Berthold of Constance (Bertholdus Constantiensis)

Annales

(Chronicle, 1054–1080)

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Year 1054
• Year 1055
• Year 1056
• Year 1057
• Year 1058
• Year 1059
• Year 1060
• Year 1061
• Year 1062
• Year 1063
• Year 1064
• Year 1065
• Year 1066
• Year 1067
• Year 1068
• Year 1069
• Year 1070
• Year 1071
• Year 1072
• Year 1073
• Year 1074
• Year 1075
• Year 1076
• Year 1077
• Year 1078
• Year 1079
• Year 1080

Preface

He was distinguished, and exceptionally learned in sacred letters. He appears to have begun writing history under Pope Gregory VII, but not until the year 1076, not unknown to leading men, well acquainted with the matters he narrates and furnished with ample resources. In the earlier part of the book, up to the year 1075, we find the Chronicle of Bernold — composed in 1073 and then sporadically continued — copied out, and from 1076 Bernold is left behind. Since Berthold stood on the side of Gregory VII and Rudolf against Henry IV, he diligently applied for his own use the public documents issued by the supreme pontiff and his councils, and placed such trust in them that very often he incorporated into his own narrative, in the same words, matters related by Gregory in letters to King Henry, to the Germans, and to the bishops of Germany and Italy. He also read Henry's letters written to Gregory, and by documents which today no longer survive he used documents of the pontifical party for illustrative purposes. In the years 1076–1080 he narrates the same events quite differently from Bernold, and in general proceeds in chronological order. One cannot speak very highly of Berthold's style. He sometimes leaves a sentence unfinished, getting stuck in the middle; he uses the accusative absolute in place of the ablative, a deponent verb with passive force, the verb tacere with a double accusative, Germanizes words instead of sounding them in the German manner, uses returnare for reverti (to return), and quamvix for cito (quickly). The annotations appended to the text by Ussermann, wherever they seemed able to offer some usefulness to our readers, I have preserved; quite a few I have condensed; the majority, as being less necessary in a volume in which we present Lambert, Bruno, and Bernold together, I have cut.

Year 1054

Herimannus, who was also a great hero, etc. His life or eulogy has been given in the Prefaces to Herman the Cripple, Patrologia vol. CXLIII, col. 25.

An assembly was held by the emperor at Mainz, in which Gebhard, bishop of Eichstätt, elected by the bishops and sent to Rome, and there honorably received, was ordained the 154th pope at the Last Supper of the following Lent, and received the name Victor II.

Year 1055

The emperor celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Goslar, and then prepared an expedition into Italy, and kept the holy day of Easter at Mantua; Pentecost he celebrated at Florence, and there, in his presence, a general synod was held by the lord pope, and many things were corrected. The emperor released Adalbert, who had been condemned to capital punishment, through the intercession of the bishops. At the same time, fifty or more armed soldiers, secretly crossing by sea from Normandy, wishing to bring aid to the Normans against the emperor, were captured by the citizens of Pisa and brought to the emperor.

The emperor sent Otto, bishop of Novara, to Constantinople. There, in the place of the recently deceased Michael, he found a certain woman holding sole rule over the entire realm; she sent him back to the emperor the following year, also adding her own ambassadors, to confirm a treaty of friendship.

Beatrice, coming to the emperor in submission on behalf of her husband, is held captive, even though a pledge had been given; and her son, the boy Boniface, fears to come for this reason. But not many days later, while the emperor was staying there, this same boy dies.

Gebhard, bishop of Regensburg, and Duke Welf had obtained leave from the emperor to return home, and their soldiers, without their knowledge, as is said, conspired against the emperor. At that time Duke Welf, greatly mourned by his people and all the people, and truly dedicated to God by a vow of holy monastic life as he entered it, was buried at the monastery of Altorf (Weingarten). Bishop Arnold of Speyer dies.

Year 1056

The emperor, returning from Italy through Bavaria, celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at the castle of Zurich, and there betrothed the daughter of Margrave Otto to his son of the same name.

Gebhard, bishop of Regensburg, overcome by the emperor regarding the conspiracy made against him, is held for a time, first in the castle of Ulfilingen and then at Stofola under guard. Duke Godfrey comes to the emperor in submission.

Conrad is appointed by the emperor at Speyer in place of Bishop Arnold.

Herman, archbishop of the city of Cologne, died; in his place Anno, formerly provost at Goslar, succeeded to the archbishopric. The emperor celebrated the holy day of Easter....

In the same year the Slavs called Liutici, raiding the borders of the Saxons, killed a great many of their chieftains along with Margrave Wilhelm.

Emperor Henry, having invited the lord apostolic to come to him in the autumn season, while staying in Saxony at Bothfeld, fell gravely ill with worsening sickness, and fortified by a good conversion, by penance, and by the most sincere confession, forgave all his debtors from his heart; all that he had unjustly acquired, he restored to those who were present; and for those who were absent, he most carefully arranged by name through the empress and his son that restitution be made; and thus, placing all his hope in God — O that it may have gone well! — he died on the 3rd of the Nones of October, in the 39th year of his age, the 18th of his reign, the 10th of his empire, in the 10th indiction. He was then carried away and translated to Speyer, where in the church of Saint Mary — which he himself had built, still incomplete — he was buried next to his father and mother by the lord pope. His son Henry IV, now in his seventh year of age, receiving in his place the rights of the kingdom, was entrusted by the leading men to the empress his mother for his upbringing. Famine afflicted many provinces.

Henry IV, son of Henry, reigned for 20 years, the ninetieth from Augustus.

Year 1057

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Regensburg. On the 7th of the Kalends of May (April 25), an immense fall of snow and frost destroyed a great part of the vineyards.

In this year, stones of wondrous size, mixed with hail, fell from the sky, and a number of people perished by lightning.

At Rome, Victor II died; in his place Frederick, brother of Duke Godfrey, formerly archdeacon of Pope Leo of blessed memory, but at that time abbot of the monastery of Saint Benedict, was ordained the 155th pope and named Stephen IX.

Otto, duke of the Alemanni, died; his duchy was received by Rudolf.

Year 1058

At Rome, Pope Stephen died. The Romans, having accepted money, had elected a certain John contrary to the canons, who sat without consecration for some days and was then expelled by Duke Godfrey; and the bishop of the city of Florence was appointed the 156th pope, and was called Nicholas II.

At the same time, Henry, bishop of Augsburg, held the chief place in the council of the empress; which greatly displeased certain princes of the realm who would not tolerate his arrogance.

Year 1059

In this year there was a great mortality of men and a plague of livestock. A war having broken out between the Milanese and the people of Pavia, many fell on both sides. Rudolf, duke of the Alemanni, took Mathilda, sister of King Henry, as his wife.

At Fulda, Abbot Eberhard died, and Sigfrid succeeded him.

Andrew, king of Pannonia (Hungary), having already confirmed peace and a treaty with King Henry through ambassadors, also obtained the latter's younger sister Judith as a bride for his son Solomon, still a boy. Frederick and his brothers from Gleichberg rebelled against King Henry, and afterward came to him in submission.

Year 1060

Henry, king of the Franks (France), died, and his son Philip, still a boy, undertook to govern the kingdom together with his mother.

Lindpald, archbishop of Mainz, died; Sigfrid, abbot of Fulda, succeeded him.

Conrad, bishop of Speyer, dies; in his place Einhard, provost of Augsburg, is promoted. Mathilda, sister of the king, died.

Henry, the Count Palatine, driven to madness — having withdrawn as if into religion, as though renouncing the world, and betaken himself to the monastery of Echternach — was dragged out from there and killed his own wife.

And in this year, as in the previous one, mortality carried off many. The winter was quite harsh and snowy, and more prolonged than usual, causing the greatest damage to grain and wine.

In Hungary, a certain Béla drove his brother, King Andrew, now aged, to his death. Andrew, thus grievously wronged by his brother, at last struck by fever, sent all his treasures to the castle of Melk, and also sent his son to King Henry through Count Tietbald.

Year 1061

A great famine consumed many. Gebhard, bishop of Regensburg, died, and Otto succeeded him.

Conrad, who had presided over the Carinthians as duke in name only, dying, made way; and his duchy was received by Count Berthold, of Swabian origin.

At Rome, Pope Nicholas having died, the Romans sent the crown and other gifts to King Henry, and appealed to him for the election of a supreme pontiff.

He (the king), having summoned all the bishops of Italy to him and held a general assembly at Basel, was called Patrician of the Romans with the crown placed upon him. Then, with the common counsel of all, and certain large gifts being given, as is said, he simoniacally elected the bishop of Parma as supreme pontiff of the Roman Church. Meanwhile, while these things were being transacted, Anselm, bishop of Lucca, with the support of certain Romans, usurped the apostolic see for himself. Burchard and Wezil of Zolorin were killed. The church of Speyer is dedicated.

Year 1062

In these times the Empress Agnes, laying aside her royal garments and clothed in a sacred veil, dedicated herself to Christ and withdrew to the town of Fruttuaria. On the 6th of the Ides of February, an earthquake, lightning, and thunder occurred. A pestilence and mortality followed, carrying off many. King Henry celebrated Easter at Utrecht, the city of Frisia, together with his mother the empress.

In these days Anno, archbishop of Cologne, with certain princes of the realm assisting, seized King Henry together with the lance and other imperial insignia by force from his mother the empress, and brought him with him to Cologne.

The bishop of Parma, elected some time before, went to Rome to be consecrated; when armed Romans met him and forbade his entry, a great number of them were both killed by his soldiers and drowned in the Tiber, while the rest were put to flight.

The Parmese, having gathered a large force from all sides, forcibly set out to seize the see, and thus arriving at the city of Rome, was not permitted by the Romans to enter; whereupon a great slaughter was made there. And so, returning sadly to Parma without a bloodless victory, with many Romans slain, he persisted unhappily to the end of his life with only the name of apostolic usurped by him.

Year 1063

In springtime, in the middle of April, a savage winter — windy and snowy — lasting four days, killed birds and livestock with cold and destroyed the greatest part of the trees and vineyards.

Engelhard, bishop of Magdeburg, died; Wernher, brother of the archbishop of Cologne, succeeded him. Henry, bishop of Augsburg, died; Imbrico, a canon of Mainz, succeeded him.

In the same year a certain woman near Constance gave birth to an infant having two heads, and also double all the other limbs down to the knees.

Year 1064

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Cologne, and Easter at Liège. A synod at Mantua.

Year 1065

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Goslar and Easter at Worms. The royal palace at Goslar was burned down; this happened on the 6th of the Kalends of April (March 27), in the 3rd indiction. And there he was girded with the sword, in the 9th year of his reign and the 14th of his age, and Duke Godfrey was chosen as his shield-bearer.

The bishop of Passau died; Altmann, chaplain of the empress, succeeded him. At this time Archbishop Sigfrid of Mainz, Bishop Wilhelm of Utrecht, Bishop Gunther of Bamberg, and Bishop Otto of Regensburg, setting out for Jerusalem with great equipment and retinue, suffered much from the pagans on that journey. Indeed they were forced to enter into battle with them. On the same journey Gunther died, and Richmann simoniacally succeeded him.

Year 1066

Many nobles perished in civil war. King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at...., and Easter at Utrecht.

Eberhard, archbishop of Trier, on the 17th of the Kalends of May (April 15), the holy Saturday of Easter, having completed the offices of that day himself, died in peace still clothed in his priestly vestments. Conrad, provost of Cologne, elected by the king, was to succeed him; but he was refused by the clergy and citizens of Trier. Whereupon a certain count from the military retinue of Trier, by name Theoderic, seized this same Conrad as he was making his way to Trier, and after keeping him in confinement for a long time, committed him to four soldiers to be killed. When they had thrown him three times over a certain precipice and could do nothing but break his arm, one of them, moved by repentance, sought pardon from him. Another, wishing to behead him, cut off only his jaw. And so he himself, a martyr worthy of God, departed to the Lord. He suffered on the Kalends of June, in the year of the Lord's incarnation 1066, the 10th year of King Henry's reign; he was buried at the abbey called Tholey. A fitting retribution afterward overtook the three soldiers who were responsible for his death. For one of them was unable to swallow food that he had taken; the other two, tearing their own hands, thus breathed their last and descended to the confines of hell. Beyond these, many miracles were wrought at the tomb, by which his venerable martyrdom is attested. Uto, a canon of Trier, was after his killing elected and appointed archbishop by the clergy.

Comets were seen in the octave of Easter, that is, the 9th of the Kalends of May (April 23), and lasted for 30 days. The wedding of King Henry at Tribur. Likewise a comet was seen. In these times the venerable Peter Damiani, formerly a hermit and now a cardinal bishop, wrote many things, and dealt quite reasonably in his writings with the problem of incontinent priests, but treated those ordained by simonists, as they say, with excessive clemency.

Hugh, archbishop of Besançon, a religious, faithful, and prudent servant of the Lord, entered happily into the joy of his Lord, to be set over many things. A canon of the same church, canonically elected by the brethren, succeeded him.

Year 1067

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Speyer, and Easter at....

Saxony suffers from civil strife. Burchard, bishop of Halberstadt, vigorously ravaged the people of the Liutici.

Einhard, bishop of Speyer, died on the road to Rome and was buried at Siena; a certain Henry succeeded him.

In these times certain monks from the valley called Vallombrosa, in the diocese of Florence, refused to receive their bishop on account of the simonian heresy, and turned away the clergy and people from him so thoroughly that they would by no means deign to accept his ministry. They also publicly protested in certain writings that the sacraments administered by him, and by all simonists and married priests, were entirely null and ought to be spurned; and from this the greatest dissension and schisms arose, not only in this place but also in the other neighboring localities.

Pope Alexander, however, hearing of this cause and question, summoned both the bishop and the monks to Rome, so that a sentence on the matter to be upheld might be defined in a Roman synod according to Catholic teaching. Therefore, the sentence defined there at the demand of the bishops was that the truth of the holy Church should be made known and revealed by the judgment of fire. When this was praised by both sides as something to be undergone, a certain one of the monks declared that he would himself submit to this same judgment, with God as his witness and discerner of his justice. And when this decree had been promulgated by the pope, they returned to Florence, so that it might be carried out there in the presence of the clergy and people.

At length, a considerable council having been assembled there, a fire-bearing flame, more than the height of a man and stretched out to the length of twelve feet, and at a gap of two feet between its two sides, was most carefully kindled from the driest wood in the atrium of the church. When the bishop, Peter of Florence, did not dare to enter the midst of it to clear himself and his peers of the charge and accusation of guilt laid against them, the aforementioned monk, having received the Eucharist of Christ, and thus prepared as he had celebrated Mass there, barefoot and with the cross taken in his hands, under this sacramental principle of proving the justice and truth of God, protested thus in the hearing of the whole church: namely, that the one called Peter, who claimed to be bishop of Florence, had obtained the episcopate through simony, and that the sacraments administered by him and by other simonist and married priests were in no way to be received by Catholics. And proceeding in this manner step by step into the midst of the flame, he walked through it happily in the name of the Lord without any injury from the heat and fire. But all the people, as they saw this judgment, unanimously returned thanks and praises to God, the righteous Judge on high.

Peter, however, was at last summoned to Rome by the lord pope, and convicted by the evidence of this judgment on the charge of the aforesaid heresy, he returned, in confusion, his episcopal staff and ring to the apostolic see, and thus departed justly deprived of the dignity to which he had been unjustly raised. For a time, however, he invaded the affairs of that church with the help of Duke Godfrey, hoping somehow to be restored to his see. But when at last he was frustrated in this hope, he renounced everything he appeared to possess, came to conversion, and made himself a monk in the monastery of Pomposa.

The Normans wished to invade Rome in a hostile manner; but they desisted when Duke Godfrey threatened them.

Year 1068

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Cologne, and Easter at.... Here, led astray by the errors of his youth, he so forgets his lawful wife and is so defamed as being entangled in unspeakable crimes that even his princes strove to deprive him of the kingdom. That entire year was rainy.

Year 1069

Peace and reconciliation among the people were confirmed at Goslar, at the Nativity of the Lord, by royal edict under oath.

King Henry ravages the people of the Liutici.

Dedo, the Saxon margrave, rebels against the king, but is afterward compelled and comes to submit.

Ulrich, abbot of Reichenau, died; in his place a certain Meginward from Hildesheim is with difficulty appointed as abbot by the king through simony, with the brethren resisting.

Rumald, bishop of Constance, most pious and kind, the most skillful restorer of the episcopal house, which had fallen into ruin in his time, and the most attentive enlarger and provider of the ecclesiastical treasury, leaving behind the shadowy vanities of this world, happily closed his last day on the 2nd of the Nones of November (November 4), and was fittingly buried in the same house which he had already begun to build.

At that time the simoniac heresy, no longer hidden as in former times, but openly and with brazen arrogance, held sway over our people from all sides without respect of persons, and had most miserably defiled the dove-like beauty of holy mother Church with the contagion of its corruption — a heresy which had at last compelled a certain Karloman, a canon of Magdeburg and provost of Halberstadt, to enter the sheepfold of the see of Constance not through the door but from elsewhere, that is through the wall, having given and promised to the king himself and his counselors no small sacrilegious sum of money, as well as ecclesiastical benefices.

Thus that most wretched buyer of hellish misery, striving quite zealously against all right to be enthroned in our see, worked in every way to frustrate the canonical election of Sigfrid, their brother and royal chaplain as well, whom they had sought to have as their bishop.

Duke Godfrey, most excellent among secular men, most quickly moved to the compunction of tears at the recollection of his sins, most generous in the giving of alms, having distributed all his possessions and treasures to the poor and to churches so that he remained almost naked, a bearer of the naked cross — transformed by so perfect and most tearful a penitence, as one from another, to such a degree that one may not doubt that he has happily departed hence to the citizenship of the court above the heavens — commending his spirit into the Lord's hands, wholly caught up in heavenly things, he breathed his last in joy. He was at last fittingly buried at Verdun, where he also died, on the 9th of the Kalends of January (December 24), with all fitting obsequies. May he rest in peace.

Year 1070

The king celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Freising, and passing through those regions arrived at Augsburg at the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The brothers of Constance, coming there to have their elected candidate accepted through the king's approval, were sent home unhappily, compelled by the threatening enough royal command imposed upon them in favor of the aforesaid simonist, whether they would or not. Thus that accursed persistent usurper unhappily seized the episcopal see for himself. Without delay he at once administered the task for which he had come with the utmost diligence, namely to sell worse what he had bought wrongly, and to steal, and to slaughter and destroy the sheep of another's flock. Sacred vessels, vestments for Mass, altar tablets covered with silver he secretly stripped away; gold, gems, and all the ecclesiastical treasure he recklessly dispersed to his own uses and those of his associates, like a sacrilegious thief. When the brothers had made all this known by letter to Pope Alexander with full complaint, by apostolic authority he forbade them to have any communion with him whatsoever; and at the same time, sending letters to the archbishop of Mainz, he commanded him not to consecrate him as bishop unless he purged himself of the aforesaid heresy. But the man, defending himself somehow by the promises and authority of the king and his associates in business, prolonged his case to as late as the second year.

He was accused by certain persons of treason against the king in Bavaria, and an opportunity was given him by the king to clear himself by trial by combat. Since he was unwilling to do this, he seized upon this as a pretext for rebellion, and with him likewise Magnus, son of Otto, duke of northern Saxony. But the king, since the aforesaid Otto, when legitimately summoned to give satisfaction, refused to come, deprived him of his duchy and all other benefices. — Dietmar, bishop of Chur, died, and Heinricus, a monk of Reichenau, succeeded him. — Meginward, unwilling to endure the king's exactions, commands, and services, voluntarily resigned the abbacy of Reichenau. — Winter was windy and rainy.

Year 1071

The king celebrated Christmas.... — Welf becomes duke of Bavaria. — King Heinricus, having suffered many plots from the Saxons, overcame them all manfully. — Otto, formerly duke of Bavaria, came with his companions at Pentecost to surrender to the king. — Karlomannus, that interloper placed at Constance, by the command of Pope Alexander at a council held at Mainz, was steadfastly accused by the canons of Constance on account of the aforesaid heresy and the many sacrileges committed, charges brought against him in written accusations; convicted by synodal process, since he could not deny that he had acted against the discipline of the ecclesiastical rule — namely that he had obtained the church by payment of money — he was shamefully expelled from the see which he had simoniacally seized; yet not by public deposition, as would have been proper. For the king, as much as he possibly could, favored him; indeed he had returned even the episcopal staff to him not in synodal council, but in his own private chamber, still hard of heart, rebellious and unwilling. And if a sentence of this kind awaits one not yet consecrated and already condemned, what shall become of those who have been consecrated? And if this is the case for bishops, what shall be done regarding presbyters? Behold, an argument for deposition from the greater to the lesser. And since, according to the precepts of the holy Fathers, no cleric may lawfully be ignorant of the statutes of the canons, let it not be burdensome to commit to memory, from among many, this one brief chapter from the decrees of the holy Pope Nicholas:

"Whatever presbyter shall have obtained a church by payment, let him be deposed in every way, since he is known to have acted against the discipline of the ecclesiastical rule. But he who shall have expelled another presbyter legitimately ordained to a church by means of money, and shall have claimed it for himself in such a manner — that vice, which has spread badly, must be corrected with the utmost diligence."

Otto, a canon of Goslar, is substituted for Karlomannus by the king.

One Rupert, abbot of Bamberg, simoniacally entered the abbacy of Reichenau, having given much gold to the king; he was subsequently anathematized and expelled.

Year 1072

The king celebrated Christmas.... and overcame those rebelling against him almost without the difficulties of war. Peter Damiani, cardinal bishop of pious memory, long since crucified to the world, departed to the Lord on the 7th Kalends of March (February 23). Lord Gerald, a monk of Cluny, distinguished in his knowledge of the Scriptures and not inferior to his predecessor in conduct, succeeded him in the bishopric. Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, died. Liemarus succeeded him.

The king built many very strongly fortified castles in the regions of Saxony and Thuringia, and unjustly seized many fortifications for himself, whereby he stirred up the hearts of many against himself.

In these same days the church of Milan remains vacant for some time upon the death of a bishop. A certain man succeeded, having given very great amounts of money to the king and his counselors. Him, though excommunicated by the pope, the king ordered to be consecrated. The clergy, however, had chosen another suitable candidate for themselves, who is said to have been expelled from there under compulsion of an oath.

Year 1073

The king celebrated Christmas.... Rudolf, duke of Swabia, and Berthold, duke of Carinthia, and Welf, duke of Bavaria, departed from the king, because, as other counselors were worming their way in, they perceived that their counsel no longer prevailed with the king.

Count Theodoric, moved by penitence for the crime he had committed against the blessed Conrad, appointed as bishop to the Triervians, although many dangers stood in the way, nevertheless set out for Jerusalem with many others in ardent faith. When they had begun at Laodicea to put to sea in a ship, they were encompassed by a sudden storm; and immediately with the day darkened, uncertain of the way they should go, after four days with the gale continually battering the ship with the same force, they were often cheered at night by a heavenly light descending upon them. Then no longer fearing death in the dangers, but meditating upon eternal life, purified by the sea waves from the filth of their sins, on the 13th Kalends of March (February 17), they perished in shipwreck and departed to the Lord: Count Theodoric, Wilderold, Marchward, and with them 113 in number.

Herimannus the margrave, son of Duke Berthold, still a youth but already striving toward evangelical perfection, with his wife and only son, having left behind all that he possessed, a true follower of Christ and a naked bearer of the naked cross, truly became a monk at Cluny. Having lived there under the rule for scarcely more than one year, he happily departed to the Lord on the 7th Kalends of May (April 25); noted for frequent oracles of divine revelations.

Pope Alexander died at Rome. In his place the venerable Hildebrand, archdeacon of the Roman Church, a prudent, sober, and chaste man, was sought by the common counsel of all to be appointed pope. Upon hearing this, reckoning himself unequal to so great an honor — or rather burden — he barely obtained a respite in which to reply; and thus slipping away in flight, he lay hidden for several days at San Pietro in Vincoli. At last he was barely found and led by force to the apostolic see, was ordained as the 158th pope, and is called Gregory VII. By his prudence the incontinence of the clergy was curbed not only in Italy, but also in the German lands; for what his predecessors had forbidden in Italy, he himself zealously endeavored to forbid in other parts of the Catholic Church.

All of Thuringia and Saxony rebelled against King Heinricus on account of the aforesaid fortifications and many other things which the king had arrogantly and rashly done in their region against the will of that same people — things which they could no longer endure patiently and bear. Having formed a conspiracy, they deliberated with a great multitude to constrain him unexpectedly and take him prisoner, which was their intention. But he, having discovered their plan and quickly taking up his treasury as far as the urgency of the moment allowed, barely escaped from them with a few men to Worms, and there for some time he was ill. Thereafter, when the king had organized an expedition into Saxony, the Saxons forestalled him, unanimously promising him satisfaction if he would grant them the rights of their ancestors. And at a conference held at Würzburg for this agreement, nothing else was accomplished there after their many and intolerable complaints of the injustices they had suffered, except that they had pledged, somewhat contemptuously, to offer the king again a false satisfaction at Christmas, according to the advice of certain of the aforementioned bishops and dukes. After these things had thus been done, a certain man, one of the king's counselors, departing from him, made public and accused him before the aforesaid dukes, asserting that he had already formed a plan with him and with his other intimates to kill them all by some means; and that he himself had been selected and compelled by very great rewards toward that same crime, he protested openly. Hence a very great discord arose between the king and the princes, to such a degree that he himself barely evaded their plots, entering Worms with the help of its citizens. There, collecting from all sides the forces of those who would aid him, he awaited the day on which he might clear himself by trial by combat from the accusation of the aforesaid crime. When the appointed day at last arrived, on which he was either to clear himself before the princes of the realm or be expelled from the kingdom, that traitor against him who had been his enemy had died a sudden death; and so the case of the aforesaid intention was postponed, while they rejected the king's oath by which he wished to clear himself; and he, gathering from all sides whatever troops of his soldiers and loyal men he could, began day by day to make light of the enmity of his adversaries.

Rupert, now anathematized by the pope and likewise driven out by the king — justly, as a sacrilegious disciple of Simon — Egghard at last, one of the brothers of Reichenau and elected by them, becomes abbot of Reichenau, and in accordance with the statutes of its privileges is consecrated after Easter at Rome by the aforesaid pope. Rupert, however, having become abbot at Gengenbach, was killed by a certain minister of the church because he wished to take away from him a certain benefice.

Year 1074

King Heinricus celebrated Christmas at Worms, although amid the greatest dangers and distresses. Thereafter, having gathered from all sides whatever help he could, he suddenly advanced against the Saxons at the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (February 2). They, fearing the force of war, came to surrender on the condition that the aforesaid fortifications, on account of which the revolt had arisen, should be destroyed; which was thereafter carried out. Thus, with the aforesaid dukes and other leading men of the realm absent, the king was reconciled to the Saxons in a dissembling fashion, and advanced with them as far as Goslar, yet not placing much trust in them. Duke Rudolf and the other rebels are reconciled to the king. — During this Lent, the empress and two bishops as legates of the apostolic see came with her from Rome to Pforzheim in Swabia to the king, for the purpose of correcting the king's conduct. The king celebrated Easter at Bamberg. Proceeding from there to Nuremberg to his mother and the other legates of the apostolic see, he committed himself as a guilty man into their hands, in the presence of the bishops of Mainz and Bremen and many others, under a pledge of correction, and most firmly promised his aid to the lord pope for the deposing of simoniacs. The king's counselors too promised under oath before those same legates that they would restore all the goods of churches unjustly acquired — for they had bought them from simoniacs, thereby assisting those unworthy of them in advancing to ecclesiastical honor. These things thus arranged, the empress and the legates of the apostolic see returned.

In that summer the king launched an expedition into Hungary, in order to aid King Solomon, who had also been driven from his royal dignity on account of the arrogance and disgraceful behavior of his misdeeds by his uncle and the other leading men of the realm, he himself making light of their counsels. But the king, accomplishing nothing there effective toward his goal, namely the restoration of Solomon, having at last received back his sister Queen Judith, wife of Solomon, returned home to Worms under no good omen such as had attended his departure. A son was born to the king. In the autumn, setting out again for Bavaria and staying in those parts for some time, he thence came through Augsburg and Reichenau to the city of Strasbourg.

Year 1075

The king celebrated Christmas at Strasbourg with splendor, with no small forces of his leading men, and there, under the openly proclaimed pretext of a Hungarian expedition to be repeated shortly after Easter, he was busily and resourcefully scheming with his faithful men the plan of suddenly advancing into Saxony with an army; gathering in so prudent a manner from all sides a considerable assemblage of military preparations, hoping that he could the more easily avenge his wrongs, the more unexpectedly he had now bent his whole mind to the matter against his adversaries.

A synod was convoked at Rome during the days of Lent by Pope Gregory with the greatest effort, for the purpose of somehow quieting the countless presumptuous enormities of the scandals of the holy mother Church, and of recalling in some degree the notable and canonical constitutions of the holy Fathers which our modern age had almost entirely forgotten and annulled. For trusting not a little, against all hope, in the hope of the help of the supremely strong Husbandman, he duly undertook to clear with the authentic axes of catholic and apostolic correction the Lord's field — which, through the careless sloth of his predecessors long since, had grown far too thickly overgrown with the thorny abuses of usurpations, and was also spreading entirely into a rank forest with the lamentable and lingering obsolescence of ecclesiastical fruit — though it would have been very easy for his predecessors at the time to gradually cut down its thorns, thistles, and tares with the scythe of sound discipline, and to uproot them from the roots with the hoe of sound teaching. He therefore decreed with apostolic authority most firmly, with the whole holy council judging and agreeing, that the authentic rules of the holy Fathers duly established in each successive council should retain their proper force; and if anyone should presume contumaciously to resist them, let him be utterly cut off from the members of the Church. Thereafter, beyond other things, in accordance with the authority of the holy Fathers, he pronounced sentence in the same synod that those who have been advanced through the simoniacal heresy — that is, by the intervention of payment — to any grade of holy orders or to any office, shall have no further place of ministering in the holy Church; also that those who hold or have held churches by the giving of money shall lose them entirely. Nor henceforth shall it be lawful for outsiders to sell or buy them, nor to enjoy their tithes, except according to the norm of canonical constitution.

Neither should those who lie under the crime of fornication celebrate masses, or minister at the altar in the lower orders. He also decreed that if the aforesaid persons should be contemptuous of his — or rather of the holy Fathers' — constitutions, the people should in no wise receive their ministry, as persons cut off from the members of the Church; so that those who were unwilling to be corrected for fear of God and for the dignity of their office might come to their senses through the shame of the world and the rebuke of the people. To those who obeyed and who were truly penitent for their error, he mercifully granted indulgence with apostolic gentleness and authority, absolving them from their sin; thus to be believed without doubt by Catholic faith as the just judge and binder of the hardened, and the merciful remitter and loosener of the truly penitent. There also he again anathematized the king's counselors for the simoniacal heresy, in that they made light of what they had promised under oath to his legates. The king, angered on their account, by no means avoided them.

In the same synod, in accordance with the statutes of the canons, a sentence of both deposition and excommunication was issued against Heinricus, bishop of Speyer. He had long since been canonically charged before the Roman see for simoniacal heresy, and when summoned there to have his case examined, contumaciously disdained to come. Now, however — marvelous to relate — on the very same day and at the same hour at which he was judicially deposed from his rank and bishopric and made an excommunicate at Rome, he himself at Speyer, enjoying himself at table in his usual manner, when he rose from the table was so fatally strangled by a most acute stab of pain in his throat that thereafter he could barely produce even a word except very rarely, and this only until the morning of the next day; in the afternoon he was to be most bitterly deposited from his bishopric and from life alike, at sufficient peril — so that in this miracle both the power of God's words and their truth might be confirmed: "Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven." — Behold now, drawn from its scabbard, the sword of Peter, most knowing judge of frauds and most effective zealot against adversaries, with which he himself had mortally struck Ananias and Sapphira who defrauded the price of a field and lied to the Holy Spirit, with which he had also cast down Simon the arch-heretic from that celestial ascent of his all the way to earth, to be torn into four pieces, and thence to be perpetually damned to the depths of hell — let this sword be feared now and always with so much greater solicitude by all simoniacs, as there is no shield of defense except perfect penitence by which so far-reaching, penetrating, and inevitable an avenger may anywhere be forestalled.

The aforesaid decrees and almost all the statutes of the apostolic see, once promulgated to various churches either by letters or by mandates, are resisted by nearly everyone; and from this the greatest hatred against the lord pope and against the very few who agree with him, and the greatest schisms everywhere — but especially among the clergy — were stirred up. And because these are matters of common concern, the lord pope commanded that a universal council be held at Mainz for their canonical resolution. This the archbishop had already made known to his suffragans, to be observed on the 16th Kalends of September (August 17). But they, already at that time planning disobedience and spurning the apostolic command, had allowed it to remain undone.

Outzmann, a canon of the church of Speyer, succeeded the wretchedly dying Heinricus. King Heinricus celebrated Easter at Worms. And after Pentecost, he suddenly moved against Saxony the army of considerable size that had been openly prepared beforehand for Hungary. The Saxons and Thuringians, having long since learned of the plan for so treacherous an invasion, likewise deliberated, having formed a conspiracy, to meet the king as best they could given the urgency of the moment; yet with this agreement in mind: that if by any effort they could give the king satisfaction, with their personal safety and integrity preserved and the right of their ancestral laws and rights retained, they would humble themselves in surrender; but if not, they would rather fall innocently in battle for their lives, their fatherland, and all they possessed under this disorderly compulsion of the king, than imprudently surrender themselves — guiltless as they were — to be intolerably tortured, and with all their possessions plundered and enslaved to the king and his soldiers as had formerly been the custom.

The king, however, had come with a different intention — namely, that unless they surrendered themselves as guilty into his hands without any condition whatsoever, in a manner befitting his honor, he would by no means accept their satisfaction; but if not, he would rather contend with them in war until he had subjugated them at his pleasure, vanquished as guilty of rebellion against him. They, reckoning this yoke of subjugation exceedingly heavy — or rather utterly most harsh — and that they could no longer draw it upon their free necks, being so unequal and unbearable, refused it with quite a querulous outcry.

The king at last, having shared this plan to his own less wholesome counsel with his men and the leading men of the realm, cleverly arranged the battle lines of the camp, fully equipped with arms, to attack them first by surprise. And having sent ahead of himself, with careful forethought, the dukes of the Swabians and Bavarians with their warlike cohorts for the first engagement — as the Alemannic law also provides — he had quite prudently appointed himself to be behind with his most select troops as a guard and support.

But the Saxons, seeing the sudden onslaught of the warlike enemy, although stunned and not without just cause terrified, had no remaining place or time to arm themselves by deliberate plan and to array their battle lines for battle in the customary fashion; nevertheless, disordered and as the urgency of the fleeting moment allowed them, they seized their arms in tumultuous fashion from all sides and awaited them ready for battle. And so the battle, boldly begun by our side, lasted for some time as both sides fought very fiercely against each other in mingled combat. At last the Saxons, unable to withstand any longer the force and onslaught of the fighters — who were fully equipped in every way for battle — took to flight. And our men pursued them as they fled for nearly two miles with savage ferocity, then aided on each flank by Duke Godfrey and the duke of Bohemia. And of them nearly eight thousand fell. Many others, wounded, barely escaped in flight.

Our men at last, having gained a victory though a bloody one — for more than fifteen hundred of them were killed — having overrun that land and devastated a great part of it with fires and plundering, returned home with the matter unresolved and the king somewhat offended. But Otto the former duke, and Magnus the duke, and the other leading men of the Saxons still persisted stubbornly in the same rebellion and on the same grounds as before, after the flight, remaining rebellious and combative to the end.

Thereafter in the autumn the king again, having gathered from all sides and from every direction a considerable military force hired with rewards, set out with both threatening and promising rhetoric — quite craftily and persistently — to subjugate the remnants of the Saxons and to reduce them to bondage at his pleasure. He professed that henceforth he would be pious and certainly mild, conciliatory, generous, and the most just judge and ruler in the ancestral laws and rights for all who obeyed him, and swore this with an oath, they say, with much flattery; but if on the contrary the rebels did not acquiesce to such words, he threatened persistently and quite menacingly and terrifyingly that he would be found and endured by them, for as long as he lived, as harsh, slanderous, troublesome in every way, an enemy all the way to their destruction, and a most hostile plunderer. When these and similar threats and promises had been disseminated most craftily man by man on both sides through smooth-talking, seductive, and corrupt intermediaries, they at last became excessively credulous and confident in the king — who was feigning a kind of penitential sorrow for so many wrongs inflicted on them — especially since beyond all this, they say, it was sworn to them most sacredly in secret on his part: above all the longed-for security of life, an inviolable covenant of peace and unfaked faith, and full liberty in their ancestral rights and laws, if only they would not hesitate to come to surrender, honoring him in this, without any public condition.

Finally, after several such promissory assertions so very like truth and good faith, expecting nothing less than deception or treachery, they had — persuaded by the presumptuous counsel of the bishops of Mainz and Augsburg especially, as well as of Duke Godfrey and others, who declared that they would utterly refuse to join battle with them in war unless compelled by the greatest necessity — placed themselves as the king's accomplices in accordance with the agreed terms of the promises and had submitted to surrender. He, however, soon — alas! — conspiring treacherously with the evil-counseling whispers of his intimates, had commanded with stubborn intent that they be transported to various garrisons and detention places, and that they be imprisoned alike, the faith of his promises being entirely cast aside — being most desirous indeed of avenging their acts of rebellion more harshly. And thereafter he himself had by a kind of sovereign right seized the possessions of certain of them, and all the castles which he had previously seized by plunder throughout all Saxony — now again, with none so much as murmuring, having installed his own garrisons, the imperious ruler had occupied them.

Herimannus, the so-called bishop of Bamberg, was deposed from his order and bishopric and excommunicated by Pope Gregory for the simoniacal heresy. He, feigning a conversion, was soon reconciled by the pope and sought out the monastery of Schwarzach, professing to become a monk there. To him a certain Rupert was soon substituted by the king — provost of Goslar and of many other churches, an intimate companion of his own consecration, pleasing to almost no cleric or layman — and was soon ordained by the bishop of Mainz on the feast of Saint Andrew (November 30) at the king's command.

About the same time Anno, faithful and prudent minister of Christ Jesus, archbishop of Cologne — who was a cheerful and most generous steward of the things entrusted to him for the poor of Christ, and an industrious and lavish founder and provider of five new churches — after all that he seemed to possess in time had been gathered and stored in the heavenly treasury, himself also following thither in the consummation of happy efficacy, to be set over many things in the joy of his Lord, and to be rewarded with unfailing and never-ending rewards, most blessedly — would that it were so! — entered in. He was buried at the monastery of Siegburg and there shone forth most holy in many genuine miracles. A certain Hildulf, a canon of Goslar, himself a servant of the king, was substituted for him — appointed barely over the protests of the clergy and people by royal authority, ordained simoniacally — but was to be deposed in the next ensuing Roman synod for this and for disobedience.

At the same summer season the lord pope sent admonitory letters to the king — still approaching by apostolic gentleness — after so many of his promises and commands had been spurned, urging him to call to mind, on reflection, what he had promised and to whom; and not to persist contumaciously in raising himself to the contempt and injury of God and of apostolic dignity as a liar and an insulter, nor to make nothing of God, Who had exalted him with such honor above others, in stubborn and incorrigible fashion; but to keep this always in his most shrewd and attentive mind: that He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

He, however, for the victory which he had gained so magnificently, did not indeed render to God, Who had given him to conquer and triumph, the greatest thanks as was fitting; but rather he was always wholly attentive to how he might gratify and delight himself according to his own wishes. The admonitions of apostolic gentleness, by which the pope had repeatedly before argued with him, besought him, rebuked him, and exhorted him to a better life, he accepted in pretense as most welcome to himself, but in fact and by accumulation of error he utterly trampled them underfoot. Sometimes also he on his part sent him devoted greetings and apologetic letters, complaining with enough of confession, now that his youth was fleeting and fragile, now that by those in whose hands the court lay he had often been badly advised and counseled. Sometimes also he sent him suppliant letters full of all humility, in which he professed himself very guilty and criminal before God and Blessed Peter, moreover offering prayers that what had been corrupted through his fault in ecclesiastical matters against canonical justice and the decretal statutes of the holy Fathers might be corrected by his apostolic providence and authority, and that in this matter he might effectively experience his obedience, counsel, and help not to be wanting to him. But now he contumaciously made light altogether of so very many such pledges of correction both of himself and of the churches — which he had made so many times and in so many ways through legates and letters to the lord pope — and presumptuously communicated with his counselors and familiars excommunicated in the recent Roman synod, and did not cease to confound and plunder the churches of God as he had long been wont to do.

When these things became known, the lord pope, seeing himself so openly held in contempt, proposed to make one more attempt on his still hardened conscience, and sent back in haste as legates three religious men who were in any case his faithful servants — two of whom he had already sent to himself at Rome as more familiar with the rest — to speak with him more intimately and to win him over in accordance with evangelical teaching; and these men should recall him, urged to worthy repentance for his crimes, with friendly and secret encouragements of persuasion and with the pleasant words of free and pure friendship, as is the way of friends; and should lay before him, in part by narrating them, those things which, though horrible to speak, were yet very widely known; and so in the mouth of these three witnesses every word should stand. Through them also he gave to be made known to him without ambiguity: if he would not hear them speaking to him privately, that his wicked deeds would be made known to the Church set forth in order; but if he would not hear the Church, he himself would wholly separate him from its members as a pagan and a tax collector.

Arriving at Goslar to the king around the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, they had carried out what had been imposed on them by obedience with the utmost caution, yet not without the greatest danger to their own lives. He received them not with good patience, and soon, inflamed with no moderate anger and indignation, had all that they had spoken privately in his ear narrated openly before his convoked counselors in a querulous fashion — with the intention, as is reported, that they might strive to defend not only his own cause but their own all the more. And immediately he stubbornly communicated, in deliberate defiance, with those excommunicated — which the lord pope had especially forbidden him beyond all other things — paying no heed to the patience of his paternal charity and long-suffering, by which he had most faithfully commissioned these men to convey to him that he would embrace his salvation and honor in the bosom of the holy Church, if he came to his senses; nor fearing on the other hand his severe threatening sword, which he had most unambiguously leveled against him equally, should he persist stubborn and disobedient in his accustomed error.

In the same autumn the monastery of Hirsau — which a certain noble and religious nobleman Erlefred had, as is reported, instituted long ago in a fully regular manner under King Pippin, but which had been destroyed and plundered for a long time by the encroachment of his descendants — having already been restored for some time by Count Adalbert, his wife Wieldrud, and their sons who agreed to the same, was now by the testamentary right of the royal majesty and the written grant of full liberty handed over in every respect to the Lord God, to Saint Peter, to Saint Aurelius, and to Saint Benedict. And thus freed completely from all dominion of their ownership, by the customary renunciatory testimony of the Alemannic law before many witnesses at the same place and on the very feast day of Saint Aurelius, they fully emancipated it from themselves as entirely free, and duly and legitimately confirmed it to be devoted to the service of God — to Abbot Wilhelm and his successors in free authority and care, and to the brothers who would live there under the monastic rule for their necessary sustenance.

When Abbot Wilhelm of that same place presently arrived at Rome to have the decrees of this most free foundation strengthened by the privilege of apostolic authority, and had efficiently accomplished at Pope Gregory's hand that for which he had come, as he was now preparing to return home, he was immediately struck and afflicted by that most acute illness which the Greeks call atrophy — that is, a cessation of nourishment — which indeed results from the wasting and emaciation of the body through certain hidden and gradually recovering causes of nature. Furthermore, wasted by acute fevers, dysentery, and hemorrhoids — that is, a flow of blood — and likewise not a little distended by a certain swelling in the groin, all this together, he was miserably tormented for about five months, despaired of even by the physicians themselves, yet not alone of his own people. But at last, when the all-powerful physician God in His mercy allowed the time of showing mercy to arrive, the prayer of faith saved the sick man, anointed with sacred oil by the brothers and absolved from his sins. Thus, soon recovering, he barely returned home to his cell with the acquired privileges and blessings of apostolic generosity.

Dietwin, bishop of Liège, died; Heinricus, provost of Verdun, succeeded him.

Year 1076

King Heinricus celebrated Christmas at Goslar, with the Saxons — though none too friendly to him and not entirely loyal, since they had been suppressed by his authority with such savage and injurious high-handedness.

Pope Gregory, as befits a good shepherd, watchfully protecting his flock on all sides against the wolf-like savagery, endured not only elsewhere, but in Rome itself, several adversaries and antichristian conspirators on account of justice. Among these was one by the name of Quintius, a sacrilegious plunderer and wicked brigand, who after many conspiracies — a frenzied, sacrilegious contemner of all things sacred to God — rose up against him on the most holy night of the Lord's nativity, while he was celebrating Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore. With a mad band of armed men he furiously burst into the church, and before he had finished the post-communion prayer after receiving the Eucharist, he tore him from the altar, seized him wounded, dragged him to his tower like a sacrilegious thief with the greatest mockery, cruelly confined him, and imprisoned him. There, for a long time, a sword held furiously at his neck, grim, menacing, and terrifying in every way, he did not cease trying to wrest from him the treasury and the strongest castles of Saint Peter as benefices for himself — but he utterly failed.

Without delay, the entire city was stirred to loud lamentation over this most grievous sacrilege against the whole Church. They attacked the tower itself with the greatest fervor of zeal for God, and having rescued from it the lord pope — whom they had already supposed dead — they destroyed it and swiftly dispersed everything that belonged to Crescentius; the man himself, who had surrendered himself as guilty to the pope, was barely driven away alive at the pope's intercession, while one man alone, who had sacrilegiously wounded the pope on the head, was slain on the spot. And so the apostolic father, returning with gratitude to the altar, completed the Mass.

Quintius, however, deceived the pope with his customary wickedness; for while in his tower, seeing the tumult of his fellow citizens and their most ardent zeal for God against him, fearing for his own life and those of his men, he confessed his sin to the pope and promised obedience, worthy penance, and satisfaction, though with feigned devotion. Paying this no heed at all, he slipped away from the City by night and escaped. Thereafter the pope, granting a respite, called him back to the penance he had imposed; but Quintius not only became an apostate in this matter, but also seized a very strong nearby castle, where he lived by brigandry, plunder, and bloodshed. The pope therefore had him condemned as excommunicate through the Bishop of Palestrina. He, however, wholly obedient to the king, thus carried on for two years, hardened in contempt of God.

At length, the king, stirred by no small fury after the departure of the aforementioned men, and deeming it unworthy that he should be rebuked or corrected by anyone, not only did not come to his senses, but recklessly and dangerously erred all the more gravely through greater evasion against what was right. For taking evil counsel with his men, he summoned to Worms the greater part of the kingdom's bishops and princes — especially those he knew to be agreeable to his will. He had compelled nearly all of them to deny the obedience due to blessed Peter and to Gregory, the head of the apostolic see, and openly to renounce it — each man's name written down individually, his own name first — having entered into a conspiracy to that end. From there he sent letters of renunciation through two bishops, those of Speyer and Basel, first to the princes and bishops of Italy to associate them with the conspiracy, and then to Rome.

Having held a considerable assembly near Piacenza, the Italian bishops and princes deliberated with a common vote — not only by words and letters, but by the sworn testimony of oaths — that due obedience ought not be rendered to the lord pope; for they greatly feared being condemned by him for the heresy of simony. At length they sent these letters containing such disobedience through legates — a certain canon of Parma and a certain servant of the king — in haste to the Roman synod. There, after the letters and mandates were read aloud publicly in the hearing of the entire assembly, deliberate disobedience was proclaimed to the lord pope, and it was threatened in the king's name that he should descend from the throne over which he unworthily presided. What tumult and shouting arose there, and what disorderly assault was made upon those legates, it falls to us to say — that the lord apostolic, at considerable danger to his own person, barely snatched them half-dead from the hands of the Romans.

At last, when silence was obtained, the lord pope ordered the synodal canons concerning these matters to be sought out and read aloud — those who, having rashly renounced the supreme pontiff, next after God their pastor and rector, as though in the midst of the entire Church, had not blushed to profess their disobedience in writing and by name; not understanding nor fearing what applied to him and the other teachers of the Church, as Paul says: "Always ready to punish every act of disobedience." For they ought to have attended more carefully to what Saint Pope Silvester had long since decreed irrefutably in the Roman synod: "No one shall judge the first see, for all sees desire to be governed by the justice of the first see, and its judge shall not be judged by the whole clergy nor by the whole people."

"The judge shall be judged" — and that decree of blessed Pope Gregory: "We decree that kings shall fall from their dignities and be deprived of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, if they presume to despise the commands of the apostolic see" — and many things of the same kind. Wherefore a synodal sentence was pronounced there, attested by the authority of divine and human law, that King Henry should not only be excommunicated, but without hope of recovery be stripped of the honor of his kingdom, so that he might remain in the fellowship of the excommunicated, with whom he himself had chosen to have a share rather than with Christ. First, because he stubbornly refused to abstain from communion with those excommunicated for the sacrilege and guilt of the heresy of simony; second, because, as a public contemner of God, he refused not only to undergo penance for his criminal acts, but even to promise it, in no way keeping what he had already promised to the apostolic legates; and furthermore because, in open, stubborn disobedience, he hardened himself and did not shrink from contumaciously resisting the apostolic see, and thus from rending and scandalizing the body of Christ, that is, the unity of the holy Church.

For these offenses, therefore, the lord apostolic condemned by synodal judgment not only Henry himself, but also all those who willfully and deliberately persisted obstinately in that disobedience, and all, high and low, who deliberately consented to him in this matter — he excommunicated them and separated them from the members of the Church in perpetuity until worthy satisfaction was given, so that those whom gentleness could not win back, severity might, by God's mercy, recall to the way of salvation.

The Empress Agnes, mother of the king, was present at all of this; the sword of condemnation had wounded her soul not a little.

On these synodal days, Duke Godfrey — who had been no small supporter and instigator of the Worms conspiracy — while returning from it, was struck from below by a certain soldier while seated in a privy attending to the needs of nature, and died unhappily under excommunication. His march, which had barely been purchased from the king for forty pounds of gold, was possessed by the son of his sister, who bore the same name — unjustly deprived of the duchy which his uncle had already obtained from the king for him. The king appointed his own son, barely two years old, to preside over this.

Thereafter the king and nearly all of his supporters contradicted the apostolic condemnation when it became known to them, asserting that whatever had been done in the Roman synod with so sacrilegious a spirit of error had been done wholly unjustly and contrary to canonical order, and they held it of no account whatsoever. But some of sounder mind than the king did not act thus.

Among these, certain bishops — the Patriarch of Aquileia, the bishops of Salzburg, Passau, Worms (who had himself been driven from his see by the king), and also of Würzburg, and nearly all the Saxon bishops — as well as the dukes Rudolf, Berthold, and Welf, and a considerable part of the other leading men of the kingdom, unquestioningly sided with the apostolic judgment; these were men who had refused to take part in the aforesaid conspiracy. And so, when summoned by the king thereafter, they avoided him — both on account of the anathema, and because their trust lay above all in the pope.

The Bishop of Paderborn died, and Poppo, provost of Bamberg, succeeded him — not in an altogether canonical manner, since he received the bishopric while in communion with the already excommunicated king. However, the Bishop of Utrecht had previously obtained it conditionally from the king for a certain relative of his own, on the understanding that he would not resist the ordination of the Bishop of Cologne — who had obtained his see simoniacally and not through the proper door — but would consecrate him himself. Deceived in this way, he no longer stood by the king with his whole heart as before.

The king celebrated Easter at Utrecht, having gathered there from all sides no small number of accomplices in his rebellion and disobedience. There the church which the bishop had built over a long time at great expense and effort, scorned by God and Saint Peter, was marvelously burned by avenging fire. From there the king returned through Lorraine to Worms, intending to hold a conference there with his peers at Pentecost.

William, Bishop of Utrecht, having grown angry at the king, withdrew from him. Returning home, he had a lavish banquet most zealously prepared for himself; and thus, drawn away from the table at which he had feasted three times in one day, overcome with excessive gluttony, he died most wretchedly, struck down by a sudden and unexpected death — himself likewise condemned beyond doubt by the sting of the anathema. Conrad, the chamberlain of Mainz, a diligent companion of the king, who had been gratified by him with the non-canonical gift of a bishopric, succeeded him.

The conference which the king arranged to be held at Worms was convened, as they say, with this intention: that the pope should be judged there as if canonically by three bishops who appeared most senior among the rest, condemned on charges of crimes laid against him, and in some manner deposed from the apostolic see — and that in his place another, whom they might find agreeable and compliant to the king's heart, should immediately be installed there.

The three previously named in the conspiracy itself were, by God's Providence, delayed so as not to arrive there. Of these, the Bishop of Utrecht, as was said, died suddenly; the Bishop of Brescia was captured on the very journey by Count Hartmann, and sent into custody — himself already excommunicated by the apostolic see; the third, the Neapolitan, arrived alone. But no one is condemned by law on the testimony of one witness alone. Duke Godfrey also, who had boldly promised the king that he would escort whoever was to be appointed pope to the Roman see, had himself died under excommunication, as is known to all. God thus dissolving that assembly, they met again at Mainz on the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul.

And in order to take a more disorderly revenge and to condemn more fully those already condemned — with themselves as judges — they rashly excommunicated the lord apostolic by the sacrilegious boldness of their movement, treating him as one judged by false witnesses; and they confirmed, as if by a binding sentence, that the anathema which had been pronounced by the apostolic authority in synodal judgment against the king and the other participants in his confederacy was to be utterly trampled upon and treated as worthless — as being rash, unjust, and of no weight.

For they had not very carefully considered what guilt they incurred against the majesty of the apostolic see, according to what the decretal statutes of the holy Fathers irrefutably establish: that whosoever presumes to alter or contest the judgment of the apostolic see as if it were reprehensible, and who — which has never been permitted to anyone — should pronounce some judgment having thus rejected it, falls into such guilt.

Hence holy Silvester in the Roman synod — at which 284 bishops with 40 priests and very many deacons subscribed, in the presence of the Emperor Constantine and his mother Saint Helena — thus decreed: "No one shall judge the first see," and the rest, as written above. And blessed Pope Gelasius in his decrees, chapter 2: "The whole Church throughout the world knows," he says, "that the most holy Roman Church has the right to judge concerning the whole Church, and it is not lawful for anyone to judge her judgment; for to her appeal must be made from any part of the world, but from her no one is permitted to appeal."

Nor do we pass over this: that the apostolic see has the faculty of absolving, without any preceding synod, those whom an unjust synod had condemned, and of condemning without any existing synod those who deserve it — which the most holy pontiffs Calixtus, Fabian, Sixtus, Julius, and countless others confirm entirely, men who so embraced truth that they resolved to die rather than to lie. And this they did assuredly on behalf of their primacy, which blessed Peter the apostle held by the word of the Lord and shall hold forever.

These are followed by the most blessed Pope Hadrian in chapter 18 of his decrees: "By general decree," he says, "we establish that an execrable anathema shall fall, and that he shall stand guilty before the Lord as a transgressor of the Catholic faith, whoever among kings or powerful men or bishops hereafter believes that the statutes of the Roman pontiffs may in any respect be violated, or permits them to be violated." No less dreadful is what holy Leo decreed with great terror in his decrees: "Everyone," he says, "who strives to nullify our decisions through disobedience, let him be struck with anathema; and whoever contumaciously contradicts our most salutary statutes, let him be separated from the members of the Church forever."

And therefore, anyone to whom the judgment of the apostolic see had come into doubt ought to have taken it up with the apostolic himself rather than with others; for without him, what he had judged could in no way be retracted or altered. For it is our duty to obey apostolic institutions without any hesitation, but to avoid foolish and undisciplined questions which breed quarrels and greatly tend to the subversion of those who hear them. It is the duty of the lord apostolic to confirm his sentences with reason, if anything in them appears doubtful to anyone.

A varied debate was indeed circulated among the synodal party regarding this sentence — whether it had been done justly or unjustly. But this was chiefly among the contentious, who strove to serve not truth but disputation. For they either did not know, or deliberately concealed, that two judicial orders are found in the holy Scriptures: the first in doubtful matters, where a delay is necessary — which these men now chiefly dispute, claiming, as they say and testify, was not granted — for obtaining witnesses and defenders. The second is for public crimes, in which no delay is to be granted, since against the contumacious and disobedient the punishing sentence must be pronounced without delay, without accuser and witness. For in doubtful cases — even if true, but not yet made public, or voluntarily confessed, or openly proven — delays must necessarily be granted for the purposes of inquiry and verification.

They must be granted so that, according to the decrees of the apostolic men Pope Felix and Julius and the rest, the accused may fully prepare himself against his accusers to clear away the charges laid against him. Hence blessed Eleutherius, the twelfth pope from blessed Peter, testifies in his decrees, chapter 1: "A considerable delay," he says, "must be given for inquiry, lest anything seem to be done rashly by either party, since many wrongs arise through misrepresentation." And holy Ambrose testifies in his commentary on the Epistle to the Corinthians: "It is not for a judge," he says, "to condemn without an accuser; for the Lord Himself, though Judas was a thief, in no way cast him out when he had not been accused" — as is the case in all doubtful matters.

And so the Lord Himself gave us an example, lest we too readily believe what is heard indiscriminately, unproven and unexamined, when, in the likeness of angels going to Sodom, He said to Abraham: "I will go down and see whether they have fully done according to the cry that has come before Me, or not — so that I may know." But after He had verified that the cry He had, as it were, heard was true, at once without delay the Lord rained down from heaven upon it showers of fire and brimstone as most present avenger.

But those are most justly condemned without a delay who do not deny a fault that has long since been distinctly condemned by the holy Fathers, but who, as obstinate contemners, attempt somehow to defend themselves against the apostolic statutes. Therefore in a manifest matter known to many, witnesses need not be sought. Hence the apostle commanded that the fornicator among the Corinthians — his deed being known to all — should be expelled from the brotherly assembly: "You are puffed up," he says, "and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you." For all knew his crime and yet did not rebuke it. For he was publicly keeping his stepmother in place of a wife; in which matter neither witnesses nor inquiry were needed, nor could the crime be concealed by any evasion. Therefore the apostle, not delaying judgment against him, said: "Absent in body but present in spirit" — for whose authority is nowhere absent — "I have already judged him who has done this deed as though I were present."

Thus the entire body of the Scriptures supports the judgments of the lord apostolic. Hence those who contradict and pervert them can most easily be convicted. For he in no way deviated from the footsteps of the holy Fathers. In vain, therefore, did certain contentious men murmur that a delay had not been given to the king and his accomplices, and that the pope had immediately excommunicated them — after their crimes had been so contumaciously made public, held of no account, and so stubbornly defended; and after they had most wretchedly polluted the holy Church, and with excessive audacity had professed their disobedience before so many and such well-known witnesses — nowhere else but in the Roman synod, and this made public in writing and by name.

In the very anathema itself, the lord apostolic, in the name and on behalf of God the Father Almighty and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and by the authority of Saint Peter, commanded all Christians that no one should henceforth in any way obey the excommunicated king as king, or serve him, or observe any oath sworn to him or to be sworn. A considerable portion of the princes of the kingdom, taking heed of this, repeatedly refused to come to him when summoned, striving most diligently to have a zeal for God in accordance with knowledge.

For even if they knew him to be excommunicated unjustly and not canonically, still according to the statute of the Council of Sardica they ought in no way to be in communion with him unless they first knew him to be reconciled. Fearing therefore to be in communion with the still-hardened king — since they could neither rebuke, punish, nor correct him — and since they shrank from consenting to him, they took care, as was fitting, to avoid him.

Wherefore in the autumn the leading men of the kingdom agreed to hold a conference with him at Magdeburg, where they might define by common counsel what was to be done in so great a matter, and where it would be permissible for them to serve their king and lord once he had been warned, converted to penance, and reconciled. After they had gathered there with no small military forces, the king sat with his flatterers this side of the Rhine at the town of Oppenheim, with a considerable gathering of his confederates — threatening and bold at their urging and persuasion. The leading men of the kingdom, dwelling on the near bank of the Rhine, debated among themselves, and each one, with God as the giver, carefully conferred with the others privately about what they ought to decide in so monstrous an affair.

There the legates of the apostolic see had arrived, bringing letters appropriate to the case; in these letters the pope also now laid upon the Bishop of Passau — to whom the apostolic commission had long since been granted in his place — the charge of canonically reconciling all who came worthily to make satisfaction and worthy penance, except the king alone; namely those who wished henceforth to stand on the side of Saint Peter.

Of these, the Archbishop of Mainz with his military retinue, the archbishops of Trier and Strasbourg, the bishops of Verdun, Liège, Münster, the bishop-elect of Utrecht, the bishops of Speyer and Basel, and the Bishop of Constance at Ulm — these bishops, and many abbots, and a considerable multitude of greater and lesser persons — were reconciled there and received back into communion, on account of the guilt of communion with the king, or because they themselves had been excommunicated for disobedience, or because they had received the Masses and offices of priests condemned for incontinence or the heresy of simony.

At length, after ten days spent in such deliberations, when the king saw and heard that so many and such great men had humbly yielded to the apostolic dignity, and that they had deliberated to appoint another king in his place, he himself — though unwilling and reluctant, and nearly out of his senses with grief — barely feigned compliance, not only to the pope, but also to the princes of the kingdom in all things whatsoever they wished to impose upon him and have him observe.

Then it seemed good to them, among other things, that first the Bishop of Worms should have his see and city freely restored to him; that the queen should depart from there with all her people; that the hostages of the Saxons should be returned to them; that the king should completely separate himself from his excommunicated associates; and that he should without delay send letters to Pope Gregory firmly declaring that he would maintain due obedience, make satisfaction, and perform worthy penance — while he himself, remaining according to their counsel in the meantime, should await the apostolic reply and reconciliation from him.

All these things and more the king immediately carried out — though not with entire sincerity. From there he sent the letters, composed according to what they had agreed among themselves and sealed in their presence — which, however, he afterward secretly altered and changed at his own pleasure — to be presented to the pope in Rome through the Bishop of Trier. The leading men of the kingdom, fearing the habitual treachery and folly of the king's counselors, of which they had so often had experience, themselves swiftly sent to Rome equally trustworthy legates who had been present at all the proceedings there — lest the pope be deceived by their tricks — humbly entreating and imploring him through the mercy of God to deign to come to these regions to settle this dissension.

Moreover, to bind the king more firmly to obedience to the apostolic see, before they parted from one another they took an oath that if he remained under excommunication on his own account for more than a year, they would no longer consider him their king. Then, out of fear of the king's future revenge and injury against them — for they had left him unseen and ungreeted by many of them, and very angry with them — having given one another a mutual pledge of assistance should anything befall them on that account, each one returned proudly to his own home.

After this conference ended around the Kalends of November, an unusually great snowfall immediately began to cover the lands on all sides. This, as a presage and sign of future evils, not only stunned the regions this side of the Alps, but also — what seemed all the more remarkable — all of Lombardy, with an unheard-of excess. Indeed, through the excessive freeze of the cold, both the Rhine and the Po — to say nothing of the other rivers — became so solidly frozen that for a long time they presented a kind of icy road over themselves for all travelers, as if on dry land.

Such a harsh and snowy winter, sustained by the force of the cold, lasted until the Ides of March — that is, from the aforesaid conference until the conference held at Forchheim by the leading men of the kingdom. And on that very day the snow began to diminish little by little, melting and sliding away across all the lands.

The king, after the aforesaid conference near Oppenheim was concluded, remained for some time at Speyer with the guardians and administrators appointed to him by the leading men of the kingdom, living after the manner of penitents. Thereafter, suspecting that the princes' aforesaid oath was directed against him as treachery and cunning subversion, he gathered his counselors from all sides, recklessly set aside the agreement of his chief men, and — with all his energy and keenest ingenuity, lest he be deprived of his kingdom — armed himself most carefully by bringing together every kind of scrutiny and counsel from his men.

The Bishop of Toul, and likewise the Bishop of Speyer, along with many others upon whom this obligation had been laid by the Bishop of Passau out of obedience, arrived at Rome and presented themselves to the pope as guilty, with due satisfaction and obedience. After he had canonically reconciled them, he had them placed in solitary confinement in certain monastic custody houses to test their obedience for some time — until, barely brought out through the intercession of the empress, they were permitted to return home without the rank that had not been restored to them, only with permission for communion.

Hard on their heels the Archbishop of Trier followed in great haste with the royal legation's letters, greeted the pope, and presented the falsified letters to him. The pope refused to have them read unless in the presence of the legates of the kingdom's leading men, so that those who had been present at the letters' composition and dispatch might serve as witnesses to the reading. When they were therefore read aloud, the legates recognized that the content was far different from what had been composed and sealed in the presence of the kingdom's leading men; they testified most freely before God the Lord that it was not the same, but had been altered and changed in places. Thus the Archbishop of Trier — though at first he had begun to defend the letters — was at last convicted and reminded by them, and publicly confessed in the letters that there had been fraud: not his own, but that of some other person unknown to him.

Thus all the pretenses of the king's obedience — which a lying letter, not the truth of the heart, had produced — deceitful fabrications and full of deceptions, the lord apostolic had vigilantly detected, along with the empress.

Wherefore the pope was by no means willing to agree to what the king had urgently requested — namely, that he be permitted to come to Rome to be reconciled with the pope — but by apostolic authority he commanded that the king should meet him to be heard and reconciled in the presence of the kingdom's leading men at Augsburg; and he sent back word most firmly through the legates of both parties that he himself would come to them there around the feast of the Purification of Mary, God willing.

Having received the letters of apostolic blessing — in which he had diligently forewarned them, as was fitting, greatly regarding their conduct, regarding other necessary matters, and regarding peace — they had returned happily to their homeland, heralding the coming of so great a guest.

All the leading men of the kingdom therefore, receiving gladly what the letters had made known, and preparing themselves most eagerly with all the effort of their minds to observe all these things in every way, were not a little cheered by the considerable hope of restoring ecclesiastical religion and observance.

The king, however, with a far different intention in his heart, upon learning of the pope's plan, was scheming with the greatest shrewdness and industry in all his counsels to intercept him before he entered this region. For he proposed either to gather money and engage by whatever means the largest military force of his men, so as to strike terror into the pope and force him to flight; or through the Romans and other counselors of the pope, corrupted by such great gifts and thus made into his steadfast supporters, to bend him to his will. If not, then those same most fierce and savage men together with him would resist, so as to expel the pope forthwith from his throne in an act of outrage and substitute another in his place according to the king's heart; and thus, elected and ordained to the empire by the latter, he would return gloriously with his wife to his homeland.

But if the pope, overcome by the fears, threats, and blandishments of the Romans, should prove entirely compliant to the king in all things, the king most foolishly premeditated that he would henceforth be favorable to himself and most severe to his adversaries.

Urged and emboldened by these and many other follies of his counselors, as rumor had it, he raised himself stubbornly against the already-arranged correction by the kingdom's leading men and the recovery of Christian religion, and did not cease to oppress their magistrates by whatever means and to free himself entirely from them according to his own pleasure.

To this end a certain marquis by the name of Operto, arriving from Lombardy at that time, encouraged the king above all others. Being magnificently gifted and honored by the king for this very reason, on his journey home near Augsburg he was overtaken by sudden death, fell from his horse, and so — having already treated the apostolic anathema as of no account, but now experiencing in fact how great its weight was — how wretchedly and damnably he perished.

Year 1077

The king celebrated the Lord's nativity at Besancon in Burgundy, tarrying there barely one day as best he could. From there, taking his wife and son with him, together with all his retinue and equipment — as had already been decided beforehand — having crossed the Rhone at Geneva, he swiftly entered Lombardy through the diocese of Turin. From there, gathering all the men he could from every side, he arrived at Pavia, assembling there from everywhere the crowd of excommunicated bishops as well; and, as if meaning somehow to arm himself with the majesty of a defender of their cause, he told them most cunningly that he intended to meet with the pope — not so much on his own account as to have from the pope an inquiry made into the sentence of the anathema, so injurious to them.

But they on their part strongly discouraged the king from even mentioning the name of the apostolic himself — whom, at his command, they had so solemnly abjured and utterly cast off, and whom together they had duly condemned under the censure of the anathema, severing him forever from the body of the Church. Nevertheless, since the false-king himself would be entirely reckless if he annulled this, and would thereby most justly incur their resentment — since the constraint of such unavoidable necessity pressed him — they judged it fitting to yield for the time being and to comply.

But thereafter, after this dispensatory and for him so necessary meeting with the pope, he should work with all his effort most industriously alongside them to find how he might thoroughly free himself and the entire kingdom from so sacrilegious a man. If he failed to do so, they made clear, he would without doubt know himself to be deprived of his kingdom, his honor, and even in part of his life — because of the folly of so cunning a recognition of the apostolic's holy name and acknowledgment of his heretical usurpation; and he should not in the least doubt that all who had always been most unconquerable in readiness to go with him to death and destruction would likewise perish and be condemned.

But after the legates of the king and likewise of the kingdom's leading men were dismissed by the pope and had begun to return home, the pope himself — most ready to lay down his soul for his sheep — immediately set out for the place and time they had agreed upon, barely climbing and crawling his way over the Alps by a most difficult route.

He arrived hastily at the place they had agreed upon, and there, according to their arrangement, eagerly awaited the guides for his journey. But in vain. For after the German princes had learned of the king's flight across the Alps — so sudden and furtive — they had grown greatly afraid of his plots and attacks, and had entirely ceased to meet him or provide the promised escort to the pope, however reluctantly and unwillingly. Thus the pope waited for them for some time at the castle of Canossa. But when they could barely send word back to him that they could in no way come to him, given so many dangers standing in the way, then he himself, deeply troubled that he had come there in vain, yet not despairing that he might somehow make his way to the German lands as necessity for the holy Church demanded, decided to remain there for some time on account of this situation.

He also considered that the king's journey and the plans of his counselors were of little benefit to him or to the holy Church — since the king had made the Lombards, whom he had already found rebellious toward God and himself, considerably more rebellious still, and had wonderfully provoked the German peoples, already thoroughly divided among themselves by no small schism, stirring them up over what to do with so reckless a man, and had greatly disturbed the whole kingdom on all sides. Therefore, as befitted a truly apostolic man, he cast all his care upon the Lord, and persisted day and night in tearful prayers, that God might divinely inspire him as to how so great a matter ought rightly to be determined by synodical procedure.

At length the king, having taken his supporters' wholesome enough counsel, and having entirely abandoned the earlier scheme which in his wicked and hateful foolishness he had devised against the pope, resolved — above all through the intercession and help of the Lady Matilda the marchioness, of his mother-in-law Adelaide likewise a marchioness, and of the Abbot of Cluny, who had himself recently come to Rome reconciled with the pope on account of the king's communion — and through all others he could draw to his side, to meet the pope, and to submit to him in all things, to yield, to obey, and to consent. With this intention, however much he concealed it among the Lombards, having sent messengers ahead to bring the aforementioned intermediaries to him, he himself gradually followed them to the aforementioned castle.

These intermediaries, hastening to meet the king at the appointed place, debated long among themselves in manifold discussion about the matter for which they had assembled, and weighed everything carefully with prudent deliberation. Yet they had noted with considerable suspicion, through diligent observation, certain crafty and deceptive twists in the promises, which they feared to bring before the pope — a man truly most experienced in such causes through long practice and daily use — as though they were plain and entirely truthful. Nevertheless, soon afterward, as necessity demanded, returning to him, they related to him in full and truthful order whatever they had judged to be feigned and perfidious.

The king followed immediately on their heels, and arrived precipitously at the gate of the castle, still unexpected, and without any apostolic response or invitation from him, rushed forward miserably with his excommunicated companions, and knocking insistently, begged urgently to be allowed to enter. There, clad in wool, barefoot, shivering with cold, he lodged outside the castle with his companions for three days; and thus, examined most strictly through many tests and trials of proof, and found obedient as far as human judgment could see, he tearfully awaited the grace of Christian communion and apostolic reconciliation, as is the custom of penitents.

The lord pope, however, who had been most cautious about being deceived as much as about deceiving, and who had been so many times deluded by the king's numerous promises, did not readily believe his words. After many weighty consultations he was barely persuaded to this: that if the king were ready to confirm, either personally or through those witnesses he would name, by oath the conditions of obedience and satisfaction which he was now about to impose upon him for the benefit and welfare of the holy Church, and moreover consented to give pledges of faithfully observing this oath in future into the hands of those intermediaries who were present, as well as of the empress who had not yet arrived, and to ratify this agreement in that manner — then he would not refuse to receive him back into Christian communion.

When the king received this response from the pope, he and all his companions judged the terms proposed to be extremely harsh; nevertheless, since he could in no way be reconciled otherwise, he consented, utterly reluctantly, whether he willed it or not.

In the end, however, it was barely obtained from the pope that the king himself should not take the oath. Two bishops, those of Naples and Vercelli, together with others of his household who would swear afterward, were chosen to take the oath on his behalf. These men swore, to summarize the substance of the oath, in the following manner: that their lord Henry, whenever the pope should summon him to a day of inquiry and peace with the princes of the kingdom, whether by his judgment or his mercy, he would appear; and that neither he himself nor any of his men would inflict any harm upon the lord pope or his legates, wherever they might travel throughout the realm for the governance of the Church, neither by imprisonment nor by mutilation of their members; and, if they were harmed by any other party, he himself, as soon as he was able, would aid them in good faith; and if any obstacle prevented him from observing the terms and the delay which the lord pope had established, then as soon as he possibly could, he would hasten without delay to observe them.

With this pact as described, entry and access to the pope was opened to the king, who was weeping with a great flood of tears, and to the other excommunicates, who were likewise weeping greatly. What a torrent of tears was poured out on both sides — no one could easily recount it. There the lord pope, himself deeply shaken by pitiable weeping for the lost sheep to be sought from God, having duly exhorted them, as was fitting, once they had humbly prostrated themselves and confessed the stubbornness of their presumption, to worthy expressions of canonical reconciliation and apostolic consolation, he introduced them into the church, thus reconciled by apostolic pardon and blessing and restored to Christian communion.

Thereafter, having offered the customary prayer for them, and having graciously greeted the king and five bishops — those of Strasbourg, Bremen, Lausanne, Basel, and Naples — and the other greater men with the holy kiss, the pope himself celebrated Mass, and at the moment of communion, having called the king to him, extended to him the Eucharist which he had previously forbidden him. The king, however, declaring himself unworthy to partake of it, departed without communicating. At this the pope promptly drew, not unwisely — by the revelation of the Spirit — a kind of sign of impurity, and as it were a testimony of some hidden hypocrisy lurking within him, and he did not presume thenceforth to trust entirely and wholly in the king's word.

At length a sufficiently proper meal was prepared and they sat down together at the same table, sustaining themselves with a moderate and seemly repast. Rising from it with thanksgiving and exchanging no more than the most necessary admonitions about the promise of obedience, the pledge of faith, not violating the oath, the doing of perfect penance, and guarding against the Lombards' anathema, the king, having received the apostolic leave and blessing, departed from there with his companions — except for the bishops, whom the pope ordered to be imprisoned there, as seemed good to him.

Moreover, a certain pact of oath that the king's household still owed to the pope was demanded of them. But when they attempted to pervert it by contentious discord, interpreting it far differently than it had been established, and feared that they might quickly be caught by the pope in the guilt of perjury, they had deceitfully evaded swearing it altogether by every means. Among them the Bishop of Augsburg had slipped away at night without leave by a clandestine flight, unreconciled. Thus, having artfully deceived and cheated the pope in the first agreement they had made together, they departed as liars.

Meanwhile, when the pope dispatched two bishops, those of Ostia and Palestrina, for the need and governance of the holy Church to Milan, Pavia, and the other cities of those regions, and they were thus making their way to Piacenza not without fruit, they were seized by the schismatic archbishop of Piacenza, a perjurer and one under anathema. Of these, the bishop of Palestrina was released a little afterward, while the bishop of Ostia was sent to be imprisoned in a certain castle. While he was held there in chains for some time, the king — striving with every cunning contrivance for the gains of his greed — though the pope had barely granted him the license to accept from them, during his Lombard journey, necessary service only, while canonically their communion was to be entirely avoided, had utterly forgotten the oath he had sworn to help the apostolic legates, and showed them not so much as one word's worth of compassionate assistance.

But when the king wished to be crowned at Pavia according to the rite of the Lombard law, and sent intermediaries to the pope to obtain permission for this, the answer given to them was that, as long as Peter was in chains, the king would have no license from apostolic authority in this matter. Nor could he extort the pope's help even so. At length, however, with the empress and the Lady Matilda interceding, the bishop of Ostia was released from prison after some time of detention.

Around the same time, that Roman Quintius, who — to heap up the measure of his damnation — had also kept the bishop of Como, already captured, near the church of Saint Peter in Rome, had endeavored to visit the king at Pavia with the bishop and to make himself sufficiently rewarded by him; for he did not at all doubt that he had merited no small expressions of gratitude from the king, not only on account of the bishop but also on account of the capture of the lord pope himself, so sacrilegious as it was. When he arrived at court, the king, carefully avoiding him because of the anathema, had not dared to kiss him or greet him as one normally greets friends, and feigned that he could not yet receive him as he deserved and as he had greatly merited, supposedly on account of certain pressing occupations. And so day by day he kept putting off giving him his due reception.

Quintius, somewhat angered, declared that he was being treated with contempt and mockery, until at last, persistent, he extorted from the king the firmest promise that the fitting greeting and rewards owed him would be delivered. But on that very night of the appointed day, a deadly swelling suddenly having blocked his throat, condemned to eternal death, without having seen or been greeted by the king, in an instant he swiftly descended to hell.

Thus the king, most greedily scraping together copious quantities of gold, silver, and fine cloths from those regions, wherever and from whatever source he could, having traversed them throughout all of Lent, and seeking no license as he should have from the pope for the kingdom already placed under interdict, celebrated Palm Sunday at Verona with great boldness and agitation. From there, the schismatic bishop of Vercelli, his most intimate companion, having departed, was himself overtaken by sudden death on the road along which he was traveling happily, fell at once from the horse he was riding, and in a moment expired most miserably.

But when the chief men of the realm had learned of the king's treachery, the breaking of the pact made at Oppenheim, his flight, his feigned reconciliation, and all his cunning machinations throughout Lombardy, they assembled at Ulm after Christmas to take counsel on so great a matter. And because only a few had come together there, hindered by the excessive harshness of a snowy winter and bitter cold, they sent letters and their own legates to the princes and bishops of the Lotharingians and the Saxons, and also of the Bavarians, earnestly admonishing them — adjuring them by the faith they had mutually pledged to one another and above all by the mercy of God — and urgently imploring them to assemble at least by the third day before the Ides of March at Forchheim, and there, having held discussion and taken prudent counsel, to resolve definitively whatever seemed best to them concerning the state of the kingdom and Church and the protection of their necessary way of life.

The lord pope, being of no small compassion and kindness, had diligently and graciously done all he could in accordance with what they so desired, and had sent to the same assembly the cardinal deacon of the holy Roman Church, as well as the abbot of Marseilles, as legates, with his instructive letters. He himself, however, remained in that same castle until the month of August, greatly distressed though he was by the scandals and opposition of so many heretics and schismatics; and from there, since the road into the German lands for the settling of so many discords was not open to him, he revisited his Rome in considerable glory, received with the greatest honor by the citizens of Rome who came out to meet him and saluted him reverently.

Duke Rudolf also, with the counsel of the other princes of the realm, after he had heard that the king was truly reconciled, sent a messenger to him, most urgently and graciously beseeching him not to come into the German lands at all until he had sent ahead either the pope or the empress, who would carefully prepare a fitting and peaceful reception for him. For this purpose the pope, approached and invited by that same legate, had declared himself most ready — but only after receiving from the king himself a guarantee of peace and faith confirmed by oath. The king, however, stubbornly disdaining the embassy, deigned to carry out neither the sending of security to the pope nor the request for a timely advance dispatch.

At length on the said Ides, as had been deliberated, the greater part of the nobility of the realm assembled. There, having held discussion, they accused the king with very many most grievous proclamations and complaints of injustices and wrongs which he had inflicted upon them, upon the chief men of the whole realm, and upon the churches; and because the pope had so forbidden them to obey or serve the king, they stripped him of the royal dignity, and adjudged him not even worthy of the name of king on account of his countless unheard-of crimes; but they resolved unanimously to elect and establish another in his place.

The legates of the apostolic see, having heard there of so sacrilegious a man, were not a little astonished that they had endured him over themselves for so long. Nevertheless they did not keep silent about what had been enjoined upon them, but rather made known before all in a public hearing the instruction of their legation: that if it could be brought about by any prudent means, they should still somehow endure him a while longer and by no means elect another king; otherwise, they themselves — since they were far better acquainted with the dangers they had experienced from necessity — should carry out whatever seemed to them best above all else, the pope not opposing.

The apostolic letters were also read aloud there at that time, in which, besides the account and notice of the Christian communion granted to the king that was mentioned, it was also contained that his subjects ought not to rejoice overmuch at the hope and progress of his penitence, since he had made the Lombards, whom he had found sufficiently disobedient, most disobedient and from bad had made them worse; and for this reason all those who had previously been under his hand and scepter were most diligently exhorted and counseled by apostolic watchfulness that, in order to overcome such necessities happily, commending themselves solely to the Lord God, they should run ever more attentively and progressively each day in the way and love of justice, and thus by persevering in running in it, should merit to be crowned by God.

Therefore, exceedingly trusting and strengthened in the grace of God, the bishops deliberated separately, and the senatorial order separately, for a long time and at length about the establishment of a king. At last, when the whole assembly of senators and populace, eager for new things, was waiting most attentively for the spiritual and divine vote of the bishops first — as men of spiritual station — in nominating and electing a king, Rudolf, Duke of Alemannia, was first named and elected king by them, first by the bishop of Mainz, then by the rest. Without delay the whole senate and populace followed, all legitimately submitting themselves to him in that same cause with the customary sworn fidelity.

With this election — truly not heretical, being legitimately carried out by the common vote and acclamation of the whole people, upon a man who did not desire it, was unwilling, and was compelled — he immediately traveled through Bamberg and Würzburg, and arriving at Mainz in the middle of Lent, was there by those same bishops and the assembly of the whole people acclaimed, anointed, and ordained as the rightful king, ruler, and defender of the whole kingdom of the Franks.

That very same day the citizens of Mainz deliberately provoked a battle against him, of whom more than a hundred fell, and only two on the king's side; the rest were barely saved from death by flight and the onset of night. Thus the king's soldiers gained a marvelous victory, and had brought such terror upon the citizens that early the very next morning they surrendered themselves as guilty to their bishop and lord, and having obtained his favor, barely acquired also the king's favor, with him interceding for all he could.

The citizens of Worms also, having gathered no small military forces from all sides, conspired in rebellion against their king and their bishop. Wherefore the king, bypassing that city, turned aside to Tribur, and thus traveling through Lorsch and Esslingen, and pausing at Ulm for Palm Sunday, had set out toward Augsburg in Rhaetia to celebrate Easter there. For during Holy Week he had proposed to discuss and arrange there with his princes many things necessary for the kingdom and the holy Church; but they began one by one to withdraw from him — driven by some misfortune, I know not what. Not only the newly enlisted soldiers, but also the veterans who had long since confirmed their fealty to him by oath, themselves too, making light of perjury, had apostatized.

He had also already sent ahead from the city of Würzburg invitatory letters to the pope, that he might deign to come into his regions for the governance of ecclesiastical affairs, intending to send guides; but he could not at all carry this out at the time for lack of soldiers. He had barely managed to gather with him only three bishops: those of Würzburg, Worms, and Passau. The fourth, the bishop of Augsburg — most crafty by all his cunning devices, with a heart harder than adamant — had so stubbornly resisted the legates of the apostolic see and their canonical sentences for two full days that he could by no means be compelled to obey the pope or the king.

At last, though feigning it, barely convicted by everyone, he confessed that he had sinned in communicating with his lord King Henry, and for that reason was deprived of his priestly office by the apostolic legates and subjected to due penance. Yet before they departed, the king having most humbly and persistently implored them in every way, his office was restored to him for a time only.

There indeed, on the holy day of Easter, while the king and all the clergy and people stood solemnly in a great procession at the church of Saint John, the apostolic legates gave and confirmed — with sound reason and canonical authority — a command that this usurpation should no longer take place at all in the Church, which certain simpler brethren rashly and presumptuously practice contrary to the decrees of Pope Clement. For on Holy Saturday, before the chrism is poured into the baptismal water, they are accustomed to sprinkle all those standing around from that water; and receiving it in their vessels, they abuse this usurpative and disordered sprinkling throughout all of Pentecost in just this way — not heeding the rational and irrefutable statute of the holy Pope Alexander, who commands that on all Sundays the exorcism of salt and water should be performed by priests, and that the people's workshops and their premises should be sprinkled from it.

There at the cell of Saint Gall, Lutold, a venerable brother of that same monastery, was set over it as abbot, regularly elected by the brethren.

The king, having celebrated Easter there in sufficiently festive fashion, traveled back through Ulm and entered Reichenau, and from there came to Constance. At this point the bishop of the city, most carefully avoiding the audience of the apostolic see's legates as well as the presence of the royal majesty, withdrew to a certain castle of Count Otto, and remained there throughout that whole year — the office having been entirely forbidden him the previous year by the pope, and yet not at all avoided by him for that reason.

For it is noted that at Worms, by the miracle of divine vengeance due to him for the conspiracy of disobedience, he began to limp, and thus went on limping thereafter in his weakened state. Nevertheless he had already received communion — not the office — from the bishop of Passau before the colloquy at Oppenheim. And he who for the previous two full years could in no way be compelled to this had not ceased from that point forward, rebelliously and stubbornly contrary to all right, to ordain clerics, consecrate churches, and persistently exercise all other episcopal rights.

The apostolic legates, having summoned the college of brethren there, held a chapter with them concerning the flight and disobedience of their bishop, as well as his other acts of rashness, negligence, and presumption. There, having granted a delay, they summoned the bishop before them, and commanded most firmly by apostolic authority that no one should accept his ministry.

They had entirely condemned the Simoniac heresy and the Nicolaitan heresy — which reigns immoderately in that bishopric, subject to an exceedingly vast populace — in accordance with the sentence given in the Roman synod. And they had especially and above all repeated the command there that no Christian should accept the ministrations of clerics condemned for incontinence.

Moreover, having discovered there that the judgments of certain priests and the testimony of their seven fellow-brethren on these matters, in support of recovering their churches — which they were convicted by the most evident testimony of many laymen to have acquired simoniacally — were customarily accepted by that bishop, they proved irrefutably that by canonical reason these judgments and testimonies could in no way lawfully be accepted. If, however, they were accused of any crime other than heresies, they did not reject such judgments and testimonies. But if any of the clergy were accused of heresy, they reasonably affirmed that the testimony of all Christians holding the catholic faith — clergy, laity, men and women — ought to be accepted against such a person. Therefore they commanded by apostolic sanction and coercion that what they had attested must be done by canonical scriptural authority should be entirely observed in cases of this kind.

The king at last traveled from there to Zurich, where he tarried for some time. At that season the greater part of the incontinent clergy and the Simonists, despising the apostolic sentence, had stubbornly returned to their vomit, emboldened by the hope of help and defense from King Henry and from his schismatic bishops. And because they greatly feared to be corrected by King Rudolf, they did not cease in every way to oppose and slander him — condemning him, anathematizing him, and detesting him in every manner. Henry, on the other hand, whom nearly the whole realm had long since calumniously spurned as notorious for his most widely known crimes and wickedness, to be cast far out from the Church, they now proclaimed on the contrary, with the most outrageous praises, exalted above the heavens and as if most unjustly condemned — with enough wailing and lamentation.

But this supremely flattering praise of him, and that hostile disparagement of the other, which I say with all due respect to them — this chorus of heretical and incorrigible persons, consisting of anti-Christian bishops, together with their subordinate clerics, canons, monks, village priests, and such synagogues of theirs, did not cease to proclaim, disseminate everywhere, and attest with unheard-of lies.

The crowd of common people, seduced by such persons, believed nothing else, did or knew nothing else, than what they had always heard from their speeches and false testimonies. Hence clearly no small variety of schisms sprang up throughout the whole kingdom. No bond of kinship, no confidence of friendship, no obedience of due subjection, no regard for the fear or love of God, no compact of faith, no debt of justice, no honor for anyone, nor even the imagination of what God has always contained in His statutes, the observance of His own law and the order of at least customary stewardship — none of these had remained intact. But from the least to the greatest, all had applied themselves most cleverly and indiscriminately to greed, attending to neither divine nor human things. Discipline was nowhere; genuine, precious modesty was nowhere; truth was most rare; countless myriads of lies reigned everywhere. Thus the enormity of frauds, the harshness of scandals, and the manifold number of all evils in every form did not cease to spread themselves beyond measure.

King Henry, meanwhile, having spent Easter in the bishopric of Aquileia, after he had most cunningly drawn the Lombards to himself by every means and recruited them as helpers and wholly inseparable allies in the usual chain of subjection, and having commended his son to the care of the Simoniac schismatic bishops — those of Milan, Piacenza, and the other excommunicates throughout Italy — himself, taking his wife and no small amount of money scraped together from that region by whatever means, barely made his way with a few companions through the sheer mountain passes of Carinthia into Bavaria by a clandestine and unexpected intrusion.

Soon at Regensburg, having held a colloquy with the princes of the Bavarians, the Bohemians, and the Carinthians, and with the patriarch of Aquileia — not a very reputable man — whom he had brought along with him from there, concerning all that had happened, he tearfully laid before them — as he had recently done with the Lombards — no small proclamations of complaint about his deposition, and promised that those whom he himself had raised up from certain humble stations to such great lordships, would be gratefully rewarded with their dignities and benefices, and honored by him, as his most faithful men, so that he might be avenged upon those who opposed him, with their aid and support, in accordance with his desire.

With magnificent gifts they were promptly and indiscriminately corrupted, and by whatever scheme he could devise, they were urgently recruited from everywhere for his aid; in a short time he gathered a considerable army of auxiliaries — nearly twelve thousand men — with whom, attempting to engage the new king, he moved forward with a military force to meet him.

Beyond these, nearly the whole strength of the Burgundians, the schismatic bishops of Basel and Strasbourg — who had recently been reconciled with the pope and professed that they would henceforth remain on the side of justice — also a considerable part of the Franconians, Count Palatine Hermann, who was to become King Rudolf's son-in-law, and the greatest part of the king's soldiers, whom he had long sworn to fidelity and of whose steadfastness he had not doubted, as well as nearly all his kinsmen and close relations, to whom he himself had always been most faithful — all these had joined together in adherence to King Henry; but from the other king, making light of faith and oath, they had one by one withdrawn.

This, which we note above all others as especially worthy of notice, was brought about by three causes. First, because they greatly feared to be corrected by him according to the rule of justice, as has been said before. Second, because it is almost natural that vicious citizens should always envy virtuous ones. And third, which is properly to serve idols: for all were demanding and exacting from him that the insatiable void of their greed be gorged through the monstrous abuse of unheard-of profusion — namely, that the kingdom, which he had been compelled to receive miserably ruined so that he might gather it together, he should scatter it yet more miserably for distribution among them. And because in his prudence he had not consented to this, almost all of them — excepting only a very few persons of sound mind — had wonderfully flocked together, as it were, into the cesspool of defilement, back to their old scatterer.

Thereupon King Henry, strengthened by so great an abundance of auxiliaries, had invaded Alemannia to devastate it with plundering, pillage, and burning. There was no distinction between sacred and profane. The Bohemians had openly ravished women in churches, led away captives in their customary manner, and held church and stable in equal reverence; and thus confounding all law and lawlessness together, they ranged over a considerable part of that land with hostile savagery after the manner of pagans — reaching as far as they could, though not without the greatest fear, from the marches of East Francia and the River Main through the River Neckar and the town of Esslingen up to Ulm and the Danube.

For they knew that King Rudolf had encamped with no small army in the siege of a certain castle near the Danube, and had been waiting there for the assembly of his soldiers, whom he had been able to gather from all sides in so brief a space of time.

King Henry, however, having held a colloquy at Ulm with those he could gather, caused King Rudolf to be condemned by formal judgment along with his dukes Berthold and Welf and the other leading men of the Alemanni who sided with him — adjudged according to Alemannic law as worthy of being put to the sword — and likewise to be deprived of their dignities and benefices. He immediately enriched certain of his own men with those benefices; and thus, in his customary manner, he urgently recruited these and all others he could, bound by oath, to his aid.

There the aforementioned patriarch, having read out before the people forged letters, as if sent from the lord pope through him into these regions, defended his king in every way and most flatteringly qualified him as most worthy to bear the royal scepter. After such lying flattery, he at last rushed off home in haste, and promising with great and costly display that he would most zealously serve in the king's support in whatever way he could, was suddenly seized with maniacal fury and became possessed. And having been demoniacally tormented for some time by this terrifying madness — an example to all liars and apostates — he breathed his last in total insanity, with a damnable end. And so he was carried back to his see to be buried, together with some of his companions who were likewise snatched away by sudden death. O how fearsome is the Lord, the God of vengeance! And how terrible in His counsels concerning the sons of men!

This man, once inflamed with the zeal of God, and having come the previous year to the colloquy at Oppenheim with the most honorable servants of God — the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishop of Passau and other soldiers of Christ — had applied himself most diligently and more than other chief men of the realm to ecclesiastical reform and to the necessary discipline and improvement of the Christian religion; and like an angel of the Lord of hosts, and in accordance with his name the prince of fathers, had stood against King Henry and all those disobedient and opposed to God and Saint Peter with the two-edged sword of the spirit — threatening and terrible, manfully resisting on all sides. But now, corrupted by no small enticements of mammon, as a most fickle apostate and leader of error he unhappily turned aside from the zeal and justice of God. Wherefore, with God as judge — most observant of equity — even here he tasted a little of his portion of the cup as an example to all who wished to look; and having tasted it, he will never, in his thirst, cease at all to drink what has been tasted — a draft to be drained in eternity and beyond without end.

Year 1078

King Rudolf celebrated the Nativity of the Lord in Saxony at Goslar most gloriously with very great forces of the Saxon people. King Henry, however, barely remained at Regensburg for two days, not very festively in any fashion, and then hastened back to the siege of a certain castle from which he had come there, wandering uncertainly through places in those eastern parts of the Norican region until the middle of Lent, and ravaging that land as well with considerable hostile incursions of this kind. Thence also he dispatched his legates, the bishops of Osnabrück and Verdun, to Rome to the lord pope and to the Roman synod to conduct his case there.

The apostolic legation and the letters of reminder from the Roman cardinal addressed to him, however — the contempt, trampling down, and disobedience of which he proclaimed openly to all with full effort — he concealed altogether with a most cunning pretense, as if he heard nothing at all or very little about it. He also awaited those legates returning from the synod to Regensburg with no small anxiety; for as his own conscience bore witness, he did not doubt that something new that he most emphatically did not want had been reported to him from the apostolic see.

King Rudolf likewise, and all his supporters, had sent their legates to the same synod — not those they would have wished, but such as they were able to send, and these under some clever and dissembling pretext — demanding true obedience in all things to the lord pope, and commending most skillfully with unanimous entreaty that he might deign to look with paternal concern upon the tyrannical and so lamentable desolation of the holy Church. The legates of King Henry, however, since they could go openly and bring about all they wished through peaceful free choice, never ceased by bribes, lies, promises, flatteries, and tearful complaints, as well as by every art and stratagem — skilled as they were in such matters — to draw to the favor of their king all persons from the least to the greatest, having corrupted, deceived, and led them all, and contrariwise to incite the greatest hatred and slanders against King Rudolf.

The synod then, at the appointed time — that is, on the 3rd of the Nones of March — was opened in canonical order, and numbered nearly 70 bishops. Among them was Bishop Albanus, who was one of the brothers dwelling in the Florentine diocese in the place called Vallombrosa, who walked through fire and flame twelve feet in length, and — untouched by the flame and unharmed — proved by manifest judgment that Peter, who was called bishop of the Florentine church, was truly a simoniacal heretic and was therefore not to be received, nor his heretical ministrations.

There too was present from the regions of Gaul the bishop of Die, who was made bishop not by human but by divine election. For while he was setting out from his home to Rome for the purpose of prayer, he came to the city of Die to lodge there for the night. Now Gerald, bishop of Ostia and legate of the apostolic see, who had at that time assembled a council in that place for the benefit and need of the Church, on seeing him, rejoiced greatly at his arrival; for he was well known to him and a very dear friend. And having greeted him with a kiss, he immediately said to him: "You have come at a good time, for by God's ordering we are about to have you as bishop and overseer of this church, which has been bereft and left without its bishop."

And he, smiling rather modestly, supposed that he had said this to him in jest. Then, when he truly perceived that this had been said to him not in jest but in earnest, he scarcely obtained from him a postponement for replying until the next day. That very night, planning with all his effort in whatever way he could to escape the burden of pastoral care, without his companions knowing, he secretly withdrew alone from them, and crept into a hiding place in a certain church there, intending to conceal himself. When morning came and he could not be found despite much searching everywhere for a long time, the apostolic legate, taking along with him substantial processions of clergy and all the people, went around those churches most devoutly, seeking him from the Lord with litanies and supplications. But when they came to the church where the fugitive was hiding, a light sent from heaven shone upon him and revealed God's chosen one. Thus exposed in this manner, subject to divine providence, he was compelled to undertake the height of governance, from which he had humbly fled in his heart, though reluctantly.

He was always accustomed to keep near him men of such great authority and reverence, among whose counsel as a faithful and prudent dispenser of God's mysteries he placed most skillfully the accomplishment of his solicitude and his decisions.

In the same synod the legates of King Henry, greatly emboldened and confident in all those supporters they had drawn to themselves in whatever way they could, first promised publicly on their lord's behalf obedience of every kind to the lord pope, and that this should be demonstrated in whatever way possible. Then they complained — themselves foremost and most strenuously, then the whole assembled audience — most fully of the wrongs done to their cause, equipped with every mode and device for this purpose, and verbose enough in oratorical proclamation. All his supporters, murmuring along with them in harmonious agreement as if this cause were most just, earnestly urged that it be decided by the apostolic and synodal judgment.

The state of that case was as follows: that Rudolf, duke and vassal of King Henry, who had been bound by the bonds of oaths to stand by him faithfully and inseparably in aid in all matters pertaining to the defence of his kingdom, had perjuriously and treacherously driven him unjustly from his kingdom together with his other supporters, and had thus rashly invaded the kingdom himself. But they declared that their lord did not make this complaint out of necessity — since he could most easily crush his adversaries — but chiefly because it seemed just and fitting to him first to appeal to the judgment of the apostolic see in this matter.

Accordingly, some judges who favorably supported their intent agreed indiscriminately that on account of so manifest and sacrilegious a deed of such great guilt, King Rudolf deserved to be condemned without delay by a sentence of apostolic anathema; and they were pressing strongly that this, having been decreed judicially, be carried out in canonical form.

The lord pope, however, to whom the full confusion of the case at hand was completely known, and whose favor no flattering argumentation of anyone could easily draw into partiality, publicly protested that he could decree nothing in the matter before a careful examination of both sides, and while the truth of the excommunication already imposed by his cardinal still remained in complete doubt for him. He professed to have heard many times the obedience, legates, and declarations of both kings, both of whom a not inconsiderable part of the kingdom's princes, bishops, and wise and devout men followed, each in his own way. Wherefore he declared that he would necessarily take appropriate counsel on this matter with the chief men and officers of the holy Roman see, as well as with whomever he could, and all those of sound judgment, at a fitting time for this, lest anything be decreed unjustly against either of them by the apostolic see.

To all this he skillfully urged and exhorted everyone, that they should most devoutly supplicate God together on this account, that He might deign to inspire in him the spirit of His divine counsel, by whose guidance Holy Mother Church, miserably scattered by so many heresies, schisms, and discords, might deserve to be united and given peace in Christ.

The sentence on this matter having thus been deferred until Saturday, certain other things that had been beneficial for the use and necessity of the Church were treated with canonical diligence there most carefully and defined. And a sufficiently prudent and discreet counsel was found and defined by the pope and all those consulting with him in Christ regarding King Henry's complaint: namely, that the lord pope himself, or in his place his suitable legates, should come to the German lands, and there in a place most fitting for this purpose, all the chief men, wise men, and leading nobles of the whole kingdom — aside from both kings themselves — should meet with them, and there, after a conference was held and the whole case of both of them had been most justly and without partiality discussed and examined by all, it should either be vindicated or disapproved; and thus by the common prudent and most just judgment and counsel of all, it should be irrefragably determined how the kingdom — which had become so miserably schismatic within itself and perjured — might at last at least not be utterly desolated, but rather rationally consolidated, having been gathered together and recovered in the peace of Christ.

But on the Saturday, the lord pope, lawfully and orderly prepared for this and entering the synod with his suffragans, set forth the aforesaid counsel openly to all. And when it had pleased all, forthwith, confidently speaking and armed with apostolic authority, he condemned universally all — under the bond of an anathema of eternal severity much to be feared — whether kings, dukes, bishops, clerics, or in short all, whatsoever their rank great or small, who by wiles, arts, intrigues, factions, or any devices whatsoever should deliberately and willingly hinder or obstruct in any way the holding of that agreed conference, and who should oppose the legates of the apostolic see in any manner from reaching that same conference, and who should refuse to hold and inviolably observe the definitions which should there be established for this cause and these most serious discords and seditions by the apostolic legates and the other chief men, nobles, and wise men of the kingdom nominated and elected for this approval, agreeing together on this matter.

Thus, when with burning candles thrown down to the ground and extinguished by the pope and his other suffragans in canonical fulfillment of the aforesaid anathema, this sentence of condemnation was being defined, he urgently implored and besought Henry, by the Lord God and by his own love of himself, and admonished him through apostolic fatherly care by his legates, that he should first in this matter demonstrate his obedience, and keep peace with all his adversaries until the completion of that conference.

Then, diligently striving to lead him through the honor of every consideration into agreement and concord, he prudently arranged to send his own messengers together with Henry's legates to him, so that Henry himself should decide, according to his own pleasure, the time and place of the future conference, and once this had been announced without delay and proclaimed beforehand to the kingdom's chief men and all those to be summoned there, the apostolic messenger should return to Rome; so that the legates of the apostolic see, appointed and chosen for this purpose, should at the opportune time and by the direct route also arrive as suitable counselors, mediators, and correctors at this assembly of the pressing case.

Thus the lord pope dismissed the royal legates from his presence — yet without the apostolic blessing for the king that they would have brought back — because rumor had widely proclaimed that he had already been excommunicated by the apostolic legates, though with dubious certainty; and he turned himself effectively to the other matters that still remained to be carried out in synodal form.

In the same synod a sentence of anathema was pronounced against the bishops of Ravenna, Milan, Cremona, and Treviso, as well as against all Simonian heretics and Nicolaitans who were persisting stubbornly and disobediently by their own will and industry in the madness of their error; and especially against those who within two years, rash, obstinate, and incontinent, had by apostolic presumption received back ecclesiastical ordinations acquired for money, had been abandoned, and had received back concubines forbidden to them. These, indeed, not few in number in our regions, were most insanely rising up as rebels against the authentic sanctions of the sacred canons in public tyranny.

Moreover, all orders and consecrations — with the sole exception of baptism — were irrevocably and utterly taken away without hope of restitution by the given judicial sentence from those who had presumed, wherever they had usurpingly assumed office, to be ordained — or rather disordered — by bishops deprived of their office and priestly dignity by apostolic sanction, and not yet restored to order either by themselves or by a definite legate of the same. And it was there judged and decreed that whatever churches had been consecrated by these bishops, as never having been canonically initiated to God, ought to be reconsecrated from the beginning.

A sentence of anathema was also given against laypeople of whatever rank, or clerics, and indeed against all persons whosoever had altogether presumed, contrary to the decrees of the sacred canons, to give in benefice bishoprics, abbacies, provostships, churches of any kind, tithes, or any ecclesiastical dignities to any cleric or any person according to their ancient usurpation, and to hand over or grant to the ministers of the altar consecrated to God and of ecclesiastical administration, for their management and ordering, what had previously been legally delegated as a canonical and legitimate tradition for the property and service of the Lord God — as if this were some private and hereditary possession — by a lay hand not consecrated to God.

There also a sentence was given that those should be under anathema whosoever had presumed to carry out plunderings, robberies, or any crafty and rash invasions in churches consecrated to God, or in the courts and cemeteries of churches, and in cloisters likewise consecrated, or in any ecclesiastical properties, possessions, and appurtenances of these churches. These things are recognized as pertaining specifically above others — separately and as if by their own proper designation and decree — to the daily prebends and all-round distributions of food and necessary provisions for canons, clerics, priests, monks, consecrated virgins, and indeed all those serving Christ under a rule.

The lord pope had above all intended by such decrees that, with peace made for the churches, although wars and seditions held sway everywhere in secular affairs, nevertheless in spiritual persons the canonical praises and prayers of God should not in the least cease on account of the damage done to external resources. And since the offenses of subjects are sometimes prudently to be overlooked, but at other times, when openly known, must be patiently borne so that they may be corrected at a more opportune time — and since remedies are fitting only with the passage of time — the lord pope, a prudent dissembler and patient bearer, had, with much care, deferred to an opportune time the judging of the heretical wickednesses, disobediences, and so many thousands of presumptuous scandals of many bishops and priests in the German and Italian regions; namely, so that after the schisms of that most seditious and more-than-civil controversy of the kingdom's princes and nobles who were at variance and at war with each other had in some manner been calmed by God's authority and legitimately consolidated in the peace of Christ, he might then also not delay to insist with most diligent care in correcting, refuting, and punishing these persons as well.

The legates of King Rudolf having been dismissed from his presence quietly and stealthily with a cautiously dissembling leave of absence — since he did not in the least doubt that Rudolf was in all things most obedient and in accord with him and the apostolic see — he endeavored vigilantly to convey to him paternal love, piety, and grace along with apostolic indulgence and blessing, as well as to all great and small who did not cease willingly and unanimously to be obediently subject to the precepts and decrees of the apostolic see and to favor them in the peace of Christ.

King Henry at last, having waited at Regensburg for some of his legates who had run ahead of the rest more hastily and met him there, soon moved from there somewhat downcast to Mainz in haste, to celebrate Palm Sunday there; and thence he pressed on to Cologne, having gathered as many of his soldiers as he could. There too he kept Easter with no great glory. But after his legates, having returned to him together with the messengers of the apostolic see and with the apostolic legation, he had most diligently learned by truthful report all that had been done and decreed at the Roman synod, he immediately turned with his followers to his customary wiles of folly, all counseling him toward this same goal with the utmost effort and most cunningly contriving in every way, so that they might appear to have freed themselves from that apostolic excommunication without observance of and obedience to the apostolic precept and decree, and to have imposed the entire burden of Roman anathema — which threatened them on account of their most manifest guilt — upon King Rudolf and all the associates of the party opposed to them, as if by the most just reasoning.

King Rudolf, however, having assembled no small multitude of his Saxon princes and soldiers, celebrated Easter quite solemnly at Goslar. There, one who had truly been first elected canonically by clergy and people and by the better and greater part of the ecclesiastical soldiery, was consecrated and ordained in canonical form as bishop of the church of Augsburg on Easter day — a certain canon, who had himself already been appointed and proven as provost of the church of Saint Maurice, a most venerable and well-lettered cleric by the name of Wigold — by the election and suffrage of the Roman cardinal, his metropolitan and archbishop of Mainz, as well as of nine other bishops who had assembled there. After all things pertaining to his ordination had been lawfully carried out — namely, having received the ring, the pastoral staff, and the episcopal throne from the archbishop of Mainz — the king diligently commended to him on his own behalf whatever of royal right existed in the management of ecclesiastical goods.

For he was most careful, as he was most obedient in all things, about what had recently been canonically defined at the Roman synod, and what had been forbidden and prohibited under anathema after the judicial sentence was given: that no layman should grant churches and ecclesiastical tithes and dignities to any persons as if his own property, or presume to usurp them for himself contrary to the canons. Moreover, Sigifrid, the archbishop of Mainz, commanded that he who had been appointed to the bishopric of Augsburg by King Henry in a non-canonical manner should, after a stated period of grace, not rashly invade his diocese any further, otherwise he would wholly separate him and all who consented with him from the members of the Church by a just anathema.

He threatened the same to the canons of Augsburg and the people as well, that if they did not receive his candidate — as was right and just — they would suffer the consequences. Thus the bishop of Augsburg, having obtained leave from the king to return home, prudently withdrew with his people to a certain castle near the passes of the Alps, since it was most secure and well-fortified, there to await peace for the Church. There he was immediately beset and harassed by the people of Augsburg with many acts of injury; but bearing this for a time with whatever patience and long-suffering he could muster, he most devoutly commended himself and his people to God as his judge and defender.

King Henry, however, returning quickly to Mainz after Easter, drew to his side by whatever means he could all those he was able to approach. He therefore caused the leading men of the Saxons to be informed, through terrifying or wheedling speeches and inducements, under the pretext and occasion of that apostolic legation and sentence, that for the sake of composing peace and calming the many schisms and discords throughout the whole realm, certain primates and nobles of the kingdom should meet him at Fritzlar. When this was received with willing minds, the princes of the Saxons — cleverly incited to this by the counsel of King Rudolf — came at the appointed time and endeavored to proceed; but King Henry sent not even a single one of the realm's primates there, only some of his own whisperers. Thus when they saw they had been deceived and set out to return home in anger, yet because they were earnestly entreated by those court intriguers, they consented to give them an opportunity for a conference and for testing them. There they heard from them nothing but lies and certain threats allegedly made against them by the pope — because, forsooth, as perjurers and traitors they had unjustly cast out their lord and king against all right. Of the actual content of the aforesaid conference, and of the apostolic anathema, no truthful mention whatsoever was made there; on the contrary, those obstinate men persistently laid the entire substance of that sentence falsely upon King Rudolf and his adherents.

At length, however, the Saxons, having heard all this and having most clearly ascertained why they had come there, in order to show that they did not consider themselves guilty in the matters charged against them, nor afraid of the arrival of the lord pope and his sentence, but rather most eager and joyful for it, declared unanimously and openly, with steadfast resolution and completely free reasoning, that they commended the conference that had been arranged, that they would barely be able to wait for the arrival of the pope himself or his legates, and that they would in all things observe his sentence and the determinations of all the realm's nobles concerning this matter; and they affirmed that all those disobedient to the lord pope and resisting his judicial sentence in this matter by any cleverness, cunning, or perversity were truly anathematized and separated from the members of the Church.

And in order to resolve this controversy between both sides reasonably and publicly, they had sent their envoy with them to their lord and to the other princes of the realm who were in agreement with him, through whom the appointed place and time of the conference might be communicated to those men, and who would testify that they were most ready and prepared for this, and that, setting aside all hindrance and doubt, they would come there, God willing. After this controversial discussion had been carried on for some time on both sides, but finally brought to a praiseworthy conclusion through the aforesaid irrefutable and just reasoning and obedience of the Saxons, peace was mutually acclaimed by both sides until the forthcoming conference, and each went home from the other.

King Henry's councillors, taking the Saxon envoy with them, set out toward the Rhine to their lord. For the just and truthful speech of the Saxon princes did not sit well in the palate of their hearts when they heard it. They had come out with a very different purpose and intention — namely, to try by whatever means to bring the Saxons over to their side. But since they could not accomplish this, they quickly returned and spread false rumors on all sides that the Saxons had certainly given hostages, made a treaty of peace with their lord, and had without doubt earned his favor. They sent back the Saxons' envoy with the message that the king would not grant any venue for a conference, but promised to do so out of devotion to the lord pope, if only he would present himself to him in penitence and submission.

When the Saxons and King Rudolf learned of this, they openly adjudged and declared him excommunicated together with all his supporters, on the grounds that he, so obstinate and disobedient, had nullified the conference so irrefutably decreed by the pope. Moreover, those on King Henry's side utterly disregarded the peace that the king's whisperers and the Saxons had agreed between themselves, even before the aforesaid envoy could return to them — invading a certain castle and storming it in violation of the pledge given. The bishop of Metz too, and very many others from Lorraine who in those same days had been able to incline toward the king's will, upon hearing of the contempt shown for the apostolic legation, publicly professed their intention to remain and persist on the side of the lord pope, and returned home having forfeited his favor. Henry immediately pursued them, taking with him Duke Theoderic and other forces of his soldiers, and unexpectedly seized the city of Metz by treachery, drove out the bishop and the rest, installed his own garrisons there, and then marched on the city of Strasbourg, from which he then departed.

While staying there during the Rogation Days, he enthroned as bishop there, against the will of the canons and in defiance of the lord pope's ban, Thiepaud, provost of Constance, who was also his own chaplain. For the canons, since they had already been forbidden by the lord pope to receive any candidate from King Henry, were deliberating in Christ with one accord on the canonical election of someone among themselves. But those canons of St. Thomas who had given their strong assent and approval to this man's promotion soon experienced divine retribution: for fire completely consumed the church, the cloister, and all their buildings.

From there, King Henry, intending to invade Alemannia but unable to gather sufficient forces to do so without danger, turned aside into Bavaria. There at Regensburg he celebrated Pentecost, and Margrave Liutpold, somewhat offended at him, withdrew.

The apostolic legate who had come to King Henry at Easter to arrange the conference which the pope had decreed was at first concealed for some time — even though he had very freely communicated the apostolic legation to Henry, despite the latter's reluctance and unwillingness, and notwithstanding his complete disregard of the legate's threats — to the point that many suspected he had been secretly killed or exiled; but at last he was treated and regarded by Henry with public and open reverence and honor. Yet some surmise that he was detained for a time for this particular reason: so that Henry might defend himself in some measure through him against the excommunication laid upon him. For when all saw the apostolic legate in communion with him, no one at all would regard him as excommunicated or shun him; indeed they would firmly reckon as a lie whatever was said abroad about the sentence of the Roman synod and the determination of the anathema pronounced — since, just as King Rudolf could display the Roman cardinal, so Henry could display the apostolic legate to all as testimony of his obedience and innocence.

King Rudolf meanwhile celebrated Pentecost magnificently at Goslar, with a considerable gathering of Saxon and Thuringian princes assembled there, and taking counsel with them, prepared and organized an expedition against King Henry. There came to him envoys of Philip king of the Franks, and of the Flemings, and very many Lorrainers, as well as of the king of the Hungarians, all most eagerly promising him assistance for God's sake and for the sake of St. Peter, in defense of the Holy Church and of the entire kingdom of the Germans — although they did not entirely follow through on what was promised.

Thenceforward throughout the entire summer many disturbances broke out on all sides across Alemannia, Alsace, and East Frankia, and those who had been carrying out plundering, arson, and many sacrileges in the holy churches themselves — reckless violators of those churches, fighting in private wars on King Henry's side — were defeated, killed, and put to flight. Among these the anti-bishops of Basel and Strasbourg barely escaped with their lives, their soldiers being vigorously overthrown and captured in battle by the margrave, son of Duke Berthold, while the peasants whom they had conscripted on oath as auxiliaries from the surrounding counties were in part castrated. During this same period Dukes Berthold and Welf had devastated a large part of Frankia west of the Rhine with plundering and arson.

Meanwhile both kings were preparing their expeditions against each other with no small effort and display, gathering their military auxiliaries from wherever and however they could. And around the Kalends of August the aforesaid dukes with the Alemannian forces were planning to meet King Rudolf as he marched out from Saxony. But King Henry, intervening with his great army, entirely prevented this from happening. And so both sides, expecting battle every day and most eagerly working to bring about the occasion for which they aimed — though not without considerable danger — had encamped close to the king. Moreover they were sustaining in their vicinity the threat of neighboring peasants from all the hundreds throughout those regions, sworn against them and equipped with military arms, numbering nearly twelve thousand most fierce and hostile fighters. Thus, with the Saxons and Alemanni kept apart from each other and prevented in every way from meeting or even deliberating through envoys, King Henry, trusting in his great army, most cunningly planned to triumph first over the Saxons and then over the Alemanni, and he had no doubt that this could be accomplished most easily and without loss to his own men.

At once, having communicated this plan to his followers, he deceitfully dispatched certain scouts — men of no mean standing — as if to confirm peace between the parties, to King Rudolf and the Saxon primates. When this had been mutually agreed upon and confirmed for a time with the customary pledge, while those men were hastening back to their lord, he, reckless and treacherous, suddenly and almost without warning fell upon them unprepared with an armed force and a warlike attack. But King Rudolf, barely breaking free from his camp with his men in the greatest haste, and as prudently as could be done in such an emergency ordering and encouraging his battle-lines against the threatening enemy, engaged him so fiercely and courageously that at the very first clash he happily obtained victory, God granting it, after quickly overthrowing the first two legions. Without delay the king himself, as the foremost man, shamefully took to flight with his closest followers; the rest of the army thereafter, seeing what was happening, unwarlike, fearful, and wonderfully terror-struck, in its flight in all directions strove with more than enough anxiety to save itself every which way. The Saxons, however, pursued them for more than three miles, pressing hard from behind upon those in flight. There, from King Henry's side, more than thirty of the nobler men and, as they say, up to five thousand of the lesser men fell slain; and from the opposing side they attest that only up to eighty men of the lesser sort fell.

Moreover, twenty-four bishops of that same party who had been present, upon hearing from certain fleeing liars that King Henry had won, had fled with their followers in all directions. Among these the Roman cardinal and many others were in considerable danger; the bishop of Magdeburg was struck by an arrow by Slavic brigands in the woods where they sought hiding, the bishop of Paderborn was captured, stripped, and fled from them nearly naked, and the bishop of Worms was likewise captured and handed over to King Henry together with a certain noble count Hermann.

With so many squadrons of the enemy routed and slain, the Saxons joyfully returned to the place of the first engagement and to their camp. Spending the night there, on the morrow they took counsel with their king and obtained from him, by the right of their laws, that they need not advance any further having been victorious in battle, and so they returned in great rejoicing to their Saxony as triumphant conquerors.

King Henry, however, without delay made his way all the way to Bavaria. For he was not a little afraid of the Alemannian assault — those who on that same day on his side had been fighting and had been completely routed and castrated in very hard battle against the sworn Frankish hundred-men, and had yet miraculously emerged as victors. They too, having truly learned of the enemy's flight and their king's victory and return, rejoiced at their men's success, and having everywhere laid waste with fires and plundering, and having stormed very many of the enemy's towns, returned home with triumphant procession in exultation.

Finally the fabricators and composers of lies for King Henry were shamelessly asserting all around the lands that their lord had returned victorious from the Saxon war, and had thus managed by letters to commend their fictions to the lord pope, the Romans, and all the Lombards. In those same days the abbot of Marseilles, legate of the Apostolic See, who had been personally present at the aforesaid expedition with the Alemannian dukes, and to whom all the deeds of the wars were thoroughly known, seeing that he had obtained no fruit of the legation imposed upon him nor any ecclesiastical benefit among the adversaries of the Apostolic See, and that he would obtain none — himself an eyewitness and a truly fitting witness of sincere truth — hastened back to Rome, to the one who had sent him, as a destroyer of lies, wasting no time. He himself, and also others thereafter through many more, testified serially to the lord pope and to the others — who were vacillating and distressing themselves considerably over the remarkable lies — of the undoubted facts of what had happened.

In the following autumn, King Henry, having gathered his military forces from everywhere, was again making a show of preparing an expedition against Saxony; and those whom he had bound under oath against the Saxons, finding that King Rudolf's very large and most bellicose army had arrived to meet him, he led the perjurers into Alemannia to devastate it.

There the most wicked and inhuman plunderers, recruited from Bohemia, Bavaria, Burgundy, Frankia, and from Alemannia itself as many as he could hire, everywhere most savagely and wretchedly persisted in plundering, arson, the destruction of some castles and towns, and unheard-of sacrileges against sacred and divine things. There was no distinction between the sacred and the profane, no compassion in so many miseries. Indeed, the sacrilegious and presumptuous men had wretchedly burned the churches to which the inhabitants of the land had fled with their possessions for safekeeping, and plundered them; they had trampled priests vested in their sacred vestments, stripped half-naked and most wretchedly beaten; they had destroyed the altars of the saints after removing the relics from them; upon the same altars they had defecated — a thing unheard-of even among pagans; they had smeared them with gore by laying upon them flesh of their plunder torn into pieces; the women they had seized in the churches they had shamelessly ravished there as if in a brothel; they had set up stables for their horses and animals in the churches, and latrines as well. Women too they had by rape pressed to death in some cases; most of them they carried off as captives, shorn and dressed like men; the wooden image of Christ crucified at Altdorf, and elsewhere too, they had mutilated by cutting off the head, hands, and feet. What more? Violating every sacred and divine thing, they had defiled everything in a manner surpassing even pagan madness.

All these things were done with the permission of the bishops who had invaded the churches of God together with them. This detestable trampling and desolation of the Holy Church was taking place around the feast of All Saints. Also at that time, nearly a hundred churches were violated in that expedition. However, these deeds were not left altogether unpunished: for some of them, as they say, were seized by unclean spirits and tormented unto death; others were killed, captured, and stripped by the Alemannian princes; and the greater part of them were castrated and mutilated.

Thus, with Alemannia wretchedly devastated, they returned home laden with no small loads of plunder and sacrilege, dancing in celebration — but without full triumph.

In those same days Duke Berthold — eager lover and defender of the Christian religion, no small practitioner of a life of honesty, lived soberly and in good order according to God and the world, most observant of equity and peace, modesty and discipline, mercy and zeal for God, most skilled executor of his father's laws and dignities, a man of great counsel most prudent, and sufficiently virtuous in the full honesty of his character — having commended his whole soul, as was right, in hope and faith into the hands of God, and having prudently set his household in order, closed his last day — O would that it were so! — most happily, with a blessed end.

Hildulf, that simoniacal anti-bishop of Cologne, condemned by the sentence of apostolic authority as a heretic, thief, and robber — damned upon earth — departed this world in that same autumn, bound in heaven as well for all eternity.

Year 1079

King Henry celebrated the Nativity of the Lord at Mainz with less than full magnificence. There, contrary to the character of our climate, great lightning was seen and very terrible thunder was heard, and a storm's whirlwind tore away no small part of the roof of the cathedral church and hurled it to the ground; and this occurrence at that time was held by all to be of no small wonder.

After this the king, in violation of the apostolic decree, appointed to the church of Cologne a certain Sigwin, the dean of that same place, as bishop — one who did not enter canonically through the door. Presumptuously receiving that investiture from the king's hand against all right, he was soon unhappily subjected to excommunication.

From there the king lingered somehow along the Rhine until the middle of Lent, and again bound under oath in private all those he could recruit and provoke against the apostolic dignity, drawing them into disobedience and rebellion; and not only did he work at this privately and secretly, but rather at Fritzlar at the conference, where the Saxon nobles and his own intimate counsellors gathered in those days, he had it publicly proclaimed to all that he had no wish whatsoever to have any care or regard for the lord pope in any act or matter that concerned him. He proved this also by the following evidence: the legates whom the pope at the last synod had decreed should be sent by him to Rome for the next synod, in answer to his case, he in his complete contumacy contemptuously failed to send.

A great synod was held at Rome, both on account of the many urgent needs of the Holy Church, and above all in order somehow to check the tyranny of King Henry. In it the legates of both kings pleaded their lords' cases and testified under oath that their lords had done nothing to impede the conference which the lord pope had decreed at the last synod under anathema, that no one should prevent it. The legate of King Rudolf was thoroughly believed by all the best men, while the others were accused of perjury. At length Henry's party attempted to wring an anathema against King Rudolf from the pope for his invasion of the kingdom; but on the contrary, with the whole synod barely agreeing, lest the synod judicially turn it against King Henry for his disobedience and the many sacrileges mentioned above and his most cunning deceptions, they were given a respite for conversion and response until the next synod or sooner, and returned home in disgrace and without the apostolic blessing, covered with confusion.

Of these men, one — Eigilbert, provost of Passau, who had already been judicially excommunicated by his bishop — returning thus as a perjurer to King Henry, was by Henry's customary violence, against the will and wish of all, simoniacally set over the church of Trier, the man canonically elected by the clergy and people having been rejected.

In the same synod these decretal sentences were issued with universal consent and subscription:

Whoever among the soldiers of any rank or profession has received or shall receive, has invaded or shall invade, or has held with their consent, the ecclesiastical estates of bishops, abbots, or any church rectors against their will from a king or secular prince, shall be subject to excommunication unless he restores those same estates to the churches.

If any of the Normans shall invade the estates of the monastery of Blessed Benedict on Monte Cassino, or shall unjustly carry off any properties of that same monastery, and after being admonished two or three times shall not make amends, let him be subject to excommunication until he repents and gives satisfaction to the church.

Since we have learned that investitures of churches are being performed by laymen contrary to the statutes of the holy Fathers in many regions of the world, and that from this arise very many disturbances in the Church — indeed, the very ruin of holy religion, through which the dignity of Christian discipline is trampled — we decree that none of the clergy shall receive investiture of a bishopric, abbey, church, provostship, or any clerical dignity from the hand of an emperor, king, or any lay person, male or female. And if any shall presume to do so, let him acknowledge that such investiture is null and void by apostolic authority, and that he is subject to excommunication until he makes fitting satisfaction.

If any bishop shall sell prebends, archdeaconries, provostships, or any ecclesiastical offices, or shall ordain otherwise than the statutes of the holy Fathers prescribe, let him be suspended from office. For it is fitting that, just as he received the episcopate freely, so he should distribute the members of that same episcopate or dignity.

Ordinations which are performed with the interposition of payment, or with prayers or service rendered to some person for that purpose, or without the common consent of clergy and people according to canonical sanctions, and are not approved by those to whom consecration belongs, we judge to be false and void; since those who are ordained in such a manner do not enter through the door — that is, through Christ — but as the Truth Himself testifies, are thieves and robbers.

We call penances false that are not imposed according to the authority of the holy Fathers in accordance with the nature of the sins. And therefore, if any soldier, or merchant, or one devoted to some office that cannot be exercised without sin, entangled in more serious faults, comes to penance — that is, one who unjustly retains another's goods, or who bears hatred in his heart — let him acknowledge that he cannot perform true penance by which he might arrive at eternal life, unless the soldier lays down his arms and henceforth does not bear them except by the counsel of devout bishops and in defense of justice; and the merchant abandons his trade, and the official deserts his office, and each of them restores the goods he has unjustly taken, and puts hatred out of his heart. Let him not despair in the meantime, however, but we urge him to do whatever good he can, that Almighty God may enlighten his heart toward penance.

We forbid by apostolic authority that tithes — which canonical authority has established were granted for pious use — be held by laymen. For whether they have received them as property from bishops, kings, or any persons whatsoever, unless they restore them to the Church, let them know that they are committing the crime of sacrilege and on that account incurring the danger of eternal damnation.

Since the day of the Sabbath has been regarded by our holy Fathers as a day of fasting, we, following their authority, salutarily advise that whoever desires to be a participant in the Christian religion should abstain from eating flesh on that day, unless prevented by a greater feast intervening or by illness.

We confirm by apostolic sanction that no abbot shall retain tithes, first-fruits, and other things which by the established canons belong to bishops, without the authority of the Roman pontiff or the consent of the bishop in whose diocese he lives.

Let no bishop impose burdens or servile service by custom contrary to ecclesiastical norms upon his abbots or clerics, nor restore a prohibited priestly office for payment; if he does so, let him incur the forfeiture of his own office.

If anyone shall usurp as his own property the estates of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, wherever situated, or knowing them to be concealed shall not reveal them, or shall not render due service therefrom to Saint Peter, let him acknowledge that he incurs the wrath of God and the holy apostles as a sacrilegious person. Moreover, whoever is caught in this crime, let him restore that same inheritance to Blessed Peter and pay fourfold the penalty from his own goods.

If any bishop shall consent, through entreaties or payment, to the fornication of priests, deacons, or subdeacons, or to the crime of incest in his parish, or shall not combat what has been committed by the authority of his office, let him be suspended from office.

Let every Christian take care to offer something to God at the solemn celebrations of Mass, and call to mind what God said through Moses: "You shall not appear before Me empty-handed." For indeed it appears clearly in the collected missals of the holy Fathers that all Christians, by the custom of the holy Fathers, ought to offer something to God.

In the same synod the sentence of anathema was pronounced against all Simonists and Nicolaite heretics who, hardened in the sect of their error, knowingly disobedient to the synodal definitions of the holy Fathers and to their decretal statutes, and with the obstinacy of apostates kicking back against them, resist with deliberate intent.

Many other things were also proclaimed there for the benefit of the Church, which it is not the moment now to review. Done in the church of Our Lord the Savior at the Lateran, on the 5th Ides of November, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1078, the first indiction.

Henry, bishop of Chur, died.

After King Rudolf, having completed the battle and obtained victory, learned that his aforesaid enemy was going to rise against him again with a considerable army, he himself again, most fiercely attempting in every way to engage him with the attack of his finest and most warlike soldiers, drove him from his presence in every direction, terror-struck and dumbfounded. When this was done, and he concluded that Henry would for this turn do nothing other than dismiss his army and send it home, he himself returned gloriously to his Saxony with his men.

Henry, however, savagely enraged, had unexpectedly invaded Alemannia to devastate it — able to compel scarcely any man of note to surrender or to a condition of loyalty by this violence, except Count Hugh.

King Rudolf, however, having sent his Saxons home from him, devoted himself most justly to peace and to their laws, judgments and justice without respect of persons, as much as he possibly could with their assistance.

Shortly thereafter, he was seized most violently by fevers and pleurisy and for more than two months labored and wasted away to such a degree that very many despaired entirely of his ever recovering his life and health. At length, however, most eagerly recovering from so many dangers as God healed him, he celebrated the Nativity of the Lord most gloriously with a considerable assembly of Saxon princes, most joyfully, and immediately before Septuagesima, having gathered his military squadrons from all directions, decided to hasten the expedition against King Henry.

When Henry first learned of this and saw that he could not resist him in so brief a space of time, he took counsel with his men and, not in his own name but in the persona of his nobles, most cunningly dispatched envoys with all haste, ostensibly to arrange whatever peace could be reached between the parties — envoys who would detest with feigned complaints the wars and seditions, the desolations of churches, and the enormity of so many crimes, and who would most firmly profess that both they and their lord King Henry were in agreement with the lord pope, with them, and with all the best men, and that they would be obedient in all things in amending such matters; and if they were not believed on their word alone, they would prove it by oath or by giving hostages.

When the Saxons heard this, they quickly became excessively credulous of these most sweetly flattering men, and first dissuaded their lord from the expedition already begun. Then they set a definite day in the coming Lent to confer at Fritzlar; and so, with a secret treaty of peace arranged, they parted from each other with mutual congratulations and went home. But when at length they met as agreed, Henry's nobles, defending and concealing their fabrications and follies as best they could, testified that they had come for no other reason than to assist the Saxons with their lord as much as they could, if only they were willing to come to submission. The Saxons, however, though they perceived that they had come in vain and had been deceived by the customary tricks and deceits, nevertheless with good patience urged them sufficiently to make themselves ready for peace, concord, and obedience to the Apostolic See.

But those men on the other side, with a public outcry, professed that neither they nor their lord would have any concern for peace or for the pope, and thus, having mutually renounced both trust and peace, they returned home, provoked to recklessness in this way.

In those days before Lent, Duke Welf, taking his fellow soldiers with him, invaded Rhaetia Curiensis with a great and powerful onslaught intending to devastate it, pursued plundering and arson, and subjugated the son of Count Otto, together with certain other leading men who had been bound by oath, to King Rudolf. Then, vigorously storming a certain pass or fortress, with the enemies killed, captured, and routed — God granting it — he returned victorious with great force, to subdue certain others thereafter.

In the same Lent a great synod was assembled at Rome in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1079, the second indiction, on the 3rd Ides of February. At this synod, though traveling by a secret and most roundabout route, the Roman cardinal, and the bishops of Passau and Metz, came with joy to proclaim before the Apostolic See the causes of so many of their own and ecclesiastical injuries, having by God's grace safely passed through many dangers from ambushes and guards. There, presenting their complaints in the hearing of the whole synod, the bishops were received and gladly heard.

There the legate of King Rudolf, enumerating one by one with detailed complaint the lamentable miseries of the aforesaid Alemannian devastation, and also eloquently magnifying at length the other acts of madness by King Henry's most tyrannical presumptuousness throughout the entire realm wherever it extended — not without the tearful bitterness of the lord pope and very many others who felt compassion — was, as was proper, graciously heard together with his colleagues.

The legate of King Henry also set forth his lord's case — though in truth not the most just — with many present agreeing with him as usually happens, in whatever fashion he could; but he and his associates were convicted of falsehood by the pope; and by all the best men, the other side was given ample credit. Indeed the lord pope publicly in the synod professed that the legations of King Henry were mendacious; and he protested that he had judicially deposed him from the kingdom and had in no way since restored him. On this account he would have immediately anathematized him, except that it had been the preference of all those present from both parties that this should rather be deferred, still awaiting, until the Ascension of the Lord — above all in order that it might not be complained that the Roman synod had acted precipitately or in a disorderly fashion against him.

For his legate publicly professed that it was not by cunning but out of necessity that he had failed to send the legates which the pope had decreed at the last synod — legates who could safely conduct the apostolic legates into the German homeland for the settling of so great a discord. He swore, however, that his lord would send such men to Rome before the Ascension of the Lord, and that he would in all things obey the Apostolic See in the matter of the kingdom. It was also sworn on the part of King Rudolf, that he too — at the conference which the pope would appoint, he would likewise obey him. Finally, the lord apostolic once again excommunicated whoever had hindered, by any device or faction, the holding of the conference in the previous year; and likewise whoever would hinder the one he had now again appointed for this occasion.

With the aforesaid truce he so conciliated the minds of all the Romans that they no longer asked for the anathema against King Henry to be deferred, if he should continue to contemn obedience to the pope. The pope, however, decreed nothing definitive about the kings at this time, except for what sufficiently, though not in every respect, satisfied the bishop of Passau and the bishop of Metz and their associates, to the extent that the necessity of the moment required. For indeed all the better men had stood firmly on the side of King Rudolf, whom they had shown to be most obedient to the lord pope in all things.

Duke Theoderic and Count Folmar were excommunicated for the invasion of the church of Metz. Likewise all those who had unjustly seized for themselves the properties of the bishops, namely of the bishop of Mainz and of the others who had been expelled from their sees. Also the bishop of Milan and the bishop of Ravenna; and likewise those who had seized the abbot of Reichenau — who had himself journeyed to the synod to plead his case — together with the soldiers of the bishop of Parma, were anathematized. The bishop of Parma himself was suspended from office on account of the same seizure.

The abbot at last, perceiving that he could not free himself otherwise, having agreed to pay his captors a sum of money and sworn to it, was released by them and joyfully arrived at Rome, as he had previously planned. There, his case having been resolved before the pope to his satisfaction, he returned — not without danger — to his Reichenau; upon which King Henry had already at Easter installed in his usual manner that accursed anathematized tyrant (whom he had also appointed to destroy the cell of Saint Gall) as anti-abbot.

The lord apostolic also sent letters throughout the entire German and Italian kingdoms to those obedient to Saint Peter, in these words: "If there are any priests, deacons, or subdeacons who lie in the crime of fornication, we forbid them, by the authority of almighty God and of Saint Peter, entry into the church, until they repent and amend. But if any shall prefer to persist in their sin, let none of you presume to hear their office, because their blessing will be turned into a curse, and their prayer into sin." And so forth.

Berengar of Tours abjured his heresy there and professed the Catholic faith.

Henry, a cleric of Augsburg, who had already received investiture of the church of Aquileia from King Henry, testified there that his election was canonical by credible witnesses; but being reprobated by the pope for the investiture usurped to him by a lay person contrary to canonical and apostolic prohibition, he publicly proved by oath — the synod so judging — that he had been ignorant of and had not heard the decree of that same definition. Thereafter, the whole assembly interceding with the pope on his behalf, he first, as is customary, professed by oath due and fitting obedience, submission, and allegiance to the apostolic see and to Pope Gregory, the vicar of Saint Peter, and from him canonically received the ring, the staff, and the other insignia of the patriarchate of Aquileia; but he did not deal faithfully with him afterward in all things.

Cardinal Bernard also did not entirely conceal from the lord apostolic how much labor and danger he had endured in our regions, and how little he had been able to benefit the Church; and among other things, that King Henry had been justly excommunicated first by the bishop of Mainz and six other bishops with him by judicial censure with his own consent, and that he himself, in accordance with the command of that same pope, had alienated Henry and all those consenting with him from communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord, had expelled him as a sacrilege from the threshold of the church, had forbidden him the governance of the realm as a tyrant and invader, and had subjected it to King Rudolf as one most obedient to the apostolic see in all things. He also did not omit to relate all these things in order to the foremost and most excellent of the Romans.

The lord apostolic had endured all this by a kind of wondrous strategy of seeming to overlook it. This was a matter of great wonder to some, why he had done so — unless perhaps he did not doubt that the conference, which he had once again appointed under anathema for settling such a great discord, would by itself suffice to accomplish what he desired. But if not — for those who would hinder the conference and would not obey him for the sake of peace and concord — he, as the most just and severe judge, had determined to add this to his earlier anathemas as though unexpectedly, all the more to lay it upon those condemned forever to eternal damnation: so that those who, as enemies, had despised him when gentle and forbearing, might in their utter ruin now experience him as the harshest of avengers.

Pope Gregory, presiding at this same Roman synod, said: "Following in the footsteps of the holy Fathers, and likewise maintaining the decrees of our holy predecessors, we absolve by apostolic authority from their oaths those who are bound by fealty or sworn oath to excommunicated persons, and we forbid them by every means to observe fidelity toward them."

"Likewise: And since we see daily that many perish, by reason of our sins requiring it, through the cause of excommunication — partly through ignorance, partly through excessive simplicity, partly through fear, partly through necessity — overcome by mercy, we opportunely temper, as far as we are able, the sentence of anathema for a time. By apostolic authority, therefore, we exempt from the bond of anathema the following: the wives of excommunicated persons, their children, their male and female servants, or bondsmen, as well as peasants and household servants, and all others who are not so much men of the court that crimes are committed by their counsel; and those who unknowingly commune with the excommunicated, or those who commune with those who commune with the excommunicated. Moreover, to any plowman, pilgrim, or traveler who enters the land of excommunicated persons and cannot buy there, or has nothing with which to buy, we grant permission to buy and receive from the excommunicated. And if anyone shall wish to give something to the excommunicated, not to sustain their pride but for the sake of humanity, we do not forbid it. Done in the church of the Lord Savior, on the 5th of the Nones of March, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1079."

The lord apostolic, therefore, appointed a new synod to be held in the week of Pentecost, to settle the aforesaid matter; and having sent legates to King Henry — the Patriarch, Peter bishop of Albano, a religious man, and Oudalric bishop of Padua, together with his other faithful men — he directed to the king in order what he intended to decree concerning him at the synod, and granted to him the task of determining without delay, at his own discretion and convenience, with the said legates, a specific time and place for the conference; and he required of him that the obedience which he had so often demanded he prove at Rome in words, he should now demonstrate in deed to be genuine.

As a further proof of obedience, he commanded him: that he should make the firmest peace with all who opposed him until the completion of the said conference; that he should grant to the bishops whom he had already expelled from their sees the fullest authority over their churches and their properties, and free and peaceful entry and disposition to use and possess them, with all harm and treachery removed; and that from among his most powerful and religious men he should send seven persons to Rome by the appointed time, to give him security by oath that his legates would be safely conducted to the said conference and fully protected in the legation entrusted to them there, and brought back safely and with all caution to him in Rome.

The Patriarch, however, who had been one of King Henry's closest associates, observing the legation imposed upon him with no great faithfulness or zeal, sent in haste to the king at Regensburg a secret messenger to sound out his will and obedience, substituting for himself. And delaying his colleagues on this occasion, he returned to his Aquileia, while they themselves made their way to Padua. The king, upon learning of this legation sent to him by the pope, welcomed it with his customary contumacy not at all — as one who had no intention of observing it.

Yet, as though ignorant of the apostolic legation, he sent the bishop of Osnabrück to the appointed conference as a messenger, equipped with no small deceptions and treacheries, so that by whatever device and with the falsely simulated obedience of Henry so many times before, he might this time too delude the pope, and that the cunningly devious king might in whatever way he could hinder the sentence of anathema and the synod now almost specially appointed to curb the king's tyranny. He himself celebrated Easter at Regensburg as best he could, committing the duchy of Swabia to Count Frederick as a provocation to wrongdoing, and denying the abbey of Reichenau — which he had already twice sold simoniacally — to Eggikhard, regularly elected by his brethren and due to be legitimately ordained by the pope according to the statute of the same monastery's privilege; and because he dared not unjustly favor Henry's party, and now, unjustly rejecting him and keeping him in the aforesaid captivity, appointing in his place that tyrant — the invader and devastator of the cell of Saint Gall of whom we have spoken before — he remained in the eastern regions of Bavaria and Neuvicensis, devastating those inhabitants and forcing the margrave Linpald with certain others to submission to him, staying almost until Pentecost.

The wife of King Rudolf, Adelheid by name, daughter of the Margravine Adelheid, sister of Queen Bertha, wife of Henry, had dwelt as best she could in the diocese of Constance at Hohentwiel and in other castles along the Rhine from the time he entered Saxony; worn out by poverty, grief, and the various calamities of adversity, and at length afflicted for some time by the troubles of illness and mortal fevers, having set her household in order and fully provided in Christ, as was fitting, for the salvation of her soul, she died commending her spirit most devoutly into His hands — with a happy end, God willing! — and was fittingly buried with full funeral honors at the monastery of Saint Blaise.

King Rudolf, now a widower, magnificently celebrated Easter at Goslar, and very prudently arranged his campaign against Henry with the utmost keenness, to be launched as soon as it seemed opportune to his nobles; and with all of Saxony marvelously united in the most steadfast peace, he most zealously administered justice and equity to all without distinction of persons, in accordance with the lawful right and constitution of that people.

Duke Welf, together with some of the senior men belonging to him, took up Rudolf's son — to whom the duchy of Swabia had been delegated while still a small child by King Henry — and brought him to Ulm; and they with the citizens submitted themselves to him according to established custom, and by common assent and acclamation confirmed him anew as their lord and duke.

After they had departed homeward, Count Frederick, having gathered from all sides from among his king's men — Austrasians, Raetians, Vindelicians, Bavarians, and whatever military forces he could — had himself invaded Ulm not without danger, intending to spend Pentecost there; but upon hearing of Duke Welf's swift hostile approach to that same place against him, he barely spent the night there and, with his three bishops driven out along with him, withdrew from the place in disgrace, timid and unfit for battle.

The duke then entered Ulm, and having soon besieged a very strong castle close by — to the dishonor of the aforesaid Frederick — he, being exceedingly bold and warlike, waited there more than two weeks for him to come and engage in battle, until he demolished, stormed, and burned the whole place with the war engines that the Germans call mangonels, and compelled all the garrison to surrender to him unconditionally.

Frederick, however, having gathered all the men he could over such a long time, and seeing himself still far too unequal to the duke in engaging him in battle, returned most sorrowfully with no little disgrace while his men scattered in all directions.

Also in these days after Easter, Margrave Berthold, son of Duke Berthold — a distinguished and most generous young man, conducting himself vigorously and quite virtuously with honesty of character in every respect — took as his wife Agnes, daughter of King Rudolf, herself in all things no less virtuous than her husband.

The aforesaid Patriarch and the other legates of the apostolic see, having learned through the messengers they had sent ahead and through the bishop of Osnabrück of Henry's responses and his — albeit feigned — obedience, arrived at Regensburg to meet him around Pentecost. There, received without much splendor, they strove with all their might to carry out the business for which they had been sent. At last, pressing and working upon the king with every skill and device, they barely wrung from him even a merely verbal assent and agreement to the simulated peace and to the conference sworn before a hearing of the synod at Rome through his own legate.

And having at once dispatched legates before them into Saxony to King Rudolf, to the other princes of the Saxons, and also to Duke Welf and the greater and better men of the Swabians, they required them to meet with them as well at Fritzlar on an appointed day to deliberate on that same matter. Without delay, on receiving this legation, the Saxons with their king, most obedient to apostolic commands, carried out what had been required of them.

Duke Welf and the other Swabians summoned there, while they were already most ready to come, had their appointed guides — those nominated by King Henry to conduct them safely — withdrawn from them by his customary treacherous folly, so that they would not have been led to the appointed place. Henry also laid treacherous ambushes for the Saxons with the same faithlessness: while they themselves had left the borders of their homeland to meet the apostolic legates, he had sent not a few detachments of military troops from Bohemia against their rear, to break into and devastate their borders, plundering with a predatory hand and harassing them in every hostile manner. These troops, however, to their own harm as they had thus invaded the march, were routed by the combined marchland forces in a military charge — some were killed, some captured in defeat — except for those very few whom flight had barely snatched away from them.

The apostolic legates, received with the greatest honor by the archbishop of Mainz and all others, great and small alike, at Fritzlar, openly disclosed to all together the cause and reason for their coming, and proclaimed the apostolic greeting and blessing of peace, justice, and obedience to those who loved them. These things being heard with rejoicing, the Saxon princes together with their king and all those of their party in common protested that they would be in all things most obedient to the lord pope in preserving the proclaimed peace, in justly and judiciously examining the cause of so great a discord and rebellion, and in observing the appointed sentence of the conference — but only on condition that the opposing party would consent to the same with equal resolve, both sides giving hostages and mutual oath-bonds.

For otherwise, they declared, they would not place great faith in King Henry and his faithlessness and folly so many times proven. The Patriarch, however, and the other of the king's associates whom the apostolic legates had brought along in their retinue, long and repeatedly refusing this kind of pact as though it were unnecessary, had been unwilling to approve it. At last, however, perceiving that the legates favored the Saxons' position as the more reasonable one, they did not much contradict it and, with a feigned and foolish promise, declared that they would compel their lord — though he resisted — to accept this pact.

For this reason the Saxons had submitted themselves with their king in all things as obedient to the legation of the apostolic see, if it could be done with a firm assurance of peace and security. Thereupon, when the day and place for holding the conference had been appointed by both parties at the city of Würzburg, the Saxons returned to Saxony, while the others made their way back hurriedly with the apostolic legates to their lord at Regensburg.

He himself, when they informed him of the peace pact they had agreed upon, disparaged it with stubborn heart and tongue, and barely, when pressed by them, declared that he would show himself peaceful and favorable to them out of equal honor and love for the lord pope — but only if they would come without delay to submit and humble themselves to him. And on that condition, he promised to hold with the Saxons the conference which had been sworn at Rome before the synod by his own legate and decreed by the authority of excommunication not only to be in no way hindered by persons of either party, but rather to be observed in every respect — but otherwise, not at all.

When this became known to the Saxon and Swabian primates and their other fellow combatants, although they had now shown themselves agreeable to the lord apostolic regarding the appointed conference, they then all together, marveling at King Henry's stubborn folly and detesting his contumacious disobedience, commended their cares and needs wholly to God and remained at home in unanimity.

He himself, having gathered from all sides no small forces of bishops and other accomplices of his party, arrived at the said city around the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a sufficiently reckless manner — as though by this he could make himself excusable to the pope and exempt from the guilt of anathema and perjury — together with the apostolic legates, who, as they say, were partly corrupted by gifts, partly broken by threats and fear, and almost entirely drawn over to his favor by flattery, cunning, and every device. There, with this sham synod arranged in every respect through his synodical men and advocates to dispute according to his own wishes, he himself lodged complaints before the apostolic legates with sufficiently persuasive intent against the disturbers and invaders of his realm, and demanded more than enough that they should strike Rudolf and all his followers with the worthy anathema of apostolic authority.

He and all his men contrived there with excessively tumultuous vehemence — importunate but not reasoned — many inventions of this sort and of clamorous accusations, yet not, as the account goes, adequate in every respect; and he most freely asserted that he had obeyed the apostolic deliberation, while his adversaries would stand convicted of disobedience, and on that account were subject to excommunication — asserting this with supposedly irrefutable proofs of guilt.

At last, however, the legates of the apostolic see — not sufficiently strengthened in the spirit of freedom as they ought to have been — declared that they had been sent to arrange a peace and to set a day and place for the conference, not one of this kind, but such as had been decreed at Rome by the lord pope; and to diligently examine the obedience of each party and report it to the apostolic see. And they protested to those who so repeatedly clamored at them that they had been named as judges not now, but were henceforth to be appointed with other suitable colleagues whom the lord pope should designate, to justly settle that cause of rebellions and battles which they were then demanding.

And by that artful manner of response they barely freed themselves from those who were shouting and clamoring at them; knowing for certain that King Henry and all his supporters had not only failed to observe the conference appointed by apostolic authority, but had on the contrary been its reckless obstructors, and had thereby openly subjected themselves along with their accomplices to the apostolic anathema; and moreover that the very location of this their sham synod, with its inhabitants, had already by just judgment been similarly condemned by its own bishop, and that they themselves had most dangerously communicated in all these things against divine and canon law.

So this accursed council — execrably inaugurated and even more execrably concluded by foolish evasion — the sufficiently turbulent and headstrong King Henry, taking the apostolic legates with him, had now rashly turned to directing the not inconsiderable army he had gathered from all sides toward the hostile devastation of the Saxons. When King Rudolf learned of the onslaught of so hostile an incursion against him and his, he himself — trusting and strengthened in confidence in God and His mercy — prudently advanced a considerable military force he had diligently assembled to meet him in orderly array; and having sent messengers to all the chief men of the hostile army, he besought them through the mercy of God and humbly implored them that they too would observe along with their lord the conference which the pope had decreed for composing the peace, unity of the Church, and concord of the whole realm, and would grant him a place to observe it in genuine faith and peace.

There he most firmly praised himself and all his men as agreeable and obedient to the lord pope and the other great men of the realm in this pressing cause in every respect. But if the contumacious should refuse, let them not doubt that he would, God willing, engage them as their most fierce enemy in arms and avenge himself upon them as hardened contemners of peace and justice under anathema, as was fitting.

Hearing this, and having ascertained beyond all doubt through their scouts both the pressing imminence of war and the strength of his most savage and fierce army, Henry's men were no little terrified — both by the urgency of the war and by the consciousness of their own injustice, excommunication, and disobedience — and they compelled their lord, though he resisted most stubbornly with tearful lamentation for a long time, to consent to dispelling the imminent danger following their counsel, and not to refuse to free himself somehow from those whom he was insufficient to engage and fight.

For they unanimously asserted — all the bishops having been excluded from this deliberation — that the Saxons with their lord were demanding a just cause from them. Those bishops indeed, combative only with the tongue, were ever tirelessly and importunately urging Henry's men to experience the thing of death by the sword, deeming it utterly wicked to thus miserably defend and reinforce the desolation, discord, and iniquity of the holy Church and the whole realm that had proceeded and been initiated from them.

Without delay, having summoned the apostolic legates to them, they strove with all their might to bring this about with them: that under the bond of anathema they should bind indissolubly the battle lines of both parties, so that they would not rise up against each other in war, but rather, confederated with each other in peace, might quickly hold a conference about the pressing cause, as ministers and fellow citizens of the realm, and through the magnates they would choose for this purpose attempt to settle the cause of so great a discord by the judgment of right reason.

To this end, certain men on the side of King Henry, having received peace from the Saxons and given it in return, served as mediators earnestly and peacefully, treating the same matter so insistently with them, until an agreement was reached by both parties: that they would all unanimously adhere to whichever side the conference — which had been appointed to them by apostolic command — should judge to be in the right.

Using this as a kind of honorable pretext for freeing themselves with artful cunning, Henry's men — who previously had stubbornly refused the pact of peace outright — now, strengthened by its most welcome assistance, withdrew from there in great confusion with their king, barely managing a hasty retreat. For what a not inconsiderable portion of the Bavarians, struck with astonishment at the Saxon battle array, had begun first, the whole camp line thereafter likewise accomplished in great tumult. Thus pulling themselves homeward as best they could and caring nothing for the pact of the conference — the Saxons having been deceived — the king again with all his might pressed his men, who were far too easily seduced, into that same military readiness, and urged them with his customary exactness to the very thing in which they had so many times sworn falsely.

The apostolic legates, lingering in these affairs as though unwillingly, as the account goes, were at last richly gifted and returned to Rome — not simultaneously — with all that for which they had been sent unaccomplished. One of them, namely the bishop of Padua, corrupted by such great gifts and having preceded his colleague — that far too simple and holy man left on this side of the Alps — as a treacherous hypocrite before the lord apostolic, and being wonderfully equipped with manifold subtleties and specious arguments of fabrications, bent all his most eager study to deceiving not only the Lombards and Romans along the way, but even the pope himself, and to pleasing his Henry by whatever means he could.

The pseudo-legate brought on Henry's behalf the most humble obedience in all things, together with promises of all the services he could still devise — and he showed that in the conference and in all the other matters for which he had been sent across the mountains, he had proven himself quite well by his observances toward the pope. But as this shameless man, so full of lies, did not cease stubbornly to deceive all and sundry everywhere with his commendations and fabrications, a certain brother — sent there by King Rudolf and his supporters, having arrived before him — utterly unable to sufficiently marvel at the impudence of one lying openly and maddening so many with his falsehoods, after long deliberation, stood against him face to face as a most confident witness to the truth, until he had shown him before all, overcome, confounded, and put to shame by irrefutable reasoning, with all his fabrications.

For having himself on many occasions been present alongside him in the trans-Alpine affairs and dealings, or having been taught by truthful witnesses who had carefully explored the whole matter and narrated it to him in detail, he refuted him with testimony by as much as nothing whatsoever about him was hidden regarding all things. And so, most justly pronounced profane and alienated by the lord apostolic, he returned home most sorrowfully with no little disgrace.

Thereupon, having sent letters, the pope commanded Peter, the legate's colleague, to return to the apostolic see as quickly as possible. He, obeying the command — bearing witness to the fullness of faith and truth just as the other had done to lies — honorably revisited Rome and reported to the lord apostolic the entire disobedience, falsehoods, treacheries, unheard-of follies, and whatever opposes God and justice, from the tyranny of Henry. The pope, having at last learned most truly of his legates' deeds, inquired nothing further about Henry; but nevertheless he wrote to King Rudolf and the others of his party, informing them that he found the sadness of his legation's outcome most grievous; and as for the partiality in this matter toward Henry which some attributed to him, he testified before God as his witness that there was none whatsoever, and that he had used no levity, but had according to the understanding of his own intelligence favored and assented to justice up to this point.

He also exhorted them most earnestly to persevere in the course of justice they had begun, with his customary paternal admonitions and exhortations.

King Rudolf, withdrawing to his Saxony and perceiving that the conference which the primates and accomplices of Henry had so cunningly arranged with the Saxons had been both falsely lauded and never observed, bore it as no small sorrow that their so many times proven folly had thus most cunningly deceived him. Nevertheless, magnanimous and most steadfast, he prudently prepared to meet their conspiracy against him in arms at that time, and did not cease to ceaselessly and with all his might premeditate, if such an occasion should again present itself by God's favor, that Henry deceived him so and should not wander off with his men unpunished.

Henry, wandering in an autumnal campaign throughout all Bavaria roundabout, did not cease by whatever device he could, along with his men, to assemble a very great company of soldiers, intending to invade Saxony soon after the Nativity of the Lord. Also persistently attempting through his most intimate intermediaries to win over a great many of the Saxons with great secret promises of money and possessions, and hastening by whatever means to attach them to himself corrupted and oath-bound, he acquired a well-nigh certain hope of subjecting all of Saxony before long without a battle.

In those same days, Henry violently placed over the church of Chur — which had been deprived of its bishop for more than a year — Nortpert, provost of the church of Augsburg, a most greedy simonist, and one in whose equal as an approver of his own error he could not easily find a peer, rejecting the candidate whom the clergy, the soldiery, and the people of that church had canonically elected — the provost of the same house, a very religious man — against the will and wishes of all. Nortpert immediately applied himself with all his devices and arts, as he always had, to his industry of avarice. And because he was not unaware that he had not entered the ecclesiastical fold by the door but another way, he attempted to draw out the heretical claim that he was subject to the heretical anti-bishop of Milan and should be ordained by him.

He also attempted somehow to avoid acknowledging the bishop of Mainz — whose subordinate parish the church of Chur is indeed universally agreed to be — as his metropolitan. Yet in this he did not succeed to any great degree.

The summer of that year passed by being excessively rainy, yet such intemperate weather had not caused any great shortage of crops.

Eberhard, bishop of Neuburg, already condemned by the lord apostolic for the contumacy of his disobedience, but rashly installed by King Henry in the church of Würzburg against all law in place of the legitimate bishop Adalbero who had been driven out thence, and himself excommunicated and striving with all his might to commune with the excommunicated, that he might share the portion of those he willingly embraced, had mortally ended his final day with unhappy obstinacy — most justly to be excluded forever from the kingdom of God. His successor was Guncherus, a canon of the church of Magdeburg, appointed in his place by canonical election.

In the same year, Bishop Hezilo of Hildesheim departed from this valley of tears to the Lord — happily, God grant it! — and was to have as his successor Uto, a canon of his church. Magdeburg also in those same days had at last received, by canonical election, Hartwig, the chamberlain of the church of Mainz, as its provisional bishop, in place of its archbishop who had now happily won the martyr's crown.

The abbot of Marseilles also, Bernard by name — a man of no small holiness, wisdom, religious devotion, and charity, who had already on more than one occasion steadfastly endured the injuries of persecution for justice's sake, and whom the lord pope had singled out as uniquely his intimate, familiar friend, and truly most dear to him above all others, by reason of the incomparable diligence of such great virtues, and had accordingly appointed him in Rome as a most suitable primicerius of the church of Saint Paul — while proposing to revisit his Marseilles, was on the return journey mortally seized by fevers, and most blessedly entered the way of all flesh, his whole heart's eagerness uplifted toward the heavenly realms. He was buried with the most devout funeral honors at a monastery situated on the royal road for those going to Rome, where the Nar river, which is white with water — the Nar being a river with turbid waters, whence Lucan says: "white Nar with sulphurous water" — is customarily crossed on this side of Saint Denis; and he rests in the peace of Christ, on the 14th day before the Kalends of August [July 19].

Year 1080

King Rudolf celebrated the Nativity of the Lord with a most magnificent royal display in the most solemn manner — where, having shared counsel most attentively with his men, as was right, he carefully deliberated on how he might resist Henry — who was now at any moment attempting to invade his Saxon territory — without detriment to himself. During those very days he was staying at Mainz, not in royal dignity but in whatever fashion he could, and gathering no small force of soldiers from Burgundy, France, Alemannia, Bavaria, Bohemia, and from every quarter, he ceased not most fiercely to press forward with a hostile expedition into Saxony shortly after the octave of Epiphany.

Against him King Rudolf, having likewise assembled a great army of his soldiers, most bravely resolved to go out to meet him and engage in battle, greatly strengthened by trust in God's mercy and His justice; and with that resolve, boldly advancing with warlike dread to meet him, he scarcely awaited his approach. For so strong an ardor of zeal for God had set him ablaze that, if by this means he could recover the proper state of the holy Church and its legitimate rights, he would by no means have shrunk from casting himself into every peril and into death itself.

Henry, however, befuddling his soldiers with the customary madness of his cunning and falsehood, promised them — and, as they say, confirmed with an oath — that the kingdom of Saxony lay open to them; and that through the Saxon nobles, virtually all of whom he held to be sworn to him and allied with him, his enemy Rudolf together with his men would be delivered into his hands as a captive with desirable ease; and that therefore no danger or difficulty stood in their way — but rather, in return for all the many labors they had undertaken, it would shortly be ready for them to co-reign with him as long as they wished with their adopted pleasure. In this manner he recklessly and cunningly enough hurled those who had been made credulous and all too trusting in him headlong into death itself to be imperiled.

For they had very nearly stumbled upon King Rudolf unawares, along with his great assembled force of soldiers most eager for battle. When Rudolf learned through his scouts that they had crept so close to him, feigning flight as if from fear of them, he skillfully gave them room to invade the province with his men by withdrawing. Yet he had feigned this with the intention that, if they engaged one another in battle, they would have the less been able to flee from him in their customary manner, the deeper they were within the borders of that land, where, if God should be propitious, they could be attacked and surrounded on all sides by all the native inhabitants.

They, however, believing the flight of the Saxons to be genuine and not a stratagem, boldly pursuing them, had presumed everywhere to press on with plunderings and burnings — the duke of Bohemia above all others. Wherefore, having taken counsel together on this matter with the archbishop of Salzburg and the other co-bishops who were in agreement with him on this, the archbishop of Mainz, through whose territories they had swept with devastation of ecclesiastical properties, had bound Henry the sacrilegious leader-in-arms of this ravaging, together with all his accomplices, by a just sentence pronounced against them — condemned and excommunicated under the bond of anathema.

This, as was their custom, those most contumacious despisers of God's justice making nothing of it, they had drawn quite close to the Saxon camp, breathing with the utmost recklessness of war and slaughter. The winter moreover, which had become harsher than usual, had been no small hindrance to both sides in the task at hand.

King Rudolf at last, learning that the enemy was at hand, and advancing most warlike and terrible — himself and his cohorts arrayed in most orderly fashion for battle — greatly trusting and strengthened in God and His justice, awaited the enemies who were attacking him without cause. For he reckoned it no small name and glory both to be and to be called not the initiator and originator of so great a clash, but the defender and liberator of himself and his men, and in this he was compelled by the highest necessity. Henry, however, arrayed in terrible fashion with his legions after the manner of men of war, engaged him with the sharpest assault, wholly intent on suppressing and subduing by every art those who were rebelling against him — partly in a direct assault, partly by ambush and auxiliary troops attacking unexpectedly.

But at once in the first encounter, King Rudolf pressed upon them most fiercely with such great force, terror, and assault that they could by no means sustain his steadfast valor; but rather either they fell slain there, or, enfeebled and unfit for battle, freed themselves from him by flight however disordered.

After the ninth hour, therefore, the battle's conflict broke out and continued in most varied fashion until nightfall; and — which is believed to have been wrought by divine judgment — at the very outset of the battle, a most windy snowstorm so wondrously darkened both sides that scarcely anyone could have recognized his own fellow soldiers, until the approaching night separated those fleeing and those pursuing as they fought at this critical moment. The Bavarians and Franks with their king were feebly snatching the nearest way of flight from such a most dreadful slaughter, swift and no little terrified.

Regarding the Bohemians, however, who had thrown themselves into this battle most eagerly, standing fast in their many thousands — for they had most ardently desired this one thing as the reward of their service: that above all others they might have the merit of engaging the Saxons first — they judge the loss to be enormous, beyond those very many who fell there. As for the Germans, or those captured on both sides, it has not been fully or certainly determined how many there were. Of the soldiery of King Rudolf, moreover, it is reported that all of them fell there save two from the lesser ranks, not from the military sword-bearers. Of these, one was Meginfrid, a certain count of Magdeburg, who had apostatized and taken up again as an apostate the arms he had long since laid down for God's sake, in pursuit of the shameful gains of certain estates — and so he was run through there and perished by the avenging sword of God the just Judge.

With the enemies routed and driven by force of arms scattered in every direction, certain men on King Rudolf's side had attacked with no little boldness, surrounding on all sides, the encampment where the young soldier-guards and shield-bearers of the hostile army had been stationed — set apart from the fighters and awaiting the end of the battle — watching over the pack animals, wagons, and bundles of food supplies, expenses, clothing, and all their baggage; and they had captured them and joyfully carried off everything to their own camp, the enemies having been so fatally plundered.

Henry therefore, along with the accomplices of his tyranny, thoroughly crushed and embittered beyond measure by the persecutory savagery of his adversaries, the destruction of famine, the harshness of cold, and the shame and ill-fortune of so disgraceful and disastrous a flight, barely made his way back to his Regensburg in whatever fashion he could. The rest, no less wretched and dishonored, equally consumed with him by so many miseries, each one returned to his homeland with precious little glory.

King Rudolf, however, rallying his troops from every quarter, held the battlefield victoriously until midnight. But because so great a force of cold, and moreover the supreme labors of the recent battle had in like manner worn down, exhausted, and in many ways tormented the majority of them who were wounded, they withdrew for a time from the field — leaving behind those who lay slain or still half-dead there — into a nearby village where those chilled might warm themselves and rest; and then returning there before dawn and triumphing supremely throughout the whole day, they remained there in rejoicing until the next day.

The great duke and his uncle Count Herimann, however, who in the previous Saxon war had been captured and handed over to Henry, and had by then been released and freed by him in accordance with the covenant and promise of faith which he and the aforesaid duke had sworn to each other — most treacherously breaking the faith and assistance which they had previously confirmed by oath to King Rudolf against all who were opposed to him — tried to attach themselves fraudulently to the aforesaid tyrant before the battle was begun, having gathered all they could; but quickly driven back and put to flight by certain Saxon nobles who had detected their treachery, they barely tore themselves away from them and reached home safely.

By the same clandestine conspiracy of treachery, the marchioness Adela together with all her retinue, and her son-in-law Margrave Eggbert — margrave of Saxony — after the outcome of the battle with sufficient open audacity, suddenly seizing certain very strong castles with the support of their soldiers, rebelled as apostates against their king to his ruin. All of these, God finally favoring him, he speedily compelled to submit to surrender — and this not without damage to them, and damage by no means slight.

For he scattered their soldiers from them, received into his allegiance those sworn to him along with their possessions, lavished their estates, benefices, and marches upon others who were seeking and accepting them most eagerly, drove them from place to place with royal majesty, pursuing and subjecting them in every manner, and pressed them down and humbled them with such manifold severity, until they had learned by experience itself how foolish and how utterly ruinous it is to kick back against one's king and lord in any way, gratuitously and fraudulently.

Thus, returning as a glorious victor to Goslar after the aforesaid great battle he had fought with Henry, he had thereafter labored diligently with these not-small lesser matters until Lent — with so many warlike movements of rebels and adversaries — until he had thoroughly subdued those who had surrendered and subjected themselves to him, as was proper.

Henry at last, since he was making no progress at his will either by war or by this clandestine conspiracy which he was conducting with the Saxon nobles — and indeed, his own conscience bearing witness, he was not unaware that he was resisting one publicly most contumacious and disobedient to the justice of God, and on that account already excommunicated along with his own followers by apostolic censure — feigning at last a fear of the apostolic see on account of so many and so great miseries and desolations of the holy Church which he and his men had inflicted upon her, he had sent to Rome from among his anti-bishops the archbishop of Bremen and the bishop of Bamberg — but not without a great weight of gold and silver, as they say, with which they were to attempt to corrupt the Romans to his will.

He had also sent thither the bishop of Padua — who the previous summer had been appointed as an apostolic legate to our regions — with the same intention, laden and loaded down together with some of his own familiars with a most copious supply of money; this man, already corrupted not a little by Henry's gifts and intent moreover on corrupting others, was on the very journey pierced through with a lance deliberately by one of his own companions, and plunged most swiftly and suddenly into hell by the judgment of God. As for the treasure, on account of which . . . . . The rest has been lost.