1155
Frederick Barbarossa crowned emperor
Adrian IV crowned Barbarossa in St. Peter's after an uneasy meeting at which the emperor had initially refused to hold the pope's stirrup. Outside, Arnold of Brescia's Roman commune prepared to riot. Frederick left as soon as the ceremony ended and never fully mended his relationship with Rome. The coronation was supposed to inaugurate a partnership between empire and papacy, but instead it revealed the mutual suspicion that would define their dealings for decades.
Arnold of Brescia hanged
The firebrand canon who had denounced clerical wealth and led a decade-long Roman republic was captured, hanged, burned, and his ashes thrown into the Tiber to prevent his followers collecting relics. Adrian IV and Barbarossa had briefly cooperated on something. Arnold's execution silenced the most radical voice of twelfth-century church reform, but his ideas about apostolic poverty lived on in movements the church would spend the next century trying to suppress.
Waldensian movement's forerunners
Around this period in the Alpine valleys south of Lyon, lay preachers began to appear who insisted that the Gospel should be preached in the vernacular by anyone - man or woman, cleric or layperson - who knew it. The movement would coalesce into the Waldensians under Peter Waldo's leadership.
Manuel I Komnenos invades southern Italy
The Byzantine emperor, allied with rebellious Norman barons and disaffected Italian cities, landed an army at Ancona and briefly reoccupied parts of Apulia. The Byzantine effort to restore imperial rule in Italy failed by 1158, but it revived Greek influence in the Adriatic. Manuel's Italian adventure drained the treasury and diverted military resources from the Anatolian frontier, where the Seljuk Turks continued their slow absorption of Byzantine territory.
Henry II confirms London's customs
The new English king issued a charter confirming the liberties of the city of London, its right to elect a sheriff, and its freedom from certain tolls. Similar charters followed for other boroughs. The web of urban privileges would be one of the quiet foundations of later English freedom. The charter recognized London's merchants as a corporate body with legal standing, a status that gave the city political leverage over the crown for centuries.