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a ppointing the bishops within the boundaries of their own realm.
Hildebrand declared that this practice would immediately come to a
halt. From now on, the church in Rome would make these
appointments.
The gall of the new pronouncement was startling. Under Pope
Hildebrand's new system, religious officials would no longer be men
the secular authority could count on for loyalty or cooperation. They
would no longer be extensions of the king's own bureaucracy. Instead,
these powerful local figures would be virtual foreign agents.
As if this weren't bad enough, Hildebrand went out of his way to
tweak the Emperor's nose. He excommunicated a few of the
sovereign's closest advisors. Then he demanded imperiously that His
Majesty show up in Rome to "defend himself against charges of
misconduct."
This was about as much as Henry IV could take. The ruler
finally decided to show the upstart Pope just who was boss. Henry
convoked a church synod within his territory--a synod of clerical
figures loyal to himself. Under Henry's guidance, the cooperative
church fathers declared in no uncertain terms that Pope Hildebrand
was fired. Then Henry sat back, smugly confident he had won. After
all, how could a Vatican prayer juggler stand up to a sovereign who
commanded the greatest armies in Europe and could crush whole
countries on the merest whim? But Henry had overlooked something.
The Vicar of Christ demonstrated that he, like the inhabitants of
the village of the sorcerers, had a stranglehold over a weapon no mere
king could command. Hildebrand excommunicated the population of
Germany. And the German citizenry, in fear that their souls would be
cast into eternal torment, so pressured their ruler that he was forced to
travel to Canossa and stand barefoot in a snowy courtyard for three
days begging the Pontiff's forgiveness.45
Like the Kurumba sorcerers, the Pope claimed command over
forces that were invisible. He maintained that his priests had power
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