What are we to think of such a fall, such a humiliation on the part of a sovereign?  What are we to think of such haughtiness on the part of a priest,—­his subject?  We are filled with blended pity and indignation.  We are inclined to say that this was the greatest blunder that any monarch ever made; that Henry—­humbled and deserted and threatened as he was—­should not have stooped to this; that he should have lost his crown and life rather than handed over his empire to a plebeian priest,—­for he was an acknowledged hero; he was monarch of half of Europe.  And yet we are bound to consider Henry’s circumstances and the ideas with which he had to contend.  His was the error of the Middle Ages; the feeblest of his modern successors would have killed the Pope if he could, rather than have disgraced himself by such an ignominy.

True it is that Henry came to himself; that he repented of his step.  But it was too late.  Gregory had gained the victory; and it was all the greater because it was a moral one.  It was known to all Europe and all the world, and would be known to all posterity, that the Emperor of Germany had bowed in submission to a foreign priest.  The temporal power had yielded to the spiritual; the State had conceded the supremacy of the Church.  The Pope had triumphed over the mightiest monarch of the age, and his successors would place their feet over future prostrate kings.  What a victory!  What mighty consequences were the result of it!  On what a throne did this moral victory seat the future pontiffs of the Eternal City!  How august their dominion, for it was over the minds and souls of men!  Truly to the Pope were given the keys of Heaven and Hell; and so long as the ideas of that age were accepted, who could resist a man armed with the thunders of Omnipotence?

It mattered nothing that the Emperor was ashamed of his weakness; that he retracted; that he vowed vengeance; that he marched at the head of new armies.  No matter that his adherents were indignant; that all Germany wept; that loyalty rallied to his aid; that he gained victories proportionate with his former defeats; that he chased Gregory from city to city, and castle to castle, and convent to convent, while his generals burned the Pope’s palaces and wasted his territories.  No matter that Gregory—­broken, defeated, miserable, outwardly ruined—­died prematurely in exile; no matter that he did not, in his great reverses, anticipate the fruits of his firmness and heroism.  His principles survived him; they have never been lost sight of by his successors; they gained strength through successive generations.  Innocent III. reaped what he had sown.  Kings dared not resist Innocent III., who realized those three things to which the more able Gregory had aspired,—­“independent sovereignty, control over the princes of the earth, and the supremacy of the Church.”  Innocent was the greater pope, but Hildebrand was the greater man.