Millennium by Holland, Tom (any book recommendations txt) 📕

had decreed, and do penance for them – or else ‘not only would he be excommunicated until he had made due restitution, but he would also be deprived of his entire dignity as king without hope of recovery’. Such an ultimatum spoke loudly of Gregory’s courage, his sense of conviction, and his invincible self-confidence: for by now he had a far better understanding of his adversary’s character. Throwing down the gauntlet as he had done, he would have anticipated the likely response. A response that, sure enough, was not slow in coming.

A mere thirty years had passed since Henry III, at the Synod of Sutri, had laid on a masterclass in the art of removing troublesome popes.

Now, determined to show himself a chip off the old block, his son aimed to reprise the coup. Three weeks into the new year, a full two- thirds of the Reich’s bishops assembled in splendid conference at Worms. Their mission was one about which Henry made absolutely no bones: to ensure the disposal of the Pope. The bishops’ solution? To insist that Gregory’s elevation had been merely as the favourite of the Roman mob, rather than as the choice of Henry and the cardinals – and that as a result he was no pope at all. A neat manoeuvre – and one with which Henry was naturally delighted. Just to spice things up a bit, however, he made sure that some additional allegations were thrown in for good measure: that Gregory had repeatedly perjured himself; that he had treated the imperial bishops like slaves; that he had been carrying on with the Lady Matilda. All was then set down, and dispatched by envoy to the man now referred to dismissively by the imperial bishops as ‘Hildebrand’. Henry himself was even ruder. ‘Let another sit upon St Peter’s throne,’ he proclaimed ringingly, ‘one who will not cloak violence with a pretence of religion, but will teach the pure doctrine of St Peter. I, Henry, by God’s grace king, with all our bishops say to you: come down, come down!’

But Gregory did not come down. Instead, no sooner had he received Henry’s invitation to abdicate than he prepared to order the gates of hell unbarred and swung open wide, ready to receive the obdurate king. In the very church in which he had first been hailed as Pope, before a full assembly of the Roman Church, and in the presence of the relics of St Peter, he ordered the letter from Worms to be read out – and the howls of horror which it provoked were terrible to hear. One week later, when Gregory formally confirmed the awful sentence of excommunication against the king, the throne of St Peter, it is said, split suddenly in two. A wonder fit to chill the blood: for one half of Christendom was indeed now sundered from the other. The terms of Gregory’s anathema were dreadful and unparalleled. ‘I take from King Henry, son of the Emperor Henry, who has risen against the Church with unheard-of pride, the government of the entire kingdom of the Germans and of the Italians. And I absolve the Christian people from any oath that they have taken, or shall take, to him. And I forbid anyone to serve him as king.’ A deposition that, once pronounced, echoed terrifyingly across Christendom. Indeed, nervousness as to what they might have brought down upon themselves and upon the Reich immediately began to afflict Henry’s bishops with serious second thoughts. At Easter, when the king summoned them to denounce ‘Hildebrand’ to the Christian people, only one, William of Utrecht, was bold enough to do so—and his cathedral was promptly struck by lightning. One week later, and he was afflicted with excruciating stomach cramps. One month later, and he was dead. William’s fellow bishops, rather than persist in their support for a king who was so clearly accursed, now increasingly began to fall away. Many of them, anxious for their own souls, hurried to make their peace with Gregory – who, for his part, was diplomatically quick to welcome them back into the fold. Henry, having been cheered on all the way in the declaration of war that he had made at Worms, now found himself being abandoned on the very field of battle.

Nor was it only the bishops who were proving fair-weather friends. The great lords of the Reich, who back at Christmas had seemed so cowed, so dutiful, so loyal, had in truth merely been biding their time. Like their brother princes of the Church, they had tracked ‘the great disasters that plagued the commonwealth’ with much show of pious consternation but also with not a little smacking of their lips, for upheaval spelled opportunity for them. Sure enough, by the summer, the embers of Saxon resentment were blazing back into open flames. In August – in infallible proof that the wind had changed – Otto of Northeim opted to jump ship yet again. Even more ominously, as Henry struggled and failed to contain the renewed rebellion, the southern princes were also preparing themselves to show their hand. In September, Duke Rudolf and a host of formidable allies sent out a summons to the nobility of the entire Reich, inviting them to the town of Tribur, on the east bank of the Rhine, there to attempt, as they put it, ‘to bring a close to the various misfortunes that for many years had disturbed the peace of the Church’. Or, to put it more plainly: to discuss the possible deposition of the king. Every lord who travelled to Tribur understood the potential stakes. So too did the king himself. Weakened as he was by the sequence of calamities that had overwhelmed him since Easter, he knew full well that he had no hope of preventing the assembly by force. Instead, mustering what few supporters he could still count upon, he limped his way to the town of Oppenheim, directly opposite the great gathering of princes,