The war between Henry and the Pope continued. Henry summoned a synod at Worms in January, 1076, which decreed the deposition of the Pope. The envoy charged to convey this sentence appeared in the council chamber of the Lateran in February, before an assembly consisting of the mightiest in the land, whom the Pope had summoned to sit in judgment on Henry. With flashing eyes and in a voice of thunder he directed the Pope to descend from the chair of St. Peter. Cries of indignation rang through the hall, and a hundred swords were seen leaping from their scabbards to inflict vengeance on the daring intruder. The Pope, with difficulty, stilled the angry tumult. Then, rising with calm dignity, amid the breathless silence of the assembled multitude, he uttered that dread anathema which "shuts paradise and opens hell," and absolved the subjects of Henry from their allegiance. The inhabitants of Europe were struck dumb with amazement when they witnessed this exercise of papal prerogative. They thought that the powerful arm of Henry would have been raised to smite down the audacious Hildebrand. The Pope, however, well knew that Henry had by his excesses alienated from himself the affections of his subjects. The sentence gave a pretext to many of his nobility to withdraw from their allegiance. Awed by spiritual terrors, his attendants fell away from him as if he had been smitten by a leprosy. An assembly was now summoned at Trebur, in obedience to a requisition from the Pope, at which it was decreed that, if the Emperor continued excommunicate on the 23d of February, 1077, his crown should be given to another. The theory of the Holy Roman Empire had thus become a practical reality. The vassal of Otho had reduced the successor of Otho to vassalage. A great pope had wrung from the superstition and reverence of mankind a spiritual empire, which, it was hoped, would extend its sway to earth's remotest boundaries. ARTAUD DE MONTOR Gregory made it an invariable rule to act at the outset with gentleness. "No one," says he, "reaches the highest rank at a single spring; great edifices rise gradually." Certain of his strength, he chose to employ conciliation. He especially sought to convince Henry, but the excesses in which that prince wallowed were so abominable that his subjects in all parts, and especially the great, revolted against him. In 1076, Gregory assembled a council, which pronounced the excommunication of the King, with all the terrible consequences attendant upon it. History shows several emperors of the East excommunicated by preceding popes: Arcadius, by Innocent I; Anastasius, by Saint Symmachus; and Leo the Isaurian, by Gregory II and Gregory III. The decree of the same council set forth that the throne vacated by Henry was adjudged to Rudolph, duke of Swabia, already created king of Germany by the electors of the empire.