f Ravenna, who contended with Urban for the name
and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to unite the powers of the
West, at a time when the princes were separated from the church, and the
people from their princes, by the excommunication which himself and his
predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France.
Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which
he had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage.
Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures, the
prerogative of confirming his bishops by the delivery of the ring and
crosier. But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy by the arms of
the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the long quarrel had been
recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad and the shame of
his wife, who, in the synods of Constance and Placentia, confessed
the manifold prostitutions to which she had been exposed by a husband
regardless of her honor and his own. So popular was the cause of Urban,
so weighty was his influence, that the council which he summoned
at Placentia was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France,
Burgandy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty
thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as the
most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude,
the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The
ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to
plead the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople,
which was divided only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the
common enemies of the Christian name. In their suppliant address they
flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once to
their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the Barbarians on the
confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe.
At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren,
the assembly burst into tears; the most eager champions declared their
readiness to march; and the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the
assurance of a speedy and powerful succor. The relief of Constantinople
was included in the larger and most distant project of the deliverance
of Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a
second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in
the autumn of the same year. The short d