The discerning eye of the vigilant pontiff had long watched the spirit and movements of all Christendom. He was well acquainted with the moral and political life, the strength and weakness, of all nations. He may be seen in the spiritual warfare temporizing with the strong, and bending all his strength against the weak. He speaks contemptuously of the feeble king of France, and claims tribute as an ancient right. Charlemagne, he says, was the pope's collector, and bestowed Saxony on the apostle. But to the dreaded William of England and Normandy his language is courteous. The haughty Norman maintained his Teutonic independence; created bishops and abbots at his will; was absolute lord over his ecclesiastical as over his feudal liegemen.
In Spain and the northern nations Gregory was more assumptuous and successful, but it was against the empire that he concentrated all his forces, and resolved to measure the strength of the Papacy with the whole power of Henry. If he could humble the highest and proudest of monarchs—the successor of the Caesars—the victory would tell on all other sovereigns.
The youth and inexperience of Henry, the demoralizing tendencies of his education, the revolt of the German princes, and the troubles that too often afflict a country during a minority, encouraged the daring priest in his bold designs. The decisions of the council, held in 1074, against the universal sin of simony, and the marriage of the clergy, were duly communicated to the Emperor. The crafty pope embraced the opportunity of assuming the greatest friendship for Henry. He admonished him as a father to return to the bosom of his mother, the holy Roman church, to rule the empire in a more worthy manner, to abstain from simoniacal presentations to benefices, and to render due allegiance to his spiritual superior.
The Emperor received the pope's legate courteously, commended his zeal for the reform of the church, and was altogether most submissive in his tone. But Gregory was not to be satisfied with unmeaning praise and apparent repentance. He now desired permission, as supreme arbiter of the affairs of Germany, to summon councils there, by which those accused of simony might be convicted and deposed. But neither Henry nor the bishops would grant leave to the pope's legates to assemble a council in Germany for such a purpose. The clergy dreaded his severe inquisition into their titles, and the Emperor dreaded having his own patronage curtailed. But the impatient zeal of the ambitious priest would brook no delay and submit to no opposition.
In the following year (1075) he convoked a second council at Rome, and proceeded to those measures which he had intended to accomplish by synods in Germany. At the head of his Roman clergy, men vowed to his cause by interest and pride, he determined at all hazards to strike at the root of all abuses comprehended under the odious name of simony. On this occasion he excommunicated some of the favorites of Henry; he deposed the Archbishop of Bremen, and the bishops of Strasburg, Spires, and Bamberg, besides some Lombard bishops, and five of the imperial court, whose assistance the Emperor had used in the sale of benefices. He also decreed that "whoever should confer a bishopric or an abbacy, or should receive an investiture from the hands of any layman, should be excommunicated." Henry again professed a measure of penitence, acknowledged the existence of simony, and his intentions in future to discourage it, but that he could by no means be induced to give up the power of appointing bishops and abbots, and the investiture so closely connected with that power. Gregory, on the other hand, exasperated by the king's disobedience, and by his appointing to the See of Milan and other bishoprics, without awaiting the decision of the apostolic See, sent him the most peremptory summons to appear in Rome, to answer for all his offenses before the tribunal of the pope, and before a synod of ecclesiastics; if he should refuse or delay, he was at once to suffer the sentence of excommunication. The 22nd of February was the day appointed for his appearance.
"Thus the king," says Milman, "the victorious king of the Germans, was solemnly cited as a criminal, to answer undefined charges, to be amenable to laws which the judge had assumed the right of enacting, interpreting, and enforcing by the last penalties. The whole affairs of the empire were to be suspended while the king stood before the bar of his imperious arbiter; no delay was allowed; the stern and immutable alternative was humble and instant obedience, or that sentence which involved deposition from the empire, and eternal perdition."
The Emperor, who was a high-minded prince and of an ardent temperament, being extremely indignant at this mandate, treated it as a wanton insult, and immediately called a convention of German bishops at Worms. His object was to depose the pope who had thus declared war, even to the death, against himself. These prelates, after passing many censures on the conduct of Hildebrand, pronounced him unworthy of his dignity, deposed him, and appointed a meeting for the election of a new pontiff. Gregory, on receiving the sentence by the king's messengers and letters, was not the least disturbed by such empty denunciations. In a full assembly of one hundred and ten bishops, he suspended the ecclesiastics who had voted and spoken against him.
He then pronounced the excommunication of the Emperor, declaring "that he had forfeited the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, and that his subjects were absolved from their oath of fealty."