²⁰² Ana. eccles. ann. 1158. 76.—According to Bossuet, this letter of Adrian IV. alone, is requisite to annihilate all the conclusions which the Ultramontanes pretend to deduce from the ceremony of the coronation of kings. ²⁰³ Radev.l. 2. c. 1—15. ²⁰⁴ Lib. 2. c. 18* ²⁰⁵ App. p. 562. ²⁰⁶ Concilior vol. 10. ²⁰⁷ Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes Ps. 81. r. 6. ²⁰⁸ Abb. Ursperg. Chron. p. 221. Alexander III. elected pope after Adrian IV. did not die until 1181. His pontificate is the longest of the twelfth century. But four anti-popes, who succeeded each other in the lapse of these twenty-eight years, under the names of Victor III., Pascal III., Calixtus III., and Innocent III., disputed and weakened the authority of the head of the church. Alexander who had been at Besancon as one of the envoys of Adrian, found in Frederick Barbarossa a formidable enemy. This emperor seeing that they had at the same moment elected two successors of Adrian, Alexander and Victor, summoned them to appear at Pavia, where he would decide between them in a council convoked by him. Victor appeared there and was pronounced the true pontiff. Alexander excommunicated by this council, in return excommunicated Frederick and Victor, loosed from their oaths the subjects of the former, and took refuge in France, then the usual common asylum of the popes expelled from Rome. Returned to this city in 1165, after the decease of Victor, he left it again in 1167, and behold in what way. The Romans besieged by the Germans, conjured him to sacrifice to their safety the title disputed with him,: “No! he replied, a sovereign “pontiff is not subject, to the judgment of any mor− “tal, neither of kings nor of people, nor yet of the “church; let them know that no power on earth “shall make me descend from the rank to which God “has elevated me;” and, while the cardinals carried to the citizens of Rome this pontifical reply, the holy father stole away without noise.²⁰⁹ Frederick at this time supported a famous war against almost all Italy, confederated under the name of the League of Lombardy. Alexander III. became the head of the Lombards, who gave the name of Alexandria, to a city built by them in 1168, at the confluence of the Tanaro and the Bormida. The pope excited the Greek emperor Manuel to arm against the emperor of the West, and attempted to reconcile the two churches, separated since the pontificate of Leo IX. But when Manuel required that the Holy See should be established at Constantinople, this condition caused the failure of both projects. To occupy a secondary rank in a capital inhabited, possessed, and ruled by a secular sovereign, this subordinate situation, which for five centuries had suited the successors of St. Peter, was not to be listened to by the successors of Gregory VII. ²⁰⁹ Vit Alex. III. edit, a card. Arrag. p. 468.—Acerbug Rfp-rena, p. 1151.—-Baron. Ann. eccles. Anji. 1167, s. 11.