“Pope Paschal, servant of the servants of God, sendeth health and his apostolical benediction, to his dearest son in Christ, Henry Augustus, by the grace of Almighty God, emperor of the Romans. The Divine disposal hath ordained, that your kingdom shall unite with the holy Roman church, since your predecessors, through valour and surpassing prudence, have obtained the crown and sovereignty of the Roman city; to the dignity of which crown and empire, the Divine Majesty, by the ministry of our priesthood, hath advanced your person, my dearest son Henry. That pre-eminence of dignity, then, which our predecessors have granted to yours, the Catholic emperors, and have confirmed in the volume of grants, we also concede to your affection, and in the scroll of this present grant confirm also, that you may confer the investiture of the staff and ring on the bishops or abbats of your kingdom, freely elected, without violence or simony: but, after their investiture, let them receive canonical consecration from the bishop to whom it pertains. But if any person shall be elected, either by the clergy or the people, against your consent, unless he be invested by you, let him be consecrated by no one; excepting such, indeed, as are accustomed to be at the disposal of the archbishops, or of the Roman pontiff. Moreover, let the archbishops or bishops have permission, canonically, to consecrate bishops or abbats invested by you. Your predecessors, indeed, so largely endowed the churches of their kingdom of their royalties, that it is fitting that kingdom should be especially strengthened by the power of bishops or abbats; and that popular dissensions, which often happen in all elections, should be checked by royal majesty. Wherefore, your prudence and authority ought to take more especial care to preserve the grandeur of the Roman church, and the safety of the rest, through God’s assistance, by your gifts and services. Therefore, if any ecclesiastical or secular person, knowing this document of our concession, shall rashly dare oppose it, let him be bound with the chain of an anathema, unless he recant, and hazard his honour and dignity. But may God’s mercy preserve such as keep it, and may he grant your person and authority to reign happily to his honour and glory.”
[A.D. 1111.] HENRY V CONSECRATED EMPEROR.
The whole ceremony of the consecration being completed, the pope and the emperor, joining their right hands, went with much state to the chamber which fronts the confessionary of St. Gregory, that the pope might there put off his pontifical, and the emperor his regal vestments. As the emperor retired from the chamber divested of his royal insignia, the Roman patricians met him with a golden circle, which they placed upon his head, and by it gave him the supreme patriciate[508] of the Roman city, with common consent and universal approbation.
All this parade of grants and consecration I have taken literally from the narrative of the aforesaid David, written, as I said, with too great partiality towards the king. In the following year, however, a council was assembled at Rome, rather by the connivance than the command of the pope, and the grant was nullified. The authors of its reversal, were, the archbishop of Vienne, who afterwards ruled the papal see;[509] and Girard, bishop of Angouleme: who stimulated their brother bishops, to make these concessions of none effect. The proceedings of that council were as follow.
[A.D. 1112.] COUNCIL AT ROME.
“A.D. 1112, the fifth of the indiction, in the thirteenth year of the sovereign pope Paschal the second, in the month of March, on the fifteenth before the kalends of April, a council was held at Rome, at the Lateran, in the church of Constantine;[510] where, when pope Paschal, together with the archbishops, bishops, and cardinals and a mixed company of clergy and laity, had, on the last day of the council, taken his seat; making public profession of the Catholic faith, lest any one should doubt his orthodoxy, he said, “I embrace all the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament; the Law written by Moses, and by the holy prophets: I embrace the four Gospels; the seven canonical Epistles, the Epistles of the glorious preacher St. Paul, the apostle, the holy canons of the apostles; the four Universal councils, as the four gospels, the Nicene, Ephesian, Constantinopolitan, Chalcedonian: moreover the council of Antioch and the decrees of the holy fathers, the Roman pontiffs; and more especially the decrees of my lords pope Gregory the seventh, and pope Urban of blessed memory. What they have approved, I approve: what they held, I hold: what they have confirmed, I confirm: what they have condemned, I condemn: what they have opposed, I oppose: what they have interdicted, I interdict: what they have prohibited, I prohibit: I will persevere in the same in every thing and through every thing.” This being ended, Girard, bishop of Angouleme, legate in Aquitaine, rose up for all, and by the unanimous consent of pope Paschal and of all the council, read the following writing. “That grant which is no grant, but ought more properly to be called an abomination,[511] for the liberation of captives and of the church, extorted from the sovereign pope Paschal by the violence of king Henry, the whole of us in this holy council assembled, with the sovereign pope, condemn by canonical censure, and ecclesiastical authority, by the judgment of the Holy Spirit; and we adjudge it to be void, and altogether nullify it: and that it may have neither force nor efficacy, we interdict it altogether. And it is condemned, on this account; because in that abomination it is asserted, that a person canonically elected by the clergy and the people, shall not be consecrated by any one, unless first invested by the king; which is contrary to the Holy Spirit and to canonical institution.” This writing being read, the whole council, and all present, unanimously cried out Amen, Amen: So be it, so be it.
The archbishops there present with their suffragans were these: John, patriarch of Venice: Semies of Capua: Landulf of Benevento: Amalfi, Reggio, Otranto, Brindisi, Capsa, Cerenza;[512] and the Greeks, Rosanus, and the archbishop of St. Severina; the bishops were, Censius of Sabina, Peter of Porto, Leo of Ostia, Cono of Prænesti, Girard of Angouleme, Galo of Leon, legate for Berri and the archbishop of Vienne, Roger of Volaterra, Gaufrid of Sienna, Rolland of Populonia, Gregory of Tarracina, William of Turin,[513] William of Syracuse, legate for all the Sicilians, and near a hundred other bishops. Siwin, and John bishop of Tusculum, though at Rome, were not present on that day of the council; but they afterwards, on the reading of the condemnation of the grant, assented and approved of it.
These things gaining publicity, all France made no scruple of considering the emperor as accursed by the power of ecclesiastical zeal hurled against him. Roused at this, in the seventeenth[514] year of pope Paschal, he proceeded to Rome, to inflict signal vengeance on him. But he, by a blessed departure,[515] had avoided all earthly molestation, and from his place of repose on high, laughed at the threats of the angry emperor; who having heard of his death, quickened his journey, in order that ejecting John Gaitan, chancellor to the late pope, who had been already elected and called Gelasius, he might intrude Maurice,[516] bishop of Brague, surnamed Bourdin, on the See: but the following epistle of Gelasius will explain the business more fully.
[A.D. 1119.] EPISTLE OF GELASIUS.
“Gelasius, servant of the servants of God to the archbishops, bishops, abbats, clergy, princes, and other faithful people throughout Gaul, health. As you are members of the church of Rome, we are anxious to signify to your affection what has there lately taken place. Shortly after our election, then, the sovereign emperor coming by stealth and with unexpected haste to Rome, compelled us to depart the city. He afterwards demanded peace by threats and intimidation, saying he would do all he might be able, unless we assured him of peace by oath. To which we replied thus: Concerning the controversy which exists between the church and the empire, we willingly agree to a meeting or to legal discussion, at proper time and place; that is to say, either at Milan or Cremona, on the next feast of St. Luke, at the discretion of our brethren, who, by God, are constituted judges in the church, and without whom this cause cannot be agitated. And since the sovereign emperor demands security from us, we promise such to him, by word and by writing, unless in the interim himself shall violate it: for otherwise to give security is dishonourable to the church, and contrary to custom. He, immediately, on the forty-fourth day after our election, intruded into the bosom of the church, the bishop of Brague, who, the preceding year had been excommunicated by our predecessor pope Paschal, in a council at Benevento; and who had also, when he formerly received the pall from our hands, sworn fidelity to the same pontiff, and his catholic successors, of whom I am the first. In this prodigious crime, however, thanks to God, the sovereign emperor had no single Roman associate; only the Guibertines, Romanus of St. Marcellus, Censius, who was called of St. Chrysogon; Teuzo, who for a long time was guilty of many excesses in Dacia; these alone transacted so shameless a deed. We command your wisdom, therefore, on the receipt of these presents, that, deliberating on these matters in common, by the grace of God, you be prepared, by his help, to avenge the mother church, as you are aware ought to be done by your joint assistance. Done at Gaeta on the seventeenth before the kalends of February.”