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410 III.

THE VESANCON EPISODE.

(Doeberl: " Moiiumeuta Germaniae Selecta," vol. iv. pp. 107-115.)

(a.) Letter of Adrian IV. to Barbarossa, Sept. 20th, 1157.

Bishop Adrian, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved son Frederick, illustrious emperor of the Romans, — greeting and apostolic benediction. A few days ago we remember to have written to thy imperial Majesty recalling to thy Highness's memory that, as we believe, that horrid and execrable crime and impious deed of evil committed in our time in Germany had remained for some time uninvestigated,—and observing, not without great wonder, that thou had'st allowed the barbarity of so pernicious a crime to pass until now without taking the severe vengeance that was fitting. For in what manner our venerable brother Eskill, archbishop of Lyon, while returning from the apostolic see, was captured in that land by certain impious and godless men—we cannot speak of it without great grief of mind,—and is at present kept in custody; how, moreover, in the aforesaid capture the impious men, the seeds of evil, the sons of crime did violently and with drawn swords rise against him and his followers; and how vilely and disgracefully they treated them, taking away all that they had:— thy serene Highness knows on the one hand, and, on the other, the fame of so great an outrage has already reached the most distant and most unapproachable regions. In vengeance of which most violent crime, as one to whom, as we believe, good things are pleasing and evil ones displeasing, thou should' st have arisen with more steadfastness; and the sword, which was given thee by divine concession to punish evil-doers but to exalt the good, ought to have raged above the neck of the impious and most sternly to have destroyed the presumptuous. But thou art said so to have hushed this up—or rather to have neglected it—that they have no reason to repent of having committed the deed, inasmuch as they