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A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance
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Historical SummaryThe foregoing letter of Henry IV. was received at Rome with a storm of disapproval and the envoys who bore it barely escaped with their lives. A council of French and Italian bishops was convened in the Lateran (Feb. 24, 1076), and the king’s haughty epistle, together with the decree of the council at Worms deposing Gregory, were read and allowed to have their effect. With the assent of the bishops, the Pope pronounced the sentence of excommunication against Henry and formally released all the latter’s Christian subjects from their oath of allegiance. Naturally the action of Gregory aroused intense interest throughout Europe. In Germany it had the intended effect of detaching many influential bishops and abbots from the imperial cause and stirring the political enemies of the king to renewed activity. The papal ban became a pretext for the renewal of the hostility on part of his dissatisfied subjects which Henry had but just succeeded in suppressing. In the first part of the papal decree Gregory seeks to defend himself against the charges brought by Henry and the German clergy to the effect that he had mounted the papal throne through personal ambibition and the employment of unbecoming means. It was indisputable that his election had not been strictly in accord with the decree of 1059, but it seems equally true that, as Gregory declares, he was placed at the helm of the Church contrary to his personal desires.
48. Henry IV Deposed by Pope Gregory (1076)
Source—Text in Michael Doeberl, Monumenta Germaniœ Historica Selecta (München, 1889), Vol. III., p. 26. Translated in Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar H. McNeal, Source Book for Mediœval History (New York, 1905), pp. 155–156.
Gregory denies that he ever sought the papal office; Henry deposed by papal decree
St. Peter, prince of the apostles, incline thine ear unto me, I beseech thee, and hear me, thy servant, whom thou hast nourished from mine infancy and hast delivered from mine enemies that hate me for my fidelity to thee. Thou art my witness, as are also my mistress, the mother of God, and St. Paul thy brother, and all the other saints, that the Holy Roman Church called me to its government against my own will, and that I did not gain thy throne by violence; that I would rather have ended my days in exile than have obtained thy place by fraud or for worldly ambition. It is not by my efforts, but by thy grace, that I am set to rule over the Christian world which was especially intrusted to thee by Christ. It is by thy grace, and as thy representative that God has given to me the power to bind and to loose in heaven and in earth. Confident of my integrity and authority, I now declare in the name of the omnipotent God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that Henry, son of the Emperor Henry,1 is deprived of his kingdom of Germany and Italy. I do this by thy authority and in defense of the honor of thy Church, because he has rebelled against it. He who attempts to destroy the honor of the Church should be deprived of such honor as he may have held. He has refused to obey as a Christian should; he has not returned to God from whom he had wandered; he has had dealings with excommunicated persons; he has done many iniquities; he has despised the warnings which, as thou art witness, I sent to him for his salvation; he has cut himself off from thy Church, and has attempted to rend it asunder; therefore, by thy authority, I place him under the curse. It is in thy name that I curse him, that all people may know that thou art Peter, and upon thy rock the Son of the living God has built his Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
1 Henry III., emperor from 1039 to 1056.
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Chicago: "Henry IV Deposed by Pope Gregory (1076)," A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance in A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance, ed. Frederic Austin Ogg (1878-1951) (New York: American Book Company, 1908), 272–273. Original Sources, accessed November 25, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UQS8VKYWLA36KGX.
MLA: . "Henry IV Deposed by Pope Gregory (1076)." A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance, in A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance, edited by Frederic Austin Ogg (1878-1951), New York, American Book Company, 1908, pp. 272–273. Original Sources. 25 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UQS8VKYWLA36KGX.
Harvard: , 'Henry IV Deposed by Pope Gregory (1076)' in A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance. cited in 1908, A Source Book of Mediaeval History: Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the Germanic Invasions to the Renaissance, ed. , American Book Company, New York, pp.272–273. Original Sources, retrieved 25 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=UQS8VKYWLA36KGX.
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