The Church witnessed with extreme alarm the growing fortunes of the Emperor. Adrian IV. showed his ill-will by putting obstacles in the way of the appointment of imperial nominees to vacant bishoprics, and Frederick retaliated by reverting in his correspondence with the Pope to a more ancient but less respectful form of address. In great disgust Adrian encouraged Milan to resist, and got ready for an open breach. He hoped to form an Italian league against the Emperor, and did not scruple to invoke the aid of the schismatic Manuel against the orthodox Frederick. But, on 1st September 1159, he was cut off by a sudden illness in the midst of his preparations. The next Pope was that Cardinal Roland whose zeal at Besançon had even outrun the zeal of Adrian himself. [Sidenote: Alexander III. 1159–1181.] Roland assumed the significant name of Alexander III.; and during his unusually long pontificate of nearly twenty-two years, he continued his predecessor’s policy with such energy that the strife of Pope and Emperor was soon renewed with all its old intensity. Frederick’s friends among the cardinals, finding themselves powerless to oppose Alexander’s election, fell back on the old weapon of schism. On the same day (7th September 1159) that the majority of the cardinals elected Alexander, the imperialist minority of the Sacred College, stirred up by the indefatigable Otto of Wittelsbach, declared that their choice had fallen on the Cardinal Octavian, who assumed the name of Victor IV. [Sidenote: The Antipope Victor IV.] Frederick returned from the reduction of the Lombard cities to hold a council at Pavia to decide between the rival claims, and boasted that he was following the examples of Constantine, Charles, and Otto. Alexander utterly refused to submit his claims to a body convoked under the sanction of the temporal sword. ‘No one,’ he declared, ‘has the right to judge me, since I am the supreme judge of all the world.’ Though the synod of Pavia declared that Victor was the canonical Pope, Alexander, driven out of Rome within a few days of his election, was nevertheless looked up to as rightful Bishop by the greater part of the Christian world. In 1160 a synod of bishops subject to Louis VII. and Henry II. met at Toulouse and declared for Alexander. But the lawful Pope upheld his position with great difficulty in Italy. [Sidenote: Alexander in France.] During the first three years of his pontificate he maintained his court at Anagni and Terracina. In January 1162 he took ship to Genoa, whence after the fall of Milan, a few weeks later, he fled to France. Secure of the friendship of the two chief kings of the West, Alexander now quietly waited until the time was ripe for his return to Italy. In 1163 he held a council at Tours, within the dominions of Henry of Anjou, in which he excommunicated the Antipope and his supporters, among whom Rainald of Dassel, now Archbishop-elect of Cologne, was specially mentioned.