mishaps and mortifications of the first. [1] Muratori, Storia d' Italia, vol. 7. p. 135. Leipsic, 1748. [2] Muratori, Dissertazione sopra le Antichita Italiane, dissert. 4. [3] Otto Frisingensis, lib. 1. cap. 23. [4] Otto Frisingensis, ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Otto Frisingensis, ibid. V. While Frederic was yet fighting his way home through Italy, Adrian had to face about and confront another foe in William, the Norman king of Sicily. William had lately succeeded his father Roger, a wise and able monarch, to whom however his son, as so commonly happens, bore no sort of resemblance; but by his incapacity and total subjection under the influence of a profligate favourite of low birth, named Wrajo, soon threw the state, which Roger had left in so prosperous a condition, into the worst disorder. The breach between him and the pope arose out of a letter which the latter had occasion to address to the king at Salerno, in which the royal title was omitted, and that of mere lord substituted. Adrian did this because William had assumed the crown of Sicily without first asking it of the pope, who, as the feudal patron of that island by ancient compact with its Norman conquerors under Robert de Guiscard, in the time of Pope Leo IX. (A. D. 1053), justly felt his rights infringed by a proceeding which set at nought their established forms. In revenge of this pretended insult, William refused to negotiate with the ambassadors through whom it came; and, furthermore, gave orders to his chancellor Scitinius, whom he had just made viceroy of Apulia, to attack the domain of the Church, which that officer accordingly did, by laying siege to Beneventum, and devastating its territory. But as this proceeding caused a number of disaffected crown vassals of Apulia, already secretly tampered with by agents of the Greek emperor, anxious to recover his lost sway in Italy, to revolt against the Sicilian government,--many of whom in so doing marched to the relief of Beneventum,--Scitinius was soon obliged to raise the siege of that city, and turn his arms against some more vulnerable point. To this end, he passed direct into the Campagna, and there set fire to the towns of Ciparano, Barbuco, and Todi; after which, he made his retreat, demolishing by the way the walls of Aquino, and driving a crowd of monks out of their convents, which he gave up to the plunder of the soldiers.