Emperor Adrian

“ The verses the Emperor Adrian wrought on his death-bed (call them a song if you will) have been admired, and approved, by several great men; Mr. Pope has not only given his opinion in their favour, but elegantly translated them, nay, thought them worthy an imitation, perhaps exceeding the original. If this behaviour of my lord's is liable to different constructions, let good nature, and good manners, incline us to bestow the most favourable thereon.
After his fatigues at sea, during the remainder of the reign of Charles the IId, he continued to live in honourable leisure. ”

“ The Emperor Adrian since made use of the same words, and kings should be often put in mind of them, to make them know that the great office conferred upon them of the command of so many men, is not an employment of ease; and that there is nothing can so justly disgust a subject, and make him unwilling to expose himself to labour and danger for the service of his prince, than to see him, in the meantime, devoted to his ease and frivolous amusement, and to be solicitous of his preservation who so much neglects that of his people. ”

“ Meanwhile, Adrian, having gained a street which, though in the neighbourhood of the crowd, was empty and desolate, turned to his fierce comrade. “Rodolf!” said he, “mark!—no violence to the citizens. Return to the crowd, collect the friends of our house, withdraw them from the scene; let not the Colonna be blamed for this day’s violence; and assure our followers, in my name, that I swear, by the knighthood I received at the Emperor’s hands, that by my sword shall Martino di Porto be punished for his outrage. ”

“ To take such a whim of a reptile with one to the gallows, seems [Pg 403] whimsical enough; but the Emperor Adrian, if you read the classics, had such a vagabondish, blandish, little animal, his animula vagula blandula, to be with him on his death-bed. ”

“ Allard began incredulously.
"The Emperor needs you more than ever before. There are too many people who cling to the peace of the last years, who dread change and would force me upon the throne at any cost. The Empire—not Adrian's court—the vast middle class, the merchants, the quiet, staid aristocracy, the very peasants, want all to continue as it is. If I were still to govern with the Emperor they would rest content, but they see it will not be so. They fear Adrian, they know and detest Dalmorov and the party he represents. ”

“ If the Emperor Adrian, near his death, cou'd play with his very Soul, his Animula,21 &c. and regret that it cou'd be no longer companionable; if Greatness at the same time was not the Delight he was so loth to part with, sure then these chearful Amusements I am contending for must have no inconsiderable share in our Happiness; he that does not chuse to live his own way, suffers others to chuse for him. Give me the Joy I always took in the End of an old Song,
My Mind, my Mind is a Kingdom to me! [21]
If I can please myself with my own Follies, have not I a plentiful Provision for Life? ”

“ But the Emperor was not at all inclined to let his new companion remain away from him very much, and Allard was quite as willing to stay at what he privately considered the post of duty. So it happened that he went riding with Adrian more frequently than he went motoring with Rosal, and accepted readily a routine which left him few hours unoccupied.
It was not possible to live at the palace without learning many things. But it required just one day for Allard to learn enough of Adrian to make him smile at ever having thought Stanief imperious. ”

“ He adorned the city of Rome with splendid and substantial buildings, and delighted to draw men of merit from obscurity. His faults were, great fondness for war, and persecuting the Christians, which his strong attachment to the heathen ritual in which he had been educated made him consider as a duty, or a proof of sincerity. He died, during an absence from home, of apoplexy, at the age of sixty-three, having reigned nineteen years.
Adrian, the fifteenth Roman Emperor, began his reign in 117. He had received an excellent education. ”

“ That the holy places were known to all men in the time of Adrian is demonstrated by an undeniable fact. This emperor, when he rebuilt the city, erected a statue of Venus on Mount Calvary, and another of Jupiter on the sacred sepulchre. The grotto of Bethlehem was given up to the rites of Adonis, the jealousy of the idolaters thus publishing by their abominable profanations, the sublime doctrines of the Cross, which it was their object to conceal or calumniate. ”

“ Charles was determined to be master in Italy; for that, not only the Lutheran question, but even the war against the Turk must wait, threatening though the attitude of Solyman was at this moment. Adrian, on the contrary, was not anxious to see the Emperor too powerful in Italy, and yearned to free the Papacy from the political trammels in which late Popes had involved it. To bring about a reconciliation between the two rivals, and then rally all Christendom in a crusade against the Turk, this was Adrian’s dream. ”

“ Sometimes it found Adrian surrounded by many people, sometimes alone, more often with Allard, as now. And never was he so sweetly gracious to Stanief as in Dalmorov's presence; although, as Stanief knew perfectly well, at other times he listened without rebuke to the baron's constant insinuations and warnings. If the young Emperor had confidence in no one, most assuredly no one could risk a judgment of his real thoughts. ”

“ Adrian III., an Englishman by birth, who was then pontiff, and very clearly convinced in his own mind of his right to dispose of kingdoms and empires, was easily persuaded, by the prospect of Peter’s pence, to act as emperor of the world, and make an addition to his ghostly jurisdiction of an island which, though converted to Christianity, had never acknowledged any subjection to the see of Rome. ”

“ The truth was, a reconciliation between Adrian and William, would have seriously embarrassed Frederic Barbarossa's designs on Sicily;—to say nothing of the protection which such an event would secure to the pope against those farther aggressions on the Church, which the emperor had in view.
Driven to desperation by the final decision of the pope, William, who, with all his faults, seems still to have been capable of a rash energy when real danger stared him in the face, resolved to throw himself again on the chance of war. ”

“ Xystus was his successor." (Ib., book iv. chap. 4.) "And Adrian being now in the twelfth year of his reign, Xystus, who had now completed the tenth year of his episcopate, was succeeded by Telesphorus." (Id., book iv. chap. 5.) "The Emperor Adrian, having finished his mortal career after the twenty-first year of his reign, is succeeded by Antoninus, called Pius, in the government of the Romans. ”

“ Adrian excommunicated William. After the departure of Frederick, Adrian collected his vassals and mercenaries and marched south to Beneventum, a papal possession, where he remained until June, 1156. It was during this time that John of Salisbury spent three months with him, and obtained from him the famous Donation of Ireland (see page 158) . The fortune of war favoured William. He captured Brundusium, with an immense store of provisions and munitions of war, and five thousand pounds' weight of gold that the Greek Emperor, Manuel I, intended for his ally the Pope. ”

“ The Britains after the deceasse of Lucius (who died without issue) rebell against the Romans, the emperor Adrian comming in his owne person into Britaine appeaseth the broile, they go about to recouer their libertie against the Romans, but are suppressed by Lollius the Romane lieutenant; the vigilantnesse or wakefulnesie of Marcellus, and his policie to keepe the souldiers waking, the Britains being ruled by certeine meane gentlemen of Perhennis appointing doo falselie accuse him to the emperor Commodus, he is mangled and murthered of his souldiers. ”

“ In his contest with the Greek empire and the Lombard princes of Benevento, Adrian remained faithful to the Frankish alliance, and the friendly relations between pope and emperor were not disturbed by the difference which arose between them on the question of the worship of images, to which Charlemagne and the Gallican Church were strongly opposed, while Adrian favoured the views of the Eastern Church, and approved the decree of the council of Nicaea (787) , confirming the practice and excommunicating the iconoclasts. ”

“ At the diet of Besancon in October 1157, the legates presented to Barbarossa a letter from Adrian which alluded to the beneficia conferred upon the emperor, and the German chancellor translated this beneficia in the feudal sense. In the storm which ensued the legates were glad to escape with their lives, and the incident at length closed with a letter from the pope, declaring that by beneficium he meant merely bonum factum. The breach subsequently became wider, and Adrian was about to excommunicate the emperor when he died at Anagnia on the 1st of September 1159. ”

“ The Romans fled on all sides with a loss of more than 1000 killed or drowned, and 200 captured. The emperor, as Otto of Frisingen asserts, [4] had the extraordinary good fortune to lose in such an obstinate and bitter combat only two men,—one killed and one made prisoner. "Such!" cried Frederic, as he beheld the defeat of the enemy, and recollected the terms of the senate the day before, "Such, O! Rome, is the price which thy Prince pays for thy crown; such the way in which we Germans buy our empire!" [5]
On the morrow he turned over his prisoners to Peter, the prefect of Rome ”

“ Those who attach credit to fables of this kind believe that a stream flows from the fountain Castalia which confers the power of predicting the future, and which is similar in its name and powers to the fountain of Delphi. It is related that Adrian here received intimation of his future greatness, when he was but a private individual; and that he dipped a leaf of the laurel into the water and found written thereon an account of his destiny. When he became emperor, it is said, he commanded the fountain to be closed, in order that no one might be enabled to pry into the knowledge of the future. ”

“ To this step he was urged all the more by finding out that Emanuel, the Greek emperor, after refusing to stand his ally at the beginning of the war, was in correspondence, through his minister Palæologus, with Adrian; trying to procure from the latter the cession of three sea-ports of Apulia in consideration of a large sum of money, and of the promise to expel the Sicilian king from his Italian dominions. ”

“ They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity and vainglory, are ever envious. For they can not want work; it being impossible but many in some one of those things should surpass them. Which was the character of Adrian [45] the Emperor; that mortally envied poets and painters and artificers, in works wherein he had a vein to excel.
Lastly, near kinsfolks, and fellows in office, and those that have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when they are raised. ”

“ He, within very few years thereafter, was effectually and in good earnest created and installed Roman emperor. A semblable story thereto is related of Adrian, who, being hugely perplexed within himself out of a longing humour to know in what account he was with the Emperor Trajan, and how large the measure of that affection was which he did bear unto him, had recourse, after the manner above specified, to the Maronian lottery, which by haphazard tendered him these lines out of the Sixth of the Aeneids—
Quis procul ille autem, ramis insignis olivae Sacra ferens? ”

“ The brief which they read to him from the pope, expressed the sorrow of his Holiness at finding how greatly the term "beneficium" had been misunderstood, and declared that no other than its ordinary meaning in the Latin language was intended by it, and that the meaning of feoff had not for a moment been entertained. Moreover, the word "contulimus" in speaking of "conferring" the crown, was explained to have meant, not that his Holiness had done so as though the emperor were his vassal, but that he had simply set it on the emperor's head ”

“ Peter; he would face death rather than permit the honour of the empire to be diminished. Soon afterwards he issued an edict limiting appeals to the pope and forbidding journeys to Rome without the permission of the ecclesiastical authorities (Radevicus, 748) . Adrian IV was indignant at the treatment of his legates, and issued a letter of complaint, addressed to the German bishops, in which he bade them admonish the emperor to return to the right path from which he had strayed. ”

“ And besides, in the second destruction which their country had undergone from the Romans a little before, in the reign of Adrian the preceding emperor, most of their learned men having been cut off, and the chiefest of their schools broken up and dissolved, and vast numbers of their people dissipated, and driven out of their land, the usual method of preserving their traditions had then in a great measure failed ”

“ He ought not, as ye know, to have entered upon so arduous a path without your advice; whence we believe that, hearing your warnings, like a discreet man and catholic emperor, he may most easily be recalled to the enjoyment of a more healthful pursuit. ”