January 24, 1076, at the imperial assembly of Worms, Henry IV and the vast majority of the German bishops replied in even harsher terms to Gregory’s letter and oral message. The bishops renounced their obedience to “Frater Hildebrand,” and the king called on Gregory to abdicate the papacy and permit the Romans to elect a new pope.
Northern Italian bishops immediately joined the action and renounced their support for Gregory. The letters reached Gregory during the customary Lenten synod (February 14–20, 1076), and the outraged pope reacted immediately, using a prayer to Peter to depose and excommunicate Henry. In the same prayer, Gregory also absolved all of Henry’s subjects of their oath of fealty to the king.
The effect of the excommunication was tremendous. Never before had a pope deposed a king, even though Gregory, according to a later letter, believed that he had historical precedents on his side, an assumption that even contemporaries considered untenable and a distortion of historical truth. Then as now, the deposition of Henry IV was the most hotly debated action taken by Gregory VII, who pursued to its logical conclusion his conviction that papal primacy pertained not only to the spiritual sphere but to the secular sphere as well. Church reform now became a contest for dominance between the priestly and the royal powers as they struggled to replace the Carolingian vision of mutual collaboration in which the church was entrusted to the monarchy for safekeeping.
In Germany Gregory’s action strengthened princely as well as episcopal opposition to Henry in a civil war that raged intermittently throughout his reign. In order to save his crown, Henry IV submitted to the pope at the castle of Canossa on January 28, 1077. Countess Matilda of Tuscany and Abbot Hugh of Cluny, Henry’s godfather, had interceded for him. Gregory acted as a pastor of souls when he reconciled the king with the church, but Henry’s footfall nonetheless was an implicit recognition of papal claims. The encounter at Canossa had interrupted Gregory’s journey to Augsburg (now in Germany), where he was to meet German princes who had planned to elect a new ruler in opposition to Henry IV. Despite Gregory’s absolution of Henry and return to Rome, the princes proceeded with their plan. Their nominee, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, was elected (anti-)king on March 15, 1077.
The quarrel between Henry and Gregory intensified after the pope formally prohibited Lay Investiture at the council of November 1078. Investiture was the customary ceremony in which the emperor or king bestowed upon the bishops the ring and staff, the symbols of their office as well as of royal authority in and protection of the church. Nevertheless, Gregory at first tried to arbitrate between Henry and Rudolf, but he excommunicated Henry for a second time at the Lenten synod of 1080 and formally recognized Rudolf as king. However, after the absolution of Canossa, Henry had reasserted himself. The new excommunication had little effect, and the king was victorious in the civil war. Following the formal deposition of Gregory VII under the aegis of Henry IV by the synod of Brixen in June 1080 and the nomination of Archbishop Wibert of Ravenna as pope, Henry marched on Rome, supported by German and, especially, Italian troops. The Eternal City was finally captured in March 1084, when the Romans, including many cardinals and other clergy, opened the gates to Henry and his army. They had deserted the papal cause in response to Gregory’s inflexibility. Wibert was enthroned as anti-pope Clement III, and Henry IV was crowned emperor. Gregory VII had at first sought refuge in the Castel Saint' Angelo but in July fled with his Norman liberators to Salerno, where he died on May 25, 1085. According to tradition, his last words were a paraphrase of a passage from Psalm 44, “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.”
Legacy
It might appear that Gregory was less successful as pope than he had been as a papal adviser, for, in the course of his bitter conflict with Emperor Henry IV, he was defeated. Apart from the court of Matilda of Tuscany, where his legend lived on, Gregory was soon forgotten, and he was not canonized until 1606. The history of the papacy and of the church, however, was profoundly influenced by him. His staunch advocacy of clerical celibacy and repudiation of simony reshaped the church and helped establish the ideals of the reformers as the standard for the church. Moreover, papal primacy cannot be imagined without Gregory. In his lifetime he attempted to translate his own religious experience with its mystical core into historical reality. Concepts that he grasped intuitively were elaborated on legally and theoretically in the 12th and 13th centuries and resulted in what is known as the papal monarchy.
Acknowledgements
There are few authors who are wholly original as far as their plots are concerned; indeed Shakespeare seems to have invented almost nothing, while Chaucer borrowed from both the living and the dead. And to come down to a somewhat different plane, the present writer is even more derivative, since for these books he has in generally kept doggedly to recorded actions, nourishing his fancy with log-books, dispatches, letters, memoirs and contemporary reports. But general appropriation, is, not quite the same thing as outright plagiary, and in passing it must be confessed that several passages and descriptions have been taken straight from the text of authors listed herein, whose words did not seem capable of improvement.
...But For A Penis
SHE WOULD BE KING!
In The Beginning
The fog enveloped the distance...objects beyond its shapeless protection remained suspended in the magic of Bordeaux, veiled as in animation. Soon from the east a ray would slice the grey opalescence...and in time the truth would shine as brightly as the morning sun on this June day of 1137.
He was there after moving deliberately but with caution, at the foot of the tower, and there he stood, like David...wondering, measuring before engagement. From his pocket he withdrew a cold, round, smooth grey stone. He looked at the top of the tower and thought it impossible to hit the hole where he knew the stone must go. But this was a mission fringed in magic, and like David...there would be no second chance if he missed his target.
His aim was flawless, his strength propelling and the stone sailed high and through the hole. Only time would tell...now, as he waited with emotion crowding his throat like the rain which was due last Thursday, and he knew it would come in a gush... and, then his fingers stroked another round stone. Surely he thought, I will miss if I must try another? His thoughts went to why he must experience this bitter task. Then without warning a door creaked near him and a shadow motioned the young man to make haste as a voice bade him well but with eyes only!
The girl at the door placed her hand over his mouth and whispered,
"Speak softly, there are ears in these walls!" She closed the heavy door and prayed it would not squeak and amplify the stillness of the night. Mercifully, it swung silently on the hinges but she failed to replace the weighty metal cross-bar, there for her security.
Certainly, the ears in these walls went back to the far distant time and this part of the original castle. A time when the Roman occupation of Acquitaine had formed the primary approach to the lookout turret at the top of the tower; for the past two hundred seventy-five years to around 850, the steps had been used only by those on a secret errand...but delivery to those restrained here, in this dreaded place, must first endure the eighty-four steps carried on the tapered limbs of lovers and assassins alike. By steadfast men on dangerous but hollowed missions...by dedicated men carrying coded documents from popes, kings and captains of armies and to Dukes of Acquitaine or the lady who now pushed the young man toward the final step around the last curve, and the chance to catch a breath of anything but the stale void of its impenetrable antiquity tinged with the memory of good men and honest women, wronged by tyrants and fools. (Not unlike federal judges, today)
At the top of the winding staircase where each footfall fell into the hollow carved into the stone by boots hastening them to certain death if caught...it ended at
