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 282 ' Readings in European History Germans and over Italy. And I absolve all Christians from the bonds of the oath which they have taken to him or which they shall in future take ; and I forbid any one to serve him as king. For it is fitting that he who strives to lessen the honor of thy Church should himself lose the honor which seems to belong to him. And since he has scorned to obey as a Christian, and has not returned to God whom he has deserted, but has had intercourse with the excommunicated ; practiced manifold iniquities; spurned the counsels which, as thou art witness, I sent to him for his own salvation; separated himself from thy Church and endeavored to rend it asunder ; I bind him, in thy stead, with the chain of the anathema. Relying upon thee, I bind him, that the people may know and prove that thou art Peter, and upon thy rock the Son of the living God hath built his Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Bishop Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to all the Archbishops, Bishops, Dukes, Counts, and other princes of the realm of the Germans, defenders of the Christian faith, greeting and apostolic benediction: Inasmuch as for the love of justice ye have assumed common cause and danger with us in the stress of this Christian warfare, we have bethought us to relate to you, beloved, in sincere affection, how the king, humbled to pen- ance, has obtained the pardon of absolution, and how the whole matter has progressed since his entry into Italy up to the present day. As had been arranged with the legates whom you dis- patched to us, we came into Lombardy about twenty days before the date on which one of the nobles was to meet us at the pass, and awaited his coming before we crossed over to the other side of the Alps. When the time fixed upon had quite passed, we were told, as we could well believe, that at that season, on account of the numerous obstacles, an escort could not be sent to meet us. We were then involved in no little anxiety as