After Pope Urban II's death, Paschal reacted to the success of the First Crusade by preaching the penitential
Crusade of 1101. During the long struggle of the papacy with the
Holy Roman emperors over
investiture, Paschal II zealously carried on the
Hildebrandine policy in favor of papal privilege, but with only partial success.
Henry V, son of
Emperor Henry IV, took advantage of his father's
excommunication to rebel, even to the point of seeking out Paschal II for absolution for associating with his father. But, Henry V was even more persistent in maintaining the right of investiture than Emperor Henry IV had been before his death in 1106. The imperial
Diet at
Mainz invited Paschal II to visit Germany and settle the trouble in January 1106, but the pope in the Council of
Guastalla (October 1106) simply renewed the prohibition of investiture. Preparations were made for the coronation on 12 February 1111, but the Romans rose in revolt against Henry, and the German king retired, taking the pope and Curia with him. During Paschal's trip to France in 1106–1107, he consecrated the Cluniac church of Notre Dame at La Charité-sur-Loire, the second largest church in Europe at the time. Toward the end of his pontificate trouble began anew in England; Paschal II complained in 1115 that councils were held and bishops translated without his authorization, and he threatened Henry I with
excommunication.
Matilda of Tuscany was said to have bequeathed all her allodial lands to the Church upon her death in 1115, but the donation was neither publicly acknowledged in Rome nor is any documentary record of the donation preserved. Emperor Henry V at once laid claim to Matilda's lands as imperial fiefs and forced the pope to flee from Rome. Paschal II returned after the emperor's withdrawal at the beginning of 1118, but died within a few days, on 21 January 1118. In 1116, Paschal II, at the behest of Count
Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona, issued a crusade for the capture of
Tarragona. During Paschal's papacy some efforts were made by the
Byzantine Emperor
Alexios I to bridge the
schism between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but these failed, as Paschal pressed the demand that the
patriarch of Constantinople recognise the pope's primacy over "all the churches of God throughout the world" in late 1112. This was something
Orthodox Patriarchs Nicholas Grammaticus and
John Agapetus could not do in face of opposition from the majority of clergy, the monastic world, and the laity. Pope Paschal II issued the bull
Pie postulatio voluntatis on 15 February 1113. It brought under Papal protection and confirmed as a religious order the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, later known as the Knights Hospitaller and today known as the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It also confirmed the order's acquisitions and donations in Europe and Asia and exempted it from all authority save that of the pope. ==See also==