The audacity of Hildebrand’s scheme will be noted by comparing it with the attitude of the most devoted adherents to the papal authority previous to his time. The capitularies of Charlemagne contain many rules for the regulation of religious duties. The emperor himself (794) presided at the Synod of Frankfort, though a papal legate was in attendance. While he brought the church all possible help as an ally, and yielded to it all obedience as a private Christian, he never allowed his imperial authority to be under so much as the shadow of control by the papal. He suffered but one religion in his domains, that which had the Pope for its chief administrator; but he held with equal strenuousness that the emperor was the vicar of God in things temporal. From 964 to 1055 the popes had been the direct nominees of the emperor. In 1059 the papal election devolved for the first time upon the conclave of cardinals; but the Lateran Council decreed that the imperial confirmation must follow. Though in 1061 Alexander II. was chosen without imperial sanction, yet in 1073 Hildebrand himself, becoming Pope as Gregory VII., did not venture to discharge the duties of the office without first asking and obtaining the emperor’s assent. But this outward deference to the secular power was only that he might grasp more securely the weapon with which he would beat that power to pieces. When the Emperor Henry IV. resented the sweeping claim of the Pope, Hildebrand launched against him all the terrors of the pontifical throne. His bull reads as follows: “Henry and all of his adherents I excommunicate and bind in the fetters of anathema; on the part of almighty God, I interdict him from the government of all Germany and Italy; I deprive him of all royal power and dignity; I prohibit every Christian from rendering him obedience as king; I absolve all who have sworn or shall swear allegiance to his sovereignty from their oaths.” (For the details of this controversy and the general history of Hildebrand, the reader is referred to the previous volume in this series, Vincent’s “Age of Hildebrand.”)