DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63447#0162
146
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
with the most dispassionate justice, and well-deserved
severity. Soldiers were even despatched to secure his
person ; and he might have had to endure the last per-
sonal humiliations, had he not volunteered to abdicate all
power into the hands of the great vassals, reserving for
himself solely his title of Emperor.
After seven days of protracted negotiation, the apple
of discord Henry had thus thrown, with a dexterity
worthy of Gregory’s self, amongst his enemies was
accepted, with a few modifications proposed by the legates.
The Pope was invited to hold a diet at Augsburg in
the following spring. He was, in the interim, to decide
whether Henry was, or was not, to be restored to the
communion of the Church. If he were, then, as a sove-
reign, he was to reassume his Imperial rights; should,
however, the sun set upon him whilst still an excom-
municated man, on the 23rd of February, 1077, his
crown was to be transferred to another. Until then
he was to reside at Spires, with the title of Emperor,
but without a Court, army, or permission to attend public
worship.
The apparent triumph of Gregory, however incomplete,
was great ; but it must be borne in mind that at an
earlier stage of the career of the criminal and violent
Henry, his barons and feudatories had already convened
a diet at Worms, to depose him ; and Eudolf, of Swabia,
was on the very eve of election to supersede him.
His career ever since then, so far from becoming more
humane and just, had only increased in sanguinary folly
and in crime. The part, therefore, that strikes the
observer is, not that a partial success was won when all
the force of Home was flung into the scale with the
notorious unworthiness of Henry to reign, but that the
innate sense of national honour and independence should
have been strong enough to afford Gregory so undecided
a victory, even though he had bribed the Germans to
choose another Emperor, by promising to approve of
him.
The steady sense of national justice and of freedom,
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
with the most dispassionate justice, and well-deserved
severity. Soldiers were even despatched to secure his
person ; and he might have had to endure the last per-
sonal humiliations, had he not volunteered to abdicate all
power into the hands of the great vassals, reserving for
himself solely his title of Emperor.
After seven days of protracted negotiation, the apple
of discord Henry had thus thrown, with a dexterity
worthy of Gregory’s self, amongst his enemies was
accepted, with a few modifications proposed by the legates.
The Pope was invited to hold a diet at Augsburg in
the following spring. He was, in the interim, to decide
whether Henry was, or was not, to be restored to the
communion of the Church. If he were, then, as a sove-
reign, he was to reassume his Imperial rights; should,
however, the sun set upon him whilst still an excom-
municated man, on the 23rd of February, 1077, his
crown was to be transferred to another. Until then
he was to reside at Spires, with the title of Emperor,
but without a Court, army, or permission to attend public
worship.
The apparent triumph of Gregory, however incomplete,
was great ; but it must be borne in mind that at an
earlier stage of the career of the criminal and violent
Henry, his barons and feudatories had already convened
a diet at Worms, to depose him ; and Eudolf, of Swabia,
was on the very eve of election to supersede him.
His career ever since then, so far from becoming more
humane and just, had only increased in sanguinary folly
and in crime. The part, therefore, that strikes the
observer is, not that a partial success was won when all
the force of Home was flung into the scale with the
notorious unworthiness of Henry to reign, but that the
innate sense of national honour and independence should
have been strong enough to afford Gregory so undecided
a victory, even though he had bribed the Germans to
choose another Emperor, by promising to approve of
him.
The steady sense of national justice and of freedom,