From this period he had no resource from the reproaches addressed to him by the Roman clergy, and which were redoubled in proportion as the emperor and his army removed from Rome. Behold, then, the head of the church, who permits himself to be taxed with prevarication, who retires to Terracina to weep his error, who suffers cardinals to annul his decrees and his promises! he was about, he said, to abdicate the tiara; happily they opposed this design; and such is the docility of the holy pontiff, that he constrains himself to preserve power, in order to make a better use of it. Finally, he revokes, in a council, the treaty he had the misfortune to subscribe; he declines, however, to excommunicate Henry him-himself, so scrupulous is he still of violating his engagement! It was the Cardinals who pronounced this anathema in the presence of Pascal II. Not only did this Council condemn investitures, but furthermore, it termed all those heretics who did not condemn them. Henry V. conceived little danger from it. He came into Italy in 1116, to take possession of the rich inheritance bequeathed by Matilda to St. Peter. She had not transferred either sovereign rights or prerogatives, nor yet fiefs, but merely landed property, which the Roman Church was to enjoy as the proprietor, ‘jure proprietario’.¹⁷⁷ It matters not—the emperor pretends that the countess had no power, even on these grounds, to dispose of those domains; and during the whole of the 12th century, the popes remained deprived of this inheritance. After having taken possession, Henry advanced towards Rome; a sedition had burst out there against Pascal, whose long pontificate displeased the great, and whose person every one. While the pope fled to Monte Cas-sino, and shut himself up in Beneventum, the excommunicated monarch entered Rome, as if in triumph, and there received the imperial crown from the hands of Bourdin, archbishop of Bruges. Pascal excommunicated Bourdin, endeavoured to raise up against Henry, now France, now the Normans established in Lower Italy, and, finally, terminated his career, rather ingloriously, in the month of January, 1118. ¹⁷⁷ Chartula comittissæ Matbildia super concessione bono-rum suorum, Roman, eccles. vol. 6, p. 384. Script, rer. Italic. His partisans gave him for successor, Gelasius II. whom the Frangipani, a family devoted to the emperor, were unwilling to recognize. Gelasius, arrested, released, and pursued, took the determination to fly to Gaeta, his country, from the time he was aware that Henry approached Rome. Henry had Bourdin raised to the papacy, who, having taken the name of Gregory VIII. crowned the new emperor. But the moment the latter quitted Rome, Gelasius entered it secretly. Driven out by the Frangipani he fled, returned, fled again, retired into Provence, and died at Cluni. He had reigned but one year, if, indeed, it can be said he reigned at all.