the English Pope Adrian IV.

Adrian, however, was as well by nature as by the experience of his
past life, a character not likely to be daunted by the threatening
prospect before him; and behaved with such courage and decision, as
for the time to confound his rebellious subjects, and reduce them to
obedience. For when, on his assumption of the tiara, the
senate,--which by this time seems to have arrived at the last pitch of
insolence, under the training of Arnold of Brescia,--made a formal
proposition to the new pope, to renounce once for all his right to the
government of the state; he no sooner heard it than he sternly
rejected it, and drove the deputation through whom it came with
ignominy out of his presence. Hereupon the mob, worked upon by the
orators and other agents of the republic, flew to arms, and led by
Arnold of Brescia himself,--who had been fetched out of the country on
purpose,--gave in to every disorder; and, among other excesses,
murdered Cardinal Gerard, a well known adherent of the pope, as he was
passing along the Via Sacra to an audience. Adrian declared this
atrocity tantamount to high treason, and at once resolved to punish it
by striking a blow such as till his time had not been struck at Rome
at all. This was to lay the city under an interdict. No calamity in
the middle ages was more dreaded, more cruelly felt by society, than
an interdict. This naturally arose out of that profound religious
faith, which in those times pervaded all classes of men alike, in the
midst of the greatest crimes and disorders. The interdict, which Pope
Adrian thus fulminated against Rome, lasted from Palm Sunday till
Maunday Thursday. It will not be uninteresting here to briefly
describe an interdict. It was usually announced at midnight by the
funeral toll of the church bells; whereupon the entire clergy might
presently be seen issuing forth, in silent procession, by torch light,
to put up a last prayer of deprecation before the altars for the
guilty community. Then the consecrated bread, that remained over, was
burnt; the crucifixes and other sacred images were veiled up; the
relics of the saints carried down into the crypts. Every memento of
holy cheerfulness and peace was withdrawn from view. Lastly, a papal
legate ascended the steps of the high altar, arrayed in penitential
vestment, and formally proclaimed the interdict. From that moment
divine service ceased in all the churches; their doors were locked up;
and