So far the contest had been confined to Germany; for Lothair had sacrificed the claims of the empire to his own immediate interests, while Conrad had never set foot in Italy after his accession to the German throne. But as the attempt of Lothair to crush the acknowledged Ghibelline leaders had been thwarted, so Conrad had failed to render the Guelf harmless; and it was the pretensions of Henry the Lion, the son of Henry the Proud, which determined Conrad to waive the claims of his young son to the succession, and to recommend to the nobles the choice of his nephew Frederick. But Conrad's nomination would have been of little account. Frederick's claims were largely personal. Already before he succeeded his father as Duke of Suabia he had shown a combination of boldness in action with a conciliatory disposition which marked him out as a leader and a statesman. To this was added, as with Conrad, the prestige of a crusader; while in view of the bitter rivalries of the last two reigns, it was a recommendation that Frederick united in his person the two families whose strife had divided the kingdom. Two years elapsed from his accession before Frederick was free to set out for Italy. As the heir of the Franconians his probable attitude was a matter of some anxiety at Rome and in Italy generally. He was no enemy of the Church. His first act after his coronation at Aachen (March 9th, 1152) was to announce his accession to the Pope, who sent him a return message of goodwill. But from the outset Frederick showed his intention of taking a high line, for, in a disputed election at Magdeburg he obtained a party for a nominee of his own who was already a bishop, and therefore ineligible, and by virtue of the Concordat he decided for his own candidate in defiance of all ecclesiastical laws, and straightway invested him with the regalia.
[Sidenote: Imperial rights.]
Moreover, he had a high idea of the imperial mission. It was seventeen years since any emperor had crossed the Alps; and it is difficult to say whether the selfish policy of Lothair or the non-appearance of Conrad must have been the more detrimental to the maintenance of imperial interests. But during the first few months of his reign appeals poured in from the Pope against his various enemies, from some barons of Apulia against the great Roger of Sicily, from the citizens of Lodi against the tyranny of Milan. These, together with the ridiculous proffer of the imperial crown from the lately formed Republic of Rome, seemed to open an opportunity for the successful recovery of imperial rights. And, much as the Italians resented the spasmodic interferences of the Emperor, they were proud of their imperial connection. The commerce of the East, largely increased by the Crusades, flowed into Western Europe chiefly through Italy. As a result, the north and centre of the peninsula were studded with a number of compact, self-governing communities inclined to resent any outside interference, however lawful in origin. But the larger cities were ever trying to group the smaller round them as satellites; and the constant quarrels which resulted, often produced a party which was ready to welcome the interposition of the Emperor. There was this common ground, then, between these cities and the Papacy that, whereas they found it equally necessary to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an outside power against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion of those imperial rights which it was the sole object of Frederick's journey to Italy to assert.
But the results of Frederick's first expedition to Italy were of a very doubtful kind. It is true that he was crowned at Rome, that he asserted his imperial rights both positively in a great assembly on the plains of Roncaglia and, as it were, negatively by the destruction of three refractory towns, and that he got rid of Arnold of Brescia. But, on the other hand, his assertion of power provoked hatred instead of fear; and although, despite some sharp differences, he parted amicably from the Pope, his return to Germany left Hadrian in an impossible position. The republican party in Rome remained untouched: William of Sicily was unsubdued.
[Sidenote: Papal defiance.]
Shortly after his accession Frederick had made an agreement with the then Pope that neither should make peace with the Romans or the Sicilian King without consent of the other. But now Hadrian, deserted, accepted the Commune as the civil authority in Rome, and even came to a treaty with William of Sicily, who engaged to hold all his lands as a vassal of the Pope. Frederick was naturally angry at the repudiation of the mutual obligation with regard to peace and of the imperial suzerainty of William's duchy of Apulia. But he was too much occupied in Germany to do more than protest. And before he was able to assert his power in Italy again Pope Hadrian had, as it were, thrown down a challenge to him. At the Diet of Besançon in Burgundy in 1157 two papal envoys appeared with a complaint of Frederick's conduct in some particular. The letter which they bore spoke of the late coronation of the Emperor by the Pope and used the equivocal word beneficia to describe the papal act. When the assembled nobles resented the expression as implying a feudal relation between Pope and Emperor, the papal representative, the Chancellor Roland, boldly asked, "From whom, then, does the emperor hold the empire if not from the Pope?" Frederick's authority alone saved the envoys from violence, and Hadrian found himself obliged to explain away the objectionable expressions.
[Sidenote: The breach.]
But the papal position had been formulated, and that before a German assembly. The Pope was no longer a suppliant: he claimed to be more than an equal. He had thrown down a challenge. Frederick proceeded to pick it up. In fact, it was this second expedition of Frederick to Italy which opened the long contest between Ghibelline and Guelf, a contest only to be ended by the practical destruction of one or other of the parties. It was the complaints of the other cities against the oppression of Milan, which were the immediate cause of Frederick's appearance in Italy in 1158; and the reduction of the Milanese was followed by the holding of an assembly on the plain of Roncaglia, to which Frederick summoned the most famous lawyers of Italy. By their decision rights and powers were given to him, which placed all the communes at his mercy. Moreover, these were not compatible with the rights asserted since the time of Gregory VII by the papal supporters: the regalia were given to the Emperor at the expense of ecclesiastical as well as lay landowners and corporations. If the papal investiture of Apulia infringed the imperial rights, the investiture of Frederick's uncle, Welf VI of Bavaria, with the inheritance of the Countess Matilda openly ignored the oft-repeated claim of the Papacy. Neither side seemed to take especial pains to avoid a breach. The acrimonious correspondence which ensued centred round the relations of the Italian bishops to the Emperor, the respective claims of each party to Rome, and the restoration of the Tuscan inheritance and all the other lands which it claimed, to the Papacy. The excommunication of the Emperor—the open declaration of war—was prevented by Hadrian's death on September 1, 1159.
[Sidenote: The papal schism.]
A schism was inevitable. The majority of the Cardinals elected the papal Chancellor Roland who had defied Frederick at Besançon, and who would be likely to maintain Hadrian's high claims: he was afterwards consecrated as Alexander III. The minority got possession of St. Peter's and proclaimed an imperialist Cardinal as Victor IV. Neither Pope could be consecrated or could remain in Rome: both appealed by legates and letters for the recognition of Christendom. Frederick as Emperor summoned both candidates to submit their claims to the decision of a Council at Pavia. Alexander entirely repudiated the Emperor's implied claim to be the arbiter of Christendom in a spiritual matter, and found support in the fact that only fifty bishops, almost entirely from Germany and Lombardy, assembled at Pavia. The Council, of course, decided in favour of Victor IV. Alexander, however, excommunicated the Emperor, and bent all his energies to gain the adherence of France and England. Not only was he successful in this, but he was also recognised by the Latins of the East and the lessor Christian kingdoms. Victor IV's only supporter was the Emperor.