Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/584

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ascendant throughout the year of the Red King's second Norman campaign. At the beginning of the next year, after keeping Christmas in Tuscany, Urban went on into Lombardy, where the Emperor still was, though his rebel son Conrad, crowned and largely acknowledged as King of Italy, was far more powerful than his father. Almost on the same days as those which in England were given to the council of Rockingham, Urban held his great council of Piacenza, a council so great that no building could hold its numbers; the business of the assembly was therefore done, as we have seen it done in our own land, in the open fields. There the Empress Praxedes told her tale of sorrow and shame; there the cry of Eastern Christendom, set forth in the letters of the Emperor Alexios, was heard and heeded; there the heresy of Berengar, already smitten by Lanfranc, was again condemned; there a new set of anathemas were hurled at the married clergy, and a more righteous curse was denounced against the adulterous King of the French. But no mention seems to have been made of English affairs; one is a little surprized at the small amount of heed which the dispute between the King and the Archbishop seems to have drawn to itself in