Roland of Parma informs the pope of…

Roland of Parma informs the pope of these decisions, and he is fortunate enough to gain an opportunity for speech in the synod, which had just assembled in the Lateran Basilica, to deliver his message here announcing the dethronement.

For the moment the members are frightened, but soon such a storm of indignation is aroused that it is only due to the moderation of Gregory himself that the envoy is not murdered.

On the following day, Pope Gregory pronounces a sentence of excommunication against Henry IV with all due solemnity, divests him of his royal dignity and absolves his subjects from the oaths they had sworn to him.

The act of excommunicating a king is incredibly bold, but not without precedent.

Pope Zachary had brought significant challenges to rulers of his era a full two hundred years earlier, in a move Thomas Hobbes will famously call "one of the greatest abuses of the papacy in the history of the Church".

This sentence purports to eject a ruler from the Church and to strip him of his crown.

Whether it will produce this effect, or will be an idle threat, depends not so much on Gregory as on Henry's subjects, and, above all, on the German princes.

Contemporary evidence suggests that the excommunication of Henry makes a profound impression both in Germany and Italy.