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Adrian provisions for his troops. Adrian IV accompanied him, as Rome was not safe for a pope. They went to Tivoli and the Alban Hills. Adrian IV urged Frederick to march against the excommunicated King of Sicily. But Frederick's troops were suffering from the heat of an Italian summer. He resolved to retire northwards, and left the pope bitterly disappointed. Adrian IV had crowned Frederick, but had got nothing in return. Neither Rome nor Sicily was reduced to obedience to the papacy. Adrian IV could not return to Rome, and stayed at Tivoli. There he received overtures from the barons of Apulia, who were preparing to revolt against the Sicilian king. The Byzantine emperor, Manuel I, sent an offer to the pope that he would make war against William of Sicily, if the pope would grant him three of the maritime cities of Apulia. Adrian IV went to Benevento to meet the Apulian barons. William, afraid of the coming storm, made overtures for peace, which Adrian IV would have accepted; but the majority of the cardinals opposed a step which would be regarded as hostile to the interests of the emperor. William's offers were accordingly rejected, whereupon he prepared for war. He succeeded in defeating the Greeks and the Apulians, and his success enabled the pope to carry out his policy of alliance with Sicily. In June 1156, Adrian IV at Benevento received King William, and conferred on him the investiture of Sicily and Apulia. William took the oath of fealty to the pope, and agreed to pay a yearly tribute, and to defend the pope against all his foes. Strengthened by this alliance, Adrian IV aimed at returning to Rome. He moved northwards, through Narni to Orvieto, where he took up his abode. He was the first pope who had visited Orvieto, and while he was there he did much to improve the buildings of the city. Thence he passed on to Viterbo, where he negotiated with the Romans, who judged it prudent to make peace with the pope and welcome him back to Rome, whither he returned at the end of the year.

Meanwhile the good understanding between Adrian IV and the emperor had passed away. Frederick regarded the pope's alliance with Sicily and with the Romans as a breach of his engagements towards the empire. Adrian IV looked with suspicion on Frederick's increasing power, and dreaded his influence in Italy. The pope had a specific ground of complaint. In 1156 Archbishop Eskil, of Lund in Sweden, who had aided Adrian when a cardinal in his disposal of the northern church, was taken prisoner in Germany on his return from a pilgrimage to Rome. He was imprisoned for a ransom, and, in spite of the pope's remonstrances, Frederick refused to interfere to procure his release. Adrian IV determined to ascertain clearly the emperor's intentions. He sent his chief adviser, Cardinal Roland of Siena, to the diet of Besançon, which Frederick held in October, 1157. Roland was a man imbued with the loftiest ecclesiastical pretensions. He gave Frederick the greeting of the pope and cardinals: ‘The pope greets you as a father, the cardinals as brothers.’ It was unheard before that cardinals should rank themselves as the equal of the emperor. Then Roland handed Frederick a letter of the pope, which was read in the assembly. It complained of Eskil's treatment, and went on to say that the pope had conferred on the emperor many benefits: ‘qualiter imperialis insigne coronæ libentissime conferens, benignissimo gremio suo tuæ sublimitatis apicem studuerit confovere. … Si majora beneficia exccellentia tua de manu nostra suscepisset … non immerito gauderemus’ ( in Muratori, vi. 747). The language was studiously equivocal. The expressions to confer benefices were the current phrases of feudal law. They were interpreted by the German nobles to mean that the pope claimed to be the feudal lord of the empire and confer it like a fief. There were angry cries from the assembly. Cardinal Roland boldly exclaimed, ‘From whom then does the emperor hold the empire if not from the pope?’ The Pfalzgraf Otto of Wittelsbach laid his hand on his sword, and would have cut Roland down if he had not been prevented. The emperor with difficulty restored order. The legate's papers were seized, and it was found that they contained letters of complaint against the emperor addressed to the German churches. The legates were bidden to make their way back to Rome at once, and leave Germany undisturbed.

Frederick I replied to the pope's challenge by a letter which was circulated through his dominions. He asserted that the empire was held from God alone, and that whoever maintained that it was held from the pope contradicted the institution of God and the teaching of St. 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 (, 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