Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 72

65

churches of Ferno and Spoleto.138 The positive attitude and willingness to cooperate during the
year 1074 was reflected in the pope’s willingness to remain open minded regarding the
disagreement over who was the rightful metropolitan of Milan, the papal or the imperial
candidate. Gregory VII wrote to the king on the seventh of December, 1074:
As to the Milan affair: If you will send to us wise and pious men and if it shall
appear by their weighty arguments that the decree of the Roman Church, twice
confirmed by synodal authority, can or ought to be modified we shall not
hesitate to follow their well-considered judgment and turn to a wiser course.
But if this shall prove to be impossible, then I beg and conjure Your Highness,
for the love of God and by your reverence for St. Peter, freely to restore its
rights to the church of Milan. Then finally you may know that you have won
the true power of a king, if you shall bow before Christ, the king of kings, for
the restoration and defense of his churches, remembering the words of him who
said: “Them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly
esteemed.”139
The pope did not suspect that anything was amiss. He was eager to return to the program of
reform and implement it within the German realm with the king’s assistance. Henry’s initial
support of reform, however, was secretly conditional upon the status of the open rebellion of the
Saxons and desire to be crowned emperor. The pope called for a synod of German bishops to
address any issues but was resisted. Various German bishops were then ordered to appear at the
Lenten synod of 1075 in Rome. Four of the most rebellious refused the request and were
summarily suspended. It was at this synod that Gregory VII perhaps made his first explicit
prohibition against investiture, forever rupturing his relationship with Henry.

138

Ibid., 119.

139

Emerton, 55-56.