The letter concludes with these words: "I, Henry, king by the grace of God, warn you, with all our bishops: descend! descend!" When the Pope had finished reading the invectives of Henry and those who were weak enough to second his ambition, so great was the exasperation of the synod, that he adjourned it to meet the next day.

When the morrow came, in the presence of one hundred and ten bishops, he recited his former indulgence to Henry, his paternal remonstrances, and his repeated proofs of love and goodness.

The whole assembly rose in a body, and implored him to anathematize a perjured prince, an oppressor, and a tyrant, declaring that they would never abandon the Pope, and that they were ready to die in his defence.

It was then that Gregory VII rose and pronounced, amid the unanimous acclamations of the synod, the sentence of excommunication against the emperor.
Thus went forth this awful thunderbolt for the first time against a crowned head.

A dissolute and ambitious monarch had called upon the successor of St.Peter to yield up the keys, and lay the tiara at the feet of the lion of Austria, because that successor had declared an invincible determination to preserve the purity of the Church and its liberties, at the sacrifice of life itself.