had organised an insurrection; France threatened war: the Pope hastened to the aid of his old master. He arrived at Goslar to receive his confession, to administer the last Sacraments. The Emperor, in consequence of violent exertion in the chace, had caught a fever, which, working on a mind harassed by the perplexing state of affairs, brought him to the grave. He died, Oct 5, 1056. forgiving all his enemies, making restitution (Oct. 28.) of all which he had unjustly possessed, bequeathing his infant son to the care of the Pope. He was buried by the faithful Pope at Spires.

Victor II., Gebhard of Eichstadt, was now in power both Pope and Emperor; his wise moderation appeased the angry conflict in Germany. He reconciled Baldwin of Flanders to the young king by a timely concession of his hereditary dukedom. He allayed the enmity of Godfrey of Lorraine; he gave no offence to those who were most likely to take offence at this pre- June, 1057. eminent elevation of one of their own order, Oct. 29, 1055. the great prelates of Germany; he raised the celebrated Adalbert into a metropolitan of Northern Germany, as Archbishop of Hamburg. He sent Hildebrand again into France to reform the Church, to depose the simoniacal prelates, to wrest the power and the wealth of the clergy out of the hands of the laity. In Italy it had already, before the Emperor's death, begun to appear that the Pope now wielded the power of the Empire. He had made a progress into the March of Nov., Dec., Ancona as Duke of Spoleto and Marquis of 1055. Camerina and Fermo and of the March of Ancona. He raised his tribunal, and was received with the utmost submission; many of the unruly barons attended obsequiously upon his court. He summoned the Count Teuto and his sons for unlawfully withholding the castle

of La Vitice from the Bishop of Teramo. The contumacious Teuto not appearing, the judge of the Pope declared him in rebellion, pronounced against him the ban of the Empire and of the Pope, and gave orders to take the castle by force. These proceedings were not always carried out without strong murmurs. Peter Damiani, in one case, thought himself called upon to intrude his remonstrances, and to admonish Pope Victor as to the observance of more equal justice. It was an ungrateful return to God who raised Victor to the favour of the Emperor, and had now invested him with imperial power, to abuse that power, to despoil unrightfully a man who had withdrawn from the world and dedicated himself to Christ. But at the summons of Pope Victor a April 18, large synod of bishops from Northern and 1057. Central Italy met at Florence; those of Florence, Arezzo, Nocera, Castello, Popilia, Sienna, Vercelli, Turin, Eugubio, Velletri, Fiesole, Pisa, Pistoia. Of the acts of this Synod nothing is known but the presentation of Frederick of Lorraine, fallen into such disgrace with the Emperor Henry III., but now wisely restored to favour, as Abbot of Monte Casino to the Pope. Frederick was received with the utmost courtesy, confirmed as abbot, and at the same time acknowledged as the Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus in the Roman Church. The ambition of Victor rose with his power; his grants assume a loftier tone; the Apostolic throne of Peter,

a Damiani, Epist. i. v. The circumstances to which Damiani alludes are unknown.

b Read in Tosti Storia della Badia di Monte Casino, i. p. 211, the curious account of the elevation of Frederick of Lorraine by a bold Papal intrigue to the Abbacy, the forcible deposition

of the pious and aged Abbot Peter, the courageous stand of the monks for their right of election. (They had an Imperial edict absolutely exempting them even from Papal jurisdiction) "fu tutta opera del generoso e forte monaco Hildebrando." So writes Tosti.

The whole early history of Monte

the chief of the Apostles, is raised high above all people, and all realms, that he may pluck up and destroy, plant and build in his name. He was preparing again to cross the Alps to arrange, in his character of guardian of the Empire, with the Empress Agnes the affairs of Germany; he was meditating a second great July 28, Council at Rheims, to accomplish the reform in the Church of France. He suddenly died at Arezzo, and with him expired all these magnificent schemes of universal rule.

1057.

When the unexpected intelligence of Pope Victor's death arrived at Rome, the Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine had not departed to Monte Casino. The death of Victor caused almost a vacancy in the Empire as well as in the Papacy. The Empress mother alone, now deprived of her ablest counsellor, and her young son, represented the Franconian Cæsars. The House of Lorraine was in the ascendant; not only had Duke Godfrey been permitted to resume his hereditary rank and title, Victor, the Pope, had either from policy consented, or yielded through fear, to admit Godfrey and his wife Beatrice of Tuscany as joint representatives of the Empire, and as rulers of Italy. Frederick of Lorraine was not a Roman, not even an Italian, but he was the

Casino is a singularly vivid and instructive illustration of the times. The foundation of S. Benedict had martial Abbots, who stood in arms against the fierce Lombard counts and dukes, and the hardly more ferocious Saracens; a Martyr Abbot who was slain before the altar; ambitious Abbots akin to the Lords of Capua and Naples who obtained by force or fraud the coveted dignity; holy Abbots, who won the homage of mankind by VOL. III.

their virtues. Prefects, Kings, Emperors vied with each other in lavish grants of domains or wealth to Monte Casino. Those domains and that wealth became the object of plunder to Lombard, Saracen, or Norman; and was hardly lost before it was recovered or replaced by religious awe or superstitious terror. The Abbot of Monte Casino became a personage, sometimes hardly of less importance than the Pope himself.

2 E

hereditary enemy of the Imperial House; he had suffered bitter persecution from the late Emperor. The Romans determined to seize the occasion of reasserting their privilege of themselves creating the Pope without regard to the permission or sanction of the Emperor. Hildebrand was absent: and as they still hesitated, they consulted the Abbot of Monte Casino concerning the future Pope. Frederick of Lorraine named no single prelate; he embarrassed them (if indeed the whole was not well understood between the parties) with the choice among five prelates, Humbert Cardinal Bishop of St. Rufino, the Bishops of Velletri, of Tusculum, and of Perugia, and the Subdeacon Hildebrand. It was proposed to await Hildebrand's return; but the dominant party would hear of no delay. They declared none of these to be equal to the Papacy; Frederick of Lorraine himself must be the Pope. "Be it as you will," said the unresisting Abbot, "ye can only do what God permits you to do.". Five days after the death of Victor, Stephen Frederick, under the name of Stephen IX., Aug. 2, 1057. was inaugurated in the church of St. Peter ad Vincula, and installed amid universal joy in the Lateran Palace. Frederick of Lorraine was a churchman of the sternest and haughtiest views. As the Legate of Leo IX. at Constantinople, he had asserted the Roman supremacy in the strongest terms. He had anathematised the Byzantine Church in language which, notwithstanding that the policy of the reigning Emperor Constantine Monomachus (intent on retaining, as an ally of the Pope, his small remaining territory in the south of Italy) led him to endure any degradation of his Church by the representatives of the Pope, eventually tended to widen the irreparable breach between the East and West. He drew up, with his colleagues, a paper which

Pope,

he solemnly deposed on the high altar of St. Sophia, which, while it condescended to admit that among the pillars of the realm and the great dignitaries of the state, they had found much true faith and orthodox doctrine; asserted that the so-called Patriarch and his followers were sowing the seeds of all imaginable heresies. Like the Simonists, they sold the grace of God: like the Valesians, they appointed men whom they had castrated not only to the priesthood but to the episcopate; like the Arians, they rebaptised those who had been baptised before in the name of the Holy Trinity, even Latin Christians; like the Donatists, they declared that without the Church of Byzantium was no true Church, the sacraments were of none effect: like the Nicolaites, they permitted carnal union to priests; like the Severians, they declared the law of Moses accursed, and cut off from the article about the Holy Ghost his procession from the Son as from the Father: like the Manicheans, they asserted that whatever is leavened has life. Like the Nazarenes, they so highly respect the purification of the Jews, that they do not baptise children who die before the eighth day, and do not administer the communion to women who are in danger during childbirth; if heathens, do not baptise them. Finally, they do not, because they themselves wear their hair and beard long, admit to the communion those who, according to the Roman usage, clip their hair and shave their chins. "Accursed, therefore, be Michael, miscalled Patriarch, Leo Bishop of Acrida, and all their followers, with those of Simon, Vales, Donatus, Arius, Nicolaus, Severus, with all the enemies of God and the Holy Ghost, the Mani

с

Compare on this extraordinary charge against these Valesians (Valentinians, qu.?) the letter in Mansi.