ging him from his seat, pulled off the imperial robes by force. The aged sovereign, with tears trickling down his cheeks, cried out: "Great God! Thou art the God of vengeance! I have sinned, I confess, and merited this shame by the follies of my youth; but Thou wilt not fail to punish these traitors for their perjury and ingratitude." So completely, however, was his heart crushed, that he afterwards made a voluntary resignation of his crown in favor of his son, and threw himself at the feet of the Pope's legate, beseeching absolution from the sentence of excommunication, which it was not in the power of the legate to grant.

It is to the eternal disgrace of his son that the emperor was suffered to want even the common necessaries of life. When he applied to the Bishop of Spires to grant him for subsistence a canon's chair in his cathedral, which he himself had liberally endowed, his request was refused. "Pity me, my dear friends," said the emperor, with a deep sigh, upon this repulse, "for I am touched by the hand of the Lord." After undergoing great suffering for some time in the Castle of Burghenheim, where his unnatural son had confined him, he managed to escape and fled to Cologne, where he was received with joy and acknowledged as lawful emperor. Troops were raised for him in the Low Countries, and fortune seemed once again disposed to smile upon him. Before, however, any further step could be taken on his behalf, he was seized with an illness which terminated fatally on August 7th, 1106. The Bishop of Liège conducted the funeral service with a splendor befitting his position, but the body was laid in an unconsecrated chapel at Spires, and remained five years without proper interment, until the ban of the Church under which he rested had been removed.

Henry IV. was a man of great personal courage, and possessed some eminent qualifications as a ruler; but his attachment to licentious pleasures led to various unjust and shameful actions, and laid a foundation for the unparalleled misfortunes and disgraces of his reign. His failure in his contest with the spiritual power proved anew the absolute strength of righteousness and the inherent weakness of vice.

HENRY IV. at Rome.

Henry, in the spring of 1081, once more descended into Italy. He came, not as formerly, a pilgrim and an exile, but at the head of an army devoted to his person, and defying all carnal enemies and all spiritual censures. He came to encounter Hildebrand, destitute of all Transalpine alliances, and supported even in Italy by no power but that of the Countess Matilda; for the Norman Duke of Apulia was far away, attempting the conquest of the Eastern capital and empire. But Henry left in his rear the invincible Saxons and the hero who commanded them. To prevent a diversion in that quarter, the emperor proposed to abdicate his dominion in Saxony in favor of Conrad, his son. But Otho (a merry talker, as his annalist informs us) rejected the project with the remark that "the calf of a vicious bull usually proved vicious." Leaving, therefore, this implacable enemy to his machinations, the emperor pressed forward, and before the summer the citizens of Rome saw from their walls the German standards in hostile array in the Campagna.

In the presence of such dangers the gallant spirit of the aged Pope once more rose and exulted. He convened a synod to attest his last defiance of his formidable enemy. He exhorted the German princes to elect a successor to Rudolf. In letters of impassioned eloquence he again maintained his supremacy over all the kings and rulers of mankind. He welcomed persecution as the badge of his holy calling, and while the besiegers were at the gates he disposed (at least in words) of royal crowns and distant provinces. Matilda supplied him with money, which for a while tranquillized the Roman populace. He himself, as we are assured, wrought miracles to extinguish conflagrations kindled by their treachery. In language such as martyrs use, he consoled the partners of his sufferings. In language such as heroes breathe, he animated the defenders of the city. The siege or blockade continued for three years uninterruptedly, except when Henry's troops were driven, by the deadly heats of autumn, to the neighboring hills.

Distress, and it is alleged bribery, at length subdued the

courage of the garrison. On every side clamors were heard for peace, for Henry demanded, as the terms of peace, nothing more than the recognition of his imperial title, and his coronation by the hands of Gregory. The conscience, perhaps the pride, of Gregory revolted against this proposal. His invincible will opposed and silenced the outcries of the famished multitudes; nor could their entreaties or their threats extort from him more than a promise that, in the approaching winter, he would propose the question to a pontifical synod. It met, by the permission of Henry, on the 30th of November, 1083. It was the latest council of Gregory's pontificate. A few bishops, faithful to their chief and to his cause, now occupied the seats so often occupied by mitred churchmen. Every pallid cheek and anxious eye was turned to him who occupied the loftier throne in the centre of that agitated assembly. He rose, and the half-uttered suggestions of fear and human policy were hushed into deep stillness as he spoke. He spoke of the glorious example, of the light affliction, and of the eternal reward of martyrs for the faith. He spoke as dying fathers speak to their children, of peace, and hope, and of consolation. But he spoke also as inspired prophets spake of yore to the kings of Israel, denouncing the swift vengeance of Heaven against his oppressor. enraptured audience exclaimed that they had heard the voice of an angel, not of a man. Gregory dismissed the assembly, and calmly prepared for whatever extremity of distress might await him.

The

It did not linger. In the spring of 1084 the garrison was overpowered, the gates were thrown open to the besiegers, and Gregory sought a precarious refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo. He left the great Church of the Lateran as a theatre for the triumph of his antagonist and his rival. Seated on the Apostolic throne, Guibert, the anti-pope of Brixen, was consecrated there by the title of Clement III., and then, as the successor of Peter, he placed the crown of Germany and of Italy on the brows of Henry and Bertha, as they knelt before him.

And now Henry had, or seemed to have, in his grasp the author of the shame of Canossa, of the anathemas of the

Lateran, and of the civil wars and rebellions of the empire. The base populace of Rome were already anticipating with sanguinary joy the humiliation, perhaps the death, of the noblest spirit who had reigned there since the slaughter of Julius. The approaching catastrophe, whatever might be its form, Gregory was prepared to meet with a serene confidence in God, and a haughty defiance of man. A few hours more, and the Castle of St. Angelo must have yielded to famine or to assault; when the aged Pope, in the very agony of his fate, gathered the reward of the policy with which he had cemented the alliance between the Papacy and the Norman conquerors of the South and of Italy. Robert Guiscard, returning from Constantinople, flew to the rescue of his suzerain.

Scouts announced to Henry the approach of a Norman host, in which the Norman battle-axe and the cross were strangely united with the Saracenic cimeter and the crescent. A precipitate retreat scarcely rescued his enfeebled troops from the impending danger. He abandoned his prey in a fever of disappointment. Unable to slake his thirst for vengeance, he might perhaps allay it by surprising the Great Countess, and overwhelming her forces, still in arms in the Modenese. But he was himself surprised in the attempt by her superior skill and vigilance. Shouts for St. Peter and Matilda roused the retreating Imperialists by night, near the castle of Sorbaria. They retired across the Alps with such a loss of men, of officers, and of treasure, as disabled them from any further enterprises.-SIR J. STEPHEN.

AT the beginning of the eleventh century, in the general low condition of society, the Church was not free from the prevalent spirit of ignorance, sensuality and avarice : it was, in fact, deeply tainted with the rot of corrupt worldliness. And this degeneracy showed itself most markedly in three principal evils : simony, lay investitures, and incontinence. Bishoprics and other ecclesiastical offices were openly bought and sold. The appointment to such offices lay quite in the hands of kings and princes, even the Pope being in a great measure thus subject to the power of noble laymen.

In the midst of this general and extreme laxity in the government of the Church there came forward one who, called the "immovable pillar of the Holy See" by Peter Damian, became the leading figure in the contest which ensued between spiritual and temporal authority, resulting in the triumph of the former. And more than that, his principles have survived him, leaving the papacy still potent on earth in spite of all adverse agencies.

Hildebrand was born about 1020, at Soano or Saono, a small town of Tuscany, as the son of a carpenter. His name is suggestive of German extraction, but of his ancestry prac