Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 64

57

establishing peace with Henry. There was no indication of a pope plotting for the subjugation of
the future emperor.122
Instead, in the correspondence and communications of the pope is a strong sense of
exactly what defined kingship and how it was to be exercised. Gregory’s thoughts on kingship
were prophetically described years earlier by St. Peter Damian in a letter to the young Henry,
possibly written during 1065 as an exposition of the following passage from Sacred Scripture:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no
authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and
those who resist will incur judgment. For Rulers are not a terror to good
conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then
do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for
your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in
vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer [Romans
13:1-4].
What Damian emphasized was the duty of the ruler to correct evil. The correlation to the reform
party was clear and the king was specifically obliged to assist it. Failure, warned the saint,
would result in the king’s subjects holding him in contempt. The king unquestionably was, as
minister, to execute his obligation to revise abuses.123

122

123

Whitney, “Gregory VII,” 146.

I.S. Robinson, “The Princes and the Pactum 1077-1080,” The English Historical Review 94, no. 373
(October 1979): 749-50, accessed March 27. 2015, http://www.jstor.org/stable/565551.