determined that the pope must be deposed. This goes to show how the German idea of the Roman primacy differed from Gregory's. A pope that can be deposed is only the mouthpiece of the Church-a kind of spiritual emperor: but so long as he is not deposed the Bishop of Rome speaks the sentence of the Catholic Church, before which even the emperor must tremble.

So Henry summoned a synod at Worms. Many German prelates were angrily ready to rebel against Gregory because his attacks on clerical vices had touched them. Others were compelled by the emperor. Between the two a large council was assembled. Siegfried, Archbishop of Mentz, who was under the pope's sentence of degradation, took his seat as primate. A long list of crimes were (it is generally admitted falsely) charged against Gregory. He was declared deposed, and the bishops singly renounced their allegiance to him. Henry thereupon wrote an insolent letter to Gregory, and sent an envoy who boldly pronounced the deposition of the pope in the other council, at Rome, to which the emperor had been summoned to answer for himself. Gregory found it necessary to interpose to save the life of the messenger. He then had Henry's

letter read, as of itself a sufficient accusation against him. The council unanimously called for sentence on the emperor, which was formally pro

nounced by the supreme pontiff. Beginning with a solemn address to St. Peter, he interdicts Henry from the government of Germany and Italy, absolves his subjects from their allegiance; and because of disobedience and schism he binds him with the anathema "that all the nations of the earth may know that thou art Peter, that upon thy rock the Son of the Living God has built His Church, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Henry made an ill-starred attempt to treat this sentence lightly. In William of Utrecht he found a prelate willing to answer anathema with anathema; he not only excommunicated Gregory, but continually declaimed against him on public occasions. Very soon the hand of God was seen of all to intervene. William of Utrecht was stricken with mortal illness and died unhouselled and unabsolved, his ravings filled with remorseful selfaccusation for his sin against the pope. The cathedral in which he had excommunicated Gregory was struck by lightning. Henry's vassals fell away from him like leaves in autumn. From the outset he could make no stand. The curse of the Church was irresistible. It is unnecessary to trace the course of the unequal contest, or to describe the absolute surrender at Canossa. I will only ask you to observe, because of the light it throws on Henry's character, that even his suing

for absolution there was itself an act of determined wilfulness. He had submitted to the popular verdict and to the Divine. He was actually a deposed emperor, whether any believe that the power of deposition resided in the pope, in the Church, in the great princes, or in the peopleall had deposed and renounced him. Himself had renounced his royal state. His journey over the Alps was that of a private man, and under very great hardships. But he was determined to have absolution, at all hazards, that he might win back his power; and he simulated penitence that he might get the talisman he required before the time of the council which Gregory had appointed to be held at Augsburg. Gregory's one act of weakness was in granting that absolution, which Henry immediately showed he ought not to have had,*and by means of which he began at once to re-establish himself.

The conflict was not ended while Gregory lived. There was another excommunication of Henry by Gregory, another deposition of Gregory by a council subservient to Henry, the setting up of an anti-pope, the capture of Rome by Henry, when

* Milman graphically describes the "judgment of God," in which the pope, solemnly protesting his own innocence of the crimes with which he had been charged, thereupon received the Holy Sacrament, and then called upon Henry to do the same; but he dared not.

Gregory from his refuge in the castle of St. Angelo had the grief of seeing the excommunicated emperor and his anti-pope enter Rome; the interference of Robert Guiscard and his Normans; the destruction of old Rome by fire; the death of Gregory in exile. He is reported to have said, "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile"; which saying has been misinterpreted as the utterance of bitterness and pride. Bearing in mind the Scriptural connection, the Christian must interpret those words as the cry of thankfulness and triumph: to be an exile upon earth is to be anointed with the confessors' oil of gladness. Henry died in wretchedness, detested and dethroned, having first endured the ignominy of the expos ure of his unspeakable vileness by his wife and son at the Council of Piacenza,* and then the revolt of his second son, who became the Emperor Henry V.

The principle for which Gregory contended, that the investiture of the clergy must be by the ecclesiastical power, triumphed in the reign of Henry V. and the pontificate of Calixtus II. by the Concordat of Worms. It has been thought by some, who have only imperfectly grasped the meaning of this conflict, that the final issue was a compromise; but a Churchman cannot so regard

* Milman's Latin Christianity, bk. vii. c. v.

it. The emperor surrendered completely the claim to investiture by ring and staff, and granted to the clergy the right to free election. From that time until the present what is now called Erastianism, although it may have had some prevalence in places for a time, has generally been a discredited and rejected principle. Even in England, where it has been strongest since the Reformation, recent events have shown that the consciences of Churchmen will never submit to secular domination. This triumph throughout the whole Western Church we owe, under God, to Gregory VII.* If the emperors had been successful, as they would have been if Gregory had not withstood to the bitter end, it seems probable that the Church to-day would everywhere be little more than a department of the government.

But this was not a triumph of the papacy, nor did it involve any growth, in general influence and pervasiveness, of the Roman idea of Supremacy. If Gregory had considered himself simply the agent of the universal West, appointed by the Church to carry out her policy, his words would have been different, but his actions and their results would

*It may be said that to him must be attributed the perpetuation and strengthening of the papal idea; but surely the triumph of Erastianism would have been a much greater evil. Israel, with his blessing, took a lameness of the thigh; but we need not partake of the sinew which shrank.