let our said son reflect on past and
present events, and enter on that path along which it is known that
Justinian and other Catholic emperors walked; as, by following their
example, he will not fail to obtain honor on earth and happiness in
heaven. You, too, should you succeed in reclaiming him, will at once
offer a grateful tribute of obedience to St. Peter, and assert your
own and the Church's liberty. At all events, our illustrious son will
learn from your admonitions,--will learn from the infallible
Gospel,--that the most holy Roman Church, built by God's hand on a
most firm rock, however much she may be shaken by the winds, will yet
endure throughout all ages under the Lord's protection."

This brief threw those to whom it was addressed into no small
perplexity; for while, on the one hand, they secretly leaned to the
cause of the Church, they had become on the other so cowed and
truckling under the iron despotism of the emperor, that they felt
themselves unequal to the task of responding to the pope as their duty
prompted; so that they resolved, after some deliberation on the
subject, to lay the brief before Frederic, and to square their reply
according to his remarks. These were a tissue of the most contemptible
subterfuges and trifling,--as for example, "that he had issued no
edict against his clergy passing into Italy as pilgrims, and all
others that wished to go thither, on reasonable grounds, attested by
their bishops, could still do so; that he was chiefly actuated in his
proceedings by the wish to correct those abuses under which his
churches were overtaxed, and the discipline of his convents almost
ruined; that, though God had raised the Church by means of the state,
yet the Church now sought to overthrow the state--a requital which he
(Frederic) viewed as by no means divine; that the evil designs of the
Church against the Empire were not only proved by her writings, but by
the pictures, which, contrary to the imperial wishes, were allowed to
continue undefaced at Rome, under one of which, representing the
Emperor Conrad kneeling to the Pope, and receiving the crown, an
inscription asserted that he did so as the vassal of his Holiness."
For the rest, the bishops begged of the pope to appease their
sovereign by apologetic letters, so that the Church might continue at
peace, and the Empire lose none of its dignity.

Adrian smiled at the perverse spirit of pride which this reply from
the German hierarchy sh