Pope as other Catholic sovereigns to other Catholic Pontiffs of Rome. The Germans suspected that into the written treaty might furtively be introduced some protest that the Pope was under force. Count Albert Blandrade declared to Paschal that his concession must be unconditional. "If "I may not add a written condition," replied the Pope, "I will do it by word." He turned to the Emperor: "So will we fulfil our oath as thou givest assurance that "thou wilt fulfil thine." The Emperor could not but assent. Fourteen cardinals and ecclesiastics on the part of the Pope, fourteen princes of the Empire on that of Henry, guaranteed by oath the fulfilment of the treaty. The written compact menaced with the anathema of the Church all who should infringe, or contumaciously persist in infringing, this Imperial privilege. No bishop was to be consecrated till he had received investiture. April 13. The army advanced again to Rome; they crossed the Salarian bridge and entered the Leonine city beCoronation of yond the Tiber. With closed doors, fearful of the Emperor. some new tumult of the people, the Pope, in the church of St. Peter, performed the office of coronation. Both parties seemed solicitous to array the treaty in the most binding solemnities. That there might appear no compulsion, the Emperor, as soon as he had been crowned, replaced the charter of his privilege in the Pope's hand, and received it a second time, contrary to all usage, from his hands. The mass closed the ceremony; the Pope brake the Host: "As this part of the living body of the Lord is severed from the rest, so be he severed from the Church of Christ who shall violate this treaty." A deputation of the Romans was then permitted to enter the church; they presented the Emperor with the golden diadem, the insignia of the Patriciate and Defensorship of the city of Rome. Yet Henry did not enter, as his predecessors were wont, the unruly city; he withdrew to his camp, having bestowed rich gifts upon the clergy and taken hostages for their fidelity: the Pope passed by the bridge over the Tiber into Rome. The Emperor returned to Germany, having extorted in one successful campaign that which no power had been CHAP. II. DISSATISFACTION OF THE CLERGY. 293 able to wring from the more stubborn Hildebrand and Urban. So great was the terror of his name that the devout defender of the Pope and of his supremacy, the Countess Matilda, scrupled not to maintain the most friendly relations with him. She would not indeed leave her secure fortress, but the Emperor condescended to visit her at Bianello; he conversed with her in German, with which, as born in Lorraine, she was familiar, released at her request the Bishops of Parma and Reggio, called her by the endearing name of mother, and invested her in the sovereignty of the province of Liguria. It would be unjust to Paschal not to believe him sincere in his desire to maintain this treaty, so publicly Dissatisfaction But he could no in Rome. made, so solemnly ratified. more resist the indignation of the clergy, than the menaces of the Emperor. The few cardinals who had been imprisoned with him as his accomplices feebly defended him; all the rest with one voice called upon him immediately to annul the unholy, the sacrilegious compact; to excommunicate the Emperor who had dared to extort by violence such abandonment of her rights from the Church. The Pope, who was omnipotent and infallible to advance the authority of the Church, when he would make any concession lost at once his power and infallibility. The leader of the old Hildebrandine party, more papal than the Pope himself, was Bruno, afterwards a saint, then Bishop of Segni and abbot elect of Monte Casino. He addressed the Pope to his face: "They say that I am thine enemy; I am not thine enemy: am not thine enemy: I owe thee the love and reverence of a father. But it is written, he who loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. I love thee, but I love Him more who made both me and thee." He proceeded to denounce the treaty, to arraign the Pope for violation of the apostolic canons, for heresy. "If I do not deprive him of his Abbey," said the Pope in his bitterness, "he will deprive me of the Papacy." The monks of Monte Casino, at the Pope's instigation, chose another abbot, and as the new abbot was supported by arms, Bruno gave up his claims and retired to his bishopric of Segni. f Chronic. Casin. July 5. Embarrassment The oath which the Pope had taken, and ratified by such awful circumstances, embarrassed the Pope of the Pope. alone. The clergy, who had incurred no danger, suffered no indignity or distress, taunted him with his weakness, contrasted his pliancy with the nobly obstinate resolution of Hildebrand and of Urban, and exhorted him to an act of perfidy and treason of which he would bear at least the chief guilt and shame. Paschal was sorely beset. He sought for reasons which might justify him to the world and to himself for breaking faith with the Emperor; he found none, but the refusal to surrender certain castles and strongholds in the papal territory, and some vague charges of ill-usage towards the hostages. At one time he threatened to lay down his dignity and to retire as a hermit to the desert island of Pontia. At length the violent and incessant reproaches of the cardinals, and what might seem the general voice of the clergy, overpowered his honour, his conscience, his religion. In a letter to the Archbishop of Vienne he declared that he had acted only from compulsion, that he had yielded up the right of investiture only to save the liberties of the Church and the city of Rome from total ruin; he declared the whole treaty null and void, condemned it utterly, and confirmed all the strong decrees of Gregory VII. and of Urban II. When this intelligence was communicated to the Emperor, his German nobles were so indignant that the legate, had he not been protected by the Emperor, would hardly have escaped with his life. But more was necessary than this unauthoritative letter of the wavering Pope to annul this solemn treaty, to reconcile by a decree of the Church the mind of man to this signal breach of faith and disregard of the most sacred oath. In March (the next year) a council assembled in the Lateran Palace; almost all the cardinals, whether bishops, priests, or abbots, were present, more than a hundred prelates, almost all from the south of March 18, See his letter, apud Eccard, ii. 274 and 275. "Ex quo vobiscum illam, quam nostis, pactionem fecimus, non solum longius positi, sed ipsi etiam, qui circa nos sunt, cervicem adversus nos erex erunt, et intestinis bellis viscera nostra CHAP. II. LATERAN COUNCIL. 295 Italy, from the north only the Venetian patriarch, from France the Archbishops of Lyons and Vienne, from Ger many none. tion of the The Pope, by a subtle subterfuge, endeavoured to reconcile his personal observance with the absolute abro- Equivocagation of the whole treaty. He protested that, though Pope. the Emperor had not kept faith with him, he would keep faith with the Emperor; that he would neither disquiet him on the subject of the investitures, nor utter an anathema against him,' though he declared the act of surrender compulsory, and so not obligatory: his sole unadvised act, an evil act which ought by God's will to be corrected. At the same time, with consummate art, he made his profession of faith, for his act had been tainted with the odious name of heresy; he declared his unalterable belief in the Holy Scriptures, in the statutes of the Ecumenic Councils, and, as though of equal obligation with these, in the decrees of his predecessors Gregory and Urban, decrees which asserted lay investiture to be unlawful and impious, and pronounced the layman who should confer, or the churchman who should accept such investiture, actually excommunicate. He left the Council to do that which he feared or scrupled to do. The Council proceeded to its sentence, which unequivocally cancelled and declared void, under pain of excommunication, this privilege, extorted, it was said, by the violence of Henry. The whole assembly with loud acclamations testified their assent, "Amen! Amen! So be it! So be it!"k Vienne excommunicates But Henry was still within the pale of the Church, and Paschal refused so flagrantly to violate his oath, Council of to which on this point he had been specifically pledged with the most binding distinctness. The the Emperor. more zealous churchmen determined to take upon themselves this act of holy vengeance. A council assembled at Vienne, under the Archbishop Guido, afterwards Pope Calixtus II. The Emperor condescended to send his ambassadors with letters, received, as he asserted, from the "Ego eum nunquam anathematisabo, et nunquam de investituris inquietabo, porro scriptum illud, quod magnis necessitatibus coactus, non pro vita meâ, non pro salute aut gloria mea, sed pro solis ecclesiæ necessitatibus sine fratrum consilio aut subscriptionibus feci, super quo nulla conditione, nulla promissione constringimur!—pravè factum confiteor, et omnino corrigi, domino præstante, desidero."-Cardin. Arragon, loc. cit. k 66 Neque vero dici debet privilegium sed pravilegium."- Labbe et Mansi, sub ann. 1112. Acta Concilii, apud Pertz. 66 Pope since the decree of the Lateran Council, in which the Pope professed the utmost amity, and his desire of peace. The council were amazed, but not disturbed or arrested in their violent course; as they considered themselves sanctioned in their meeting by the Pope, they proceeded to their decree. One metropolitan Council took upon itself to excommunicate the Emperor. They declared investiture by lay hands to be a heresy; by the power of the Holy Ghost they annulled the privilege granted by the Pope, as extorted by violence. Henry, the King of the Germans, like another Judas, had be-. trayed the Pope by kissing his feet, had imprisoned him with the cardinals and other prelates, and had wrung from him by force that most impious and detestable charter; him we excommunicate, anathematise, cast out of the bosom of the Church, till he give full satisfaction.' These decrees were sent to the Pope, with a significant menace, which implied great mistrust in his firmness. "If you will confirm these decrees, and abstain from all intercourse, will reject all presents from that cruel tyrant, we will be your faithful sons; if not, so God be propitious to us, you will compel us to renounce all subjection and obedience." m To this more than papal power the Pope submitted; he ratified the decree of the Council of Vienne, thus Oct. 20. doing by others what he was solemnly sworn not to do himself; allowing what was usually supposed an inferior tribunal to dispense with the oath which he dared not himself retract; by an unworthy sophistry trying to obtain the advantage without the guilt of perjury." But these things were not done without strong remonstrance, and that from the clergy of France. A protest was issued, written by the learned Ivo of Chartres, and adopted by the Archbishop of Sens and his clergy, denying the temporal claim to the investitures to be heresy, and disclaiming all concurrence in these audacious proceedings. A good and prudent emperor might have defied an interdict issued by less than the Pope. But the and revolt of man who had attained his sovereignty by such violent and unjustifiable means was not likely to Discontent the German prelates. Letter of Archbishop of Vienne, and the account of the Council, apud Labbe et Mansi, A.D. 1112. n Mansi. Bouquet, xv. 52. 0 Apud Labbe et Mansi, sub ann. 1112. |