herto undreamed of.
Hildebrand first issues from obscurity by the side of Gregory VI; he
became the Pope's chaplain, and this fact alone proves that Gregory was
no idiot. How far Hildebrand's activity already extended, whether he had
any share in Gregory's illegal elevation, we do not know; but in the
"representative" spoken of by the chronicles, we may easily recognize
the gifted young monk who was Gregory's counsellor, and who later took
the name of Gregory VII in grateful recollection of his predecessor.

While Benedict IX pursued his wild career in Tusculum or Rome, Gregory
VI remained Pope for nearly two years. His desire was to save the
Church, which stood in need of a drastic reform--and which soon
afterward obtained it. The papacy, lately a hereditary fief of the
counts of Tusculum, was utterly ruined; the _dominium temporale_, the
ominous gift of the Carlovingians, the box of Pandora in the hands of
the Pope from which a thousand evils had arisen, had disappeared, since
the Church could scarcely command the fortresses in the immediate
neighborhood of the city. A hundred lords, the captains or vassals of
the Pope, stood ready to fall upon Rome; every road was infested with
robbers, every pilgrim was robbed; within the city the churches lay in
ruins, while the priests caroused. Daily assassinations made the streets
insecure. Roman nobles, sword in hand, forced their way into St. Peter's
itself to snatch the gifts which pious hands still placed upon the
altar.

The chronicler who describes this state of things extols Gregory for
having repressed it. The captains, it is true, besieged the city, but
the Pope boldly assembled the militia, restored a degree of order, and
even conquered several fortresses in the district. Sylvester had
apparently made an attempt on Rome; he was, however, defeated by
Gregory's energy. The short and dark period of Gregory's pontificate was
terrible, and his severity toward the robbers soon made him hated by the
nobles and even by the equally rapacious cardinals.

Whatever he may have done under the influence of French and Italian
monks to rescue the Church from its state of barbarous confusion, it
was--as in the time of Otto the Great--by the German dictatorship alone
that it could be saved. The exertions of Gregory VI soon ceased to bear
any result; his means were exhausted, and his opponents gradually
overpowered him. So utter was the state of anarchy that it is said that
all three