ad sedem deduxit et intronizavit. De reliquis, quae ibidem acta sunt, exemplaria litterarum subnotata consule:
Victor having been thus confirmed and received into the papacy, the sentence of the sacerdotal council is borne to the prince. This being venerably received and approved, Victor is called to the church and is received with great solemnity and a great concourse of clergy and people, and he himself is acclaimed as supreme pontiff and universal pope. The divine emperor also exhibited to him the customary reverence and the office of strator, just as Constantine humbly before the doors of the church exhibited to blessed Sylvester, and, taking his hand, he led him up to the seat and enthroned him. For the rest of the things that were done there, consult the copies of the letters noted below:
Fridericus Dei gratia Romanorum imperator et semper augustus dilectissimo suo Eberhardo venerabili Salzburgensi archiepiscopo et suffraganeis eius, Adilberto Frisingensi episcopo, Hartmanno Brixinensi et Romano Gurcensi totique provinciae Salzburgensi gratiam suam et omne bonum. Si sacro concilio Papiae celebrato interfuissetis, omnia, quae ibidem vel in Romana aecclesia facta sunt, oculata fide cognoscere possetis. Ne autem ab his, qui pravis delationibus et mendatiis iam totum fere orbem resperserunt, veritas possit obnubilari vel vestra sinceritas trahi in contrarium, quanto brevius possumus seriem totius rei sine aliqua falsitatis commixtione mera veritate vobis significare dignum duximus, Luce clarius constat, quod papa Adriano adhuc vivente Rolandus cancellarius et quidam cardinales, non adtendentes illud dominicum: Sit sermo vester: est est, non non, conspiratione facta cum Wilhelmo Siculo, prius ab eis excommunicato, et cum caeteris hostibus imperii, Mediolanensibus, Brixiensibus, Placentinis, ne forte per mortem papae Adriani tam iniqua factio evanesceret, iuramenti vinculo invicem sese constrinxerunt, ut, defuncto papa, nullus alius ei substitueretur, nisi qui in eadem conspiratione cum eis convenisset.
Frederick, by the grace of God emperor of the Romans and ever august, to his most beloved Eberhard, the venerable archbishop of Salzburg, and his suffragans, Adalbert bishop of Freising, Hartmann of Brixen, and Romanus of Gurk, and to the whole Salzburg province, his favor and every good. If you had been present at the sacred council held at Pavia, you could have known with ocular faith all the things that were done there or in the Roman Church. But lest by those who have already bespattered almost the whole world with depraved denunciations and mendacities the truth be able to be obnubilated, or your sincerity be drawn to the contrary, we have deemed it worthy, as briefly as we can, to signify to you the series of the whole matter, without any commixture of falsity, in mere truth. It is clearer than light that, while Pope Adrian was still living, Roland the chancellor and certain cardinals, not attending to that dominical saying: Let your speech be: yes, yes; no, no, having made a conspiracy with William the Sicilian, previously excommunicated by them, and with the other enemies of the empire—the Milanese, the Brescians, the Piacentines—lest through the death of Pope Adrian so iniquitous a faction should evanesce, bound themselves mutually by the bond of an oath, that, the pope having died, no other should be substituted for him, except one who had agreed with them in the same conspiracy.
For this cause, on the 12th day after the election of Lord Pope Victor, he sitting in the seat of blessed Peter, the already-named conspirators, having gone out from the City to the cistern of Nero, abandoning the vein of living waters, betook themselves and erected for themselves an idol, Roland the chancellor, saying that this is Simon Peter, who was presuming to attain the apex of apostolic dignity by so nefarious an invasion. That this conspiracy was made, and that that already-said Roland through it has in this way entered, is not fictitious, but has been wondrously declared to religious men by Him who makes manifest the counsels of hearts.
While these things were being transacted at Rome, and we, as to what should be done about so great a schism, were consulting religious men—archbishops, to wit, and bishops—there arrived, as if sent by God, the archbishop of Tarentaise, the abbot of Clairvaux, the abbot of Morimond, and other abbots, ten in number, requesting peace for the Milanese; who, having received a word from us, when they were returning to Milan to investigate their will, received from them such an answer: ÔLords fathers, we are held bound by oath to the lord pope and the cardinals, that we ought not to return into the emperor’s favor without their will, and they, in turn, without our will can make no peaceÕ. The abbots answered them: ÔYou henceforth are not held to the lord pope, because he is deadÕ; and they immediately added: ÔIf the pope is dead, we are not therefore absolved, because we are nonetheless bound to the cardinals and they are bound to usÕ. These things the aforesaid father abbots testified they had received as replies from the Milanese before many religious men. Besides these, we received many proofs of the conspiracy that had been made through letters intercepted on the way, as this messenger more fully saw and heard. Indeed, out of the council of the orthodox, as on another occasion we remember to have commanded you, we proclaimed at Pavia a general assembly of religious, to which we summoned both who called themselves Roman pontiffs, not to a secular judgment, as with lying mouth they assert, but to the examination of the church, through two venerable bishops, namely the Ferdense and the Brogense.
The other indeed, because he had a purer conscience—namely lord Victor—voluntarily offered himself to the judgment of the church, the other, namely Roland, stubbornly resisting and saying that, since he ought to judge all, he himself wished to be judged by no one. Therefore, a venerable council having been held, in which the Patriarch of Aquileia and many religious archbishops and bishops had come together, for 8 continuous days, with the greatest gravity, with most diligent examination, every lay person removed, it was treated who of the two ought by right to obtain the apex of the supreme pontificate. After a long deliberation, since that most unspeakable conspiracy, exceedingly hateful to God and to the church, by manifest indications was not only proven, but revealed as set before the face of the whole church, and in lord Victor nothing blameworthy was found, except that a smaller number of cardinals, altogether apart from that conspiracy, elected him for the good of peace, bringing concord between kingdom and priesthood, [and] with the grace of the Holy Spirit invoked, the Church of God condemned Roland the chancellor—a conspirator and schismatic, evangelizing that discords and litigations and perjuries are good—and confirmed lord Victor the pope as spiritual father and universal pontiff.
Whom we, guided by the Church, have followed and approve, and we declare that, with divine clemency cooperating, he will be the father and rector of the universal Church. This deed, therefore, propped by divine safeguards and firmly founded in apostolic stability upon the rock—Christ, that is—we ask and most earnestly desire to be approved by your Beatitude for the peace of the whole Church and the welfare of the empire, and to be held and preserved by every church committed to your sanctity. Given at Pavia, 15. Kal.
Quia sedis apostolicae turbatio Christianorum animos admodum sauciavit, nos, qui ad resecanda scismata et pacem aecclesiae reformandam Papiae fuimus congregati, qualitatem causae modumque negotii et sacri concilii dispensationem universitati vestrae plenarie duximus intimandum, quatinus per scripta presentia mera veritate monstrata auditorum animi falsitatem, quam forte conceperant, vehementer expellant et ammodo per scripta scismatica non seducantur. Cum igitur orthodoxorum Papiae congregatorum universitas in nomine Domini consedisset, causa per VII dies continuos, omni remoto seculari iudicio, legittime et canonice agitata ac diligenter inspecta, sufficienter et canonice in conspectu concilii per testes idoneos est comprobatum domnum papam Victorem et nullum alium in basilica beati Petri a saniori parte cardinalium petitione populi et consensu ac desiderio cleri fuisse electum et sollempniter inmantatum, quod, presente et non contradicente Rolando quondam cancellario, in kathedra beati Petri fuerit collocatus, et quod ibi ei a cardinalibus et clero Romano ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ gloriose decantatum, et inde ad palatium cum bandis et aliis papalibus insignibus est deductus, et clerus et populus secundum consuetudinem interrogatus per scriniarium, si placeret, tribus vicibus clara voce respondit: ÔPlacetÕ. Probatum est etiam, quod Rolandus XII. die post domni Victoris promotionem ab Urbe egressus apud cisternam, in qua Nero imperator quondam ab Urbe profugus latitavit, primo est inmantatus.
Because the disturbance of the apostolic see has very much wounded the minds of Christians, we, who were gathered at Pavia to cut away schisms and to reform the peace of the church, have judged that the quality of the cause and the manner of the business and the dispensation of the sacred council ought to be fully intimated to your whole body, to the end that through these present writings, with pure truth shown, the minds of the hearers may vehemently drive out the falsity which they had perhaps conceived, and henceforth not be seduced by schismatic writings. Therefore, when the whole body of the orthodox assembled at Pavia had sat in the name of the Lord, the cause for 7 continuous days, with all secular judgment removed, having been lawfully and canonically handled and diligently inspected, it was sufficiently and canonically proven before the council by suitable witnesses that Lord Pope Victor, and no other, in the basilica of the blessed Peter, by the sounder part of the cardinals, at the petition of the people and the consent and desire of the clergy, had been elected and solemnly enmantled; that, Roland the former chancellor being present and not contradicting, he was placed on the chair of the blessed Peter; and that there to him by the cardinals and the Roman clergy “ÔTe Deum laudamusÕ” was gloriously chanted, and from there he was led to the palace with banners and other papal insignia, and the clergy and people, according to custom, having been asked by the scriniary whether it pleased them, three times with a clear voice answered: “ÔPlacetÕ.” It was also proven that Roland, on the 12. day after Lord Victor’s promotion, having departed from the City, at the cistern in which the emperor Nero once, a fugitive from the City, hid, was first enmantled.
It was proved that on the second day after lord Victor’s promotion Roland, asked by the rectors of the Roman clergy and the clerics about his cardinalate, whether obedience was to be rendered to lord Victor, expressly confessed that he had never been invested with the mantle and expressly said: ÔGo and obey him whom you see to be invested with the mantleÕ. Upon these chapters there were witnesses, and, with the most holy Gospels touched under the stole, swore, lord Peter Christianus, dean of the basilica of blessed Peter, both on his own behalf and on behalf of all his brethren. The venerable archpresbyters and rectors of the Roman clergy Blasius and Manerius presbyters, John presbyter, Gentilis, Aimeradus archpresbyter, Berardus archpresbyter, John archpresbyter, Benedict deacon, master Tolomeus archpresbyter, master Gerard and Nicholas, and other honorable Roman clerics, also swore. Moreover Peter, the illustrious Prefect of the City, Stephen son of Tebaldus, Stephen the Northman, Gimundus of the house of Peter Leonis, John son of Stephen, and other Roman princes and nobles, who had come at the summons of the most serene emperor, in the sight of the council likewise for the most part bore testimony concerning the already said chapters and were willing to swear.
But we, because we had sufficient and most abundant testimony of many religious presbyters, judged that laymen in this part should be spared. Then the venerable bishops Hermann of Verden, Daniel of Braga, and Otto the count palatine, and Master Heribert the provost—whom the lord emperor, by the counsel of 22 bishops and of the abbots of Cîteaux and Clairvaux and other religious then present, had delegated to Rome to summon the parties into the council’s presence at Pavia—bore testimony in the sight of the council, that they had called Roland the chancellor and his party, by triple edicts at intervals, peremptorily and solemnly, to the presence of the church to be assembled at Pavia, all secular judgment being set aside, and that Roland the chancellor and his cardinals declared openly, by viva voce and with their own mouth, that they were unwilling to receive any judgment or examination of the church. We also saw the writings of Henry the Pisan, cardinal, directed to the lord emperor, in which it was expressly contained that they were unwilling to undergo any judgment or examination of the church.
Over and above all these things, the same Henry and Odo, cardinal of Saint Nicholas in Carcere Tulliano, who during the time of the council and before were staying at Genoa, and John of Anagni, cardinal, and John Piozutus, subdeacons of the holy Roman Church, who were then at Piacenza, were awaited by the whole council for 8 days, and were summoned by the letters and envoys of the council, and they disdained to come. Therefore, being sufficiently instructed from all these matters, and with the truth on both sides fully declared, it pleased the reverend council that the election of lord Victor, who, like a meek and innocent lamb, had come to humbly receive the Church’s judgment, should be approved and confirmed, and that the election of Roland be utterly quashed. And so it was done.
The election therefore of Lord Victor, all secular judgment removed, the grace of the Holy Spirit invoked, having been confirmed and received, the most Christian emperor, after all the bishops and after all the clergy, last of all, at the counsel and petition of the council, received and approved the election of Lord Victor; and after him all the princes and an innumerable multitude of men who were present, asked three times whether it pleased them, answered with joy in a loud voice: ÔIt pleasesÕ. On the next day immediately following, that is, the first Friday of Lent, Lord Victor with a procession from the church of the Holy Savior outside the city, in which was his lodging, was gloriously led to the cathedral church. There the most religious emperor received him before the doors of the church and, as he dismounted from his horse, humbly held the stirrup, and, taking him by the hand, led him even to the altar and kissed his feet; and we all, the patriarch, archbishops, bishops and abbots, and all the princes with the whole multitude that was present, kissed the apostolic feet. But on the next day following, that is, on Saturday, a general council having been held, the lord pope and we with him anathematized Roland the chancellor, the schismatic, and his principal supporters, with candles lit, and delivered him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.
We also wish the prudent discretion of you not to be unaware that it has been clearly detected that Roland the chancellor and certain cardinals his followers, while Pope Adrian was still living, did conspire. Now the tenor of the conjuration was that, if while they were living it should befall Pope Adrian to die, they would elect one cardinal from among themselves who would be bound in the same conjuration. Moreover, on behalf of God Almighty and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul and of all the saints and orthodox men, who by divine prompting have come together to cut away schisms, we humbly implore and admonish your whole body in Christ, that the things which the church of God, assembled at Pavia, to the honor of the Creator and of His Bride, your mother, the most holy Roman Church, and to the salvation of all Christians, has faithfully ordained, you, with every doubt and ambiguity removed, hold as irrefragably ratified and firm; praying that our Redeemer Christ Jesus preserve through long times the universal pontiff and our pope Victor, in whose sanctity and religion we altogether trust, and grant to him every manner of tranquility and peace, so that through him God Almighty may be honored and the Roman Church and all Christian religion may receive an increase pleasing to the Lord.
Reverentissimo patri et domino Eberhardo Salzburgensis aecclesiae archiepiscopo Eberhardus Babinbergensis gratia Dei si quid est tam devotum quam debitum cum oratione servitium. Convenientibus in unum Papiae episcopis circiter L diuque ventilata questione papatus, cum dilatio primo pene omnibus complacuisset usque ad maiorem rei noticiam et aliud generalius concilium, prevaluit tandem pars domni Victoris iustificata ab altera parte multis modis: quia coniuratio contra imperium factum illud precesserat; quia domni Victoris inmantatio prior, illa posterior, quo solo Innocentius Anacleto prevaluit, cum Anacletus plures et maximae scientiae et auctoritatis haberet electores; deinde quod ad hostes imperii pars illa se transtulit, obligata Siculo, Mediolanensibus, Brixiensibus, Placentinis per sacramentum, quod sanae doctrinae adversari videtur, cum et subditos a iuramentis fidelitatis debitae absolvat et servire imperatori prohibeat quoscumque et sic discessioni viam preparet, quod pessimum est, sicut opere ipso clarescit et scriptis undique per Italiam directis tam civitatibus quam episcopis. His malis principiis finem deteriorem promittentibus, perpetuam videlicet discordiam inter regnum et sacerdotium et discessionem ab invicem, dum pars illa cum omni securitate conductus nec venire voluisset nec etiam procuratores pro se mittere ad subeundum iudicium et excipiendam sententiam: domnum Victorem recepimus spe pacis et concordiae inter regnum et sacerdotium, longo tamen examine premisso de tempore et ordine electionis suae, de his, qui eius electioni consenserunt primitus et postmodum [retro] abierunt, cardinalibus numero VIIII, testificante super his omnibus capitulo beati Petri et clero Romano scriptis et viva voce nunciorum sub iureiurando.
To the most reverend father and lord Eberhard, archbishop of the church of Salzburg, Eberhard of Bamberg, by the grace of God, if he be anything, offers a service as devout as it is due, with prayer. When about 50 bishops had come together as one at Pavia and the question of the papacy had been long ventilated, although delay had at first been pleasing to almost all until greater knowledge of the matter and another more general council, at length the party of lord Victor prevailed, justified against the other side in many ways: because a conspiracy against the imperium had preceded that deed; because the “mantling” (inmantatio) of lord Victor was earlier, that of the other later—by which alone Innocent prevailed over Anacletus, since Anacletus had more electors and of the greatest knowledge and authority; then because that party transferred itself to the enemies of the imperium, bound by oath to the Sicilian, the Milanese, the Brescians, the Piacentines, which seems to be adverse to sound doctrine, since it both absolves subjects from oaths of due fealty and forbids whomever to serve the emperor and thus prepares a path to discession, which is most evil, as is made clear by the deed itself and by writings sent everywhere through Italy, both to the cities and to the bishops. With these evil beginnings promising a worse end—namely perpetual discord between the regnum and the sacerdotium and a discession from one another—while that party, with every security of safe-conduct, was unwilling either to come or even to send procurators for itself to undergo judgment and receive sentence, we received lord Victor in hope of peace and concord between the regnum and the sacerdotium, a long examination, however, having first been conducted concerning the time and the order of his election, concerning those who at first consented to his election and afterwards went back [retro], cardinals to the number of 9, with the chapter of blessed Peter and the Roman clergy testifying on all these things by writings and by the living voice of messengers under oath.
The nuncio of the king of the Franks promised on his behalf that he would receive neither party, until he should receive the nuncios of the lord emperor. The nuncio of the king of the English promised to will the same and to not-will the same both in these matters and in others. The Arelatensian, the Viennensian, the Lugdunensian, and the Bisuntinian consented through letters and nuncios.
Only the Archbishop of Trier from our realm remains on that side, from the number of archbishops, who has not consented; yet all his suffragans have consented. It has come only as far as you alone. May the Angel of great counsel direct you according to his good pleasure and guard you in all your ways.
Domino suo in Christo reverendo Everhardo Salzburgensi archiepiscopo frater Heinricus dictus prepositus de Berthersgadem cum devotis orationibus debitae subiectionis obsequia. Si cuncta quae audivimus et vidimus scribere deberemus, non cartam sed volumen facere videremur. Verum summam eorum, quae de duorum electione Romanorum pontificum acta sunt, breviter paternitati vestrae notificamus.
To his lord in Christ, the reverend Everhard, Archbishop of Salzburg, brother Heinrich, called the provost of Berthersgadem, with devout prayers the obeisances of due subjection. If we had to write down all the things we have heard and seen, we would seem to make not a sheet but a volume. But the sum of the things which were done concerning the election of the two Roman pontiffs we briefly notify to your paternity.
The curia, which had been convoked at Pavia on the Octave of Epiphany, was deferred until the Friday next before the beginning of the fast, because the lord emperor was detained in the destruction of Crema. In it, as the lord Patriarch, the archbishops, and nearly fifty bishops of diverse lands were sitting, and also the legates of the king of France and of the archbishops—namely of Arles, Lyons, Vienne, Besançon, and Trier—and of the Elect of Ravenna, the cardinals and clerics who were present on Victor’s side advanced into the midst and set forth the sequence of each election. Upon which, after there had been copious disputation for a continuous 5 days by the bishops and other prudent men, on the sixth day at last, in a public consistory the chapters of the election were proposed anew, and each point was confirmed by the canons of the church of Blessed Peter and the rectors of the Roman clergy, an oath having been given upon the Holy Four Gospels.
The other party, however, neither came itself nor sent representatives to the assembly, for what cause we do not know. Moreover, very many lead‑sealed letters were read out, directed by Alexander and the cardinals who are with him to the bishops and cities of Lombardy, but seized by the faithful of the lord emperor; from the tenor of which their machinations and efforts against the empire were openly detected. Wherefore, because delay seemed to threaten no small danger both to the Church and to the Empire, especially since there was no one to contradict the aforesaid assertions and proofs, since indeed both parties had been called not to the examination of the curia but of the church, the bishops gave their assent to Victor’s party, which, with oath sworn upon the holy four Gospels, as said above, had proved that he had been mantled (invested) 11 days before Alexander was mantled, and that he had sat in the seat of blessed Peter, the opposing party being present, without protest; and, solemnly receiving that same Victor as the Apostolic in the church, they showed to him the customary reverence.
These things were done, the lord emperor and the faithful of the empire lending their support, on account of the reasons recalled. Wherefore he himself rendered the customary honor to the same pontiff, now confirmed, as he came down before the doors of the church. But on the second day after these things, the oft-mentioned lord Victor, after the office of the synod had been solemnly celebrated, bound with the bond of anathema, candles extinguished, the leader of the other party together with certain of his supporters—namely the bishops of Ostia and of Portus, because they had presumed to lay upon him the hand of consecration—and also the cardinals Henry the Pisan, John the Neapolitan, and Hyacinth.
He excommunicated Henry the Pisan, moreover, for this reason: that at his command Master Raymond, a cardinal, had been despoiled and savagely beaten. He also involved the Provost of Piacenza in a similar sentence, because he had attacked the Lord of Tusculum with an armed force and, after despoiling him, had subjected him to many contumelies. Furthermore, he summoned William the Sicilian and the Milanese to canonical satisfaction for their invasions of the churches and of the empire.
Present at all these were the metropolitans—the lord patriarch, the Mainz, the Cologne, the Magdeburg, and the Bremen—with some of their suffragans, and the greatest part of the bishops of Lombardy, of whom very many gave an affectionate and full assent to the aforesaid confirmation. But the lord patriarch and certain others, saving for the future the censure of the catholic church, obeyed on account of the aforementioned necessities of the empire. All the absent archbishops whom we have previously noted, on their own behalf and that of their suffragans, consented fully, except for the Trier, who, when he had set out on the journey, impeded by infirmity, had sent only excusatory letters.
However, the present suffragans of him, the one of Toul and the one of Verdun, pledged in full for themselves and for their fellow-suffragan of Metz. [Lords] of Bamberg, Passau, and Regensburg imitated the patriarch. For the confirming of all the things that have been done, legates are sent: [lord] of Cologne into France, the one of Verdun into Spain, the one of Braga into Hungary.
If in the meantime other writings—some of which we have seen—containing less of the mere truth about these matters should come into your hands, let your Sanctity know that, insofar as we were able in part, we have signified the sincere truth about these things. More fully, however, we shall intimate when present.
Quare autem tam crebrae litterae Eberhardo Salzburgensi archiepiscopo super gestis concilii directae sint, haec fuit causa. Cum ad concilium iter cepisset et iam per Forum Iulii et per marchiam Veronensium usque ad civitatem Vicentinorum pervenisset, gravi correptus infirmitate gradum sistere domumque redire coactus est. Sane quoniam tanti viri fecimus mentionem, de vita et moribus eius quedam memorabimus, quae, quamvis ut lucerna super candelabrum posita [nobis] in domo nostrae provinciae clarissime luceret, ab his tamen qui longe positi sunt invida bonis fama difficilius subtrahet, si scribendo celebretur.
Why, moreover, so frequent letters were directed to Eberhard, archbishop of Salzburg, concerning the deeds of the council, this was the cause. When he had taken his journey to the council and had already come through Forum Julii and through the march of the Veronese as far as the city of the Vicentines, seized by a grave infirmity he was forced to halt his step and to return home. Indeed, since we have made mention of so great a man, we will recall certain things about his life and morals, which, although like a lamp set upon a candlestick [for us] it shone most brightly in the house of our province, yet among those who are placed far away an envious rumor will more difficultly subtract from the good, if it be celebrated by writing.
Moreover, that same venerable man was mature in age, most fittingly instructed in the letters of the sacred page, outstanding in faith, singular in religion; in humanity and piety so accommodating that he could truly say: I have become all things to all, that I might gain all; in largesses liberal, zealous in alms and in receiving pilgrims, to such an extent that the expenses daily disbursed in service of the poor [and] of monasteries and of pilgrims seemed burdensome not only to his own palace but even to the entire bishopric. He himself, however, was in no wise weighed down by a burden of this sort, since he compensated these inconveniences by the reward of good repute—which he, nevertheless, in no way sought—and of eternal recompense. He did not at all shrink from the squalors of the poor; he allowed himself to be touched and handled by lepers—nay more, he did not hesitate sometimes to touch them himself and to kiss their hands.
Nor did he deem it sufficient, if in the ministry of the poor he used the offices of servants, unless he himself with his own hands, his habit girded, would at times set on food, proffer the cup, and pour water not only for washing hands but also feet. And since he furnished an example not only in word of perfect doctrine, but also in deed of consummate discipline, it was deservedly said of him what once was said of a certain one of the saints, namely: This is he who has a life such as his word is, and a word such as his life is, since what he teaches he does, and what he does, this he teaches. By these and many other virtues and the gifts of divine grace he had stirred many indeed to his imitation, but the affection of all to love for him. But thus far on these things.
Compositis ita rebus et gestis concilii, missis quoque legatis, ut supra dictum est, ad reges Hyspaniae, Angliae, Franciae, Datiae, Boemiae et Ungariae, ad imperatorem quoque Grecorum Manuel nuncios dirigit, videlicet Heinricum ducem Carentanum, fortem et exercitatum in bellicis consiliis virum, et Heinricum sacri palatii notarium, omni probitate et industria preditum, ac Neimerium, filium Petri Polani ducis Veneticorum, iam dudum in captivitate sua tentum, sed absolutum, responsa portantes, ut dicebatur, super petitione Constantinopolitani principis de Pentapoleos [et] maritimis in Apulia et quibusdam secretioribus consultationibus contra Wilhelmum, Rogerii Siculi filium et in regno successorem. Cernens autem totam Longobardiam continuis duorum annorum expeditionibus graviter attritam, cum exercitus in crebris contra hostes excursibus et rapinis nec etiam amicis parcere potuisset, paulisper terram ipsam quiescere et respirare utile iudicavit, donec recepta cultura novas futuro anno calamitates sustinere novumque facilius et recipere et enutrire posset exercitum.
With matters thus composed and the acts of the council accomplished, and legates also sent, as was said above, to the kings of Spain, England, France, Dacia, Bohemia, and Hungary, to the emperor also of the Greeks, Manuel, he dispatches nuncios, namely Henry, duke of Carinthia, a man brave and exercised in warlike counsels, and Henry, notary of the sacred palace, endowed with every probity and industry, and Neimerius, son of Peter Polanus, duke (Doge) of the Venetians, long since held in his captivity, but released, carrying responses, as it was said, concerning the petition of the Constantinopolitan prince about the Pentapolis [and] the maritime regions in Apulia, and certain more secret consultations against William, son of Roger the Sicilian and successor in the kingdom. But seeing that all Lombardy, by the continuous expeditions of two years, had been grievously worn down, since the army, in frequent sallies and plunderings against enemies, had not been able to spare even friends, he judged it useful that the land itself should for a little while rest and take breath, until, cultivation having been recovered, it might in the coming year sustain new calamities, and more easily both receive and nourish a new army.
Itaque dimissurus exercitum, advocans ad se proceres et de militia meliores magnam illis ait se habere gratiam pro benivolentia et fidelitate, qua erga se utendo perseverassent. Laudabat etiam in unoquoque bonos mores et fortitudinem, quam preliando in multis magnisque periculis monstrasset; quod eos neque hostium multitudo nec magnitudines civitatum vel audatia inconsulta et immanitates efferae adversantium a consueta animi virtute terruissent. Magnam quoque huius rei sibi fore diligentiam, quod debitis premiis et honoribus virtutes eorum vellet honorare, qui militiae socii fuissent, nec ullum eorum, qui plus aliis laborasset, iusta vicissitudine cariturum.
Therefore, being about to dismiss the army, calling to himself the nobles and the better men of the soldiery, he said that he had great gratitude to them for the benevolence and fidelity which they had continued to exercise toward him. He also praised in each one the good morals and the fortitude which each had demonstrated by fighting amid many and great dangers; that neither the multitude of the enemy nor the magnitudes of the cities, nor the reckless audacity and feral inhumanities of their adversaries, had terrified them from their accustomed virtue of spirit. He further [said that] great diligence in this matter would be his, namely that he wished to honor their virtues with the due prizes and honors, they who had been companions in military service, and that none of those who had labored more than the others would lack a just reciprocation.
He also was highly commending those whom he knew to have done something bravely and exceptional in war, addressing individuals by name. Then he distributed gold and silver, vessels made from silver and gold, likewise precious garments, benefices of fiefs and other donatives, liberally and regally. And when all had in this way been exhilarated and endowed, each according as he had shown himself deserving, with well-wishes and praises offered with great favor by the whole army, he dismissed them, each to where it might suit him to go; but he himself remained in Italy with a few.
Since indeed we have not proposed that the little books of this work should exceed the evangelical number, before we set a limit to this fourth volume, in which we have summarily sketched the acts and deeds of the wars of the most serene prince, let us for a little while also pursue his character, the remaining parts of his life, and his studies concerning the administration of the kingdom.
Igitur divus augustus Fridericus, ut de Theoderico quidam scribit, et moribus et forma talis est, ut et illis dignus sit agnosci, qui eum minus familiariter intuentur; ita personam suam Deus arbiter et ratio naturae consummatae felicitatis dote sociata cumularunt. Moribus huiuscemodi, ut laudibus eorum nichil ne imperii quidem fraudet invidia. Forma corporis decenter exacta; statura longissimis brevior, procerior eminentiorque mediocribus; flava cesaries, paulolum a vertice frontis crispata; aures vix superiacentibus crinibus operiuntur, tonsore pro reverentia imperii pilos capitis et genarum assidua succisione curtante.
Therefore the divine Augustus Frederick, as someone writes of Theoderic, is both in morals and in form such that he is worthy to be acknowledged even by those who behold him less familiarly; thus God the arbiter and the ratio of nature, joined with the endowment of consummate felicity, have heaped up his person. Of such morals, that envy robs nothing of their praises—not even the empire’s. The form of the body is decently exact; in stature shorter than the very tallest, taller and more eminent than those of middling height; a blond caesaries, a little curled from the crown of the brow; the ears are covered by hair scarcely overlying them, the barber, out of reverence for the empire, by assiduous cutting shortening the hairs of head and cheeks.
The orbs of the eyes are sharp and perspicacious, the nose comely, the beard somewhat rufous, the lips subtle and not enlarged by the angles of a dilated mouth, and the whole face glad and cheerful. The ordered series of the teeth presents a niveous color. As for the throat and neck, not obese, but somewhat succulent, the skin is milky and is suffused with a youthful blush, and that color comes to him frequently not from anger, but from modesty.
Shoulders projecting a little; vigor in the girded loins; legs supported by swelling calves, honorable and truly masculine. Gait firm and constant; a clear voice, and the whole habit of the body virile. By such a form of body very much both dignity and authority is acquired, both standing and seated.
In health quite prosperous, except that at times he is seized by a fleeting fever. A lover of wars, but so that through them peace may be acquired; himself prompt in hand, most mighty in counsel, appeasable by suppliants, propitious toward those received into the faith. If you inquire about his daytime activity outside, he seeks the pre-dawn gatherings of the basilicas and of his priests, either alone or with the smallest retinue, and he venerates them with so great assiduity that he himself has given to all Italians the form and example of maintaining honor and reverence toward bishops and clerics.
He affords such veneration to the divine offices that he honors every hour in which psalmody is performed before God himself with appropriate silence, nor meanwhile does anyone dare to trouble him about any business. With the vows completed, and after the solemnities of the masses, having been consigned with divine relics, in the morning he assigns the remainder to the care of administering the kingdom. If he exercises himself in hunting, in the training, viewing, and carrying about of horses, dogs, hawks, and other birds of that kind, he is second to none.
When there is play to be had, he for a while sequesters the royal severity, and he is of such a temperament that the remission is not vitiating, the austerity not blood‑staining. Toward his familiars he is, in proffering discourse, not menacing, nor in admitting counsel disdainful, nor in investigating a charge persecutory. He sedulously perquires the Scriptures and the deeds of ancient kings.
He for the most part distributes alms with his own hand in the ministry of the poor, and faithfully apportions a tenth of his monies to churches and monasteries. In his native tongue he is very eloquent, but Latin he can better understand than pronounce. He uses ancestral vesture, neither profuse nor petulant, nor yet plebeian, which is more decorous for him, so that in his camps the pomp of Mars may rather radiate than that of Venus.
Although he stands out as so great in enlarging the kingdom and subjugating peoples, and is constantly engaged in the aforesaid occupations, nevertheless he has initiated very many works in various places pertaining to the decor and convenience of the realm, some he has even consummated, and he has expended the greatest part of his providence on the service of piety. For indeed palaces once most beautiful, constructed by Charles the Great, and royal residences adorned with most illustrious workmanship at Noviomagus and near the villa Ingelinheim—works indeed very strong, but by now worn out as much by neglect as by age—he most becomingly repaired, and in them he displayed the very great greatness of spirit innate to himself; at Lutra he, with no less munificence, took care of a royal house built from red stones. For on one side he has encompassed it with a most strong wall; the other side a fishpond, in the likeness of a lake, flows around, containing within itself every delectation of fish and fattened fowl for the feeding of both sight and taste.
He also has a contiguous preserve nurturing an abundance of deer and roe-deer. Of all which the regal magnificence and a supply greater than can be told offer to onlookers a sight worth the effort. In Italy too, at Modoicium, at Lauda, and in other places and cities, in the renewing of palaces and sacred edifices, he has manifested such magnificence of liberality that the whole empire of so great an emperor may not cease forever to enjoy both his benefaction and his memory.
The kings of Spain, England, France, Denmark, Bohemia, and Hungary, although they always held his puissance suspect, he so bound to himself by friendship and society, and has them so inclined to his will, that whenever they have sent letters or legates to him, they declare that the authority of commanding yields to him, and that in them the will of obeying is not lacking. The Constantinopolitan emperor Manuel, who of his own accord was seeking his friendship and society, he bent, since he called himself emperor of the Romans as his predecessors did, to call himself emperor not of Rome but of New Rome. And, not to linger over many matters, for the whole time of his reign he deemed nothing better, nothing more delightful, than that the imperium of the city of Rome by his own work and labor should prevail and flourish with its pristine authority.
These things were done by the glorious prince up to the present year, which from the Incarnation of the Lord is counted the 1160th, but of his reign the 7th, of the empire the 5th—he being destined still to accomplish many things felicitously at the helm of the kingdom, and at length, with the King of kings, together with the most pious princes, to receive the eternal prizes of merits. From the very broad meadows of your deeds, most excellent of the Augusti, both your so‑beloved uncle Otto the bishop and the diligence of our humility gathered flowers, whence we might weave the crown of this little work; leaving more, which are known and reported about you, to the more skilled and to those more domestic. If these things should be hateful to anyone, or they should judge them despicable, yet the fruits of our obedience will console us, in that we obeyed the one giving the command.
Anno ab incarnatione Domini MCLX. apud oppidum, quod vocatur Carcer, ab imperatore contra Mediolanenses grave prelium habitum est, et cum iam, Latinis qui secum erant fugientibus, victus videretur, strennue vicit. Cesi pene quingenti ex parte adversa, de nostris tantum quinque.
In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1160, at the town which is called Carcer, by the emperor against the Milanese a grave battle was held, and when now, with the Latins who were with him fleeing, he seemed defeated, he strenuously conquered. Nearly five hundred were cut down on the opposing side, of ours only five.
Anno ab incarnatione Domini MCLXVI. apud Wirzeburch in pentecosten curia celebratur, ubi coniuratio fit ab imperatore et principibus qui aderant tam secularis quam aecclesiastici ordinis, quod Paschalis semper papa habeatur et eo mortuo nullus nisi de sua parte eligatur; similiter post mortem imperatoris nemo sibi substituatur, nisi iuraverit se eandem partem defensurum. Solus Albertus Frisingensis tunc iurare noluit.
In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1166. at Wirzeburch at Pentecost a court is held, where a sworn confederation is made by the emperor and the princes who were present of both the secular and the ecclesiastical order, that Paschal be always held as pope and, when he is dead, no one be elected unless from their party; likewise, after the death of the emperor, no one be substituted for him unless he shall have sworn that he will defend the same party. Only Albert of Freising then refused to swear.
For Conrad of Mainz had already been pre-judged as an enemy. In the same year Albert of Freising, long resisting, was compelled and swore to obey Paschal for conscience’s sake, as long as the empire should favor his party and as long as he should wish to have the regalia. In that same year likewise the emperor, descending around the feast of Saint Peter, compelled the Hungarians, who earlier, regarding the promised money, had for the most part lied, to swear anew.
MCLXVII. Imperator circa autumpnum Italiam intravit ibique, cooperante cancellario suo Christiano, Paschalem per iterata sacramenta confirmavit; hoc eiusdem instinctu cancellarii apposito, quod nullus eorum umquam absolutionem eius iuramenti expeteret et oblatam numquam reciperet. Eodem anno dux Austriae H. et O. palatii comes maior in Greciam destinati, sine effectu, preter quod magnifice donati sunt, revertuntur.
1167. The Emperor, about autumn, entered Italy and there, with his chancellor Christian cooperating, confirmed Paschal through repeated oaths; this added at the instigation of that same chancellor: that none of them should ever seek absolution of that oath and, if offered, should never receive it. In the same year H., duke of Austria, and O., the senior count of the palace, destined for Greece, returned without effect, except that they were magnificently gifted.
MCLXVIII. Imperator Ravennates, Fagenses, Bononienses graviter attritos ad deditionem coegit. Christianus aput Mogontiam domno Conrado superponitur.
1168. The emperor forced the Ravennans, Faentines, and Bolognese, heavily battered, to surrender. Christian at Mainz is set over lord Conrad.
Iuvavia, long since proscribed by the emperor on account of Alexander, is burned, it being doubtful whether by the deed of enemies or by its own mishap. Conrad, the emperor’s brother, in order to recover the favor which he had long before unwisely lost, enters Italy, but returns without effect. Welf the elder and Henry the Burgrave and Frederick the Count Palatine set out for Jerusalem.
1168. The Hungarian, aid being furnished to him by H., duke of Austria, his father-in-law, moves war against the emperor of the Greeks on account of this: that he received and fostered his brother, aspiring to the kingdom, and enriched him by the marriage of his daughter. In the same year the emperor besieges Ancona, takes it.
The emperor follows after them, burns the Leonine City and the porticoes of the church of Saint Peter; he takes the church, which had been castellated by the Romans, and he would have overthrown it if he had not spared it out of regard for religion. After these things he turns his march into Lombardy. The Cremonese, the Brescians, and the Milanese returned to their place; the people of Lodi, Bergamo, and Mantua, confederated with the enemies of the empire, rebel.
At the same time a severe pestilence invaded the army and for the greatest part extinguished it. Then there died from among the princes: Reinold of Cologne, Daniel of Prague, Eberhard of Regensburg, Conrad of Augsburg, Godfrey of Speyer, Hermann of Verden, N., bishops of Cicensis, Frederick the son of King Conrad, Welf the Younger, Berengar of Sulzbach, and innumerable among the barons. The emperor, by letters throughout the whole latitude of the empire, proclaims the disaster of his own and the rebellion of the Italians.
MCLXVIIII. Rolandus, qui et Alexander, denuo Urbe cedit. Nam hoc eodem anno de Francia reversus, fretus quibusdam de nobilioribus Romanis et Gwillehelmo Siculo, sedem Lateranensis patriarchii insederat.
1169. Roland, who is also Alexander, again withdraws from the City. For in this same year, having returned from France, relying on certain of the more noble Romans and on William the Sicilian, he had occupied the seat of the Lateran patriarchate.
Meanwhile the newly elected bishops are compelled by the emperor to receive their consecration from Christian of Mainz. Guido, who is also Paschal, dies and is buried in the basilica of the blessed Peter at Rome; by the Romans, except the Centii, John, bishop of Albano, is chosen and is named Callistus III. Louis, king of France, and Henry, king of England, wage war against each other; they are approached by the emperor with entreaties about making peace between themselves, with threats added on the part of the king of the Franks; for between the emperor and the king of England there was a pact and amity, his daughter having been given in marriage to Henry, duke of Bavaria and Saxony.
[MCLXX.] Imperator natale Domini in Alsatia egit. Circa purificationem sanctae Mariae Norinberch curiam celebrat, ibi regem Boemiae, qui offenderat, de facili in gratiam recepit. Albanum Pataviensem electum, a suis ab episcopio perturbatum, specie tantum in episcopatum restituit, effectu minime.
[1170.] The emperor spent the Nativity of the Lord in Alsace. Around the Purification of Saint Mary he holds court at Nuremberg; there he easily received the king of Bohemia, who had offended, back into favor. Albanus, the Paduan elect, having been disturbed from his bishopric by his own people, he restored to the episcopate in appearance only, in effect not at all.
For he was offended with him because he refused to be consecrated by Cristanus. For this cause also he treated Conon, the elect of Ratisbon, harshly there, and he preassigned to him a session of the curia on this matter for the next Pentecost, to the end that he should either receive orders from Cristanus or resign the episcopate. With Quadragesima (Lent) beginning, the abbots of Cîteaux and of Clairvaux met the emperor about the schism and suggested to him that he dispatch the bishop of Bamberg with them to Rome.
Which also was done. But on account of the insolence of the Longobards, the business itself then lacked advancement; for the bishop himself, repulsed by them, was forced to return to his own. About the same time the Salzburg elect was consecrated by Ulrich, patriarch of Aquileia, the emperor being unwilling.