Milan in 1059 he made a speech against simony to the assembled clerics. At first they were so
enraged that his life was in danger, but at last his eloquence won them over, and with tears they
one and all confessed themselves guilty. Moreover they promised obedience to Rome. Under the
next Pope, there was a dispute with the Emperor about the See of Milan, in which, with the help
of the Patarines, the Pope was ultimately victorious.
At the death of Nicholas II in 1061, Henry IV being now of age, there was a dispute between him
and the cardinals as to the succession to the papacy. The Emperor had not accepted the election
decree, and was not prepared to forgo his rights in the election of the Pope. The dispute lasted for
three years, but in the end the cardinals' choice prevailed, without a definite trial of strength
between Emperor and curia. What turned the scale was the obvious merit of the cardinals' Pope,
who was a man combining virtue with experience, and a former pupil of Lanfranc (afterwards
archbishop of Canterbury). The death of this Pope, Alexander II, in 1073 was followed by the
election of Hildebrand ( Gregory VII).
Gregory VII ( 1073-1085) is one of the most eminent of the Popes. He had long been prominent,
and had had great influence on papal policy. It was owing to him that Pope Alexander II blessed
William the Conqueror's English enterprise; he favoured the Normans both in Italy and in the
North. He had been a protégé of Gregory VI, who bought the papacy in order to combat
simony; after the deposition of this Pope, Hildebrand passed two years in exile. Most of the rest of
his life was spent in Rome. He was not a learned man, but was inspired largely by Saint
Augustine, whose doctrines he learnt at second-hand from his hero Gregory the Great. After he
became Pope, he believed himself the mouthpiece of Saint Peter. This gave him a degree of self-
confidence which, on a mundane calculation, was not justified. He admitted that the Emperor's
authority was also of divine origin: at first, he compared Pope and Emperor to two eyes; later,
when quarrelling with the Emperor, to the sun and moon--the Pope, of course, being the sun. The
Pope must be supreme in morals, and must therefore have the right to depose the Emperor if the
Emperor was immoral. And nothing could be more immoral than resisting the Pope. All this he
genuinely and profoundly believed.
Gregory VII did more than any previous Pope to enforce clerical