    30

    a ppointing the bishops within the boundaries of their own realm.

    Hildebrand declared that this practice would immediately come to a

    halt.  From now on, the church in Rome would make these

    appointments.

    The gall of the new pronouncement was startling.  Under Pope

    Hildebrand's new system, religious officials would no longer be men

    the secular authority could count on for loyalty or cooperation.  They

    would no longer be extensions of the king's own bureaucracy.  Instead,

    these powerful local figures would be virtual foreign agents.

    As if this weren't bad enough, Hildebrand went out of his way to

    tweak the Emperor's nose.  He excommunicated a few of the

    sovereign's closest advisors.  Then he demanded imperiously that His

    Majesty show up in Rome to "defend himself against charges of

    misconduct."

    This was about as much as Henry IV could take.  The ruler

    finally decided to show the upstart Pope just who was boss.  Henry

    convoked a church synod within his territory--a synod of clerical

    figures loyal to himself.  Under Henry's guidance, the cooperative

    church fathers declared in no uncertain terms that Pope Hildebrand

    was fired.  Then Henry sat back, smugly confident he had won.  After

    all, how could a Vatican prayer juggler stand up to a sovereign who

    commanded the greatest armies in Europe and could crush whole

    countries on the merest whim?  But Henry had overlooked something.

    The Vicar of Christ demonstrated that he, like the inhabitants of

    the village of the sorcerers, had a stranglehold over a weapon no mere

    king could command.  Hildebrand excommunicated the population of

    Germany.  And the German citizenry, in fear that their souls would be

    cast into eternal torment, so pressured their ruler that he was forced to

    travel to Canossa and stand barefoot in a snowy courtyard for three

    days begging the Pontiff's forgiveness.45

    Like the Kurumba sorcerers, the Pope claimed command over

    forces that were invisible.  He maintained that his priests had power

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