CHAPTER III.

Continuation of German Popes.

HILDEBRAND having concluded his hasty treaty with Berengar, but not leading with him, as he had threatened, the captive heretic, travelled with the utmost speed to Rome. Pope Leo, it is said, had bequeathed the administration of the see, during the vacancy, to the Cardinal-subdeacon; but tumults were threatened, or actually broke out: the party of Benedict, the old Roman party, was not extinct. According to one account, it made a bold attempt to regain its power. Hildebrand was too wise as yet to aspire to the unsafe dignity. The Pope must be a wealthy prelate, for the larger part of the papal domains were still in the hands of the baronial plunderers. An Italian pope of the most awful piety, of the most determined energy, would only have wielded spiritual weapons, to which those lawless men had been too long habituated, not to laugh them to scorn. The Pope must command the imperial protection, without which Rome might at any time become the prey of the Normans. That terrible race had again resumed their hostile aspect; their ally, the Count of Reate, had not scrupled to seize and imprison, on their return from Constantinople, the future Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine and the other legates of Pope Leo. The Pope would have become the slave, he had not yet learned the wiser policy of being the patron and ally, of these barbarians. After some months it was

determined to send an embassy to the Emperor, at the head of which was Hildebrand himself, to implore his nomination. But Hildebrand had already determined upon his choice-a Pope who might meet the exigencies of the times, and whose election would so flatter the Emperor, that he would hardly refuse to concur cordially in the appointment. Gebhard of Eichstadt was one of the richest, undoubtedly the ablest of the German prelates. Gebhard might be considered the remote cause of the discomfiture of Leo at Civitella, and of his premature death. He it was who had advised the Emperor to countermand the march of the great body of his troops to the support of Leo. He had veiled this act of jealous hostility to Leo under affected scorn of the Normans; "with two hundred knights he would chase them from Italy." If Gebhard could command the German troops to retire, he could command them to advance in these perilous times to the rescue of Rome.

The rise of Gebhard of Eichstadt to power and influence had been rapid and extraordinary. Gebhard, Bishop of Ratisbon, the uncle of the Emperor, had demanded for his favourite, Cuno, the succession to the see of Eichstadt. From some latent cause, on the pretext that Cuno was the son of a married priest, Henry refused the nomination, but endeavoured to propitiate his uncle by leaving the appointment absolutely in his power. The Bishop of Ratisbon immediately named Gebhard, a remote descendant of the noble house of Calw. To the Emperor's objection against his extreme youth, the bishop replied with prophetic sagacity, that Gebhard would rise to still higher honours. This vaticination began immediately to give promise of fulfilment. The Bishop of Eichstadt showed consummate abilities; he

was of the greatest service to the Emperor in most difficult circumstances, particularly during the HungaHe became his most intimate and confidential

rian war. counsellor.

It was a great stroke of policy to secure the full exertion of the imperial power for the reinstatement of the Pope in the dignity and security of his office; to repel the Normans, perhaps to wrest back from their unworthy possessors some of the estates of the see: while at the same time it deprived the Emperor of a counsellor who was most likely to give success to his policy, to the German policy, of retaining the Pope in obsequious vassalage to the Empire. It might be boldly predicted from the ambition and abilities of such a Pope as Gebhard, that after the great work of the re-establishment of the papacy was completed, the Churchman, as in his predecessors, would predominate over the faithful subject, the Italian Pope over the German Liegeman. Gebhard foresaw the danger, shrank from the temptation; he had rather remain the commanding counsellor than the equal, the rival, it might be the enemy, of his master. He yielded to the pressing entreaties of Hildebrand and the Romans, and of his Imperial sovereign, only after long delay, only on the significant terms that the Emperor would restore the rights and possessions which he held belonging to the papacy. This speech implied the pledge of his assistance to recover those usurped 1055. by others. A whole year had elapsed before the successor of Leo IX. was inaugurated at Rome under the name of Victor II.

April 13,

The Emperor followed his Pope into Italy at the head of an imposing and powerful array. But a new enemy had arisen, if not more formidable, more hateful to the Emperor than the Normans or the usurpers of the Papal

estates. Godfrey the Bearded, the deposed Duke of Lorraine, had been Henry's ancient antagonist. Godfrey, anathematised by Leo IX., deserted by his allies, had submitted to the loss of his hereditary dukedom; he had led an aimless and adventurous life. One of the acts which was considered as betraying hostility to the Emperor in Pope Leo, had been the elevation of Godfrey's brother, Frederick of Lorraine, to the Cardinalate, and to the highest honours of the Church. Godfrey had accompanied his brother, the Cardinal Legate, on his mission to Constantinople. On his return he married Beatrice, the widow of Boniface, A.D. 1052. Marquis of Tuscany, who had been murdered

a few years before. The whole inheritance of that family, the most powerful in Italy, the inheritance which, afterwards falling to the famous Countess Matilda, was the great source of the independence and overweening power of Gregory VII., was at the command of the Emperor's implacable enemy. The depression of the house of Lorraine was the one object which now occupied the Emperor. The mother and her daughter fell into his hands. Godfrey of Lorraine was forced to abandon his Italian possessions; he fled to Germany, to stir up more perilous revolt against the Imperial authority. The Cardinal Frederick, pursued by the implacable jealousy of the Emperor, did not find himself safe even in the holy sanctuary of Monte Casino. He took refuge in a more unapproachable monastery in the rocky island of Thermita, to emerge in a short time, under other circumstances, as the Supreme Pontiff.

Pope Victor II. held a council in the presence of the Emperor at Florence, then an unimportant city. Besides the ordinary denun

May 27.

ciations against simoniacal proceedings, and a new

sentence against the excommunicated Berengar, a decree was passed which attempted to strike at the root of that evil which impoverished the papacy, broke up the Church property into small pieces, and made laymen the actual possessors of the estates of the Church. It prohibited, under pain of excommunication, all bishops and abbots from granting the estates of the Church as fiefs to knights or nobles. The Pope set the example of this new proceeding; on the falling in of the fief of Spoleto and Camerina, he became himself the Marquis. He proceeded, no doubt under the awe of the protection of his imperial master, to resume other lands which had been rashly and fraudulently granted away in the more turbulent periods to the barons of the Romagna.

But, whether from his severity in the condemnation of simony, the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline, or the threatened resumption of the estates of the Church, the Italian hatred to a German Pope soon found a man bold and guilty enough to endeavour the murder of Victor. A subdeacon mingled poison even with the blood of the Lord in the Eucharist. The story took the form of legend; the Pope could not lift the chalice; he entreated the prayers of the faithful to enable him to investigate the cause of this wonder; the affrighted culprit fell on his knees and confessed, or, as it was said, the dæmon who possessed him confessed his guilt.

The Emperor, on the news of threatened insurrection, had hastened back to Germany. Instead of descending again in the next year to Italy, he sent messenger after messenger pressing the return of his one faithful and wise counsellor to Germany. The Empire was in open or secret revolt in many parts. Godfrey of Lorraine