The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution of the Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the supreme pontiff. This Nicholas II did in A.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses and depravity of the last century, advanced apace. It had two main objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on the secular clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the extinction of simony. In the former, the Emperors and a large part of the laity were not unwilling to join: the latter no one dared to defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots, who would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass under that of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be impossible. [Sidenote: Henry IV and Gregory VII.] [Sidenote: A.D. 1077.] Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other: after this decree war was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor[177] replied by convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Supported by his own princes, the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through all Germany the Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of disaffection. Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince, titular lord of the world, a suppliant before the successor of the Apostle. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him; driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered life a power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless had all other humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent standing barefoot and woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who sat within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark a decisive change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased. Its wearer could no more, with the same lofty confidence, claim to be the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone. Gregory had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of