repudiating the wife whom they had forced upon him. He was checked by
the austere and resolute papal legate, Peter Damiani, and was obliged
to accept Bertha of Savoy, to whom subsequently he became much
attached. Peter Darniani's visit, however, brought him relief in
another way, for the legate took back such a report of the prevalence
of simony that the archbishops of Mainz and Koln were summoned to
Rome, whence they returned so humiliated that their political
influence was gone. It is almost equally remarkable that the two
English Archbishops also appeared at Rome during this Pontificate,
Lanfranc of Canterbury in order that he might obtain the pall without
which he could not exercise his functions as Archbishop, and Thomas of
York, who referred to the Pope his contention that the primacy of
England should alternate between Canterbury and York. In France, too,
we are told that the envoys of Alexander interfered in the smallest
details of the ecclesiastical administration and punished without
mercy all clergy guilty of simony or of matrimony. Almost the last
public act of Pope Alexander was to excommunicate five counsellors of
the young King of Germany, to whom were attributed responsibility for
his acts, and to summon Henry himself to answer charges of simony and
other evil deeds.




CHAPTER II

GREGORY VII AND LAY INVESTITURE


[Sidenote: Gregory VII (1073-85).]