army, melting from about the emperor under a nameless horror, left him
helpless.

Gregory lay like a magician in the fortress of Canossa: but he had no need
of carnal weapons, for when the emperor reached the Alps he was almost
alone. Then his imagination also took fire, the panic seized him, and he
sued for mercy.

On August 7, 1106, Henry died at Liege, an outcast and a mendicant, and
for five long years his body lay at the church door, an accursed thing
which no man dared to bury.

Gregory prevailed because, to the understanding of the eleventh century,
the evidence at hand indicated that he embodied in a high degree the
infinite energy. The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and the
evidence which appealed to it was those phenomena of trance, hypnotism,
and catalepsy which are as mysterious now as they were then, but whose
effect was then to create an overpowering demand for miracle-working
substances. The sale of these substances gradually drew the larger portion
of the wealth of the community into the hands of the clergy, and with
wealth went temporal power. No vested interest in any progressive
community has probably ever been relatively stronger, for the Church found
no difficulty, when embarrassed, in establishing and operating a thorough
system for exterminating her critics.

Under such a pressure modern civilization must have sunk into some form of
caste had the mediaeval mind resembled any antecedent mind, but the middle
age, though superficially imaginative, was fundamentally materialistic, as
the history of the crusades showed.