The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]

The price Gregory set upon this absolution was such as no other monarch ever had to pay. The pope was inhabiting at the time the château of Canossa, in the domains of the celebrated countess Matilda, a devout adherent of the holy see and the most powerful sovereign in Italy, since she included among her possessions the marquisates of Tuscany and Spoleto, Parma, Piacenza, and several points in Lombardy, the Marches, etc. Henry IV came to this castle to solicit an audience, but was compelled to wait barefooted in the snow three days before he was received. At last on the fourth day he was admitted and given absolution. Gregory, however, too adroit to lay down arms at once, refused to decide the question relative to the German crown, and deferred all consideration of it to a special diet, thereby reserving to himself a means of throwing Henry into fresh embarrassment. Could the king do other than tremble before a man who was the acknowledged representative of divinity on earth, and who believed himself so secure in the favour of heaven that, taking half of a “host,” he adjured God upon it to annihilate him instantly if he were guilty of the crimes imputed to him? When he presented the second half of the “host” to the king, asking him to swear a similar oath, Henry shrank back affrighted (1077).

By this timely bowing of the head Henry IV avoided the blow that was about to be aimed at him by a coalition of his enemies; the moment of danger once passed, he straightened up like a bow relieved from tension. Indeed he had no alternative save definitively to relinquish his hopes of the crown or again to risk all upon a single chance, since the German rebels had undertaken to answer the question left open by Gregory, and had appointed to the throne Rudolf of Swabia, who had purchased the protection of the legates by promising to abjure investiture (1077), and had been solemnly acknowledged by the pope.

[1077-1125 A.D.]

Having gathered around himself a body of partisans, Henry IV began to wage war with success. The battle of Wolksheim, in which Rudolf was slain by the hand of Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, who carried the imperial standard, made him master of Germany (1080). He determined to repeat this success in Italy, where a victory won by his son had already paved the way; and the countess Matilda was stripped of a part of her possessions, Rome was taken, and the archbishop of Ravenna was appointed pope under the name of Clement III. Gregory himself would have fallen into the hands of the man he had so deeply outraged, had not Robert Guiscard and his Normans, faithful allies of the holy see, come to his rescue. He died among them (1085) with the words: “For no other reason than that I have loved justice and pursued iniquity, I must die in exile.”