Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 55

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consolidate authority.103 His promises and apologies forgotten, he resumed the practices of
ecclesiastical appointments and interference in the imperial church, disregarding Rome.
Henry could not give up the right of appointing bishops without abandoning all
hope of welding Germany into a united monarchy. Gregory could not acquiesce
in the imperial claims, which included a claim to appoint the popes themselves,
without jeopardizing the continuance of the entire reform movement, for Henry
showed none of his father’s spontaneous zeal for the task of revivifying the
church. When Henry turned to his bishops for support in resisting the pope’s
decree, and Gregory in turn appealed to the German princes to assist him in
deposing Henry from his kingship, it became clear that the whole leadership of
Christian society was at stake in the dispute.104
Henry’s upbringing and the example of his father and other kings before him shaped his idea of
where his authority originated but it was the inability to exert absolute power over the German
princes that caused his desperate defense of influence over the imperial state-church system,
without which his monarchy was certain to crumble. Under the somewhat benevolent reign of
Henry III and during the minority of Henry IV, however, the Roman Church had grown
confident in its reform role. When Hildebrand was elected pope, he brought to the papacy his
strong sense of reform’s necessity to the survival of the Church. No compromise was possible.
Pope Gregory VII

103

Miller, 83-84.

104

Tierney, 45.