PASCHAL I., pope from 817 to 824, a native of Rome, was raised to the pontificate by popular acclamation, shortly after the death of Stephen IV., and before the sanction of the emperor (Louis the Pious) had been obtained—a circumstance for which it was one of his first cares to apologize. His relations with the imperial house, however, never became cordial; and he was also unsuccessful in retaining in Rome itself the popularity to which he had owed his election. He died at Rome while the imperial commissioners were investigating the circumstances under which two important officers of Lothair, the eldest son of Louis, had been seized at the Lateran, blinded, and afterwards beheaded; Paschal had shielded the murderers but denied all personal complicity in their crime. The Roman people refused him the honour of burial within the church of St Peter, but he now holds a place in the Roman calendar (May 16). Like one or two of his more immediate predecessors he was liberal in his donations to several churches of the city, St Cecilia in Trastevere having been restored and St Maria in Domnica rebuilt by him; he also built the church of St Prassede. The successor of Paschal I. was Eugenius II.

PASCHAL II., pope from 1099 to 1118, was the successor of Urban II. Of his early history nothing is known except that his proper name was Rainieri, that he was of Tuscan origin, and that in early life he became a monk, probably of Cluny. He was raised to the cardinalate by Gregory VII. about 1076, and was elected to the papal chair on August 13, 1099. In the long struggle with the imperial power about Investiture (q.vf he zealously carried on the Hildebrandine policy, but hardly with Hildebrandine success. One of his first acts was to expel from Rome the antipope Clement III., otherwise known as Guibert of Ravenna, and to renew his predecessor’s sentence of excommunication against the emperor Henry IV., by the help of whose rebellious son it seemed at one time as if the claims of the church were to become wholly triumphant. But Prince Henry, who succeeded to the purple in 1106 (see Henry V.), proved a still more active and persistent opponent of papal pretensions than ever his father had been. Paschal was courteously invited to Germany to assist in arranging definitely the affairs of the empire (1107), but, while the pope delayed his journey, the emperor proceeded actually to exercise all the rights of investiture to the fullest extent, and, having disposed of various wars in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, announced in 1110 the intention of proceeding to Rome to be crowned and to re-establish order in Italy. From Arezzo he sent ambassadors to Rome, and the pope after negotiation agreed to his coronation on the footing that the church should surrender all the possessions and royalties it had received of the empire and kingdom of Italy from the days of Charlemagne, while Henry on his side gave up the form of investiture. But on Henry’s arrival in Rome (Feb. 1111), ...