With these charges the patriarch, attended by other oriental prelates, set out for Italy, to lay his case before the pope. After running many perils by reason of the war, then going on between the pope and the king of Sicily, the party at last reached Beneventum. The trial that took place lasted several days; when the result of the pleadings for and against was, that Adrian became convinced of the hollowness of the accusations, laid by the patriarch against the knights of St. John, and, therefore, refused to grant the redress sought for,--namely, to annul the patent of privileges conferred by Anastasius. William of Tyre,--who describes the transaction as a partisan of the patriarch,--plainly says that the pope took bribes to decide as he did. But Pagi [3] denies this flatly, and affirms that Adrian proceeded in this, as well as in every other act of his authority, conscientiously and disinterestedly. Indeed, it is rather unfortunate for William of Tyre, that of the three cardinals, whom he alone excepts from the charge of bribery, two, namely, Octavian, and John of St. Martin,--afterwards figured as principal actors in the scandalous schism which rent the Church after Adrian's death: the first as Frederic Barbarossa's anti-pope, under the name of Victor IV. in opposition to Alexander III. the lawful pope; the second as Victor's legate, and as chief supporter, after his death, of Anacletus III., whom the emperor next started against Alexander. Peter of Blois, too, in his letter [4] to cardinal Papiensis, describes Octavian as having passed his whole life in amassing riches wherewith to disturb the Church, and as having been but too successful in corrupting a powerful party in the Roman curia to his views. It had always been a leading concern of the popes to heal the schism between Constantinople and Rome. Adrian did his part, though fruitlessly, towards so great a work. Shortly after his accession, he sent to the Emperor Constantine legates on the subject, who also carried a letter from the pope to Basilius, bishop of Thessalonica,--one of the most influential and well disposed prelates, at that day, in the east. This letter was to request his co-operation in bringing about the re-union of the severed Churches. Basilius made answer, that unity might easily be restored, as no essential difference of belief existed between the two communions; in both of which one and the same doctrine was taught, and one and the same Lamb, namely Christ, offered up for the sins of the world; though without doubt, some minor discrepancies existed between the two, whose removal however belonged wholly to the pope: who, as he had the will had also the power, no less than our Saviour himself, to unite into _one_ what stood now so widely separated. Basilius would thus seem, to have been of opinion that he was in no wise cut off from the Catholic Church, notwithstanding the oriental might differ in certain rites from the western Church. [5]