The Jesuits of the Vatican have decided to celebrate January 25, the octocentenary of the infamous treatment of Henry IV., of Germany, in 1077, by the notorious Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. Prince Bismarck’s pithy saying, “Germany is not going again to Canossa,” seems to have rankled in the souls of the Jesuits, and in the spirit of indomitable defiance of all earthly power, which is the breath of their nostrils, they have resolved that not only Germany, but all the world shall hear it; and not only hear it, but have it thundered into its ears by a noisy and boastful exhibition wherever popery prevails. To any but Jesuits the great fact that the circumstances of the two parties are now reversed, that, instead of the papacy’s being able to dictate to Germany, Germany is become a great and commanding power, and the papacy is become just nothing at all, would have inculcated some modesty; but it is this very change which stings the Vatican to madness.
This commemoration of the most notorious and offensive display of the assumed right of the Romish church to depose kings is to show to the world, with which the papal church is everywhere at war, that not only does the church approve the dogma of Hildebrand, but that after a lapse of eight hundred years it glories in the most infamous transaction of the kind that ever took place, and is resolved to glory in it in the face of all knowledge of the nineteenth century, of every monarch, and every people. It is to say, with all the possible emphasis of words and acts, that had the church power, it has still the will and the wish to treat Emperor William, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, Victor Emmanuel, and the President of the French, exactly as Hildebrand treated Henry IV. at Canossa. As the Catholic Bishop Kendrick, of Philadelphia, candidly confesses, the church does not do these things, only because she cannot.
Henry IV., indeed, disheartened by the effect of Hildebrand’s excommunication on his superstitious subjects, and by the attempts on his throne to which it emboldened his princely neighbors, in the frightful winter of 1077—such a winter as no man living had witnessed—crossed the Alps with his wife and family, through the most incredible sufferings, and arriving at the castle of Canossa—whither Hildebrand had fled, supposing that Henry was coming with an army, and where he was feasting luxuriously with his paramour, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany—presented himself in the castle court in sackcloth, with a rope round his neck, and with bare head and feet. The outer gates were immediately closed upon him, and for three days and three nights he was kept standing there, vainly imploring admission to the presence of the pope. His limbs were rigid with cold, his beard and hair were clotted with ice; in his agonies he howled like a wild beast, and how he survived it is marvelous.
It was not the heart of the diabolic pontiff, in whom the Vatican glories, which relented; it was the heart of a woman. Giving way, at length, to the tears and entreaties of the Countess Matilda, Gregory VII., seizing his crucifix, exclaimed, “For thee, Jesus, I make this sacrifice!” Odious hypocrite! who dared to introduce the name of Christ into this drama of priestly arrogance and vengeance, and to pretend to sacrifice his envenomed passions to the meek Saviour.
But he did nothing of the sort. Though he professed to forgive Henry, and took off the excommunication, he refused to restore him to his throne, and attempted to put Rudolf of Bavaria into it. This is what the present pope and his advisers deem the proper model for the treatment of crowned heads by a pope.
This is the transaction and the church doctrine which the Vatican now, after 800 years, is preparing to celebrate as still the doctrine and principles of the infallible. But what were the consequences of this papal display? If God, according to the proverb, first drives mad those whom he means to destroy, the Jesuits should be profoundly silent on this affair; but it is precisely for this divine driving to destruction that the Jesuits bring it forward in glorification.
Henry IV., roused to action by the unexampled indignities which he had suffered, returned to Germany, raised an army, for now his people were aroused too, crossed the Alps, marched to Rome, deposed Gregory in full conclave, and set up Clement III. in his place.
Gregory, dastardly and weak as he was overbearingly insolent, fled to the castle of St. Angelo, which was shut up three years. The discord which his audacious conduct at Canossa had stirred up tore to pieces the two desolated countries. Everywhere there were princes maddened by ambition, sacked cities, violated women, burnt villages, and people infuriated against each other. As for himself, he was hurled from the papal throne and continued so. With a heart corroded by disappointment, by public contempt and by jealousy, he saw another pope wearing the tiara, and lived and died miserably in exile at Salerno, in the bay of Naples. Is that a story for a pope in his senses to revive?
But the consequences to the church have been equally disastrous. This doctrine proclaimed by Hildebrand of supremacy over kings, and this first scandalous enforcement of it, struck the first blow against the church in the heart of the kings. Thenceforth it was the avowed enemy of the civil power, which, as knowledge increased, was sure to become too much for it.
It is since the Jesuits have come into power, dating from the Council of Trent, that this war of the church on the States has gone on most determinedly, and ever to the damage of the church. All monarchies, especially since the Œcumenical Council, have come to regard the Vatican as their most open and also their most insidious enemy; all, even the most bigoted, except Spain, have broken off their concordats with Rome. Every step that the Jesuits, through their submissive tool, Pius IX., have of late years taken to maintain their fast-falling prestige, the Syllabus, the Œcumenical Council, the dogma of infallibility, have only brought additional ruin on their heads. The pope, instead of being benefited by the doctrines and deeds of Gregory VII., instead of ruling over and trampling on monarchs, is himself put down by a monarch, stripped of his temporal power, reduced to a mere householder, at the mercy of a government whom he contrives to menace and insult in a manner which may ere long lead to a crisis which will practically illustrate the axiom of “Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat.” This is the real moral of the story of Canossa.—Christian Weekly.