anger at Gerard's treacherous conduct proved a
further incentive to revenge. His numerous adherents still held St.
Angelo, and his gold acquired him new friends. After a forty-nine days'
reign, Sylvester III was driven from the apostolic chair, which the
Tusculan reascended in March, 1045.

Benedict now ruled for some time in Rome, while Sylvester III found
safety either within some fortified monument in the city or in some
Sabine fortress, and continued to call himself pope. A beneficent
darkness veils the horrors of this year. Hated by the Romans, insecure
on his throne, in constant terror of the renewal of the revolution,
Benedict eventually found himself obliged to abdicate. The abbot
Bartholomew of Grotta Ferrata urged him to the step, but he unblushingly
sold the papacy for money like a piece of merchandise. In exchange for a
considerable income, that is to say, for the revenue of "Peter's pence"
from England, he made over his papal dignities by a formal contract to
John Gratianus, a rich archpriest of the Church of St. John at the Latin
gate, on May 1, 1045.

Could the holiest office in Christendom be more deeply outraged than by
a sale such as this? And yet so general was the traffic in
ecclesiastical dignities throughout the world that when a pope finally
sold the chair of Peter the scandal did not strike society as specially
heinous.

John Gratian, or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with a defiant
courage which perhaps was only understood by the minority of his
compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to wrest it from the hands of
a criminal, and this remarkable Pope, although regarded as an idiot in
that terrible period, was possibly an earnest and high-minded man.
Scarcely had Peter Damian knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to
Gregory VI on his elevation, rejoicing that the dove with the olive
branch had returned to the ark. The Saint may have known the Pope
personally and have been persuaded of his spiritual virtues. Even the
chroniclers of the time, who represent him--assuredly with injustice--as
so rude and simple that he was obliged to appoint a representative, are
unable to fasten any crime upon him. The Cluniacs in France and the
congregations of Italy all hailed his elevation as the beginning of a
better time, and side by side with this simonist Pope a young and brave
monk suddenly appears, who, after the heroic exertions of a lifetime,
was to raise the degenerate papacy to a height hit