"great countess " Matilda, who had succeeded to the Tuscan duchy of her mother, Beatrice, and her father-in-law, duke Godfrey. Over the mind of this extraordinary woman the genius of Hildebrand had obtained a complete mastery, and her devotion to his interests was undoubtedly one of the principal causes of his great success. She was herself a scholar and a warrior, the most powerful princess of Italy, and the most faithful adherent of the papacy in all its diversified fortunes.

To Canossa Henry accordingly directed his steps, attended now by a train of Italian followers. Arrived before the fortress, he solicited an immediate audience, first of the countess Matilda, and then of the pontiff. By the first, his request was granted, but neither his own royal character nor the intercessions of Matilda could prevail on the stern Gregory to admit Henry to his presence. Message after message did the emperor despatch, expressed in the humblest tone, and offering the most ample atonement, but not for many days would Gregory listen to a syllable of his petition. Henry was just reduced to the verge of despair, and a longer delay might have driven him to indignation and defiance, when he received the announcement that he should obtain absolution on one condition alone-his delivering up into the hands of the pope, his crown, sceptre, and other symbols of royalty, and confessing himself unworthy to bear the name of king. These arrogant terms were not, however,

insisted on even by the audacious Hildebrand, and probably they would not have been complied with even by the abject and crest-fallen Henry; but it was inexorably demanded that he should do penance in the castle-yard before he should receive the pardon of the pope.

It was towards the end of January, and winter had laid his icy hand on all the scene, when Henry, attired in the white woollen robe of a penitent, entered the gates of the fortress. His followers regarded him with strange and conflicting emotions, in which pity strove with ridicule, and contempt with anger. But whatever emotions filled the breast of Gregory, they were not expressed that day. The rising sun found Henry at his post, and the setting sun still left him there, faint with fatigue and hunger, and bursting with a vexation and wrath which he dared not express. A second day and a third witnessed a repetition of the same barbarities, and the sovereign of vast kingdoms servilely submitted to cruelties which the most despotic tyrant would now hesitate to inflict on the vilest malefactor; and to crown all, it was at the hands of one who called himself the vicar of Christ, the chief representative on earth of the "meek and lowly" Jesus.

On the evening of the third day, Henry's fortitude was quite overcome, and taking refuge in an adjacent chapel, he there fell on his knees before the countess Matilda, and besought her, with sobs and tears, to intercede in his behalf. This time her entreaties prevailed, and Henry

was permitted to appear before the now triumphant and exulting pope. The gates of the castle were thrown open, and the royal penitent stood in the presence of the haughty Gregory, "from the terrible grace of whose countenance," we are told, "the eye of every beholder recoiled as from the lightning." The one was youthful, tall, and graceful; the other was aged, decrepid, and austere. It was the submission of the physical to the intellectual, and still more of the secular to the sacerdotal, that was then ratified for ages to come; and Henry and Gregory were fit types of the new era. Henry promised to submit to the pontiff's judgment respecting the imperial crown, and even to resign that crown if Gregory's decision should be adverse. He engaged to be guided by the pope's counsel in all his future acts; and to abstain, till his judgment should be given, from any use of his royal prerogative. Then, and not till then, did Gregory pronounce the absolution.

But even in this act of assumed clemency the pope discovered his resolution to trample on his fallen foe. Holding in his hands the consecrated wafer, "Behold,” he exclaimed, fixing his fierce eye upon the jaded countenance of the emperor, "behold the body of the Lord! Be it this day the witness of my innocence. May the almighty God now free me from the suspicion of the guilt of which I have been accused by thee and thine, if I be really innocent! May he this day smite me with sudden

death if I be really guilty!" Looking up to heaven, he then broke and ate the bread. Turning again to Henry, he said, "If now thou also art conscious of innocence, and assured that the charges brought against thee are false, free the church from scandal and thyself from suspicion. Take, as an appeal to Heaven, this body of the Lord!" This challenge, Henry was of course unable to accept. He submitted in silence to the haughty speeches of the pope, meditating in his heart a swift and ample revenge. When, at length, the monarch retired from the presence of Gregory and quitted the castle of Canossa, he repaired to the camp of his Italian followers, who had now greatly multiplied, and who anxiously awaited the issue of the strange transactions that were taking place within the fortress. Sympathizing with the indignation of Henry, they also felt and expressed their contempt for the emperor himself, who ought, in their estimation, to have treated a pope with as little cere-mony as his father had done at the council of Sutri. They either forgot or did not know how crippled Henry's German resources had become by numerous divisions; and that, in fact, a crisis had arrived in the history of the empire, which not even the genius of Henry II. could have longer delayed.

But if we may pity Henry, how strongly must we reprobate the conduct of the pope! Is this a bishop of the Christian church? Is this a disciple of Christ? Whatever may have

been the sincerity and the zeal of Gregory in the cause which he adopted, the unbounded arrogance he displayed is too clear a proof that of the spirit and genius of Christianity he knew absolutely nothing. In him the passions of the unrenewed heart were displayed in their most developed and even exaggerated forms. Yet this is the man whom Rome adores! Well has it been said, that Gregory VII. was the most complete and finished example of the spirit and nature of the papacy itself!

CHAPTER VI.

RENEWAL OF THE CONTEST BETWEEN GREGORY VII. AND HENRY IV.-GERMAN CIVIL WAR AND PAPAL USURPATIONS-DEATH OF GREGORY VII.

A.D. 1077-1085.

ANIMATED alike by the reproaches and the promises of his Italian subjects, the emperor resolved on swiftly avenging himself for the insolence of Gregory. For this purpose he immediately invested the castle of Canossa with armed troops. By the aid, however, of his faithful friend, the countess Matilda, the pontiff escaped from the hands of the besiegers, and retreated in safety to Rome. The time had now expired for the settlement of Henry's tenure of the imperial crown, and though he had received absolution, the sentence of deposition had not been revoked. Neither did the