Alexander III
1159-1181
Laurentius Bandinelli born app 1100
Alexander III, originally named Laurentius Bandinelli, of the Paperoni family of Sienna, canon regular at Pisa and at Saint John Lateran, and professor of Holy Scripture in the .University of Bologna, was created cardinal-deacon in 1145 by Eugene, and then named by the same pope cardinal-priest of Saint Mark and vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church; and, finally, he was made legate from Adrian IV to William, King of Sicily, and then to the Emperor Frederic I. He was elected pope after three days' deliberation. He refused the tiara, but was compelled to accept it, and he was crowned in the estate of Ninfa, near Veletri, on the 20th of September, 1159.
As soon as Alexander was raised to the chair of Saint Peter, seeing the threatened schism, he addressed an encyclical letter to bishops of the principal churches, to inform them of his election. A few days afterwards he wrote another letter, stating the manner in which Cardinal Octavian had endeavored to seize the pontifical authority. One of those letters was addressed to Gerard, bishop, another to the canons, and a third to the doctors and professors of Bologna; and Tiraboschi remarks, on this subject, that the university of that city was the first to be thus honored with a letter from a sovereign pontiff.
Saint Bernard had foretold the pontificate of Alexander, and at the same time announced the tribulations and the embarrassments that would attend upon his labors.
Henry II, King of England, Frederic I, emperor, and four antipopes were those who most tried the patience of this pontiff. But, whether obliged to fly, or live in exile, or whether he was falsely excommunicated by the antipopes, his courage and his heroic constancy never failed him.
Alexander remained at Ninfa to avoid the disturbances which were excited in Rome by the partisans of Octavian. Thence he was enabled to return to the capital in 1161; some time after he canonized Saint Edward, King of England, who died on the 4th of January, 1066; then, leaving a vicar-general he went to Terracina to embark in a galley for France.
In 1162 the Holy Father arrived at Genoa on the galleys which belonged to William, King of Sicily. There, in spite of the prohibition of Frederic, who was about to dishonor himself by the destruction of the city of Milan, the clergy and the people gave the pontiff an honorable reception. In the month of April he arrived at Montpellier, where he held a council which excommunicated the antipope who had assumed the name of Victor IV. Early in 1163 pope arrived at Paris. King Louis the Young met him two leagues from the city, kissed his feet, and received from the pope the golden rose.
From Paris he went to Tours, where he held a council in which he received with great honors Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. In this council the errors of the Albigenses were again condemned. The same year, at the solicitation of Charles, King of Sweden, and he canonized Saint Helena, a Swedish widow, who fell a martyr as she returned from the Holy Sepulchre.
In 1164 Alexander approved the military order of Calatrava, founded in 1158 by diverse Spaniards who defended that territory against the Saracens. These Spaniards, under the command of Diego Velasquez de la Bureba a Cistercian novice, vanquished the infidels. Then he and the Blessed Raymond of Fiterio, his abbot, founded at Calatrava, which was granted to them in fief by King Sancho III, that order which remained subject to the Cistercian rule, adapted, however, to the pursuit of arms, because they had to be always ready to meet the Saracens. The order had many vicissitudes.
Cardinal Julius was Alexander's vicar at Rome, and these Romans, who always ill-treated the pontiffs when they resided in the city, and bitterly regretted them when they left it, now grown wiser, sent an ambassador to the pope to entreat him to return to Rome. Escorted by an army of King William, Alexander returned to Rome in 1165, and was received with honors still more imposing than those which had been paid to his predecessors. At the same moment the antipope Pascal III, named by Frederic to replace the antipope Victor IV, canonized Charlemagne. The Church has not approved, but only tolerated, this canonization, and that is sufficient, says Lambertini, to warrant the belief that he has been beatified equivalently. However, Charlemagne receives the title of saint in the churches of France, Germany, and Flanders, but his name has never been introduced into the Roman Martyrology.
In 1166 Frederic advanced to besiege Rome. To this the sufferings of Saint Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Persecuted by King Henry II, of England, the prelate fled to Pontigny, a dependency of the Cistercian abbey. Henry II wished the archbishop to be driven from that asylum, and he wrote threatening letters to the chapter general. "You," he says, "have received, Thomas, mine enemy, into one of your houses; I forbid you to keep him any longer, if you would not lose all that you possess in my territory on either side of the sea."
When the chapter adjourned, the Cistercian abbot went to Pontigny, accompanied by the Bishop of Parma, formerly a monk of the order, and by some abbots. They declared to the archbishop, in the name of the chapter, the order they had received from the king, and added: "My lord Archbishop, the chapter does not, therefore, expel you, but it begs you prudently to consider what is best for you to do." The prelate, having reflected, replied: "I should be grieved, indeed, should an order which has so charitably received me suffer on my account; therefore, wherever else I go, I shall promptly avoid your houses; but I hope that He who feeds the birds of the air will care for me and for the companions of my exile." He sent intelligence of this to Louis, King of France, who was greatly astonished, and who communicated it to those who were around him. The he exclaimed: "Religion, religion! where art thou? Behold these men whom we fancy dead to the world, yet fearing the threats of the world, and, for the sake of the worldly goods which they pretend to despise for the sake of God, they abandon the work of God and drive away those who suffer for His cause!" Then, turning to the prelate's messengers, he said: "Salute your master in my name, and tell him boldly that, though he be abandoned by all the world and by those who pretend to be dead to the world, I will not abandon him, and whatever the King of England, my vassal, may do or threaten against the archbishop, I will constantly protect him, because he suffers for justice. Tell him, then, to let me know in what part of my dominions he prefers to remain and he shall find it ready to receive him."
Saint Bernard no longer existed (the documents were prepared for his canonization), but his courage and determination, his eloquence and his strength, lived again in the heart and in the mouth of a king of France in the twelfth century. The demand of Henry II very much resembles that which the English government made for the expulsion of Charles Edward, the Pretender, after the battle of Culloden. In the latter case France had not a government to reply in the spirit of Louis VII. Subsequently the same Louis VII further addressed the envoys of Henry II of England in the following words:
"Tell your master that if he will not abandon the customs which he claims to have been handed down his ancestors, although they are said to be contrary to the laws of God, still less will I give up the ancient right of France. For France has ever been accustomed to protect the unfortunate and the afflicted, and chiefly to receive those who suffer exile in the cause of justice. I have received the Archbishop of Canterbury from the hands of the pope, whom alone I recognize as my suzerain here on earth, and therefore I will not abandon this archbishop for emperor, for king, or for any power in the world."
These words did not at all move the King of England. Henry having previously exclaimed, "Will none of my friends and servants rid me of this Thomas?" was answered by four dastards who assassinated the archbishop.
The emperor was again excommunicated in a council held in 1167; but the imperial arms being on the point of triumphing, the pope travelled to Gaeta in the garb of a pilgrim, and there resumed the pontifical habit in which to proceed to Benevento.
In that city, on the 13th of March, 1168, he received the ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Manuel, who promised to reunite the Greek to the Latin Church and to deliver it from the persecution of the Emperor Frederic. Manuel attached a condition to that promise: he asked in exchange the investiture of the empire of the West.
The Holy Father thanked Manuel for his offers of kindness and for his wishes for the greater glory of religion. As for the demand for the empire of the West, the pontiff replied that God had raised him to a high position of authority, in which he should show himself the friend of peace and not the fomenter of discord.
In the same year, 1168, the pope, at the request of Waldemar, King of Denmark, canonized that monarch's father, Saint Canute, king of that realm, martyred, in 1132, by Magnus, son of King Nicholas. Lambertini gives the date of that canonization as 1164.
To the same or the next year is attributed the foundation of the city of Alexandria; it was built by the partisans of Alexander, and in his honor, in a spot called Rovereto. The pope's enemies thought fit to add to that name the words della Paglia, in derision, and the city, which has now become one of the greatest fortresses in the world, preserves the name of Alexandria of Straw.
On his return to Rome, Alexander confirmed King Henry II of England in possession of the kingdom of Ireland, which he had conquered. The pope repented when he learned of the assassination of Thomas a Becket. The king sued for pardon, but Alexander would not grant it, although the king protested that the crime had been committed without his order.
In 1173 the pope canonized Saint Thomas of Canterbury, and the acts of canonization were accompanied by testimonies of admiration at the virtue of so courageous a martyr. In 1174 took place the canonization of the great Saint Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux. He died on the 20th of August, 1153. The order of the Carthusians was approved by Alexander in 1176.
Frederic, weary of useless wars and of the plotting which he had resorted to in his endeavors to destroy the legitimate authority of Alexander, sent ambassadors to solicit peace. The Holy Father could not trust to the word of Frederic but, as the common father of Christendom, he could not discourage the real or apparent penitence of the emperor. He went to Venice on one of the galleys of King William of Sicily, whom he still found a faithful friend and a devout Catholic. There he concluded the long-desired peace between the Church and the empire, to which Frederic was more than ever forced by a check which his arms had met within a war against the Venetians. The Doge Zani, among other privileges, obtained that of having a drawn sword carried before him on great holidays. The pope presented him with the golden rose that he had blessed on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and he also gave him a ring with which he and his successors should espouse the Adriatic on Ascension day, in sign of sovereignty acquired over that sea. On the 24th of July the emperor asked for absolution, and received it front of the doors of Saint Mark. He knelt before the Holy Father, who, in tears, hastily raised him to his feet, gave him the kiss of peace, and blessed him. On the following day the emperor received communion from the hands of the Holy Father and they publicly exchanged marks of friendship. The ceremony of holding the stirrup when the pope mounted was renewed in all its vigor.
During his stay in Venice, Alexander sent a legate to a king who lived between Persia and Armenia, called, it was said, Prester John. Modern critics affirm that he was at once king and Christian priest, but that he professed Nestorianism.
In 1177 the pope approved the military order of Alcantara, instituted against the Saracens in 1156, by Don Soero Fernandez, under the Cistercian rule.
In 1178 Alexander returned to Rome. In 1179 he held the third Lateran and eleventh general council, consisting of more than three hundred bishops; there it was resolved that no pontiff should be recognized unless elected by the votes of two thirds of the cardinals, exclusive of the voice of the one elected. This law is still in force.
Among other regulations, that council decided that no one under thirty years of age should be elected bishop, and that bishops should not be sumptuous in apparel, be present at and banquet or go hunting.
The Albigenses were again condemned, and soon divided themselves into Catari, Patarini, and Publicani. They followed the heresy of the Manichaeans, rejected the Old Testament, prayers for the dead, the real presence, and the authority of the Church, and maintained many other errors.
To reward the services rendered by Alphonso I of Portugal, Alexander granted to him, in 1179, the title of king, which he had taken in the time of Lucius III, but which no pontiff had confirmed.
Alexa