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Page 29
We shall leave him in his inactivity, to trace the progress of events
which form one of the most important and exciting periods in history.
Rodolph was not a moment too soon in concentrating his power; for Henry
IV, flushed with his recent victory over the Saxons, had called at
Goslar a diet of the princes of the empire, under the pretext of
deciding, in their presence, the fate of their Saxon prisoners. Only a
small minority of the princes obeyed the summons; but the real object of
the king became evident when he made them swear to exalt, upon his own
death, Conrad his son, a minor, to the throne. In the meantime, the news
of the nomination of Hidolph, as successor to the sainted Anno, had
spread to Rome. The Pope beheld with profound sorrow the obstinacy and
ambition of the king. Henry was not to be driven from his purpose by the
universal contempt this nomination excited, and he replied to the
repeated remonstrances of the citizens of Cologne, that they must
content themselves with Hidolph or with a vacant see. And his firmness
triumphed over the popular indignation; for Hidolph was invested by the
king with the crozier and the ring, and finally consecrated Archbishop
of Cologne.
But his victory was not complete. He had yet to cope with an adversary
more formidable than popular opposition; one who would not yield to
temporal tyranny the watch-towers and guardian rights of spiritual
liberty. That adversary was Gregory VII. Already the tremendous threat
had issued: "Appear at Rome on a given day to answer the charges against
you, or you shall be excommunicated and cast from the body of the
Church." But the infatuated monarch, too proud to recede, hurried on by
his impetuous arrogance, and by the unprincipled favorites and corrupt
prelates who shared his bounty, loaded the Papal legates with scorn and
contumely, and drove them from his presence.
He did not even wait for the sentence of excommunication to fall, that
now hung by a hair above his head, but began the attack, as if resolved
to have the advantage of the first blow. Couriers were despatched to
every part of the empire, with commands to all the prelates and nobles
upon whom he could rely, to assemble at Worms, where he promised to meet
them without fail. Twenty-four bishops and a great number of laymen
hastened to obey the summons. The conventicle sat three days, and the
following charges were formally preferred against the Pope: "That he had
by force extracted a solemn oath from the clergy not to adhere to the
king, nor to favor or obey any other Pope than himself; that he had
falsely interpreted the Scriptures; that he had excommunicated the king
without legal or canonical examination, and without the consent of the
cardinals; that he had conspired against the life of the king; that, in
spite of the remonstrances of his cardinals, he had cast the Body and
Blood of our Lord into the flames; that he had arrogated to himself the
gift of prophecy; that he had connived at an attempted assassination of
the king; that he had condemned and executed three men without a
judgment or an admission of their guilt; that he kept constantly about
his person a book of magic."
So palpably absurd and false were these charges that three of the
assembled prelates refused to sign an instrument for the deposition of a
pontiff, so little conforming to the ancient discipline, and unsupported
by witnesses worthy of belief. Nor were Henry's machinations confined
to Germany, but he ransacked Lombardy and the marches of Ancona for
bishops to sign these articles of condemnation, and even aspired to
infect Rome itself by presents and specious promises. But the golden ass
could not then leap the walls of Christian Rome.
Gregory's principal accuser was the Cardinal Hugues le Blanc, whom he
had previously excommunicated. This ambitious man rose in the council
and taunted the Pope with his low extraction, at the same time charging
him with crimes that were proved to be the offspring of calumny and
error. He produced a forged letter, purporting to come in the name of
the archbishops, bishops, and cardinals, from the senate and people of
Rome, inveighing against the Pope, and clamoring for the election of
another head of the Church. Encouraged by imperial patronage, and
stimulated by a desire to rid himself of disgrace by sullying the hands
that had branded him, the excommunicated cardinal did not hesitate to
call the Pope a heretic, an adulterer, a sanguinary beast of prey. The
emperor himself knew Gregory too well to believe such a tissue of
absurdity; but he hoped to find others more credulous than himself.
Upon the accusations already specified, and the invectives of Hugues le
Blanc, the assemblage of prelates at Worms resolve upon the deposition
of Gregory VII. It is then that Henry steps forth, as the life and soul
of the conventicle, armed with its decree, and addresses an insulting
letter to the Pope, inscribed "Henry, king by the grace of God, to
Hildebrand." In this letter, the decree of the conventicle is lost in
the insolence of the king. "I," is the language of the missive, "I have
followed their advice, because it seemed to me just. I refuse to
acknowledge you Pope, and in the capacity of patron of Rome command you
to vacate the Holy See." Can the most jaundiced eye, can the man who
learned, even in his boyhood, to loathe the name of Hildebrand, read
these expressions without confessing that the king was the aggressor,
and that if the Christian Church had a right to expect protection from
its appointed head, Gregory VII was called upon to vindicate the majesty
and liberty of religion so grossly outraged in his person? Surely it
will not be asserted at this day that the head of the State, by virtue
of his temporal power, should be the head of the Church; or does that
beautiful logic still exist, which denied an absolute spiritual
supremacy in the successor of St. Peter, yet admitted it as an
incidental prerogative to the crown of England? But we have yet to see
the last act of this attempted deposition.
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