he undertook the arduous task
of entirely disjoining the ecclesiastical from the civil power, and of
excluding profane laymen from the right which they had assumed of
filling the vacancies of bishoprics, abbeys, and other spiritual
dignities [a]. The sovereigns who had long exercised this power, and
who had acquired it not by encroachments on the church, but on the
people, to whom it originally belonged [b], made great opposition to
this claim of the court of Rome; and Henry IV., the reigning emperor,
defended this prerogative of his crown with a vigour and resolution
suitable to its importance. The few offices, either civil or
military, which the feudal institutions left the sovereign the power
of bestowing, made the prerogative of conferring the pastoral ring and
staff the most valuable jewel of the royal diadem; especially as the
general ignorance of the age bestowed a consequence on the
ecclesiastical offices, even beyond the great extent of power and
property which belonged to them. Superstition, the child of
ignorance, invested the clergy with an authority almost sacred; and as
they engrossed the little learning of the age, their interposition
became requisite in all civil business, and a real usefulness in
common life was thus superadded to the spiritual sanctity of their
character.
[FN [a] L'Abbe Conc. tom. x. p. 371, 372. com. 2. [b] Padre Paolo
sopra benef. eccles. p. 30.]

When the usurpations, therefore, of the church had come to such
maturity as to embolden her to attempt extorting the right of
investitures from the temporal power, Europe, especially Italy and
Germany, was thrown into the most violent convulsions, and the pope
and the emperor waged implacable war on each other. Gregory dared to
fulminate the sentence of excommunication against Henry and his
adherents, to pronounce him rightfully deposed, to free his subjects
from their oaths of allegiance; and instead of shocking mankind by
this gross encroachment on the civil authority, he found the stupid
people ready to second his most exorbitant pretensions. Every
minister, servant, or vassal of the emperor, who received any disgust,
covered his rebellion under the pretence of principle; and even the
mother of this monarch, forgetting all the ties of nature, was
seduced to countenance the insolence of his enemies. Princes
themselves, not attentive to the pernicious consequences of those
papal claims, employed them for their present purposes; a