§ 20. PASCAL II. AND HENRY V. 75
Pascal had to suffer for his unscrupulous policy. When Henry V. came into full possession of his power, he demanded the right of investiture over all the churches of the empire, and coronation at Rome. The pope was imprisoned and so hard pressed by Henry, that he resolved to buy the spiritual freedom of the Church by a sacrifice of its temporal posses sions (except the patrimony of Peter). A compact to this effect between him and the emperor was signed provisionally, April, 1111. Henry was crowned emperor of the Romans in St. Peter's. But after his return to Germany, a Lateran synod rejected the compact, March, 1112. The pope repre sented to the synod that, while in the custody of the em peror, with many bishops and cardinals, he had conceded to him the right of investiture to avoid greater evils, and had promised him immunity from excommunication. He con fessed that the concession was wrong, and left it with the synod to improve the situation. He made in the sixth ses sion (March 23) a solemn profession of the Catholic faith in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, the Canons of the Apostles, the four (Ecumenical Synods of Nicsea, Con stantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, and the decrees of Greg ory VII. and Urban II. against lay-investiture and all other crimes which they had condemned. Then the synod, while the pope kept silent, resolved to annul the treaty which he had been forced to make with King Henry. All exclaimed, "Amen, Amen, fiat, fiat ." Twelve archbishops, a hundred and fourteen bishops, fifteen cardinal-priests, and eight car dinal-deacons signed the decree.
The zealous Gregorians wished to go further and to de clare lay-investiture a heresy (which would imply that Pope Pascal was a heretic). A French Synod of Vienne, Sept. 16,
Leben Kaiser Heinrich des Vierten, Berlin, 1858) ; by Druffel and Giesebrecht, to Bishop Erlung of Wiirzburg, who was chancellor of the emperor from 1103 to 1105. For a good characterization of Henry IV. see Giesebrecht, III. 764- 768, and on this biography, pp. 1050 sq.
76 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1085-1122.
1112, passed three decrees: 1) Investiture by a layman is a heresy; 2) the enforced compact of Pascal with Henry is null and void ; 3) King Henry, who came to Rome under the pretext of peace, and betrayed the pope with a Judas-kiss, is cut off from holy Church until he gives complete satisfaction. The decisions were submitted to the pope, who approved them, October 20 of the same year, to avert a schism. Other provincial synods of France, held by papal legates, launched anathemas against the " tyrant of Germany."
But Henry defied the pope, who had pledged himself never to excommunicate him on account of investiture. After the death of Countess Matilda, July 24, 1115, he hastened for a third time to Italy, and violently seized the rich possessions which she had bequeathed to the chair of St. Peter. Pascal fled to Benevento, and called the Normans to his aid, as Gregory VII. had done. Henry celebrated the Easter festi val of 1117 in Rome with great pomp, caused the empress to be crowned, showed himself to the people in his imperial purple, and amused them with shows and processions; but in the summer he returned to Germany, after fruitless negotia tions with the pope. He lived to conclude the Concordat of Worms. He was an energetic, but hard, despotic, and unpopular ruler.
Pascal died, Jan. 21, 1118, in the castle of St. Angelo, and was buried in the church of St. John in Lateran. He barely escaped the charge of heresy and schism. He privately con demned, and yet officially supported, lay-investiture, and strove to satisfy both his own conscience and his official duty to the papacy. The extreme party charged him with the sin of Peter, and exhorted him to repent; milder judges, like Ivo of Chartres and Hildebert of Le Mans, while defending the Hildebrandian principle of the freedom of the Church, ex cused him on the ground that he had yielded for a moment in the hope of better times and from the praiseworthy desire to save the imprisoned cardinals and to avoid bloodshed ; and