WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 353

mother of this monarch, forgetting all the ties of cnature, was seduced to countenance the insolenceof his enemies. Princes themselves, not attentiveto the pernicious consequences of those papalclaims, employed them for their present purposes:And the controversy , spreading into every cityof Italy , engendered the parties of Guelf andGhibbelin; the most durable and most inveteratefactions that ever arose from the mixture of ambitionand religious zeal. Besides numberless assassina-tions , tumults, and convulsions, to which theygave rife , it is computed that the quarreloccasioned no less than sixty battles in the reignof Henry IV. and eighteen in that of hissuccessor , Henry V. when the claims of thesovereign pontiff finally prevailed 7t .

But the bold spirit of Gregory, not dismayedwith the vigorous opposition , which he metwith from the emperor, extended his usurpa-tions all over Europe; and well knowing thenature of mankind , whose blind astonishmentever inclines them to yield to the most impudentpretensions , he seemed determined to set nobounds to the spiritual , or rather temporalmonarchy, which he had undertaken to erect.He pronounced the sentence of excommunicationagainst Nicephorus, emperor of the East; RobertGuifcard, the adventurous Norman, who hadacquired the dominion of Naples, was attackedby the same dangerous weapon: He degraded

Padre Paolo sopra i beaef. eccles. p. 113.

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