like angels but would only encourage licence, and that, if it were
necessary to choose, they would abandon the priesthood rather than
their wives. Gregory, however, sent legates into various districts
armed with full powers, and succeeded in rousing the populace against
the married clergy.

[Sidenote: Gregory's decree against investiture.]

It was under these circumstances that Gregory determined to bring to
an issue the chief question in dispute between Church and State.
Hitherto he had said nothing against the practice of lay investiture.
Now, however, at the Lenten Synod in 1075, a decree was issued which
condemned both the ecclesiastic, high or low, who should take
investiture from a layman, and also the layman, however exalted in
rank, who should dare to give investiture. The decree had no immediate
effect, and at the end of the year Gregory followed it up with a
letter to the King, in which he threatened excommunication if before
the meeting of the next usual Lenten Synod Henry had not amended his
life and got rid of his councillors, who had never freed themselves
from the papal ban.

[Sidenote: Henry's Answer.]

Henry's answer was given at a Synod of German ecclesiastics at Worms.
Cardinal Hugh the White, who for personal reasons had turned against
Gregory, accused him of the most incredible crimes, and a letter was
despatched in which the bishops renounced their obedience. Henry also
addressed a letter to the Pope, which quite surpassed that of the
bishops in violence of expression. "Henry, King not by usurpation but
by the holy ordination of God, to Hildebrand now no apostolic ruler