prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy. Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon him on Christmas, A.D. 1075, during Divine service, and made him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to take to flight. On New Year’s Day, A.D. 1076, there appeared at the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened the king with excommunication and deposition should he not immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant, an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave their consent to this decree (§ 97, 5). At the next Roman Fast Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance. Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets. The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur, in October, A.D. 1076, the pope was invited to come personally to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown, but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in the exercise of all royal prerogatives.