It is difficult to estimate the natural gifts of the new ruler of Germany, for an unhappy upbringing warped his outlook and affections. Left at first under the guardianship of his mother, the Empress Agnes, the young Henry IV was enticed at the age of eleven on board a ship belonging to Anno, the ambitious Archbishop of Cologne. While he was still admiring her wonders the ship set sail up the Rhine, and though the boy plunged overboard in an effort to escape his kidnappers he was rescued and brought back. For the next four years he remained first the pupil of Archbishop Anno, who punished him for the slightest fault with harsh cruelty and deprived him of all companionship of his own age, and then of Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen, who indulged his every whim and passion. At length, at the age of fifteen, handsome and kingly in appearance, but utterly uncontrolled and dissolute in his way of life, Henry was declared of age to govern for himself, and straightway began to alienate his barons and people. He had been married against his wish to the plain daughter of one of his Margraves, and expressed his indignation by ill-treating and neglecting her, to the wrath of her powerful relations: he also built castles on the hill-tops in Saxony, from which his troops oppressed the countryside: but the sin for which he was destined to be called to account was his flagrant misuse of his power over the German Church. At first, when reproved by the Pope for selling bishoprics and benefices, Henry was apologetic in his letters; but he had no real intention of amending his ways and soon began to chafe openly at Roman criticism and threats. At last acrimonious disputes came to a head in what is called the ‘Investiture Question’, and because it is a problem that affected the whole relations of Church and State in the eleventh century it is important to understand what it exactly meant to Europe. Investiture was the ceremony by which a temporal ruler, such as a king, transferred to a newly chosen Church official, such as a bishop, the lands and rights belonging to his office. The king would present the bishop with a ring and crozier and the bishop in return would place his hands between those of the king and do him homage like a lay tenant-in-chief. The Roman See declared that it was not fitting for hands sacred to the service of God at His altar to be placed in submission between those that a temporal ruler had stained with the blood of war. Behind this figure of speech lay the real reason, the implication that if the ring and crozier were to be taken as symbols of lands and offices, bishops would tend to regard these temporal possessions as the chief things in their lives, and the oath of homage they gave in exchange as more important than their vow to do God’s service.