cal communion, and
from all commerce of civil life. They urgently demand that you be
judged, and you know how uncertain are all human judgments. Do, then, as
we advise, and if you feel that you are innocent, deliver the Church
from this scandal, and yourself from this embarrassment. Take this other
portion of the host, that this proof of your innocence may close the
lips of your enemies, and engage us to be your most ardent defender, to
reconcile you with the nobles, and forever to terminate the civil war."

This address astonished the King. Going apart with his confidants, he
tremblingly consulted as to what he could do to avoid so terrible a
test. At length, having somewhat recovered his calmness, he said to the
Pope, that as those nobles who remained faithful were, for the most
part, absent, as well as those who accused him, the latter would give
little faith to what he might do in his own justification, unless it
were done in their presence. For that reason, he asked that the test
should be postponed to the day of the sitting of the general diet, and
the Pope consented.

When the Pope had finished Mass, he invited the King to dinner, treated
him with much attention, and dismissed him in peace to his own people,
who had remained outside the castle. Henry, on his return to his nobles,
was not well received. Henry, as Voigt shows, soon became alarmed at
their disapprobation, which originated only in a feeling of wounded
complicity and ambitious views, which could not hope for success after
the victory gained by Gregory.

Henry, hearing himself accused of weakness, thought to deliver himself
from so much annoyance by a bold perjury; and he endeavored to draw
Gregory and Matilda into a snare. Warned by faithful friends, they did
not visit the King as had been agreed; and that new wrong determined
Gregory to suspend his departure for the Diet of Augsburg. No one, not
even the pious Matilda, now dared to speak of a reconciliation.

Henry held at Brescia, in 1080, a pseudo council of the bishops devoted
to him; and there he caused Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, an avowed
enemy of Gregory, to be elected as Pope; and he deposed Gregory,
although he was recognized as the legitimate pope by the whole Catholic
world, with the exception of the bishops in revolt, under the direction
of Henry. On learning this, Gregory celebrated at Rome, in the year
1080, a regular council, in which he again excommunicated Henry, and
especial