Thus the scene which has ever since impressed the imagination of Europe is in substance authentic; though we are by no means compelled to think that Henry literally stood in the snow for three whole days. But the common interpretation of the scene is quite false. It was not a spiritual triumph, but a political pseudo-triumph. In reality, it was Henry who triumphed; and one can imagine him jesting merrily afterwards about his bare feet and coarse robe of penitence. He promised to amend his ways, and then proceeded to make a tour of Italy in light-hearted confidence and with all his old wilfulness. He refused to interfere when a Papal Legate was thrown into prison at Piacenza; and he refused to provide Gregory with an escort when the Germans invited the Pope to come and preside at their new Diet.[233] Gregory soon realized that the war had merely passed into a new and more difficult phase, and we must follow it swiftly to its tragic end in the utter defeat of the Pope.
Gregory sent two Legates to the Diet of Forchheim on March 13th, where, with their consent, Rudolph of Swabia was declared King of Germany. The Papal Legates exacted that he should not claim the succession for his family—apparently Germany was to be the next fief of the Roman See—and should abandon investiture. When Henry pressed the Pope to excommunicate Rudolph, he replied that he had not yet heard Rudolph's case—an "unworthy subterfuge," Bishop Mathew justly remarks—and Henry set out for Germany. In the three-years struggle which followed, the Pope adopted a policy which few historians hesitate to condemn. He sent Legates repeatedly, claiming that he alone was the judge: that "if the See of the Blessed Peter decides and judges heavenly and spiritual things, how much the more shall it judge things earthly and secular."[234] He even promised the crown to whichever of the combatants should respect his Legates: a remarkable test of the justice he promised to administer. He evidently hoped that Rudolph would win, but feared that the victory might fall to Henry; and, above all, he desired to judge the princes of the earth. At last the Saxons in turn began to abuse him. His Legates, they said, were offering his verdict to the highest bidder—assuredly without his knowledge—and his policy was unintelligible. Bishops were saying that the Papacy had become "the tail of the Church."
At the Lenten synod of the year 1080 representatives of both princes came before Gregory and his bishops, and the great decision was taken. Henry was found guilty of "disobedience," and, after a long and eloquent speech, Gregory excommunicated him once more and confirmed Rudolph in the kingdom of Germany. Bishop Bonitho[235] tells us that Henry had sent an ultimatum: if Gregory did not at once condemn Rudolph he would appoint another Pope. This is, apparently, the real inspiration of the synod and of Gregory's fiery speech.[236] Henry's partisans retorted by excommunicating Gregory and consecrating Guibert of Ravenna as Anti-Pope, and, as Rudolph fell in battle in October, the Gregorian cause was in a lamentable plight. Gregory had, in his extremity, overlooked all the crimes of Robert Guiscard—"for the present" he quaintly said in the treaty—and made an alliance with him, but Robert was still engaged in the East, and Henry's troops made great havoc in Mathilda's dominions. Yet Gregory repeated his excommunication of the King, and wrote letters all over Europe to defend his action and obtain money and troops.
Several years passed in this indecisive warfare, Henry wearing down the Tuscan troops and cutting off supplies from Rome. At length, toward the end of March, 1084, the Romans, weary of the long siege, opened their gates to Henry, and Gregory shut himself in the impregnable fortress of Sant' Angelo. From the windows, for two dreary months, Gregory had to watch the progress of the victorious Imperialists and the triumph of the Anti-Pope, Clement III. In May he was elated by the message that Henry had fled and Robert Guiscard was marching to Rome with a large force. But his joy was brief. A brawl with the Romans let loose the half-barbaric Normans, and the city was visited with one of the most pitiless raids in its eventful history. Thousands of the Romans were sold into slavery: sacred virgins and matrons were savagely raped: large districts of the city were burned to the ground. For this the infuriated Romans cast the whole blame on the Pope, and he was forced to retire with Robert. In penury and impotence he rode into the abbey of Monte Cassino, where Abbot Didier would hardly fail to remind him that they who appeal to the sword are apt to perish by the sword, and then on to Salerno. Surrounded by the shrunken remains of his supporters he made a last appeal to the Christian world to espouse his cause, and he feebly cast forth his last anathemas. But the fight was lost, and he wearily drew his last breath on May 25, 1085. "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile," he said. It was not wholly true. He was exiled by the people of Rome, whose devastated homes made them heap curses on his iron policy. History honours the purity of his ultimate aim, the heroism with which he pursued it, the greatness, with all its defects, of his character; it sternly condemns the means he employed, the tortuous and dangerous character of his reasoning, the appalling claim that kingdoms were toys in his hand. He failed; but he had, in reality, so strengthened the frame of the Papacy that it would take an earthquake to shake it.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] The two ablest recent writers on Hildebrand, the Right Reverend Dr. A.H. Mathew (The Life and Times of Hildebrand, 1910) and Dr. W. Martens (War Gregor VII. Mönch?, 1891, and Gregor VII., 2 vols. 1894—an invaluable study), hold that he never took the vows. The chief biography of Hildebrand on the Catholic side is now the Abbé O. Delarc's Grégoire VII. et la Réforme de l'Église au XI siècle (3 vols., 1889). Slight but excellent sketches will be found in F. Roquain's La Papauté au moyen âge (1881) and Hildebrand and His Times (1888) by W.R.W. Stephens. Older writers like Voigt, Gfrörer, Villemain, and Bowden are now of little use. The original authorities are as numerous as they are unreliable. The partisans of Gregory (chiefly Bonitho and Donizo) are scarcely more scrupulous than the partisans of Henry (Benzo, Benno, Guido, etc.), or those of Rudolph (Lambert, Berthold, Bruno, etc.). Fortunately we have a large number of Gregory's letters, and, as usual, I rely chiefly on these.
[201] The reformers of Milan worked chiefly among the poor, especially in the "old-clothes quarter," or Pataria. Hence the name of the party.
[202] The word "cardinal" occurs occasionally in early ecclesiastical literature in its literal meaning of "important," and is applied to clerics of various orders. After the fifth century it is restricted at Rome to the first priests of each of the tituli (quasi-parishes) into which the city was divided. They numbered twenty-eight in the eleventh century. In the course of time the name was also given to the seventeen leading deacons of Rome and the seven suburbicarian bishops.
[203] In this last case we have the assurance of Hildebrand himself that he dictated the Papal policy. Years afterwards he wrote to William (Ep., vii., 23) that, when the Norman envoys came to ask Papal approval of his design, it was generally censured as an unjustifiable raid, and Hildebrand alone induced Pope Alexander to send the Normans a banner: on condition, he adds, that William secured the payment of Peter's Pence by the reluctant English and in other ways promoted the interests of Rome. But even William did not dream that his acceptance of the banner made England, in Hildebrand's opinion, a fief of the Roman See!
[204] Ep., i., 1.