Gregory realised the magnitude of his task, but he never shrank from it. ‘I would that you knew,’ wrote he to the Abbot of Cluny, ‘the anguish that assails my soul. The Church of the East has gone astray from the Catholic faith. If I look to the west, the north, or the south, I find but few bishops whose appointments and whose lives are in accordance with the laws of the Church, or who govern God’s people through love and not through worldly ambition. Among princes I know not one who sets the honour of God before his own, or justice before gain. If I did not hope that I could be of use to the Church, I would not remain at Rome a day.’ From the very first he was beset on every side with difficulties. Even the alliance with the Normans was uncertain. Robert Guiscard, with his brother Roger, waged war against Gregory’s faithful vassal, Richard of Capua; and Robert, who threatened the papal possession of Benevento, went so far that he incurred excommunication. Philip of France, ‘the worst of the tyrants who enslaved the Church,’ had to be threatened with interdict. A project to unite the Eastern with the Western Church broke down lamentably. A contest with Henry IV. soon became inevitable. But Gregory abated nothing of his high claims. In February 1075 he held a synod at Rome, at which severe decrees against simony and the marriage of clerks were issued. [Sidenote: The Synod of 1075, and the attack on Simony and Lay Investiture.] The practice of lay investiture, by which secular princes were wont to grant bishoprics and abbeys by the conferring of spiritual symbols such as the ring and staff, had long been regarded by the Cluniacs as the most glaring of temporal aggressions against the spiritual power. This practice was now sternly forbidden. ‘If any one,’ declared the synod, ‘henceforth receive from the hand of any lay person a bishopric or abbey, let him not be considered as abbot or bishop, and let the favour of St. Peter and the gate of the Church be forbidden to him. If an emperor, a king, a duke, a count, or any other lay person presume to give investiture of any ecclesiastical dignity, let him be excommunicated.’ This decree gave the signal for the great Investiture Contest, and for the greater struggle of Papacy and Empire that convulsed Europe, save during occasional breaks, for the next two centuries.