d
calamitous reign. At the age of sixteen he was married to Bertha of
Savoy (A. D. 1066), to whom he conceived a strange and unmerited
aversion, which she overcame in the course of time by her faithfulness
and loyalty in times of misfortune. She shared all the sorrows and
humiliations inflicted upon him by the haughty magnates of the realm and
especially by the German Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII., the overtowering
personality of his time. But divine providence tried to compensate her
for her life of trial and bitterness: she became the mother of Agnes,
wife of Frederic of Hohenstaufen, ancestress of that glorious dynasty
under which blossomed up the First Classical Period of Bloom of German
Literature and Civilisation.

Of tremendous influence in all states and conditions of women and men is
the enforced celibacy of the clergy, an institution due, with all its
consequences of good and of evil, to the energy and iron will of Pope
Gregory VII. It is true that among the ancient Hebrews the marriage of
the high priest, and even of the priests in general, to a divorced woman
or to a widow, or, in fact, to any woman not a virgin, had been
forbidden. The New Testament, however, knows no such ordinance. Several
apostles, especially Saint Peter, were married. The Latin Church,
however, since the eighth century, insisted more and more upon the
celibacy of the clergy; but, nevertheless, it remained the rule for the
clergy in Germany, France, and Upper Italy to be married. During the
tenth century the moral decay among the clergy and the fear of its
increase, if the ordinances of celibacy were enforced, left priestly
marriage undisturbed. But the theory of the greater sanctity of the
priestly state, and the mediaeval spirit of the mortification of the
flesh, as well as the growing conviction that only the sacraments
administered by spiritually pure priests without carnal knowledge of
woman had a saving grace and force, and prepared the way for the final
stroke of entirely abolishing priestly marriage. As the power of the
Papacy increased, and as the necessity for an army of instruments
severed from the binding ties of family life and consequent dependence
upon the secular powers became ever more pressing, the great Gregory
VII. ventured the decisive and final decree of 1074, according to which
every married priest who administered the sacrament at the altar, and
every layman who accepted it from his hand, should be excommunicated,