On 5th January 1106 Henry V. was crowned for the second time at Mainz. The first months of his reign were disturbed by his father’s attempt to regain power. When he was at last undisputed King of Germany, he found that his cold-blooded treachery had profited him very little. The Investiture Contest was still unsettled. Between 1103 and 1107 Anselm of Canterbury, restored to his see by William Rufus’ death, had been carrying on a counterpart of the contest with Henry I. of England. But the personal animosities which had embittered the continental struggle were absent, and the dispute did not, as abroad, involve the larger questions of the whole relations of Church and State. It was easy, therefore, to settle it by a satisfactory compromise. Yet at the very moment when Henry had agreed to lay aside investiture with ring and staff, the envoys of Henry V. were informing Paschal that their master proposed to insist upon his traditional rights in the matter. The result was that the continental strife was renewed with all its old bitterness.

For two years Henry was engaged in wars against Hungary and Bohemia. In 1110 he resolved to visit Italy to receive the imperial crown, and to re-establish the old rights of the Empire. Besides a numerous army, he took with him ‘men of letters able to give reasons to all comers’ for his acts, among whom was an Irish or Welsh monk named David, who wrote, at his command, a popular account of how the king had gone to Rome to extract a blessing from the Pope, as Jacob had extorted the angel’s blessing.^[7] He found Italy too divided to offer effectual resistance. The Countess Matilda was old, and Paschal was no great statesman like Gregory or Urban. |Henry’s Roman journey. Paschal renounces the Temporalities of the Church, 1111.| Early in 1111 the king’s army approached Rome. The Pope, finding that neither the Romans nor the Normans would help him, sent to Sutri to make terms. Even in his supreme distress he would not give up freedom of elections or abate his hostility to lay investitures; but he offered that if the king would accept those cardinal conditions he would renounce for the Church all its feudal and secular property. It was a bold or rash attempt to save the spiritual rights of the Church by abandoning its temporalities, lands, and jurisdictions. Henry naturally accepted an offer which put the whole landed estates of the Church at his disposal, and reduced churchmen to live on tithes and offerings—their spiritual sources of revenue. Only the temporalities of the Roman see were to be excepted from this sweeping surrender.

On Sunday, 12th February, St. Peter’s church was crowded to witness the hallowing of the Emperor by the Pope. Before the ceremony began the compact was read, and the Pope renounced in the plainest language all intervention in secular affairs, as incompatible with the spiritual character of the clergy. A violent tumult at once arose. German and Italian bishops united to protest vigorously against the light-heartedness with which the Pope gave away their property and jurisdictions, while carefully safeguarding his own. The congregation dissolved into a brawling throng. The clergy were maltreated, and the sacred vessels stolen. The coronation was impossible. The king laid violent hands on Pope and cardinals, and the mob in the streets murdered any Germans whom they happened to come across. After three days of wild turmoil, Henry quitted the city, taking his prisoners with him. After a short captivity, Paschal stooped to obtain his liberty by allowing Henry to exercise investitures and appoint bishops at his will. ‘For the peace and liberty of the Church,’ was his halting excuse, ‘I am compelled to do what I would never have done to save my own life.’ In return Henry promised to be a faithful son of the Church. On 13th April Paschal crowned Henry with maimed rites and little ceremony at St. Peter’s. Canossa was at last revenged. Henry returned in triumph over the Alps, and solemnly interred his father’s remains in holy ground at Speyer.

Henry’s triumph made a deep impression on Europe. The blundering Pope had betrayed the temporal possessions of the clergy, and the necessary bulwarks of the freedom of the spiritual power. The event showed that there were practical limits even to papal infallibility. Paschal was as powerless to retreat from the position of Hildebrand, as he had been to renounce the lands of all prelates but himself. The clergy would not accept the papal decision. In France a movement to declare the Pope a heretic was only stayed by the canonist Ivo of Chartres declaring that the Pope, having acted under compulsion, was not bound to keep his promise. The Italians gladly accepted this way out of the difficulty. |Paschal repudiates his concessions.| Paschal solemnly repudiated his compact. ‘I accept,’ he declared, ‘the decrees of my master, Pope Gregory, and of Urban of blessed memory; that which they have applauded I applaud, that which they have granted I grant, that which they have condemned I condemn.’

Even in Germany Henry found that he had gained nothing by his degradation of the Pope. The air was thick with plots and conspiracies. His most trusted councillors became leaders of treason. |Conspiracies against Henry in Germany.| Adalbert, Archbishop of Mainz, his chief minister, formed a plot against him and was imprisoned. The Saxons rose once more in revolt under their new Duke Lothair of Supplinburg. Friesland refused to pay tribute. Cologne rose under its Archbishop, and Henry found that he was quite unable to besiege it successfully. The nobles who attended his wedding with Matilda of England at Mainz, profited by the meeting to weave new plots. Next year the citizens of Mainz shut up the Emperor in his palace while he was holding a Diet, and forced him to release their Archbishop.

Affairs in Italy were even more gloomy. In 1115 the Countess Matilda died, leaving all her vast possessions to the Holy See. If this will had been carried out, Paschal would have become the greatest temporal power in Italy. Henry therefore crossed the Alps in 1116, anxious, if not to save Matilda’s allodial lands, to take possession of the fiefs of the Empire which she had held. In 1117 Henry occupied Rome and crowned his young English wife Matilda. Even in his exile Paschal had not learnt the lesson of firmness. He died early in 1118, before he had even definitely made up his mind to excommunicate Henry.

The new Pope, John of Gaeta, a monk of Monte Casino, who took the name of Gelasius II., was forced to flee from Rome as the Emperor was entering it. Henry now took the decisive step of appointing a Pope of his own. Burdinus, Archbishop of Braga, was in some fashion chosen by a few cardinals, and took the name of Gregory VIII. |The Antipope Burdinus.| Gelasius at once excommunicated both Antipope and Emperor. He soon managed to get back to Rome, whence, however, he was again expelled by the malignity of local faction rather than the influence of the Emperor. He now betook himself to Marseilles by sea, and, after a triumphant progress through Provence and Burgundy, held a synod at Vienne. On his way thence to Cluny he was smitten with pleurisy, reaching the monastery with difficulty, and dying there on 18th January 1119.

Guy, the high-born Archbishop of Vienne, was chosen somewhat irregularly by the cardinals who had followed Gelasius to Cluny. He had long been conspicuous as one of the ablest upholders of Hildebrandine ideas in the dark days of Paschal II. |Calixtus II. (1119–1124).| The son of William the Great, Count of imperial Burgundy (Franche-Comté), he was the kinsman of half the sovereigns of Europe. He was, moreover, a secular (the first Pope not a monk since Alexander II.), and accustomed to diplomacy and statecraft. He resolved to make an effort to heal the investiture strife, and with that object summoned a council to meet at Reims. |Negotiations for a settlement.| Henry himself was tired of the struggle. He practically dropped his Antipope, and gave a patient hearing to the agents of the Pope, who came to meet him at Strasburg. These were Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, and the famous theologian, William of Champeaux, now Bishop of Châlons. The two divines pointed out to Henry that the King of France, who did not employ investiture, had as complete a hold over his bishops as the Emperor, and that his father-in-law, Henry of England, who had yielded the point, was still lord over his feudal vassals, whether clerks or laymen. For the first time perhaps, the subject was discussed between the two parties in a reasonable and conciliatory spirit. Before the king and the divines parted, it was clear that a compromise on the lines of the English settlement was quite practicable.

On 20th October 1119, Calixtus II. opened his council at Reims. Louis VI. of France, who had married the Pope’s niece, was present, and the gathering of prelates was much more representative than usual. Next day the Pope went to Mouzon, a castle of the Archbishop of Reims, hoping to meet the Emperor. But their agents haggled about details, and mutual suspicion threatened to break off all chance of agreement. |Breakdown of the negotiations.| Deeply mortified, and without having seen the Emperor, Calixtus went back to the council, where the old decrees against simoniacs and married clerks were renewed, and where a canon forbidding laymen to invest a clerk with a bishopric or abbey was passed. But this canon marked a limitation of the Pope’s claim. While Hildebrand had absolutely forbidden all lay investiture, Calixtus was content to limit the prohibition to the investiture with the spiritual office. Yet, before the council separated, the excommunication of Emperor and Antipope was solemnly renewed. An agreement seemed to be further off than ever.

No Pope ever stood in a stronger position than Calixtus when in February 1120 he at last crossed the Alps. He was received with open arms by the Romans, and with more than ordinary loyalty by the Normans of the south. The Antipope fled before him, and was soon reduced to pitiful straits in his last refuge at Sutri. At last he was captured, contemptuously paraded through the Roman streets, and conveyed to prison, until, after peace had been restored to the Church, he was released to end his life obscurely in a monastery.

The Emperor saw that he had been too suspicious at Mouzon, and again wished to retire with dignity from a conflict in which his prospects of complete triumph had long utterly vanished. Things were now going better in Germany. In 1121 a Diet was held at Würzburg, at which Henry made peace with Adalbert of Mainz and the Saxon rebels. It was agreed to refer the investiture question to a German council under the Pope’s presidency, and direct negotiations with Rome were renewed. The Pope’s words were now exceedingly conciliatory. ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘is not covetous of royal splendour. Let her enjoy what belonged to Christ, and let the Emperor enjoy what belonged to the Empire.’

On 8th September 1122 the council met at Worms. Calixtus, after some hesitation, did not attend himself, but sent Lambert, Bishop of Ostia, as his legate. Lambert was a citizen of Bologna, who had been archdeacon of his native town, and had learnt from its rival schools of Canonists and Civilians [see pp. 217–220] the principles involved in both sides of the controversy. He soon turned his knowledge and skill to good account. The council lasted little more than a week. The Emperor at first stood out for his rights, but was soon persuaded to accept a compromise such as had been suggested previously at Strasburg. On 23rd September the final Concordat of Worms was ratified, which put an end to the investiture strife. Two short documents, of three weighty sentences each, embodied the simple conditions that it had cost fifty years of contest to arrive at. ‘I, Henry,’ thus ran the imperial diploma, ‘for the love of God, the holy Roman Church, and of the lord Pope Calixtus, and for the salvation of my soul, abandon to God, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the holy Catholic Church all investiture by the ring and the staff, and I grant that in all the churches of my Empire there be freedom of election and free consecration. I will restore all the possessions and jurisdictions of St. Peter, which have been taken away since the beginning of this quarrel. I will give true peace to the lord Pope Calixtus and to the holy Roman Church, and I will faithfully help the holy Roman Church, whenever she invokes my aid.’ The papal diploma was even shorter. ‘I, Calixtus, the bishop,’ said the Pope, ‘grant to Henry, Emperor of the Romans, that the elections of bishops and abbots in the kingdom of Germany shall take place in thy presence without simony or violence, so that if any discord arise, thou mayst grant thy approbation and support to the most worthy candidate, after the counsel of the metropolitan and his suffragans. Let the prelate-elect receive from thee by thy sceptre the property and the immunities of his office, and let him fulfil the obligations to thee arising from these. In other parts of the Empire let the prelate receive his regalia six months after his consecration, and fulfil the duties arising from them. I grant true peace to thee and all who have been of thy party during the times of discord.’^[8]

Less clear in its conditions than the English settlement, the Concordat of Worms led to substantially the same result. The Emperor gave up the form of investiture, and public opinion approved of the temporal lord no longer trenching on the domain of the spirituality by conferring symbols of spiritual jurisdiction. But the Emperor might maintain that, if he gave up the shadow, he retained the substance. The Henries had not consciously striven for mere forms, but because they saw no other method of retaining their hold over the prelates than through these forms. The Pope’s concessions pointed out a way to attain this end in a way less offensive to the current sentiment of the time. As bishops and abbots, spiritual men could not be dependent on a secular ruler. As holder of fiefs and immunities, the clerical lord had no more right to withdraw himself from his lord’s authority than the lay baron. By distinguishing between these two aspects of the prelate’s position, the Concordat strove to give Cæsar what was Cæsar’s and God what was God’s. The investiture question was never raised again. But in its broader aspect the investiture question was only the pretext by reason of which Pope and Emperor contended for the lordship of the world, and sought respectively to trench upon the sphere of the other. The Concordat of Worms afforded but a short breathing-space in that controversy between the world-Church and the world-State—between the highest embodiments of the spiritual and secular swords—that was still to endure for the rest of the Middle Ages. Contemporary opinion, unapt to distinguish between shadow and substance, ascribed to the Papacy a victory even more complete than that which it really won. |Practical triumph of the Church.| After all, it was the Emperor who had to yield in the obvious question in dispute. The Pope’s concessions were less clear, and less definite. The age looked upon the Concordat as a signal triumph for the Roman Church. Henceforth the ideals of Hildebrand became part of the commonplaces of European thought.

Neither Henry nor Calixtus long survived the Concordat of Worms. Calixtus died at Rome in December 1124, having previously held a council in the Lateran, where the Concordat was confirmed, and a vast series of canons drawn up to facilitate the establishment of the new order of things. He strove also to restore peace and prosperity in Rome, which had long lain desolate and ruinous as the result of constant tumults. Short as was his reign, it could yet be said of him that in his days there was such peace in Rome that neither citizen nor sojourner had need to carry arms for his protection. He had not only made the Papacy dominate the western world; it even ruled, if but for a time, the turbulent city that so often rejected and maltreated the priest whom all the rest of the world revered.

Henry V.’s end was less happy. The war had taught him that the real ruler of Germany was not himself but the feudal aristocracy. He planned, in conjunction with his English father-in-law, an aggressive attack on Louis VI. of France, but he utterly failed to persuade his barons to abandon their domestic feuds for foreign warfare. He fought one purposeless campaign as the ally of England. In May 1125 he died on his way back, at Utrecht, saddened, disappointed, and worn out before his time. He is one of the most unattractive of mediæval Emperors. Cold-blooded, greedy, treacherous, violent, ambitious, and despotic, he reaped no reward from his treasons, and failed in every great enterprise he undertook. Yet despite his constant misfortunes, the strong, hard character of the last Salian Emperor did something to keep up the waning fortunes of the Empire, and the unity of the German kingdom.