he
archbishops of Milan and Cologne, with other powerful lords, having
consigned him to a degrading captivity, administered, in his name, the
government of the empire. By affording him every means of vicious
indulgence, they were only too successful in corrupting a noble and
generous nature. Very soon he was guilty of crimes, and plunged into
excesses which seemed to cry aloud for vengeance.

The Pope saw that the time had come for the execution of his designs.
Henry had been guilty of the grossest simony. The spiritual dignities
had been openly sold to the highest bidder. He saw also that, while the
clergy took the oath of fealty to the monarch and were invested by him
with the ring and crozier, he could not establish the superiority of the
spiritual to the temporal jurisdiction. He therefore summoned a council
at the Lateran (1075), which issued a decree against lay investitures.
The Pope, having thus declared war against the Emperor, proceeded to
fill up certain vacant bishoprics, and to suspend bishops, both in
Germany and Italy, who had been guilty of simony. He also cited Henry
before him to answer for his simony, crimes, and excesses.

This citation is alleged to have given occasion for an attempted crime,
supposed to have been sanctioned by Henry, which may show us that while
the Pope was asserting a right to rule over the nations, he could not
rule in his own city. On Christmas Eve, 1075, the city of Rome was
visited with a violent tempest. Darkness brooded over the land. The
inhabitants thought that the day of judgment was at hand. In the midst
of this war of the elements two processions were seen advancing toward
the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. At the head of one of them was
Hildebrand, leading his priests to worship at a shrine. At the head of
the other was Cencius, a Roman noble. In one of the pauses in the roar
of the tempest, when the Pope was heard blessing his flock, the arm of
Cencius grasped his person, and the sword of a ruffian inflicted a wound
on his forehead. Bound with cords, the Pope was removed to a mansion in
the city, from which he was the next day to be removed to exile or to
death. A sword was aimed at the Pontiff's bosom, when the cries of a
fierce multitude, threatening to burn down the house, arrested the arm
of the assassin. An arrow, discharged from below, reached and slew the
latter. Cencius fell at the Pope's feet, a suppliant for pardon and for
life. The Pontiff immediately pa