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 INVESTITURES

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INVESTITURES

had received the imperial crown. In this way war soon broke out again, during which the cause of the king suffered a dccHne. The antipope's bishops gradually deserted him in answer to Urban's advan- tageous offers of reconciliation; the royal authority in Italy disappeared, while in the defection of his son Conrad and of his second wife Henry suffered an addi- tional humiliation. The new crusading movement, on the other hand, rallied many to the assistance of the papacy. In 1!»4 nn.l ID'.I.') Urban renewed the excom- munication of Henry, (luibert, and their supporters. When the pope died' (1099), followed l^y the antipope (11 00), the papacy, so far as ecclesiastical matters were concerned, had won a complete victory. The subse- quent antipopes of the Ouibertian party in Italy were of no importance. Urban was succeeded by a less able ruler. Paschal II (1099-1118), whom Hemy at first inclined to recognize. The political horizon meanwhile began to look more favourable for the king, who was now universally acknowledged in Germany. He was anxious to secure in addition ecclesiastical peace, sought to procure the removal of his excom- munication, and publicly declared his intention of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. This, however, did not satisfy the pope, who demanded the renunciation of the right of investiture, still obsti- nately claimed by Henry. In 1102 Paschal renewed the anathema against the emperor. The revolt of his son (Henry V), and the latter's alliance with the princes who were dissatisfied with the imperial policy, brought matters to a crisis and occasioned the great- est suffering to the sorely tried emperor, who was now ignominiously outwitted and overcome by his son. A decisive struggle was rendered unnecessary by the death of Henry IV in 1106. He had untiringly de- fended the inherited rights of the royal office, and had never sacrificed any of them.

From the beginning Henry V had enjoyed the sup- port of the pope, who had relieved him of excommuni- cation and had set aside his oath of allegiance to liis father. At and after the Pentecost Synod of Nord- hausen, in 1105, the king dispelled the last remnants of the schism by deposing the imperial occupants of the episcopal sees. The questions, however, which lay at the root of the whole conflict were not yet decided, and time soon showed that, in the matter of investi- tures, Henry was the true heir of his father's policy. Cold, calculating, and ambitious, the new monarch had no idea of withdrawing the royal claims in this respect. Notwithstanding repeated prohibitions (at Guastalla in 1106, and at Troyes in 1107), he continued to invest with ostentation the bishops of his choice. The German clergy raised no protest, and made it evident in this way that their earlier refusal of obedi- ence to the emperor arose from the fact of his excom- munication, not from any resentment occasioned by his interference in the affairs of the Church. In 1108 excommunication was pronounced upon the giver and receiver (dan,'i el accipiens) of investiture, and thus affected the king himself. As Henry had now set his heart on being crowned emperor, this decision precipi- tated the final struggle. In 1111 the king marched with a strong army on Rome. Eager to avoid another conflict, Paschal attempted a radical solution of the question at issue; the German clergy, he decided, were to restore to the king all their estates and privileges and to maintain themselves on tithes and donations; under these circumstances the monarchy, which was interested only in the overlordship of these domains, might easily dispense with the investiture of the clergj'. On this understanding peace was established at Sutri between pope and king. Paschal, who had been a monk before his elevation, undoubtedly executed in good faith this renunciation of the secular power of the Church. It was but a short step to the idea that the Church was a spiritual institution, and as such had no concern with earthly affairs.

The king, however, cannot have doubted for a mo- ment that the papal renunciation would fail before the ojiposition of both ecclesiastical and secular princes. Henry V was mean and deceitful, and sought to en- trap the pope. The king having renoimced his claim to investiture, the pope promulgatecl in St. Peter's on 12 Feliruary, 1112, the return of all temporalities to the Crown, but thereby raised (as Henry had foreseen) such a storm of opposition from the Ciernian princes that he was forced to recognize the futility of tliis at- tempt at settlement. The king then demanded that the right of investiture be restored, and that he should be crowned emperor; on the pope's refusal, he treach- erously seized him and thirteen cardinals, and hurried them away from the now infuriated city. To regain his freedom. Paschal was forced, after two months imprisonment, to accede to Henry's demands. He granted the king unconditional investiture as an im- perial privilege, crowned him emperor, and promised on oath not to excommunicate him for what had oc- curred.

Henry had thus secured by force a notable success, but it could have no long duration. The more ardent members of the Gregorian party rebuked the "hereti- cal " pope, and compelled him to retire step by step from the position into which he had been forced. The Lateran Synod of 1 1 12 renewed the decrees of Gregory and Urban against investiture. Paschal did not wish to withdraw his promise directly, but the Council of Vienna, having declared the imperial privilegium (privilege, derivatively, a private law) a pravilegium (a vicious law), and as such null and void, it also excommunicated the emperor. The pope did not, however, break off all intercourse with Henry, for whom the struggle began to assume a threatening as- pect, since now, as previously under his father, the tlifficulties raised by ecclesiastical opposition were aggravated by rebellion of the princes. The incon- siderate selfishness of the emperor, his mean and odious personality, made enemies on every side. Even his bishops now opposed him, seeing themselves threatened by him and believing him set on sole mastery. In 1114 at Beauvais, and in 1116 at Reims, Cologne, Goslar, and a second time at Cologne, excommu- nication of the emperor was repeated by papal legates. Imperial and irresolute bishops, who refused to join the papal party, were removed from their sees. The emperor's forces were defeated simidtaneously on the Rhine and in Saxony. In 1116 Henry attempted to enter into negotiations with the pope in Italy, but no agreement was arrived at, as on this occasion Paschal refused to enter into a conference with the emperor.

After Paschal's death (1118) even his tolerant suc- cessor, Gelasius II (1118-19), coidd not prevent the situation from becoming daily more entangled. Hav- ing demanded recognition of the privilege of 1111 and been referred by Gelasius to a general council, Henry made a hopeless attempt to revive the universally detested schism by appointing as antipope, under the name of Gregory VIII, Burdinus, Archbishop of Braga (Portugal), and was accordingly excommuni- cated by the pope. In 1119 Gelasius was succeeded by Guido of Vienna as Callistus II (1119-24) ; he had already excommunicated the emperor in 1112. Rec- onciliation seemed, therefore, more remote than ever. Callistus, however, regarded the peace of the Church as of prime importance, and as the emperor, already on better terms with the German princes, was likewise eager for peace, negotiations were opened. A basis for compromise lay in the distinction between the ecclesiastical and the secular elements in the appoint- ment of bishops. This mode of settlement had already been discussed in various forms in Italy and in France, e. g. by Ivo of Chartres, as early as 1099. The bestowal of the ecclesiastical office was sharply distin- guished from the investiture with imperial domains.