460 ANNALS OF ROGER DF. HOYEDEN. A .D. 11/7. afterwards burned witb his own hands, because he had received it of him, and was absolved at Venice, at the Rialto, in the palace of the Patriarch, before pope Alexander and the whole of the cardinals, and receiving the pall from Alexander, continued to be archbishop of Mentz. TL· Letter of pope Alexander to Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, and his suffragans, on the restoration of peace to the Church. "Alexander, the bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his venerable brethren Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, and his suffragans, and his beloved sons the abbats appointed in the archbishopric of Canterbury, and who especially belong to the Roman Church, health and the Apostolic benediction. We do give to Almighty God exceeding praise and thanks, who, though He has for so long permitted the ship of Peter to be tossed by the stormy tempests of the sea, has now at length given His orders to the winds and the waves, and a great calm has ensued, insomuch that, the waves of the raging sea being appeased, the said ship has been brought into the haven of rest ana of safety. For our most dearly beloved son in Christ, Frederic, the illustrious emperor of the Romans, on a day recently past, being the Lord's day before the feast of Saint James, with great devoutness came into our presence at Venice, attended by the principal ecclesiastics and laymen of his realm, and there, before an innumerable concourse of men and women, who repeated his praises with the loudest acclamations, paid all reverence and honor to ourselves as Supreme Pontiff ; and on the feast of Saint James, as Ave were going at his entreaty to the church of Saint Mark for the purpose of celebrating the solemnity of the mass, he came to meet us, and after the mass was finished, which, unworthy as wc are, he reverently heard performed by us, he paid us all the honor which his ancestors had been accustomed to shew unto our predecessors. On the calends also of the present month of August, the before-named emperor, in presence of a numerous multitude of persons, caused oath to be made on his soul,6 on which his chief men who were then present, both ecclesiastics as well as laymen, the said oath being administered, did confirm the same, to the effect that he would for ever keep intact and inviolate This peculiar kind of oath wc learn was especially used by the early kings of France.