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 favour 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 of 1080 the citizens 1080 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 neighbouring hills. Distress, and it is alleged bribery, at length subdued the courage of the garrison. On every side clamours 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 the 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

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pontifical synod. It met, by the permission of Henry, on the 1083 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. The 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.

1084

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 of 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.

The Emperor returned into Germany to reign undisturbed by civil war; for the great Otho was dead, and Herman of Luxemburg, who had assumed the imperial title, was permitted to abdicate it with contemptuous impunity. Henry returned, however, to prepare for the new conflicts with the Papacy, to drain the cup of toil, of danger, and of distress, and to die at length (1106) with a heart broken by the parricidal cruelty of his son. No prayers were said, and no requiem sung, over the unhallowed grave which received the bones of the excommunicated monarch. Yet they were committed to the earth with the best and the kindest obsequies. The pity of his enemies, the lamentation of his subjects, and the unbidden tears of the poor, the widows, and the orphans, who crowded round the bier of their benefactor, rendered his tomb not less sacred than if it had been blessed by the united prayers of the whole Christian Episcopacy. These unbribed mourners wept over a prince to whom God had given a large heart and a capacious mind, but who had derived from canonized bishops a corrupting education, and from a too early and too unchequered prosperity the development of every base and cruel appetite; but to whom calamity had imparted a self-dominion from which none could withhold his respect, and an active sympathy with sorrow to which none could refuse his love.

With happier fortunes, as indeed with loftier virtues, Matilda

continued for twenty-five years to wage war in defence of the Apostolic see. After a life which might seem to belong to the province of romance rather than of history, she died at the age of seventy-five, bequeathing to the world a name second, in the annals of her age, to none but that of Hildebrand himself.

To him the Norman rescue of the papal city brought only a momentary relief. He returned in triumph to the Lateran. But within a few hours he looked from the walls of that ancient palace on a scene of woe such as, till then, had never passed before him. A sanguinary contest was raging between the forces of Robert and the citizens attached to Henry. Every street was barricaded, every house had become a fortress. The pealing of bells, the clash of arms, cries of fury, and shrieks of despair assailed his ears in dismal concert. When the sun set behind the Tuscan hills on this scene of desolation, another light, and a still more fearful struggle, succeeded. Flames ascended at once from every quarter. They leaped from house to house, enveloping and destroying whatever was most splendid or most sacred in the edifices of medieval Rome. Amidst the roar of the conflagration they had kindled, and by its portentous light, the fierce Saracens and the ruthless Northmen revelled in plunder and carnage, like demons by the glare of their native pandemonium. Gregory gazed with agony on the real and present aspect of civil war. Perhaps he thought with penitence on the wars he had kindled beyond the Alps. Two-thirds of the city perished. Every convent was violated, every altar profaned, and multitudes driven away into perpetual and hopeless slavery. Himself a voluntary exile, Gregory sought in the castle of Salerno, and under the protection of the Normans, the security he could no longer find among his own exasperated subjects. Age and anxiety weighed heavily upon him. An unwonted lassitude depressed a frame till now incapable of fatigue. He recognised the summons of 1085 death, and his soul rose with unconquerable power to entertain that awful visitant. He summoned round his bed the bishops and cardinals who had attended his flight from Rome. He passed before them, in firm and rapid retrospect, the incidents of his eventful life. He maintained the truth of the great

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principles by which it had been governed from the commencement to the close. He named his three immediate successors in the Papacy. He assured his weeping friends of his intercession for them in heaven. He forgave, and blessed, and absolved his enemies, though with the resolute exceptions of the Emperor and the anti-Pope. He then composed himself to die. His faltering lips had closed on the transubstantiated elements. The final unction had given assurance that the body, so soon to be committed to the dust, would rise again in honour and incorruption. Anxious to catch the last accents of that once oracular voice, the mourners were bending over him, when, struggling in the very grasp of Death, he collected, for one last effort, his failing powers, and breathed out his spirit with the indignant exclamation, "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: and therefore I die in exile!" 1

ANSELM.

A.D. 1033-1109.

(From "Essays and Reviews," by the Rev. RICHARD CHURCH.)

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THE Church policy of William the Conqueror, which.... certainly had in part for its object to promote vigour, regularity, 1033 and strictness in the Church, is marked by two main features. One is the disposition to give and guarantee to the Church, within certain limits, a separate and independent jurisdiction. In the important council, or rather Parliament, of Lillebonne (1080), this was done for Normandy. From the floating mass of precedents and customs definite laws were extricated and fixed in writing; the province of the episcopal courts marked out with tolerable equity; questions about traditionary rights between the feudal and ecclesiastical powers adjusted, and provision made for settling future claims. . . . In England the 1 Abridged from Essay I.