But tell me, when he endeavored to procure a divorce from Bertha, who prevented the criminal separation?
Was it the boasted chivalry of Suabia?
No! Peter Damian, the Pope's legate, alone opposed the angry monarch, and told him, in the presence of all his courtiers, that 'his designs were disgraceful to a king--still more disgraceful to a Christian; that he should blush to commit a crime he would punish in another; and that, unless he renounced his iniquitous project, he would incur the denunciation of the Church and the severity of the holy canons.' The result was the reconcilement of Henry with Bertha, in Saxony.

And though Alexander was Pope, Peter received his instructions from Hildebrand.

But there is a wide difference between your hostility to Henry of Austria and the resistance of Gregory VII to his encroachments: your motives all flow from human considerations, and seek a human revenge; his, on the contrary, proceed from the knowledge of his duty, to God, and breathe forgiveness: you seek the king's destruction and your own aggrandizement--Gregory, the king's welfare, and the independence and prosperity of the Christian Church." We will no longer continue a conversation which, to be intelligible to all, would require a more intimate acquaintance with the history of the times than can be obtained from the books in free circulation among us.
Though Gregory VII has been reproached by all Protestants, and by some Catholics, with an undue assumption of temporal power, and an unnecessary severity against Henry IV of Austria, it is certain that, in his own day, he was charged by many of his own friends, particularly, in Saxony and Suabia, with too tender a regard for a monarch who violated his most solemn engagements the moment he fancied he could do so with impunity, and whose court, already openly profligate, threatened to present the appearance of an Eastern seraglio.

A hasty glance at the prominent facts of the dispute will leave us in doubt whether to admire most the dignified and Christian forbearance of the Pope while a hope of saving his adversary remained, or the unwavering resolution he displayed, even to death in exile, when convinced that mercy to the king would be injustice to God.
No sooner had Gregory assumed the tiara, than he addressed letters to different persons, in which he assured them of his earnest desire to unite with Henry in upholding the honor of the Church and the imperial dignity; to accomplish which he would embrace the first opportunity of sending legates to Henry, to acquaint the king with his views.

But, while proferring his love, he declared that, if Henry should venture to offer God insult instead of honor, he would not fail in his duty to the Divine Head of the Church through fear of offending man.