52 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
clergy and nobility of Lombardy and an invading army from Germany.1
When Henry received the tidings of the sentence of ex communication and deposition, he burst into a furious rage, abused Gregory as a hypocrite, heretic, murderer, perjurer, adulterer, and threatened to fling back the anathema upon his head. William, bishop of Utrecht, had no scruples in complying with the king's wishes, and from the pulpit of his cathedral anathematized Gregory as "a perjured monk who had dared to lift up his head against the Lord's anointed." Henry summoned a national council to Worms on Whitsun day (May 15) to protest against the attempt of Gregory to unite in one hand the two swords which God had separated.2
This was the famous figure for the spiritual and temporal power afterwards often employed by the popes, who claimed that God had given both swords to the Church, — the spirit ual sword, to be borne by her; the temporal, to be wielded by the State for the Church, that is, in subjection and obe dience to the Church.
The council at Worms was attended by few bishops, and proved a failure. A council in Mainz, June 29, turned
lrlhe excommunication of Henry in 1076 and again in 1080 called forth a controversial literature of some proportions, Mirbt, Publicist ik, 134-239, as did Gregory's attitude towards simony and clerical celibacy. The anti-Gregorians took the ground that the excommunication was unjust and even called in question the pope's right to excommunicate a king. Gregory's letters make reference to these objections. Writing to Hermann of Metz, Reg., IV. 2, Gregory said that there were some who openly declared that a king should not be excommunicated, regem non oportet excommunicari. Gregory justified his act on the ground of the king's companionship with excommuni cated persons, his refusal to offer repentance for crimes, and the rupture of the unity of the Church which resulted from the king's course, Reg., IV. 1, etc. The Council of Tribur, Oct. 16, 1076, discussed the questions whether a pope might excommunicate a king and whether Gregory had acted justly in excommunicating Henry. It answered both questions in the affirmative. A hundred years after the event, Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici, I., speaks of the sentence as unheard of before, quo numquam ante hwc tempora hujustnodi sententiam in principcm romanum promulgatam cognoverat.
-Reg., IV. 2 ; Migne, 148, 455.
§ 16. CANOSSA. 53
out no better, and Henry found it necessary to negotiate. Saxony was lost; prelates and nobles deserted him. A diet at Tribur, an imperial castle near Mainz, held Oct. 16, 1076, demanded that he should submit to the pope, seek absolution from him within twelve months from the date of excommu nication, at the risk of forfeiting his crown. He should then appear at a diet to be held at Augsburg on Feb. 2, 1077, under the presidency of the pope. Meanwhile he was to abide at Spires in strict privacy, in the sole company of his wife, the bishop of Verdun, and a few servants chosen by the nobles. The legates of Gregory were treated with marked respect, and gave absolution to the excommunicated bishops, including Siegfried of Mainz, who submitted to the pope.
Henry spent two dreary months in seclusion at Spires, shut out from the services of the Church and the affairs of the State. At last he made up his mind to seek absolution, as the only means of saving his crown. There was no time to be lost; only a few weeks remained till the Diet of Augs burg, which would decide his fate.
§ 16. Canossa. 1077.
The winter of 1076-1077 was one of the coldest and longest within the memory of men — the Rhine being frozen to a solid mass from November till April — and one of the most memorable in history — being marked by an event of typical significance. The humiliation of the head of the German Empire at the feet of the bishop of Rome at Canossa means the subjection of the State to the Church and the triumph of the Hildebrandian policy.
A few days before Christmas, Henry IV. left Spires on a journey across the Alps as a penitent, seeking absolution from the pope. He was accompanied by his wife with her infant son Conrad (born August, 1071) and one faithful servant. Bertha, daughter of the margrave Odo of Turin and Adelheid