lovely maiden, singing and plucking flowers
beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern and warlike chatelaine of
Canossa. Unfortunately we know but little of Matilda's personal
appearance. Her health was not strong; and it is said to have been
weakened, especially in her last illness, by ascetic observances. Yet
she headed her own troops, armed with sword and cuirass, avoiding
neither peril nor fatigue in the quarrels of her master Gregory. Up to
the year 1622 two strong suits of mail were preserved at Quattro
Castelli, which were said to have been worn by her in battle, and
which were afterwards sold on the market-place at Reggio. This habit
of donning armour does not, however, prove that Matilda was
exceptionally vigorous; for in those savage times she could hardly
have played the part of heroine without participating personally in
the dangers of warfare.

No less monumental in the plastic unity of his character was the monk
Hildebrand, who for twenty years before his elevation to the Papacy
had been the maker of Popes and the creator of the policy of Rome.
When he was himself elected in the year 1073, and had assumed the name
of Gregory VII., he immediately began to put in practice the plans for
Church aggrandisement he had slowly matured during the previous
quarter of a century. To free the Church from its subservience to the
Empire, to assert the Pope's right to ratify the election of the
Emperor and to exercise the right of jurisdiction over him, to place
ecclesiastical appointments in the sole power of the Roman See, and to
render the celibacy of the clergy obligatory, were the points he had
resolved to carry. Taken singly and together, these chief aims of
Hildebrand's policy had but one object--the magnification of the
Church at the expense both of the people and of secular authorities,
and the further separation of the Church from the ties and sympathies
of common life that bound it to humanity. To accuse Hildebrand of
personal ambition would be but shallow criticism, though it is clear
that his inflexible and puissant nature found a savage selfish
pleasure in trampling upon power and humbling pride at warfare with
his own. Yet his was in no sense an egotistic purpose like that which
moved the Popes of the Renaissance to dismember Italy for their
bastards. Hildebrand, like Matilda, was himself the creature of a
great idea. These two potent personalities completely understood each
other, and worked towards a sin