Having seen so much of the king in connection with the pope, we will briefly notice his end before commencing a fresh chapter.
He survived his great antagonist twenty-one years. On the 7th of August, 1106, Henry closed his long and agitated life, his eventful reign of fifty years. History is full of every incident of that great monarch's life from his early boyhood till his death, but even an outline of his political life falls not within our plan. The contrast between the affections of his people and the enmity of the church is remarkable, and tells its own tale. Branded though he had been by the pope with the mark of the beast, he was greatly loved by the people. He had many faults very common to kings, but he had a large place in the hearts of his people. "At the news of his death," says Greenwood, "their love overflowed in deep and bitter lamentations. A general cry was heard in the streets of the city of Liege; the court and the people, the widows and the orphans, the multitude of the poor and indigent of the city and country flocked to the obsequies of their sovereign, their friend, their benefactor. With uplifted voices they bewailed the loss of their father; dissolved in tears they kissed his cold hands, they embraced the inanimate limbs, and could with difficulty be persuaded to give place to the attendants in waiting to prepare the body for burial. Nor could they be persuaded to quit the tomb; but for many days relieved each other day and night to watch and pray beside the place where they had laid him."
Nothing could be more beautiful or touching than the testimony of these true mourners to the benevolence of the Emperor. But oh, how different, how sad, how sorrowful, when we turn to the so-called church, the so-called representatives of the meek and lowly Jesus! The wrath of his papal adversaries seems to have been heated sevenfold when they heard of such honors being paid to the body of the excommunicated Henry. The young king, his son, Henry V., was threatened with the anathemas of heaven unless he caused the accursed remains of his father to be exhumed and deposited in some unconsecrated spot; or-inconceivable assumption and wickedness!-let the pope be applied to for a post mortem absolution. His faithful bishop Albert, who had given his sovereign decent burial in the church of St. Lambert, was compelled, as a penance for this act of gratitude and love, to disinter the body with his own hands, and have it conveyed to an unconsecrated building in an island on the Moselle. But these indignities thus heaped on the lifeless body of the late emperor produced a reaction. The young king, though he had been trained by Pope Paschal II. to deceive his father and openly to rebel against him, became alarmed at this spiritual terrorism, gave orders for the body to be removed to Spires, and solemnly deposited in the tomb of his ancestors. The procession was followed by nearly the whole population. The service for the dead was performed with every ceremony and honor usual on such occasions.
Bishop Gibbard, one of the fiercest of the late Emperor's persecutors, happened to be from home at this moment, but the news of what had taken place brought him back in all haste. Boiling over with indignation, he caused the body to be once more exhumed, placed in unconsecrated ground, and imposed a penance on all who had attended the procession. But the voice of affection could not be silenced by the relentlessness of the bishop. The citizens in a body attended the corpse to its new resting-place with loud lamentations. "They reminded the bishop," says Milman, "how the munificent Emperor had enriched the church of Spires; they recounted the ornaments of gold and silver and precious stones, the silken vestments, the works of art, the golden altar-table, richly wrought, a present of the eastern Emperor Alexius, which had made their cathedral the most gorgeous and famous in Germany. They loudly expressed their grief and dissatisfaction, and were hardly restrained from tumult. But they prevailed not. Yet the bier of Henry was still visited by unbought and unfeigned witnesses to his boundless charities. At length, after five years of obstinate contention, Henry was permitted to repose in the consecrated vault with his imperial ancestors."