Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/413

mony in the church of St. Salvatore, guarded the gates and bridges, towers and triumphal arches of the city of Rome with bands of armed men, occupied the Lateran palace with an armed force that he had brought together with hostile intent, frightened the clergy—lest they, none of whom wished to elect him, should dare to resist—by threatening death through the drawn swords of his satellites, and carried by assault the long-desieged chair before the body of the dead man had obtained burial. But when some persons tried to call to his mind that decree of pope Nicholas promulgated by those 125 bishops under pain of unathema, Hildebrand himself approving,—the tenor of which was that if any one, without the consent of the Roman sovereign, should presume to become pope he should be considered no pope but an apostate: he denied all knowledge of a king and asserted his own right to declare void a decree of his predecessors. What more is there to say? Not only Rome, indeed, but the whole Roman world bears witness that he was not chosen by God but that he forced his way most impudently by violence, fraud and bribery. For his fruits betray their root and his works manifest his intent, inasmuch as he subverts the order of the church; has perturbed the rule of a Christian empire; tries to kill the body and soul of a catholic and pacific king; defends as king a perjurer and traitor; has sown discord among the united, strife among the peaceful, scandals among brothers, divorce among husbands and wives; and has shattered whatever of rest he found being enjoyed by those leading a holy life. Therefore we, congregated together, as has been said, by God's authority, trusting in the legates and letters of the 19 bishops who were assembled at Mainz on the holy day of last Pentecost, do decree against this same most brazen Hildebrand,—who preaches sacrilege and arson, who defends perjury and homicide, who questions the catholic and apostolic faith concerning the body and blood of our Lord, who is an ancient disciple of the heretic Berengar, a manifest believer in dreams and divinations, a necromancer, dealing in the spirit of prophecy and therefore a wanderer from the true faith—that, he shall be canonically deposed and expelled and, unless on hearing this he descend from that