DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55699#0178
142
THE LANDSCAPE ANNUAL.
how will you rebuke him of negligence ? if it be not of
duty, what need you care on which side he come unto you
who comes to do you worship ?” But such was either
the humility or the fear of Frederic, that the next time
he met the pontiff he took care to profit by the lesson
he had been so rudely taught.
An anecdote very similar to this is related of Alexander
the Third, who, having subdued the emperor’s son
Otho, and held him prisoner in Venice, compelled the
former to appear before him in the cathedral of that city,
and there to fall prostrate before him, and in that pos-
ture supplicate his forgiveness. The humbled monarch
did as he was commanded, and the pontiff placed his foot
on his neck, repeating, at the same time, the passage
from scripture, “ Thou shalt tread upon,” &c.
The emperor at this raised his head and said, “ It was
not said to thee, but to Saint Peter.” The pontiff then
again stamping on his neck, exclaimed, “ Both to me
and to Peter!”
In Urban the Sixth we again meet with those traits
of barbarous and revengeful cruelty which stained the
characters of so many pontiffs. His conduct to the
clergy was so severe that he is said, by a contemporary
historian (Theodoricus, lib. i. ch. ii.), to have been left
almost entirely alone at the commencement of a change
in his fortunes. Six cardinals, whom he had thrown into
dungeon for some supposed offence, were, says the
same author, tortured in so deplorable a manner, that
every spectator was melted with pity at their sufferings.
But the more he was besought to have mercy, the more
wrathful he was, so that his eyes would sparkle, his face
THE LANDSCAPE ANNUAL.
how will you rebuke him of negligence ? if it be not of
duty, what need you care on which side he come unto you
who comes to do you worship ?” But such was either
the humility or the fear of Frederic, that the next time
he met the pontiff he took care to profit by the lesson
he had been so rudely taught.
An anecdote very similar to this is related of Alexander
the Third, who, having subdued the emperor’s son
Otho, and held him prisoner in Venice, compelled the
former to appear before him in the cathedral of that city,
and there to fall prostrate before him, and in that pos-
ture supplicate his forgiveness. The humbled monarch
did as he was commanded, and the pontiff placed his foot
on his neck, repeating, at the same time, the passage
from scripture, “ Thou shalt tread upon,” &c.
The emperor at this raised his head and said, “ It was
not said to thee, but to Saint Peter.” The pontiff then
again stamping on his neck, exclaimed, “ Both to me
and to Peter!”
In Urban the Sixth we again meet with those traits
of barbarous and revengeful cruelty which stained the
characters of so many pontiffs. His conduct to the
clergy was so severe that he is said, by a contemporary
historian (Theodoricus, lib. i. ch. ii.), to have been left
almost entirely alone at the commencement of a change
in his fortunes. Six cardinals, whom he had thrown into
dungeon for some supposed offence, were, says the
same author, tortured in so deplorable a manner, that
every spectator was melted with pity at their sufferings.
But the more he was besought to have mercy, the more
wrathful he was, so that his eyes would sparkle, his face