Saint Gregory VII

He chose Gebhard, Bishop of Eichstätt, a relative of the Emperor; he chose him despite the Emperor and despite the bishop himself, who took the name Victor II, whether because God had enlightened him regarding this choice, or because he had himself recognized the pilot suited for the barque of Saint Peter for these times of storms. This new Pontiff, continuing the irreconcilable war that his predecessor had decl ared ag simonie Buying or selling of spiritual goods, a major struggle of the saint. ainst simony, gave the mission for it, so to speak, to Hildebrand. As the enemy that had to be defeated had especially invaded Burgundy and Italy, our Saint held a council in Lyon to depose the bishops convicted of having purchased their sees: the bishop of the place was himself guilty of this crime; the legate, having summoned him, pressed him to humbly acknowledge his fault; the culprit, seeing himself in his own city and supported by the count of the region, responded only with contempt; but he soon realized that there was a serious intention to judge him according to the rigor of the canons; then he boldly denied what he was accused of: the matter was postponed until the next day; our simoniac, who was not unaware that he was dealing with inflexible severity, thought he could escape it by corrupting, during the night, with money, both the accusers and the witnesses. When his traps were thus set, he presented himself to the council and asked proudly: "Where are my accusers? Let him appear, he who wishes to condemn me!" All kept silent. Our Saint, heaving a deep sigh and having consulted with the Fathers of the council, said to him: "Do you believe that the Holy Spirit, whose gift you are accused of having purchased, is of the same substance as the Father and the Son?" The bishop replied: "I believe it." — "Say then," continued the legate, "glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." The simoniac, the hypocrite began, but he could never name the Holy Spirit, although he tried up to three times. He then threw himself at the feet of his judge, convinced by the miracle, touched by grace; he confessed his crime, he was deposed, and immediately he finished the Gloria Patri without difficulty.

Stephen IX, who succeeded Victor II on the chair of Saint Peter, had no less confidence in our Saint; as he had sent him to Germany for affairs of state, he ordered very expressly to the bishops, the clergy, and the Roman people, gathered in the church, that if he were to die, the Holy See should be left vacant until the return of Hildebrand, so that it might be disposed of only by his counsel. This Pontiff died indeed shortly after, and the return of the holy ambassador was awaited, although the factious had created an anti-pope in the interval. He chose Gerard, Bishop of Florence, who took the name Nicholas II and lived under the tiara only until 1061. His successor, Alexander II, worked like his predecessors, with our Saint, to free the Church from temporal power, to make discipline flourish, and to heal the hideous wound of whic h we have la simonie Buying or selling of spiritual goods, a major struggle of the saint. already spoken: "simony." Upon his death, a successor was immediately elected for him; here is the decree of this election: name of the magician Simon: it is known that the latter offered money to the Apostles for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This plague had spread at that time in a frightening manner and had gained mainly the emperors and the kings. This infamous depravity had taken such deep roots that, despite the efforts and the anathemas of the Popes, Ferdinand of Aragon did not blush to sell the diocese of Taranto, for the sum of thirty thousand ducats, to a Jew, who passed his son off as a Christian. It is thus that he gave to his hunters and others abbeys and benefices, on the condition that they maintain a certain number of dogs and decoy birds for his hunting pleasures.

Emperor Henry III, in a synod held at Constance in 1047, spoke with energy against this disorder, and said to those who were present: "You who should spread blessings, you are perverted by avarice and greed, equally worthy of anathema, because you give and because you receive. My father also, whose salvation causes me much anxiety, practiced this guilty traffic only too much. That is why he among you who defiles himself with such a stain must be excluded from the holy ministry; for such injustice calls upon men famine, mortality, and war." Voigt, p. 9.

Peter Damian depicts, in the following two stanzas, this disorder in a quite palpable manner:

| Cedant equi phalerati, | Ad bene Simonis leproscen | | Cedant enot raboim, | Excerate lueresio, | | Cedant canes venateres | Sacerdatum simul atque | | Ac minorum fabuim | Sectus adulterit, | | Et accipitres rapaces | Lalcorum dominatus | | Noc non aves garrulm. | Cedat ab ecclesila. |

"Our Lord Jesus Christ reigning, in the year of the merciful Incarnation 1073, the eleventh indiction and moon, the tenth of the kalends of May, the second series, the day of the burial of the lord Alexander II, pope, of happy memory, so that the apostolic chair might not long be in mourning, deprived of a capable pastor, we cardinals, clerics, acolytes, subdeacons, deacons, priests of the holy Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church, assembled in the basilica of Saint Peter in Chains, with the consent of the venerable bishops, abbots, parish priests and monks here present, to the acclamations of a considerable crowd of both sexes and of various ranks, we elect as pastor and sovereign Pontiff the religious man versed in both sciences, an accomplished lover of equity and justice, intrepid in adversity, moderate in prosperity, and, following the word of the Apostle, adorned with good morals, modest, sober, chaste, hospitable, governing his house well, raised and instructed in a distinguished manner, from his earliest childhood in the bosom of this mother Church, and for his merit promoted to this day to the honor of the archidiaconate; in a word, the archdeacon Hildebrand, whom we wish and approve to be forever, under the name of Gregory, pope and apostolic, et Grégoire, pape Pope during whose pontificate Saint Gausbert died. c..."

Before and after this decree, the clergy and the people cried out in the church: "Saint Peter has elected the archdeacon Hildebrand! Saint Peter has elected Pope Gregory!"

As soon as our Saint became the father of all the faithful, he watched over everyone with paternal care; no corner of the earth escaped his gaze, his love, or his government, which was as severe as it was just; he devoted his entire life to executing the plan of his predecessors, which was to lead kings, princes, bishops, and priests to the practice of their duty for the glory of God and the salvation of the souls entrusted to their zeal. Most of these sons, these beloved brothers, asked for or at least received with docility the advice that Our Lord gave them through the mouth of His vicar.

We will cite only a few examples of these friendly relations to give an idea of what the Christian family was like at that time: the holy King Canute of Denmark, having asked our Saint for advice, received the following letter:

« We congratulate your affection with sincere charity, that being placed at the ends of the earth, you nevertheless seek with zeal everything that concerns the honor of the Christian religion, and that, recognizing the Roman Church as your mother and that of the whole world, you claim its instructions and advice. We wish and we recommend to you that your devotion persevere in this eagerness and these desires, that it grow therein with divine grace, that it never relax from this good purpose, but that each day it renders itself capable of something better, as is fitting for a wise man and for the constancy of a king; for your excellence must consider that, the more it is elevated and dominates over the great number, the more it can, by its example, either incline its subjects to evil, which God forbid, or bring back to good even the cowardly; your prudence must also consider the joys of this temporal life, how fleeting they are, how fugitive they are, and, even if one could hope for the longest life, how subject they are to being troubled by unforeseen adversities. You must therefore apply yourself above all to directing your steps and your intentions toward the things that do not pass away and that do not abandon the one who possesses them. We would be very pleased if a prudent man from among your clergy came to us, to make known to us the customs of your nation and to bring back to you with more intelligence the instructions and commands of the Apostolic See ».

Poor Norway, which finds itself today in darkness and ice more fatal to the soul than that which the body fears, knew well then, despite the distance, how to draw closer to the hearth of light and warmth, and the holy Pope was far from forgetting this distant flock; he wrote to King Olaf:

« Seated on the apostolic chair, we are all the more obliged to take care of you, as being at the end of the earth, you have less convenience to be instructed and strengthened in the Christian religion. That is why we desire, if we could, to send you some of our brothers; but as it is very difficult, both because of the distance and the difference in languages, we ask you, as we have commanded the King of Denmark, to send to the apostolic court young men of the nobility of your country, so that being instructed in the law of God, under the protection of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, they may bring back to you the orders of the Holy See, and usefully cultivate religion among you. For the rest, always think of the hope of your vocation, and be attentive to what the Lord says in the Gospel: They will come from the East and the West, and will sit at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; do not delay, run, hasten. You are from the last confines; but if you run, if you hasten, you will be associated in the kingdom with the first ancestors. May your race be faith, charity, and desire! Your career, to meditate on how the glory of this world is fleeting, and to convince yourself that it must be viewed with bitterness rather than with delight; the use of your power, to help the oppressed, to defend widows, to avenge orphans, in short, not only to love justice, but also to support it with all your strength. It is by this way, with this treasure and these riches, that one arrives from the earthly kingdom to the heavenly; from passing joy to eternal joy, from fragile glory to the glory that remains forever ».

Our Saint ended almost all his letters in the same way, reminding the great of the brevity of life and the eternal reward; but not all were equally docile to his lessons. Boleslaus II, King of Poland, despite the warnings of the Holy See, used his power only to satisfy his brutal passions; he ended up giving himself over, even in public, to the most infamous debaucheries; he abandoned himself at the same time to such horrible acts of tyranny and injustice that his contemporaries and posterity have branded him with the name of savage; the lords and the people groaned to see themselves the prey of such a monster; Saint Stani slaus, Bishop of Krakow, made usele saint Stanislas, évêque de Cracovie Bishop of Krakow martyred by King Boleslaw II. ss remonstrances to him up to three times; finally, after a fourth, he had the courage to excommunicate him. He thus earned and drew upon himself the crown of martyrdom, the object of his noble ambition. The ferocious Boleslaus, having sought in vain among the Poles for an assassin of the holy Pontiff, employed the instrument most worthy of such a sacrilege: he slaughtered the august victim with his own hand at the foot of the altars. At the news of this execrable crime, Pope Gregory VII, to avenge religion, morality, and humanity all at once, struck the assassin king with anathema, deprived him of royalty, released all his subjects from their oath of fidelity, and finally removed the title of king from the sovereigns of Poland who, for a long time, held only that of dukes.

The throne of France offered the world, not the same cruelty, but the same scandals: Philip I, master of others at fourteen, could hardly yet be master of himself: his conduct was that of a libertine rather than a king; he placed debauchery in the first rank among the enjoyments of royalty, and, instead of wise counselors, he had around him vile courtiers, flatterers eager to excite his passions, to serve them, and assured of advancement all the more rapid as their services were more shameful; to pay the instruments and accomplices of his vices, he sold bishoprics and abbeys; religion served, so to speak, as fuel for passions that it should have extinguished. What would have become of the holy laws of morality in France, trampled underfoot by the one into whose hands God had placed the sword to defend them, if Gregory VII had not remembered, like his predecessors, that the whole universe is a family, that he was its father, and that he had to rebuke, correct, punish, and even exclude from the circle of the family of the faithful those guilty children, all the more guilty as they are placed higher and obliged to set better examples? He wrote several letters to the bishops to repress the scandals of the king, who often promised to correct himself, always failed in his promise, and who only sincerely amended his ways under Pope Paschal II.

But the prince who most afflicted the Church with his disorders of every kind was Henry IV , Emperor of Germany; our holy Henri IV, empereur d'Allemagne Emperor and father of Itta. Pontiff addressed remonstrances to him, especially regarding the shameful traffic he conducted in holy things; the hypocritical emperor, engaged against the Saxons in a war whose outcome was uncertain, replied with fine promises; but when he had triumphed over his enemies, he continued to protect the scandalous and simoniacal bishops who were his creatures. Then our Saint, despite his firmness, seeing that he could not reform such a great evil, fell into deep discouragement; his humility gave him the thought of abandoning the government of the Church to others; he wrote to Hugh, Abbot of Cluny:

"I wish I could paint for you the torments that agitate me within, the daily labors that overwhelm me without. I have often conjured Jesus Christ to withdraw me from this miserable world, if it is not given to me to serve our common Mother with more success. An inexpressible pain, a mortal sadness poisons my life. I see the East separated from us by the instigation of the demon, and, when I turn my gaze toward the West, I find there hardly any bishops worthy of their title who govern their flock according to the rules of the Gospel. Among the princes of the earth, there is none to whom his own glory is dearer than that of God, and who is not disposed to sacrifice justice for sordid gain. If I consider myself, I feel that I am succumbing under the weight of my sins, and my only resource is in the immense mercy of Jesus Christ. If I did not have the hope of repairing my past faults by a more Christian conduct, and if I did not believe that I could still be useful to the Church, I take God as my witness, nothing could keep me any longer in Rome where, for twenty years, I have been forced to remain against my will."

One sees, by these words, what zeal for the glory of God devoured the heart of Saint Gregory, and what was the purity of his intentions; no alloy altered the gold of his actions. Well resolved to fight to the peril of his life for the laws of God and his Church, he deposed the Bishop of Bamberg, a creature of the emperor, who publicly displayed the most dissolute morals and who was accused of simony and concubinage; he convened in Rome a Council for the restoration of discipline and for the reformation of the morals of the clergy; it is there that he issued the famous decree which forbids any secular person, whatever his power and dignity, from giving the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices, and he notified this great resolution by briefs throughout Christendom. Henry IV, irritated by this blow, tried to parry it in his usual manner; he bribed assassin s, who t Henri IV Emperor and father of Itta. hrew themselves upon our Saint at the moment he was going to celebrate Christmas Mass; but the people, warned by this tumult, delivered their pastor who celebrated, without any trouble, the holy sacrifice, offering himself for the Church with the divine Lamb. Nevertheless, this attack, added to so many others, determined him to cite the emperor to Rome; he summoned him to appear before the tribunal to which the whole universe is subject, to account for his conduct and to justify himself for the crimes imputed to him. And as the culprit topped off his scandals by assembling a pretended Council of bishops, his accomplices, where all these criminal subjects pronounced the deposition of the Pope, their head and their judge, our Saint, with the unanimous advice of the bishops who were gathered in Rome, fulminated a bull of excommunication against Henry, and renewed those which had already been launched against most of the bishops of his party. Germany rose up immediately: the princes and the peoples abandoned this emperor hated for his crimes, despised for his conduct, and publicly excluded from the Christian family. The general diet, gathered at Trebur, gave him one year to lift his excommunication, otherwise it would declare him deposed from the empire (October 15, 1076). Cruel when he was strong, his weapon, when he felt weak, was hypocrisy; he had recourse to it in this general abandonment; he came to Italy, penance on his face, but not in his heart; he advanced as far as the castle of Canossa, which belonged to the pious Countess Matilda, his relative, and where Sain t Gregory was wai comtesse Mathilde Countess of Tuscany, faithful ally of Pope Gregory VII. ting for him; instead of a pitiless judge, whose eyes read through the mask of hypocrisy, he found a father who wanted to believe in repentance so as not to lose the opportunity to forgive. After having waited three days, according to the ancient rules, to test his sincerity, in the first enclosure of the fortress, barefoot and with his body covered in a hairshirt, he was admitted before the Pontiff, who gave him a firm and paternal reprimand and granted him absolution.

He returned absolved, but unchanged. As soon as he was in Germany, he made preparations for an expedition against Italy and in particular against the Pontiff, whom he had deceived with his fair promises; excommunicated a second time and deposed by the electors of the empire, he defeated Rudolf, Duke of Swabia, who had been named emperor in his place, had a deposition against Saint Gregory pronounced once more in a synod composed of his creatures, and had Guibert, former chancellor of the empire, elected in his place—a man who, having become Archbishop of Ravenna, had been excommunicated for having despoiled his Church. He then marched on Rome to place this antipope, named Clement III, by force upon the seat of Saint Peter. Our Saint, full of confidence in the justice of his cause, saw without fear the storm that was forming over his head; he awaited with resignation whatever Providence would ordain for him. All the sufferings of the Church, it is true, came to be gathered in him, who was its head; but those that were particular to him hardly worried him. While his enemy advanced by forced marches, he presided quietly over a synod in Rome and had wise ordinances drawn up on the most important points of ecclesiastical discipline. In the letters he wrote in this critical circumstance to the bishops and princes of Italy, one notices a great love for the Church, the piety of a Saint, and a touching self-abnegation regarding his own interests. When it was proposed to him to use the goods and revenues of the Holy See to procure troops for his defense, he rejected this proposal and replied that he did not wish to make such use of his goods. The enemy of the Church finally appeared before Rome and became master of it after a two-year siege, on the Thursday before Palm Sunday in 1084; he enthroned his antipope in Saint Peter's and had himself crowned by him on Easter Day. Saint Gregory, who was blockaded in the Castle of Saint Angelo, was rescued by Robert Guiscard, Prince of Apulia, who had rushed to his aid; he withdrew first to Monte Cassino, then to Salerno. The wasting away of his strength and the weak ening o Salerne Port of embarkation for the Holy Land. f his health made him feel that his end was approaching; then he thought only of appearing before the sovereign Judge. He protested, in the presence of the cardinals, that he had never had in view anything but the good of the Church, the reformation of the clergy, and the restoration of morals among the faithful. He gathered them several times around him, recommending to them, with the most lively insistence, to choose as his successor only the one they believed before God to be most capable of steering the barque of Saint Peter in such stormy times; and, as they begged him to choose his successor himself, he designated the three men he judged most capable: Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, who indeed succeeded him; Otho, Bishop of Ostia, who became Pope under the name of Urban II and had the glory of accomplishing the great and holy thought of Gregory VII for the deliverance of the tomb of Our Lord; and finally, Cardinal Hugh, Archbishop of Lyon. Desiderius hoped to assist at his final moments; but the Saint predicted to him that he would not be there, and he was indeed obliged to return to his monastery because of an attack by the Normans.

Three days before his death, Saint Gregory lifted all the sentences of excommunication he had launched, with the exception of those that fell upon Henry and Guibert; he kept his presence of mind until the end; his last words were: *Dilexi justitiam et odivi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio*: — "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile." He went to receive the crown due to his struggles on May 25, 1085. His body was buried in the church of Saint Matthew in Salerno, and several miracles occurred at his tomb. He was inscribed in the Catalogue of Saints in 1580 by order of Gregory XIII, and Benedict XIII had his office placed in the Breviary.

We possess relics of his spirit no less precious than those of his sacred body: these are nine books of letters; we cannot refrain from citing the one he addressed to Princess Matilda in 1074; one will se princesse Mathilde Countess of Tuscany, faithful ally of Pope Gregory VII. e there that this powerful genius, who with a glance embraced all kingdoms, who attacked at the same time and everywhere all disorders, even on the most formidable thrones, who appeared more unshakable than heaven and earth, had a tender piety, an ardent devotion to the Holy Eucharist, a child's confidence toward the Blessed Virgin, and finally an affectionate heart and language; he reconciled qualities that seem incompatible, because he lived by that wisdom from above, which reaches from one end to the other with strength and disposes all things with sweetness. Here is that letter:

"Saint Ambrose expresses himself thus in the fourth book of *The Sacraments*: If we announce the death of the Lord, we announce the remission of sins. If every time the blood of the Lord is shed, it is shed for the remission of sins, I must receive it always, so that my sins may always be remitted. Sinning always, I must always take the remedy. In the fifth book of *The Sacraments*, the same Saint says again: If it is a daily bread, why do you take it after a year, as the Greeks are accustomed to do in the East? Receive it every day, so that every day it may profit you: live in such a way as to deserve to receive it every day."

Saint Gregory says likewise, in the fourth book of his *Dialogues*: "We must, at least seeing it already passed, despise with all our soul the present age, offer every day to God the sacrifice of our tears, immolate to Him every day the victim of His flesh and blood; for, what saves our soul from eternal perdition is this incomparable victim which renews for us, through the mystery, the death of the only Son. Although risen from the dead, He dies no more, and death has no more power over Him, nevertheless, living immortally and incorruptibly in Himself, He is immolated again for us in the mystery of the sacred oblation; for His body is received there, His flesh is shared there for the salvation of the people, His blood is poured out there, no longer into the hand of the faithful, but into the mouth of the faithful. Let us think from this what this sacrifice is for us, which ceaselessly imitates, for our absolution, the passion of the only Son. What faithful person can doubt that at the moment of the immolation, at the voice of the priest, the heavens open; that the choirs of angels assist at this mystery of Jesus Christ; that what is lowest unites with what is highest, earthly things with heavenly, and that a certain unity of visible and invisible things is formed? Saint Chrysostom says in the same sense to the neophytes: See to what extent Christ has united Himself to His spouse; see with what meat He feeds you. He is Himself our substantial meat and our nourishment. As a mother, by a natural affection, hastens to feed with her milk the child she has just brought into the world, so Christ ceaselessly feeds with His blood those whom He Himself regenerates. The same Chrysostom writes to the monk Theodore: Mortal nature is something very casual; it falls quickly, but rises with slowness; it falls easily, but it does not right itself as promptly. We must therefore, my daughter, have recourse to this admirable Sacrament, and desire this admirable remedy.

"I wished, dearest daughter of Saint Peter, to write these things to you in order to increase your faith and your confidence in receiving the body of the Lord; for such is the treasure, such are the gifts, not gold or precious stones, that, for the love of your father, namely the Sovereign of the heavens, your soul expects from me, although you may, according to your merits, receive better ones from other Pontiffs. As for the Mother of the Lord, to whom I have mainly recommended you, I recommend you and will not cease to recommend you, until we have the happiness of seeing her as we desire; what shall I tell you of her that heaven and earth do not cease to praise, even though they cannot praise her worthily? Hold this, however, beyond doubt: as much as she is higher, and better, and holier than any mother, so much is she more clement and sweeter toward converted sinners, both men and women. Put thus an end to sin in your will, and, prostrate before her with a contrite and humbled heart, shed your tears. You will find her, I promise without any doubt, more prompt than a mother according to the flesh and more tender in loving you."

Saint Gregory VII is represented with a dove on his shoulder: everyone knows that the dove is the symbol of inspiration from above. — Prostrate before an image of Our Lady, he weeps over the evils of the Church: the Blessed Virgin also weeps to show him what part she takes in his sorrows, and to encourage him in the generous struggle he is waging against the enemies of the good; — the great Pope of the 11th century is especially honored in Salerno and in Dalmatia: in Salerno, because he died there; in Dalmatia, because Gregory VII had conferred the title of king upon Demetrius, Duke of the Dalmatians and Croats. Saint Gregory also gave the name of king to Michael, prince of the Slavs, known more particularly by the name of Servians. One sees this by a letter where the Pope informs him that he awaits his ambassadors to recognize his royal dignity, to give him a standard, and to hold him henceforth as a beloved son of Saint Peter, and to end a dispute between the archbishop of Spalatro and that of Ragusa. The letter is dated January 9, 1077. One sees by his examples, which are not the only ones, what the constitution of Christendom was in the 11th century. Princes and peoples submitted, even temporally, to the Roman Church, to the Vicar of Christ. Bossuet himself shows us, according to historical monuments, how then dukes, counts, and even kings submitted in emulation of one another to the Holy See in order to find safety and peace in its protection. And he adds that in effect it was no mediocre assurance to have received royalty or the kingdom from the Apostolic See. Sovereigns found notable advantages there. The authority of the head of the Church protected them against the invasion of foreigners and against the revolt of their own subjects. Thus, in a letter to Vezelin, a noble knight, Saint Gregory reminds him of the fidelity he promised to the Apostolic See, and consequently forbids him to make war on Demetrius whom the same See has constituted king in Dalmatia. A thing even more astonishing had been seen in 1075. The son of another Demetrius, king of the Russians, came to Rome and asked Pope Saint Gregory to hold the paternal kingdom from his hand. Hungary had been thus submitted to the Holy See by its first king and apostle. In the time of Saint Gregory VII, it had for king another saint, namely Saint Ladislaus, who was a model of Christian, royal, and military virtues. We have a letter from the holy Pope to the holy king, where he congratulates him on his piety, his zeal, and his devotion, and recommends to him some faithful or vassals of Saint Peter, who had been unjustly exiled, and whom this good king had helped. Bohemia, for its part, had a sovereign who was not despicable: this was Wratislas II. He loved Pope Alexander II singularly, who returned the favor. But often the duke took advantage of this to make unusual requests, which the Pope granted him out of affection, and not without some solicitude. Thus the prince one day begged him to send him a mitre, which it appears he wanted to make a ducal insignia of Bohemia in great ceremonies. Such a request embarrassed the Pope and the cardinals somewhat; never had a mitre been granted to a lay person. Alexander, however, so much did he love this prince, sent it to him in Prague by his legate John, Bishop of Tusculum. Saint Gregory VII, having ascended the chair of Saint Peter, confirmed these privileges of his predecessor, and had a similar affection for the Duke of Bohemia.

Pope Gregory VII was slandered during his life, he was slandered after his death; but the day of truth is beginning to dawn, and, astonishingly, this justice comes to him from the Protestants. One of them, Voigt, wrote a Life Voigt Protestant historian and author of a biography rehabilitating Gregory VII. of Gregory VII based on original and authentic monuments. He examines Gregory VII both regarding the goal he set for himself and the means employed to achieve this goal. In both respects, he finds him not only exempt from blame but worthy of praise. His great goal, his sole goal, was to make the Church of God free and independent of men, and to subordinate politics to justice and morality. As for the means, he could not have taken any others than those he took. Here is how the Protestant author summarizes: "Gregory was Pope, he acted as such; and in this respect he is great and admirable. To pass a fair judgment on his acts, one must consider his goal and his intentions, one must examine what was necessary in his time. Doubtless, a generous indignation seizes the German when he sees his emperor humiliated at Canossa, or the Frenchman when he hears the severe lessons given to his king. But the historian who embraces the life of peoples from a general point of view rises above the narrow horizon of the German or the Frenchman, and finds what was done to be very just, although others blame it. — It is difficult to give this Pope exaggerated praise, for he laid the foundations of solid glory everywhere. But everyone should wish that justice be rendered to whom justice is due; that one does not cast stones at the innocent; that one respects and honors a man who worked for his century, according to such great and generous paths. Let him who feels guilty of having slandered him return to his own conscience." This is how this Protestant author speaks of Pope Saint Gregory VII. May all Catholics profit from this lesson!

The Life of Saint Gregory was written by Paul of Bernried, and is found in the Acta SS., May, vol. VI, with the notes of Father Papelbrock. — This Pope, so great and so misunderstood, was defended by the pen of Saint Anselm of Lucca, Lambert of Hersfeld, Paul Langius, Marianus Scotus and his continuators Dodechin and Stephen, Bishop of Halberstadt; of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, of the priest Domnizo, in his Life of Countess Matilda; of Leo of Ostia, In chron. Casinens; of Bernold of Constance, Onofrio Panvinio, the Dominican François d'Enghien, in his work: *Auctoritas Sedis apostolicæ pro Gregorio Papa VII, vindicata adversus Natalem Alexandrum*, and several other authors. See Baronius, Annal. eccles. excul. XI; Gretser, vol. II, *Defensionis controversiarum cardinalis Bellarmini*; the dissertation of Musserelli, and especially the learned notes of the Bollandists. Following the example of Msgr. de Ram, from whom we have borrowed several excellent notes, in order to protect ourselves from the reproach of prejudice and partiality, we have made it a duty to take as authorities, in our work, learned Protestants who have distinguished themselves by their historical research, mainly Professor Johannes Voigt, *Hildebrand als Papst Gregorius der Siebente, und sein Zeitalter, aus den Quellen dargestellt*. Msgr. de Ram also cites: Heeren, *Ueber die Folgen der Kreuzzüge für Europa*; Ihne, *Handbuch der Geschichte des Mittelalters*; Luden, *Allgemeine Geschichte der Volker und Staaten*; the work of a Catholic writer, Friedrich Von Kerz, entitled: *Über den Geist und die Folgen der Reformation*, Mainz, 1822.