The tyrant struck in anger, and the Pontiff, incapable of yielding, gave the blow at last; for the _temple_ of religion was insulted and invaded.
It is easy, when calmly seated at a winter's fireside, to charge Gregory VII with an undue assumption of temporal power.

But he who will study the critical position of Europe during the eleventh century, must bow down in reverence before the mighty mind of him who seized the moment to proclaim amid the storm the independence of the Christian Church.

Was not this resistance to Henry expedient?
Yes! And to one who knows that the Church was the lever by which the world was raised from barbarism to civilization, and will confess, with Guizot, that without a visible head, Christianity would have perished in the shock that convulsed Europe to its centre, the truth is revealed, as it was to the master mind of Gregory, that had he pursued any other course, peace and unity, as far as human eye extends, would have perished with the compromised liberty of the Church of Rome.

Let us rejoice, then, that this sainted Pontiff hurled against the Austrian tyrant the anathema on which was written--"The independence of the Church of God shall be sustained, though the thrones of princes crumble around her, or though her ministers are driven to seal their fidelity with death.".