We will no longer continue a conversation which, to be intelligible to all, would require a more intimate acquaintance with the history of the times than can be obtained from the books in free circulation among us.  Though Gregory VII has been reproached by all Protestants, and by some Catholics, with an undue assumption of temporal power, and an unnecessary severity against Henry IV of Austria, it is certain that, in his own day, he was charged by many of his own friends, particularly, in Saxony and Suabia, with too tender a regard for a monarch who violated his most solemn engagements the moment he fancied he could do so with impunity, and whose court, already openly profligate, threatened to present the appearance of an Eastern seraglio.  A hasty glance at the prominent facts of the dispute will leave us in doubt whether to admire most the dignified and Christian forbearance of the Pope while a hope of saving his adversary remained, or the unwavering resolution he displayed, even to death in exile, when convinced that mercy to the king would be injustice to God.

No sooner had Gregory assumed the tiara, than he addressed letters to different persons, in which he assured them of his earnest desire to unite with Henry in upholding the honor of the Church and the imperial dignity; to accomplish which he would embrace the first opportunity of sending legates to Henry, to acquaint the king with his views.  But, while proferring his love, he declared that, if Henry should venture to offer God insult instead of honor, he would not fail in his duty to the Divine Head of the Church through fear of offending man.  So, in a letter to Rodolph, Duke of Suabia, who at that time was known to be secretly hostile to the king, Gregory declared that he entertained no ill feeling whatever for Henry, but simply desired to do his duty.

There were two evils which Gregory was resolved to extirpate:  lay investitures, and the incontinence of the clergy.  When the power of appointing to benefices was usurped by the civil power, the emperor was sure to fill the highest places in his gift with creatures of his own.  The inevitable result of this was to create two classes of prelates—­one of lay, the other of ecclesial investiture.  Its ultimate effect was to render the Church completely depend upon the State, and to change and corrupt its very source with the varying vices of libertine despots.  It was found (and how could it be otherwise?) that the proteges of the emperor studied only how to please him; and that, in serving the State and the prince, they became indifferent to the Church.  Selected to serve a particular purpose, or chosen in consideration of a valuable donation, the lay nominee had been sure to fulfil the object for which he was elevated, or to indulge the avarice or ambition which had craved the appointment.  It was in attempting to remedy this fatal innovation that Gregory found himself repeatedly thwarted by Henry; and yet he had been censured by those who lament the worldliness of a portion of the medieval clergy, for striking at the root of the evil.