even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232] authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party: first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,-- 'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.' Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that this dependence of the imperial name on a coronation in the city injured the German sovereign[234]. With strange inconsistency it was not pretended that the Emperor's rights were any narrower before he received the rite: he could summon synods, confirm papal elections, exercise jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown itself could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents, be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of the German nation to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master. The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which the poet who sang the glories of Barbarossa[235], describes the result of the conquest of Charles the Great:-- 'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem Præficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.' But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his reign each Emperor undertook a long and dangerous expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home. [Sidenote: The title 'Holy Empire.']