THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the castle of Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Henryappeared before the gate of this castle, a penitent, and succeeded in inducing Gregory to release him, though not without reservation; for he did not revoke the sentence of deposition.
Only a transient peace ensued between Henry and Gregory upon this basis. When, several weeks later, on motion of some of the German princes, Rudolph of Swabia was elected oppo- Second Ex- sition king at Forchheim, Gregory did communi- not declare against him. He treated cation of the matter of Henry's or Rudolph's Henry, 1080. legitimacy rather as an open question, Henry's Tri- and hoped to be able to decide the disumph, 1084. pute as judge. Finally, when Rudolph, on Jan. 27, 1080, won a great victory — so the report went — near Flarchheim, Gregory again placed Henry under the ban and sentence of deposition. But this time public opinion was against him, whereas in 1076 it had sided with him; furthermore, on Oct. 15, 1080, Rudolph died, and Hermann of Luxemburg, later elected in his stead, could not materially strengthen the papal position in Germany. Henry IV. was now able to take the offensive against Gregory. At Brixen (June 25, 1080), Gregory was solemnly repudiated, and Guibert of Ravenna (q.v.) was made counterpope. In the following year, Henry marched to Italy, since Gregory was to be conquered only in Rome. This was accomplished in 1084. A faction of the clergy fell away from Gregory, thirteen cardinals turned their backs on him, and the Roman people, weary of the war, delivered the city to the German king. Guibert of Ravenna was now enthroned (Mar. 24) as Clement III. and Henry IV. was crowned emperor by him on Mar. 31. Not until May did the Norman prince Robert Guiscard march to Gregory's aid. He forced Henry to retreat, but by his plundering of Rome the cause of Gregory, who was held responsible therefor, was lost forever. Gregory lived a year longer in exile at Salerno, forsaken by his friends but unbroken in spirit. He died May 25, 1085.
The concentration of his strength upon Germany prevented Gregory from acting with similar energy in other countries. He projected Gregory's great things in the Orient; but he did Policy and not succeed in abolishing the schism Achieve- between East and West, nor could he ments out- institute a crusade or form a union side of with the Armenians. He made good Germany, some political claims on Dalmatia, Corsica, and Sardinia; and he cherished the vain hope of founding a papal feudal kingdom in Spain. He once threatened excommunication and interdict, and even deposition, against Philip I. of France, who had aroused his ill-will by reason of simony and ecclesiastical oppressions; but he did not enforce these penalties — although the king showed no improvement — because he was unwilling to provide Henry IV- with a confederate. William I. of England also derived advantage from the conflicts in Germany. For, in spite of his marital relations, in spite of his appointment of bishops and abbots, in spite of his forbidding the bishops to visit Rome, and of many other I
things, he was spared the Roman censures. Gregory maintained favorable relations with Denmark, whose King Svend II., Estridsen, was summoned — without practical result — to transform his kingdom into a feudal dependency upon the apostolic prince. He directed like hopes toward Russia; and he affirmed that the Roman Church had long held a right of possession in respect to Hungary. He also kept Poland and Bohemia in view; even as his provident care was likewise engaged by north Africa, oppressed by the Saracens.
Gregory's administrative activity thus encompassed the entire Christian world, operating along definite lines, and clearly pursuing well-defined aims. Of fundamental significance The Aims were his ideas as to the essence of the and Means. State. The Augustinian theory that The Inves- the State is a product of sin was shared titure Con- by him; only, inasmuch as the logical
troversy. .' sequel of a permanent conflict with the State as such was not within practical realization, he recognized the coexistence of State and Church as of divine ordination, at the same time vigorously affirming the obligation to subordinate the State to the Church. From these premises he deduced the right of excommunicating and deposing incompetent rulers and of confirming the status of a German king. The attempts to persuade particular States into a relation of spiritual dependency on the Roman see show that he had consciously in view the goal of subjecting temporal States to the Church; that is, to found a theocracy or to create an ecumenical papal dominion. He endeavored to apply these principles in filling spiritual vacancies, and in this way the dispute as to Investiture (q.v.) came about. Inaugurated by a law promulgated in 1049, under Leo IX., it filled Western Christendom down to the Concordat of Worms in 1122. It is manifest from the laws enacted under Gregory in 1075, 1078, and 1080 that he purposed to withdraw appointments to spiritual positions from the influence of the king for the sake of securing this influence for himself, and so to substitute papal nomination for the previous royal nomination. But even had this goal been attained, Gregory was not yet at the end of his aspirations; for even if the king no longer had influence on episcopal nominations, the bishops were expected to retain all the sovereign rights, allodia, and fiefs which had been conveyed to them as princes of the realm. By this process, however, the king's right to church property of the realm would have been annulled, and the pope, as feudal suzerain, would have acquired the right of administration over the goods of the Church.
In the internal direction of the Church, Gregory's efforts to enforce the celibacy of the clergy and to extirpate simony took front rank at the outset. The legislation of Leo IX. The Internal on celibacy was energetically sustained Administra- by Gregory, and the "Nicolaitan hertion of the esy" was combated in all countries.
Church. — though with spirited protests on the
part of many married ecclesiastics.
The difficulty of abolishing simony was increased
by the fact that in the course of time the practise