lose his crown, and be in danger of losing his soul, unless he made his peace with his dangerous enemy.  It was necessary that the awful curse should be removed.  He had no remedy; only one course was before him.  He must yield; not to man alone, but to an idea, which had the force of fate.  Wonder not that he made up his mind to submit.  He was great, but not greater than his age.  How few men are!  Mohammed could renounce prevailing idolatries; Luther could burn a papal bull; but the Emperor of Germany could not resist the accepted vicegerent of the Almighty.

Behold, then, the melancholy, pitiable spectacle of this mighty monarch in the depth of winter—­and a winter of unprecedented severity—­crossing, in the garb of a pilgrim, the frozen Alps, enduring the greatest privations and fatigues and perils, and approaching on foot the gloomy fortress of Canossa (beyond the Po), in which Hildebrand had intrenched himself.  Even then the angry pontiff refused to see him.  Henry had to stoop to a still deeper degradation,—­to stand bareheaded and barefooted for three days, amid the blasts of winter, in the court-yard of the castle, before the Pope would promise absolution, and then only at the intercession of the Countess Matilda.

What are we to think of such a fall, such a humiliation on the part of a sovereign?  What are we to think of such haughtiness on the part of a priest,—­his subject?  We are filled with blended pity and indignation.  We are inclined to say that this was the greatest blunder that any monarch ever made; that Henry—­humbled and deserted and threatened as he was—­should not have stooped to this; that he should have lost his crown and life rather than handed over his empire to a plebeian priest,—­for he was an acknowledged hero; he was monarch of half of Europe.  And yet we are bound to consider Henry’s circumstances and the ideas with which he had to contend.  His was the error of the Middle Ages; the feeblest of his modern successors would have killed the Pope if he could, rather than have disgraced himself by such an ignominy.

True it is that Henry came to himself; that he repented of his step.  But it was too late.  Gregory had gained the victory; and it was all the greater because it was a moral one.  It was known to all Europe and all the world, and would be known to all posterity, that the Emperor of Germany had bowed in submission to a foreign priest.  The temporal power had yielded to the spiritual; the State had conceded the supremacy of the Church.  The Pope had triumphed over the mightiest monarch of the age, and his successors would place their feet over future prostrate kings.  What a victory!  What mighty consequences were the result of it!  On what a throne did this moral victory seat the future pontiffs of the Eternal City!  How august their dominion, for it was over the minds and souls of men!  Truly to the Pope were given the keys of Heaven and Hell; and so long as the ideas of that age were accepted, who could resist a man armed with the thunders of Omnipotence?