The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

IIILDEBRAND S SUCCESSORS. 79Gregory was gone, but his principle survived. Ho hadleft the mantle of his ambition, and, to a largo extent, ofhis genius also, to his successors, Urban II. and Paschal IT.Urban maintained the contest in the very spirit of Gregory;the opposition of Paschal may deserve tobe accounted aspartaking of a higher character. A conviction that it wasutterly incongruous in a layman to give admission to a spiritualoffice, seems to have mainly animated him in prosecutingthe contest. He actually signed an agreement with Henry V.in 1110, whereby all the lands and possessions held by theChurch in fief were to be given back to the Emperor, on conditionthat the Emperor should surrender the right of investiture.The prelates and bishops of Paschal's court, who sawlittle attractive in the episcopate save the temporalities, believedthat their infallible master had gone mad, and raisedsuch a clamour, that the pontiff was obliged to desist from hisdesign.* At length, in 1122, the contention was ended bya compromise between Henry and Calixtus II.Accordingto this compact, the election of bishops was to be free, theirinvestiture was to belong solely to ecclesiastical functionaries,while the Emperor was to induct them into their temporalities,not by the crozier and ring, as before, but by thesceptre.It is not improbable that the sovereigns and barons ofthe age believed that this concordat left the substantialpower in the election of bishops still in their own hands.With our clearer light it is not difficult to see that theadvantage greatly preponderated in favour of the Church.It extricated the spiritualsecular.element from the control of theIt was a solemn ratification of the principle of spiritualindependence, which, in the case of a church spurningco-ordinate jurisdiction, and claiming both swords, wassure speedily and inevitably to grow into spiritual supremacy.The temporalities might come in some cases to belost ; but in that age the risk was small ; and granting thatHallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 542.