CHAP. I.

TREATMENT OF HIS REMAINS.

277

their solemn services, the bishops of the adverse party declared that he who was excommunicate in life was excommunicate in death. Olbert was compelled, as a penance for his precipitate act of gratitude and love, to disinter the body, which was placed in an unconsecrated building in an island on the Moselle. No sacred ceremonial was permitted; a single monk, just returned from Jerusalem, had the pious boldness to sing psalms beside it day and night. It was at length, by his son's permission, conveyed to Spires with a small attendance of faithful servants. It was received by the people, and even the clergy, with great honour and conveyed to the cathedral. At this the implacable bishop was seized with indignation; he imposed penance on all who had attended the procession, he prohibited the funeral service, and ordered the body to be placed in an unconsecrated chapel within the cathedral. The better Christianity of the people again rebuked the relentlessness of the bishop. They reminded him how the munificent Emperor had enriched the church of Spires; they recounted the ornaments of gold and silver and precious stones, the silken vestments, the works of art, the golden altar-table, richly wrought, a present of the eastern Emperor Alexius, which had made their cathedral the most gorgeous and famous in Germany. They loudly expressed their grief and dissatisfaction, and were hardly restrained from tumult. But they prevailed not. Yet the bier of Henry was still visited by unbought and unfeigning witnesses to his still more Christian oblations, his boundless charities. At length after five years of obstinate contention Henry was permitted to repose in the consecrated vault with his imperial ancestors.

CHAPTER II.

HENRY V. AND POPE PASCHAL II.

If it were ever unpresumptuous to trace the retributive justice of God in the destiny of one man, it might be acknowledged in the humiliation of Pope Paschal II. by the Emperor Henry V. Henry V. The Pope, by his continual sanction, if not by direct advice, had trained the young Emperor in his inordinate ambition and his unscrupulous avidity for power. He had not rebuked his shameless perfidy or his revolting cruelty; he had absolved him from thrice-sworn oaths; he had released him from the great irrepealable obligations of nature and the divine law. A rebel against his sovereign and his father was not likely, against his own interests or passions, to be a dutiful son or subject of his mother the Church, or of his spiritual superiors. If Paschal suffered the result of his own lessons, if he was driven from his capital, exposed to personal sufferings so great and menacing as to compel him to submit to the hardest terms which the Emperor chose to dictate, he had not much right to compassion. Paschal is almost the only later Pope who was reduced to the degrading necessity of being disclaimed by the clergy, of being forced to retract his own impeccable decrees, of being taunted in his own day with heresy, and abandoned as a feeble traitor to the rights of the Church by the dexterous and unscrupulous apologists of almost every act of the Papal See.

Hardly was Henry V. in peaceful possession of his father's throne when the dispute about the investitures was unavoidably renewed. The humble ally of the Church was not more inclined to concede the claims of the Teutonic sovereign than his contumacious and excommunicated father. The implacable enmity with which the Pope had pursued the aged Emperor turned immediately against himself. Instead of an adversary weary of strife, worn out with premature old age, under the ignominy not

СНАР. 11.

FIRST ACTS OF PASCHAL II.

279

only of his former humiliation at the feet of Hildebrand, but of his recent expulsion from Italy, and with almost the whole of Germany in open arms, or leagued by discontent against him, Paschal had raised up an antagonist, a youth of unrivalled activity and unbridled ambition, flushed with the success of his rebellion, holding that authority over the princes of the Empire which sprang from their common engagement in a daring and unjustifiable cause, unencumbered with the guilt of having appointed the intrusive prelates, who held their sees without the papal sanction, yet sure of their support if he would maintain them in their dignities. The Empire had thus become far more formidable; and unless it would humbly cede all the contested rights (at such a time and under such a king an event most improbable) far more hostile.

Synod of

Pope Paschal held a synod chiefly of Lombard bishops at Guastalla. The first act was to revenge the dignity of Rome against the rival see of Ra- Guastalla. venna, which for a century had set up an Anti-pope. Already, jealous no doubt of the miracles reported by his followers to be wrought at his tomb, Paschal had commanded the body of Guibert to be taken up from its sepulchre and cast into the Tiber. The metropolitan see of Ravenna was punished by depriving it of the province Æmilia, and its superiority over the bishoprics of Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, and Bologna. A prudent decree, which expressed profound sorrow for the divisions in Germany, acknowledged the titles of all those prelates who had been consecrated during the schism, and had received the imperial investiture, in fact of the whole episcopacy with few exceptions, in the Empire. Those alone who were usurpers, Simoniacs, or men of criminal character, were excluded from this act of amnesty. But another decree condemned the investiture by lay hands in the strongest terms, deposed the prelates who should hereafter admit, and excommunicated the laymen who should dare to exercise, this authority. Ambassadors from the young Emperor, the Bishops of Treves and Halberstadt, courteously solicited the presence of Paschal in Germany. They proposed a council to be held at Augs

Labbe et Mansi, Concil. sub ann. 1106, Oct. 18.

burg to arrange definitively the ecclesiastical affairs of the Empire, at the same time expressing his hope that the Pope would fully concede all the rights of the Empire, an ambiguous phrase full of dangerous meaning.b

The Pope acceded to the request, but the Emperor and the princes of the Empire held their Christmas at Augsburg, vainly awaiting his arrival. The Pope had advanced as far as Verona; a tumult in that city shook his confidence in the commanding sanctity of his presence. His more prudent counsellors suggested the unconquerable determination of the Germans to maintain the right of investiture, and the danger of placing himself in the power of a prince at once so daring and perfidious. He would be more safe in the friendly territory and under the less doubtful protection of the King of France. The acts of Henry might justify this mistrust. The king proceeded at once to invest the Bishops of Verdun and Halberstadt, and commanded the Archbishop of Treves to consecrate them; he reinstated the Bishop Udo, who had been deposed by the Pope, in the see of Hildesheim; he forced an abbot who was actually under an interdict in the monastery of St. Tron to violate his suspension. The papal clergy throughout Germany quailed before these vigorous measures. So utterly were they prostrated that Gebhard of Constance, Oderic of Passau, under the specious pretence of avoiding all communion with the excommunicate, had determined to engage in a foreign pilgrimage. Paschal entreats them to remain as shining lights, and not to leave Germany a land of utter darkness.d

The tone of Henry's ambassadors, before a Council held by Pope Paschal at Troyes, in Champagne, was as haughty and unyielding. He demanded his full privilege of electing bishops, granted, according to his assertion, by the Pope to Charlemagne. He would not condescend to permit questions which related to the German Empire to be agitated in a foreign country, in France. At Rome

CHAP. II.

HENRY DESCENDS INTO ITALY.

281

this great cause should be decided; and a year's truce was mutually agreed upon, to allow the Emperor to make his appearance in that city.

It was not, however, till the third year after this truce that Henry descended into Italy. These years were occupied by wars in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. Though not always or eventually successful, the valour and determination of Henry, as well as his unscrupulous use of treachery when force failed, strengthened the general dread of his power and his ambition.

Ratisbon.

In a great Diet at the Feast of the Epiphany, A.D. 1110, the Emperor announced his intention of proceeding Diet at to Rome-I. For his coronation; the Pope had A.D. 1110. already expressed to the King's ambassadors his willingness to perform that ceremony, if Henry would declare himself a faithful son and protector of the church. II. To re-establish order in Italy. The Lombard Republics had now begun to assert their own freedom, and to wage furious battle against the freedom of their neighbours. Almost every city was at war with another; Milan with Lodi, Pavia with Tortona, Pisa with Lucca. III. To take measures for the protection of the Church in strict obedience to the Pope." He delayed only to celebrate his betrothal with Matilda, the infant daughter of Henry I. of England.

The summons was obeyed in every part of the Empire. Above 30,000 knights, with their attendants, and Henry's the infantry, assembled under the Imperial banner, army. the most formidable army which for some centuries had descended from the Alps; and to be increased by the Italian partisans of the Emperor. Large contributions were made to defray the expenses of the expedition. In order to cope with the Papal party, not in arms only, but likewise in argument, he was attended by the most learned of the Transalpine ecclesiastical scholars, ready to do theological battle in his cause. Though an angry comet glared in the Heavens, yet the Empire seemed to adopt with eager loyalty this invasion of Italy.

h

The first act of Henry struck terror into all minds. With

"Ad nutum patris apostolici." His chaplain, David the Scot, was to be the historian of the expedition,

His work is lost, but was used by the author of the Chronicon Usbergense, and by William of Malmesbury.