HENRY IV. emperor of Germany in 1056, styled the Great, was memorable for his quarrels with pope Gregory II. whom at one time he deposed, for having presumed to judge his sovereign; but at another, dreading the effects of the papal anathemas, he had the weakness to submit to the most humiliating personal solicitations and penances to obtain absolution; which impolitic measure increased the power of the Pope, and alienated the affections of his subjects: thus circumstanced, he reassumed the hero, but too late; marched with an army to Rome, expelled Gregory, deposed him, and set up another pope. Gregory died soon after: but Urban II. and Pascal II. successively, excited his ambitious sons, Conrad and Henry, to rebel against him, and the latter was crowned emperor by the title of Henry V. in 1106; and he had the inhumanity to arrest his father, and to deprive him, not only of all his dignities, but even of the necessaries of life. The unfortunate Henry IV. was reduced to such extremities (after having fought 62 battles in defence of the German empire), that he solicited the bishop of Spire to grant him an underchaunter’s place in his cathedral, but was refused. He died the same year at Liege, aged 55, a martyr to the ignorance and superstition of the age, and to his own blind confidence in favourites and mistresses.