the reins of a most extended kingdom, ought to be a defender of catholic peace and justice.
But his deeds declare how much he thought either of our writings or of the messages sent through our legates. For, offended at being taken to task or rebuked by any one, he not only could not be induced to make amends for the deeds perpetrated, but, carried away by a still greater fury of spirit, did not cease until he had caused the bishops—nearly all of those in Italy; in German lands as many as he could—to shipwreck the faith of Christ, compelling them to deny the obedience and honour due to St. Peter and the apostolic see and granted to them by our Lord Jesus Christ. We, therefore, seeing his iniquity advance to a climax, for these causes:—first, namely, that he was unwilling to abstain from intercourse with those who had been excommunicated for sacrilege and for the sin of simoniacal heresy; then because, for the criminal acts of his life, he was not willing—I will not say to undergo—but even to promise penance, that repentance which he had promised before our legates having been feigned; finally because he has not flinched at rending the unity of the holy church, which is the body of Christ:—for these faults, I say, we have excommunicated him by sentence of a synod to the end that, since we could not recall him by gentleness, we might either lead him back to the way of salvation by severity, God helping us, or that, should he not even fear the censure of the bann—which God forbid —our soul might not at length succumb to the charge of negligence or fear.
If any one, therefore, thinks that this sentence has been unjustly or unreasonably imposed—if he be such a one as is able to apply his intellect to the sacred canons—let him treat with us in the matter and let him acquiesce after hearing patiently, not what we, but what the divine authority teaches, what it decrees, what the unanimous voice of the holy fathers declares. We, indeed, do not think that there is one of the faithful who, knowing the ecclesiastical statutes, is so bound by this error as not to say in his heart, even though he do not dare to publicly affirm it, that we have acted rightly. But even if we—which God forbid—had bound him with such bann for no sufficiently
