The Kingdom in the Sun (49 page)

It may be remembered how, just before Adrian died, the assembled cardinals of the pro-Sicilian party gathered at Anagni had agreed to elect as the next pope one of their own number—their leader, Cardinal Roland, being the obvious favourite. Since this group constituted some two-thirds of the electoral college, there was reason to hope that the election might pass off smoothly enough—as indeed it might have but for the presence in the pro-imperialist opposition of Cardinal Octavian of S. Cecilia. This prelate has already made two brief and faintly ludicrous appearances in our story—the first when, as a papal emissary to Roger II, he had to be told by Roger himself of the Pope's death and the consequent expiry of his own special powers, and the second when, on a similar mission to Conrad of Hohenstaufen, his behaviour earned him the ridicule of John of Salisbury.
¹
But never in his long and inglorious career can he have made such an exhibition of himself as on this occasion.
²

On
5
September
11
5
9,
the day after Adrian's body had been laid to rest in the crypt of
St
Peter's, about thirty cardinals assembled in conclave behind the high altar of the basilica;
³
two days later, all but three of them had cast their votes for Cardinal Roland, who was therefore declared to have been elected—a declaration, be it noted, perfectly in accordance with canon law. The scarlet mantle of the Papacy was brought forward and Roland, after the customary display of reluctance, bent his head to receive it. Suddenly Octavian dived at him, snatched the mantle and tried to don it himself. A scuffle followed, during which he lost it again; but his chaplain instantly produced another—presumably brought along for just such an eventuality—which Octavian this time managed to put on, unfortunately back to front, before anyone could stop him.

There followed a scene of scarcely believable confusion. Wrenching himself free from the furious supporters of Roland who were trying to tear the mantle forcibly from his back, Octavian—whose frantic efforts to turn it right way round had resulted only in getting the fringes tangled round his neck—made a dash for the papal throne,

^I
See pp.
11o
and
15on.

²
I
 
have taken the following account from Gerhoh of Reichensburg
(De Investigatione Antichristi,
i.
53),
whose version is not only the fullest but also—in the opinion of at least one authority (Mann)—'more likely to be impartial than any
of the others'. Impartiality, however, is a rare virtue among historians of the twelfth century; and it is only fair to add that among writers of more imperialist sympathies Octavian also has his champions.

³
By the end there may have been only twenty-nine; according to Arnulf of Lisieux
(Ep. ad cardinals,
Migne, vol. 201, col. 41) Bishop Imams of Tusculum, a renowned epicure, left early because he refused to miss his dinner.

sat in it and proclaimed himself Pope Victor IV.
¹
He then charged off through St Peter's until he found a group of minor clergy, whom he ordered to give him their acclamation—which, seeing the doors suddenly burst open and a band of armed cut-throats swarming into the church, they hastily did. Temporarily at least, the opposition was silenced; Roland and his adherents slipped out while they could and took a hasty refuge in St Peter's tower, a fortified corner of the Vatican which was safe in the hands of Cardinal Boso. Meanwhile, with the cutthroats looking on, Octavian was enthroned a little more formally than on the previous occasion and escorted in triumph to the Lateran—having been at some pains, we are told, to adjust his dress before leaving.

However undignified in its execution, the
coup
could now be seen to have been thoroughly and efficiently planned in advance—and on a scale that left no doubt that the Empire must have been actively implicated. Octavian himself had long been known as an imperial sympathiser and his election was immediately recognised by Frederick's two ambassadors in Rome, who at the same time declared a vigorous war on Roland. Once again they opened their coffers, and German gold flowed freely into the purses and pockets of all those Romans—nobles, senators, bourgeoisie or rabble—who would openly proclaim their allegiance to Victor
TV.
Meanwhile Roland and his faithful cardinals remained blockaded in St Peter's tower.

But almost at once Octavian—or Victor, as we must now call him—saw his support begin to dwindle. The story of his behaviour at the election was by now common knowledge in the city and, we may be sure, had lost nothing in the telling; everywhere, the Romans were turning towards Roland as their lawfully-elected Pope. A mob had formed around St Peter's tower and was now angrily clamouring for his release. After a week he had to be removed to a place of greater security in Trastevere, but they only clamoured the louder. In the street, Victor was hooted at and reviled; lines of doggerel were chanted mockingly at him as he passed. On the night of
1
6 September he could bear it no longer and fled from Rome; and on the following day the rightful Pontiff was led back into the capital amid general rejoicing.

¹
Strangely, it was the second time this title had been chosen by an anti-Pope. See p.
65.

But Roland knew that he could not stay. The imperial ambassadors were still in Rome, where they still had Umitless money to spend. Victor's family, too, the Crescentii, was among the richest and most powerful in the city. Pausing only to assemble an appropriate retinue, on 20 September the Pope travelled south to Ninfa, then a thriving little town under the sway of his friends the Frangipani; and there, in the church of S. Maria Maggiore, he at last received formal consecration as Alexander III
¹
. One of his first acts, predictably, was to excommunicate the anti-Pope—who soon afterwards and equally predictably excommunicated him in return. For the second time in thirty years, the Church of Rome was in schism.

The election of his old friend Cardinal Roland to the Papacy had been the last major diplomatic triumph for Maio of Bari; but the fact that it proved an even greater blessing to the Kingdom of Sicily than Maio had ever dreamed was due, paradoxically, to Frederick Barbarossa himself. Had Frederick bowed to the inevitable and accepted Alexander as the rightful Pope he undoubtedly was, there is no reason why the two should not have reached some accommodation; instead, at the Council of Pa via in February
1160,
he formally recognised the ludicrous Victor, thereby forcing Alexander—whose claim was soon accepted
by
all the other rulers of Europe—into even closer alliance with William I and saddling himself with a new series of vain and useless obligations which were to cripple him politically for the best part of twenty years. But for these obligations he would almost certainly have been able to take advantage of the Sicilian crisis of
1161-62
as we know he planned to do;
²
and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily might have ended even sooner and more tragically than it did.

It was that crisis that decided Alexander to take positive action against the Emperor. To be sure, he had excommunicated Frederick

¹
 
The town of Ninfa was sacked and destroyed in 1382, since when it has lain in ruins. By then, however, it had been acquired by the Caetani family, to whom it still belongs; and since 1922 they have turned the site into one of the loveliest and most romantic gardens in all Italy.

²
Treaties signed by Frederick with Genoa and Pisa during the early summer of 1162 made his intention clear. In both of them he seems to consider his conquest of Sicily a foregone conclusion.

as early as March
1160
—after Pavia he had had little choice—and absolved all imperial subjects from their allegiance; until the end of the following year, however, he had divided his time—apart from one short and unsuccessful attempt to re-establish himself in Rome— between Terracina and Anagni, two papal cities conveniently close to the borders of the Sicilian Kingdom, to which he looked both for his physical protection and for the financial subsidies he so desperately needed. The events of
1161,
starting with the Palermo insurrection and ending with the whole of South Italy up in arms against the King, changed all that. The Pope saw that William of Sicily could no longer be relied upon in an emergency; other allies were needed. Leaving Terracina on a Sicilian ship in the last days of
1161,
he landed in April near Montpellier.

For the next three and a half years, Alexander was to live in exile in France—mostly at Sens, where Peter Abelard had been crushed by the oratory of St Bernard almost a quarter of a century before— working to form a great European League comprising England, France, Sicily, Hungary, Venice, the Lombard towns and Byzantium, against Frederick Barbarossa. He failed, as he was bound to fail. Long conversations with the kings of England and France resulted in broad measures of agreement, cordial expressions of support and —more important still—further heavy subsidies; but no alliance. Henry II in particular he found impossible to trust. In the early days of the schism he had been a firm friend; as early as
1160
Arnulf of Lisieux had reported that while the King 'received all Alexander's communications with respect, he would not so much as touch Octavian's letters with his hands, but would take hold of them with a piece of stick and throw them behind his back as far as he could'. But in
1163
his difficulties with Thomas Becket had begun, and in the following year his promulgation of the Constitutions of Clarendon—deliberately designed to strengthen his hold over the English Church at the expense of the Pope—had caused a distinct chill in Anglo-Papal relations.

William of Sicily too had made difficulties. Alexander had no firmer friend, Barbarossa no more convinced opponent. William was on excellent terms with England, France, Hungary and the Lombard towns, and would willingly have reached some sort of agreement with Venice. But Byzantium was another matter. In
115
8, at the insistence of Pope Adrian, he had made his peace with Manuel Comnenus—and a generous peace at that, considering how soundly he had trounced him only two years before. Even at the time, however, he had known that it could not last; the Byzantines showed no signs of giving up their long-term ambitions in Italy. Subsequent developments had proved him right. Within a year or two Manuel was building up his position again, not only in his old headquarters at Ancona but in all the main towns of Lombardy, to say nothing of Genoa and Pisa; everywhere his agents were busy, encouraging anti-imperial feeling and dispensing subsidies with a generous hand. Insofar as this policy was directed against Barbarossa it was no doubt to be welcomed, but William had had enough experience of the Greeks to know that their presence anywhere west of the Adriatic was, directly or indirectly, a threat to Sicily. Besides, if Manuel's intentions were honourable, why was he still giving shelter to Sicilian rebels ? He was no better than Frederick. William replied to the Pope's overtures in the only way he could—that he would never, at any price, voluntarily allow Byzantine troops on his territory.

But Alexander's disappointment at his diplomatic failure must have been forgotten when, early in
1165,
he received an invitadon from the Roman Senate to return to the city. His rival, the anti-Pope Victor, who had also been forced to spend the last years in exile, had died the year before in pain and poverty at Lucca, where he had been keeping alive on the proceeds of not very successful brigandage and where the local hierarchy would not even allow him burial within the walls. Frederick, stubborn as ever, had immediately given his blessing to the 'election', by his two tame schismatic cardinals, of a successor under the name of Paschal III; but the action had earned him and his anti-Pope nothing but scorn, and it may well have been the ensuing wave of resentment and disgust at the absurdity of the schism and the pig-headedness of the Emperor that had at last brought the Romans to their senses. Besides, the pilgrim trade had dried up. Without a Pope, mediaeval Rome lost its
raison d'etre.