Henry's bold action was not altogether without reason. For some years there had been growing up within the ranks of the advocates of reform a moderate party which, while opposed to simony and clerical marriage, saw in the continued and close union of Church and State an indispensable guarantee of social order. They aimed therefore at conserving the rights of the Crown no less than at recovering those of the Church. This party is found especially among the French clergy. One of its chief spokesmen, the Canonist Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, who had suffered much for his enthusiasm for reform, insists in his correspondence even with the Pope himself, that the prohibition passed upon lay investiture is not among the class of matters which have been settled by a law for ever binding, but among those which have been enjoined or forbidden, as the case might be, for the honour or profit of the Church, and he appropriately bids the papal legate beware lest the Roman clergy should incur the charge of taking tithe of mint and rue while they omit the weightier precepts of the law. Moreover, both he and his friend Hugh of Fleury, in a treatise dealing with the "Royal Power and Priestly Office," maintain that the King has the power, "by the instigation of the Holy Spirit," of nominating bishops, or at least of granting permission for their election; and that, while the royal investiture, however made by word or act, pretends to bestow no spiritual authority, but merely estates or other results of royal munificence, it is for the archbishop to commit to a newly elected prelate the cure of souls.
[Sidenote: Settlement in England.]
This distinction, repugnant as it was to the extremists, soon found practical application. Lanfranc's successor in the See of Canterbury, Anselm, was, like his predecessor, an Italian, transferred from Normandy to England. He had to contend with the typical King of an unrestrained feudalism in the person of William II. A succession of quarrels ended in Anselm's retirement to Italy. Recalled by Henry I, he took back with him the maxims of the reformers about investiture, and refused to do the required homage to the new King. Henry was not an unreasonable man, and he sent Anselm to bring about some arrangement with the Pope. However, it was not until a rupture was imminent that Pope Pascal was persuaded to acquiesce in an agreement on the lines advocated by Ivo of Chartres and his party. By this Concordat (1107) Henry I agreed to give up his claim to invest with the ring and staff, while Archbishop Anselm allowed that the elected bishop might do homage for his lands to the King.
[Sidenote: Pascal II (1099-1118).]
At present neither side in the Empire was sufficiently honest in its intentions to be willing to accept so reasonable a settlement. But the fact that the Pope had felt himself obliged to allow it in one case sensibly weakened his position and correspondingly strengthened that of the German King. It was typical of Pascal's position in general. Though strongly Gregorian in principle, he was neither clever nor courageous, and was inclined to take up a position which he could not maintain. Intent on renewing the prohibition of lay investiture and afraid of Henry, Pascal determined to support himself upon France. Here, at any rate, Philip I had gradually dropped the practice of investiture of bishops. The papal censures of his scandalous private conduct uttered by Gregory and Urban had had no effect. Pascal accepted professions of amendment and acts of humiliation, and ceased to trouble himself further about Philip's private affairs. A Council of French bishops was held at Troyes (1107), where the decrees against lay investiture were renewed. The one gleam of hope for the future appeared in Pascal's deliberate abstention from any pronouncement against the King in person. Henry, occupied on the eastern border, could not pay his first visit to Italy until the beginning of 1111, and it was not without significance that on the eve of setting out he betrothed himself to the daughter of Henry I of England. He was more fortunate than his father had been in the moment of his visit. The Lombard cities quarrelling among themselves were quickly forced to submission; the Countess Matilda, grown old and tired of strife, sent her envoys to do homage for the imperial fiefs; the Normans had just lost their Duke. Pope Pascal, finding himself isolated, did not dare to meet by a simple negative Henry's demand for the right of investiture as well as for his coronation as Emperor.
[Sidenote: His proposal.]
By way of escaping from his difficulty he sent to the King an astonishing proposal. The King was to renounce the right of investiture and all interference in the elections, in return for which the prelates should give up all imperial lands and rights with which they were endowed, retaining merely the right to tithes, offerings, and private gifts: the papal rights over the Patrimony of St. Peter and the Norman lands were specially excepted. It has been pointed out that this was the policy which Count Cavour made famous as "a free Church in a free State." It seems almost impossible that Pascal should have thought that the German bishops would accept this solution: he may have hoped that they could be coerced into it. But in contracting himself out of the obligations to be imposed on all other ecclesiastical dignitaries, he practically renounced any claim to set the policy of the Church. Henry may have aimed at digging an impassable ditch between the Pope and the German bishops. It was an impossible agreement; for neither bishops nor lay nobles would wish to see so large an addition to the King's resources, while Henry himself could not afford to surrender the right of investiture, since it would stultify his claim to a voice in the election of the Pope.
[Sidenote: Henry's success.]
The publication of the agreement at Rome caused great tumults, Henry contriving that all the odium should fall upon the Pope. Then, since Pascal could not fulfil the part of the agreement which he had made on behalf of the Church, Henry forced him, the successor of Gregory, to acquiesce in the exercise by the German King of the right of investiture with ring and staff. Henry was crowned Emperor, though with very maimed ceremonial, and returned in triumph to Germany.
[Sidenote: Pascal's withdrawal.]