Shall the Church of God be free or become the
creature of temporal power? Already William the Conqueror and Henry of
Austria were trying to fetter the spouse of Christ--already the gulf was
opening that threatened spiritual Rome with destruction. Then it was
that Gregory VII saved the Church as Curtius saved the city; but while
the pagan has been raised to the skies, the Christian has been insulted
and belied.

Never can we sufficiently contemplate the spectacle of one man
contending against the world! Not a chieftain, at the head of an army,
subduing kingdom after kingdom, but a priest, without a carnal weapon,
resisting a continent combined at once to crush him, and finally
vanquishing by his death. Uninspired by ambition, assailed by every
earthly motive, God alone could have directed, and God only could have
upheld him. The Emperor of Austria had sworn to depose him, the
Italians promised to assist his antagonist. With scarce a footing in
Germany or Italy, cooped up on a barren peak, he wrestled with the
haughty conqueror of England, humbled the pride of Nicephorus Botoniates
who had usurped from Michael Paripinasses the empire of the East, and
deposed Guibert the guilty Bishop of Ravenna. Yet amid these cares, such
as human shoulders seldom knew before or since, he forgot not the
objects to which he had dedicated his life--the punishment of simony and
the preservation of ecclesiastical purity. It was in the attainment of
these, that he arrayed kingdoms against him and died in exile at
Salerno. Harassed and chained down as he was, the councils of Anse,
Clermont, Dijon, Autun, Poietiers, and Lyons were thundering against
simony and incontinency.

It would be presumptuous to offer a word in defence of the conduct of
such a man, had not his actions been so grievously misstated, and his
aims so ungenerously misinterpreted. It were as well to point out the
sun when the eye is dazzled by its brightness.

Gregory received Rodolph's envoys with every mark of affection, but
dismissed them, saying he could not comply with their request. The
Pontiff's object was to keep royalty within its legitimate sphere, not
to depose a particular king, and he wished to accomplish this with as
little bloodshed as possible. He saw clearly enough that to declare for
Rodolph would be to proclaim war to the knife. He also hoped that Henry
would have recourse to his mediation after his defeat. He was again
disappointed. His very friends now