46 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
his vassal, and had to swear an oath of obedience, which implied the duty of serving at court and furnishing troops for the defence of the country. Sometimes a bishop had hardly left the altar when his liege-lord commanded him to gird on the sword. After the death of the bishop, the king or prince used the income of the see till the election of a successor, and often unduly postponed the election for his pecuniary benefit, to the injury of the Church and the poor. In the appointments, the king was influenced by polit ical, social, or pecuniary considerations, and often sold the dignity to the highest bidder, without any regard to intel lectual or moral qualifications. The right of investiture was thus closely connected with the crying abuse of simony, and its chief source.
No wonder that Gregory opposed this investiture by lay men with all his might. Cardinal Humbert had attacked it in a special book under Victor II. (1057), and declared it an infamous scandal that lay-hands, above all, female hands, should bestow the ring and crosier. He insisted that investi ture was a purely spiritual function, and that secular princes have nothing to do with the performance of functions that have something sacramental about them. They even commit sacrilege by touching the garments of the priest. By the exercise of the right of investiture, princes, who are properly the defenders of the Church, had become its lords and rulers. Great evils had arisen out of this practice, especially in Italy, where ambitious priests lingered about the antecham bers of courts and practised the vice of adulation, vitium adulationis.1
The legislation against lay appointments was opened at the Synod of Rheims, 1049, under the influence of Leo IX.
1 Humbert's work, adversus simoniacos, is given in libeUide lite and Migne, vol. 153. Wido of Arezzo and Damiani expressed the same views. See Mirbt, PuUizistik, 463-471. Of those who received lay investiture it began to be said "that they entered not in by the door," non per ostium intraverant.
S 15. GREGORY VII. AND HENRY IV. 47
It declared that no priest should be promoted to office with out the election of clergy and people. Ten years later, 1059, the Synod of Rome pronounced any appointment of cleric or presbyter to benefice invalid, which was made by a lay man.1 The following year, 1060, the French synods of Tours and Vienne extended the prohibition to bishops. It remained for Gregory to stir up all Europe over the question who had the right of investiture.
By abolishing this custom, Gregory hoped to emancipate the clergy from the vassalage of the State, and the property of the Church from the feudal supervision of the prince, as well as to make the bishops the obedient servants of the pope.
The contest continued under the following popes, and was at last settled by the compromise of Worms (1122). The emperor yielded only in part ; for to surrender the whole property of the Church to the absolute power of the pope, would have reduced civil government to a mere shadow. On the other hand, the partial triumph of the papacy contributed very much to the secularization of the Church.
§ 15. G-regory VII. and Henry IV.
The conflict over investiture began at a Roman synod in Lent (Feb. 24-28), 1075, and brought on the famous collision with Henry IV., in which priestcraft and kingcraft strove for mastery. The pope had the combined advantages of supe rior age, wisdom, and moral character over this unfortunate prince, who, when a mere boy of six years (1056), had lost his worthy father, Henry III., had been removed from the care of his pious but weak mother, Agnes, and was spoilt in his education. Henry had a lively mind and noble impulses, but was despotic and licentious. Prosperity made him proud and overbearing, while adversity cast him down. His life
1 ut per laicos nullo modo quilibet clericus aut presbyter obtineat ecclesiam nee gratis necpretio, Mansi, XIX. 898.