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Page 59
"Where is Herman now?"
"Among his poor flock, who have lost almost all--endeavoring to procure
them food and shelter, and exhorting them to patience and submission to
the will of God."
"How fared Stramen Castle?"
"Even worse than your own."
"And the church?" continued Gilbert.
"Was despoiled and fired."
At this instant the curtain of the tent was parted again, and Father
Omehr stood before them.
When informed of the fate of his church, the missionary calmly raised
his eyes to heaven and repeated, in a clear, steady voice, those sublime
words: "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the
name of the Lord!"
But when apprised of the position of his parishioners, who must
inevitably have perished from the oldest to the youngest, the old man
bent his head upon his breast, and, pressing his hands to his face, wept
bitterly. He soon recovered his habitual resignation, and then, turning
to Gilbert, said mournfully:
"Do you see, my son, that God is _beginning_ to punish our feud?"
Immediately after his victory, Rodolph despatched messengers to the Pope
to give him the intelligence, and implore him to recognize the king in
the victor.
We always approach with veneration and extreme diffidence the character
of this mighty man. It is difficult, indeed, to form an adequate idea of
his moral grandeur. The better you study his views, the more you are
astonished at his wisdom and fore-sight; the deeper your scrutiny of his
motives, the higher your respect for his sanctity. His was an age of
transition. The great question was still undecided: Shall liberty or
tyranny prevail--barbarism or civilization? This question depended upon
the answer to another: Shall the Church of God be free or become the
creature of temporal power? Already William the Conqueror and Henry of
Austria were trying to fetter the spouse of Christ--already the gulf was
opening that threatened spiritual Rome with destruction. Then it was
that Gregory VII saved the Church as Curtius saved the city; but while
the pagan has been raised to the skies, the Christian has been insulted
and belied.
Never can we sufficiently contemplate the spectacle of one man
contending against the world! Not a chieftain, at the head of an army,
subduing kingdom after kingdom, but a priest, without a carnal weapon,
resisting a continent combined at once to crush him, and finally
vanquishing by his death. Uninspired by ambition, assailed by every
earthly motive, God alone could have directed, and God only could have
upheld him. The Emperor of Austria had sworn to depose him, the
Italians promised to assist his antagonist. With scarce a footing in
Germany or Italy, cooped up on a barren peak, he wrestled with the
haughty conqueror of England, humbled the pride of Nicephorus Botoniates
who had usurped from Michael Paripinasses the empire of the East, and
deposed Guibert the guilty Bishop of Ravenna. Yet amid these cares, such
as human shoulders seldom knew before or since, he forgot not the
objects to which he had dedicated his life--the punishment of simony and
the preservation of ecclesiastical purity. It was in the attainment of
these, that he arrayed kingdoms against him and died in exile at
Salerno. Harassed and chained down as he was, the councils of Anse,
Clermont, Dijon, Autun, Poietiers, and Lyons were thundering against
simony and incontinency.
It would be presumptuous to offer a word in defence of the conduct of
such a man, had not his actions been so grievously misstated, and his
aims so ungenerously misinterpreted. It were as well to point out the
sun when the eye is dazzled by its brightness.
Gregory received Rodolph's envoys with every mark of affection, but
dismissed them, saying he could not comply with their request. The
Pontiff's object was to keep royalty within its legitimate sphere, not
to depose a particular king, and he wished to accomplish this with as
little bloodshed as possible. He saw clearly enough that to declare for
Rodolph would be to proclaim war to the knife. He also hoped that Henry
would have recourse to his mediation after his defeat. He was again
disappointed. His very friends now began to desert him, upbraiding him
with ingratitude and coldness. The Saxons addressed him several epistles
in which they threatened to abandon him. But less moved by their threats
than their entreaties, the Pontiff accused them of weakness and
insolence. There was another reason sufficient to deter him from
confirming the nomination of Rodolph, had none other opposed it. All
Italy, with few exceptions, espoused the cause of Henry, and waited only
the pontifical coronation of his rival, to rise in open rebellion. When
the history of the times is carefully studied, it will be confessed that
the Pope's refusal to accede to Rodolph's request was dictated by the
greatest wisdom, enlightened and purified by the greatest virtue and
forbearance.
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