ergy, especially in France and Germany, were setting at
defiance the edicts of popes and councils. The glory of celibacy was in
an eclipse.

No one comprehended the necessity of celibacy, among the clergy, more
clearly than Hildebrand,--himself a monk by education and sympathy. He
looked upon married life, with all its hallowed beauty, as a profanation
for a priest. In his eyes the clergy were married only to the Church.
"Domestic affections suited ill with the duties of a theocratic
ministry." Anything which diverted the labors of the clergy from the
Church seemed to him an outrage and a degeneracy. How could they reach
the state of beatific existence if they were to listen to the prattle of
children, or be engrossed with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So
he assembled a council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that
married priests should not perform any clerical office; that the people
should not even be present at Mass celebrated by them; that all who had
wives--or concubines, as he called them--should put them away; and that
no one should be ordained who did not promise to remain unmarried during
his whole life.

Of course there was a violent opposition. A great outcry was raised,
especially in Germany. The whole body of the secular priests exclaimed
against the proceeding. At Mentz they threatened the life of the
archbishop, who attempted to enforce the decree. At Paris a numerous
synod was assembled, in which it was voted that Gregory ought not here
to be obeyed. But Gregory was stronger than his rebellious
clergy,--stronger than the instincts of human nature, stronger than the
united voice of reason and Scripture. He fell back on the majestic
power of prevailing ideas, on the ascetic element of the early Church,
on the traditions of monastic life. He was supported by more than a
hundred thousand monks, by the superstitions of primitive ages, by the
example of saints and martyrs, by his own elevated rank, by the
allegiance due to him as head of the Church. Excommunications were
hurled, like thunderbolts, into remotest hamlets, and the murmurs of
indignant Christendom were silenced by the awful denunciations of God's
supposed vicegerent. The clergy succumbed before such a terrible
spiritual force, The fear of hell--the great idea by which the priests
themselves controlled their flocks--was more potent than any temporal
good. What priest in that age would dare resist his spiritual monarch on
almo