Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter in a little town of Tuscany, had risen to be prior of Clugny, and in that capacity had become conspicuous for austerity and self-denial. On the nomination of Leo IX to the papal chair, he had pursuaded that pious prelate that an emperor had no right to create a pope, and even prevailed on Leo’s successor to confer on the College of cardinals the exclusive right of voting at papal elections. For his services to the church, Hildebrand had successively been appointed cardinal and chancellor of the Holy See; and in 1073, he was elected as pope by the Sacred College. But before assuming the tiara, he obtained the youthful emperor’s assent, and then assuming the title of Gregory VII, he prepared to throw off his mask, and execute his mission of ‘pulling down the pride of kings.’
Meantime the Saxon subjects of the emperor, on the verge of revolt, sent deputies to demand an audience of him, and explain their grievances. The deputies found Henry engaged with a game of hazard, and he contemptuously bade them to wait till it was finished. The Saxons indignantly rose in arms under Otho of Nordhim, and in a few hours the emperor was a fugitive. A Diet, or Assembly of the States, was held to depose him, and bestow the crown on Rodolph of Swabia; but a display of excessive loyalty on the part of the citizens of Worms caused the dissolution of the Diet, and Henry, panting for vengeance, led, in the depth of a severe winter, his gallant army to the Saxon frontier. There, however, he found the insurgent forces of Otho so much superior to his own, that he was under the necessity of capitulating; but at this point, the great feudatories of the empire taking up his quarrel, Henry, with the whole strength of Germany, encountered the rebellious Saxons on the banks of the Unstrut, and, at a fearful cost of life, gained a bloody victory.
Meanwhile, Gregory, having enacted a law forbidding priests to marry, and another precluding kings from the right of investing spiritual dignitaries, sent two legates to cite Henry to appear before him for his delinquencies, in continuing to bestow and sell investitures. This brought the dispute between the pope and the emperor to a crisis, for the legates being unceremoniously dismissed, and a Diet held at Worms having deposed Hildebrand, he, in retaliation, excommunicated the emperor, and released all that prince’s subjects from their oath of allegiance.
It was about the opening of the year 1076, that Henry, returning to Utrecht from a campaign against the revolted Saxons, became aware that he was under the papal ban; and in autumn a Diet held at Tribur decided that, in the event of the emperor not being received into the bosom of the Church by the following February, a Diet should be held at Augsburg, and his crown given to another. Henry, thereupon, took up his residence at Spire, where, deserted by his courtiers, he was consoled by his injured but forgiving wife—the pure and faithful Bertha. When months had worn away, and the pope still refused to receive him in Italy as a penitent, the proud emperor, assuming the garb of a pilgrim, and accompanied by Bertha, with their infant child in her arms, undertook, in the midst of a singularly severe winter, to cross the Alps, which, after the utmost danger and fatigue, they almost miraculously accomplished.
About the end of January the emperor appeared as a humble suppliant at the gate of the castle of Canossa, in whose feudal halls the pope was enjoying the hospitality of his faithful adherent, Matilda, countess of Tuscany. In the trenches of that Italian fortress, while the Aphenines were covered with snow, and the mountain streams with ice, Henry, cold, fasting, barefoot, and unclad, save with a scanty woolen garment, stood for three whole days, imploring, with tears of agony and cries for mercy, the pity of Hildebrand. As the third day was drawing to a close, the pope relaxed, admitted the humiliated emperor to his presence, and after subjecting the royal victim to the depth of debasement, revoked the papal anathema.
The degradation to which the emperor had been exposed so galled his subjects, that they meditated a removal of the imperial crown to the head of his infant son, Conrad; the Saxons having elected Rodolph as their sovereign, defeated Henry in two battles; and Hildebrand once more pronounced against him the sentence of excommunication. But the emperor had his revenge; for his rival, Rodolph, having fallen in battle by the hand of Godfrey of Bouillon, and the pope’s Norman allies being absent in the East, the banners of Germany were suddenly displayed before the walls of Rome. In the spring of 1084 the besiegers entered the Eternal City. Gregory took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, and Clement III, a rival pontiff, placed the Imperial crown on Henry’s brow. But the return of the warlike Normans caused the Imperial troops to retreat with precipitation; while the Roman citizens rising against his allies compelled Hildebrand to fly for shelter to Salerno. There, broken with time and trouble he expired; and his last words were, ‘I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile.’
Henry returned to Germany, where he reigned for a while undisturbed by civil war; but Pope Pascal, aspiring to follow in the footsteps of Hildebrand, incited Henry, the Emperor’s eldest son, to rebellion; and the youth declaring that he could not acknowledge as king or father a man who was excommunicated, treacherously imprisoned his sire, and assembling a Diet was proclaimed in his stead. Two prelates were sent to demand the regalia from the deposed Emperor; he, receiving them in his symbols of sovereignty, refused; but, laying violent hands on him, they dragged him from his chair, and forcibly divested him of the regal robes. Poor and distressed, Henry escaped from prison, and raised a considerable force to assert his rights; but he died at Liége in 1106, before active operations commenced. His body, denied a resting-place in consecrated ground, was interred in a cave near Spire.
Henry V, though indebted to the Pope for support in his parricidal rebellion, was no sooner established on the Imperial throne, than, reviving the claim of investiture for which his father had contended, he invited the Pope to Germany, that they might settle the dispute. But Pascal having appealed to the King of France, and a fruitless conference having been held at Chalons, Henry entered Italy with eighty thousand men, and after a tedious interview in the church of St. Peter, ordered his guards to take Pascal into custody. The populace of Rome rushed to the Pope’s rescue; a battle was fought under the walls; and the carnage was so terrible that the waters of the Tiber were stained with blood. Pascal, taken prisoner, crowned the Emperor, and confirmed the right of investiture; but hardly had Henry departed when the Pope changed his tune, and pronounced a sentence of excommunication. The Emperor once more entered Rome, chased the Pope to the territories of the Norman princes, and marched to take possession of Tuscany, which Matilda, during Hildebrand’s visit to Canossa, had bequeathed to the Church. Meanwhile Pascal died, and the States of the Empire having implored Henry to make peace with the new Pope, a Diet was held at Worms, and the matter accommodated. In 1125 a pestilential disease carried Henry to the grave; and the Imperial dignity, after being enjoyed till 1138 by Lothario II, was bestowed upon Henry’s nephew, Conrad, duke of Franconia. A rival appeared in the person of the haughty Duke of Bavaria, whose followers called themselves Guelphs, from his family name; while the adherents of the Emperor adopted the appellation of Ghibelines, from Hihghibelin, the village of which Frederick, the brother of Conrad, was a native. Both parties took up arms, and during the contest a romantic incident occurred at the siege of Weinsberg. The Guelphs in the castle, after being long besieged, yielded on condition that the Duke of Bavaria and his officers should be allowed to retire unmolested: but the noble Duchess, apprehending a breach of faith, stipulated that she and the other women in the castle should be allowed to come forth and be conducted to a place of safety, with as much as each of them could carry. Conrad, who expected to see the ladies loaded with jewels, gold, and silver, was in no small degree surprised when the Duchess and her fair comrades appeared carrying their gallant husbands; and he was so touched at this display of conjugal affection, that he granted most favorable terms to the Guelphs.
The preaching of St. Bernard, though in French, and therefore unintelligible to the Germans, had nevertheless a powerful effect on the latter; and Conrad, resolving to take part in the second Crusade, embarked with a mighty army: but being betrayed by Greek guides in Asia Minor, his forces were surprised and defeated amidst the defiles of Laodicea. The defeated Emperor, returning to Europe, died in 1151, and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, who was soon involved in a struggle with Henry the Lion duke of Saxony, with the Italian cities, and with another enemy infinitely more formidable than either.
Early in the twelfth century, Nicolas Breakspear, an English mendicant, was strolling about from place to place, when chance directed his vagrant steps to the convent of St. Rufus, in Provence, where the canons received him as a servant. Being afterward admitted as a monk, Nicolas rose to the rank of Abbot. In 1154, by personal merit and good fortune, the Anglo-Saxon beggar was placed in the papal chair as Adrian IV, and before crowning Frederick he insisted that the Emperor should on bended knee kiss his foot, hold his stirrup, and lead his white mule by the bridle for nine paces. Frederick reluctantly consented to perform the ceremony at Venice; but purposely mistaking the stirrup, he remarked with a sneer, ‘I have yet to learn the business of a groom.’