On 5th January 1106 Henry V. was crowned for the second time at Mainz. The first months of his reign were disturbed by his father’s attempt to regain power. When he was at last undisputed King of Germany, he found that his cold-blooded treachery had profited him very little. The Investiture Contest was still unsettled. Between 1103 and 1107 Anselm of Canterbury, restored to his see by William Rufus’ death, had been carrying on a counterpart of the contest with Henry I. of England. But the personal animosities which had embittered the continental struggle were absent, and the dispute did not, as abroad, involve the larger questions of the whole relations of Church and State. It was easy, therefore, to settle it by a satisfactory compromise. Yet at the very moment when Henry had agreed to lay aside investiture with ring and staff, the envoys of Henry V. were informing Paschal that their master proposed to insist upon his traditional rights in the matter. The result was that the continental strife was renewed with all its old bitterness.
For two years Henry was engaged in wars against Hungary and Bohemia. In 1110 he resolved to visit Italy to receive the imperial crown, and to re-establish the old rights of the Empire. Besides a numerous army, he took with him ‘men of letters able to give reasons to all comers’ for his acts, among whom was an Irish or Welsh monk named David, who wrote, at his command, a popular account of how the king had gone to Rome to extract a blessing from the Pope, as Jacob had extorted the angel’s blessing.[7] He found Italy too divided to offer effectual resistance. The Countess Matilda was old, and Paschal was no great statesman like Gregory or Urban. [Sidenote: Henry’s Roman journey. Paschal renounces the Temporalities of the Church, 1111.] Early in 1111 the king’s army approached Rome. The Pope, finding that neither the Romans nor the Normans would help him, sent to Sutri to make terms. Even in his supreme distress he would not give up freedom of elections or abate his hostility to lay investitures; but he offered that if the king would accept those cardinal conditions he would renounce for the Church all its feudal and secular property. It was a bold or rash attempt to save the spiritual rights of the Church by abandoning its temporalities, lands, and jurisdictions. Henry naturally accepted an offer which put the whole landed estates of the Church at his disposal, and reduced churchmen to live on tithes and offerings—their spiritual sources of revenue. Only the temporalities of the Roman see were to be excepted from this sweeping surrender.