death the cardinals chose one Pope while the Romans, reasserting the rights they had surrendered,
chose another. The empress sided with the cardinals, whose nominee took the name of Nicholas
II. Although his reign only lasted three years, it was important. He made peace with the Normans,
thereby making the papacy less dependent on the Emperor. In his time the manner in which popes
were to be elected was determined by a decree, according to which the choice was to be made first
by the cardinal bishops, then by the other cardinals, and last by the clergy and people of Rome,
whose participation, one gathers, was to be purely formal. In effect, the cardinal bishops were to
select the Pope. The election was to take place in Rome if possible, but might take place
elsewhere if circumstances made election in Rome difficult or undesirable. No part in the election
was allotted to the Emperor. This decree, which was accepted only after a struggle, was an
essential step in the emancipation of the papacy from lay control.
Nicholas II secured a decree that, for the future, ordinations by men guilty of simony were not to
be valid. The decree was not made retroactive, because to do so would have invalidated the great
majority of ordinations of existing priests.
During the pontificate of Nicholas II an interesting struggle began in Milan. The archbishop,
following the Ambrosian tradition, claimed a certain independence of the Pope. He and his clergy
were in alliance with the aristocracy, and were strongly opposed to reform. The mercantile and
lower classes, on the other hand, wished the clergy to be pious; there were riots in support of
clerical celibacy, and a powerful reform movement, called "Patarine," against the archbishop and
his supporters. In 1059 the Pope, in support of reform, sent to Milan as his legate the eminent
Saint Peter Damian. Damian was the author of a treatise On Divine Omnipotence, which
maintained that God can do things contrary to the law of contradiction, and can undo the past.
(This view was rejected by Saint Thomas, and has, since his time, been unorthodox.) He opposed
dialectic, and spoke of philosophy as the handmaid of theology. He was, as we have seen, a
follower of the hermit Romuald, and engaged with great reluctance in the conduct of affairs. His
holiness, however, was such an asset to the papacy that very strong persuasion was brought to bear
on him to help in the reform campaign, and he yielded to the Pope's representations. At