Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/155

 II 141

Covered with insults and scorn by those who called him a heretic and a traitor to the Lord, he kept his despair to himself and carried out the will of the Gregorian Party step by step, though he did not himself proclaim the ban which they hurled at Henry. He was still sup ported by the Imperial faction, by the cardinals who had suffered with him (especially those of France, where feeling had risen highest) and by the famous canonist Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who was a fighter for the liberation of the Church, from the power of the State and for ac- cording recognition to the dignity of even a mistaken Pope. The opponents of Pascal, said Ivo, should resemble the good sons of Noah, and instead of laughing at their father should turn their faces away and cover his nakedness, so that they might receive his benediction.

Nevertheless Pascal was unable to stave off a complete retreat. At the Lateran Synods of 1112 and 1116, he abrogated the Treaty of Ponte Mammolo. During the last named year the Emperor ap- peared again in Rome, though without an army. Despite the fact that the princes had allied themselves with the growing opposition in the German Church, he sought to collect the Imperial loans once given to the recently deceased Countess Mathilda. . He also wanted to get as much as possible for himself of what she had bequeathed to the Church, so that he could make friends with largesse. As he approached the city, the Pope, who had just previously been driven out by a war between the factions, fled for the second rime from the "wolf in sheep's clothing" (who was now inclined to make a peace) to the Normans. Rome paid homage to the Emperor, who scattered gold about him; and Rome also sided with Pascal again, once the Germans had left. The Pope returned to the city to die.

The weather which now hung over Rome and the Church was as troubled as of yore. It mattered not that Henry sought to weaken Gelasius II, the next Pope, whom the Imperial faction of Frangipani had maltreated bodily while the Conclave was still in session, by recognizing an anti-Pope by whom he had already been crowned. The aged, tired Gelasius had no recourse excepting to hurl the weapon of the ban, which by this time had lost much of its effectiveness, at the Emperor and his anti-Pope. But Rome afforded him no protec- tion against Henry's retainers. Having tried ceaselessly and in vain to determine its own political life despite Papacy and Empire, the

142